Re: [asa] Why the opposition to global warming

Maybe. I didn't live through the 50's and early 60's and I'm the first to
acknowledge my historical situatedness. I do remember though as a kid in
the early 70's hearing snippets of talk about race in my white suburban
middle class conservative fundamental / evangelical context -- usually not
pretty at all.

Still, I'm uncomfortable with the comparison. It's sort of a rhetorical
atom bomb -- "your position is just like [opposing the civil rights movement
/ denying the holocaust / what the Nazi's would have said.....]" So if I
question the wisdom of Kyoto, it's the same as denying civil rights to
African Americans?

Monotonically -- hmm, probably misused the word, but on reflection, I like
how it came out.

On 2/5/07, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
>
> 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 <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
> *To:* Bill Hamilton <williamehamiltonjr@yahoo.com>
> *Cc:* George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> ; wdwllace@sympatico.ca ; Randy
> Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> ; 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ____________________________________________________________________________________
> > Looking for earth-friendly autos?
> > Browse Top Cars by "Green Rating" at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center.
> > http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David W. Opderbeck
> Web: http://www.davidopderbeck.com
> Blog: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
> MySpace (Music): http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
>
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Web:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com
Blog:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
MySpace (Music):  http://www.myspace.com/davidbecke
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.