Exchange with Matt Schweder re global warming

Matt Schweder wrote the following letter to Bushwatch.com in response to an article about global warming I wrote for Bushwatch. My reply to Matt Schweder follows:

Letter to Bushwatch from Matt Schweder

David Cogswell's commentary about Bush's ignoring global warming and the oil interests that create that position was a really wonderful piece. Many fine writers and journalists have also made similar comments, but I thought his had more punch. However, there is always something missing in the analysis on the subject, noteably why the oil companies would fight tooth and nail to impede the move to sustainable energy.

The obvious explanation, that they're clinging to their profits and power, doesn't make sense. Think about it this way. Most of the world is dependent on oil. We're talking for mobility, food production, factory operation, household products, etc., etc. down the line. We know we have a finite amount of oil in the earth, so these oil tycoons also know they can't continue their oil profits forever. To move the planet's economy from an oil dependent economy to one of an alternative fuel (or fuels), will be a most enormous undertaking, costing trillions of dollars and requiring millions of new jobs and hundreds of new industries. There will not be a single person on this planet who now requires pretroleum products who will not need to invest currency in these new products and energy sources. That means companies will stand to profit in the trillions of dollars. Now who in this world has the resources and capital to fund the coming shift into the Second Industrial Revolution? Not the average middle class worker. Not the small business owner down the street. It will be the wealthy corporations already in the business of providing energy, who already have deep pockets.

It seems to me that these energy companies would be licking their chops thinking of supplying the entire world with new cars, factories, power plants and all the thousands of household products contained within each and every home on this planet, instead of fighting to hold on to a system they know is dying. Everything these companies do comes down to money. The smart wager for future payoffs is alternative energy. The fact that they're not betting tells me we must have their motives figured wrong. Are they hoping for a total economic meltdown? Is this some twisted attempt at population control? Because if we run out of oil before alternatives are up and running, millions (and maybe billions) of people will die as a result. I would love to know what Mr. Cogswell, or anyone else for that matter, thinks about this.

--Matt Schweder

Reply

Dear Matt Schweder,

Your comments are flattering, but I would suggest that it is the subject itself that is gaining punch. The issue of global warming is hitting us head on now. It is no longer an abstract concept. We can see it and feel it. We are still experiencing the trend in slow motion, but at the same time we are beginning to get a glimpse of what a colossal force we are dealing with. It also becomes more pressing as the Bush team gains momentum in a retrograde direction.

Your questions are profound, and others have raised them too. Why indeed would the most powerful forces on the planet seem intent on policies that seem bound to ultimately destroy them along with everyone else? I'm not sure anyone is competent to answer that. It's not apparent whether even Bush, Cheney, Bush et al could answer if they wanted to.

When I interviewed Noam Chomsky in 1993, it came up that Jimmy Carter provided weapons to the Indonesians, who were at that time massacring the Timorese people. I was shocked to learn that the arms shipment was a Carter initiative, not something some slick congressman had tacked on to a bill. I had not perceived Carter as capable of partaking in such savagery. In my disorientation I blurted out something like, "What could have been his motivations? How could he justify it?" Then I felt like a schoolboy in the presence of the genius.

To Chomsky it didn't matter why. With a scientific clarity of purpose, he focused only on the fact that it was happening and resisted the inclination to follow a path of inquiry into the personal motivations of the man. I think he believed in a very pragmatic way that such speculation could be endless and could take you away from the very important business of dealing with the fact that these people are doing these things and people are dying as a result -- right now as we debate these issues.

"When you ask whether Carter was a hypocrite or not, I haven't the slightest idea," he said. "You'd have to get into his head and find out. Maybe he believed he was doing the right thing, who knows? In my opinion, these are not very interesting questions. We all know from our own personal experiences if not from reading history, that it's very easy to construct a pattern of justification for just about anything you choose to do."

The Bush people, on the other hand, drive forward in fascist lockstep determination and do not pause to speculate. While we discuss and assure ourselves that we are being fair, they take up every inch of slack and trample over us. Whether or not we can figure out why they do what they do, they are killing us.

Like you, I can't resist speculating, trying to figure out the paradox: Why do they pursue this hell-bent, destructive agenda? It's not just the destruction of the ozone layer. These people are churning up the fires of nuclear war again. They are already carrying out war in Afghanistan and Colombia, and their aspirations for greater military conquests are no secret. They are engaged in the most massively macho game of brinkmanship ever, one that could drag all of life on planet earth into extinction with them. Are they crazy?

I think we must be prepared to face that possibility. Insanity is a relative term and there are many varieties of mental and emotional aberrations. Anyone familiar with the revelations that continue to unfold from the Nixon tapes must acknowledge the peril that the world was in when that man had his finger on the nuclear button. Was Hitler insane? It was not widely believed even in the West until massive carnage was an accomplished fact. Was Stalin insane? Peter the Great? Genghis Khan? Caesar? Perhaps.

If they are insane, to treat them like sane people would be foolhardy. Perhaps they are like the scorpion in the myth of the frog and the scorpion who could not change his murderous ways even though killing the frog would destroy the only thing that was keeping him from drowning.

It is possible that the human institutions of which the Bush corporate elite are part cannot function any other way but to blindly, mechanically seek profit, like a computer programmed with a singular objective. It is possible that none of these very clever men with their attaché cases, coats and ties have the necessary insight or force of will to change the momentum of the institutions they are part of, even if it kills them. Though alternative energy is potentially a tremendous moneymaking opportunity, these men may not be able to rise to the occasion. They are certainly smart game players on certain political and economic fields, but are they men of wisdom? Do they possess the necessary heroic strength? They may be little men way over their heads, moving machine-like one step after another toward the objectives they were programmed for long ago.

I tend to think it is just classic human folly, just basic incompetence employed on the highest levels of power, the same greed and narrow-mindedness that have destroyed humanity's greatest creations since time immemorial.

They may be suicidal. We don't know what really motivates them. We only know what they are actually doing and that it is lethal to all of us and to our children and our children's children. And we don't know how much time we have to take action.