5 ms·

The deontology (paper straws) and eschatology (the end is nigh) of some environmentalism smacks of religion to some. And, given that, the focus in state action

The deontology (paper straws) and eschatology (the end is nigh) of some environmentalism smacks of religion to some. And, given that, the focus in state action incorporates many of the downsides of state adoption of religion, including sectarian bickering, a lack of grace, virtue signalling, and hypocrisy. A reasonable response to those takes is "but this take on things happens to be true". That's fair, however that's the premise of the defense of basically every belief system.

FussyZeus 7y ago
A good amount of the uncertainties involved in climate science, though, can be laid directly at the feet of the Right, and how they've undermined and obstructed science for decades to enable their corporate donors to continue polluting the planet. Perfect example is when global warming was rebranded to climate change, largely by the Right, after which right-leaning politicians have spent every moment saying "See they had to change it from warming to change! They clearly don't know what they're talking about." Or that they've defunded departments showing the ample data on Climate Change, or instructed various departments to not use the language. Anything they can do to shut it down and make sure their corporate donors don't have to lose a minor bit of their bottom line to, oh I don't know, perpetuate the SPECIES a little longer. IMHO such flagrant and destructive distortion of truth, especially with such an existential threat as Climate Change is, deserves some criminal charge on the order of Crimes Against Humanity. I've been watching this charade play out from inside Republican ranks for decades and whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  I'm not really contradicting you here, but I'll point out how thoughts "rhyme". That is, "They" and "Their" base instincts, ignorance, greed, and lies are also to blame when other belief systems are unpopular or misunderstood. If the goal is to rile up believers, jeremiads tend to work well enough. But building a case to prosecute does not create repentance.
- achillesheels 7y ago
  To describe uncertainties involved in climate science without an equally weighted consideration of the political bias in scientific research in academia, self-evidently through biases in research funding, is frankly speaking petulant, and why someone like myself takes your "existentialism" as histrionic.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  >> especially with such an existential threat as Climate Change is But it isn't, at least not for these people. The core of the right doesn't contemplate a world beyond their own lifespans. They, trump especially, are surprised when they travel to see other world leaders talking about things decades in the future. Monarchs of ages past thought about securing their kingdoms for their future descendants. Our monarchs don't think beyond the next election cycle. The longest span of time contemplated in US right-wing politics is how long a supreme court justice might live. Everything beyond that is totally irrelevant.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Framing this as a partisan issue has the causation reversed. The people funding anti-climate change propaganda are the oil and coal companies. They're only "the right" because the places with oil and coal under them happen to be red states, which allows those companies to control those politicians more easily because they have more constituents who would lose their jobs to meaningful reductions in fossil fuel usage. It only becomes partisan once the representatives of those districts push it into the party platform. You can't defeat that in the long-term by voting the other party in because the nature of the two party system is that each party is in power half the time. The only way to fix it is to reform the Republican platform so that it's one of the issues both parties agree on rather than every administration just undoing whatever the previous one did. > Perfect example is when global warming was rebranded to climate change, largely by the Right, after which right-leaning politicians have spent every moment saying "See they had to change it from