Civil War on the (Climate) Left, Part 2

The ruckus we reported here the other day about Naomi Oreskes applying the label climate denier to James Hansen and other board-certified climatistas has caught the arched eyebrow of The New Yorker, whose fealty to climate orthodoxy is hard to top. Michael Specter writes in “How Not to Debate Nuclear Energy and Climate Change”:

According to Oreskes, suggesting that nuclear power play some role in limiting carbon emissions and solving global warming is not just wrong but “a strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late, one that says renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs.”

It is one thing to wonder about the value of nuclear energy—I was mostly opposed, too, until I saw Robert Stone’s compelling documentary, “Pandora’s Promise.’’ But to label Hansen . . . or Caldeira as denialists is absurd. . .

Oreskes is certain that we won’t need nuclear power to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. This is a legitimate and essential debate. But it should be possible to have it without denigrating positions held by people who have spent their careers, quite courageously, trying to solve the world’s biggest problem. . .

As the environmental activist Ben Heard tweeted earlier this week, “This thrash of insult against senior climate scientists for wanting all tools deployed is foul and degrades us all.”

No political group in Western life has been more adept at committing fratricide (and suicide) than the people of the left.

Speaking of suicide, take in this story from The Telegraph:

Baby Survives Parents’ Global Warming Suicide Pact

Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their daughter and her toddler brother before killing themselves.

Their son Francisco, two, died instantly after being hit in the back.

However, their unnamed daughter cheated death after the bullet from her father’s handgun missed her vital organs. . .

Her parents said they feared the effects of global warming in a suicide note discovered by police.

They must not have got the memo that the planet was just saved by the Paris conference. On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t be too hasty in judging the parents. Perhaps they’re just ahead of the curve. Given that the climatistas’ energy agenda involves economic suicide, perhaps they were just trying to get a head start, leading by example. In which case we should salute their far-sightedness.

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