Alexander Cockburn turns out to be a global warming denialist. Maybe ExxonMobile will start advertising in Counterpunch.
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Who Knew?
01 May 2007 06:27 pm
Comments (30)
I just can't take someone named cockburn seriously.
Speaking of Alexander Cockburn, I love how Derek Fisher had the best plus/minus number on Utah while Chuck Hayes had the worst plus/minus number on Houston, but the game's biggest play involved Hayes taking a charge against Fisher.
And speaking of ExxonMobile, the Denver/San Antonio series is approaching the tragic level of the Iraq war.
Think about it: Mission Accomplished on the aircraft carrier and Denver stealing the first game of the series, but only bad news was to follow in both cases.
cockburn has written against global warming at least since 2000, when he devoted a nation column to it. but if i remember correctly, his opposition was not scientific (though he invokes the usual right-wing doubter nonsense) but pragmatic: global warming, he thought, was a big problem not likely to be solved, and an easy distraction from pressing and present environmental battles: the destruction of wetlands, pollution, deforestation, etc. a read through counterpunch (and particularly the writing of his compadre jeff st. clair) will show that cockburn is actually very far to the left (no surprise!) on the environment, but very much opposed to what the counterpunchers call "big green," the large liberal environmental organizations, whom they see as all money and hot air and no action.
It dudn't surprise me at all. Cockburn is, after all, a former Wall Street Journal editorial page columnist.
Maybe he's a month late with an April Fools' Day column? You know, time zones and such. On a recent trip to Costa Rica, an American scientist at La Selva, a rainforest research station, described her research into the declining growth, and predicted eventual death, of Central American rain forests due to human-caused to global warming. I'll trust a scientist like her before a dufus like Cockburn.
Yet one more reason (were more really needed?) never to read a word Cockburn writes or publishes. And I write this as a subscriber to the Nation.
"denier"
Cockburn is, at heart, a "red," believing as reds do that the immediate material needs of the teeming, downtrodden poor outweigh the lofty concerns of the privileged, environmentalist, bourgeois academy.
I sympathize with his fundamentally humanist concerns but must stress, as a low level (read: undergraduate) student of the global climate myself, the unassailability of the science has convinced me that no immediate needs can be addressed until the environmental peril of the earth is acknowledged and combated on some large-scale, sweeping level.
It's hard to follow the ideological twists and turns of these old school tie Stalinists.
RE: Gregorio--If this is Cockburn's thinking, then perhaps he ought to consider the catastrophic impact global warming will have on the world's poor. The wealthy will be able to migrate away from low-lying areas; tens of millions of poor Bangladeshis will not. It's one thing to be a humanist--it's another to be a short-sighted blunderer.
Nathan— I concur. I'm sorry, my post was truncated by a pre-Warriors obligation. In summation: these poo-pooers are insanely shortsighted and often self-aggrandizingly contrarian. Bangladesh is imperiled for a variety of reasons, the least pressing but most devastating sea-level related. Cockburn's characterization of the hysteria and smug, self-serving capitalist hand-wringing is right-on, but his ejection of the baby along with the bathwater is alarmingly myopic.
On a whole, if we want our world to resemble itself for our children's children, the clattering crone of capitalism must needs to collapse in the dust she so dearly deserves, and a new, ecologically responsible global socialism must arise from her acrid ashes. That is not to say entrepreneurship and innovation must be squashed; quite the opposite, in fact, but the priorities of human survival and accumulation of capital cannot coexist.
"I met Dr. Martin Hertzberg, the man who drew that graph and those conclusions, on a Nation cruise back in 2001. ...Hertzberg was a meteorologist for three years in the U.S. Navy..."
Jeez, he can't even do wacky conspiracy theory right. I mean, it'd be entertaining if he had some grand theory about how every climate scientist in the world were in on the scam to rob us of our civil rights, create a Permanent Emergency and make us Climate Chattel - but "some dude I met on a cruise who worked for the Navy a long time ago"? That's pretty weak.
luc, i suggest you read patrick cockburn's reporting on iraq in the independent. it's been excellent.
also, here's alex in 2001 proclaiming global warming to be the left-wing's missile defence. lest you accuse him of being an irresponsible contrarian, he used to be friends with chris hitchens you know.
Oh, I don't care. I'll still read everything he posts on Counterpunch. He's the most entertaining political writer around.
ok, let me unhelpfully point out that the name+colon beginning to each post is weird: it makes each poster seem to be addressing him/herself...
I agree with Nick and also request the return of the "Recent Comments" sidebar, which was quite useful.
I'm really disappointed to read down this far and find that Petey's attempted threadjacking is still unsuccessful, leaving me no entry point to celebrate my Raptors' continued survival.
Nick makes the assumption that we don't all want to appear to be addressing myself. I find the system rather suits my impression that in many of the comments we are basically muttering to ourselves, while hoping we will be overheard (and appreciated) by others.
Responding to weblogs is almost as productive as masturbation, and (usually) requires less cleanup(unless it's Al, then bring out the doublewide Industo-Strength mop, dripping SimpleGreen).
I know for certain my palms are less hairy.
Gregorio:
Cut it out, you onanstic ignoramus!
Gregoire:
Mais non!
Gregory:
Well, I never.
"Who knew?" Well, I knew -- he was saying it in his "Nation" column at least as far back as 1990 (when I was still reading the damn thing). That, however, was hardly the most outrageous thing he said there. The Nation's (and, before that, the Village Voice's) embrace of Cockburn was magnificently effective in smashing up the reputations of both publications.
tut tut, yglesias. It is no longer 'global warming'. It is now 'climate change' since that allows us to cite any short term weather effects, whatever their nature, as proof of the coming apocolypse.
Last I knew ExxonMobil was in the carbon credit camp.
The idea of carbon credits is perfectly assailable--to give Cockburn the benefit of the doubt, I think maybe he was attacking that and went too far afield.
The better comparison for global carbon credits would be similar legislation in America in the 90s--the idea is to weigh the economic viability of polluting versus that of investment in cleaner technologies.
Carbon credits are the liberal capitalist solution, whereas state funding and regulation would be the traditional leftist/socialist solution. Carbon credits are a step in the right direction, especially as they're not hugely controversial, though their long-term effects are indirect.
Is ExxonMobile headquartered in Alabama?
I think Alex deserves to have his name in the title of his magazine, as in the cases of I.F. Stone's Weekly and O: The Oprah Magazine. Call it CockPunch.
Well, gee, Matt, that was a deep article of yours rebutting Cockburns article. Anything? Or, just hyperbole and smears?
You are right William Teach, nobody argues the science. We just get slogans.
You may be pleasantly shocked to find my piecefrom Weds. on crackpot "Cockburnian" analysis of in National reviewof all places.
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWY4N2FlY2U1MGNiYjJmMGUwNTM0ZjE0MDlmZjkxMGQ=
Best,
Jim Manzi
Comments closed May 15, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I suppose it is interesting that not all the scientific whackjobs are on the political right. Of course, Mr. Cockburn is no more qualified to discuss this issue then his counterparts on the right Glenn Beck and Kevin Hannity.
Posted by SLC | May 1, 2007 8:35 PM