7 ms·

Outside climatologists, geophysicists, biologists and other people with scientific training, I am not sure most people are really equipped to argue against evi

Outside climatologists, geophysicists, biologists and other people with scientific training, I am not sure most people are really equipped to argue against evidence of human impact on the climate, or that human activity is a non-factor in change. However, I do think that the policies countries and even municipalities institute in response to the evidence are fair game. Wild lands conservation, green belts on cities, reducing suburban blight and car dependency, not importing garbage, and using tariffs to reduce dependency on globalized supply chains are viable policy options, but ones that are unpopular with many of the very people who use climate change as a motte for global equity, justice, and economic central planning. The people I know who dismiss climate activism and its acknowledgement don't disagree with the science. They resent people who use climate change as a proxy for another agenda that is unrelated and inconsistent with the needs of reducing human impact on the planet (beyond reducing birth rates in wealthy countries). These activists, whose insistence that everything is connected and systemic, are not interested in solving problems, rather they use this conflation of all things to muddy the waters and place themselves at the centre of it, conveniently gate keeping what policy options are acceptable to talk about. Climate changes, it's a fact, and humans are impacting it, that is not seriously controversial. What is controversial is freighting the solutions with a destructive, class war agenda designed to leverage a crisis, spread poverty, and centralize governance.

ykevinator 7y ago
This is cutting your nose off to spite your face. Who cares why people who are unqualified to agree with scientists agree with scientists?
huffmsa 7y ago
Gretta of Arc would disagree with you. (But really the subject is so complex that angry pontificating is just as valid and additive to the debate as any mathematical model)
jasonvorhe 7y ago
So you disagree that climate change is a systemic problem?
Brakenshire 7y ago
That is a legitimate criticism of a lot of the environmental movement, but the viewpoint you’re describing is not from the mainstream of conservative thought. Conservatives are invited to put themselves at the heart of tackling climate change, by proposing policies which can reduce carbon emissions at a fast enough rate without overturning the economic system. I personally think that is the most credible way of tackling the issue. But first they have to stop denying warming is happening, stop denying the pre-eminent role of greenhouse gases from human civilization, and then propose mechanisms which are credible to tackle the problem. Such a position does exist in conservative movements, for instance you can see it in the British Conservative party, but it is unusual in the English-speaking world. Most English-speaking conservative leaders have reduced themselves to bringing snowballs into Parliament, or calling climate change a Chinese hoax.
- yodsanklai 7y ago
  > But first they have to stop denying warming is happening I believe that they can see that reducing carbon emissions is entirely incompatible with their usual line of thoughts and policies. They need either to renounce to their ideology, or deny/minimize climate change.
  - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
    I don't think it's incompatible with their policies and principles, but it is incompatible with their current funding sources (coal, oil, Russia, Saudi) and voting base (old people who will die relatively soon soon). Competition from China and EU showing it's possible and profitable and voters dying out might flip them surprisingly quickly.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      China, which has recently added an entire United States worth of new coal emissions?
      - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
Angostura 7y ago
> They resent people who use climate change as a proxy for another agenda In my experience, it's more a question that whenever action is proposed, they simply claim as an axiom that it those proposing action actually have another agenda. "You want to introduce tax on carbon emissions? You clearly want big government to control our lives and destroy American industry". This kind of paranoid thinking is problematic in introducing effective measures.
- motohagiography 7y ago
  There is probably more middle ground. Many people read problematic, and just hear counter-revolutionary. If we agree on reducing carbon emissions, and using policy tools to do it, there are a lot of solutions that don't require trusting that a carbon tax will be used for anything but general revenue. Without limits on what the money is used for, it's the same as a progressive VAT/consumption tax, which isn't a necessarily terrible idea if it replaced the current VATs, income and other burdens, but when it's just another largess fund for connected believers, it's a nonconstructive shibboleth for an identity politics agenda. Someone wrote here the other day on Scissor ideas that some differences of opinion can only be reconciled through power, and it's a seductive idea, but we all know what the alternative to discourse looks like, so I think it's more valuable to support ideas that contribute to preserving it as the means for reconciliation.
  - tzs 7y ago
    Most carbon tax proposals I've seen have not given the money to the government. They have been revenue neutral, with the money collected distributed back to the general population, with each person getting an equal share.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    > there are a lot of solutions that don't require trusting that a carbon tax will be used for anything but general revenue. There are indeed. Carbon fee and dividend is perhaps the most popular proposal in the world. Under this system the revenue is immediately returned to the general populace, equally on a per-person basis. Why are you assuming any other kind?
specialist 7y ago
"They resent people who use climate change as a proxy for another agenda that is unrelated and inconsistent with the needs of reducing human impact on the planet..." If you stop at "they resent people", I totally agree. The rest of your statement is just one source of resentment. People hate being preached at, scolded, criticized. And it's not about intent. It's about how the message is received. Something I was very late to realize and have struggled to adapt. (This reply is a good example of my failings.) -- On the left, someone might be jazzed about a specific narrow local issue, and then try to tie it back to a larger issue. Which is totally legitimate, intellectually, because everything's connected. But it's a terrible persuasion strategy. I can't speak first hand to conservative activism, having not participated. Though I've read they're more top-down.
yodsanklai 7y ago
> The people I know who dismiss climate activism and its acknowledgement don't disagree with the science. They resent people who use climate change as a proxy for another agenda that is unrelated and inconsistent with the needs of reducing human impact on the planet What if preservation of the environment is simply incompatible with some political/economic ideology? how are you supposed to propose solutions without challenging the culprit ideology?
- nec4b 7y ago
  Of the developed countries, those that are most pro market and have freest societies also have the most preserved environments. Those that are under authoritarian regimes care a lot less about the environment.
jackpirate 7y ago
class war agenda designed to leverage a crisis, spread poverty The people who have a "class war agenda" are precisely the people trying to reduce the spread of poverty. You may disagree with their methods, but claiming their agenda is "designed to spread poverty" is both false and disingenuous. Otherwise your points were quite good.

