The Tragedy of the Climate Wars – Hesitating for it?
Mike Hulme wrote a book review of Mann’s last best work:
And it can be found at issue.org
Hulme puts her assessment into a historical perspective.
Wars, battles, raids, battles and enemies dot its 260 pages. Much of what I said about Mann’s fighting force in my article in his 2012 book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate War: Dispatch from the Frontline, can be equally applied to this new one. Now, his central argument is that there is a New war is breaking out. NS old the war – largely around the claims of climate scientists – was won (for the most part). But a new war was ignited; Mann and his allies are now fighting against the forces of inaction.
https://issues.org/new-climate-war-michael-mann-hulme-review/
However, Hulme is not a fan of Mann.
However, the tragedy of Mann and his like-minded people is that they view the debates on these questions through a Manichean lens: the source of all objections to the “right” view – Mann’s. – about what should be done about climate change is rooted in a staged evil empire. The basic doctrine of Manicheanism is about the structural conflict between good and evil. For Mann, the source of this crime is the fossil fuel industry, which is, as he puts it, “the eye of Sauron”, the almighty dark power in Lord of the Rings.
There is no doubt about the need to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. And certainly political vested interests have impeded its progress. But Mann is so conditioned by his Manichean worldview that wherever he looks at the public, scientific and political debates around climate change, he sees a shadow of him. the Koch brothers (52 names in the book), Exxon Mobil (23), and the Heartland Institute (15). The nefarious hand of the fossil fuel corridor is everywhere. This worldview leads him to some ludicrous content that, taken together, leads to New climate war: The fight to take back our planet present an incoherent and clearly unhelpful story about climate change. Let me give some examples of what I mean.
https://issues.org/new-climate-war-michael-mann-hulme-review/
He describes Mann’s warrior behavior.
Indeed, he sees a need to make enemies from the many scientists, academics, writers, filmmakers and consulting organizations that are truly engaged in the serious search for solutions to climate change. post — not his solutions. People with whom Michael Mann disagrees – a long list that includes progressive celebrities like Michael Moore and Bill Gates – becomes enemies: agents of the dark forces of inactivity, or people opposers, or “gentle denyers” or protestors, or apologetics, or losers. Mann’s books here are reminiscent of 1950s McCarthyism or the ideological purges pursued by the Communist International during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
https://issues.org/new-climate-war-michael-mann-hulme-review/
And.
This is the first American book. It further implicates that global politics on climate change can be read through the distinctive lens of American political parties. Other climate superpowers — the European Union (6 mentioned), China (8), Brazil (3) and India (0) — offer bit players for Mann. There is no analysis of the political economy of the global energy transition, and he dismisses the global challenge of reduce energy poverty (“A contrived concept”). And Mann employs a trick he accuses his enemies of using – trivialization – when the concerns of those arguing about a fair transition for the world’s poor are brushed aside. side with his disdainful comment “there are always winners and losers”.
https://issues.org/new-climate-war-michael-mann-hulme-review/