Arrogant Ignorance, v2

Despite my best intentions, I ended up watching a large chunk of the Oscars telecast this past Sunday. My “best intentions” were to catch Chris Rock’s opening monologue and move on to something else, but I was wrapped up in a movie and didn’t tune in the Oscars until 10 PM. So, I missed what by many reports was a great opening monologue. I also missed the “boring” awards that were presented early, and mostly saw just the major ones.

Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor for his role in The Revenant. I’m tempted to guess at a motive for his being given the award other than his performance, but since I didn’t see the movie, that wouldn’t be fair. It’s also irrelevant in the grand scheme. Ricky Gervais, in his hosting of the Golden Globe awards a few weeks ago, admonished the recipients-to-be not to get too wrapped up in their victories, noting:

No one cares about that award as much as you do. Don’t get emotional, it’s embarrassing. That award is, no offense, worthless. It’s a bit of metal some nice old confused journalists wanted to give you in person so they could meet you and have a selfie with you, okay?

DiCaprio’s award matters to him. It matters to the production studio’s bottom line, since the award will likely prompt more people to watch the movie. In the aforementioned “grand scheme,” though, what makes DiCaprio’s award memorable is the second half of his acceptance speech, which consisted of a diatribe about global warming.

Here’s part of his statement:

Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed.

There are a few problems here, and I’m not talking about the gross hypocrisy of a multimillionaire living a multimillionaire’s lifestyle (private jets, yachts, mansions) chastising the rest of us about global warming – excuse me – “climate change.”

The first problem is, of course, the fact that global warming isn’t what it used to be. The “pause,” i.e. the recent span of time where global warming was predicted (by over a hundred models) but hasn’t occurred, is two decades long now, and even Michael Mann, climatologist at Penn State and high priest of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming aka Climate Change aka Climate Disruption aka Climate Catastrophe aka Climate Justice, is acknowledging it. The reasons offered to explain the “pause” are myriad, with one site tallying 52 different ones as of a year and a half ago. Of course, some sources now say the “pause” isn’t, and there’s been a fair bit of backward-looking data revision that’s purported to prove this, but no matter which way one leans on the validity and magnitude of global warming, it is indisputable that there are legitimate and substantial questions about the maturity and certitude of global warming science. So, DiCaprio’s first statement, that it’s real, is not as absolute as he’d have us believe. And, his second statement, that it’s happening right now, is wrong.

Next up, the hyperbole of “the most urgent threat facing our entire species.” Lets contemplate that for a moment. For this to be true, global warming would have to be something that will render the planet uninhabitable. This is nonsensical flapdoodle. No rational person can believe that a temperature rise of a couple degrees will wipe out humanity, especially a humanity that will continue to advance technologically as this supposed temperature increase happens. But, we can dismiss this as exaggeration for effect, especially given what he said next.

The biggest problem with DiCaprio’s exhortation is his assertion that “we” need to address global warming to benefit the world’s poor. First, they’re not being affected right now. The pause means that the predicted negative effects aren’t at hand. Moreso, the predictions of stronger and more frequent storms have fallen utterly flat. There haven’t been the sea level rises that we’ve been told will inundate low countries. Many other predictions have proven wrong as well, including ice caps, polar bears, famines, droughts, unsightly wax buildup, excessive navel lint, and on and on. So, today’s poor aren’t suffering from the effects of global warming.

Consider, though, the policy prescription that the high priests are demanding. Yes, prescription, singular. That prescription is a brute-force reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, to be effected by a combination of caps and taxes on carbon, spending of taxpayer dollars on “alternative energy” and tax credits to distort markets, all with the goal of making coal, oil and natural gas more expensive and therefore used less.

Energy is a fundamental driver of living standards. More and cheaper energy makes life better and easier. Conversely, making energy more expensive will adversely impact living standards. For the first world, this will mean less leisure, more work, and in general more unhappiness, but probably won’t drastically affect baseline living standards. Sure, we’ll all be poorer, but we won’t be reduced to subsistence living. But, for the world’s poor, for the very people that DiCaprio purports need to be looked out for by a concerted effort against global warming, this will mean a slower rise out of poverty, less access to the basics that we in the first world take for granted (clean water, medicine, technology that allows one to rise up from subsistence living, and so forth), and therefore shorter lifespans. The noble notion of helping the world’s poor by tackling climate change is, in fact, a prescription for doing them immeasurable harm. Billions will remain in deeper poverty, and millions will die prematurely and avoidably.

In making such exhortations, DiCaprio and his peers demonstrate an ignorance that is inexcusable. Being wealthy and in a first world nation, they have every resource they could possibly need to assess the reality of what they are proposing. What I’ve written here is hardly revelatory. It’s merely the result of taking a moment to think about the consequences of the policy prescription. Aretha Franklin knew that she had to warn Matt “Guitar” Murphy to think about the consequences of his actions before abandoning their restaurant in order to play a gig with the Blues Brothers. While the gig did raise enough money to save the orphanage, Matt and his bandmates ended up in prison, and Matt may very well have ended up with a broken marriage, proving Aretha right. Leo has no excuse for not thinking through the consequences of global warming.

It takes a special sort of arrogance to stand up and urge tens of millions of people to pursue a course of action that is so easily deconstructed. It’s an arrogance we see all the time in people who’ve achieved success in a particular endeavor. It’s the presumption that reaching the pinnacle of one’s field validates one’s excellence in understanding everything. That’s not to say an actor is incapable of learning enough about global warming to have an informed opinion, but if one doesn’t put in the time and effort to become informed, then one is rendering an ignorant opinion.

There’s an old adage that observes that opinions are like noses. Everyone has one and they all smell. There is, of course, a less polite version that many of you know. However, informed opinions serve a good purpose, while ignorant ones don’t. Science fiction author Harlan Ellison once observed:

Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing. It’s just bibble-babble. It’s like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks.

A wise person recognizes when his opinions are solidly informed and when they’re born out of ignorance. That wise person should be happy to share the former and should be happy to keep the latter to himself. The fool, on the other hand, often doesn’t recognize the difference. I discussed such a fool back in August, 2014. A quiet fool isn’t usually a problem. An arrogant one, on the other hand, can do great harm to others.

Mr. DiCaprio should keep his exhortations on behalf of the world’s poor (or as he called them “underprivileged,”) to himself until he thinks a bit more about the results those exhortations will actually produce. Unfortunately, it’s may very well be that his motivations are those of Thomas Sowell’s anointed i.e. “self-congratulation as a basis for social policy.” Many of us recognize this, and much of the vacuity spouted by the various celebrities who stood at the microphone during the Oscars telecast will be ignored or dismissed, but like it or not, people do pay attention to celebrities. The arrogant ignorance that leads them to offer up harmful beseechings shouldn’t be ignored or dismissed, though. DiCaprio and his ilk should be challenged and chastised when they urge actions that will cause enormous harm to their fellow humans.