Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

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Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by SpaceMarine93 »

This is from the "Republican war on the Environment" topic on the forum:
Kicking off her recent bus tour, Sarah Palin attended a motorcycle rally and took a deep breath. "I love that smell of the emissions," she exulted.
Her comment reflected a common attitude in the Republican Party: Exhaust fumes are as American as apple pie. Cool kids don't need clean air. Arctic ice is overrated.

Republicans like Palin often compete to see who can sound most indifferent to the environment. So someone taking a different tack stands out. Mitt Romney got grief from Rush Limbaugh and others for saying, "I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that."

This is like noticing that bananas are yellow. Mainstream scientists have said the same thing for a long time. But the consensus has spread.

Bjorn Lomborg, a conservative hero for his 2001 book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," now writes, "We have long moved on from any mainstream disagreements about the science of climate change. The crucial, relevant conversation of today is about what to do about climate change."

In "Climate of Extremes," published by the libertarian Cato Institute, scientists Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling Jr. assail various plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But they admit, "Humans are implicated in the planetary warming that began around 1975. Greenhouse gases are likely to be one cause, probably a considerable one..."

Most GOP candidates, however, don't care. Rick Santorum dismisses such claims as "junk science." Michele Bachmann derides the notion that carbon dioxide could be harmful. Tim Pawlenty's campaign declined to answer when asked if he agrees with Romney.

During last year's campaign, the National Journal reported, "Of the 20 serious GOP Senate challengers who have taken a position, 19 have declared that the science of climate change is inconclusive or flat-out incorrect." (The exception: Mark Kirk of Illinois.)

Conservatives fear liberals will use climate change to justify heavy-handed intrusive regulation and wasteful subsidies, and they are right to worry. But that's no excuse for pretending global warming is a myth or refusing to do anything about it. It's an argument for devising cost-effective, market-based remedies that minimize bureaucratic control.

If today's Republican attitude had prevailed four decades ago, Americans would not have such vital measures as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Then, many people worried that environmentalism would strangle economic growth and personal freedom. But both have survived and even flourished.

Conservatives once understood that corporations are not entitled to foul the environment, any more than individuals have the right to dump garbage in the street.

Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP presidential nominee, wrote, "When pollution is found, it should be halted at the source, even if this requires stringent government action." As governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed major environmental bills and called for "all-out war against the debauching of the environment."

But modern Republicans think the environment is big enough to take care of itself. They decried President Barack Obama's moratorium on new deepwater drilling, which was imposed to prevent a repeat of last year's catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Bush administration gave a green light to mountaintop coal mining, which it admitted would mean burying more than 700 miles of rivers in debris. They see preventing pollution as an unaffordable luxury.

But that's intellectually untenable and politically dangerous. What's more, the GOP doesn't have to surrender its principles to confront environmental reality. There is plenty of room for disagreement, for instance, about how to combat global warming.

The method most congenial to personal and economic freedom is a carbon tax. Instead of putting the government behind favored forms of energy, as the administration likes to do, it would create strong incentives for people to find their own ways to reduce emissions.

It would achieve maximum benefits at minimum cost. It could be revenue-neutral, if the receipts were used to pay for other tax cuts.

A carbon tax is hardly a liberal idea. Among its proponents are Gregory Mankiw, who headed the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain's chief economist during his presidential campaign. But Republican politicians have no interest.

During hard economic times, that approach may work. But at some point, voters will conclude that global warming and other environmental problems demand solutions. And Republicans will be left wondering why they didn't come up with any.

Now, we all know that Global Warming by Man is real, we know that it is going to harm the environment and us more than it would ever do good, we know that the Republicans are denying it out of fear of countermeasures controlling business and removing profits. And we know in all likelihood they have a relatively high chance of winning presidency next year and waste another 4 - 8 years doing nothing or even making the problem worse.

The problem here is not how stupid the Republicans are, or how unfortunate the whole thing is.

We should ask ourselves - WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

This debacle of a controversy had gone on long enough. We all know the consequences of inaction. If more than anything, we must act now. How do we decisively stop this madness? What must we do to convince every one of those ignorant, consumerist and apathetical masses that it is in their interest to stop Global Warming? What must we do to deny those planet-wrecking gas-addicted anti-intellectual Conservative scums victory over the environment? Does the ends justifies the means (YES, IT DOES) and if so, what must be done?