warming to change! They clearly don't know what they're talking about." Propaganda is propaganda. When it was called global warming they would claim that some places were getting cooler rather than warmer (due to changes in ocean and wind patterns etc.), which was true but not actually any better. If some places get drier and some places get wetter, well, droughts and floods are both bad. More to the point, the ecosystem in each place is calibrated for the previous climate and rapid changes start causing things to go extinct regardless of the direction of the local changes. But that takes longer to explain than a talking point about how some places are getting cooler and not warmer or any of the other irrelevant nonsense about how temperatures decline every year during the period between summer and winter. Calling it climate change was an attempt to defend against that nonsense, so naturally the industry now spends all day claiming that rhetorical defeat as a victory because that's what propagandists do. Pitting both sides against each other is how corporations get what they want. The enemy is Exxon, not the people of the state of Nebraska.
- wavepruner 7y ago
  I don't think it's true to say that the rebranding to "climate change" came from the right. It came from academics who realized that saying "global warming" was confusing to people when the climate swung wildly from unusually hot to unusually cold. It takes some time and a willing listener to explain that "warming" means increased energy in the climate system, and therefore more dramatic swings between hot and cold weather. Saying "global warming" also does nothing to communicate things like change in precipitation patterns. Using the phrase "climate change" does a much better job of encompassing these phenomenon.
johnchristopher 7y ago
(FTR: I am not downvoting you). I share your sentiment. I used to be active in a local food buyer group (7-15 people getting together to collect vegetables and food from local producers) and I saw how to the tribe factor plays a huge role in one's allegiance and political stance. Basically, people gather to be together. The end goal was second to that. Buying local or organic food ? No brainer. Joining the Sunday demonstration against the nuclear plant ? No room for debate. It's assumed everyone will go and it'll be friendly (almost in a kid way) and everyone is in it together. It's about the tribe and mutual reassurance (are we all friends ? are we all okay ?) Scary thing is when you realize some people fall into the happy gang of buying fresh vegetables from the farm and spend an afternoon or two during summers tending to the crops with the farmer (and then have a nice bbq) but some people, because they were put in classroom A or B in elementary school or anything else really, end up roaming the street at night looking for troubles. It's all really basic physiological needs: humans like to be together. The political (in the city sense) reasons for that often seem to come second. So, yes, the exterior signs of belonging to a group have to be defended. And the online discourse make it looks like everyone is a hard-liner and conversations get hot real quick. It's like the vegan thing on Imgur. I know some hard core vegan. None of them are anything like the straw men I see, the made up extremist version of vegans, being derided on the front page. There's one guy in my facebook friends who can't let two days past without posting something along the lines of "do vegans think of mama carrot when they eat baby carrots ?". I counter joked once that he must have been bitten by a lettuce or his parents forced him to eat his soup too many times when he was a kid to hold such grudges against vegans. Now on the other hand I have another friend in the first stage of veganism that can't let two days go without posting outrage cryporn about the beef or chicken industry. So. They all clash. Social networks are social status validators and all the tribes are mixing in but their core values aren't compatible. Sorry, I am rambling.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  For what it's worth I don't have strong feelings on all this. I'm just describing what folks say about environmentalism when it's safe to be frank.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

