Below is my column in The Hill on Twitter’s adoption of a “living Internet” approach to censorship policies. Notably, at the recent hearing before the Senate, Democratic Senators demanded more censorship despite the Big Tech CEOs admitting that the blocking of the Hunter Biden story was a mistake.
Twitter finally lifted its suspension of the New York Post over its reporting on the laptop of Hunter Biden. The decision came two weeks after both Twitter and Facebook barred access to the story about his emails that appeared to reveal influence peddling and contradicted past statements of former Vice President Joe Biden. Twitter now admits there was no evidence that the emails were fabricated or were the product of Russian disinformation, a conclusion confirmed by both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the director of national intelligence.
Rather than apologize for its error, however, the company cited a curiously familiar argument to excuse its decision: Its policies are “living documents” subject to continual change. That sounds like an internet version of the “living Constitution” theory used by jurists such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to continually update the meaning of the Constitution. Twitter’s claim should turn every citizen into a strict “internet originalist.” Before addressing the “Living Twitter” theory, a few established facts on the story should be noted.
The Bidens have not denied that these were, in fact, Hunter Biden’s laptop and his emails.
Second, various senders and recipients of the emails have confirmed that they are real emails.
Third, not only was the laptop subpoenaed last year by the FBI in an investigation into money-laundering, but the FBI has confirmed that the investigation involving the emails — including Hunter Biden’s involvement — remains ongoing.
Finally, a former business associate has asserted that Joe Biden’s past denials of knowledge or involvement in his family’s business dealings are “lies” and has shared his allegations with the FBI, under criminal penalty for making any false statements.
There is no evidence that the laptop or emails are false. Indeed, the only obvious “disinformation” about this story has come from Joe Biden and his allies. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, for example, stated that the entire story was Russian disinformation, a claim repeated by Biden this week. In reality, Twitter and Facebook tried to bury a story by the New York Post that appears to be accurate regarding the source and the content of the emails.
After dropping its suggestion of Russian disinformation, Twitter claimed the underlying material appeared to be hacked material — a claim ridiculous on its face, since the Post’s article was based on the contents of an abandoned laptop. Now the social media company is adopting a claim that its policies should be read like a living Constitution:
“Our policies are living documents. We’re willing to update and adjust them when we encounter new scenarios or receive important feedback from the public.”
It is precisely the type of argument that would drive the late Justice Antonin Scalia to distraction. Scalia rejected this approach to constitutional interpretation as little more than opportunism to change the meaning of rights without having to ask the consent of citizens through amendments:
“You would have to be an idiot to believe that; the Constitution is not a living organism; it is a legal document. It says something and doesn’t say other things … .”
That is a view shared by newly sworn Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who recently testified that
“I interpret the Constitution as a law. That I interpret its text as text. I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. So that meaning doesn’t change over time, and it isn’t up to me to update or infuse my own policy views into it.”
I am not a constitutional originalist, but I am an internet originalist. The internet was originally the greatest single advancement in free speech since the printing press. It was an open, free platform for speech that united the world. Not surprising, it also was a threat to authoritarian countries and figures who have struggled to control and censor the sharing of information and viewpoints. Originally, Twitter was the ultimate expression of those free speech values, as individuals associated with others to share instant observations and experiences.
Yet, the original free use of the internet has come into increasing conflict with liberal politicians who demand that social media companies actively prevent people from sharing information they deem to be false or misleading. Joe Biden has demanded that these companies block postings linking mail voting to fraud; Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have threatened punitive legislation if the companies do not censor groups accused of spreading false information.
In this week’s Senate hearing on Twitter’s suppression of the Biden story, Democratic senators ignored the admissions of Big Tech CEOs that they were wrong to bar the story and, instead, insisted that the CEOs pledge to substantially increase such censorship. Senator Jacky Rosen warned the CEOS that “you are not doing enough” to prevent “disinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech on your platforms.”
That is why a “living internet” interpretation is so dangerous. These companies are driven by profits and politics, not principle. If Democrats take control of Congress and the White House, these companies will face growing demands for increased censorship. That is when “living policies” change “to update and adjust them when we encounter new scenarios or receive important feedback.”
