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The interests opposed to actual change are the oil+coal industry most obviously, but also the rich more generally who are opposed to the redistribution which is
by ihm 6y ago
The interests opposed to actual change are the oil+coal industry most obviously, but also the rich more generally who are opposed to the redistribution which is necessary to make real climate action politically viable. (We will need to reduce certain forms of carbon-intensive production, and without wealth redistribution to compensate for that, the resulting society will be unstable.)
Unfortunately we can't wait for the coal industry or the rich to die, they reproduce themselves.
- lopmotr 6y agoThere are also people, like myself, who just don't like the negativity of it all. We want progress and not regression but are told to use less of this, do less of that, ban this, ban that. But most importantly, stop looking forward to a brighter future for humanity. We should move backwards, not forwards. Destroy what we've created and make the future worse than the present because good things are bad, like puritanism. For optimistic people, this is just painful. For hopeless aimless people, it might give them a sense of something to fight for.
- ihm 6y agoTotally agree. That’s the idea the Green New Deal tries to articulate. The book “A Planet to Win”[0] describes a detailed vision of how we can come out of a transition off fossil fuels as a stronger, more prosperous society. To quote some reviews “the tone of the book is urgent and pragmatic. It's also refreshingly optimistic and future-oriented, filled with specific ideas.... Their portrait of a planet transformed by the [Green New Deal] is designed to spark that effort." And "its optimism is inspiring....The authors’ battle-ready tone on this score breaks with the often moralistic and soul-searching mode of some of the higher-profile climate books of the last few years." [0]: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3107-a-planet-to-win https://www.versobooks.com/books/3107-a-planet-to-win