Visited by Mark Hertsgaard

Mark Hertsgaard visited campus to speak about global warming and his book: The Eagle's Shadow. Myself and several of my colleagues were invited to a lunch-time discussion with him the following day. Most of this time consisted of Q&A. Students asked several questions mostly related to environmental awareness in the community through civic engagement. I asked him who he saw most fit to be elected, and why. He seemed quite fond of John Edwards especially due to his environmental policies, but did not seem to be particularly against Paul or Kucinich when I brought up their names. Hertsgaard, however, made pretty sure to be an "objective journalist," and remained considerably neutral on such topics. Toward the end of our chat he began to mention his next book dedicated primarily to global warming activism. His beliefs on global warming are fairly congruent with Gore's - to give you an idea. In response to his enthusiasm, I proceeded to probe for his awareness of data that supports the idea of naturally occurring global warming. I tried my best to keep the conversation away from the "this source is better than that one" argument, and move toward the specifics of data and the positivity of projections. This was the turning point that my Socratic probing made me the bad guy - I was one of the many "brainwashed" sheeple of the media; I was questioning Gore's good will and the impeccable record of the IPCC! It was my strategy to ease him into my partial skepticism so I could eventually ask: Don't you think we should be making these changes to our policies and technologies regardless of global warming's true cause? Indeed I was in for a surprise; the author of open minded ideas became visibly disturbed at my questioning of the popular opinion. Since I seemed to be less frightened of his frame than the other students - probably due to the fact that I respect him for being so right on most topics, but understand that this does not make him the final word on new scientific theories - I let him vent on me without further debate. I don't need to share all of the details, but I did thoroughly enjoyed this experience - even though most would probably have been too uncomfortable to sit in Hertsgaard's hot seat. He did apologize for losing his temper, but no worries (if you end up seeing this Mr. Hertsgaard) - I understand your good intentions. Unfortunately as you may know, especially in the political arena, we can't be too sure of intent.