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> Most people don’t care much about climate I don't think that's true. > Huge sums of money have been spent in an effort to will into existence a mass social

> Most people don’t care much about climate I don't think that's true. > Huge sums of money have been spent in an effort to will into existence a mass social movement to tackle climate change, and it basically hasn’t worked. I think it has worked. Numbers show overwhelmingly around the world people believe the science (even in extreme denier countries like Indonesia they number under 20%), and as your own quoted numbers show, people do want change. > You can get people out to a march, but the people who come are all-purpose leftist activists, which is why you have incredible trouble imposing message discipline and preventing people from showing up with “Free Palestine” and “Defund Police” signs. Most people don't go to "rallies" because they don't see them as having a significant benefit, and they've got other things to do. It doesn't mean they don't support action. Too few people showing up to rallies, or too many "defund the police" signs at them is not the reason really significant action on climate has not happened. I don't buy the cost argument either -- costly, controversial and unpopular policies and legislation have been implemented in countries around the world with far less support than this. Democratic countries have been dragged into wars of aggression. Banks have been bailed out after causing economic crashes and destroying peoples' housing assets. Immigration policies are widely unpopular among many western countries. The list goes on. The ruling class has not had a problem pushing through their horrendously costly and unpopular agenda before, yet they're telling us the greatest problem facing humanity and their singular most important issue has somehow this one time been derailed by the selfishness of the commoners (or even more hilariously, the boogeyman all-powerful unemployed coal miner in West Virginia who doesn't believe the science and is usually a KKK member, a Nazi, perhaps a Russian agent as well, and is somehow pulling the strings of most politicians from both main political parties) Garbage. It's their usual lies and divisiveness. Pretend to be battling valiantly and working themselves to the bone to solve this problem that they don't actually want solved, and blame your neighbor for their faux failures. People need to stop the singular focus on this minority of boogeymen as though they somehow have the power to hold everyone to ransom and the only way to make progress is to reason, plead, or bully them until 100% of them think exactly the same we do. And focus on the real problem which means holding the ruling class to account. And yes, that is likely going to require some very difficult reflection of "your team" and very uncomfortable realization that they have repeatedly promised change and repeatedly failed to deliver it over the decades despite at many times having strong mandates in terms of electoral victories and holding positions of power to make changes if they actually wanted. And make bad, unpopular, and costly changes they did many times, all the while largely ignoring the problem they were repeatedly calling the greatest threat facing humanity.

gruez 5y ago
>I think it has worked. Numbers show overwhelmingly around the world people believe the science (even in extreme denier countries like Indonesia they number under 20%), and as your own quoted numbers show, people do want change. "believe the science" =/= "a mass social movement to tackle climate change" >Democratic countries have been dragged into wars of aggression imminent threat of terrorism is a powerful motivator. abstract threat of lifestyle change in a few decades isn't. >Banks have been bailed out after causing economic crashes and destroying peoples' housing assets 1. the alternative would be an even worse recession, so it was the lesser of two evils. 2. imminent threat vs abstract future threat (see above) 3. what housing assets were "destroyed"? Did the recession set people's houses on fire? Sure, they caused housing prices to tank, but they were inflated in the first place. >Immigration policies are widely unpopular among many western countries. source?
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > "believe the science" =/= "a mass social movement to tackle climate change" A "social movement", going to "rallies" with the correct signs, is not going to tackle climate change. There is more than enough will for significant political action and has been for a some time. I repeat, the enemy is not your redneck boogyman somehow orchestrating everything you think is going wrong with the world, it is your politicians who have repeatedly promised you just need to elect them to solve your problems while never having the slightest intention of doing so. > imminent threat of terrorism is a powerful motivator. There wasn't an imminent threat of terrorism from any of the many recent catastrophic wars and interventions around the middle east and north africa. Fewer people bought that line than want action on climate change. > abstract threat of lifestyle change in a few decades isn't. Lots of people think we have an imminent threat from climate change. Do you have a source for the claim that more people believed the lies that Iraq posed an imminent threat of terrorism? > 1. the alternative would be an even worse recession, so it was the lesser of two evils. That was the claim of course by the politicians who are owned by banks (e.g., https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/15/wiki-o15.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/15/wiki-o15.html). Most likely a lie, certainly the actual response implemented was costly unpopular and terrible compared to what could have been done. And I just listed a few examples of cases where politicians have no problems implementing costly unpopular agenda regardless of what the people want. It was not supposed to be a scientific exact same situation, this is missing the point. > source? Well it's common knowledge. Again this is missing the point, don't worry if you don't know the exact details of all the examples or they don't match 100% exactly with climate change. They're just examples of unpoular costly things politicians do all the time. It's not hard to come up with them. But if you're interested these were among the first 4 links on google https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-018-0071-9 https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/article... "Over the past three decades, research on immigration policy-making has flourished. To explain why so-called ‘Western liberal democracies’ have liberalized immigration despite popular demands for restriction, scholars have pointed at the democratic character of these states. Freeman (1995) argued that immigration policy-making in democracies follows the pattern of ‘client politics’ because the costs of immigration are diffused among the entire electorate, while benefits are concentrated within a small pool of entrepreneurs." https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/Hochschild-FINAL%5B1%5D.pdf https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publicat... "To begin with, the very fact of immigration creates a central puzzle for democratic theory: For several decades, most Western countries have had high and rising levels of immigration even though a majority of their populations consistently want immigration to stabilize or decrease. This public sentiment has been apparent since the early 1960s, when survey researchers first began to investigate the question of immigration. " [and actual survey numbers follow in table 1]

