Re: [asa] Why the opposition to global warming

I think you are reading a 2007 understanding of the racial situation back into the 50s. Even many whites who in general terms were sympathetic with the situation of southern blacks didn't seen it as "monotonically evil." (I'm not sure what you mean by that anyway. A function that changes "monotonically" is one which is always getting either greater or smaller - i.e., whose derivative doesn't change sign. Before the civil rights movement started most northern whites didn't see the racial situation as getting progressively worse.)

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck
  To: Bill Hamilton
  Cc: George Murphy ; wdwllace@sympatico.ca ; Randy Isaac ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 7:38 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Why the opposition to global warming

   I think what George was driving at was the consequences
  of being on the wrong side. I take that seriously,
  Right... me too.... but, I still think the comparison doesn't work. With the civil rights movement, there were immediate evils visible to everyone -- lynchings, church burnings, people being turned away at the university gate, segregated lunch counters, etc. In that context, it's very, very hard to make a plausible non-racially motivated argument that local governance, markets operating over time, etc. are enough. With global warming, we have clear indications of a trend that could be very dangerous over the next 100 years -- or that could be mostly mitigated by new technology -- or that could be mostly adapted to -- or any wide variety of other plausible scenarios. It's difficult to see the moral commensurability with the immediate, monotonically evil threats confronted by the civil rights movement.

   
  On 2/5/07, Bill Hamilton <williamehamiltonjr@yahoo.com> wrote:

    --- David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

> *I was a YAF belonging - National Review subscribing - Goldwater applauding
> -conservative candidate door knocking - card carrying conservative. So I
> know a bit about it from the inside.*
>
> Really! I knew there was a spark of something in there somewhere...
> Remember, even Darth Vader eventually came back from the Dark Side :-)
>
    Ditto
    [big snip]
> At the end of the day, then, I think the comparison between the civil rights
> movement and global warming is superficial at best.
>
    This may be true, but I think what George was driving at was the consequences
    of being on the wrong side. I take that seriously, while agreeing with you that
    the case for environmental action -- on the scale the environmentalists seem to
    be calling for -- is less clear than it was in the case of civil rights.

    Bill Hamilton
    William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
    248.652.4148 (home) 248.821.8156 (mobile)
    "...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31

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  David W. Opderbeck
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Received on Mon Feb 5 22:12:22 2007