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"The boy who cried wolf." They need to be more selective if they want to be taken seriously. Maybe this one is serious, but how are we to know if they fight eve

by paul_f 5y ago

"The boy who cried wolf." They need to be more selective if they want to be taken seriously. Maybe this one is serious, but how are we to know if they fight everything?

Retric 5y ago
We are not the ones reading these petitions, so it’s arguably irrelevant what we think about them. I suspect many environmental groups do limit themselves to reasonable exceptions, but when any group can do something some will object to everything. As such it’s not about environmental groups doing this but rather specific groups.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > As such it’s not about environmental groups doing this but rather specific groups. After a while, you get to the point where it's up to the "environmental groups" to police themselves: If The Reasonably Lush Greens don't want all environmental concerns to be written off as Luddite obscurantism, then The Reasonably Lush Greens should regularly put out press releases like "One-in-a-trillion Risk Of Poison Gas Discharge, While Technically Existant, Is Negligible -- The Fanatical Neon Greens Are Spreading BS". Really, honestly. Until they can do that, I'm not going to take either seriously. Why should anyone? Isn't that like accepting some rather-ultra-right movement because "But hey, they're not actually advocating gassing all the Jews... They just refuse to condemn the ones who DO advocate it." ?
  - Retric 5y ago
    Except these aren’t meaningless issues, any construction has negative environmental impacts they just not have negative impacts in everything. Group A wants to protect wetlands, group B wants to protect deserts. Collectively their going to object to more projects than they do individually. It’s not group A’s job to police group B, and they are definitely not talking to you.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > Except these aren’t meaningless issues Has anyone said they are, or are you just tilting at windmills? > It’s not group A’s job to police group B At the moment, that is (obviously, judging from your comment) how most people see it. What I'm saying is it should be their job. > and they are definitely not talking to you. Oh? Funny, here I thought groups with a political agenda are actually talking to everybody, in an effort to get wide-spread support for their agenda (environmental or whatever it may be). And if they're not talking to me, then whom are they talking to? If not me, as one of the general electorate, then apparently not to anybody else in that general group either, but only to some rarefied few? The particular "stakeholders" in each particular issue, perhaps? Then WTF is the use of making their letter to those administrators an "open" letter, for everyone else to see? But OK, great, if they're not talking to us, the great unwashed public, then we are of course free to ignore whatever they have to say. It's not us they're talking to, after all. (Are you quite sure you had thought that through all the way to its logical conclusion, and that you're speaking for them all in this?)
      - Retric 5y ago
        It’s not that they are ignoring you because they don’t care. Talking to the general public is expensive, only some groups have funding for meaningful outreach. Filling out some paperwork is dramatically less expensive, thus individual groups allocate their funds based on their objectives. And of course anyone can call themselves an environmental group, many of them care more about NIMBY than the environment. Honestly, I simply view this as a free speech issue. Anyone can object to anything for any reason and that’s OK. It’s only going to be obstructionist when they have a point.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        > I simply view this as a free speech issue. Anyone can object to anything for any reason and that’s OK. As long as they do so by just generally exercising their free speech, sure. I got the impression the problem with the German Greens is that they go beyond this. > It’s only going to be obstructionist when they have a point. No, it's far more obstructionist when they don't have a point, and still protest not only in a general participating-in-the-debate fashion but by lodging formal complaints in various municipal and regional environmental-protection processes, over shit they know (or should have known) is irrelevant / insignificant / impossible. "Gumming up the works" for no real reason. And that's the impression I got from comments up-threads of what (at least many of) the German Greens are doing.

by paul_f 5y ago

"The boy who cried wolf." They need to be more selective if they want to be taken seriously. Maybe this one is serious, but how are we to know if they fight everything?

Retric 5y ago

We are not the ones reading these petitions, so it’s arguably irrelevant what we think about them. I suspect many environmental groups do limit themselves to reasonable exceptions, but when any group can do something some will object to everything. As such it’s not about environmental groups doing this but rather specific groups.

CRConrad 5y ago
> As such it’s not about environmental groups doing this but rather specific groups. After a while, you get to the point where it's up to the "environmental groups" to police themselves: If The Reasonably Lush Greens don't want all environmental concerns to be written off as Luddite obscurantism, then The Reasonably Lush Greens should regularly put out press releases like "One-in-a-trillion Risk Of Poison Gas Discharge, While Technically Existant, Is Negligible -- The Fanatical Neon Greens Are Spreading BS". Really, honestly. Until they can do that, I'm not going to take either seriously. Why should anyone? Isn't that like accepting some rather-ultra-right movement because "But hey, they're not actually advocating gassing all the Jews... They just refuse to condemn the ones who DO advocate it." ?
- Retric 5y ago
  Except these aren’t meaningless issues, any construction has negative environmental impacts they just not have negative impacts in everything. Group A wants to protect wetlands, group B wants to protect deserts. Collectively their going to object to more projects than they do individually. It’s not group A’s job to police group B, and they are definitely not talking to you.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > Except these aren’t meaningless issues Has anyone said they are, or are you just tilting at windmills? > It’s not group A’s job to police group B At the moment, that is (obviously, judging from your comment) how most people see it. What I'm saying is it should be their job. > and they are definitely not talking to you. Oh? Funny, here I thought groups with a political agenda are actually talking to everybody, in an effort to get wide-spread support for their agenda (environmental or whatever it may be). And if they're not talking to me, then whom are they talking to? If not me, as one of the general electorate, then apparently not to anybody else in that general group either, but only to some rarefied few? The particular "stakeholders" in each particular issue, perhaps? Then WTF is the use of making their letter to those administrators an "open" letter, for everyone else to see? But OK, great, if they're not talking to us, the great unwashed public, then we are of course free to ignore whatever they have to say. It's not us they're talking to, after all. (Are you quite sure you had thought that through all the way to its logical conclusion, and that you're speaking for them all in this?)
    - Retric 5y ago
      It’s not that they are ignoring you because they don’t care. Talking to the general public is expensive, only some groups have funding for meaningful outreach. Filling out some paperwork is dramatically less expensive, thus individual groups allocate their funds based on their objectives. And of course anyone can call themselves an environmental group, many of them care more about NIMBY than the environment. Honestly, I simply view this as a free speech issue. Anyone can object to anything for any reason and that’s OK. It’s only going to be obstructionist when they have a point.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > I simply view this as a free speech issue. Anyone can object to anything for any reason and that’s OK. As long as they do so by just generally exercising their free speech, sure. I got the impression the problem with the German Greens is that they go beyond this. > It’s only going to be obstructionist when they have a point. No, it's far more obstructionist when they don't have a point, and still protest not only in a general participating-in-the-debate fashion but by lodging formal complaints in various municipal and regional environmental-protection processes, over shit they know (or should have known) is irrelevant / insignificant / impossible. "Gumming up the works" for no real reason. And that's the impression I got from comments up-threads of what (at least many of) the German Greens are doing.