Cover van de The Weekly Standard; March 15, 2010 · Vol. 15, No. 25

The Weekly Standard · Vol. 15, No. 25

Altijd leuk om op zondag een lang journalistiek verhaal – een cover story – te kunnen lezen. Zeker als je in de stemming bent gebracht door een coverafbeelding zoals de bovenstaande. Al Gore als de naakte keizer uitgelachen door twee ijsberen (in werkelijkheid zijn ijsberen de enige diersoort op aarde die mensen zonder meer en zonder twijfel rauw lusten met kleren en al).

Laat me dit artikel eens niet becommentariëren en de lezer alleen op weg helpen met het hoe en wat van dit magazine en van de auteur Steven F. Hayward, de schrijver van de toonaangevende tweedelige Ronald Reagan biografie. Om met de laatste te beginnen. In zijn zeer respectabele Wikipedia-weergave lezen we:

Hayward generally believes that the Earth’s environment is far more resilient than public opinion would think. He has said, “we talk as though the earth is so fragile that, you know, we’re endlessly insulting it in its doom”. He has also said, “environmental concern rightly understood as now a settled middle class value in wealthy countries and will become more so in other countries around the world as they prosper and that’s a key point.” He supports the idea of an environmental Kuznet’s curve, in which increased economic development constitues the best way to help the environment. He believes that modern developing nations such as China could speed through the curve with technological progress.

Lees vooral ook de rest van Haywards credentials. Laten we dan nog even samen naar het magazine kijken. Wikipedia leert ons dat een verlieslijdend maar toonaangevend magazine is in neoconservatieve kringen.

Hieronder de openings- en slotalinea’s van In Denial, The meltdown of the climate campaign en dan happy reading!

Openings- en slotalinea’s van In Denial, The meltdown of the climate campaign

It is increasingly clear that the leak of the internal emails and documents of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in November has done for the climate change debate what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war debate 40 years ago—changed the narrative decisively. Additional revelations of unethical behavior, errors, and serial exaggeration in climate science are rolling out on an almost daily basis, and there is good reason to expect more.

[….]

The lingering question is whether the collapse of the climate campaign is also a sign of a broader collapse in public enthusiasm for environmentalism in general. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, two of the more thoughtful and independent-minded figures in the environmental movement, have been warning their green friends that the public has reached the point of “apocalypse fatigue.” They’ve been met with denunciations from the climate campaign enforcers for their heresy. The climate campaign has no idea that it is on the cusp of becoming as ludicrous and forlorn as the World -Esperanto Association.

Steven F. Hayward is the F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of the forthcoming Almanac of Environmental Trends (Pacific Research Institute).

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