She “gets it” from talking with regular people in the United States today, who’ve been persuaded out of self-respect and initiative by a few decades of down-punching, elite-driven propaganda.
I take it you were disappointed by the non-response to your “CO2 doesn’t really cause global warming and we can’t stop it anyhow” comment above, and decided to try & whipping up an argument with choliz.
Nice try.
James G. Watt, the Secretary of the Interior during the Reagan administration:
Watt periodically mentioned his Dispensationalist Christian faith when discussing his method of environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he once said, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”
Around 1990, I had a summer job going door-to-door to fundraise for CalPIRG’s Clean Air Campaign. Lots of people told me directly that they believed that there was no reason to protect the environment, because of God’s plan, and a few said that it was actually wrong to try because the faster we used up the Earth’s resources, the sooner the Apocalypse would come, and the Second Coming.
The funny thing, by the way, was that I only heard this in posh, middle-class neighborhoods. In poor neighborhoods, people were much more supportive.
Not sure where all the hostility comes from. I’ve never heard someone talk about God making it all better some how. There is no Biblical basis to believe that. I have heard the flip side of the coin of things getting much worse as the “end of days” and thus one better prepare for it.
So if you are going to say something like it is a “huge problem” then I’d like some explanation on where one gets that idea. I live in the Bible belt and this is the first I’ve heard of anyone saying that.
And no - I don’t think for the most part we can stop the overall heating and cooling. At least not at our current technology level. Some sort of sci-fi weather machine maybe. I think we should focus our energies on adapting to the changes - which is what any successful organism does best.
ETA - Looking at the chart someone posted below, perhaps chgoliz was referring to the rapture. Which isn’t exactly “poof, God will make it better” but “poof, God will take me away from it all”. Which would have been the clarification I was looking for.
It’s incomplete but Here’s a discussion of quite a few common reactions beyond just denialism and catastrophism.
Well, you can certainly find people like Inhofe mention “what a lot of alarmists forget: God is still up there, and He promised to maintain the seasons and that cold and heat would never cease as long as the earth remains.” I would dismiss him as an ignorant outlier, but some idiots thought he was worthy to be chairman of the environment committee, so obviously his drivel has fans.
Well that is true. You might point out it doesn’t mention if man is still on the earth…
But again, I haven’t encountered that attitude, though I don’t generally hang with fundamentalists. I have seen the attitude that we are stewards of God’s creation and are charged with taking care of it.
While I do not dispute the five Ds described, there is a further element that applies to climate change as well as more structural problems like economic degeneration, environmental degradation and the security/military/torture state: lack of a response that is both effective and fits with our collective and individual self-image.
For those who claim that voting is the answer, I would assert that a lot of us have been voting all of our lives and, even for those who have never cast a ballot for a denialist or plutocrat or fascist, that has achieved exactly the state where we find ourselves today. Voting is not enough.
Fine, so we write our elected representatives. I’m still waiting for something more detailed than an autoresponse for the many missives I have sent on energy, foreclosures, health care and myriad other more local issues. So scribbling into the ether isn’t enough, either.
So what is enough? By making these first options irrelevant, we are left only with direct action. JFK (or maybe one of his speechwriters) came up with, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Peaceful revolution is being made impossible, not just by pepper-spraying students sitting quietly in a plaza and kettling permitted marches, but by convincing the vast majority of Americans that it doesn’t work - and that they’re not really one of “those” people anyway. Populist change only works for foreigners. Activism is just for scruffy crazies and naive, self-involved kids. That’s not for me because I’m a grownup.
Let’s face it: voting changes nothing because by the time it gets to election day, anyone who challenges the rule of big money has been weeded from the field. Trying to influence the winners of said contests is absurd unless one can outdonate the most profitable industries in the history of the planet - not just to that one candidate but to that entire party (see the pressure the Dems are getting from Wall Street to marginalize Elizabeth Warren).
As long as people think that political participation is an individual activity that happens once a year or so, we will all be reduced to the influence we can each wield based on our individual checkbooks. The opposition are not only far richer than we are, they don’t act as individuals. They have lobbies, they have think tanks, they have industry groups; they have ALEC and the National Association of Manufacturers, they have the US Chamber of Commerce. Though many of the members and sponsors of these groups can and do use their influence as individuals to get what they want, they know that collective action gets the best results. That is why they also spend fucktons of money convincing us that it’s pointless.
