If You Can't Beat Them . . .

The Open Society and a New Enemy

In a recent article on the Energy Bulletin website (June 29, 2008), Kurt Cobb, who is a founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, argues for restrictions upon free speech with respect to climate change.

This is not new. It has been part of the sinister underbelly of the movement for some time. Every so often the covering is removed for all to see.

Towards the end of World War Two, Karl Popper wrote the now famous The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper argued very successfully, against the backdrop of the closed societies of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, that a pre-requisite for progress was maintaining an open society where there was a tolerance of the free exchange of ideas scholarship and research. Cobb and his ilk are calling for the Open Society to be closed to climate change skeptics. The rights of free speech should be removed from anti global warming advocates.

What exigency would require such a lurch into a closed, controlled, totalitarian society?


Let us consider carefully Cobb's two reasons for this extreme suggestion.

1. The dire magnitude of the threat requires that basic freedoms be relinquished. This argument is familiar to us all. In a time of war, when our very existence is threatened, it is common for a nation to move to a “war footing” which usually results in greatly expanded state powers, on the one hand, and greatly diminished personal freedoms, on the other. We all understand this, and most find the argument compelling.

However, as we look around we don't see a state of war. It does not appear as though we are living under dire threats. Cobb and his ilk argue in return that this is the very point. The threat exists, it is real—but it won't show up for another fifty years or so. There is so much carbon in the atmosphere right now that these consequences are inevitable; so we must take urgent action now. It is comparable to a situation where we know that a submarine has launched a polaris nuclear missile, but it is just going to take several decades to arrive. So we ought to go to a war footing now—with its attendant restrictions on personal freedoms. All criticism of global warming must be silenced because it is equivalent to traitorous talk in a time of war. Just as we jailed conscientious objectors during the world wars, we should silence global warming critics now.

The problem with this argument is its question begging. It is a fallacy. It assumes what has to be proven. It is precisely the existence of the danger, the proximity of the peril, and the reality of the threat that is at issue. Critics don't believe, or are not convinced, the polaris missile is airborne, or even that there are hostile submarines out there. Until global warming acolytes can engage rationally with the objections and the criticisms, and prove them wrong, suppressing the critics amounts to no more than substituting force for reason. Might is attempting to make right.

Now, we don't question the depth or fervency of Cobb's belief in anthropogenic global warming. We just believe him to be in error. He and his colleagues have far more work to do.

A variant of the “dire threat” argument is the pragamatic overlay: it is better to be safe than sorry. The argument runs that even if global warming is not correct, it will do no harm to combat carbon emissions in the meantime. We will not have lost anything.

Really? Try telling that to the starving millions who cannot afford to buy food any more, courtesy of the bio-fuel mania—explicitly whipped up to combat global warming. Sure the UN has now declared bio-fuels have turned out to be a crime against humanity, but it is a little too late.

It turns out that working to prevent “so called” presumed damage in the future brings terrible hardships, deprivations, and suffering now. It does a great deal of harm. Wisdom says we had better be sure we are right, before we inflict that price upon ourselves—particularly because the price will be disproportionately born by the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable in the world—the people that Franz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth.

2. Public debate is being muddied because oil companies have huge financial resources with which to promote their case in the media and to the public. By implication environmentalists don't have has much money so in this issue the state of free speech is an uneven, unfair playing ground. He who talks the most wins the debate.

Again, there is a certain force to this argument. We have all observed arguments where one protagonist has shouted the other down, has not let him get a word in edgewise, and effectively has won by silencing his opponent.

But is this really the case? When we observe such a situation, do we not resent the shouter and disrespect his arguments? Do we not have sympathy for the person whose views are silenced? Does it not make people more determined than ever to hear the other side? Often that is precisely the effect.

Secondly, oil companies can have no apparent vested interest in fossil fuels per se over the longer term. They are essentially energy “manufacturing” and distribution companies. One would have thought it was deeply within the vested interests of oil companies to promote all sorts of fears about global warming. Who stands to benefit from the bio-fuel mania? Oil companies. As soon as it becomes industrialised and in the supply chain, the oil companies will take a position and make money from it.

It is likely that oil companies will morph into energy conglomerates and will make lots of profit from global warming fears. After all, the major oil companies have been researching alternatives to fossil fuels for decades. So it is not immediately evident why all their vast resources will be put to silencing the siren calls, or to queering the debate. In fact, if anything the widespread phobia over global warming could well be due in part to oil companies stirring the pot along.

We would humbly suggest that every major oil conglomerate in the world right now is carefully positioning itself to maximise its profit from energy measures and policies arising out of efforts to oppose global warming. They will make heaps off the government subsidies, the rules and regulations—because in the end the world needs energy, and it needs capital to develop tools to harness it—and the major oil companies will be right up there.

Finally, is Cobb's capitalist conspiracy theory credible when you consider that all the mainstream media appear to froth at the mouth to publish stories about global warming? Every significant climate event is causally connected with global warming. Once again, like the oil companies, it helps them make profits. Sensational dangers grab attention and increase news consumers—leading to higher advertising revenues. The content of the mainstream media has favoured the cause of global warmingism many many time over.

In 2007, news clippings services recorded that James Hansen, Al Gore's resident global warming expert, was quoted over nine thousand times. No sceptic even came close.

What we desperately need is more, not less debate. The dangers of trying to shut your opponent up by force are just too great. You usually try and do that when you sense your argument is weak and deeply flawed. Or you are frustrated. Or both.