I think you’re right that the majority of pipeline supporters also believe we should be taking serious action on climate change. But, that doesn’t mean they have a good understanding of what we need to do to address this slow moving disaster.
I blame this primarily on a lack of deep reporting from the mainstream media that typically assumes that extraction is the best way to keep Canada’s economy pumping (pun intended).
It would be theoretically possible, but very, very, very hard to both build these pipelines AND successfully meet our Paris climate goals. And even if we did do both, the pipelines would largely become economically non-viable long before they reach their engineered lifespan.
Thankfully, it looks like some or most of these pipelines will never be built, due to the NDP/Green coalition in BC.
Have you been to rural BC? The Lower Mainland + Victoria might seem lefty/green, but once you get farther east and north into lumber/mining/ranching country, it’s rather different. Hell, even in the Fraser Valley there are pockets of very conservative, religious, science deniers: where do you think the measles outbreaks of the last few years came from?
It’s just sometimes tricky to figure it out, because sometimes there’s a lot of denial denial: people say that they trust science, because they do trust the answers that benefit them. Science is great… Right up until the point it requires more effort or will get in the way of making a buck.
A poll that shows a 7% increase in climate science being unclear is probably just noise. It’s a stretch to say there is a trend with two years of data.
Also, the question isn’t very clear - do you believe climate science is unclear? Well, what aspect of it? If the question were more specific, e.g. Do you think that anthropogenic carbon emissions are primarily responsible for rising global temperatures? then you might see a much different response. Even the IPCC reports quantify the level of uncertainty in their models and predictions (AGW is one of the few where they have basically 100% confidence).
Scientists have disagreements all the time, and if the question is about science in general, then it’s easy to see how the public would view that as a difference in opinion. Again, it seems like a poorly worded question because it leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
Sure, there are anti-vaxxers here, and climate deniers in spades. But I also feel this survey is a tad alarmist and methodologically flawed. And to suggest a trend with two data points is premature.
I think what has drifted up from the USA is a willingness for people to turn their back on the elites, be they intellectual, political, or whatnot.
Where once we expected the mass of people to defer to the richer and better educated, now they have shed their shame and proudly claim the right to express their opinion as they truly feel it, rather than trying to suss out the “right” attitude and pretend to adopt it.
The trouble with giving people freedom to be themselves is that freedom goes in every direction, including the directions I don’t like.
In other words, stupidity is slowly creeping northward across the border. In the mean time, Trump wants to erect a wall to keep intelligence and good work habits from flowing in from the South. Vincente Fox for President!
Fuck’s sake, guys. The further I have to move away, the more expensive it gets and the longer it’s gonna take. You guys are my #1 go-to, don’t screw this up for me.
They are not denying science, they are denying consensus. As a methodology, they are not performing science. Neither are most of those who assent to consensus. Consensus about scientific results is a political, rather than scientific problem. It is a deeply baked-in contradiction of socializing participation as an exercise in individual choices amidst a marketplace of ideas - there is no provision made for the event that crucial decisions would ever need to be based principally upon factual information about the world at large rather than human whims. In an individualist capitalist society, there is no ethical imperative for anybody to believe or act upon scientific consensus. It is a pre-scientific society.
Try establishing a few countries/societies/cultures which are based upon science rather than commerce.
Our future northern territories don’t have enough homicide to avoid grave suspicions of cultural heterodoxy; but their per-capita armament levels are actually pretty respectable.
I’m so sorry. I make the jokes because I spent a large part of my childhood in a border state, and the culture crossed enough to make it work.