Do you even know what a "Cornucopian" is?
From "Rearguard of Modernity by Peter Jacques
A Review of Environmental Skepticism
A review of the skeptical literature provides over fifty books, with the overwhelming majority of them written since the 1990s with overt ties to contemporary conservatism.13 This does not mean that every single skeptic is a contemporary conservative. Gregg Easterbrook 14 and Magnus Enzenberger15 offer examples of liberal and Marxist views respectively. However, the vast majority of skeptics are contemporary conservative, and the latter exceptions do not offer any evidence of a concomitant social movement.
Consistent concerns range from the skepticism of the precautionary principle, global warming, ozone depletion, finite natural resource depletion, and biodiversity loss, to a committed faith in genetically modified organisms, the petroleum industry, and agricultural and industrial chemicals. The concentration of skeptical claims from the 1990s onwards indicates an intense burst of interest in the environmental skeptical program and is consistent with a conservative counter movement against global environmental concern (described below).16 Thus environmental skepticism is not, unlike its name might suggest, a disposition to withhold judgment until more compelling evidence is provided. Instead, environmental skepticism is a project that is skeptical of mainstream environmental claims and values but very faithful (i.e., not skeptical) to contemporary conservative values and issues, such as its faith in industrial and agricultural chemical benefits.
Skeptics often describe themselves as underdogs who are “speaking truth to power,”17 while “debunking” “junkscience” that has been constructed ignorantly or maliciously by environmentalists.18 I will note below, however, that while skeptics are positioned contrary to normal ecological understandings of the world, the idea of speaking truth to power is somewhat ironic since skeptics speak squarely from the base of the dominant modes of power, not against them.
Much of environmental skepticism’s history is well known by environmental scholars and is part of our standard textbook repertoire, starting with the maligning of Rachel Carson in the early 1960s by the chemical industry to the cornucopian work of Herman Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute, and Julian Simon, afaliated with the Cato Institute, in the 1980s and 1990s.19 This earlier mode has aptly been referred to as “cornucopian” or “promethean,”20 because of its interest in refuting ideas about environmental scarcity. Cornucopian thought has now expanded into “environmental skepticism,” through an interest in wider environmental problems of sustainability and global ecological change, including scarcity.
One important difference between the cornucopian view and environmental skepticism is that some skeptics may not dismiss the reality of all environmental problems. Rather, some skeptics dismiss the importance of environmental problems through a filter of cost-benefit analyses that cast doubt upon the rationality of seeing environmental problems as significant. Lomborg, for example, not only disputes the science behind many global environmental problems, but he disputes the rank ordering of environmental issues as priorities, which is discussed in more detail below. Nonetheless, this is a different challenge compared to the simpler cornucopian claim of quasi-inanite ecological abundance. The comparative cost-benefit lens articulates an additional level of reasoning why, in their judgment, environmental problems are generally not worth public concern and therefore action. Nonetheless, a deaning element to both cornucopian thought and environmental skepticism is the forceful rejection that environmental problems threaten the sustainability of modern human societies. This rejection is usually accompanied by the allegation that environmental knowledge has been politicized and therefore has become unreliable. So, the new incorporates the old but casts a wider net, and the new name is not unproblematic but seems relatively apropos.
Speciac Skeptical Propositions
Given the wide understanding of the cornucopian literature, I will limit this review to a handful of important skeptics. I give Lomborg special attention later in the paper.
One of the more widely known skeptics is Reason21 science correspondent, Ronald Bailey. Bailey has written and edited several volumes on the state of the world, all with the support of contemporary conservative institutions such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute.22 He believes that environmentalism is propped up on false science popularized by Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown, and Rachel Carson in combination with Marxist sympathies. He sees environmentalists politicizing science through “an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary” in order to control others through fear.23
- The Rearguard of Modernity
There are 5 relevant facts to consider:
1) the basic belief structure of "cornucopians" is closely tied to the belief structure of contemporary conservatives,
2) the belief that coal and nuclear are the best sources of energy is a fundamental part of contemporary conservative thought,
3) virtually ALL of the "doomers" on DU EE are supporters of nuclear energy
4) the belief that renewable energy is our best source of energy is a fundamental part of liberal thought,
5) virtually ALL of those you refer to as "cornucopians" on DU EE are supporters of renewable energy.
Since there is an obvious disconnect between your accusations and the reality of the terms I'd say that the most probable conclusion to be derived from this set of data is that the nuclear supporters are adopting and deploying arguments disguised as being liberal when their actual intent is to further the conservative agenda while thwarting the liberal agenda.
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