I'M SPECIAL, SO SPECIAL (via Gene Brown):

Cassandra v. Cassandra (Peter Huber, 05.21.07, Forbes)

The dire warming scenarios hinge on predictions about engines and power plants that burn fossil fuels in rich countries and ovens and livestock fueled by wood and grass in poor ones. All will be well if these old technologies can be curbed or displaced by new ones fueled by sun, wind, corn or uranium. Or alternatively, if billions of ordinary people have a change of heart and just stop craving more energy. The dire terrorism scenarios hinge on predictions about biological and nuclear technologies falling into the hands of sociopaths. All will be well if these technologies can be quarantined, or better still, eliminated altogether. Or, alternatively, if sociopaths have a change of heart and just stop craving more death.

Some people, in other words, see doomsday coming in the casual--but not intentionally destructive--behavior of ordinary people everywhere, and especially affluent Americans. Others see it coming in the conscious--and altogether malignant--scheming of fanatics hiding in huts and caves.

All warming predictions assume that the global political environment will stay cool. They assume that the global economy will continue to prosper, fueled in no small part by 600 billion barrels of oil pumped calmly and efficiently from the Persian Gulf over the course of the next half-century or so. They assume, in short, that people, politics, economics, religion and philosophy are more stable than the earth's climate.

More than stability, they imagine a human (and personal) significance for which there is little evidence.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 12, 2007 6:15 AM