Climate and Guilt

As noted, in earlier posts, one of my general themes vis-a-vis politics is taking a close look at the language used and understanding the frame (or meme), in order to get at the "real" message represented by a particular statement -- no matter who the source.

Tracking the discussion on "global warming" is one of those activities that can make you crazy if you only react to the frame. The fact that the LA Times persists in giving Jonah Goldberg a prominent spot on its Op-Ed page has made me a little crazy in the past, but I'm trying to take the time to apply the de-framing exercise to his screeds, and I'm finding there is a lot to learn about Jonah and his fans, whoever they are.

Take today's column, "Maybe it's the sunspots" (it has a different title online). Along with a shallow dip into the science of sunspots and their correlation to warmer or cooler climatic periods, Jonah gets to the meat of his argument in the last third of his column, as he talks about being "lectured and harangued" about his choice of toilet paper or cereal or shopping bags. That's what really cheeses him off -- being made to feel guilty by some snotty environmentista.

Look at what most of the right says about climate change (or global warming, or whatever) and it comes down to an argument about who's at fault, buttressed by how expensive it will be to fix it, even if it is our fault, which it's not. After all, we exhale CO2, how could it be bad for us? Fox News even had their own viewpoint last Friday.

In other words, for those folks who see such issues in terms of a divinely defined moral order, how could we be doing something immoral? Don't tell me I'm guilty! George Lakoff (earlier bog) has an interesting anlaysis of the political identities that see the world in this way.

For those of us whose experience of the world demonstrates that we are responsible for our actions -- and that responsibility is NOT the same as guilt -- we are confronted with this basic disconnect. We accept that we don't know all the answers, but that doesn't mean that we ignore what we do know while we keep asking the questions that will get us closer to the truth, inconvenient or not.

In some future blog we will also look at the role of "common sense" in terms of this disconnect.