Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free for now, but please consider clicking on the button at the bottom to become a paid subscriber to enjoy this along with Monday’s “Off The Shelf” feature about books and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
I feel like I got run over by a train. That’s always the way I feel after a cross-country plane trip. Airline seat designers begin with the proposition: how can we make this seat as uncomfortable as we can, with as little lumbar support as possible, so as to make Brian Mattson miserable at the end of a trip?
Let’s just say they are good at their jobs.
On Wednesday I traveled from 10 AM until nearly midnight. It takes three aircraft to get me from Billings to Birmingham, Alabama. I got to the hotel and went to bed. Yesterday I got up, went to a film studio, did an hour-long debate, had lunch, and went right back to the airport to do it all over again in reverse. I was in Alabama for less than sixteen hours—long enough to notice that the main object of worship in that state is a collegiate football team whose branding has something to do with the color red and the movement of oceans.
Now, I am friends with “real” travelers (you know, the “million mile” guys) so this is a pretty pathetic sob story, I know. But it’s unusual for me and to be honest the older I get the more I despise airline travel. I always feel so bad for the guys on the plane wearing their corporate polo shirts and and hats—the life of a traveling sales rep isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy. Now that I’ve got my Beemer fixed (Yay!) and I plan to put 330,000 miles on it (in honor of the 330xi), I am going to try as best I can to just make the All-American road trip my preferred mode of transportation. If time and a few other factors allow, I’m driving.
What’s that? Debate? Oh, yes. A debate. I was invited to Birmingham by The Gospel Coalition to take part in their “Good Faith Debates” series—hourlong conversations between Christians who disagree—sometimes profoundly—on secondary, non-essential, debatable matters. It’s a cool concept and I was honored to be a part of it.
I was paired up with Jake Meador of Mere Orthodoxy and our topic was Christians and Environmental Policy. And what do you know? It turns out that we have profound disagreements over environmental policy! So the debate was perfectly on brand for the TGC series, and they seemed pretty pleased with how it went.
I think that both Jake and I thought that we had ample opportunity to say everything we wanted to say, more or less. For my part there are always things that afterward you think to yourself, Oh, I should have said this! There were some assertions made that could’ve used some pushback, but when you’re listening carefully to a fairly lengthy answer to something there are always details you make a mental note to handle, but then the answer evolves before your eyes and something else occurs to you and the original thought vanishes. I’m sure that was Jake’s experience, too.
But even with that dynamic we both hit our major points and challenged each other where we wanted to. It was very fair in that regard.
I hope the debate doesn’t disappoint anybody, and there is one thing that might. My original plan when I got the debate prompt was to debate environmental policy more broadly—what to do about mining and extraction policy, forestry, waterways, and so forth—but Jake’s primary passion is climate change policy. So the debate sort of naturally morphed into a debate on climate change. But neither of us are experts on climate change and I didn’t feel that two very-much non-scientists debating that topic would serve the audience well. So I limited myself to debating issues of how to approach environmental policy and the worldview commitments and ethics involved in that task. Jake did that, too, but from my point of view he did make a lot of debatable scientific assertions—a litany of “likely dooms” confronting humanity—that in an ideal world could’ve used some pushback.
For just one timely example, Hurricane Ian made an appearance along with the “obvious” fact that hurricanes are becoming more frequent and more intense because of climate change. This is one of those cases where your eyes are lying. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s current assessment of this question is:
We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.
Anyway, my purpose isn’t to score post-facto debate points. I just want to alert you to the fact that this wasn’t a debate about climate change; it was a debate about what we can and ought to do about climate change.
And on that question I think I ably represented “Team Liberty.” Limited government and the astounding ingenuity and innovative capacities of free markets. We will not regulate our way out these problems; we will, as always, innovate and adapt our way out of them. And while that may be frustrating, and it might seem as if that process is not nimble enough and free people are unruly and can’t be trusted to do the right thing, the proposed alternative of the State intervening on behalf of the “common good” to fashion (and enforce) its desired economic outcomes is a cure worse than the disease. Because not only will we not solve climate change that way, but we’ll also be impoverished while we try.
I don’t know what the timeframe is for TGC to start launching the finished products out into the marketplace, but I will certainly keep you informed!
I know that there are some of you out there just dying to know what I make of the controversy embroiling the chess world. Okay, a few of you.
If you’re living under a rock, or impoverishing yourself by not keeping up with the world of professional chess, a brief recap: World Champion and #1 Rated Magnus Carlsen has accused 19-year-old Hans Niemann of being a cheater and will never play him again.
And the facts that have emerged are that … Hans is a cheater. He has for certain cheated in online rated games and prize money tournaments, and has done so often—way more often than he has admitted. In the airport yesterday I read Chess.com’s entire 72-page report on Niemann and it is simply not debatable. The question is whether it can be proved that he has cheated during live, over-the-board games. And the answer to that remains to be seen (FIDE is doing an investigation), but it is unlikely absent some confession or whistleblower coming forward.
There are many people lamenting that this controversy has forever poisoned Hans’s career because the cloud will dog him for the rest of his days. My short evaluation?
Good.
Sorry to sound cruel and unsympathetic, but Hans deserves the cloud. Even after Chess.com privately and generously gave him an opportunity to rehabilitate himself, he did it again. Just like his mentor, GM Dlugy. Amazing how both teacher and student get caught cheating online, both are given opportunities to redeem themselves, and both get caught again. My view is that there are people in this world—I personally cannot fathom it—who do not mind winning unfairly. They like gaming the system; that is the game for them. They are stone-cold sociopaths. Every time I ask myself whether it can possibly be true that someone would go to the lengths necessary to cheat in live chess games, I remember two words:
Lance Armstrong. That guy and his team self-administered blood transfusions in a bus year after year after year to accumulate seven Tour de France victories.
You see, such people do exist. And even if Hans never cheated in the over-the-board game (and I am convinced that the preponderance of the evidence is that he has), actions have consequences and Hans has nobody to blame but himself.
The good news is that he is 19 years old. Plenty of time for a career change.
That’s it for this week’s Square Inch. Thank you so much for reading. I really do appreciate the support of my readers, so I’d love it if you’d click the button below and become a paid subscriber! Have a wonderful weekend.
There was a time when I bought into many of the just-so stories about climate change. What opened my eyes was the realization of the profound costs of these policies to the very poor. Once you shift the paradigm from 'just do something" to human flourishing, everything changes.