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Why Don't Americans Believe in Global Warming?
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This is exactly what I want to say put better than I could say it, point one especially. I'm not going to say that humans have no impact on the environment because clearly we do but there are many green activists who are as blinkered as the energy industry they campaign against. The hardcore greens seem to be determined to ignore the simple fact that the earth has gotten hotter and colder periodically since well before man came on to the scene and will continue to do so long after we're gone.
I'm not saying we're not to blame, I'm saying I'm not convinced we are. We noticed the planet was getting slightly warmer years ago and jumped the gun to find a reason why. There was a period where the theory of human caused climate change was so enshrined that it was career death for any scientist to say anything against it. It would be automatically assumed they were in the pocket of big oil companies. I think now we have enough learned people on both sides of the debate that we can't just ignore either side on principle.
However I say this as a fan of renewable energy, we should adopt it for the simple reason the oil is running out anyway. Not to mention as a society we do produce an awful lot of shit we can do without and we should do without it rather than pretending we can have everything we want forever. We should make the changes to a cleaner less wasteful society but we should do it in a planned, organised way, not rush into it half assed like we'll run out of air in 20 years if we don't.
Ruining our economies in a headlong rush to green up ASAP just doesn't seem like a geat idea to me.
That's just what I got from the OP. This line in particular.
http://www.pwc.com/us/en/corporate-sustainability-climate-change/assets/using-sustainability-attributes-drive-new-growth.pdf
But the OP was not even recommending a course of action; how could you say that that supports your claim that the environmentalists are willing to destroy the world economy to stop global warming? And acting quickly is not the same as acting irresponsibly. Sometimes it is the responsible thing to do. And this would appear to be one of those situations, if the current climate science is correct. And that is not exactly a big "if" at this point. Despite the usual objectors, the body of evidence is completely overwhelming, with alternative hypotheses failing to explain the phenomena we are experiencing.
Yep, and green energy reduces US reliance on foreign oil, reduces pollution, which is also directly better for health, and is just pretty much a win-win-win all around.
But hey some people apparently really want to keep sucking Saudi dick for the next generation or two.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
edit: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
Looks like things have already moved substantially in that direction.
Nobody's saying that the planet will cease to exist, or even that mankind will go extinct. We're just saying that a lof people (and about half of all other species) will die from various climate change effects. See http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/22/an-introduction-to-global-warming-impacts-hell-and-high-water/
Um... I agree that some environmental ads go a little too far in trying to be cute. But I don't really see how see how that's disingeneous? The same effects that are killing most other species on earth will also be the ones that kill us. And a lot of people really do react more strongly to the image of a cute animal dying, than to that of a human dying.
Most of this is right-wing disinformation. Nobody forced the auto industry go electric or green, that was the whole problem- they were producing gas guzzling hummers at a time when rising gas prices caused americans to want small, efficient cars. Organic food (you don't need to put it in scare quotes) produces a bit less, because it's trying to make healthy and environmentally sustainable food, rather than destroying the soil to produce food that causes cancer. And while food shortage is a problem, the main problem in first-world countires is that people can't afford HEALTHY food, because the unhealthy food is way too cheap and subidized. Forcing businesses to comply with environmental standards creates more jobs, not less- because it takes work to comply with those standards, and it takes workers to do that work. If a company is literally unable to make a profit without polluting heavily, then maybe it's best for society if that company goes out of business.
Even modern societies shift paradigms slowly, and do so despite observable immediate phenomena. The Civil Rights, gay rights, and suffrage movements took generations to gain traction despite a complete dearth of logic dictating its opposition, and still haven't made complete victories yet.
Now, extrapolate that thinking against an opposition force that often predicts doomsday scenarios while simultaneously proposing initiatives that would increase spending and prices while losing a lot of jobs (and possibly even civil freedoms). Good freakin' luck with that.
What I've always felt is that the brunt of the environmentalist message should focus on local awareness. Why should Joe and Jane Q. Public care about Scandinavian ice floes? Or deforestation in Brazil? Or desertification in northern Africa?