FussyZeus 7y ago

A good amount of the uncertainties involved in climate science, though, can be laid directly at the feet of the Right, and how they've undermined and obstructed science for decades to enable their corporate donors to continue polluting the planet. Perfect example is when global warming was rebranded to climate change, largely by the Right, after which right-leaning politicians have spent every moment saying "See they had to change it from warming to change! They clearly don't know what they're talking about." Or that they've defunded departments showing the ample data on Climate Change, or instructed various departments to not use the language. Anything they can do to shut it down and make sure their corporate donors don't have to lose a minor bit of their bottom line to, oh I don't know, perpetuate the SPECIES a little longer. IMHO such flagrant and destructive distortion of truth, especially with such an existential threat as Climate Change is, deserves some criminal charge on the order of Crimes Against Humanity. I've been watching this charade play out from inside Republican ranks for decades and whole thing makes me sick to my stomach.

humanrebar 7y ago
I'm not really contradicting you here, but I'll point out how thoughts "rhyme". That is, "They" and "Their" base instincts, ignorance, greed, and lies are also to blame when other belief systems are unpopular or misunderstood. If the goal is to rile up believers, jeremiads tend to work well enough. But building a case to prosecute does not create repentance.
achillesheels 7y ago
To describe uncertainties involved in climate science without an equally weighted consideration of the political bias in scientific research in academia, self-evidently through biases in research funding, is frankly speaking petulant, and why someone like myself takes your "existentialism" as histrionic.
sandworm101 7y ago
>> especially with such an existential threat as Climate Change is But it isn't, at least not for these people. The core of the right doesn't contemplate a world beyond their own lifespans. They, trump especially, are surprised when they travel to see other world leaders talking about things decades in the future. Monarchs of ages past thought about securing their kingdoms for their future descendants. Our monarchs don't think beyond the next election cycle. The longest span of time contemplated in US right-wing politics is how long a supreme court justice might live. Everything beyond that is totally irrelevant.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
Framing this as a partisan issue has the causation reversed. The people funding anti-climate change propaganda are the oil and coal companies. They're only "the right" because the places with oil and coal under them happen to be red states, which allows those companies to control those politicians more easily because they have more constituents who would lose their jobs to meaningful reductions in fossil fuel usage. It only becomes partisan once the representatives of those districts push it into the party platform. You can't defeat that in the long-term by voting the other party in because the nature of the two party system is that each party is in power half the time. The only way to fix it is to reform the Republican platform so that it's one of the issues both parties agree on rather than every administration just undoing whatever the previous one did. > Perfect example is when global warming was rebranded to climate change, largely by the Right, after which right-leaning politicians have spent every moment saying "See they had to change it from warming to change! They clearly don't know what they're talking about." Propaganda is propaganda. When it was called global warming they would claim that some places were getting cooler rather than warmer (due to changes in ocean and wind patterns etc.), which was true but not actually any better. If some places get drier and some places get wetter, well, droughts and floods are both bad. More to the point, the ecosystem in each place is calibrated for the previous climate and rapid changes start causing things to go extinct regardless of the direction of the local changes. But that takes longer to explain than a talking point about how some places are getting cooler and not warmer or any of the other irrelevant nonsense about how temperatures decline every year during the period between summer and winter. Calling it climate change was an attempt to defend against that nonsense, so naturally the industry now spends all day claiming that rhetorical defeat as a victory because that's what propagandists do. Pitting both sides against each other is how corporations get what they want. The enemy is Exxon, not the people of the state of Nebraska.
wavepruner 7y ago
I don't think it's true to say that the rebranding to "climate change" came from the right. It came from academics who realized that saying "global warming" was confusing to people when the climate swung wildly from unusually hot to unusually cold. It takes some time and a willing listener to explain that "warming" means increased energy in the climate system, and therefore more dramatic swings between hot and cold weather. Saying "global warming" also does nothing to communicate things like change in precipitation patterns. Using the phrase "climate change" does a much better job of encompassing these phenomenon.

johnchristopher 7y ago

(FTR: I am not downvoting you). I share your sentiment. I used to be active in a local food buyer group (7-15 people getting together to collect vegetables and food from local producers) and I saw how to the tribe factor plays a huge role in one's allegiance and political stance. Basically, people gather to be together. The end goal was second to that. Buying local or organic food ? No brainer. Joining the Sunday demonstration against the nuclear plant ? No room for debate. It's assumed everyone will go and it'll be friendly (almost in a kid way) and everyone is in it together. It's about the tribe and mutual reassurance (are we all friends ? are we all okay ?) Scary thing is when you realize some people fall into the happy gang of buying fresh vegetables from the farm and spend an afternoon or two during summers tending to the crops with the farmer (and then have a nice bbq) but some people, because they were put in classroom A or B in elementary school or anything else really, end up roaming the street at night looking for troubles. It's all really basic physiological needs: humans like to be together. The political (in the city sense) reasons for that often seem to come second. So, yes, the exterior signs of belonging to a group have to be defended. And the online discourse make it looks like everyone is a hard-liner and conversations get hot real quick. It's like the vegan thing on Imgur. I know some hard core vegan. None of them are anything like the straw men I see, the made up extremist version of vegans, being derided on the front page. There's one guy in my facebook friends who can't let two days past without posting something along the lines of "do vegans think of mama carrot when they eat baby carrots ?". I counter joked once that he must have been bitten by a lettuce or his parents forced him to eat his soup too many times when he was a kid to hold such grudges against vegans. Now on the other hand I have another friend in the first stage of veganism that can't let two days go without posting outrage cryporn about the beef or chicken industry. So. They all clash. Social networks are social status validators and all the tribes are mixing in but their core values aren't compatible. Sorry, I am rambling.

humanrebar 7y ago
For what it's worth I don't have strong feelings on all this. I'm just describing what folks say about environmentalism when it's safe to be frank.
crankylinuxuser 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]