If you read Daily Kos it’s likely you pay attention to political issues. It’s therefore reasonable to guess that you’ve been confronted directly or online by a climate change denier.
There may be instances where you are discussing climate change with someone with some expertise, but the average exchanges about it in the blogs, comments, and conversations are likely to between people with limited scientific or business experience and expertise. That shouldn’t disarm someone who wants to do the right thing, but the average denier doesn’t. They want to feel empowered and superior while lacking any real knowledge. So these exchanges aren’t really about climate change. They’re games.
If your interaction was an exercise in frustration, try another way.
Right wing media has emboldened conservatives to presume expertise where they don’t have any, or even to denigrate the idea of expertise in the first place. Deniers come armed with trite memes and talking points that they repeat regardless of verity or actual understanding. They call it “debate” but these aren’t debates. Real debate is based on mutual courtesy and fair understanding that neither side is outright lying. Both sides accede to the duty of proving their arguments on the basis of fact. Deniers don’t play by those rules. No matter how ardently they credit themselves as debaters, they don’t debate.
Willful ignorance is a talking tactic for them. You’ve seen them use it: they require proof, references, statistics, etc., from you, demanding that you educate them while they demand to be ineducable. They bait you to propose a thesis and prove it while they dismiss all your sources as partisan and all your exhibits as skewed. Their point isn’t to advance at all. They want stalemate. The best outcome they can get from this intellectual Who’s On First routine is a tie. They want you to admit that their way of looking at this, or at any other position, is equal to yours. The same strategy appears commonly in their fake debates on abortion, gun control, etc., because they aren’t really discussing those things. They’re discussing their right to their own facts.
They need you to say that there are such things as alternative facts. There aren’t.
They need you to concede that their alternative facts are as good as your real ones. They aren’t.
They want to subvert the idea of empirical proof itself. It buys them time for their practices of peddling doubt, externalizing their costs, and getting away with continuing needless damage instead of being part of the solution. That’s part of the goal.
The other part is your frustration. That part is fun for them.
Belligerent fun fails for three reasons
You’ve seen this too: belligerence is their weapon. If they make you mad they feel like they’ve scored a point. They’ll use it against you if you presume their good will and courtesy, so don’t.
Next time someone wants to take you on because you “believe” in climate change and they don’t, and they require you to change their minds, prove climate change and make them “believe” too, don’t take the bait. Don’t be polite. And indulge your own belligerence. Try saying this:
- First, climate change isn’t a matter of belief, so what you and I “believe” about it isn’t relevant. Facts are facts because they’re empirically proven, not because of what anyone believes.
- Second, if you choose not to believe in climate change, and you demand to practice your disbelief, have at it. The facts don’t need you. Neither do the people, homeowners, institutions, municipalities, state governments, and large and small companies in the private sector who aren’t waiting for political consensus on the question. They’re behaving as though climate change is real. The argument you’re in isn’t some petty vaudeville with me. You’re fighting against the reality of the markets in the economy right now.
- Third, there’s a real scoreboard, and it isn’t this trivial one-upmanship. It’s you against me in our bank accounts, our businesses, the value of our property, our cost accounting. And by those measures, your ignorance isn’t my problem. It’s my advantage, so keep it. If you think this silly little discussion is competitive, wait until you and I are neighbors, and I get more comfort and utility from the dollar I spend on my electricity than you get from the dollar you waste on it. You’ll see it when my energy -efficient house is worth more than yours. Even better, wait until my company is competing with yours. If I act to mitigate climate change, I’m cutting my carbon footprint, which means I’ll be saving money on energy and using it more efficiently than you do.
I’m not playing your game. You’re playing mine.
Amusing though these fake arguments might be for some conservatives, we’re still in the real world, and in the real world, fake arguments are as worthless as fake money. No matter how good the counterfeit is, sooner or later people wise up, spot the fakes, and stop taking them. That’s why so many real world companies such as Walmart and News Corp. are slashing their carbon footprints, and why the Dow Jones has a Sustainability Index. That’s why Donald Trump’s promises to coal country are worthless. That’s why cities around the country in Red States and Blue States alike, are working every day to improve their energy efficiency. They know what sane people know, and what the die-hard deniers don’t know: in the real world there’s a bottom line. Sane people look at what deniers deny: the facts.
So deniers, enjoy these little arguments. You can pretend all you like but the facts land on your bottom line and mine every thirty days when you pay for your energy and for your mistakes, and I pay for mine and my smart decisions. You like games? In this game we don’t use talking points from liars. We use dollars, kilowatts, BTUs, etc. People who act like climate change is real don’t do it because they’re Democrats or Republicans. Their motives don’t matter. Results are all that counts, and if you don’t act, then you don’t get the results. And that’s fine by me. I’m in the majority and the growing numbers are all behind me.
So, keep being stupid.
If you know anything at all about business you know that waste is stupid. Welcome to capitalism, where stupid doesn’t survive. So while you’re disbelieving in climate change, you’re working wastefully and throwing money away. I’ll go solar on my house, and install energy-efficient windows, and buy energy efficient appliances. You can call me the names you’re taught to call me, a liberal, a treehugger, whatever. Every month this year your electricity bill will be higher than mine. Do the same thing in business. It won’t be long before your company is suffering, and that means your best people will be sending their resumes to me. Your best recruits from college will be turning you down and taking my offer. Your customers will see you stumbling, making excuses, and trying to dump the cost of your stupidity onto them, and they won’t stand for that. They’ll come to me. While you’re trying to justify stupid practices on political grounds, your company will be going down in the stock market, going down in its reputation, and finally just going out of business. You think this is a fun game? Keep thinking that. Then you can sell me your inventory on my terms, 20 cents on the dollar, while you lock your doors.
The real world is a whole lot tougher than these candyass games that climate change deniers like to play. Deniers, keep playing them. They’re fun, sure. But you want these games and fake debates to buy you time for this denial about climate change, and they don’t buy time. They cost time. And the longer you take to figure this out, the more you’ll spend, the more you’ll waste, and the more you’ll lose.
Talk all you want. This game’s already over.