Nudging the conversation

I don't listen to the NPR show This American Life hosted by Ira Glass. The stories just don't resonate with me. But the promos for this one caught my attention. It is about how the debate in climate change is being nudged from the long-term stalemate.

In the first part we hear about Nolan Doesken, the State Climatologist for Colorado. Up to this year he had been able to say all the strange and extreme weather could be attributed to "variability" -- and he could name the year when something similar happened. But this year's early spring, summer heat, and drought convinced him that there might be something to this climate change stuff. Even so, he has been quite reluctant to say so as part of his job because so many of his clients -- the state's farmers -- are either skeptics or depend on the climate not changing. He saw no use in alienating them. However, in his annual address in January he did -- briefly -- talk about it. And he has been a bit bolder since then. The extreme weather of 2012 has finally permitted him to talk about it -- or has permitted his clients to listen.

Chapter two is about Bob Inglis, who makes it safe for Republicans to talk about climate change. He was a GOP representative from South Carolina and lost in the Tea Party wave of 2010 -- by 71%. Now he spends his time talking about the issue that got him defeated. Liberals, with data on their side, tend to overplay their hand -- soccer moms in SUVs are bad people (or so it seems by conservatives). But Inglis comes at it from the conservative point of view. He is targeting the difference between the 40% of GOP voters who believe climate change is real and 0% of GOP lawmakers willing to vote for it. Yeah, some are afraid of defying the orthodoxy even though they agree with the voters. One of his central messages is to tax pollution, something that is bad, and reduce taxes on other things such as income. Alas, at public events his crowds tend to be liberal -- waiting to hear a conservative say conservatives are wrong.

For the third part we turn to the Democratic side. Bill McKibben is trying to energize the progressive message, which has become too quiet. People are to ambivalent about going green because they like such things as cheap airfare. To change the debate, he says, there must be an enemy. And he has one: oil and coal companies. Now he works to organize an army against that enemy. If the earth's temperature rises two degrees (Celsius) we're screwed. At the current rate we produce enough CO2 to raise those two degrees in 14 years. The coal and oil companies have enough reserves (still in the ground), that if it were used, would pump out five times the CO2 needed to raise the temp by two degrees. And financial markets have priced the stock with the expectation that all those reserves will be brought to market. That's enough to brand them as enemies. Just like cigarette companies and those that invested in apartheid South Africa. McKibben is working to rouse college students to ask their administration to divest from oil and coal companies. But colleges are reluctant to actually do it, giving students a runaround, while praising them for bringing the issue to their attention. They say, "Want us to act? Make us. Be a nuisance." Even a few students making noise can shift the public perception.