The controversy over Jonathan Franzen’s climate change opinions, explained
Scientists
are pissed at the novelist — and at the New Yorker for publishing him.
By Sigal
Samuel Sep 11, 2019, 12:50pm EDT
Jonathan
Franzen writes about climate change. Twitter erupts in anger. It’s the circle
of life as we denizens of the internet have come to know it in recent years.
Franzen is
most famous for authoring novels like The Corrections and Freedom, but he’s
also developed a pattern of writing controversial takes on the environment. His
latest is an opinion essay for the New Yorker titled, “What If We Stopped
Pretending?” The subtitle sums up his argument: “The climate apocalypse is
coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.”
The author
starts from the premise that if we let Earth warm by two degrees Celsius, the
climate will spin completely out of control and there’ll be no coming back from
it. He says “human psychology and political reality” are such that we will
indeed let Earth warm by two degrees, so it makes no sense to talk about
“saving” the planet anymore. What’s more, he argues, it’s actively harmful to
talk like that because it gives us the sense that climate change mitigation
“needs to be everyone’s overriding priority forever” — and that’ll make us
ignore adaptation efforts like disaster preparedness, and smaller-scale goals
like helping animals suffer less right now.
He wants us
to keep doing what we can for the planet, but also to adopt “a more balanced
portfolio of hopes, some of them longer-term, most of them shorter.”
Immediately
after the essay went live Sunday, people began to express their ire online.
Climate scientists and activists were especially pissed — at the author, and
also at the magazine that published him. (A few people did defend him, to a
point.) The critics’ anger seemed to coalesce around four main complaints,
three of them empirical in nature: Franzen is wrong on the science, on the
politics, and on the psychology of human behavior as it pertains to climate
change.
The fourth
complaint was more about credentials and identity: If a prestigious magazine
like the New Yorker wants to allocate precious space to a conversation about
climate, great! But why give it to a novelist and not a climate scientist? And
why give it to yet another white man instead of elevating the voices of people
we rarely get to hear from, like women of color?
These four
complaints are significant because, as much as they’re about Franzen — a man
whose comments have been bothering more and more people over the years —
they’re about a lot more than just Franzen. They reflect a broader public fight
over how we should talk about climate change and who should get to do the
talking. (Perhaps infighting is a better term, since much of this squabbling
happens within progressive circles.) Let’s unpack it.
Franzen is
wrong on the science
Franzen is
the kind of man who says he feels guilty about his carbon footprint when he
flies or drives, the kind who advocates for land conservation and animal
welfare, the kind who, in his words, “cares more about birds than the next
man.” He is no fan of climate denialism. So it was strange to see him
propounding a view that, while different from denialism, can lead to the same
conclusion: Stop focusing so much on cutting emissions.
“Our
resources aren’t infinite. Even if we invest much of them in a longest-shot
gamble, reducing carbon emissions in the hope that it will save us, it’s unwise
to invest all of them,” Franzen writes. “All-out war on climate change made
sense only as long as it was winnable.”
His
apocalyptic rhetoric starts to sound like it’s sliding into a breed of
denialism (or “de-nihilism,” as Mary Annaïse Heglar of the Natural Resources
Defense Council dubbed it): the denial that there’s any sense in focusing on
the fight for a better climate.
Stuart Capstick
🌡️🌏
@StuartBCapstick
1. Climate
change is dubious and irrelevant --> no point cutting emissions
2. Climate
change is apocalyptic and impossible --> no point cutting emissions
Seems like
society's move from denial #1 to denial #2 has happened in barely the blink of
an eye😒
244
3:41 PM -
Sep 9, 2019
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Franzen
repeatedly returns to the notion that our damage to the climate is sure to pass
a “point of no return” and so we might as well admit that we’re just not going
to be able to “solve” the climate crisis. Here’s how he expresses his
understanding of the scientific consensus on climate:
Our
atmosphere and oceans can absorb only so much heat before climate change,
intensified by various feedback loops, spins completely out of control. The
consensus among scientists and policy-makers is that we’ll pass this point of
no return if the global mean temperature rises by more than two degrees Celsius
(maybe a little more, but also maybe a little less). The I.P.C.C.—the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—tells us that, to limit the rise to
less than two degrees, we not only need to reverse the trend of the past three
decades. We need to approach zero net emissions, globally, in the next three decades.
