Pielke on “Manichean paranoia”
Roger Pielke Jr. gave a talk in London last night, on “Climate politics as Manichean Paranoia”.
This phrase refers to the idea that “your opponent is considered to be malign and willfully ignorant, whereas your own side is noble and uniquely enlightened”, which Pielke says is one thing that unites the two sides of the climate debate.
He has tweeted the slides of his talk, and they are linked, so you can see all 62 slides by clicking on the first one:
1/ Here comes a Twitter talk version of my talk last evening in London titled “Climate Politics as Manichean Paranoia” – comments welcomed.
Here’s my brief summary of some of his slides: Pielke cites Inhofe, Mann and Trump as good examples of Manichean paranoia. He says this sort of paranoia was described by Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s, and that one of its aims is to eliminate opposition, something that he has experienced himself. Paranoia has not been very successful, in the sense that public opinion hasn’t changed much in many years. For democracy to work properly, you need to talk to people you disagree with – that’s the first of his 5 recommendations. The second is maintaining the integrity of science assessments, by including minority views and avoiding stealth advocacy. And there’s much more, about his “iron law” (people are only prepared to pay a relatively small amount), the Paris agreement, climate policy, decarbonization…
Josh was there and has produced one of his amazing cartoon summaries (click and click again to get bigger versions):
A video of the talk should be available soon.
1/ Here comes a Twitter talk version of my talk last evening in London titled “Climate Politics as Manichean Paranoia” – comments welcomed.
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New conversation
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2/ My main points. I decided to prepare this talk in an effort to address head-on a willful loss of capacity to debate important issues.
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3/ The phrase “Manichean paranoia” comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski, who popularized it on The Daily Show, [and is pronounced Man-ee-kay-an]
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4/ Examples of Manichean paranoia abound in the climate debate. Here is Sen James Inhofe as an example–>
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5/ And in example 2 here is Prof Michael Mann, also invoking the ideas of conspiracy and the willful evilness of his political opponents –>
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6/ The notion of a “paranoid style” in American politics was described by Richard Hofstadter in 1964 (in an essay about the political right)
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7/ One strategy in the toolbox of the paranoid is to try to eliminate from public debate enemy voices. I’ve (& others) hv seen this up close
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8/ However the paranoid style doesn’t achieve much It does however foster a pathological politicization of policy debate Climate = Exhibit A
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9/ Hofstadter describes in detail the worldview of the paranoid. Sound familiar?
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10/ Here is an example of the paranoid style in American politics–>
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11/ Here is another example of the paranoid style in American politics–>
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12/ Should we care about pathological politicization of policy brought about by Manichean paranoids locked in combat? I think yes.
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13/ For democracy to work, we must be willing to engage not only those who we disagree with, but also those who we may actually despise.
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14/ So I’ll offer 5 recommendations for improving the debate. These 5 recs are based on 3 criteria that I employed–>
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15/ Here are the five recommendations, which I will go through 1 by 1–>
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17/ A naive, younger version of me once thought engagement with the political right on climate policy would be looked upon favorably. Hah!
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18/ I’m among academics (including Curry, Mann & others) who have been investigated by Congress (Ds &Rs) for espousing views they don’t like
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19/ I even showed up in Wikileaks as subject of an organized campaign to get me fired from a writing gig. Dirty tricks to prevent engagement
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20/ There is empirical support for group-think. When like-minded people deliberate, they become more extreme in their views –>
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21/ Some strategies have been proposed to counter group-think, here are a few –>
