New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. is reaching out to subscribers who dumped the paper because he hired Bret Stephens, a neo-conservative columnist whose record on the subject of climate change has run contrary to the scientific consensus. Stevens is that familiar right-wing media creature, a Squealer in the Animal Farm barnyard: "The best known among them was a small fat pig named Squealer, with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker, and when he was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive. The others said of Squealer that he could turn black into white." A shill sowing doubt, not quite a liar, just a persuader who serves liars and their lies. They're all over Fox, Sinclair, and CNN. Good living if you can get it. And a choice that subscribers found disconcerting.
The publisher is at pains to explain because it seems that many people saw Stephens as the last straw after the paper’s disastrous coverage of the 2016 campaign, where the paper served more or less as the sidewalk blackboard showing the daily special being served by the GOP’s Café Merde. Sulzberger tolerated the gruel cooked by Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, et al., but apparently he felt that the recipe still needed some additional solid waste. Hence Stephens, who is not a climate scientist, nor a businessman. Stephens is a commentator. His academic training is in political philosophy and comparative politics, which took him to The Wall Street Journal in the US and in Europe, the Jerusalem Post and Commentary.
The premise of Stephens as a commentator on climate change is that, from the Times’ point of view, it’s a political issue at the foundation, and a matter of debate for which someone with training in political philosophy is a valid voice. Stephens was necessary for “balance” because so many people weigh in on the other side of the issue, and no matter what their expertise, they’re all really just commentators too, so hiring a contrarian isn’t pointless, it’s fair. Stephens’ debut hewed right to his standard position that we can’t really know what’s happening, and that this climate change “data” is a matter of perspective as much as it is one of empiricism; and moreover, certainty is a mark of hubris and arrogance and unfairness in this troubled time of divisiveness, so no one of good wise character ever says he's really sure. He opens with a dazzling bit of wisdom that's old, so it must be applicable:
When someone is honestly 55 percent right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60 percent right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God.
But what’s to be said about 75 percent right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100 percent right? Whoever says he’s 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.
— An old Jew of Galicia
In case a fortune cookie doesn't give you sufficient humility, his next example is beyne argument for his Conservative readers: Hillary Clinton thought she had that last election locked up. HILLARY CLINTON, people. She wasn't just certain, was CLINTON ARROGANT. And anyone who thinks he's 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal--CLINTON ARROGANT. And you can't absolutely know that climate change is real, and you can't act until you absolutely know that climate change is real, and acting like you really know that climate change is real isn't just arrogant, it's CLINTON ARROGANT.
Sulzberger’s email to the people who cancelled suggested an argument something like, yes, those kids act up, sorry about your dead cat, but the NYT family as a whole is still nice people and we shouldn’t judge them all just because one of them made your pet into tacos. He emphasized that the paper has “sharply expanded the team of reporters and editors who cover climate change.” What “sharply expanded” means is hard to understand especially coming from someone in the writing business--are they sharply taller? Sharper dressers? Are they commentators?
Sulzberger’s plea nails the problem, though he seems not to understand: “Our editorial page editor, James Bennet, and I believe that this kind of debate, by challenging our assumptions and forcing us to think harder about our positions, sharpens all our work and benefits our readers.” Exactly: this for him is about positions and debate. In the News sections they try, sort of, to cover facts. On the Op Eds, reality is a position.
Sulzberger touted the paper’s coverage of effects attributed to climate change as though a thousand case studies would offset the doubt in the Op Eds about whether it’s happening, and if so, why. Once again, he missed the point. A thousand floods and tornadoes and droughts can all be dismissed as force majeure by the people who want climate change to not exist, or to be not of human making, or to be beyond anyone’s remedies, or just to be doubted because doubt buys time. It’s a feeble case for him to make because the Op Eds are the place where these issues are judged, and if the judgment suggests doubt, then all the factual stories of instances where climate change is apparent amount to feeble suggestions of evidence. Sulzberger doesn’t have the courage or the wisdom to get to the causes. He wants to challenge our assumptions and force us to think harder about our positions after the assumptions are tested and the positions require action, not thinking harder.
Deep in the bowels of its Markets section, the paper unknowingly ran a better commentary on climate change than anything Bret Stephens or Tom Friedman or Nick Kristof ever wrote on it, and better than anything Ross Douthat or David Brooks or Maureen Down ever wrote at all:
Walmart Launches Project Gigaton to Reduce Emissions in Company’s Supply Chain
Published: April 19, 2017
Through release of a sustainability toolkit, Walmart asks suppliers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one gigaton – the equivalent to taking more than 211 million passenger vehicles off of U.S. roads for an entire year
BENTONVILLE, Ark.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr. 19, 2017-- Today, during Walmart’s annual Milestone Summit, the company launched a sustainability platform inviting suppliers to join Walmart in committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions resulting from their operations and supply chains. Dubbed Project Gigaton, this initiative will provide an emissions reduction toolkit to a broad network of suppliers seeking to eliminate one gigaton of emissions, focusing on areas such as manufacturing, materials and use of products by 2030. That’s the equivalent to taking more than 211 million passenger vehicles off of U.S. roads and highways for a year.
Walmart is the first retailer with a verified science-based target emissions-reduction plan. The company aims to reduce its absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 18 percent by 2025. The retailer will also work to reduce CO2e, or carbon dioxide equivalent, emissions from upstream and downstream Scope 3 sources by one billion tons (a gigaton) between 2015 and 2030.
Project Gigaton is part of a series of Walmart sustainability initiatives, focused on addressing social and environmental issues in ways that help communities while also strengthening business. For example, by investing in solar energy, Walmart has helped to support jobs for American solar companies. Walmart is now one of America's leading commercial solar and on-site renewable energy users and gets about 25 percent of its global energy from renewable sources. To give another example, by doubling the efficiency of our U.S. fleet from 2005 to 2015, Walmart saved nearly $1 billion compared to a 2005 baseline.
Walmart isn’t debating this. In their 100% certainty they’re profiting from making themselves and their supply chain work cleaner and greener, and they’ll demonstrate all the arguments required that capitalist can act as though climate change is real and gain market advantages from that action. The Times didn’t send one of its sharper new climate change writers to ask questions about this, and there is no evidence that anyone at the Gray Lady even picked up the phone. They ran the news release verbatim and nobody in the shallow warm water of The Times Op Eds had a word to say about it. But in Bentonville, if someone in management at Walmart suggested going back to the old thinking was desirable because you can't really know that climate change is real, and that this kind of debate, by challenging our assumptions and forcing us to think harder about our positions, sharpens all our work and benefits our customers, they'd have been fired. Maybe Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. would have offered him a job on The Times Op Eds.