But as some
climate scientists noted on Twitter, this is not an accurate representation of
what the IPCC says. Two degrees of warming is not meant to be treated as a
scientific threshold, a “point of no return.” As sustainable business expert
Andrew Winston wrote, Franzen focuses with a strange insistence on “two
degrees” as if it’s a magic number beyond which everything instantly turns to
hell. But it’s not the case that passing the two-degree mark means we should
all just throw our hands up in despair. “If we miss 2, we fight for 2.1, then
2.2, etc.,” as Winston put it.
To his
credit, Franzen does acknowledge that “even if we can no longer hope to be
saved from two degrees of warming, there’s still a strong practical and ethical
case for reducing carbon emissions. ... If collective action resulted in just
one fewer devastating hurricane, just a few extra years of relative stability,
it would be a goal worth pursuing.”
That’s
logical, and yet the overall thrust of his essay flies in the face of this
logic by arguing that although mitigation is a goal worth pursuing, it would be
unwise to invest too much in it. That’s because he believes putting all our
eggs in the mitigation basket will undercut our ability to pursue adaptation (“preparing
for fires and floods and refugees”) and conservation of wildlife that’s at risk
right now. More on that strawman argument in a bit.
Franzen is
wrong on the politics
Franzen
also angered many progressives by comparing the climate denial espoused by the
Republican Party to “denial entrenched in progressive politics”: denial that
the climate crisis is unsolvable. He writes: “The Green New Deal, the blueprint
for some of the most substantial proposals put forth on the issue, is still
framed as our last chance to avert catastrophe and save the planet.”
According
to Franzen, the problem with this framing is that we’re too late to save the
planet — and even if we’re not actually too late, we’re certainly too stubborn
to accept the massive changes to our lifestyles that saving the planet would
require. For example, he thinks Americans would revolt against the idea of
paying higher taxes to underwrite the Green New Deal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
has suggested raising the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans to pay for the
plan.
But as
critics pointed out, Franzen didn’t seem to have a firm grasp of the details of
the Green New Deal, and failed to offer a full and fair characterization of the
plan. The Deal notes that we’re actually facing two crises: climate change and
growing economic inequality. It sets out a series of goals for heading off the
first crisis (like achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions) and, in the
process, seeks to tackle the second crisis by designing our transition to a
greener economy in a way that creates jobs for people.
“I suppose
Franzen didn’t actually read the Green New Deal resolution. Or any of the
climate plans that the Democratic candidates have put out. Who has time to read
policy proposals when you’re busy building your climate apocalypse bunker!?”
wrote Leah Stokes, a climate researcher at University of California Santa
Barbara. “He has no idea what is in the Green New Deal. He says: ‘Americans
need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar lifestyles
without revolting.’ The entire point of the Green New Deal is to marry
industrial policy with social policy to avoid this outcome.”
Stokes is
referring to the aspect of the Green New Deal that acknowledges that
transitioning away from fossil fuels will cause some Americans to suffer job
loss — and that describes all the ways they’ll be protected, like public
employment and universal health care. Here’s a Vox video that explains this in
greater detail:
Franzen is
wrong on the psychology
Franzen
seems to presume that we human beings can’t hold more than one idea in our
minds at the same time. That’s why he argues that “a false hope of salvation
can be actively harmful.” Here’s his reasoning:
If you
persist in believing that catastrophe can be averted, you commit yourself to
tackling a problem so immense that it needs to be everyone’s overriding
priority forever. One result, weirdly, is a kind of complacency: by voting for
green candidates, riding a bicycle to work, avoiding air travel, you might feel
that you’ve done everything you can for the only thing worth doing. Whereas, if
you accept the reality that the planet will soon overheat to the point of
threatening civilization, there’s a whole lot more you should be doing.
But where
is this mythical person who, because he rides a bike or avoids air travel,
thinks he’s done his duty and doesn’t bother to do anything else that’s good
for the world? How many such people have you actually encountered?
