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> "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 t
by 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]
- yongjik 5y ago> 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. I don't buy the argument. When France increased the price of gas, they got nationwide "yellow vest" protests that left 11 people dead. In other words, politicians are stalling on the climate change because actually tackling it is a widely unpopular move. If people say they want a cleaner Earth, but qualify it with "as long as fuel prices don't rise," then they have made their priorities known. Politicians are merely following it.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago> I don't buy the argument. When France increased the price of gas, they got nationwide "yellow vest" protests that left 11 people dead. In other words, politicians are stalling on the climate change because actually tackling it is a widely unpopular move. Regressive consumer fuel taxes are a terrible way to fight climate change. Fairly obvious that wasn't it. That was a lie they went to to try get these unpopular taxes though because they know climate change is in fact quite a popular cause. The reality is it's just more of the same governments telling you they're desperately trying to fight climate change and sadly being thwarted at the last minute by these violent racist nazis. You really have to stop believing that claptrap and start holding your failed politicians to account. They are the problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests While some commentators have claimed that the movement was a backlash to policies meant to combat climate change,[115][116] a communique released by the movement calls for a "real ecological policy", including fuel and kerosene taxes for ships and airplanes, but objects to policies like the gas tax that hit the poor and working class most heavily.[117][118]
- yongjik 5y ago> Regressive consumer fuel taxes are a terrible way to fight climate change. Why? A fuel tax is not inherently regressive - it gives the correct incentive, because a gallon of gas not burned is a gallon of gas not burned. It's "regressive" in the sense that poor people are hit harder, and I agree that the French government could have handled it better (well, obvious in hindsight), but there are other policies to help the poor while maintaining the fuel tax. Honestly, I find these "we're actually for the environment" argument suspicious - isn't it rather convenient that the things they want taxed are exactly what they aren't (directly) buying? As it stands now, addressing the climate will require radical policies. Some of them will hit the rich. Many of them will hit the poor harder, simply because they are the most vulnerable, whenever anything changes. There's no such thing as a painless easy fix, held back by evil politicians.