Being fair to people you don’t agree with is a really challenging task. After all, from your viewpoint, they are wrong. It can be pretty easy to see the holes in their arguments. Indeed, we can be really great at that. Although we are generally not so talented at taking apart our own arguments. When we read something we can, and should, ask ourselves, “Are we being fair to those we disagree with?”. We should also ask, “Are they being fair to those they disagree with?” When reading Superabundance, a book by two Cato Institute scholars, I asked myself both questions. Acknowledging my bias, I decided that I was being fair and they weren’t.
Why Name Yourself After Cato? Because Hoover Was Taken?
As an aside, I have to admit that I am put off by the name Cato for the institute that sponsored their work. This is a well-known Conservative think tank in the US. In the spirit of fairness, the institute seems to have stuck to its principles in the MAGA era. It still believes in Libertarianism/Conservatism, not whatever Donald Trump dreamt up that morning.
Why then don’t I like the name? Cato was shared by two truly awful famous Romans, helpfully named Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger. The elder Cato was best known for advocating genocide against the Carthaginians. The youngest was exactly the sort of pompous Conservative trading on the family name that you still get hanging around far too much in British politics. To be fair, the Institute says it took its name from US revolutionary letters penned in the 18th century — though these were named after the useless pompous younger Cato, so I’m not sure that makes much difference.
An Attack On Malthus And Ehrlich
The book Superabundance has some good points. I liked their defense of progress. There are plenty of people who call themselves progressives who can’t seem to do that. Well done to the authors.
They had me cheering with their attacks on awful people who, for some reason that I can’t understand, have historically been embraced by many who care about the world. Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich should never been held up as heroes or visionaries. Were the authors being fair to evil gloom-mongers like Malthus and Ehrlich by condemning them? I think so, but then this may just be the result of some overlap of people we dislike. They certainly do have some good taste in people to pillory. I agree with them that the government shouldn’t be coercing people into having or not having children.
Being Fair To People You Don’t Agree With
It is true that Ehrlich was awful but the authors lost me at many points. They had some old-man-style random complaints about where we are all going. These ‘things were better in my day’ rambles didn’t seem in the positive spirit of the rest of the book. Furthermore, their general defense of the benefits of hierarchy came from nowhere and went straight back there without leaving me any more informed about where they pulled it from.
Where I felt the authors lost it most was being unfair in not distinguishing sufficiently between people with different views to theirs. Many people who care about the environment would reject Ehrlich. As such, to criticize the whole movement you can’t just harp on the worst examples. Furthermore, you need to be careful about crude attempts to link those you disagree with to monsters. The authors go on an extended discussion of mass murderers. They do this in the hope of discrediting environmentalists they disagree with by insinuated associations. For example, they discuss a murderer who killed 22 people in an El Paso Walmart. This was an anti-Hispanic attack that took place when Donald Trump was first US President and he was not saying great things about Hispanics. The killer had apparently “blamed” the Democrats for immigration. That said, the killer also used the term An Inconvenient Truth so somehow I think they believe that the killing was Al Gore’s fault.
A great example of their unhelpful style was talking about failures of prediction in the past. Some of the criticisms are certainly fair, but then the logical leap is made that if selected concerns in the past were wrong modern concerns must be wrong too. History is full of bad (and good) predictions. We need to tackle the evidence that we see now to get the best possible understanding of the current world.
Shock A Politician Tries To Build Momentum For Action
Where they are particularly unfair is lumping different comments together. They talk about extreme reactions to environmental concerns. A paragraph about Gordon Brown, the ex-UK prime Minister, was thrown in presumably to suggest he was panicking unnecessarily about the environment. (No proper explanation of why the paragraph was relevant was ever given).
On October 20, 2009, the Independent ran an article titled “Gordon Brown: We have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe.” The article summarized a speech given by the British prime minister, who claimed that the United Kindgom had 50 days to “set the course for the next fifty years and more”.
Tupy and Pooley (2022) page 136
They didn’t bother to check if Gordon Brown had a valid point in his speech. They just referenced the headline. Reading the original, it is clear that Brown was trying to say that it was important to get ready for the 2009 Copenhagen Summit which was in less than 50 days. Read it here. It is a perfectly normal speech by a politician trying to build momentum for change. Yes, the UK Prime Minister tried to motivate action at the summit by instilling a sense of urgency but wasn’t that Gordon Brown’s job?
We Need To Dig Into Claims, Some May Be Wrong, Others Right
The authors seem to suggest that Brown was unnecessarily panicking, but he was saying that there are problems on the horizon and that we should act. For example, he mentions flooding in the UK. Was he right? The Met Office in 2024 is saying the UK has got wetter precisely as Brown suggested that it would. In essence, The Met Office, the best meteorological source in the UK using our best modern scientific assessments, is saying the same things as Brown was, see here. It is even saying that we can prevent flooding by taking action as he was. 15 years on it seems like Brown was absolutely right. So I’m not sure why the author chose this, or many of the other examples, as an example of unnecessary panic.
When discussing the state of the world we need to get the balance right. Unnecessary panic isn’t helpful but neither is complacency when there are useful actions we can take.
For more on progress see here, here, and here
Read: Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley (2022) Superabundance: The Story Of Population Growth, Innovation, And Human Flourishing On An Infinitely Bountiful Planet, Cato Institute
