Shrinking the Tent
THB Insider #11
Roger Pielke Jr.
Nov 21, 2024
This week I was invited by a colleague to try out the BSky app as an alternative to X/Twitter. They told me that it is far more welcoming for discussion about energy and climate. Sure, I thought, I’ll give it a try.
I actively posted there for a bit and learned that climate activists have created a Bsky climate “blocklist” that focuses on me and anyone who mentions me — Matt Yglesias of Slow Boring and Ted Nordhaus of The Breakthrough Institute are also on it. The blocklist prevents those on it from seeing the posts of those who join and creates a disincentive for anyone to mention those on the list, lest they get added to it. This is not a new strategy for some climate scientists and journalists.
People are free to create their social media echo chambers however they like, of course, but one detail is worth mentioning — One person promoting the block list is one of the lead scientists of the U.S. National Climate Assessment. That degree of intolerance among those selected to represent the climate science community is a problem for climate science and politics.
Tisha Schuller writes today that as climate activism becomes evermore “exclusive,” practical environmentalism is inevitable, and I agree with her:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/shrinking-the-tent
