Neuter the Rabble.

Last Thursday night, during the blizzard before last, I drove out to the high school here in beautiful, misunderstood Edina to catch weatherman Paul Douglas’s act on climate change. The operative cliché for “my people” is that they’re all self-absorbed, hyper-competitive materialists restless-to-bored with any conversation or endeavour that doesn’t add to shareholder value in the next quarter. Nevertheless, over 100 fellow citizens slogged their way through the right-angle sleet to hear what Douglas had to say.

Being that he’s spent the bulk of his career on TV, his name and face are familiar to every Minnesotan over the age of 15, and sure enough there were people posing with him for souvenir pictures in the lobby before the “show”.

And it’s a pretty good show. Douglas, TV performer and demonstrably shrewd businessman, has a polished, credible and engaging act laying out the known reality of climate change. I doubt there was a skeptic in the theater, but the impact of deniers, willful ignorers and utter know-nothings is stark in his story of building effective consensus. (His shtick was the main attraction in a night raising awareness of Edina’s various green initiatives, for which, as Mayor and MC Jim Hovland proudly pointed out, the city — of preening, avaricious capitalists (not his words) — has already won national acclaim and regard as a leader.)

Having followed Douglas’ career since his KARE-11 days, through WBBM in Chicago, back to (and then out of) WCCO, including more than a half-dozen businesses along the way, his evolution into a prominent consciousness-raiser for climate change is surprising only in a couple of ways. There’s never been a question he is smart enough to grasp the metrics of true science, the only issue was whether he’d take the career-risk of actually proselytizing for what he knows to be true.

But he has. Perhaps most aggressively after realizing that his days with network affiliate TV were over, but he has. And it’s dramatically more than any of his meteorological colleagues left behind at any local station dare to do. In case you haven’t noticed human-caused climate change is a taboo in local weather reports … and not much less on The Weather Channel.

Douglas makes only passing reference to his experiences dealing with nervous news directors skittish about injecting anything into weather (or any element of news coverage) that comes with so much as a hint of political provocation. As he says, “Everyone on TV wants to be loved”. And you’re not creating love (translation: ratings) if you’re making some people irrationally angry.

But who, at this point in the climate change discussion, are we making angry? As Douglas and everyone who is actually conversant in science, peer review, climatology, core samples, etc. fully accepts, the “debate” over human causation is over. (Has been for years.) Those who continue to deny it, citing transparently fraudulent counter-studies (usually underwritten by the Koch brothers or other carbon producers), have no credible standing on the matter. They can make noise, bluster and rage, but from the perspective of everyone who can read a graph on carbon dioxide release, that crowd is the rhetorical equivalent of a drunk armed with the same handful of bogus bar stool talking points.

But as we’ve just seen in the Senate vote on universal background checks, an absurdly small minority of irrationally angry/misinformed citizens still has powerful influence over the well-being of the … vast … majority.

How to reverse that dynamic?

Ninety minute seminars for the choir will only do so much. Likewise, simply writing campaign checks to sympathetic politicians for election season ads has obvious effectiveness issues. Not the least of which is that the crushing majority of ads during a campaign cycle are little more than noise and annoyance to viewers.

My suggestion, both for gun control and climate science awareness, is an experiment in the full, sustained impact of … theater. Paul Douglas long ago learned and honed the techniques of performance. You have to engage and sustain an audience to get your message across. In terms of building broad cultural awareness, what if we combined the talents of Hollywood and Madison Avenue, two industries full of people who “get” the science and the consequences of doing nothing. (Add to them the military and insurance companies, two other entities long past the point of denying climate change.)

Given Hollywood’s progressive attitudes, I have to believe writers, directors, editors, actors and camera people, would fall over each other to be a part of a campaign producing PSAs on the reality of human activity on climate, pulling back the curtain on the disinformation industry, and the modest lifestyle changes that can be made (not to mention the employment opportunities in renewable energy). Ditto, a sustained campaign to further delegitimize the NRA, with the intent of rendering it inconsequential to the election prospects of Bible Belt and rural legislators.