Let's start small. How about informing people more thoroughly of the local damage done by landfills? Or plastic waste? Pesticides and fertilizers in the water table that their families drink from?
Give people a look at environmental damage that reflects their lifestyle and they can actualize on a personal level. And stop with the Chicken Little crap.
The easier to understand argument almost always wins out in non-academic communities. You don't have to be right to convince most people to believe in something, you just have to understand what people believe, and frame an argument that appeals to what they already think about things.
Unscrupulous business men prey on the stupidity of large groups of people. They'll convince enough American's that global warming doesn't exist until they've polluted it to the point where they own the only drinkable water and breathable Oxygen. Then they'll sell it to you at a premium. It won't be long before they start selling oxygen for breathing in a can.
The difference between then and now is that they didn't have a powerful industry with a vested interest in nuclear war (the defense industry wanted to prepare for war, but not actually do it), and they didn't have a 24-hour "lets nuke the reds" propaganda channel telling people that nuclear warfare would stimulate the economy, and that it's negative effects were totally overblown by the liberal media.
We can focus on both, you know. No reason we can't fight climate change at both the local and the national or global level. Unfortunately, a lot of local efforts are rendered useless by economics. If you try and shut down a coal plant in your county, but the federal government still wants to subsidize it and keep it cheap, it will just move to the next county over, giving your county all the pollution but none of the jobs. A lot of the serious issues really have to be addressed at the national level.
If nobody points it out how is anything going to change? "You guys should stop being so pushy" is hardly a valid counterargument to "we can make changes in gradual, non-catastrophic ways to avoid killing off human civilzation as we know it".
No, it did happen naturally. Market pressures demanded more fuel-efficient cars. Consumers wanted them, Detroit didn't produce them, so Toyota and Honda skyrocketed to the top of the sales charts. The EPa eventually responded by asking for MPG increases by a much later date, but that was after the auto bailouts.
If basic free market economics isn't "happening naturally" I want to know what is.
Two things:
1: Who, if not agriculture business would you suggest is best qualified to move to farming methods that may be better for the environment? Harnessing big business to make a positive change in the world and then crying about it because they're making money is sort of missing the point. If renewable energy becomes a big thing over the next few decades it's not going to be some Captain-America-led liberal-leaning brand-new totally-ethical paragon-of-the-people that comes out of nowhere and saves the fucking planet. It's going to be BP, Shell, Chevron, and all the other energy companies that adapt to the pressures exerted on them by governments and consumers. They'll realize that there's money to be made in renewables (as well as disincentives to drilling for oil, potentially) and they'll go where the money is.
2: Food scarcity in the world is not in any way, shape, or form a crisis of food production. It's three things: local underproduction, futures speculation, and global distribution. The first is the big ones: droughts/fires in Russia, droughts in China, floods/cyclones in Australia and bam the price of wheat skyrockets. The second one (speculation) can amplify the effects of a price jump because hey, if the price is going up because of scarcity why not pocket a few bucks while the trend exists (making money because of a phenomenon that kills off thousands of people and in the process perpetuating it is one of those utterly evil acts you couldn't convince someone not to do). The third one is the bigger problem: when Australia's wheat crop fails surpluses in other countries don't just magically show up where the demand is, it takes time and money and infrastructure to move it, which may make doing so unprofitable.
Organic farming is largely relegated to developed nations who don't have any kind of food production crisis and whose issues of poverty have nothing to do with the price of food.
Regulation doesn't kill business.
Wait, let me correct that. Regulation should kill businesses that can't adapt and leave ones that can alive and profitable. We enact regulation because we believe that certain behaviors of a business are bad. They might be detrimental to worker health, worker wages, market integrity or, yes, environmental quality. This principle is in large part uncontroversial and claiming otherwise is pretty much firmly in the Reagan levels of delusion about the way governments and markets should interact.
