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> You claim that the left is out of touch with reality while you think that we can somehow build a few hundred new nuclear plants ... and that alone will fix t

by Udik 6y ago

> You claim that the left is out of touch with reality while you think that we can somehow build a few hundred new nuclear plants ... and that alone will fix the climate crisis No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if I want to support my theory that a political side has appropriated a real scientific and technical issue to promote a worldview that had long pre-existed the issue itself, what I need to find is at least some cases in which technical solutions are ignored because they don't fit in that worldview. And I think nuclear energy is one such example. > The climate disaster will have to mitigated by stopping polluters from polluting Well, first of all it's not "polluters", it's emissions of CO2. Pollution is a wider issue than climate change which is what we are supposedly talking about. Also, you seem to divide the world in "a handful of rich people" and "people in poorer areas", in a way that resembles a lot the traditional division between "capitalists" and "workers", the ones profiting and the others suffering. But these rich people is us: we use cars, we eat food grown with fertilizers, we use tons of energy for all our daily lives. Separating us from our means of pollution means separating us from most of what we use and need in our daily lives. And you think that this is more realistic than building nuclear plants? I tried googling "climate crisis disproportionally affects" to find some scholarly articles about the third world impacts of climate change (but I was lazy so I didn't add the final 'poorest countries'). This is what I got, a bit surprisingly, as first results: - Why Climate Change Disproportionately Affects Women - Climate change disproportionately impacts those with disabilities - Climate change will hurt poor people the most So I got curious and added 'LGBTQ' to the search string, and there it goes: - Women, LGBT people 'invisible' victims of disasters – experts - Why Climate Change is an LGBTQ+ Issue This stuff makes me extremely suspicious. I'm used to think that reality is entirely indifferent to our justice issues, to our sense of fairness and opportunity: cancer develops in the body of the good and the evil ones; earthquakes don't care if the city above is rich or poor. And yet here we have an example of a physical phenomenon that perfectly confirms and adapts to a range of social and political issues that pre-exist it and that are the domain of a specific political side. But to be more specific, and to take upon the most serious claim, the one that climate change disproportionally affects the poorest countries: 1) it is trivially true that natural disasters affect most the poorest and those who are least organised and prepared to cope with them. It used to happen to us as well. What changed is that we got rich and organised: we made enormous modifications to our environments and societies; we deviated rivers, builts dams, drained swamps, built roads, removed most of the people from the country to highly infrastructured cities and provided them jobs in factories and offices; built schools and hospitals. Mechanisation, chemical fertilisers and genetic research brought us food security. Buildings follow expensive regulations to withstand fires and eartquakes. And on and on and on. What I want to stress here is that we didn't find safety thanks to a gentler climate. We actually consumed enormous amounts of resources to build it. If climate change were to be stopped and reversed now, disappearing as if it had never happened, the people in the poorest countries would only be slightly better off, but they would remain as poor and exposed to natural disasters as they are now. We are fixating on a detail and missing the bulk of the issue. 2) The idea that the poorest countries are paying the price of the development of the richest ones is also pre-existing the climate change issue and it's a very old political stance of the left. Again, it is suprising how a scientific issue exactly confirms a political side in their traditional views. 3) The fact that the "climate crisis" is always happening is some faraway place we have little or no understanding of makes me even more suspicious.

runarberg 6y ago
When I say that the climate disaster disproportionately affects poorer area I’m not saying that natural disaster will target poorer countries. Take a forest fire for example, if it burns through an area with a bunch of holiday houses for rich people—while it sucks—the owners won’t be harmed significantly, they’ll be able to collect on insurance and build the houses again. Now if it burns through a poor neighborhood, most of people living there will now become homeless. When the dust cloud blows over a nearby city, the wealthy residence can seek refuge in their far away holiday houses, while the poorer residence are forced to breath the pollution and develop lung diseases which they can’t afford to be treated for. The same applies to flooding, drought, etc. You seem to agree with this, so I don’t see your point. Polluters make money by making the world a more inhospitable for people other then them self. Aside: Now Lets talk about the word “polluters”. I’m using the word “polluters” in the context of climate change. You know fair well which pollution I’m talking about, there is no need to spin the debate. I use the word polluters because it has a just strong negative connotation. “Greenhouse gas emitters” doesn’t cut it the same way. Polluters deserve to be called on what kind of people they are and the harm they are doing. Aside 2: When I say “polluters” and “means of pollution” I’m specifically talking about major polluters and industrial level means of pollution respectively (that one is on me, I wasn’t clear enough). Unless you are a CEO of a major fossil fuel company you are not the problem. You might even drive those giant pickup trucks on city streets, take 15 air trips a year and eat a meal of meat 14 times a week. You are still not the problem, the people who sold you the truck, persuaded you to take these air trips, and subsidized you meat are. Now to the problem of climate justice being out of touch with reality—which is now the main point of this debate–you can’t just point to silly clickbaity articles to prove your point. First of all, their point may be valid even though their headlines look silly, just because a rhetoric is cliché, it doesn’t make it wrong. Secondly, even if all or most of them are wrong, that still doesn’t disprove the point that ethical issues are closely tight to the climate disaster. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The reality is that the climate disaster is being caused by a handful of criminally negligent people, and the harm they are causing affects people other then them self. Mentioning this fact does in no way shy away from the reality of the situation, hiding it does.
- Udik 6y ago

by Udik 6y ago

runarberg 6y ago

When I say that the climate disaster disproportionately affects poorer area I’m not saying that natural disaster will target poorer countries. Take a forest fire for example, if it burns through an area with a bunch of holiday houses for rich people—while it sucks—the owners won’t be harmed significantly, they’ll be able to collect on insurance and build the houses again. Now if it burns through a poor neighborhood, most of people living there will now become homeless. When the dust cloud blows over a nearby city, the wealthy residence can seek refuge in their far away holiday houses, while the poorer residence are forced to breath the pollution and develop lung diseases which they can’t afford to be treated for. The same applies to flooding, drought, etc. You seem to agree with this, so I don’t see your point. Polluters make money by making the world a more inhospitable for people other then them self. Aside: Now Lets talk about the word “polluters”. I’m using the word “polluters” in the context of climate change. You know fair well which pollution I’m talking about, there is no need to spin the debate. I use the word polluters because it has a just strong negative connotation. “Greenhouse gas emitters” doesn’t cut it the same way. Polluters deserve to be called on what kind of people they are and the harm they are doing. Aside 2: When I say “polluters” and “means of pollution” I’m specifically talking about major polluters and industrial level means of pollution respectively (that one is on me, I wasn’t clear enough). Unless you are a CEO of a major fossil fuel company you are not the problem. You might even drive those giant pickup trucks on city streets, take 15 air trips a year and eat a meal of meat 14 times a week. You are still not the problem, the people who sold you the truck, persuaded you to take these air trips, and subsidized you meat are. Now to the problem of climate justice being out of touch with reality—which is now the main point of this debate–you can’t just point to silly clickbaity articles to prove your point. First of all, their point may be valid even though their headlines look silly, just because a rhetoric is cliché, it doesn’t make it wrong. Secondly, even if all or most of them are wrong, that still doesn’t disprove the point that ethical issues are closely tight to the climate disaster. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The reality is that the climate disaster is being caused by a handful of criminally negligent people, and the harm they are causing affects people other then them self. Mentioning this fact does in no way shy away from the reality of the situation, hiding it does.

Udik 6y ago