US conservatives' predicament explains climate change and NYT op-ed

[sharedvalues]

https://newrepublic.com/article/142444/bret-stephenss-opinions-arent-problem

A great article from Brian Beuter at TNR. The problem with Stephens is his conservative ideology which distorts his arguments.

U.S. conservatives face a predicament across a wide range of issues, including climate change, but few of them are prepared to do the dull, repetitive, and frequently unconvincing work of explaining why their opposition to an active federal government should trump other urgent concerns. It would be unpersuasive to argue, “Stopping runaway climate change requires federal interventions that I object to on the following abstract ideological grounds” over and over again; applying the same principles to other pressing questions—like whether we should reduce the rate of uninsurance, or provide poor children adequate nutrition—yields similarly unsatisfying opinions.

The remedy most conservatives have adopted, consciously or otherwise, is to devise more genial justifications for their conclusions and use those to backfill their arguments. New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait called this “a tic of American conservative-movement thought — the conclusion (small government) is fixed, and the reasoning is tailored to justify the outcome. Nearly all conservatives argue this way...”


A standard that would exclude Stephens, and everyone to his right on the issue of climate change, would come perilously close to excluding all conservatives from the Times’ editorial pages. It is paradoxical to support the concept of ideological diversity while insisting on a standard that excludes everyone on the right. The way to resolve the paradox is to eschew ideological litmus tests and insist on rhetorical ones instead. What matters isn’t that Stephens is a conservative, but how he argues for conservatism.

This is the core objection to Stephens. He's reasoning backward from a conclusion. He hates climate change, because he's a conservative. So he makes up flimsy arguments against it.

There's no place for such speciousness at the NYT. And if such a standard excludes nearly all conservatives, the problem is with conservatism, not with the New York Times.

[Historic NY]

1. God's will....conservative answer works all the time even in the face of science.

[sharedvalues]

2. Yup - it's all motivated ultimately by a desire to enrich corporations and the very wealthy.

We're only having a debate about climate change because climate change costs energy companies money, so those companies buy PR, and scientists, and politicians, and ultimately Bret Stephens, to deny climate change.