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It's wasn't self-evident to me or to many millions of people. There's an enormous energy spent in attempting to convince people that they're voting for the wro

It's wasn't self-evident to me or to many millions of people. There's an enormous energy spent in attempting to convince people that they're voting for the wrong political party, that climate change is real, that God does or doesn't exist, by building logical arguments from observable facts. I rarely see arguments of persuasion rooted in utility coming from honest, clear thinkers. Utility persuasion appears to be more common in politicians and charlatans though (Vote for me because I'll make you and your community feel good about yourself)

marcosdumay 7y ago
> convince people that ... climate change is real Have you looked on how much easier it was to convince people that the hole on the ozone layer was real? It was a much less observable phenomenon. It was too early on the life of the problem for many people to be affected, and it had much less visible symptoms. Yet, nearly nobody doubted it, and everybody agreed on taking action.
- DevX101 7y ago
  I think the main reason the world agreed on limiting CFCs to prevent ozone depletion was because there were technological alternatives in HFCs. So adopting the belief that CFCs are dangerous was not that costly because we could just use something else (Notably Dupont fought viciously against ozone regulations because that would have been specifically harmful to the company). But let's imagine for a moment if there were no technological alternatives to CFCs. Where stopping ozone depletion would actually mean giving up on refrigeration and air conditioning. A lot less people would believe that ozone depletion was a real phenomena if the natural consequence of that belief would mean giving up very valuable conveniences. Similarly, I don't think it's a coincidence that public moral attitudes about slavery changed with the advent of agricultural mechanization.
  - godelski 7y ago
    I think a lot of people don't realize this. That many beliefs are from culture. Which explains why you can see radical shifts in ideologies even without the "changing of the guard". Some beliefs are deeply rooted personally, but many are deeply rooted socially. But then again, it's easier to blame a single person.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Exactly this. The hole on the ozone layer could be solved, so a huge political movement appeared, solved it, and got away. Compared to that, the only thing one can get from the current discussions about Global Warming is a cognitive dissonance. So people don't care, or actively do not believe. I wonder how far we could go if the political discourse changed from "how do we stop emitting GW gases?" to "how do we increase solar power 100 fold?", "how do we electrify industry and transportation?", and "how do we capture CO2 into synthetic substances?"
- DataWorker 7y ago
  The utility was obvious. All people had to do was buy a new type of hair spray that didn’t have cfc’s and they were helping to fix the planet. Sales for hairspray went up. Like the point zizek likes to make about recycling being the new system of indulgence. We can feel good about ourselves and absolve any sense of guilt about our wasteful and polluting lifestyles merely by putting cans into the right bin. Behavior is utilitarian. Belief is behavior.
- Roark66 7y ago
  >> convince people that ... climate change is real Have you looked on how much easier it was to convince people that the hole on the ozone layer was real? >It was a much less observable phenomenon. It was too early on the life of the problem for many people to be affected, and it had much less visible symptoms. Yet, nearly nobody doubted it, and everybody agreed on taking action. I don't think those two problems can be compared like this. There are a lot of differences between them. For example: - Everyone was (or was going to be) universally affected negatively by the hole in the ozone layer while there are a lot of people that stand to benefit from the results of mild global warming (for a concrete example consider opening up of the north passage between Europe and Asia along Russia's coast). - The primary mechanism for ozone layer depletion was very easy to understand - refrigerant gas destroys ozone. Regarding global warming or climate change the way we can affect it(negatively or positively) is via human greenhouse gas emissions. There are additional mechanisms that affect it, there are non human greenhouse gas emissions, there are various feedback loops and trip points only some are known about. - Also, way to remedy. Regarding ozone layer, we just had to ban some chemicals we quickly found replacements for so there was no great sacrifice. Regarding greenhouse gases many people would agree in principle we should lower greenhouse gas emissions, but how do we actually do this? Some countries could build more nuclear power plants, solar and wind are expensive and unreliable unless backed by expensive large scale infrastructure. Then we also have the matter of already emitted gases by developed countries as part of their past development and the perceived hypocrisy of denying same technological advance to developing countries. This leads to ideas that are very difficult to reconcile. For example if there was some kind of global accounting for greenhouse gas emissions that took into account past emissions resulting in a system where developed countries would have to effectively purchase "carbon credits" from developing countries how do we account for underprivileged areas of so called developed countries. No matter how we attempt to resolve this people will consider it unfair and will vote in politicians that will revert it. Please note I didn't even mention the issue of non-compliance from countries such as China (or US). This is why I think there will be essentially nothing done about greenhouse gas emissions on global scale and we should plan for how to deal with the consequences of the change. There is also the risk of well-meaning climate-geoengineering attempts fucking it up really badly, but such attempts shouldn't be that difficult to prevent for state players.
- edmundsauto 7y ago
  Because people could emotionally connect the ozone hole to bad sunburns. Plus, the scope was much smaller, which made it easier to move the needle.

marcosdumay 7y ago

> convince people that ... climate change is real Have you looked on how much easier it was to convince people that the hole on the ozone layer was real? It was a much less observable phenomenon. It was too early on the life of the problem for many people to be affected, and it had much less visible symptoms. Yet, nearly nobody doubted it, and everybody agreed on taking action.

