Aasof’s Reflections

Next week on Facebook I try to present the challenges to climate change, something that has turned out very difficult to do with a claimed 97% of the scientific community reporting it as an Anthropocene event. For my part I can see no end to whatever is inducing any perceived climate change.

Economic growth translates directly into political votes and there is no indication that global electorates put concerns over climate change (anthropocene or not) ahead of their concerns for personal economic growth.

The first duty of government is the protection of life, not its destruction. Abandon that, and you have abandoned all. Thomas Jefferson

A premise of democracy that I believe is worth defending is that it is incumbent on those seeking either change or for the status quo to be sustained to define and defend their arguments, even against robust criticism, and even against seemingly stupid and evil opinion. Needless to say, I also believe that this principle is entirely absent from the green argument. Instead, the environment’s putative voices have preferred to question the intellectual capacity and moral character of their critics, no matter how big a question mark it puts over their own hearts and minds. The most significant development in this regard seems to be the recruitment of cognitive and behavioural sciences into the climate debate, with their own ‘standards’ of evidence. Yet more recent developments have shone more light on this dark tendency. Ask a stupid question