Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Guardian contributor Megan Mayhew Bergman has written a series of columns about why she thinks Southerners don’t get the climate crisis.
What I learned writing about climate change and the US south for a year
I crisscrossed a region – my own – that is mired in a culture of denial and delay. The conversation on the climate crisis has not changed fast enough.
Megan Mayhew Bergman
Wed 7 Aug 2019 20.00 AEST…
I thought that Hurricane Florence might serve as a turning point in the conversation about the realities of climate change in a region still mired in a culture of denial and delay. After a year of research and reporting, I am not convinced that the conversation has changed fast enough, if much at all. Here in Beaufort, like Miami and Charleston, I encounter deniers, continued waterfront development, hurricane damage and blistering temperatures.
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I saw more of the south while reporting for this column than I ever saw in my 30 years of living there. My travel reinforced what I already knew: there is no one south. In 2019 it is multitudinous, diverse and still reckoning with its plantation economy and cruel social history. It has PhDs, evangelicals, Trump enthusiasts, environmentalists, artists and activists. It’s this very tension that has often made the south the genesis of social movements; one hopes it might happen again, and soon.
Social and environmental racism, income inequality and poverty are as present as they have ever been, and are only weaponized by climate change, as I reported from Virginia and Natchez, Mississippi.
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What does a better and more inclusive conversation look like? Non-traditional environmentalists can be critical allies in addressing the culture of climate change denial below the Mason-Dixon Line, like hunters in Arkansas and evangelical Christians in places like St Simons, Georgia. But too often, the perspectives and interests of frontline communities are ignored, further exacerbating the environmental racism so pervasive in the south.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/07/climate-change-us-south-what-i-learned-writing-about-for-a-year
One theme which continues to shock me is how intolerant many allegedly inclusive green liberals are. If you disagree with them about climate change, they say all sorts of vile things about your views and your culture, even if they grew up in that culture as Megan did.
The Guardian records today’s level of CO2 on the weather page and says 350ppm is the ‘safe level’. Bless them for that.
They heard it from Bill McKibben, who also thought that 400ppm was what caused hurricane Sandy. He even commented on here about it. I asked him if he knew about the Beer-Lambert Law but he passed on that one.
She hates her parents. She wouldn’t be the first one. But it doesn’t make her bilge true or correct.
The author of this article talks lovingly and eloquently of wild horses, alligators and panthers, but hatefully craps all over people that disagree with her – standard fare with the inhabitants of the virtue signaling progressive privilege community.
I believe we are just witnessing normal human behavior in a maladaptive but recurrent pattern. We as a species tend to think primarily through emotions and rapid reactions as that is what nature required for us to survive up until the advent of organized society and modern technology. It is frustrating, infuriating, wasteful and in many cases harmful to the welfare of people and the environment but it is what people do. If this is to be corrected to a more appropriate base of critical thinking and careful reasoned decision-making then many aspects of society must address the needed changes, not the least of which are our education systems and our media.
Those who would call me a “climate denier” would, having read the paragraph above, been certain that I was talking about the irrational behavior of people like me who deny that the world is facing cataclysmic climate Armageddon due to the burning of fossil fuels, or that this is somehow directly linked to all the other perceived evils of modern society: capitalism, racism, slavery, income inequality, homelessness, and a vague grab-bag of malign social defects called social justice issues. If I were to ask the simplest questions as to the basis of their beliefs such as:
What objective evidence is there for adverse trends in current climate?
What evidence (other than mythical climate models) directly proves this is due to CO2 emissions?
How have you excluded all the other significant influences on climate as causation given rapid
and substantial climate changes in the pre-industrial age?
I would be just yelled at an called a “climate denier” at higher volume. If I asked about evidence that rising energy use, rising temperatures, greening of the biosphere and rising human population and well-being are all correlated better than CO2 and temperature the words wouldn’t even register because the “believers” are not thinking in a rational way but simply believing like a herd, a cult, or a religious club. This is what people do. It is why reasoned discussions, presentation of evidence, critical appraisal and rebuttal of evidence that doesn’t meet the standards of good science are pointless efforts.
