Climate versus deficits
by David Atkins
David Roberts over at Grist posted a stimulating twitter/email exchange between himself and former NPR producer Wen Stephenson. The whole thing is interesting, but this in particular from David Roberts was masterful:
To be a Very Serious Person is to echo conventional wisdom, safe in the knowledge that even if you’re wrong, so is everyone else — at least everyone else who’s serious! One good indicator of a VSP is that he/she claims to be unbiased and non-partisan, occasionally “centrist.” To VSPs, being on “a side” is a sure path to illegitimacy; one must always be above all that, moderate and reasonable. Again, this has nothing to do with accuracy or facts, only with where the herd is located at the moment…
For instance, when, say, John Broder at the NYT covers the failure of international climate talks, he doesn’t say, “the failure to develop serious global climate policy raises the already-high probability that humanity will experience widespread disruption, suffering, and die-off later this century.” He might know that it’s true, on some level — I don’t know. But he doesn’t say it, because it sounds extreme. Saying that the status quo guarantees mass suffering makes you sound “partisan,” like an “alarmist” (and guarantees that right-wingers will hassle you and your editor). Again, this has nothing to do with the truth of it, only with the norms of Very Serious writing. Saying stuff like that is like farting at a cocktail party…
It’s quite instructive to compare coverage of climate with coverage of the deficit. I would argue that, on the factual merits, climate is a much bigger, more severe, and more urgent problem. The deficit isn’t a short-term problem at all, as most professional economists agree. Quite a few economists argue that it’s not a mid-term or long-term problem either! (That’s one of those deviant perspectives you never, ever see represented in mainstream media.)
Yet everyone in elite media, punditry, think tank, and political circles “just knows” that the deficit is a looming, awful threat that will crush our grandchildren and their puppies. An “objective” reporter can say that without fear of being accused of bias. Indeed, the deficit is mentioned not just in stories about the deficit but in almost every story about economics or government, period! You can recommend economic austerity measures that are absurd to professional economists and never, ever get your reputation dinged. There is no social risk to over-worrying or talking too much about the deficit; there’s only upside, reputation- and career-wise. It is the paradigmatic Very Serious issue, divorced from the facts but reinforced by herd behavior.
Climate is the mirror image. The facts support a far more alarmist case, but not only can objective journalists not take that for granted — they’re barely allowed to take the existence of climate change for granted. Even the mildest of carbon-pricing schemes is deemed radical, unrealistic, bad politics. “Everybody knows” we’re going to keep accelerating through oil, gas, and coal until they’re gone. To say otherwise is to be un-savvy, the cardinal sin for VSP.
There will come a day in the future when regular people look back at us, thunderstuck. “Deficits? That’s what these idiots cared about? Their big political arguments were about paying back deficits on bonds held by bankers the government bailed out, right during the middle of a recession, while ignoring the impending climate change disaster? Not only ignoring it, but desperately trying to figure out how to extract more oil? Just how stupid were these people, anyway?“
And the answer will be: we weren’t all stupid. Just the Very Serious People were. Let the blogs stand as testament to the fact that some of us did cry out, like voices in the wilderness.
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