I am frankly tired of how so many of us enlightened people, who are aware of Global Warming, who are concerned about how the forces of ignorance and greed are stopping us from doing anything about it, who are willing to talk about it, just SIT there and complain and Complain AND COMPLAIN and not actually doing anything about it.

The same goes for issues with Evolution, Abortion, Gay Rights, Multi-Culturalism etc. We always moan how some people are so stupid to oppose them, but when it comes to it they have greater support because that's all we do, MOAN, while they go out picketing, broadcasting their viewpoints aloud, swaying people with demagogues and shamming their way through politics so their ignorant, conservative viewpoints get their way.

I am frankly disappointed how no one would go and stand up to those conservatives and ignorant people on the issue of Global Warming. Somebody, anybody, has got to step up and do something decisive.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by K. A. Pital »

The current political order (advanced democracy in rich major pollutants, lack of democracy in poor major pollutants) and economic order (advanced capitalism) decisively preclude "decisive action".

Look at the root of the issue. Are you willing to undergo hardship, possibly go from your cheap big car to a 100km per charge electric car the size of a Smart or a Toyota iQ at the same cost or even at a greater cost as a normal hatchback or SUV? Are you willing to consistently vote for people who are ready to take decisive action - the Greens - not spineless Democrats or Republicash Party?

How many people around you are ready to do the same? I don't know about you, I did my share of "picketing" and political action (which thankfully didn't lead me to lose life or limb, thoo-thoo-thoo). Problem is people like you or me are the minority.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Covenant »

You don't think environmentalists go out and picket? Or supporters of evolution, women's health choices, equal rights, and so forth? The problem is picketing doesn't solve problems, so doing something "decisive" would be doing something other than bitching and moaning while holding a sign.

People do battle with this stuff, but fighting an unreasonable person with demagoguery of the other side doesn't get anything done.

If you think you can actually just man the barricades and beat sense into people with the big end of a cudgel, maybe you're not as enlightened as you think. America isn't the only nation that matters, so judging the entirety of the intellectual establishment by their ability to penetrate the ideology of American Republican Party Conservatives... that's unfair, and disingenuous, and not going to get anything accomplished. There isn't a giant you can slay to bring this all down.

You want to go rounding up all the ideologically impure people and re-educate them? I'm generally not someone who buys into the "If you do good the way they did bad, you're as bad as they are!" thing, but you have to remember that 90 percent of every movement seems to be filled with idiots who don't understand why they think something. For every thoughtful, humanitarian non-theist you'll find a bunch of people who can't articulate their thoughts on the matter and are just as non-reflective as the people they think they're better than.

I know some pretty hard-line environmentalists who didn't really understand what they were advocating when they were stumping for this whole Hydrogen Power Economy thing. Simple facts like "We need to burn coal to split the hydrogen off," never occurred to them. I mean, fuck, look at these recent commericals where they show everyday appliances being fueled up with gasoline and it's like "What if everything ran on gas?" and the unstated fact is that nearly everything does run on gas, or coal and it's just you don't see it. The point being that your demagogue might be Glenn Beck for the Environment in more ways than one--whipping people up over fake facts and bad ideas.

So what's the solution? Well, anger and rage don't usually produce valuable results. The simple fact is that while politics is a realm for bullshitters to battle it out, science gives us the tools for actually fixing problems--and science can't be yelled into progress. Yeah, it'd be nice if we could scream the morons down for a generation and get our Brain Industry back up and running. And sure, if people wanted to switch to smarter things, we'd be able to fix that too.

But you'll never do that.

People simply do not work that way. It's extremely, extremely hard to motivate an entire society to make radical changes to how they do things. I don't know the psychology of these things, but there's almost a kneejerk response to segments of a community resisting groupthink--you need the society to enforce it. They don't like being told what to do, even if it's for their own good. Part of it is laziness, and part if it is an entrenched ideology built upon many different forms of support. If we knock out ONE of those supports, like the religious conception of Earth as 6000 years old and therefore scientists are just agents of Satan lying about things to confuse you, there are still other supports. But with everything I think we need to go after the money. Not only would money help influence what kinds of things we want the Democrats to parrot (hopefully our things) but going after the supporters of Republican Dumbthink would help give thinking members of the conservative wing more breathing room to re-enter rational society.