Green activism has fuckall to do with the economic recession. It has everything to do with excessive deregulation, excessive risk-taking, and political expediency. All of which are, funny enough, encouraged by a worldview that denies the possibility of anthropogenic climate change being possible in the first place
If you really, truly believe that unemployment is right now at 9% because of the EPA and its advocates then you're beyond help. This is like saying that the sky is blue because Cthulhu told you it is in a dream.
You're wrong on so many levels on every single one of your points that the best I could do was take the part no-one has addressed yet. You really need to reconsider your entire view of how environmental policy and the free market interacts, and think "is this actually true or am I just making it up?" before saying something like "Forcing change, directing change is always a destructive negative thing". No, actually, it's often a very good thing and often the only recourse we have to correct behaviors that are otherwise highly undesirable.
Do you consider the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to be "negative things"?
Then you're wrong. The vast number of scientists studying this have concurred that humans are having an impact on global warming. While there are climate shifts, we are effecting those shifts and causing this.
The planet is not going to get so hot it blows up, but it's going to be more than a little inconvenient for us.
While I agree with your larger point, are you seriously bringing up a fucking commercial as your example?
This is the sort of head up your ass mentality that has people convinced the President is some Muslim extremist socialist born in Kenya. First, the American auto industry problems weren't caused exclusively by labor issues, they were making shitty fucking cars no one wanted. Name me a good Chrysler from the 90's. You can't. I worked during that time span at a Chrysler dealership and every single one of their lines was shitty. And got bad gas mileage. Then there's this weird tirade on organic food. Sustainable food makes sense. Not killing ourselves with pesticides makes sense. Finding the balance where we can do both is where most people are looking.
We need change. We can't wait. If we wait, we're fucked. And, just because you're backwoods enough not to be enlightened enough to bother to understand the issue, doesn't mean that we shouldn't take action now to address it.
I'll probably be infracted for this post, but I honestly made it less condescending than it started. Ignorance isn't bliss. Being stupid isn't cool. Once we get that through our collective societal heads, we'll actually be able to address the problems our society faces. Until then, we'll have more retards like Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly (or, hey, even Al Gore who has gone beyond the pale) having more influence on our nation than people who know what they're talking about and actually make sense.
Oh, and even after the recession and the crippling regulations, some how, some way, corporations are making record profits. But, hey, not much of that is trickling down to anyone but the CEOs and CFO's. But, if only they weren't crippled by regulation, they'd be able to pay people more, because that's their goal. Right?
I would also point out, in the interest of contrariness, that it's not inconsistent to believe in anthropogenic global warming and still be opposed to a given course of action meant to prevent it. If
(Cost of prevention) < (probability and degree of successful prevention) * (cost of post facto mitigation)
doesn't hold, then it's reasonable to oppose it. Given that there is uncertainty in all three terms, and a lot of it in the last two, I don't think that it's fair to conclude that anyone who opposes the various proposed 'fixes' is either a know-nothing or a mustache twirling plutocrat. (although this is not exactly what the OP is about)
I'm so cold I'm starting to doubt gravity.
Nonsense, when we moved off of whale oil every economy everywhere collapsed and never recovered
Okay, to be honest, only about 1/3rd the population of the US believes this. But they are the part of the population most driven by Fox News.
the time for drastic action was back in the 70s; now any effort is going to be too late.
what we SHOULD be doing is brainstorming some big ideas about how to deal with a more volatile world
stop treating global warming as a world-ending boogeyman and frame it as another problem for humanity to deal with. we don't like floods? we build dams. we get earthquakes? we build our structures stronger. volcanoes? early detection and monitoring. the green movement seems hung up on preserving the world the way it is, but it's always been in flux. we need to stop trying to paddle backwards and instead put on our life jackets, because the rapids are coming whether we like it or not.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
screw the _____s, humanity's the top species on this planet and we didn't get here by twiddling our thumbs and living in "harmony" with the natural world. we used our fucking giant brains and i don't see why we should stop now. don't save, ADAPT.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
The problem is we cannot biologically adapt as quickly as we need to unless we suddenly spring about 200 years ahead of our current genetic manipulation research. We need a lot of species of plants and animals to survive to support us, and we're killing them fast. Not to mention we're absolutely pissing away resources and generally doing things that fuck everything up. So, you know, we do need to save the earth even if we are completely and utterly selfish because we are utterly dependant on it. We can't just adapt that quickly, and absolutely never have before.