gruez 5y ago

>I think it has worked. Numbers show overwhelmingly around the world people believe the science (even in extreme denier countries like Indonesia they number under 20%), and as your own quoted numbers show, people do want change. "believe the science" =/= "a mass social movement to tackle climate change" >Democratic countries have been dragged into wars of aggression imminent threat of terrorism is a powerful motivator. abstract threat of lifestyle change in a few decades isn't. >Banks have been bailed out after causing economic crashes and destroying peoples' housing assets 1. the alternative would be an even worse recession, so it was the lesser of two evils. 2. imminent threat vs abstract future threat (see above) 3. what housing assets were "destroyed"? Did the recession set people's houses on fire? Sure, they caused housing prices to tank, but they were inflated in the first place. >Immigration policies are widely unpopular among many western countries. source?

throwawaylinux 5y ago
> "believe the science" =/= "a mass social movement to tackle climate change" A "social movement", going to "rallies" with the correct signs, is not going to tackle climate change. There is more than enough will for significant political action and has been for a some time. I repeat, the enemy is not your redneck boogyman somehow orchestrating everything you think is going wrong with the world, it is your politicians who have repeatedly promised you just need to elect them to solve your problems while never having the slightest intention of doing so. > imminent threat of terrorism is a powerful motivator. There wasn't an imminent threat of terrorism from any of the many recent catastrophic wars and interventions around the middle east and north africa. Fewer people bought that line than want action on climate change. > abstract threat of lifestyle change in a few decades isn't. Lots of people think we have an imminent threat from climate change. Do you have a source for the claim that more people believed the lies that Iraq posed an imminent threat of terrorism? > 1. the alternative would be an even worse recession, so it was the lesser of two evils. That was the claim of course by the politicians who are owned by banks (e.g., https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/15/wiki-o15.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/15/wiki-o15.html). Most likely a lie, certainly the actual response implemented was costly unpopular and terrible compared to what could have been done. And I just listed a few examples of cases where politicians have no problems implementing costly unpopular agenda regardless of what the people want. It was not supposed to be a scientific exact same situation, this is missing the point. > source? Well it's common knowledge. Again this is missing the point, don't worry if you don't know the exact details of all the examples or they don't match 100% exactly with climate change. They're just examples of unpoular costly things politicians do all the time. It's not hard to come up with them. But if you're interested these were among the first 4 links on google https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-018-0071-9 https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/article... "Over the past three decades, research on immigration policy-making has flourished. To explain why so-called ‘Western liberal democracies’ have liberalized immigration despite popular demands for restriction, scholars have pointed at the democratic character of these states. Freeman (1995) argued that immigration policy-making in democracies follows the pattern of ‘client politics’ because the costs of immigration are diffused among the entire electorate, while benefits are concentrated within a small pool of entrepreneurs." https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/Hochschild-FINAL%5B1%5D.pdf https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publicat... "To begin with, the very fact of immigration creates a central puzzle for democratic theory: For several decades, most Western countries have had high and rising levels of immigration even though a majority of their populations consistently want immigration to stabilize or decrease. This public sentiment has been apparent since the early 1960s, when survey researchers first began to investigate the question of immigration. " [and actual survey numbers follow in table 1]