Right now, as it stands, we're laying siege to these things and they're reacting by bunkering up. We're getting gay marriage legal in some cities, we're getting Repblicans to finally relent on climate change, we're slowly turning the social culture in such a way that conservative views are punchlines on television. It's not going to happen overnight, but I think it's totally going to happen. There will always be conservatives but this generation is going to be a remarkably different form of conservatism. So you're going to burn yourself out, or burn the place down, trying to make this freight train pull a U-Turn. People need to speak up each time someone says something moronic, yes. But I can't fix this and you can't fix this and that's just the truth, sad as that may make you. But you never know--maybe your one "speaking up" on your blog or whatever will set something off and you'll catch lightning in a bottle. You can't plan for that though. And with American politics as fucked as they are, it's hard to even convince people what their own history is.
Last edited by Covenant on 2011-06-17 02:33am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

What do you want us to do, Space? Make an ice cream factory to make the world cooler? Set up an illicit abortion clinic? Fill petri dishes with our sperm and try to make our jizz evolve into sentient amoebas? For a thread bitching about how people are moaning and groaning and inserting whole chickens up their anuses, your post looks like nothing but moaning and groaning. You can vote for the candidates, write to your congressman, talk to people in real life or in the internet to spread the word and disprove the misconceptions they have, but what else can a normal person do?

Insert whole chickens, that's what. In red colored font.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by SpaceMarine93 »

It's extremely, extremely hard to motivate an entire society to make radical changes to how they do things.
I agree with that sentiment. But it is still possible. So long as the hope that it is still possible, regardless of difficulty, we might have a chance in succeeding.We have to try. America, even the world's, future depends on the right people succeeding.

And I did suggest that we could use any mean necessary. ANY MEANS

We could, I don't know, establish a vanguard party like Lenin did, made up of ideologically similar people, intellectuals and organizers with merit, to unite all the divided factions into a strong coherent force that may effectively oppose those motivated by ignorance or greed in power.

While the Tea Party Movement had rally many conservatives to their cause, perhaps we could emulate that. We could rally into a movement as big as the Tea Party USA, headed by popular personalities that people would listen to. We could propaganda posters stubbed on every surface on every street. We could perhaps train up our own demagogues and establish a large media base like Fox News to counter the conservatives propaganda, or set up our own children indoctri - I mean - summer camps that could spread the right ideas and sway supporters to the course.

Of course, I am being overly optimistic and hotheaded, so I suggest that don't take whatever I just said as something serious. That's the problem with me being politically charged at a very young age thanks to my brother.

In any case, we still need to convince people to protect the environment, and counter those motivated by greed and ignorance who wants to ruin it. How do we do that?
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

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Shroom Man 777 wrote:What do you want us to do, Space? Make an ice cream factory to make the world cooler? Set up an illicit abortion clinic? Fill petri dishes with our sperm and try to make our jizz evolve into sentient amoebas? For a thread bitching about how people are moaning and groaning and inserting whole chickens up their anuses, your post looks like nothing but moaning and groaning. You can vote for the candidates, write to your congressman, talk to people in real life or in the internet to spread the word and disprove the misconceptions they have, but what else can a normal person do?

Insert whole chickens, that's what. In red colored font.
That's a good burn, I will give you that. I guess you are right.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

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Do you vote, Spacemarine?
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

The increased awareness of people HAS played an important role. We're actually considering Global Warming and homobortions as serious topics, companies are trying to make their things more eco-friendly supposedly, you have world summits on trying to solve the Global Warming problem (admittedly, not much has come out of them), and this is due to the populations' increased awareness of the matter through media, through education, and through communication and shits.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by madd0ct0r »

Join EWB, http://www.ewb-international.org/about.htm

join Greenpeace (or not, as your taste for nuclear goes)

write a letter to your senator

host a 'green party' in a local pub

visit somewhere like CAT, donate or buy useful products - http://www.cat.org.uk/

do an emissions check for your house. work out what to improve.

change your lightbulbs

buy a bike, use it.

switch to a green electricity tariff.

try googling 'how to help stop climate change' - lists like the above have been appearing in magazines for years.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Simon_Jester »

SpaceMarine93 wrote:
It's extremely, extremely hard to motivate an entire society to make radical changes to how they do things.
I agree with that sentiment. But it is still possible. So long as the hope that it is still possible, regardless of difficulty, we might have a chance in succeeding.We have to try. America, even the world's, future depends on the right people succeeding.