The alternative is “internet originalism” – no censorship. If social media companies returned to their original roles, there would be no slippery slope of political bias or opportunism; they would assume the same status as telephone companies. We do not need companies to protect us from harmful or “misleading” thoughts. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not approved speech.
If Pelosi demanded that Verizon or Sprint interrupt calls to stop people saying false or misleading things, the public would be outraged. Twitter serves the same communicative function between consenting parties; it simply allows thousands of people to participate in such digital exchanges. Those people do not sign up to exchange thoughts only to have Dorsey or some other internet overlord monitor their conversations and “protect” them from errant or harmful thoughts.
It has been a long time since a bunch of geniuses came up with a new form of communication on Twitter. Back then, the platform was neutral. Its appeal was its convenience, not its supervision. Dorsey himself said the success of Twitter is based on the principle that you “make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to the perfect.”
A free and open forum for communication was the original and perfect design. And here, once again, the Constitution could offer the clarity of that original meaning to limit the detail to the perfect. To paraphrase the First Amendment, Twitter should return to a simple static, “originalist” position: It should “make no policy abridging the freedom of speech or the press.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36dkC03 Tyler Durden
Edward Snowden Says He’s Seeking Russian Citizenship For Sake Of Future Son Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/02/2020 – 18:20
In a hugely controversial announcement former NSA analyst and whistleblower Edward Snowden says he and his wife are applying for Russian citizenship after last month being given permanent residency status by the Russian government.
He explained in a statement Monday that it’s only for the sake of not being separated from his family in the era of the pandemic, which has seen border closures and travel restrictions especially within the Russian Federation. He did emphasize he remains an American and looks forward to the day he can hopefully return to the United States. He would have dual citizenship status.
Edward Snowden with his wife Lindsay, via Facebook.
“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son. That’s why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we’re applying for dual US-Russian citizenship,” Snowden wrote on Twitter.
He added: “Lindsay and I will remain Americans, raising our son with all the values of the America we love, including the freedom to speak his mind. And I look forward to the day I can return to the States, so the whole family can be reunited. Our greatest wish is that, wherever our son lives, he feels at home.”
His critics within US national security state circles will no doubt seize on this as showing he’s somehow in the service of Russian intelligence. Russian citizenship could also be a factor focused on by federal prosecutors if he ever stands trial in the United States.
After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son. That’s why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we’re applying for dual US-Russian citizenship. https://t.co/cCgT0rr37e
His son is due in December and will automatically receive Russian citizenship by birthright on Russian soil. Snowden says it will be crucial to have a Russian passport along with his son to prevent any future possible separation or problems at borders.
Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told Interfax, “Edward has told me that their baby is expected to be born in December; considering that the baby will be entitled to Russian citizenship by the birthright, he also wants to be a citizen of Russia.”
It continues to be a great disgrace of the US that the person who risked his own life and liberty to expose secret lawbreaking and unconstitutional spying by the US Govt on its own population is the one treated as a criminal, in exile, while the lawbreaking officials thrive: https://t.co/Svzal1xLpc
The 37-year old, who fled his base at Hawaii and entered Hong Kong in 2013 as some of the most damning parts of the trove of NSA leaks were published in the media, eventually landed in Russia while being pursued by US authorities.
He’s long said his intent was to seek asylum somewhere in Latin America, but ended up “stuck” in Putin’s Russia.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HWJFvW Tyler Durden
Real Vision senior editor, Ash Bennington, welcomes Tommy Thornton, president of Hedge Fund Telemetry, to break down his framework for trading markets as the U.S. Presidential election rapidly approaches. Thornton looks at market sentiment and trader positioning, concluding that investors are net long this market, which limits upside potential, with extremely low short interest. Bennington and Thornton explore price action in European markets and look forward to vaccine news. Thornton then describes several trades he sees in cannabis and coffee, advising viewers on the value of holding dry powder as well as not getting sucked into narratives. In the intro, editor Jack Farley takes a look at Europe’s lockdowns, election odds, and price action in the credit markets.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/381uIU9 Tyler Durden
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has made major waves throughout mainstream and alternative media by resigning from The Intercept, an outlet he co-founded in 2014 with the stated mission of holding power to account with the power of unrestricted journalism.
