SCANLON: Burned out on global warming beach Dwindling climate scaremongers give confab the cold shoulder
The Washington Post – December 7, 2010
As climate scientists gathered in Cancun, Mexico, the past few weeks for yet another United Nations-sponsored global warming “summit,” some were openly calling for the West to commit economic suicide.Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, for example, claimed that the only way to curb greenhouse gas emissions enough to save the Earth from cataclysmic climate change – without punishing developing countries – is to halt, yes halt, economic growth in the developed world over the next two decades. To achieve this, he recommends rationing on a level not seen since World War II and the Great Depression.
Mr. Anderson conceded that it “would not be easy” to persuade people to undergo such drastic, voluntary privation, and no wonder: As the Daily Telegraph reports, it would mean “[A] limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has traveled from abroad may be limited [as would] goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.”
Yet even as climate warriors grow more vociferous than ever in their utter hatred for Western economic productivity, their movement’s ability to sway public opinion and effect policy change from governments is diminishing by the hour. Major liberal-leaning news outlets, which once deluged U.N. climate conferences with breathless and extensive coverage, barely covered the Cancun confab. New York Times‘ environment editor Erica Goode explained why: “There is not a lot expected at Cancun.” The lack of expectations coincided with the virtual disappearance of the global warming issue from many op-ed pages. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, “the amount of climate-change coverage in 2010 declined significantly in some major American newspapers – to a four-year low.”