And I did suggest that we could use any mean necessary. ANY MEANS

We could, I don't know, establish a vanguard party like Lenin did, made up of ideologically similar people, intellectuals and organizers with merit, to unite all the divided factions into a strong coherent force that may effectively oppose those motivated by ignorance or greed in power.
Step back. Consider the problems.

1) A vanguard party works when you've got large numbers of people who are suffering enough to trust the vanguard as a way of solving their problems. Here, precisely the difficulty is that most of the society's problems are abstract; the people affected are those who will be alive twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now. You can't motivate a mass popular movement led by a cabal of technocrats that way, because you haven't given people anything to fight for. It's a lot harder to do it that way than to mobilize a revolution among a peasant class whose grandparents remember being actual serfs owned by the nobility and whose rulers regularly machine-gun demonstrators.

2) Setting up a network of propaganda and indoctrination like you describe takes decades- it would not have been possible to form the Tea Party twenty years ago, even if a somewhat larger percentage of the electorate believed the same things, because they weren't as ready to bash someone's head in BY ANY MEANS (echo there is deliberate) to get it.

3) One of the eternal problems with vanguard parties and "we don't have to tell people the truth to get them to follow us!" is... well. The best explanation I've seen Yudkowsky's site Less Wrong, which is very much NOT the be-all and end-all of anything, but is at least fairly well spoken on certain points of philosophy. He calls it dark side epistemology: the tendency to, as a way of protecting one's lies, to encourage people to stop thinking. To take an easy example, it's easier to get a creationist to stay a creationist after you've convinced them the scientific method is heresy and never to be allowed inside their brain where it might do damage. In general, any argument that revolves around "let's lie to people in the name of truth!" winds up with an entangling net of lies that force the liar to suppress the truth entirely; take that as a cautionary tale.

4) Bear in mind that the rich, the powerful, the movers and shakers, are selected by an asymmetric process. They are probably better at social manipulation and the problems of management than you, because that is how they got rich, and stayed rich. Trying to beat wealthy interests at their own game is not necessarily a good strategy, and must be considered closely.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Akhlut »

The world is capitalist, comrade, so the best and only way to defeat such things now is to make it unprofitable to pollute.

Of course, that's easier said than done, depending on where you're at. Do what you can, though.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

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SpaceMarine93 wrote:We should ask ourselves - WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Change our energy infrastructure from polluting and dangerous fossil fuel dependency to a renewable energy infrastructure dominated by solar power. The good news is it's already being done, although we're just hitting the knee curve of the exponential change that will occur during this transition. So the critics are still going strong because of their personal projections and estimates based upon past data that is decieving if not understood via exponential projections.

My only concern is how many bumps we'll hit on the way. Not that they'll impact the overall result much, but during said bumps they will be felt.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

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SpaceMarine93 wrote:We should ask ourselves - WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
The most effective thing to do: Talk about it. Change a few habits. Talk about changing those habits.

Not in a hugely "in your face" moralistic way, but tell people what you are (not) doing and why. When you hear people tell blatant lies about it, talk about it and inform.

I don't know how possible that is in the US, but here in Germany you can often talk about politics, etc in various surroundings and happenings. You'll be amazed at the ripple effect even a single person can have. If you (help) change the opinion of some relatives and friends, then they can do the same, those people again, etc. You will most likely not see that much of a change because of yourself, but you aren't the only one doing that. Thats how opinions change over time.

Yes, most of the time there is a lot of focus on the big picture - politics, news, new media, and so on - but thats only because these are highly visible singular events that can be tracked easily. For the average person, the views that person holds are a huge conglomeration and mixture of all the stuff they've heard somewhere, somewhen. You'll probably never know if maybe that one sentence you said off-hand could effect huge changes in the opinion over time, but the chance is there. And if you don't talk about it, that chance isn't there.

So, simply talk about this kind of stuff. Call out wrong facts. Don't go crazy overboard screeching.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Zaune »

Akhlut wrote:The world is capitalist, comrade, so the best and only way to defeat such things now is to make it unprofitable to pollute.
How in hell are we supposed to do that? Hijack airliners and crash them in to coal-fired power stations?
Those with the money, power and influence to do something proactive to prevent climate change have the least incentive to do anything about it, because they'll be the last people to be more than mildly inconvenienced by it. And you don't get to have that kind of power if you're easily moved to generosity or compassion; either you fight your way to the top by dirty tricks and ruthlessness, or your great-granddad did and left you a massive entitlement complex to go with the money. What do they care if famine, disease and resource-wars knock a billion or two off the world's population? Droves of starving, desperate refugees swarming over the border keep labour costs down. If food or oil or whatever else they need gets scarce enough that whoever's sitting on it won't part with it for what they consider a reasonable price, they can afford to pay people to take it by force.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

