The Daily Digest

Shanghai skyscape

Cherry-picked Michael Gerson: In the field of environmentalism, "brows tend to be frozen in furrow and despair is a professional credential." But there is cause for hope, and it's not because people are pedaling to work instead of driving. Example: Innovation, not austerity, reduced smog in Los Angeles. Writ large: "The answer to global warming will eventually be technological—the production of energy without the production of heat-trapping gases."

Ninety-six members of Mitt Romney's family traveled to Iowa to help him win the Ames straw poll. By contrast, Rudy Giuliani's son will not campaign for his dad, and his daughter is supporting Barack Obama.

Racism, vile and visceral, remains alive and well in Louisiana.

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Cooling Down the Global Warming Debate

Earlier this week I suggested that the global warming debate isn't as polarized as some like to think. As quoted in yesterday's NYT, AEI's Steven Hayward, who's promoting his PowerPoint rebuttal of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, takes the words right out of my mouth:

"I agree that we’re warming, and I agree that we’re playing a role in it. What I disagree with is his overall pessimism."

Cato's Pat Michaels, another alleged denialist, expresses the same view.

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Trimming the Trees

Pit easily exploitable emotions against deep philosophical convictions, and you get a glimpse of the debate over stem-cell research.

"Consequently," write Robert George and Thomas Berg, "we propose six facts on which people on either side of the . . . debate should be able to agree":

1. There is no “ban” on human embryonic stem cell research in the United States.
2. We are a long way away from therapies derived from embryonic stem cells.
3. The human embryo has at least some degree of special moral status.
4. There are non-controversial alternatives worth exploring.
5. Concerns about embryo destruction are not only religious.
6. [Omitted because it's nonsense.]

One of the best strategies for reasoned discourse—where the goal is enlightenment, not victory—is to begin with common ground. The above essay is a good example, since by trimming the trees, if you will, it shifts the discussion to the forest, like where life begins and what research taxpayer dollars should fund.

My proposal for the next such primer concerns another subject fueled more by ignorance and arrogance than by facts: global warming. Here's a start:

1. The earth is warming.
2. Human activity is partly responsible for the warming.
3. Environmentalists have a track record of alarmism.

From here, we can delve into the essential issue: will the warming be disastrous?

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