The problem here is that most people don't really understand how this all works. Scientists say that the massive snowfalls here in the US are caused by climate change, but Average Joe thinks, "Ok, so all the snow is because of climate change, but this is the worst snowfall since the 70s, so what caused the huge snowfall back then? Was is climate change then too? Why haven't things gotten tons worse like they said?"
That's because the news media is terrible. A better way to say it is that this is the worst snowfall since the 70's, and the last time that happened was... last year. We seem to get getting an awful lot of "once in a hundred years" weather right now".
Inicidentally, I watched that Top Gear where they travel to the North Pole and at the very end they implied that global warming wasn't real because they hadn't fallen through the ice on the way there and Arctic weather is still cold and scary. So it's not just Americans.
The climate isn't static. Our descendants will adapt, like people always have. If anything, they'll be better prepared to deal with it since they'll be more technologically advanced.
Hey, green tech and renewable energy is awesome. I fully support companies investing in these technologies, if they think they can make a buck off of doing so.
I really think people need to chill out about climate change. Everything will be fine.
Rigorous Scholarship
This is why I don't get why so many conservatives refuse to do anything on the basis that climate change supposedly isn't anthropogenic. So what if it's a natural event, it still has severe ramifications - if an asteroid was heading towards Earth on an impact trajectory, wouldn't you want to take measures to blow it up or somesuch for the sake of the human race?
well yeah, but the green movement needs to frame it in those terms if they want to make any progress. alternative energy sources are necessary not because of some nebulous green morality/harmony with nature bullshit, but because we are running out of oil. there's too much preaching and not enough practicality.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Expecting people to start caring about them now because of climate change is naive, to say the least. Especially if that "caring" costs them something in terms of standard of living.
Rigorous Scholarship
Plus blaming people is hard, because, there's also global dimming that can attribute to climate change, caused by emissions and pollution. As a whole, it's probably the cyclical nature of our earth's climate to repeat something like this. Whether we caused it or not is not really a point. My position is often, yes global climate change is happening, and yes, it has happened in the past, at the same and higher levels than it is now. I mean with the law conservation of mass, all this carbon we're spewing had to be scrubbed from our atmosphere at some point. So, relatively speaking, we'd just hit the equilibrium at the other end of the spectrum and it'd need to be scrubbed back out again.
The point now should be how to survive it, not postpone it because it's economical. Trying to postpone it by spewing garbage into our atmosphere is a silly thing, and I hate every time I read countries are thinking of trying to do that.
Hahahaha thanks for that
How about "Climate Change to Forcefully Abort Thousands of Pregnancies Against the Will of the Mothers'" for a headline?
I guess it comes down partly to the fact that Americans are pretty confident we have the resources to adapt to and survive climate change. I guess Bangladeshis are probably screwed, but when haven't they been?
Rigorous Scholarship
Yeah. I think this is the biggest issue. A lot of people simply don't give a shit about the developing world, nor the environment, nor anything that doesn't have a direct and immediate impact on their own well-being. But these same people would still like to think of themselves as good people, so they deal with the resultant cognitive dissonance by adopting a denialist stance. You can't convince these people by trying to prove to them that anthropogenic climate change is a fact. In their heart of hearts they may already believe it. Instead, you'd need to show them in concrete terms (preferably with a well defined time frame and dollar values) how climate change (and conversely any policy to combat it) is going to impact their and their children's lives, which is probably an impossible task at this point.
tl;dr: people are selfish