So we have to get over this conceit that we are better than the stoned white dude with dreadlocks that every TV camera seems to find at the demonstration. We have to reconcile ourselves to going to the occasional meeting, talking to people we don’t necessarily agree with on everything and taking a little responsibility. It may seem to conflict with the person we imagine ourselves to be, but that person is an entitled idiot who expects everything to be done for them and then whines when it doesn’t come out exactly according to their wishes. Trust me: you will feel more responsible, more engaged and wiser for having accomplished something that helps someone beyond yourself. And that is what a real grownup is.
tl;dr: Torches and pitchforks.
Where I live was covered in ice until recently. The evidence for this is all around us around Lake Ontario suggesting we are emerging from an ice age, which was freezing cold.
To suggest this warming trend was caused by industrial output and cow farts seems to be a political mechanism to raise taxes and hijack media and confuse children of all ages.
Climate action?
Citation Needed
This article goes in the right direction, it just doesn’t go far enough. Climate Change is not actually THE problem, it’s just one of the symptoms. The same behavior that gives us climate change, also gives us the pacific garbage patch, MRSA,Contaminated food supply, yadda fucking yadda… You’ve heard it all before. In order to change any of it, you have to do the things that would change all of it.
The one thing that seems different about climate change, is the enormous scale, the wide consensus, and the culpability- making it too big to think about seriously. Yet whether or not it’s taken seriously, it’s going to have an impact.
I think maybe instead of trying to avert the disaster before it’s too late, we think about what people who survive will end up doing, and try doing that.
I’m not really sure where I’d place myself on that map… F/G, so therefore L? It seems like a few of the ideas on the right would need to work together to ‘save’ us, while a number of the less dramatic solutions on the right would be appropriate on a smaller scale, even if collapse doesn’t happen.
As long as folks like Al Gore are preaching austerity as the solution to global warming to the worlds 99% from their (carbon credit paid up) mansions and private jets there will never be acceptance of the concept.
People would want to trade up and maybe even fight nuclear NIMBYing for modern power plants if they saw the cheaper power as making their life better while eliminating the far more dangerous fossil fuels and hydro, leaving petro as feedstock to lock up nearly forever some carbon as plastic stuff. Saying you bough back carbon credit means nothing to most people.
Buy climate change control by offering voters a real better life, not with more wealth for the carbon trading class and less for the 99%.
Possibly, but only if you define “climate change action” as “passing more laws”.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the United States’ CO2 emissions have been on a consistent downward trend for over a decade. Why? Because cleaner energy sources have in some areas become cheaper, due to market forces, than dirty energy sources.
If you can point to any cases where Republicans have sought to keep this from happening, please do so.
Market forces encouraged by government policies like tax break, subsidies, subsidized research, emissions regulations, etc.?
I also seem to remember hearing some palaver over Solyndra. What was the Republican position on this, again?
I think the GOP position on Solyndra was that it was corporate welfare for a big campaign contributor.
I’ll concede that. On the other hand I think it’s safe to conclude that anyone who is against nuke fission power, against nuke fusion power, against more hydropower, and against fracking, has an agenda which is different from being concerned about GHG emissions. I don’t accuse you of being in that camp, but I have heard from many who are.
“Corporate welfare” is an easy objection to make, and one that can be trotted out against any form of tax beaks, subsidies, government loans, etc. that you want to object to. It may appear to be neutral, but I don’t think it’s neutrally applied: subsidies, exceptions, tax breaks, and funding for things like the oil industry, pipelines, sports teams, incorporation, call-centers, auto factories, etc., etc. seem to somehow elude the “corporate welfare” charges even if they are just as much a form of government largesse.
But anyway:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-13/solyndra-program-vilified-by-republicans-turns-a-profit
Hopefully climate change deniers won’t realise the game until it’s up.
Of course we realise that by warning them of the issues in the way that we are, they will only double down behind walls of impenetrably stupid ideology.
There’s only going to be so much space on the few patches of land left to humanity and by that time it’s going to be really fucking easy to just ignore the pleas for safety from a bunch of climate destroying witches who were well warned by the upstanding and scientifically literate saviours of humanity.
I predict a towering wave of disavowal, never before seen in the history of humanity, to sweep over the idealogical landscape (forgive the pun) and cleanse it of climate change deniers in the next few decades. Followed by some very speedy court cases and executions.
The coal, natural gas, and petroleum industries are the most obvious on that list.
White americans were mostly OK with racism due to the five Ds. Dr. King was in place, but Malcolm X drove people to his Dr. King’s message. We’ve got Al Gore and plenty of scientists meekly saying “here’s the evidence, we really need to do this, guys!” but we’re missing the militant Malcolm X figure driving people to pick that path. I’m not saying there aren’t plenty of aggressive, angry environmentalists with a message, I’m saying nobody respects them, nobody takes them seriously. We need a Malcolm X who will command respect.
EDIT: strikethru above
