Cui Bono?

The title of this post is not a misspelling, but instead a Latin phrase. I hope you don't think me pretentious, but in my fascination with all things Roman, I find their ancient culture very insightful into our own day. That Latin phrase, contained in a famous speech delivered nearly 2,100 years ago, is translated to mean "Who benefits"? In our own day, an equivalent thought might be expressed as "Follow the money".

The phrase was originally spoken on a tension filled day before the Roman Senate by their President (Consul). Named Marcus Tullius Cicero, he was telling them to not only listen to what was said, but give consideration to who stood to benefit from what was said. The lives and fortunes of his audience depended on discerning the truth between very different stories being told about the events happening around them. I have a print in my office, a cheap print, of a painting showing the moment of Cicero's speech. Arms raised with face expressive, he asks his audience to not get caught up in the oratory, but instead to think about who had the most to gain and why.

Wise words that echo to our own day. Today, our well being and future prosperity of our children are bound up in a public debate about energy. Our civilization is based on the use of hydrocarbon fueled energy. We have achieved wide spread health, prosperity and material wealth undreamt of in earlier ages because of our access to plentiful and cheap energy. Now our elites have decided that such energy use causes unacceptable harm to our environment and must be largely ended. It is with almost a unanimous voice that our leaders in government, science, media and last but not least, business, speak this vision of future disaster to us.

As Cicero warned his colleagues, "Who will benefit"? The broad consensus of people and institutions speaking this opinion should cause us to heed the warning. Consensus of opinion has such a poor track record that we should always be suspicious. When everyone believes something, they are almost always wrong. But why is this such a passionate issue, and pursued with such righteousness by those who are charged with leading us?

We have heard those that speak talk of our responsibility to our children and grandchildren. How can we leave them a world caught in the grip of a warmer climate? Imagine the horror of Denver having a climate like Houston? I admit that to be a frightening future prospect.

Who among us will not sacrifice for our children? On the other hand, those who speak with such passion about the dangers of a warmer climate are silent about the looming Social Security disaster, or the dangers posed by the public debt of our nation and other governmental entities. Why the seriousness about a possible future trend in climate, well within past norms, when there is only silence about very real and large financial burdens we have already imposed on our children?

"Cui bono"? We look to our scientists for answers. Energy and environment are their expertises. The physical world has grown far too complicated for us to rely on common sense anymore. We have seen technology move so quickly with such impact on our lives that we have child like faith in what science tells us. Yet we fail to distinguish between engineering and science. Engineers build things that work, admittedly with a debt to the insights of scientists. Scientists speculate about ideas.

Engineers are paid because they build things that work. On the other hand, scientists are paid by the government or other public entities. This means that speculating about the correct ideas is very important to scientists. Refer to the life of Galileo for proof of this. His colleague, Giordano Bruni, was burned at the stake, vividly further demonstrating the danger of going against the consensus as a scientist. And then remember that the voices in the public debate about global warming are scientists, not engineers. Driving through the millions of acres of dead pine trees in Colorado is additional testimony to the power of politically correct ideas in environmental science. Scientists that don't support the idea of future disaster caused by hydrocarbon fuels simply won't get grant money or that university tenure. "Cui bono" indeed.

In a world of 24/7 news, prosperity is a non-starter. A future of happiness and peace fill no hours and sell no advertising. If there are no crisis, then one must be found. There is no celebrity gained, books sold or Nobel Prizes won, if there is no problem.

We look to business to act as a counterbalance to the sometimes presumed foolishness of the media and government. After all businessmen are conservative and sober, focusing on the facts, and immune to the whims of fleeting public opinion. But we forget that business exists to make money and that they exist in the moment, with little thought for the past or future. It was Lenin who declared that businessmen would sell him the rope that he used to hang them with, showing he understood business very well.


Permit me a moment to state my real opinion. As a civilization, we are in the middle of a debate on energy which will have very real and very serious consequences. In that debate virtually everything said in the public square is demonstrably nonsense. But who will stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes? Cui bono?