Brian Sussman: Global Warming’s Reckless Rhetoric

An acclaimed environmental studies professor contends that those who do not believe that humans are causing global warming are mentally ill and need to be “treated,” according to a recent story at American Thinker.

Keri Norgaard teaches at the University of Oregon and is the author of Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life.  In her book she compares global warming skepticism to racism, arguing that there is a “cultural resistance” that keeps some people from acknowledging that humans are responsible for global warming.  This condition, she claims, “… must be recognized and treated” as an aberrant sociological behavior.

Norgaard also claims, “Climate change poses a massive threat to our present social, economic and political order.  From a sociological perspective, resistance to change is to be expected.”  She continues, saying, “This kind of cultural resistance to a very significant social threat is something that we would expect in any society facing a massive threat.”

Norgaard even goes so far as to say that such cultural resistance to accepting the theory of anthropogenic global warming is comparable to what happened when slavery was challenged in the Southern United States.

Norgaard has been making such radical pronouncements for years.  In a 2009 interview with Wired magazine, she said, “Global warming … threatens the survival of our species[.]“

Translated, she’s saying that if we don’t do something, we’re all gonna die.

But Norgaard is not a lone voice of reckless eco-rhetoric.  In fact, green scare-mongering is a common practice amongst those in the environmental movement — and such comments have the potential to incite societal panic.

American Thinker