It is why a deluded journalist can travel the American South seeing only what they expect to see, interpreting every significant weather event as a sign of the end of times, and every poor outcome in society as a direct result of the election of a Republican President who doesn’t pass the idiotic test of the Hollywood good-guy super hero with nice hair and a beguiling smile. Never mind any positive trends in the economy and employment, never mind improving economic conditions for long-disadvantage minorities, never mind that every other president and congress before for decades, Democratic or Republican, has raised the same alarm about uncontrolled borders and asked for similar remedies to those pursued by the current incumbent.
Some of us are spending our time having a scientific debate about the objective evidence of what drives climate, and making what must be considered very speculative guesses about what the future will bring, while others are simply standing on the corner selling their religion and their belief in the end of times. It appears the latter group are winning the majority of adherents because what they do is second nature to humans, while rational thinking is a very difficult and exhausting exercise.
Off-topic, although perhaps not by much – Michael Moore gets half-way there:
https://apnews.com/933b49681b0d47d3a005d356f35251ab
He’s going to be in for another shock when he researches climate sensitivity.
Guess where the domestic net migration is going. Which states are gaining, losing, and stagnant?
Using highly technical deep-grammar analysis (/Sarcasm) I spotted what could be the underlying issue for this reporter’s perspective:
“…My travel reinforced what I already knew…”
A true believer already knows the answer.
You can therefore stop reading anything else they have to say, it’s all just opinion ignoring facts.
Another journalist with obviously no background in science, and who is never bothered to actually look at the data. Funniest line though was the very last sentence.
“We need your support to keep delivering quality journalism, to maintain our openness and to protect our precious independence. Every reader contribution, big or small, is so valuable”
I think I’ve sodden my armor from laughter!
The Guardian is a climate denier by claiming that current temps and hurricanes have anything to do with global warming. I is simply massive ignorance to claim hurricanes (or floods or droughts) have anything to do with global warming.
Liberalism is all about white people. To a Liberal they are the good white guys fighting the evils of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. The reason people do not get their world view is obviously right wing media, big business, the Koch brothers, Murdoch or us right wingers are to too stupid to understand the science, economics.
Green Profits conflate logical domains. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is monotonic [unqualified] change. Conservativism smooths perturbations. Principles matter.
Environmental racism. Could she be any more ridiculous?
I realize that accusations of RACIST!!! constitute a leftist rebuttal of any conservative comment in lieu of rational debate (because they have no truth or facts on their side) but surely they can see that there are limits.
Yeah, no I guess not.
Yup! My first question is WHAT THE HE!! is environmental racism ?
Never send your children to an Ivy League School .
Well, on a second reading I see she got one thing right:
“…and are only weaponized by climate change.”
That is exactly what the warmistas, which include her, have done.
They have weaponized the issue of climate, and use as “evidence” to themselves only, things that have always been present, events that have always occurred, and always will.
Separately, I want to know which states and cities that are not in the Southern US have reduced income inequality and/or poverty?
She has actually stated that seeing these things in the South is evidence that it is a world apart from her world.
(Poverty of course is a relative thing, but clearly there are rich and poor people. Everywhere.)
Besides for her totally ignorance and confirmation bias, it takes a lot of work to ignore or forget what it is that has lifted the entire world out of poverty, and that it is the exact thing which she and her ilk blame their imaginary climate crisis on: Cheap and plentiful energy.
I remember visiting people in LA before the LA riots. My impression from talking to people then was that they viewed the “deep south” as some kind of contained, regional place where racism resided apart from other regions. That was until they were rudely and violently awaken from their armchair philosophizing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots
https://www.britannica.com/event/Los-Angeles-Riots-of-1992
One of the second most insulated think places I was aware of on this topic was Missouri. They too got awakened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_St._Louis_protests
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/us/university-of-missouri-enrollment-protests-fallout.html
Does this dimwit think there were no cat 4 hurricanes before she was born (or before Ford popularized the ICE)?
