A Quakerish friend once
told me that, in her experience, the quality of silence varies from one
silent Quaker meeting to another. As odd as that may sound, I think I
get her point. While a physicist might insist that an absence of sound
waves is equally soundless anywhere, any anthropologist will tell you
that the meaning of a social silence hinges on its cultural context. The
silence in a Buddhist meditation sangha is not the same as the
silence in a morgue, or in a comedy club just after a joke has bombed.
And at a finer level, the silence in the Haverford meeting house may
have a subtly different quality than the silence in Swarthmore to any
given quietist on any given Sunday.
So it is with climate silence. The presence or absence of public talk about global warming and climate change seems to vary a great deal from one social location to another, and climate silence may prevail in a community for any of a number of different reasons. Not all silences are alike.
Consider, for example, the curious case of climate silence in Houston, Texas, a city I’ve been observing at close range for nearly five years. This public silence is what I’ve elsewhere called “the Houston taboo,” or “the dinosaur in Houston’s living room.”
When I moved to Houston, one of the first things I noticed was the general absence of public discussion, or even acknowledgement, of climate change as a serious issue. The silence on this subject was almost deafening. In a city economically and culturally dominated by the oil industry, neither the Houston Chronicle, nor the local television stations, nor the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, nor even the few relatively progressive religious congregations in town seemed to show much concern for what some scientists regard as potentially the greatest emerging challenge facing world civilizations in this century – a challenge made nearly invisible to us by its glacial gradualness, and by our seeming inability to think beyond the immediate future or to cooperate with each other to solve transnational problems.
To the extent that Houston’s cultural institutions addressed the climate issue at all, it was to disparage concerned citizens for being “alarmist” or even “apocalyptic.” Meanwhile, denialist messaging, produced largely by the powerful and deeply entrenched oil industry and its media advocates, effectively drowned out the voices of the world scientific community. Thus even as scientists converged toward consensus regarding the seriousness of climate challenges, our political and civic community, dominated in Texas by the right wing of the Republican Party, successfully cultivated public skepticism and doubt that greenhouse effects were really anything to worry about. What's true of Houston in this regard seems true to varying degrees of other parts of the country and world as well.
Let me suggest several reasons why I think many of us avoid talking about climate issues openly and frankly.
Lack of Interest. Busy people have a multitude of pressing and more immediate concerns on their minds than climate change. Long-term climate trends seem remote and irrelevant to their daily lives, at least until they experience extreme weather events partially attributable to greenhouse effects. While a majority of Americans are vaguely sympathetic with environmental concerns, most are not apt to give these a high priority.
Lack of Awareness or Knowledge. Even among those with an interest in the subject, learning about climate science requires an investment of time and effort, and the ability to distinguish between reputable sources and strategic disinformation. Many are understandably confused by competing claims and feel unqualified to join the discussion, and so remain silent.
Fear and Denial. Few of us enjoy facing unpleasant realities and inconvenient truths. And since the brunt of the news that leading scientists are bringing these days is disturbing, it’s only natural that we should want to deny it or shroud it in silence. Some may even be inclined to blame the messengers for telling us things we really didn’t want to hear or think about. Our tabloid media don’t help matters by sensationalizing and wildly amplifying legitimate warnings from the scientific community, creating unproductive anxieties without promoting constructive actions.
A Sense of Helplessness. Another potent silencer is the common belief that it’s already too late to do anything about climate change. Why talk about something that’s beyond our control? In effect, our species is already dead, and we’re just waiting for rigor mortis to set in. In the mortal words of David Letterman, “We’re fried.”
The truth, however, is that we can do many things (silver buckshot, not silver bullets, as Bill McKibbin says) to mitigate the damage we’ve already done and to reduce future damage, from advocating for the research and development of renewables to supporting carbon taxes and buying carbon offsets. But ignoring the problem will only allow it to worsen. One of the worst choices we could possibly make now is the choice to remain silent.
Fear of Conflict. Advice columnist Ann Landers urged her readers to “avoid religion and politics unless you know the other person shares your beliefs.” To these two taboo topics she might now add climate. Some may fear that discussing climate change openly will divide and polarize institutions (such as political parties or churches, for instance) much as the abolition movement did in the 19th century. While this may be a valid concern in the short run, the laws of nature will have the last word in the long run. Our first question should not be “will this divide us?” but rather “What’s the reality that we must now face together?”
