Welcome to new subscribers! Differ We Must is a companion to my forthcoming book of the same name, on how Lincoln succeeded in his divided time. I hope you’ll preorder to get it Oct. 3. You can take a moment to do it here on Amazon, or find alternative choices by clicking here. Or just support my local bookstore by clicking here!
Differ We Must examines our modern divisions, so it may be surprising to hear this assertion: we don’t argue enough in this country.
We say a lot of heated things. But it’s not that often that someone makes an argument—marshaling evidence in a logical way to support for their point of view—or that someone else makes a counter-argument.
Political actors instead commonly label their opponents and attack their motivations.
I think about that a lot after writing a book filled with extended arguments. Lincoln delivered speeches for hours in the 1850’s. Just one of his speeches filled 36 printed pages. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, every word he’s known to have written or said in a speech, fills eight bound volumes.
In each of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, one candidate spoke for an hour; the second spoke for an hour and a half; and the first replied for half an hour. Three hours total.
Thousands of people stood around and listened! Or read it later when newspapers transcribed it. Granted, there were fewer distractions. Nothing was on TV and nobody could check their phones. I wouldn’t expect such speeches to work today. But in their allotted time, Lincoln and Douglas would deliver an extended argument. Sometimes, to be sure, they repeated themselves or wandered off course. Sometimes their arguments were awful, too. Stephen A. Douglas explicitly argued in the famous debates that Lincoln wasn’t racist enough. But even that was useful. People knew where Douglas stood.
The 2024 presidential debates begin in August. Let’s see if the rapid-fire exchanges are as illuminating as Lincoln and Douglas were.
All this came to mind as NPR’s Rebecca Hersher discussed an effect of climate change on NPR’s Morning Edition.
For decades this country has “debated” climate science. While a lot of that debate has been detailed and helpful, much of it involved climate skeptics asserting that “the left” is pushing a new religion designed to control people. Attacking motivations rather than facts.
Some believers of climate science found it useless to argue with people who pushed bogus evidence or distorted statistics. Some lost interest even in debating the genuine uncertainties about climate science, which are less about whether than about how soon and how bad and how best to respond.
There’s a theory in communications that to engage in some arguments is to lose. (“If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”) To this way of thinking, it’s better to assert what you know to be true. Sometimes this theory is helpful. Some bad-faith claims deserve no response. But this means that many discussions of climate change don’t really get down to the actual thing.
Well, the actual thing is not going away just because we don’t have a useful discussion. Hersher reported that it’s getting harder for some people to find affordable home insurance:
Multiple major insurance companies are pulling back from California – that means they’re not renewing existing home insurance policies, or they’re not offering any new policies. That’s also happening in Louisiana. In Florida – just in the last few weeks, two big companies have pulled back from that state…
Overall, the cost of home insurance in the U.S. has risen about 20% since 2015.
In Colorado and Texas, prices are up more than 40%. In Florida, it’s risen nearly 60%.
Insurance companies are on the hook for disasters. This requires them to take account of the actual thing. And they are not willing to pay for it—not willing to pay for the replacement cost of homes in regions more prone to wildfires, floods, hurricanes and other extreme events—whether we’re willing to discuss this reality or not.
In theory and in the long term, the industry’s move may be helpful. High insurance prices are a signal to adapt: to build homes differently or in different locations. In the short term, this is pure pain. Homeowners pay.
The actual thing appeared again on NPR when my colleague Nathan Rott reported on a study linking our extremely hot summer to climate change. He quoted climate scientist Friederike Otto at Imperial College in London.
It's a very boring study, yes. From a scientific point of view there is nothing new because we have known this for a long time and we saw exactly what we expected to see.
Clearly, climate scientists are tired of replicating their findings. But it’s useful when not everyone in this country accepts the evidence, and not everyone in the world agrees on exactly what to do about it. It’s part of the extended argument for understanding the problem, and responding to it.
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The Twitter bio of Geoff Farina (https://twitter.com/GeoffwitaG) includes this line: "Love debating, not arguing."
(In this instance, methinks Geoff's "debating" is Steve's "arguing": marshaling a set of arguments, rather than demeaning, and casting aspersions on the motivations of, one's discussion partners.)
I agree we don’t have enough substantive arguments. So let’s try this out.
Rebecca Hersher says “Well, they're all vulnerable to climate-driven disasters - right? - like more intense wildfires and hurricanes.”
I disagree with the second part of the statement. According to IPCC reports and NOAA, no detection of increased hurricane intensity has been made when considering 100+ years data.
The IPCC AR6 WG1 Section 11.7.1.2 concludes that at a global level “there is low confidence in most reported long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in TC frequency- or intensity-based metrics…”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reaches similar conclusions about the US and the Atlantic: “There is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in U.S. landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes… Similarly for Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency… there is not strong evidence for an increase since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes, or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity.”
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
What are your thoughts on this?