Greenwald says he resigned because Intercept editors refused to let him publish an article he’d been working on about the mass media’s role in covering up the Hunter Biden October surprise and obfuscating its nature, which he says is a violation of the conditions in his contract for editorial freedom. He also published part of the email exchanges he’d been having with the editors in the lead-up to submitting his notice of resignation.
My Resignation From The Intercept
The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.https://t.co/dZrlYGfEBf
The email exchanges make it fairly clear that Intercept editors were holding Greenwald’s analysis of the allegations against Joe Biden and his family to a much higher evidentiary standard than they hold any journalist who wants to criticize Trump or promote flimsy Russia conspiracy theories on the platform, and generally creating pressure and inertia to remove anything in the article that might hurt Biden’s election chances. Journalist Matt Taibbi has his own article out on Greenwald’s resignation which contains more information on the email exchanges, and which is very much worth reading.
More revealing than the emails is the information which Greenwald shares in his Substack article about his resignation, saying The Intercept has been deliberately opaque about those who were responsible for the Reality Winner debacle and the actions they took which led to her arrest when leaking NSA documents to the outlet. Greenwald claims editors rushed the publication of the leaks “because they was eager to prove to mainstream media outlets and prominent liberals that The Intercept was willing to get on board the Russiagate train,” and says their silence has allowed the blame to fall on him for Winner’s imprisonment despite his having nothing to do with the ordeal.
Greenwald also reveals that The Intercept refused to report on the daily proceedings of the Julian Assange extradition hearing “because the freelance reporter doing an outstanding job was politically distasteful”. It’s unclear exactly what was meant by this; Greenwald has praised the excellent Assange trial coverage by Shadowproof‘s Kevin Gosztola and Richard Medhurst now of Press TV in the past, both of whom say they don’t at this time know who he was referring to. Regardless of what he meant, refusal of a media outlet whose motto is “Fearless, adversarial journalism” to cover the single most important journalistic freedom case in the world is outrageous on its face.
The Intercept editors called Greenwald’s criticisms “a grown person throwing a tantrum” in a remarkably snarky statement on their website, claiming on what appears to be no basis that their co-founder was “attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign — the Trump campaign.”
“We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years,” the editors wrote. “It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not The Intercept.”
These accusations are fully in line with the smears you can read from the blue-checkmarked commentariat by typing in Greenwald’s name into the Twitter search bar on every given day. Establishment spinmeisters have been painting Greenwald as a closet Trump supporter who stumbled his way into useful idiocy for the Kremlin ever since the award-winning journalist began questioning the establishment Russia narrative, and this statement is plainly both informed by and designed to appeal to acolytes of that smear campaign.
When intel officials decried the recent Post story, they wrote, “We do not have evidence of Russian involvement.” The recent Intercept story quoting the letter left out that line.
“The CIA letter was more honest than The Intercept,” Greenwald notes. https://t.co/9i43bgwKds
The Intercept has fallen victim to the same decay as all other outlets past a certain size and funding level. Matt Taibbi, who says he’s spoken to “multiple well-known journalists” who are encountering similar pressures as those Greenwald encountered in the lead-up to the US election, wrote the following in his aforementioned article:
The traditional method of controlling the press — as described by legendary independent journalists like I.F. Stone — was the quiet aside by the boss, “a little private talk,” where a “hint that the reporter seems irresponsible, a little bit radical” would be dropped. Getting the message, and fearing for his or her job, the reporter backs off. Or, in cases like the Iraq war runup, the strategic dismissal or un-hiring of a big name with the wrong views — Phil Donahue, Jesse Ventura — makes sure the rest of the employees get the message.