Short Time Horizons. Years ago, economist Robert Heilbroner posed the provocative question, “What has posterity ever done for us?” If we care only about private and short-term gains, we’ll see no point in public discussions of the long-term implications of our actions for future generations. Unfortunately, our human tendency to focus on the near term at the expense of the far term is exacerbated by forms of capitalism that encourage investment with an eye toward immediate short-term profits and dividends rather than longer-term and widely shared prosperity. And in an age of electronic trading, even the short-term future is now measured not in years or even days, but in nanoseconds. Talking about climate change requires us to think in the other direction -- in decades and even centuries, even unto the seventh generation.
Economic Interests. Economic determinists may interpret public silence on climate issues as the direct result of systematic attempts by the carbon industry (coal, oil and gas corporations and their shareholders, employees, and others whose dependence on the carbon economy is more indirect) to suppress criticism of the carbon economy. And as Upton Sinclair famously remarked, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” While economic motives for enforcing silence aren't the whole story, they may well be the biggest part of it. We're all caught in the glue trap of the carbon economy to one degree or another, and reluctant to talk about a daunting transition to alternatives.
Fear of Reprisal. The corollary to Sinclair's Maxim is that it’s easy for us to be silent on a subject when that silence serves our financial (to say nothing of our ideological and emotional) interests. In Houston, those who harbor private concerns about the carbon economy may be reticent to express these too loudly for fear of disapproval or reprisal from those whose financial and personal interests are threatened by the prospect of open discussion. Many wealthy and powerful Houstonians are heavily invested in a conservatarian ideology that rationalizes unfettered capitalism and idolizes The Market as a nearly omniscient and infallible god, and they're not kindly disposed toward heretics in their midst. Sometimes it's prudent to keep one's head down and one's mouth closed, or risk economic and social reprisal.
Houston’s taboo against open public discussion of climate change and the city’s role in producing it is untenable in the long run. Climate reality will eventually force the subject to the surface. Already the Houston Chronicle’s editorials have begun to cautiously acknowledge that the city must begin to think beyond petroleum and face the future with more candor and concern for sustainability than it has done in the past.
Carbon silence, like any conversational silence, is the default setting in social discourse. We can’t begin a discussion about anything until we break the prevailing default silence and raise the issue out loud. The thankless task of progressives is to challenge that silence and violate the taboo against talking publicly about climate change – especially in places like Texas where it is taboo even to acknowledge publicly that there is a taboo.
But when you do violate the silence, don’t expect applause.
-- originally posted at Danagram
For more by this author on climate issues, see Big Green and Big Carbon.
So it is with climate silence. The presence or absence of public talk about global warming and climate change seems to vary a great deal from one social location to another, and climate silence may prevail in a community for any of a number of different reasons. Not all silences are alike.
Consider, for example, the curious case of climate silence in Houston, Texas, a city I’ve been observing at close range for nearly five years. This public silence is what I’ve elsewhere called “the Houston taboo,” or “the dinosaur in Houston’s living room.”
When I moved to Houston, one of the first things I noticed was the general absence of public discussion, or even acknowledgement, of climate change as a serious issue. The silence on this subject was almost deafening. In a city economically and culturally dominated by the oil industry, neither the Houston Chronicle, nor the local television stations, nor the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, nor even the few relatively progressive religious congregations in town seemed to show much concern for what some scientists regard as potentially the greatest emerging challenge facing world civilizations in this century – a challenge made nearly invisible to us by its glacial gradualness, and by our seeming inability to think beyond the immediate future or to cooperate with each other to solve transnational problems.
To the extent that Houston’s cultural institutions addressed the climate issue at all, it was to disparage concerned citizens for being “alarmist” or even “apocalyptic.” Meanwhile, denialist messaging, produced largely by the powerful and deeply entrenched oil industry and its media advocates, effectively drowned out the voices of the world scientific community. Thus even as scientists converged toward consensus regarding the seriousness of climate challenges, our political and civic community, dominated in Texas by the right wing of the Republican Party, successfully cultivated public skepticism and doubt that greenhouse effects were really anything to worry about. What's true of Houston in this regard seems true to varying degrees of other parts of the country and world as well.
Let me suggest several reasons why I think many of us avoid talking about climate issues openly and frankly.
Lack of Interest. Busy people have a multitude of pressing and more immediate concerns on their minds than climate change. Long-term climate trends seem remote and irrelevant to their daily lives, at least until they experience extreme weather events partially attributable to greenhouse effects. While a majority of Americans are vaguely sympathetic with environmental concerns, most are not apt to give these a high priority.
