With so much changing so quickly, Right Brain/Left Pain smashed into a wall. Would consumers fall for the $40 oil price and resuscitate the Hummers, F-trucks, and Rams that had turned into immovable fossils just a couple of months earlier? Would the previous turn toward responsible transportation, under an oppressive $147 oil price, keep going, or suddenly end? Would people be generally smart enough to realize that the energy monster hasn't gone away, it's only resting and regathering its strength?
"The price [of oil] is low because demand has fallen because economic growth in most parts of the world has stopped," said the Executive Director of BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, at a January 29 OPEC meeting. "This is not about low prices because we've added lots of new capacity. It's about demand destruction, at least in the short term. And the big challenge for all of us is to recognize that when economic recovery returns, demand will come back very fast." 76
So much of what we've been talking about here through the last year was thrown into instant flux, with the planet's governments and economies heaving and rearranging by the hour, that it was impossible to carry one idea to its full end before a new one came along to replace or redirect it.
But now, it's Obama time. And Al Gore went to testify before Congress that a wrecked economy can't be used as an excuse to stand still on climate initiatives. And Fox News reported that story this morning, this way: "Former Vice President Al Gore went to Washington to discuss the immediate need for 'cap and trade' legislation... on a day when the city was locked in ice. Here to debate the idea of global warming...."
And then came the split screen, with a responsible scientist on one half and a somewhat hysterical spokesman for the Cato Institute on the other. The scientist said he would rely on the reports of all sixteen of the world's major climate science reporting organizations that capping carbon outputs, right now, has to happen. The Cato guy said that in the time that average American temperatures went up one degree Celsius, American corn output rose 500 percent. So, carry on. As we were.
"The facts are out there," the Fox commentator said. "We'll leave it to our viewers to become informed and decide for themselves."
Okay. We just did this at the end of November, but let's do it again:
1. Just because there is ice in Washington D.C. does not mean that the entire planet is miraculously back on its normal climate track. It's like saying that there are no rats in your back yard, so the rat population of New York City is all gone now.
2. And there is no such thing as a "debate" to be had anymore. Look at it this way. Your house catches fire and starts billowing smoke from the windows, but you think it might just be natural clouds of dust blowing off the sills because you're a terrible housekeeper. Fire departments from sixteen cities roll up to your yard and say no, it's definitely fire, and we need to put it out now or you'll have no house. One of your neighbors weighs in: "I dunno. I still say it might only be dust." Do you really want to stand there and "debate" this issue, or would you prefer that the firefighters leap into action... even if it turns out to be a "just in case" precaution?
3. Let's assume that American corn yields did in fact go up 500% during the same time that the average mean temperature increased in the United States. How would that fact negate the corresponding decrease in Australian wine grape production, the decrease in Bolivian water supplies, the decrease of fish populations worldwide, the decrease of crops in post-hurricane Haiti, the decrease of rice output in Asia — and the in-process decrease of viable cropland in California because of an alarming decrease in water supplies for irrigation,77 meaning a decrease in American fresh vegetable output? Is the Cato Institute really sending its version of Marie Antoinette over to Fox News to announce, "Let them eat corn"?
And all of this while Fox's founder, Rupert Murdoch, is allegedly into his second year of "inspir[ing] people to change their behavior" as he helps his network's viewers understand that "climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats." 78 The Fox founder's own words. So what's up with him, and with that?
Some day — maybe as quickly as it took for the world economic landscape to change, but most likely not — the networks may still come to realize that they can't play this story both ways. That it's not a "controversial" story ripe for bringing four shouting heads together for three minutes of sputtering over each other. That the leadership and change coming from the new White House isn't material for "entertaining" challenges from the Limbaugh-Hannity-O'Reilly hydra, but something those three could help to lead, too.
Meanwhile, the greatest tragedy in human history proceeds apace.
====SOURCES====
76 "Energy Leaders Tell Davos That Oil Prices Too Low for Serious Investments." Radio Free Europe, Jan. 29, 2009.
77 Associated Press, "California farmers idle crops, veggie prices may rise." Jan. 26, 2009
78 Amanda Griscom Little, "Thinking Outside the Fox." Grist, May 9, 2007.
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