Greenwald co-founded the Intercept with this exact scenario in mind, building a structure where “little private talks” with bosses would never happen, and there couldn’t be high-profile dismissals for ideological reasons.
What he didn’t guess at was that even in an atmosphere where managerial interference is near zero, a collective of independent journalists can themselves become censors and enforcers of official orthodoxies. In some cases, journalists will become more aggressive propagandists and suppressors of speech than the officials from whom they supposedly need to be protected. This is what happened with The Intercept.
I really enjoyed my 3-hour discussion yesterday with @joerogan — a wide range of issues: media censorship in general & on Biden, free speech erosions, surveillance & privacy, what responsibilities come with a public platform, just raw & honest discourse:https://t.co/X6gIDwVkcz
People will cite all sorts of reasons for The Intercept running cover for intelligence agencies and powerful politicians, including its Omidyar funding and the possibility of government infiltration. But I think the primary source of the decay of The Intercept is much more basic: having large, well-funded news media outlets simply is not conducive to good reporting.
Powerful people pour so very much energy into manipulating how the masses think, act and vote, and news reporters are constantly interfacing with that severely polluted stream of information. For this reason the most heavily propagandized people in the world are those who are responsible for distributing propaganda, namely the news media. As the final guardians of society’s incredible shrinking Overton window, reporters are necessarily the group who will be most aggressively pushed within that window.
If as Upton Sinclair says it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it, then surely that is especially true of those who’ve spent their working lives learning what frameworks of understanding help them ascend to prominence in the sphere of journalism. This would have shaped them long before they arrived at any outlet which purports to promote “fearless adversarial journalism”, and it would continue shaping them as they interact with fellow journalists.
This combined with a dominant plutocrat-funded media system designed to streamline journalistic thought into mainstream establishment orthodoxies creates a kind of conformity conveyor belt that journos get processed through like the schoolchildren in the video for Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”.
The dominant worldview in any collective of journalists is statistically likely to be a mainstream worldview, simply because it’s more common by its very nature. Mainstream worldviews are only mainstream because vast amounts of wealth and effort went into shoving them into the mainstream by sheer force for the benefit of the rich and powerful, whose kingdoms are built upon the capitalist imperialist status quo. If you set out to just hire a bunch of journalists who seem good to you, you’re necessarily going to get a lot of people unwittingly promoting the interests of the rich and powerful just by sheer statistical probability.
When you take all these factors together and throw them into a large media outlet full of journalists, our primitive impulses to conform with the pack kick in and the consensus worldview has a much easier time overtaking critical thought even further than it already has.
Additionally, when you gather news reporters together in a large outlet you’re going to attract the attention of powerful forces who have a vested interest in controlling how the news is reported. If you can use your leverage and/or resources to manipulate how that entire outlet reports, then that’s energy well spent.
All this to say, decentralization is going to have to be the way forward for good critical journalism. There are so few reporters who haven’t been digested by the conformity conveyor belt, and if you stick them with the groupthink herd they’re going to be squeezed until they either fall in line or leave. Stop trying to throw the few alive ones in with the zombies and let them go out on their own or in small groups; they’ll be much harder to influence and they can do a lot more damage to the lie factory.
I don’t know if the best way to make a living doing that is with paid Substack subscriptions like Greenwald and Taibbi or more like my own Patreon-based model, or with some other approach we haven’t thought of yet. I just know that every time we cluster up in groups we bog ourselves down and make ourselves an easy target for the machine. It’s clear with the decay of The Intercept that we’re better off finding ways to let our own skills and insight guide us down our own paths toward this journalism thing while the conformity drones rot in their well-funded outlets. The audiences will be there. Truth is attractive to people, serving power is not.
I don’t know that the Hunter Biden October surprise shows anything more scandalous than you’d expect for any major US presidential nominee. I do know that the uniform conspiracy of silence and obfuscation from the mass media about it is uniquely scandalous and says bad things about the future of journalism in western news media. We can’t keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them. Drastic changes are desperately needed.
* * *
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
A nakedly political legal manuever that sought to invalidate about 127,000 votes in a deep blue part of Texas was blocked by a federal judge on Monday evening.
