Thread by @DoctorVive

There are many problems w the @NewYorker Franzen climate piece. Here are three:

1) It distorts the science.
2) It's completely apolitical.
3) It contradicts itself: is the apocalypse coming or should we all start local farmers markets?

THREAD

1/n

@NewYorker First: the science.

Franzen claims that climate change will spin "completely out of control" if the planet heats to somwhere around 2°C.

This is flat-out wrong.

2/n

@NewYorker According to @helixclimate, the EU agency tasked with studying climate impacts from 1.5° to 6°C, the "tipping points" that cause global heating to spin out of control happen at solidly higher temperatures.

3/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate But lest you think that scientists know what they're talking about, Franzen makes sure to attack the legitimacy of the @IPCC_CH.

4/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH The crazy thing, though? Franzen doesn't understand how climate science works.

(Although I don't know why I'm surprised.)

5/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH Climate scientists don't make "best predictions." Nor do they have most confidence in their "lowest" projected temperature.

They project temperature across a confidence *range*.

6/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH I mean, who edited this piece?

(On that note, there's also a misspelling in this sentence, and someone concerned with clarity needs to tell Franzen that "brain" is not "mind.")

7/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH I get it, I guess, climate science is hard. But if you're going to write about climate science for the @newyorker you should really get it right.

8/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH Moving on to the more serious issue with this essay: did you all notice that it's easier for Franzen to imagine the end of the world than to envision a politics that will change our systems in time to save millions of lives?

9/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH That lack of vision is a choice.

It's an aesthetic choice.

It's a political choice.

10/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH These putatively lefty smart boys acting like they're so courageous and manly for accepting the apocalypse?

They're just lazy and entitled.

(And selfish, too, also selfish.)

11/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH Guess what? The people working their asses off to do politics in order to change the distribution of power so that people will live?

Those people imagine the apocalypse too.

They think about death, like, constantly.

But then they say to the god of death...

10/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH "I barely know your kids and I feel like I would jump in front of a bus to stop this shit."

Just go read @amywestervelt, you'll get it.

popula.com/2019/08/19/the…

11/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt But Franzen is arguing that such a politics is impossible. Don't even try, he's saying.

You know else who cites ethonol subsidies to argue climate action is hopeless? Br*t Stephens.

14/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt This kind of denier argument hides its ideological commitments under the invocation of "human nature": we will never stop emitting carbon dioxide, it says, because of "human nature."

15/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt This is pure ideology, hiding the real (and contingent) material conditions of our existence behind the lie of natural inevitability.

16/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt In other words, Franzen looks at power and sees "human nature."

But of course he does!

17/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt There is no such thing as "human nature" when it comes to climate change, as I've argued👇and explain kaleidoscopically in my next book, "Keywords for a New Climate."

slate.com/technology/201…

18/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt There are the people who are blocking climate action, the people who are fighting for our lives, and everyone else paying some other level of attention. That's it.

19/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt When the people fighting look at power, we see a historical phenomenon to be contested and dismantled and transformed into something life sustaining and beautiful.

20/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt And I suspect we understand, deeply, that climate breakdown is not, as Franzen would have it, about "distant nations" and "distant future generations," but about, for example, my life as an old woman and my son's whole life and everybody who's suffered and died already.

21/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt But Franzen doesn't see beyond his own selfish nose, as his conclusion makes entirely clear, because he doesn't understand that everything on this globe is intertwined.

22/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt Franzen literally suggests doing things like starting a local CSA to hedge against runaway global heating.

As if a planet subjected to runaway global heating would have CSA veggie box delivery.

23/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt Which leads me to ask a question about the third problem with this piece: which is it, Mr Franzen? Are we on a planetary death spiral or are we not?

24/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt Clearly, Franzen thinks that there will be a "society that survives" runaway global heating, which is a completely incoherent position even just on a logical level.

25/n

@NewYorker @helixclimate @IPCC_CH @amywestervelt My point is that Franzen doesn't undertand what he's talking about, and this piece should never have made it past the pitch.

Just because Franzen's a novelist who likes birds doesn't mean he deserves to write crap and have it published. Especially not in the @NewYorker.

/fin