Critics
took Franzen to task for this straw man. “Virtually every climate group that’s
currently agitating for rapid decarbonization also supports investments in
adaptation and resilience,” wrote Eric Levitz in New York Magazine. “Meanwhile,
Franzen’s suggestion that supporters of a Green New Deal believe climate must
be ‘everyone’s overriding priority’ — such that no one is allowed to focus on
combating wealth or racial inequality — would be news to both Ocasio-Cortez and
her critics.”
Franzen has
actually been banging this drum for years. In another climate essay he wrote
for the New Yorker in 2015, he gave the example of a blogger who said there’s
not much point installing special patterned glass in a new stadium’s windows
because the gravest threat to birds is not collisions but climate change.
Franzen used this example to argue that climate change is making it harder for
people to care about conservation — to take care of animals that are dying
right now of causes that are less PR-friendly but no less real than climate
change.
It’s hard
to believe, though, that most people really find it difficult to care about
climate change and care about conservation (or adaptation) at the same time. If
anything, people who are passionate enough about the world to avoid air travel
tend to be those who are also passionate about doing other commendable things —
including the things Franzen says he cares about: taking care of animals,
supporting refugees, donating to homelessness charities.
For anyone
who cares to look, there are plenty of examples of organizations (like the Audubon
Society) and individuals (like environmentalist Bill McKibben) who work on both
climate and conservation at the same time. This is a non-zero-sum game.
Franzen is,
well, Franzen
If the New
Yorker wants to publish Franzen, that’s its prerogative, but, some people
asked, why not hear from a climate scientist? If not a climate scientist, why a
well-off older white man and not, say, a young woman of color whose opinion is
less often heard and who’s likelier to actually suffer ill effects from global
warming?
“It’s hard
to imagine major outlets publishing essays declaring efforts to reduce poverty
hopeless. Or telling cancer patients to just give up,” John Upton, an editor at
Climate Central, wrote on Twitter. “Yet this Climate Doomist trope flourishes —
penned, best I can tell, exclusively by older, comfy white men.”
And here’s
Rhiana Gunn-Wright, policy lead for the Green New Deal, and Katharine
Wilkinson, vice president of communication and engagement at Project Drawdown:
Rhiana
Gunn-Wright
@rgunns
i am actually
incensed about this franzen piece. the hoops i see my climate writers who are
women and POC go through to get published and the New Yorker is going to spare
space for jonathan franzen to talk about climate? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY *sexism
and racism* WHY WHY WHY
838
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Sep 8, 2019
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Dr.
Katharine Wilkinson
@DrKWilkinson
Know what
we haven’t tried “at scale” to address the climate crisis?? ✨feminist leadership✨ So to all Franzen & Co. “we’re toast”
bros, why not work for a world free of patriarchy instead of going🤷🏼♂️😴? Great way to help: pass the mic to folks with
real vision, especially WOC. https://twitter.com/amywestervelt/status/1170727584755093506
…
Amy
Westervelt
✔
@amywestervelt
It's
exactly shit like Franzen's essay in the @NewYorker that prompted me to write
this: https://popula.com/2019/08/19/the-case-for-climate-rage/ …
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Sep 8, 2019
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Meanwhile,
Leah Stokes asked why our most prominent outlets “continue to publish these bad
takes, which invariably come from privileged, western, white men? Is this what
is going to replace airtime for deniers?”
This critique
is really two critiques. One is about credentials: Franzen is a novelist, not a
scientist, so why should we be paying special attention to his analysis of the
climate crisis?
The other
is about identity: Franzen is a privileged white man writing for a magazine
that has long bolstered the power and prestige of white men. Many people —
especially women and people of color — have been frustrated for ages at how
much harder it is to get their voices heard in prestigious outlets, even when
they’re more credentialed on the topic at hand. So when someone like Franzen
comes along and pens yet another take for the New Yorker on a topic he’s no
expert at, the long-simmering frustration erupts into an online conflagration.
The anger
is partly about Franzen’s actual arguments. But it’s also partly not about his
arguments or even about his person. It’s about what he and the New Yorker have
come to symbolize: a culture of prestige that only wants to hear from those it
has already deemed prestigious.
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