The ruling should put an end to an attempt by a group of Republican lawmakers and candidates to block Harris County, which includes Houston, from counting votes cast at a drive-thru voting station. The lawsuit claimed that the drive-thru voting station was illegal under Texas law, which allows so-called “curbside voting” only for individuals with disabilities. Harris County contended that the drive-thru voting station met all the requirements to be a standard polling place under state law: individuals had their IDs checked and voted within the privacy of a temporary tent erected for the purpose.
Republicans had asked both state and federal courts to reject those ballots. The state Supreme Court rejected that request on Sunday night and federal Judge Andrew Hanan followed suit on Monday.
Monday’s emergency hearing in federal court had drawn national attention because the case landed before Hanan, a George W. Bush appointee with a history of controversial rulings. Liberals and voting rights activists worried that he might rubberstamp a GOP plot to invalidate hundreds of votes on the eve of Election Day.
But Hanan’s ruling turned out to be a thorough rebuke of the Republican challenge. The judge dismissed the case on a technicality—the plaintiffs did not have standing in the lawsuit—but went on to say that he would not have invalidated the already-cast ballots even if the lawsuit had been judged on its merits.
In all ways, that seems like the right outcome. As I wrote yesterday, there was little reason to think those voters should have their ballots tossed out since they were not doing anything wrong. The legal challenge argued that Harris County had overstepped its authority by setting up the drive-thru voting station, but voters using it had merely been complying with the instructions they were given by local election authorities.
There was nothing remotely fraudulent about the 127,000 votes cast in Harris County’s drive-thru voting station. Republican efforts to disqualify those votes were nothing more than partisanship gamesmanship. The courts are right to have dismissed these lawsuits.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Gmx30p
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If governments don’t completely eliminate fossil fuels by 2040, society is doomed, says Jeff Nesbit, author of This is the Way the World Ends.
That kind of apocalyptic rhetoric “costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet,” says Bjorn Lomborg, author of False Alarm.
Are fossil fuels an imminent threat to human life, or are attempts to eliminate them more destructive? That was the subject of an Oxford-style online Soho Forum debate hosted on Sunday, October 18th, 2020.
Arguing in favor of the complete elimination of fossil fuels over 20 years was Nesbit, the executive director of Climate Nexus. He went up against Lomborg, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. The debate was moderated by Soho Forum director Gene Epstein.
Narrated by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Ian Keyser. Intro by John Osterhoudt.
A nakedly political legal manuever that sought to invalidate about 127,000 votes in a deep blue part of Texas was blocked by a federal judge on Monday evening.
The ruling should put an end to an attempt by a group of Republican lawmakers and candidates to block Harris County, which includes Houston, from counting votes cast at a drive-thru voting station. The lawsuit claimed that the drive-thru voting station was illegal under Texas law, which allows so-called “curbside voting” only for individuals with disabilities. Harris County contended that the drive-thru voting station met all the requirements to be a standard polling place under state law: individuals had their IDs checked and voted within the privacy of a temporary tent erected for the purpose.
Republicans had asked both state and federal courts to reject those ballots. The state Supreme Court rejected that request on Sunday night and federal Judge Andrew Hanan followed suit on Monday.
Monday’s emergency hearing in federal court had drawn national attention because the case landed before Hanan, a George W. Bush appointee with a history of controversial rulings. Liberals and voting rights activists worried that he might rubberstamp a GOP plot to invalidate hundreds of votes on the eve of Election Day.
But Hanan’s ruling turned out to be a thorough rebuke of the Republican challenge. The judge dismissed the case on a technicality—the plaintiffs did not have standing in the lawsuit—but went on to say that he would not have invalidated the already-cast ballots even if the lawsuit had been judged on its merits.
In all ways, that seems like the right outcome. As I wrote yesterday, there was little reason to think those voters should have their ballots tossed out since they were not doing anything wrong. The legal challenge argued that Harris County had overstepped its authority by setting up the drive-thru voting station, but voters using it had merely been complying with the instructions they were given by local election authorities.