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Zaune wrote:
Akhlut wrote:The world is capitalist, comrade, so the best and only way to defeat such things now is to make it unprofitable to pollute.
How in hell are we supposed to do that? Hijack airliners and crash them in to coal-fired power stations?
Make it profitable for companies and cheaper for consumers to switch to alternative sources of energy would be a high priority goal. Again, this is something the solar industry is well aware of and working towards.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

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Zaune wrote:
Akhlut wrote:The world is capitalist, comrade, so the best and only way to defeat such things now is to make it unprofitable to pollute.
How in hell are we supposed to do that? Hijack airliners and crash them in to coal-fired power stations?
:banghead:

Tax carbon emissions, you nitwit.

And yes, they'll pay if it's that or watch their fortunes get devoured by the lawyers. Aristocrats and plutocrats can be proud, and stupid, and selfish, but they knuckle under to a government that has the guts to make them do it, because that's the other side of how you get to be that powerful- when the storm comes, you trim sails and do what you need to survive with your power base more or less intact.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Akhlut »

Well, thank you SI and SJ for saving me some time and effort on my own reply. :P

But, yes, in a representative republic, mass public outpourings can rouse the legislature to do something, if for no other reason than fear for their jobs.

Also, there is such a thing as "voting with your wallet," i.e. using your purchases to send a message. So, if instead of buying the HUMMER-XTREME GAS GUZZLER, you instead buy a VW Golf Diesel or a Nissan Leaf or whatever and encourage other people to do the same through calm and usually half-way well-reasoned arguments, then companies will see their bottom lines grow or shrink based off of how ecologically sound their products are.

There's also such thing as "grassroots" movements, such as Greenpeace, the WWF, Sierra Club, and other such non-profits that have some of their own legislative pull. Again, spread the word on those.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Zaune »

Ad hominem doesn't become you, Simon. And if there's a government left on the planet that has the guts to stand up to aristocrats and plutocrats then I'd love to know where it is, so I can donate all the time and money I can spare to help keep it in power.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

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Zaune wrote:Ad hominem doesn't become you, Simon. And if there's a government left on the planet that has the guts to stand up to aristocrats and plutocrats then I'd love to know where it is, so I can donate all the time and money I can spare to help keep it in power.
Get the word out on the bullshit that goes on with those in power, then. How do you think Arab Spring happened? That sort of thing would have a much greater effect in developed nations because of a much greater semblence to an actual representative republic than developing nation dictatorships.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Simon_Jester »

Zaune wrote:Ad hominem doesn't become you, Simon.
Zaune, I'm not trying to say your rhetorical flourishes are silly because I think you're a nitwit; I called you a nitwit because I think your rhetorical flourishes are silly. That's not an ad hominem; that's a criticism. And, yes, an insulting one- but "ad hominem" is not Latin for "you insulted me!"

Now, in this case, "nitwit" was an exasperated crack made because it seemed to me that you were totally missing the obvious. You said, and I quote:

"How in hell are we supposed to [make it unprofitable to pollute]? Hijack airliners and crash them into coal-fired power stations?"

Which skips right over all the simple, nondestructive, perfectly normal solutions of policy... straight over to terrorism. What the hell? I look at that and I wonder if you've completely taken leave of your senses, and I don't think an outside observer can blame me.

Global warming is a policy issue. It should not, will not, and can not be resolved by ecoterrorism. It may take more time than you (or anyone else clued in on the subject) would like to deal with, and more damage will be done than if there were no one in the world who was wrong on the issue.

But to ignore all the ways of treating it like a policy issue, and to fly straight to a mindset of "the rich are an occupying army supported by hordes of gibbering loons the state is useless WE MUST FIGHT THEM..." it's just ridiculous. Really, it is. It's huffing and puffing and childish petulance about how the world isn't what we want it to be, all cranked up to a level at which it becomes nearly self-parodic. Mock-revolutionary sentiment, from people who have precious little knowledge of revolutions.

And that is why I called you a nitwit. Because you said something that strikes me as very stupid.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Zaune »

Okay, fair comment. I shouldn't have let bitterness (and low blood-sugar) run away with me like that, and I apologise for it.