Lack of Awareness or Knowledge. Even among those with an interest in the subject, learning about climate science requires an investment of time and effort, and the ability to distinguish between reputable sources and strategic disinformation. Many are understandably confused by competing claims and feel unqualified to join the discussion, and so remain silent.
Fear and Denial. Few of us enjoy facing unpleasant realities and inconvenient truths. And since the brunt of the news that leading scientists are bringing these days is disturbing, it’s only natural that we should want to deny it or shroud it in silence. Some may even be inclined to blame the messengers for telling us things we really didn’t want to hear or think about. Our tabloid media don’t help matters by sensationalizing and wildly amplifying legitimate warnings from the scientific community, creating unproductive anxieties without promoting constructive actions.
A Sense of Helplessness. Another potent silencer is the common belief that it’s already too late to do anything about climate change. Why talk about something that’s beyond our control? In effect, our species is already dead, and we’re just waiting for rigor mortis to set in. In the mortal words of David Letterman, “We’re fried.”
The truth, however, is that we can do many things (silver buckshot, not silver bullets, as Bill McKibbin says) to mitigate the damage we’ve already done and to reduce future damage, from advocating for the research and development of renewables to supporting carbon taxes and buying carbon offsets. But ignoring the problem will only allow it to worsen. One of the worst choices we could possibly make now is the choice to remain silent.
Fear of Conflict. Advice columnist Ann Landers urged her readers to “avoid religion and politics unless you know the other person shares your beliefs.” To these two taboo topics she might now add climate. Some may fear that discussing climate change openly will divide and polarize institutions (such as political parties or churches, for instance) much as the abolition movement did in the 19th century. While this may be a valid concern in the short run, the laws of nature will have the last word in the long run. Our first question should not be “will this divide us?” but rather “What’s the reality that we must now face together?”
Short Time Horizons. Years ago, economist Robert Heilbroner posed the provocative question, “What has posterity ever done for us?” If we care only about private and short-term gains, we’ll see no point in public discussions of the long-term implications of our actions for future generations. Unfortunately, our human tendency to focus on the near term at the expense of the far term is exacerbated by forms of capitalism that encourage investment with an eye toward immediate short-term profits and dividends rather than longer-term and widely shared prosperity. And in an age of electronic trading, even the short-term future is now measured not in years or even days, but in nanoseconds. Talking about climate change requires us to think in the other direction -- in decades and even centuries, even unto the seventh generation.
Economic Interests. Economic determinists may interpret public silence on climate issues as the direct result of systematic attempts by the carbon industry (coal, oil and gas corporations and their shareholders, employees, and others whose dependence on the carbon economy is more indirect) to suppress criticism of the carbon economy. And as Upton Sinclair famously remarked, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” While economic motives for enforcing silence aren't the whole story, they may well be the biggest part of it. We're all caught in the glue trap of the carbon economy to one degree or another, and reluctant to talk about a daunting transition to alternatives.
Fear of Reprisal. The corollary to Sinclair's Maxim is that it’s easy for us to be silent on a subject when that silence serves our financial (to say nothing of our ideological and emotional) interests. In Houston, those who harbor private concerns about the carbon economy may be reticent to express these too loudly for fear of disapproval or reprisal from those whose financial and personal interests are threatened by the prospect of open discussion. Many wealthy and powerful Houstonians are heavily invested in a conservatarian ideology that rationalizes unfettered capitalism and idolizes The Market as a nearly omniscient and infallible god, and they're not kindly disposed toward heretics in their midst. Sometimes it's prudent to keep one's head down and one's mouth closed, or risk economic and social reprisal.
Houston’s taboo against open public discussion of climate change and the city’s role in producing it is untenable in the long run. Climate reality will eventually force the subject to the surface. Already the Houston Chronicle’s editorials have begun to cautiously acknowledge that the city must begin to think beyond petroleum and face the future with more candor and concern for sustainability than it has done in the past.
Carbon silence, like any conversational silence, is the default setting in social discourse. We can’t begin a discussion about anything until we break the prevailing default silence and raise the issue out loud. The thankless task of progressives is to challenge that silence and violate the taboo against talking publicly about climate change – especially in places like Texas where it is taboo even to acknowledge publicly that there is a taboo.
But when you do violate the silence, don’t expect applause.
-- originally posted at Danagram
For more by this author on climate issues, see Big Green and Big Carbon.
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