DevX101 7y ago
I think the main reason the world agreed on limiting CFCs to prevent ozone depletion was because there were technological alternatives in HFCs. So adopting the belief that CFCs are dangerous was not that costly because we could just use something else (Notably Dupont fought viciously against ozone regulations because that would have been specifically harmful to the company). But let's imagine for a moment if there were no technological alternatives to CFCs. Where stopping ozone depletion would actually mean giving up on refrigeration and air conditioning. A lot less people would believe that ozone depletion was a real phenomena if the natural consequence of that belief would mean giving up very valuable conveniences. Similarly, I don't think it's a coincidence that public moral attitudes about slavery changed with the advent of agricultural mechanization.
- godelski 7y ago
  I think a lot of people don't realize this. That many beliefs are from culture. Which explains why you can see radical shifts in ideologies even without the "changing of the guard". Some beliefs are deeply rooted personally, but many are deeply rooted socially. But then again, it's easier to blame a single person.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Exactly this. The hole on the ozone layer could be solved, so a huge political movement appeared, solved it, and got away. Compared to that, the only thing one can get from the current discussions about Global Warming is a cognitive dissonance. So people don't care, or actively do not believe. I wonder how far we could go if the political discourse changed from "how do we stop emitting GW gases?" to "how do we increase solar power 100 fold?", "how do we electrify industry and transportation?", and "how do we capture CO2 into synthetic substances?"
DataWorker 7y ago
The utility was obvious. All people had to do was buy a new type of hair spray that didn’t have cfc’s and they were helping to fix the planet. Sales for hairspray went up. Like the point zizek likes to make about recycling being the new system of indulgence. We can feel good about ourselves and absolve any sense of guilt about our wasteful and polluting lifestyles merely by putting cans into the right bin. Behavior is utilitarian. Belief is behavior.
Roark66 7y ago
>> convince people that ... climate change is real Have you looked on how much easier it was to convince people that the hole on the ozone layer was real? >It was a much less observable phenomenon. It was too early on the life of the problem for many people to be affected, and it had much less visible symptoms. Yet, nearly nobody doubted it, and everybody agreed on taking action. I don't think those two problems can be compared like this. There are a lot of differences between them. For example: - Everyone was (or was going to be) universally affected negatively by the hole in the ozone layer while there are a lot of people that stand to benefit from the results of mild global warming (for a concrete example consider opening up of the north passage between Europe and Asia along Russia's coast). - The primary mechanism for ozone layer depletion was very easy to understand - refrigerant gas destroys ozone. Regarding global warming or climate change the way we can affect it(negatively or positively) is via human greenhouse gas emissions. There are additional mechanisms that affect it, there are non human greenhouse gas emissions, there are various feedback loops and trip points only some are known about. - Also, way to remedy. Regarding ozone layer, we just had to ban some chemicals we quickly found replacements for so there was no great sacrifice. Regarding greenhouse gases many people would agree in principle we should lower greenhouse gas emissions, but how do we actually do this? Some countries could build more nuclear power plants, solar and wind are expensive and unreliable unless backed by expensive large scale infrastructure. Then we also have the matter of already emitted gases by developed countries as part of their past development and the perceived hypocrisy of denying same technological advance to developing countries. This leads to ideas that are very difficult to reconcile. For example if there was some kind of global accounting for greenhouse gas emissions that took into account past emissions resulting in a system where developed countries would have to effectively purchase "carbon credits" from developing countries how do we account for underprivileged areas of so called developed countries. No matter how we attempt to resolve this people will consider it unfair and will vote in politicians that will revert it. Please note I didn't even mention the issue of non-compliance from countries such as China (or US). This is why I think there will be essentially nothing done about greenhouse gas emissions on global scale and we should plan for how to deal with the consequences of the change. There is also the risk of well-meaning climate-geoengineering attempts fucking it up really badly, but such attempts shouldn't be that difficult to prevent for state players.
edmundsauto 7y ago
Because people could emotionally connect the ozone hole to bad sunburns. Plus, the scope was much smaller, which made it easier to move the needle.