RUTHFULLY YOURS

Almost exactly 100 years ago in France, Julian Benda wrote The Treason of the Intellectuals to challenge the intellectuals to cease and desist from stoking the violent political passions that were dividing the Republic. At present public intellectuals in the quality press have the opportunity to set the example for critical thinking about difficult and divisive issues, à la Benda.Responsible public intellectuals will engage with the signature issues of the time to establish one or more areas of competence where they have well-informed opinions.  They can provide invaluable guidance on those matters because they have access to the best brains in the country to help them to explain and clarify scientific and technical matters to facilitate informed public debate. If they do their homework in their areas of competence they can be taken seriously, although on other topics they can only recycle what they regard as reliable opinions offered by other people.

Paul Kelly is a leading public intellectual on the basis the circulation of The Australian, his books, and the years that he has spent reading, observing and writing about Australian politics. That is his area of competence, as he demonstrated in his appraisal of the prospects for nuclear power. In The Australian (10/11/2021) he described the idea of conservatives winning an election with a promise of nuclear power as “a grand fantasy” because, he argued, it will take years to achieve bipartisan support at the federal and state levels: “It would never be established amid an energy policy war between the Coalition and Labor.”

Contrast that considered opinion with his position on climate change and net zero. He apparently accepts that the science is settled in favour of warming alarmism despite the empirical evidence that the warming in modern times has been unequivocally beneficial and that we are still short of the temperature during the Roman warm period, which was even more favourable for life on earth.

Similarly, the post industrial increase in the level of CO2 has been literally life-saving because the level of CO2 during  the Little Ice Age was barely enough to keep the plants alive. Still, Kelly exhorts us to make all efforts to achieve net zero even if we can’t do it by 2050. In The Australian (6/2/2021) he applauded Scott Morrison’s commitment to net zero and the Paris accord in the face of “blind conservative resistance.” Likewise, Australian stablemate Greg Sheridan’s area of competence is in foreign affairs and defence, topics from which strays to deplore the misguided folk who refuse to dance to the tune of the climate alarmists and the net zero enthusiasts. 

When public intellectuals aggressively assert their views on important and controversial matters outside their areas of competence they should warn readers that they are stepping out out of their lane. If they have not checked the facts and consulted well-qualified  experts on both sides of the case they may unwittingly mislead their readers.

Climate and energy became signature issues after warming alarmism emerge in the US in the 1980s and there has been plenty of time for senior journalists to learn enough to form realistic views on climate and energy  policies. Some have done this, Terry McCrann, Andrew Bolt, Graham Lloyd, Piers Akerman and Chris Mitchell for example. Some politicians have done the same, notably Malcolm Roberts, Craig Kelly,  Matt Canavan, Alex Antic, Gerard Rennick and Ralph Babet.  In the street there are many others, like the Five Dock Climate Realists in Sydney, who have done the hard yards to achieve robust positions without holding formal qualifications in climate science.

Too many  commentators and their editors have metaphorically shouted “Fire!” in the crowded theatre of the climate and energy debate and enabled the unsettled  science of climate alarmism to capture the hearts and minds of the people and the politicians. That process was accelerated by publicly funded activists in the ABC, the schools and the universities, especially the university-funded site The Conversation where alternative views are excluded by editorial fiat.

That unsettled science drove the net zero crusade around the world  that has wasted trillions of dollars to get more expensive and less reliable power with massive collateral damage to forests and farmlands.