But the fact remains that the scientific community has been warning world leaders about climate change for longer than most of us have been alive, and even after the effects are becoming blindingly obvious even to a complete layman it's still an uphill struggle to achieve more than token gestures towards prevention. If the whole industrialised world imposed punitive taxation on carbon emissions tomorrow then we might limit the damage somewhat, but there are so many vested interests keeping heads firmly buried in the sand -or somewhere rather less salubrious- that it will probably come too late even for that.

Personally, I think the best thing the green lobby can do now is to switch emphasis from prevention to resilience. Biodiversity's going to take a massive hit whether we like it or not, but maybe we can mitigate the human cost somewhat if we adopt new agricultural practices suited to the altered climate, and construction techniques that reduce our dependence on electricity for heating and/or air conditioning.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Eulogy »

Not to mention construction of artificial habitats, promotion of birth control, and taking DNA samples of as much lifeforms as we can; that way, after the planet gets back on its feet and we figure out cloning, we can resurrect species.

Desperation also leads people to banditry, and if rich sociopaths are careless or stupid enough to make themselves easy targets, then they'll get killed for their billions. Hiring thugs won't make them proof against determined people, though. In the age of the internet and Wikileaks this is more likely than you'd think.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Setesh »

I think George Carlin had the best idea:
I've got an idea about homelessness. Do you know what they ought to do? Change the name of it. It's not "homelessness", it's "houselessness". It's houses these people need. A home is an abstract idea, a home is a setting, it's a state of mind. These people need houses; physical, tangible structures. They need low-cost housing.
I think a lot of issues suffer from the same problem, global warming one of them. The concept is simply too abstract, or in this case too big for most people to wrap their head around. Many global warming deniers do so because the problem is simply outside the context they can think in. A better soundbite is needed, Global Warming just sounds like a massive problem that requires massive solutions out of the average persons reach.

Which leads into the second problem here (one I've brought up before), global warming alarmists. Global warming is a problem, but the people going around massively overstating the effects to get in the news are doing more damage to the cause of solving it than any denier ever could. This is a hard science problem with crap science leaking all over it fuzzing the lines and making it easier for the deniers to claim there is dispute.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by Winston Blake »

SpaceMarine93, I understand your anger. One might say 'I know that feel, bro'. But if you let idiots drag you down to their level, they will just beat you with experience. The incoherence and conflict in humanity's response to climate change is tragic - but I find it just as tragic that so many people in support of countering climate change are intentionally exaggerating, intentionally using flimsy emotive arguments, intentionally using 'trendiness' vs 'uncoolness', and spending their time on household small-stuff just so they can feel good about themselves (something which I feel destroys the real drive to change things on a large scale).

As I said, if you let idiots drag you down to their level, they will just beat you with experience. Irrationality is the enemy, and choosing to use irrational methods only makes it stronger. We need to promote calm rationality and a scientific worldview. The biggest cause of today's problems is yesterday's poorly-thought-out solutions - this applies to both the climate change problem itself, and your haste and anger in scrambling to 'do something about it'.

The climate change denialists may be highly visible, but ask yourself this: how visible are all the students doing science & engineering degrees now with the aim of countering climate change and peak oil? Or all the ordinary people carefully reading about all the options, trying to find the ones that won't come back to bite us in the future? Or all the academics and businesspeople planning to develop and commercialise useful technologies?

Quiet, careful, steady research is going on underneath all the noise - and you can find your own place in this. People ARE doing something about it - it's just firm, steady, long-term stuff, not short-term, flashy noise like the denial side. I have provisional ideas about where the future ought to lie for my country and I am structuring my life around making this happen - but you won't see me posting inane emotive comments on articles & blogs. I don't know which way the world is going to go, but I hope and intend for the best options for fighting climate change to become apparent over the next few years, and once that (natural) uncertainty has cleared, I hope and intend for it to be vastly easier to win the battle for public opinion.

Instead of allowing them to frustrate you and make you go out swinging at them, which only plays into their hands, consider a view of future history more like Muhammad Ali's 'rope-a-dope' strategy.
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Re: Global Warming Issue: Why no decisive action?

Post by General Mung Beans »

Because the environmentalists prevent the full unleashing of nuclear power as in France due to Chernobyl (which is an example of Soviet/Red incompetence not the evils of nuclear power) and Fukushima (the fact that the plant withstood such a large quake is good news).
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