The commonality of climate deniers and ardent gun “enthusiasts” is striking.

And the money for it? How much did Hollywood and uber-liberal fat cats pour into the 2012 election? How fast do musicians volunteer for the latest disaster relief telethon? How much of this kind of work could be had pro-bono? How much (if any) could the networks be pressured to provide at discount through their affiliates? (Okay, forget that one.)

Point being: The vast majority of the American audience is receptive to both messages, particularly on guns. The demographic downside is minimal. You’re not exactly pissing off the well-educated, top dollar crowd. Moreover the artful, entertaining application of humor, visuals and message association would likely have a solidifying effect among the young, much as gay rights has enjoyed, largely due to representations in the entertainment industry.

It’s one thing to ignore the angry rabble. It’s something better to neuter them into insignificance.

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Douglas: Sh*t Storm Chaser

Seen in same room at same time?

I’ve always thought WCCO-TV meteorologist Paul Douglas looked like Pee Wee Herman, comedian Paul Reubens’ brilliant character who famously responded to insults by using every elementary student’s favorite plaground rebuttal: “I know you are, but what am I??” Works every time.

Well, Paul the weatherman might be tempted to use Paul the comedians’ cathartic line over the next few weeks, as conservative climate chaos doubters get wind of his recent Huffington Post essay “A Message From a Republican Meteorologist on Climate Change.”

In contrast to KSTP-TV weather man Dave Dahl, Douglas has long been a believer in climate change. But he really provoked the anti-science crowd in this tour de force. It’s a long piece, but worth the read. Here are a few excerpts:

I’m going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real.

I’m in a small, frustrated and endangered minority: a Republican deeply concerned about the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our economy powered-up. It’s ironic. The root of the word conservative is “conserve”. A staunch Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, set aside vast swaths of America for our National Parks System, the envy of the world. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, launched the EPA. Now some in my party believe the EPA and all those silly “global warming alarmists” are going to get in the way of drilling and mining our way to prosperity. Well, we have good reason to be alarmed.

…

My father, a devout Republican, who escaped a communist regime in East Germany, always taught me to never take my freedom for granted, and “actions have consequences”. Carbon that took billions of years to form has been released in a geological blink of an eye. Human emissions have grown significantly over the past 200 years, and now exceed 27 billion tons of carbon dioxide, annually. To pretend this isn’t having any effect on the 12-mile thin atmosphere overhead is to throw all logic and common sense out the window. It is to believe in scientific superstitions and political fairy tales, about a world where actions have no consequences — where colorless, odorless gases, the effluence of success and growth, can be waved away with a nod and a smirk. No harm, no foul. Keep drilling.

Thems fightin’ words. Hang on, Paul, a violent storm front is rolling into your neighborhood.

– Loveland

The Creator and Me

Frank Luntz: Privilege Creator.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz is the genius who helped shift Republicanspeak from “inheritance taxes” to “death taxes,” and dramatically change public support as a result. You see, “inheritance” sounds unearned and aristocratic to the masses, while taxing death sounds outrageously insensitive and unfair. Score!

Similarly, at the behest of his wealthy clients Luntz changed Republicanspeak from “oil drilling” to “energy exploration,” “global warming” to “climate change,” and “health care reform” to “government takeover of health care.”

Is Luntzian linguistics Orwellian? In a 2007 interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross, Luntz embraces his inner Big Brother:

“To be ‘Orwellian’ is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever.”

Now Luntz is urging his Republican clients to repeatedly use the term “Job Creators” whenever referring to the wealthiest Americans. Mr. Luntz seeks to focus Americans’ attention on the 1%’s trickledownedness, rather than it’s gawdy and growing wealth.

Brilliant! After all, in the midst of a sluggish recovery no one wants to stand in the way of “job creation,” so this turn of phrase is getting Luntz’s wealthy clients exempted from debt reduction sacrifice. (“Sacrifice,” incidentally, is a bad bad word Luntz is urging Republicans to ban. If only Churchill and FDR had been so clever.)

