I went to hear Jonah Goldberg, aka "Cookie Monster guy", speak at the U of M last night. He was invited to campus by "CFACT", which bills itself as a "conservative environmentalist" organization. Jonah did his best to convince us that such a moniker is in fact not parody and in my mind he did a pretty good job, while drinking a tremendous amount of water. (He confided: "I smoked soooo much pot before I got here." )
He told us we could either have a new speech or a good speech, but he managed to do both. It might have been rambling -- but it was interesting rambling, full of humor and first-hand knowledge . Most everyone stayed for the Q&A.
The gist of the talk was about how environmentalism has all the characteristics of a religion and how adherants often frame their arguments in that context, regardless of fact. He used a couple of examples:
How often have you heard the phrase "majestic" or "pristine" in regards to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Jonah, who went to Alaska to find out what the fuss was about, had less glamorous terms to describe the coastal plain where oil drilling would happen: "Godforsaken hellhole". No sunshine for most of the year and biblical clouds of mosquitos for the remainder. He pointed out the actual footprint of all the drilling operations that would take place amounted to less land than the University sits on, in a preserve the size of South Carolina. But -- in spite of reality, drilling in ANWR is framed in terms of a national catastrophy, the irrevocable loss of a national treasure to greedy hoardes of oilmen. This is a fantasy, a belief that's been force-fed to the American public. The caribou herds? As Jonah mentioned, the caribou-dog street vendors in Anchorage didn't seem too concerned. There are more than enough of them to go around.
He also talked about Yucca mountain, the national repository for nuclear (civil and governmental) wastes. I don't think I could possibly do justice to his rendition of one of the potential problems facing the site -- that is, the dripping of water eating through the bedrock, the storage casks, the nuclear fuel rods themselves, and then far, far down to reach the water table. The debate, he says, is whether this might happen in 10,000 years or 40,000 years -- but we have a storage problem (and many billions spent) now. Nuclear power is by far the cleanest conventional method of power generation that exists today -- but a whole generation of plants have not been developed since Three Mile Island. (When, he points out, 8-tracks were still a novelty.) Not only does coal power pollute more in terms of greenhouse gasses, but because uranium naturally exists in coal deposits burning it releases more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants do.
Fancy that -- more reliance on nuclear power would actually reduce the amount of radioactive material in the atmosphere. But this is not the debate that's taking place: one of the tenets many environmentalists hold dear is that nuclear = bad, and with the help of the media, the public has accepted this as fact. (*This wasn't part of the talk, incorporating parts of a slashdot thread here.)
I could go on but I'm sure if you've made it this far, you get the idea. (That and I'm not really doing the talk justice.) Lileks has some more comments about the evening, he's shorter in person than I had imagined. It's funny how you assumptions about stature derive from perceptions of status. Jonah points this out too in his post facto post. (Contrary to what Lileks says -- I do recall "Star Trek" being uttered. It's a Corner thing.)
I spent the rest of the evening "on the town" with Professor Adventure and some of his friends. Good times.
UPDATE
Some more blogging of the event:
http://martinandrade.blogspot.com/
http://brainboy.blogspot.com/
http://bantering.blogspot.com/
http://ddcya.blogspot.com/
http://pinkmonkeybird.blogspot.com/
Posted by eric at April 27, 2005 09:27 AM
Comments
I might note that the reason many environmentalist arguments SOUND religious is because they ARE religious. One reason for this is the attempt to avoid the naturalistic fallacy. Another reason for this is that many people genuinely believe that there is something special about nature worth protecting. If we were to take a virgin forest and exploit it for resources but then replace it with an identical forest, which we've constructed, would it be just as special? Objectively there would be no difference. Yet, many people would feel that there would be a significant difference. Unfortunately for clarity's sake ethics is more a discussion of values and beliefs and not facts.
However, if there are beliefs concerning facts, where the facts are patently false, Jonah’s argument is perhaps more effective. If nuclear waste is really not a major ecological concern, than those who oppose it are either mistaken or irrational. Though, if there is an agreement on the matter of facts, but dissention in how these facts are valued, an interesting ethical debate will ensue.
http://www.cuyamaca.net/bruce.thompson/Fallacies/naturalistic.asp
Posted by: Edwardo at April 27, 2005 02:31 PM
Paragraph 4: Hmm...interesting.
Posted by: d2ana at April 27, 2005 04:36 PM
How very cryptic, dd!
Yes, the talk was about where facts clash with feelings. Naturally (pun intended?), this is not the "whole story" when it comes to ANWR or Yucca Mountain.
Posted by: Eric at April 28, 2005 09:19 AM