Bush, pollution, delusions: did he really say that?

The timing of these two stories was interesting. First, George Bush reported as signing off from the G8 with the line: ‘Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter‘. Picked up the Independent, Telegraph and across the blogs; Climate Progress or, perhaps, the Greenpeace US blog probably says it best:

193 days, 19 hours, 22 minutes until Bush finally stops leading my country.

Can you still suffer from delusions of grandeur even if you have legitimate claim to being the most powerful individual, within the foremost institution, on the planet? As others have pointed out, the reason why the U.S. has not acted on climate change could well be to do simply with the fact that George Bush finds it funny. Did it stop there?

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock…

He was probably planning that joke for months.

Not so funny is the other story that was in the media this week: the ‘first case’ of ‘climate change delusion’, which immediately makes most readers imagine that the individual sufferer is deluded about climate change. There is no way in which the facts or understanding of climate change cannot be underminedby this report, whether sceptic or belever.

Richard Littlemore on DeSmogBlog questions whether the science could be less than robust: It doesn’t look as if the science is faulty, but the reporting.

In the UK, only the Telegraph picked up the story of the ‘delusion’. (I say only: by circulation it’s the biggest quality paper). The Telegraph’s handling of the story is faulty. The headline suggests it is a new illness (‘first case of…’) and this is backed up in the article: “Dr Robert Salo said he expected more patients to suffer from the disorder”.

However, it is not a new illness or disorder.

The patient, who had a history of mental illness…

Further down the article:

However, Dr Salo stressed climate change was not the cause of the illness. “People with anxiety disorders may develop anxieties about it, but it doesn’t cause anxiety disorder.”

The headline and opening, although most probably fair reporting of the journal article (the journal is peer reviewed, and published by Taylor and Francis), communicates the Telegraph’s sceptical position on clmate change, at the expense of a sufferer from mental illness.

Back to an earlier sentence: “Dr Robert Salo said he expected more patients to suffer from the disorder as long as the issue remained on the agenda.” The way this is phrased, and the way others have picked it up and run with it, sugests climate change should be taken off the agenda. For example, a comment on one of the most influential sceptic blogs, Wattsupwiththat

Ya know. This isn’t really funny. My oldest (8) is terrified of global warming. They’ve  obviously talked about it at school, and if anything comes on the news about it or whatever he throws a fit. I’ve done about all the deprogramming I can do and it has helped. But, if this junk wasn’t taught in the first place, it wouldn’t be a problem…

What’s actually quite interesting is that just a few days earlier, influential sceptic blog Jennifer Mahorasy was talking about how Australians were being ‘deluded’ by the Garnaut Report. I guess the word’s time had come.

So when the story about the psychiatric case broke, her blog returned to the story, and guest writer Paul links out to Andrew Bolt, writing in the Australian Herald Sun, who takes the opportunity to lambast the PM Kevin Rudd and the author of the recent Garnaut Report into climate change, Ross Garnaut. This is the way Bolt used the story:

In every case the Indians are pragmatic where Rudd and Garnaut are having delusions — delusions about an apocalypse, about cutting gases without going nuclear, about saving power stations they’ll instead drive broke. And there’s that delusion on which their whole plan is built — that India and China will follow our sacrifice by cutting their throats, too.

That’s reasonably polemical and graphic: and using the key rhetorical devices of conduplicatio and anaphora (the three phrases sounding the same, using the same words and phrases to pound home the message: that first one a favourite of George Bush). And the universalisation of the ‘delusion’ (and its repetition), and then that image: Australia’s PM cutting his/their/Australia’s throats. Bolt wraps it up with:

So psychiatrists are treating a 17-year-old tipped over the edge by global warming fearmongers? Pray that their next patients will be two men whose own delusions threaten to drive our whole economy over the edge as well.

I’m reminded of the findings of Von Weisäcker et al. (1997, 299) reflecting on the meaning of economies:

“Economic efficiency is only a means, not an end. Markets are meant to be efficient, not sufficient, greedy, nor fair. Markets were never meant to achieve community or integrity, beauty or justice, sustainability or sacredness – and they don’t… and if we ever suppose these greatest achievements of the human spirit can be replaced by economics, we stand in peril for our souls.”

Bolt’s soul has already left the building. For example, this morning, Bolt is running with the story: ‘Delusion Spreads’ as he uses the story (having forgotten about the 17-year old with mental illness, which is indefensible journalism) to attack another public figure suffering from ‘climate change delusion’. Or, as one of Wattsupwiththat’s commenters suggests: “General Environment Dysphoric Disorder” (as an opportunity for psychiatrists to institutionalilse the ‘illness’ and make lots of money).

Interestingly, this story was covered earlier this year with less euphoric rhetoric: it was a considered report of a doctor’s call to treat climate change as a health issue. According to the article, the World Health Organisation “has estimated that 60,000 people die each year from climate change-related natural disasters.”

Interestingly, this piece on health (including mental health) and climate change was written without the word delusion. Funny what a simple word in a headline can do.

So, who is deluded here?

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Tagged as: Bush, climate change, G8, media reporting