Coming up next: Energy Week
The Cosmopolitan Globalists are not of the same mind about Biden's climate summit. We propose a wild, week-long debate.
From Claire—The Cosmopolitan Globalists have many different views of Biden’s climate summit. Depending which Cosmopolitan Globalist you ask, we view the summit and the extravagant promises it elicited from the world’s leaders with admiration, approbation, acceptance, indifference, cynicism, or outright horror.
In light of this, we’ve decided next week is Energy Week. Next week, all week, we will devote this forum to asking, “Omnibus perpensis, what’s the best way to provide energy for the globe’s 7.9 billion people?”
We envision a lively discussion. All of our readers are welcome—encouraged—to participate. We’ll be running a number of excellent essays about fossil fuels, nuclear power, and green tech; we’ll be taking all questions from our readers—as well as submissions, should they wish to write at length; and at the end of the week, we’ll wrap it up with a Grand Cosmopolicast Debate, followed by the announcement of a winner.
We aim to showcase a wide variety of opinions, because we wish not only to discuss energy without partisanship or empty slogans, but to demonstrate that contact with an opinion not one’s own will not cause any participant, nor any reader, spontaneously to combust.
We may not be of one mind about energy, but we’re of one mind in believing it true now, as it was when J.S. Mill wrote On Liberty, that a vigorous, uncensored debate is the best way to arrive at a wise and informed opinion.
There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument; but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind.
No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognisant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers—knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter—he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.
So we invite you to spend the week with us with open minds, listening to what may be said about this subject by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at. We assume you will steadily correct and complete your own opinion by collating it with those of others eager to ensure you have shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter.
In the end, we believe, you will have the right to think your judgment better than anyone who has not joined us for the duration.
Needless to say, after Energy Week the Cosmopolitan Globalists will all be of exactly the same opinion about this issue, for from our devout commitment to Mill’s understanding of the human mind, it follows naturally that we’re all prepared promptly to revise our views upon contact with a superior argument. So participants in this debate are playing for high stakes. The winner keeps the minds of all 68 Cosmopolitan Globalists.1
Claire and Vivek talk with Rob at Symposium
Speaking of the principles of liberal democracy, friend of the Cosmopolitan Globalists Robert Tracinski has founded a new newsletter, Symposium.
Symposium is a journal that brings together academics and public intellectuals to discuss the meaning, application, and intellectual foundations of political liberalism.
The Cosmopolitan Globalists approve. We also approve of his guests.
Rob Tracinski talks to Claire Berlinski and Vivek Kelkar of The Cosmopolitan Globalist about why America needs cosmopolitan globalists, the worldwide challenge of authoritarian nationalism, and the creation of new institutions to defend “liberal democracy.”
If you’re new to the Cosmopolitan Globalist and curious about why it exists, the podcast is a good introduction. Vivek and I explain why we founded this publication, why we felt it was necessary, and why we called it the Cosmopolitan Globalist.
Write an essay for Energy Week
Would you like to contribute an essay for Energy Week? We enthusiastically encourage you. Please submit no more than 2,500 words; double-spaced, left-justified, and ideally in Microsoft Word. We may edit your essay. If you’d like us to withhold your name, we’re happy to do so.
Invite an expert to Energy Week
Would you like to invite an expert to Energy Week? We warmly encourage you to bring your best experts. Please forward this email to your expert, saying the editors would be especially pleased if he or she were to join.
If you fear your expert may be shy, please drop us a note and your expert’s email address. We will send your expert a personal, charming invitation on our special Cosmopolitan Globalist letterhead.
Win a prize at Energy Week
At the end of the week, having heard from persons of every variety of opinion, the editors will award the Cosmopolitan Globalist Jolly Green Giant Award to the essayist or reader who has made the most compelling argument. Not only does this prestigious award convey upon the recipient unimaginable glory, it may be exchanged for one of the following:
a gift subscription to the Cosmopolitan Globalist;
a signed copy of a book written by your favorite Cosmopolitan Globalist; or
a bespoke Cosmopolitan Globalist essay on a subject of your choosing.
We assume we won’t need to use it—our readers would never—but we’ll keep the Swallowed the Kool-Aid Demerit on hand in case anyone introduces truly factitious nonsense into the discussion.
So put Energy Week in your calendar, tell your friends, and above all—subscribe.
I am not entirely sure there are still 68 of us. We’ve added a few; we’ve lost a few. “Approximately 68” would be more accurate.