She must be super sensitive (like Greta) if she can feel the temperature increase that has occurred during her lifetime.
She must also be so blinded by the love of her adopted North East that she does not see the continued waterfront development of the Atlantic coast from Delaware to Maine. (To say nothing of “enlightened” California on the Pacific.))
TRANSLATION: These folks don’t agree with me so they are obviously ignorant hicks, 200 years behind the times. How does nonsense like this get published?
Take a look at other stuff she has written.
She is convinced things that are not real.
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/megan-mayhew-bergman
The over arching sense of superiority always get me. This is a great illustration. The lack of self awareness in regard to the lens they see everything through is a hallmark of the alarmists. The other side is wrong, the other side is mired in a culture of their definition. So even when every prediction they make fails and their whole story is falling apart , its the other side that needs radical attention to help them “understand”
Sorry I dont want to be in your cult.
It’s one thing for the Guardian to appoint themselves members of the UK’s unelected left wing aristocracy. But when they try to do the same thing in the USA, it’s high time someone gave them the thoroughly good kicking that they deserve. (Metaphorically speaking of course.) They need to be taught to mind their own business.
Another creepy headline. https://newrepublic.com/article/154649/reformed-climate-deniers-dont-deserve-redemption
Trump is preparing an EO on Social Media:
https://ussanews.com/News1/2019/08/07/president-trump-is-preparing-an-executive-order-that-will-crack-down-hard-on-social-media-censorship-of-conservatives/
It’s official.
Playing “The Race Card” is so passe. It has now been replaced by “The Race Deck”.
Leftists are intolerant. Doesn’t matter what the subject, if you disagree with them you instantly are labeled evil and someone who has to be destroyed. Doesn’t matter what the subject matter is.
‘I thought that Hurricane Florence might serve as a turning point in the conversation about the realities of climate change in a region still mired in a culture of denial and delay.’
I was hit by Florence, though a tropical storm by the time it got here. I’ve seen a number of hurricanes in my lifetime here in the southeastern U.S.
Florence was just a hurricane. Just like a dozen others before it. Only the ignorant could see it as a ‘turning point in the conversation.’ Things like hurricanes happen every few years. Have been all of my 70 years.
‘region still mired’
Ignorant fool commenting on my region. What a maroon.
I found this chart with the annual number of hurricanes in the north Atlantic every year since 1851.
http://stormfax.com/huryear.htm
Avg is about six a year. About ONE THOUSAND HURRICANES SINCE 1851*. But somehow Hurricane Florence was different, and should have changed people’s outlook. I reckon if southerners were as dim as Guardian writers, it could work.
*Probably substantially more, but Man didn’t effectively monitor the north Atlantic very well until well into the 20th century.
I live in the South and grew up in the South. It is always hot in the summer and sometimes it is hot in the winter, too. Like shorts at Christmas hot. I live closer to the Gulf Coast than many and I’ve seen tropical depressions, tropical storms and hurricanes of varying size and intensity. The first I remember was Carla and the last one was Harvey.
I am a true skeptic about many things, especially if Chicken Little is doing the announcements of gloom and doom. I became convinced there is nothing more unintelligent (& credulous) than a college student convinced the Earth is warming and it is our fault. It made this skeptic look into it. I found out the oceans and the sun drive the climate of our planet, just as the moon drives the tides.
“…Social and environmental racism, income inequality and poverty are as present as they have ever been, and are only weaponized by climate change…”
I would love to hear some examples of this tripe.
I will be happy to examine my approach to climate data and models. In return I would ask the Guardian to just answer a simple question: at the present rate of change, about what year will the climate finally reach the optimum for the biosphere?