ykevinator 7y ago

This is cutting your nose off to spite your face. Who cares why people who are unqualified to agree with scientists agree with scientists?

huffmsa 7y ago

Gretta of Arc would disagree with you. (But really the subject is so complex that angry pontificating is just as valid and additive to the debate as any mathematical model)

jasonvorhe 7y ago

So you disagree that climate change is a systemic problem?

Brakenshire 7y ago

That is a legitimate criticism of a lot of the environmental movement, but the viewpoint you’re describing is not from the mainstream of conservative thought. Conservatives are invited to put themselves at the heart of tackling climate change, by proposing policies which can reduce carbon emissions at a fast enough rate without overturning the economic system. I personally think that is the most credible way of tackling the issue. But first they have to stop denying warming is happening, stop denying the pre-eminent role of greenhouse gases from human civilization, and then propose mechanisms which are credible to tackle the problem. Such a position does exist in conservative movements, for instance you can see it in the British Conservative party, but it is unusual in the English-speaking world. Most English-speaking conservative leaders have reduced themselves to bringing snowballs into Parliament, or calling climate change a Chinese hoax.

yodsanklai 7y ago
> But first they have to stop denying warming is happening I believe that they can see that reducing carbon emissions is entirely incompatible with their usual line of thoughts and policies. They need either to renounce to their ideology, or deny/minimize climate change.
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  I don't think it's incompatible with their policies and principles, but it is incompatible with their current funding sources (coal, oil, Russia, Saudi) and voting base (old people who will die relatively soon soon). Competition from China and EU showing it's possible and profitable and voters dying out might flip them surprisingly quickly.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    China, which has recently added an entire United States worth of new coal emissions?
    - ZeroGravitas 7y ago

Angostura 7y ago

> They resent people who use climate change as a proxy for another agenda In my experience, it's more a question that whenever action is proposed, they simply claim as an axiom that it those proposing action actually have another agenda. "You want to introduce tax on carbon emissions? You clearly want big government to control our lives and destroy American industry". This kind of paranoid thinking is problematic in introducing effective measures.

motohagiography 7y ago
There is probably more middle ground. Many people read problematic, and just hear counter-revolutionary. If we agree on reducing carbon emissions, and using policy tools to do it, there are a lot of solutions that don't require trusting that a carbon tax will be used for anything but general revenue. Without limits on what the money is used for, it's the same as a progressive VAT/consumption tax, which isn't a necessarily terrible idea if it replaced the current VATs, income and other burdens, but when it's just another largess fund for connected believers, it's a nonconstructive shibboleth for an identity politics agenda. Someone wrote here the other day on Scissor ideas that some differences of opinion can only be reconciled through power, and it's a seductive idea, but we all know what the alternative to discourse looks like, so I think it's more valuable to support ideas that contribute to preserving it as the means for reconciliation.
- tzs 7y ago
  Most carbon tax proposals I've seen have not given the money to the government. They have been revenue neutral, with the money collected distributed back to the general population, with each person getting an equal share.
- Angostura 7y ago
  > there are a lot of solutions that don't require trusting that a carbon tax will be used for anything but general revenue. There are indeed. Carbon fee and dividend is perhaps the most popular proposal in the world. Under this system the revenue is immediately returned to the general populace, equally on a per-person basis. Why are you assuming any other kind?

specialist 7y ago

"They resent people who use climate change as a proxy for another agenda that is unrelated and inconsistent with the needs of reducing human impact on the planet..." If you stop at "they resent people", I totally agree. The rest of your statement is just one source of resentment. People hate being preached at, scolded, criticized. And it's not about intent. It's about how the message is received. Something I was very late to realize and have struggled to adapt. (This reply is a good example of my failings.) -- On the left, someone might be jazzed about a specific narrow local issue, and then try to tie it back to a larger issue. Which is totally legitimate, intellectually, because everything's connected. But it's a terrible persuasion strategy. I can't speak first hand to conservative activism, having not participated. Though I've read they're more top-down.

yodsanklai 7y ago

> The people I know who dismiss climate activism and its acknowledgement don't disagree with the science. They resent people who use climate change as a proxy for another agenda that is unrelated and inconsistent with the needs of reducing human impact on the planet What if preservation of the environment is simply incompatible with some political/economic ideology? how are you supposed to propose solutions without challenging the culprit ideology?

nec4b 7y ago
Of the developed countries, those that are most pro market and have freest societies also have the most preserved environments. Those that are under authoritarian regimes care a lot less about the environment.

jackpirate 7y ago

class war agenda designed to leverage a crisis, spread poverty The people who have a "class war agenda" are precisely the people trying to reduce the spread of poverty. You may disagree with their methods, but claiming their agenda is "designed to spread poverty" is both false and disingenuous. Otherwise your points were quite good.