This whole business got me to thinking, “if I could afford to hire old Frank Luntz, what could the wunderkind wordsmith do to get ME exempted from sacrifice?

Readin’, Writin’ and Revisionism

THIS POST HACKED.

(Political) Climate Change

TPaw Beware: Presidential primaries not kind to flippers.

Governor Pawlenty formed the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group to find solutions to address the “profound impact of global warming.” Presidential candidate Pawlenty has ignored the group’s recommendations.

Governor Pawlenty launched the Midwest Governor’s Climate Change initiative. Presidential candidate Pawlenty has come out against the initiative.

Governor Pawlenty had been an aggressive advocate for a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gases. Presidential candidate Pawlenty wrote to Congress bashing cap-and-trade.

To be sure, the Executive Mullet is hardly the only thing about Pawlenty that is evolving. These are just a few of the cooling patterns documented in an excellent Minnesota Public Radio analysis of Governor Pawlenty’s positions on issues related to climate change.

I understand Pawlenty’s political dilemma. As Governor, his political fortunes rose and fell based on whether he could win over moderate suburban swing voters. But as presidential candidate, Pawlenty’s political fortues will rise and fall based on whether he can win over national Republican party activists, a breed that is much more conservative than the average Minnesota swing voter.

When the Presidential primary season heats up and rivals start pointing out Governor Pawlenty’s changes in positions on a whole range of issues, Pawlenty may run into the same problem former Governor Mitt Romney (R-Massachusets) did, where he had been on so many sides of so many issues that few felt they could trust him.

– Loveland

Is “Global Warming” The Most Motivating Descriptor?

I’ve been trying to decide the best way for The Crowd to celebrate Earth Day. Compost our commentaries? Reduce, reuse or recycle old posts? Detonate our computers to save energy?

I know, how about we bicker about global warming spin?!

My brother is a remote sensing scientist, which apparently means that he studies satellite photos of the Earth to track changes in vegetation, land use, climate and other stuff I can’t begin to understand. If you pump enough gin and tonics in him, he also is that rare scientist who likes to ruminate and fulminate about communications. This curse recently led him to bemoan that Al Gore and others had popularized the term “global warming.”

He’s got a good point. For a lot of people, particularly for those of us positioned near the planet’s poles, the prospect of “warming” just doesn’t sound particularly menacing. After all, global warming last weekend caused us to deliriously expose our milky white limbs to our neighbors, and actually enjoy yard work and exercise.

Also, the “global warming” framing causes public opinion to ebb and flow based on day-to-day temperature swings. When it’s warmer than usual, they believe in “global warming.” When it’s not, they don’t.

It is very difficult to motivate the public based on difficult-to-notice shifts in average temperatures over a period of decades and centuries. They very naturally focus on the temperature of the here and now. As a result, when it’s unseasonably cool, the talk radio jocks love to take cheap shots at the notion of “global warming,” and their scoffs erode public support.

“Global warming” isn’t the part of the problem that is most noticeable to us. The parts about global warming that we WILL most notice are a) extreme weather events and b) shifts in ecosystems that cause humans and other species unequipped for the new ecosystems to suffer and/or perish.

While a degree or two of warmer weather won’t move people to action, the prospect of preventing the human and economic suffering associated with more severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts and floods might. So might the prospect of preventing the demise of a species popular with humans, such as polar bears, or catastrophic outbreaks of malaria in regions unprepared for the threat.

In contrast to a relatively indiscernible temperature increase, those are dramatic events humans notice and feel in their guts. So those are the things that should be captured in the branding and framing of this issue. “Global warming” doesn’t do the trick, and neither does the other popular label du jour, “climate change.”

True to form, I don’t have a great alternative label, so maybe The Crowd can do better. The best I can come up with is “climate chaos.” To me, that better captures the erratic and disastrous effects of global warming that hold the most promise of motivating us to the necessary level of self-sacrifice.

Whatever the right framing, judging from the lack of political action on this issue as of Earth Day 2008, we haven’t found it yet.

– Loveland

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