There was nothing remotely fraudulent about the 127,000 votes cast in Harris County’s drive-thru voting station. Republican efforts to disqualify those votes were nothing more than partisanship gamesmanship. The courts are right to have dismissed these lawsuits.
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Biden Boosted By ‘Tens Of Thousands’ Of Fake Twitter Followers — From India Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/02/2020 – 17:40
Joe Biden’s Twitter account received a ‘sizable boost’ within two weeks of selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate on August 12 – thanks to ‘tens of thousands of fake followers’ purchased from rural Indian troll farms.
According to Zenger News (via Newsweek), a large number of Biden follower accounts appear to have been created exclusively for that purpose – with many coming from small villages where English-speakers are rare.
A Zenger News investigation reveals that Biden’s increasing social media footprint in India came from the country’s infamous troll farms boosting his candidacy.
Kamala Harris’s ethic heritage is in part rooted in India, but her share of Indian and apparently Indian followers is far lower, about 0.12 percent.
Some of the operators who worked on the campaign spoke at length about how propaganda agencies in New Delhi and Mumbai activated a widely distributed troll network to amplify Biden’s campaign impact on Twitter. –Newsweek
“This was started as an internet café by my father in the late 1990s,” said Harshit Patel, owner of said troll farm. “Back then, men came in mostly for chatting in IRC [Internet Relay Chat] rooms and surfing porn. It was brisk business. But then internet became so cheap and everyone got smartphones and business petered out. We had to rely on passengers asking to print railway tickets, fill up online forms, and get documents photocopied. But that didn’t even cover the costs of maintaining the PCs and paying the electricity bill. Things changed in 2012–13 when [Narendra] Modi started his campaign for prime minister. And this became my main business.”
Patel’s troll farm opens at 8:00 p.m. after his main cafe shuts down – around 10:30 a.m. in New York and 7:30 a.m. in California.
Four of Patel’s employees take their seats at long desks lining two walls, open task sheets, and get to stumping for Biden.
Using aliases—each worker controls several hundred—they schedule tweets, check engagement stats and, at the close of their shifts, fill up a spreadsheet with their analytics from the previous day.
Started mostly to serve the 2014 Narendra Modi campaign, India’s troll farm business is now one of the most decentralized and robust in the world. They offer nearly anything to paying customers, according to Patel: fake news, Photoshopped images, support and “hate” campaigns, and even incitements of mob violence.
“I came to this because of my ideology,” said Patel, who’s a member of the youth wing of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, “but then this became my profession. My wife got herself trained in Photoshop and now we offer not only these [trolling and propaganda] services, but also content creation” that includes making memes. –Newsweek
“We don’t pick and choose. Joe Biden the person is irrelevant to us. We got a target in August to follow him and engage with his tweets, and we did. The agencies in Delhi who we work with don’t tell us any details, and we don’t ask,” he said.
In other words – someone paid Patel’s troll farm to meddle in the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
“There are so many levels [of subcontractors] in this, nobody can really trace anything back. We don’t even get paid through banks. We settle in cash once a month,” said Yajpal Yadav, Patel’s business partner.
“I won’t tell you how much we make, but what I will tell you is this setup is feeding all our families. And I don’t have to ever worry about a roof on my head or about paying my children’s’ school fees.”
If governments don’t completely eliminate fossil fuels by 2040, society is doomed, says Jeff Nesbit, author of This is the Way the World Ends.
That kind of apocalyptic rhetoric “costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet,” says Bjorn Lomborg, author of False Alarm.
Are fossil fuels an imminent threat to human life, or are attempts to eliminate them more destructive? That was the subject of an Oxford-style online Soho Forum debate hosted on Sunday, October 18th, 2020.
Arguing in favor of the complete elimination of fossil fuels over 20 years was Nesbit, the executive director of Climate Nexus. He went up against Lomborg, the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. The debate was moderated by Soho Forum director Gene Epstein.
Narrated by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Ian Keyser. Intro by John Osterhoudt.
