To the Editor:
Re “With a Whimper” (editorial, July 23):
Senate Republicans and a handful of coal and oil state Senate Democrats,
driven by parochial, political self-interest and aided by the Obama
administration’s failure to put up a real fight to honor the promises it
made last December in Copenhagen, have refused to address the most
dangerous, long-term and in effect irreversible threat to the health and
survival of human beings. They clearly do not understand what is at
stake for all life on earth as a result of unchecked global warming and
the consequent variable, unstable and extreme changes to the global
climate.
It is up to the millions of us who do to let them know that their inaction is not acceptable.
Eric Chivian
Boston, July 26, 2010
The writer, a physician, is director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.
Note from KBJ: This is the sort of alarmism that gives science a bad name. Settle down, professor. First, we don't know that the globe is warming. Second, we don't know what is causing it, if it is. Third, even if the globe is warming and even if human beings are contributing to it, it's an evaluative question, not a factual question, what we should do about it, if anything. (Action as well as inaction has costs.) By the way, why do you impute bad motives to those with whom you disagree? They can impute bad motives to you as well. They can say, for example, that global warmists such as you are motivated by self-interest, since there is a lot of grant money at stake. What does that accomplish? Instead of focusing on motivation, which is in any case obscure to you (in other words, you're speculating), you should focus on the grounds of your opponents' beliefs. Isn't that what science is all about? Or do you prefer to play the politician?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 