New York Times Shames Bloomberg for Climate “Silence”

Plus, Denzel Washington on God

An indication that a newspaper is really worked up about something is that it starts publishing articles about how other people or organizations haven’t spoken up about whatever that something is.

A recent example of this is the New York Times. Under the print headline “Billionaire Climate Champions Go Quiet,” the Times ran a photo of Michael Bloomberg and a cutline that said, “Michael R. Bloomberg, left, and Laurene Powell Jobs are moguls who have made big climate commitments, but they have not spoken out against President Trump’s moves to dismantle American climate policy.”

This is genuinely comical. First of all, Bloomberg owns an information and data company that has been hammering Trump on climate. “Trump Climate Data Purge Hurts Health and Wallets” is the headline over one Bloomberg column, by Mark Gongloff. Here’s a Bloomberg podcast with Leslie Kaufman, Climate Change Reporter for Bloomberg Green, headlined “Trump Aims a ‘Wrecking Ball’ at Climate Policy.”

And second, Bloomberg Philanthropies issued a press release saying that Bloomberg would step up to fill a money and information gap left by Trump pulling the U.S. out of a global agreement. The press release quoted a former EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy, saying, “Since the Trump administration has failed once again to meet the moment, Mike Bloomberg is showing what real leadership looks like.”

So it’s not even really accurate to say that Bloomberg has “not spoken out” or that he’s gone “quiet.” What more does the Times want him to do?

It’s like the Times will only be satisfied if Michael Bloomberg personally goes down to Washington and chains himself to the White House fence in front of television cameras, or launches a hunger strike, to protest Trump’s climate policies.

Maybe Bloomberg has concluded that such performative public denunciations are unlikely to sway public opinion or policy in the direction that he wants it to go. Or maybe he’s concluded that because of America’s system of state and local governments and private industry, and also because climate is a global issue, the media focus on the policy from Washington is misguided and excessive.

Anyway, there are lots of interesting things happening on climate and energy. Britain just changed its rules to make it easier to generate nuclear power by building small modular reactors. The University of Chicago just announced a new undergraduate major in climate and sustainable growth, with an announcement that mentions students traveling “to New York City to meet with capital allocators who are focused on private returns to their investments” and “to West Texas to see the potential local economic benefits and pollution challenges of living in an energy boom town.” The idea that all of this is over with and finished because Trump won the election, or that Michael Bloomberg and Laurene Powell Jobs can be most helpful by getting in a big public fight with President Trump about an international climate agreement, seems incorrect.

Denzel Washington on God: Actor Denzel Washington was recently baptized, the New York Times reports. In an interview with the Times, Washington offers this:

Man tries to reduce everything down to his understanding, which is the ultimate in ego. If I don’t understand it, it doesn’t exist. Some people don’t understand God, so some say, therefore, he doesn’t exist. Or they say, “I’m God,” because that’s what they need. Well, how’s that working out?...At this point, everything I’m doing is through the lens of what God thinks.

The Sunday print Times business section was the article about Christianity in Silicon Valley and the Sunday print Times magazine was Denzel Washington’s baptism. And it wasn’t even Christmas or Easter, when the press traditionally nods in the direction of Christianity. It was just a random Sunday early in the Trump administration. More signs that a religious revival in America may be already under way.