> The problem isn't really that all the facts aren't in or that we need
> an extra dollop of skepticism (I'm confident Exxon and its fellow
> travelers have given us multimillion dollars' worth of 'skepticism'),
> it's that if, as appears likely, the science is accurate, we have to
> re-think how we do pretty much everything. I'm going to guess that
> Penn -- like many other 'skeptics' -- doesn't want to face that. It's
> not the way he thought he'd be spending his old age, it's not the way
> he imagined his kid's future.
Jillette, I believe, is an avowed libertarian, an outlook that does not digest any environmental problem well. Appeals to your supposed free choice fall apart quickly in the face of fucking up the commons, and their sometime remedy of throwing civil lawsuits at each other starts looking particularly silly with this intergenerational international mother of all environmental problems.
So with this nail making particularly messy hash of their hammer, the easiest way to deal I guess is to blank it out. I had a libertarian coworker, a very smart and generally knowlegable and genial guy. In a discussion of industrial coolants he mused about the banning of HCFCs, "and they weren't even certain they were causing a problem." This, in the late 90's, the Nobel awarded, the ozone hole looking less dire, and the case, I thought, closed in all the the most obstinate circles.
That global regulation would be necessary and successful to avoid disaster might be just too much to accept.
-- Andy