7 ms·

One fact from this saga to boggle the mind: a big reason that the international treaties on ozone-harmful chemicals succeeded was because Ronald Reagan, preside

by afry1 4y ago

One fact from this saga to boggle the mind: a big reason that the international treaties on ozone-harmful chemicals succeeded was because Ronald Reagan, president at the time, had skin cancer removed from his nose right around the time that studies on ozone layer depletion were coming out. The issue was low priority for him and his administration, but the fact that he had personally suffered from the effects of excessive UV made it personal for him, and so he eventually pushed for action.

buzzdenver 4y ago
Same hypocrisy with supporting stem cell research after Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimers, but opposing first. Or the Cheneys' attitudes towards same sex marriage after one of their daughters came out as lesbian.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  Is it hypocrisy or just changing one’s mind? I guess I’m generally thankful for people changing their minds rather than sticking steadfastly to one thing (even if that is a good thing).
  - wbsss4412 4y ago
    It’s more just a complete lack of empathy.
    - vntok 4y ago
      On the contrary, it would seem like Cheney was/became rather empathetic to his daughter's situation.
      - stemlord 4y ago
        Caring only about one's immediate blood legacy strikes me as more opportunistic than empathetic when one is a top leader whose explicit responsibility is to work to improve the lives of all citizens.
        Phlarp 4y ago
        On the other hand, this is Dick Cheney we're talking about; an empathetic human response isn't something he's otherwise demonstrated in his business or political dealings.
        dTal 4y ago
        That's not "on the other hand", that's literally the point of the observation.
        Closi 4y ago
        Eh, these people are human though. Different people care about different things, and these change based on personal experience. Empathy is something you feel, rather than something you calculate.
        verisimi 4y ago
        You don't know the human. You only know a character on TV. That character is intermediated for you by many hands. Maybe the character acts in reality as you think, or maybe they are literally acting to gain your approval. We don't know anything about the people presented to us.
        iamthepieman 4y ago
        I would argue that this is how you become a top leader. It's really discouraging to realize that only a certain type of people even want to win a popularity contest. Even dictators are winning the "more popular than the alternatives" contest, though the alternative might just be death. Also that might be the stated responsibility, but the implicit one is to improve the outcomes relative to perceived alternatives. Many times the alternatives area manufactured.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        There's an overall trend that this example fits in where people tend to act on spectrum of outright denial, not caring or actively exacerbating/ridiculing/etc, when it comes to problems experienced by people other than themselves. It's only when they themselves, or someone they care about, experiences something that they begin to care about it. It speaks to a selective empathy, one that is ultimately selfish, because it is only given when it starts to impact them. It is especially selfish when that lack of empathy has benefited them in the past, as well.
        arthurcolle 4y ago
        I feel like this is just how most people behave, for better or worse. I have a set of strongly held opinions about certain things that may or may not be considered socially acceptable and when people I actually know that I care about are experiencing particularly bad consequences as a result of secondary or tertiery effects that "derive from" from views (in the sense of legislation being passed that is in line with the views that I hold, or anything adjacent from this) as such, I sometimes loosen up - isn't this pretty reasonable, natural given that we empathize with people we know more than people we don't know? It isn't really hypocrisy -- it's more of a moderating factor given one's connections with people one might know, assuming the desire to fit in with society and have more pro-social interactions with others.
        Kbelicius 4y ago
        > I have a set of strongly held opinions about certain things that may or may not be considered socially acceptable and when people I actually know that I care about are experiencing particularly bad consequences as a result of secondary or tertiery effects that "derive from" from views (in the sense of legislation being passed that is in line with the views that I hold, or anything adjacent from this) as such, I sometimes loosen up - isn't this pretty reasonable, natural given that we empathize with people we know more than people we don't know? I'd say that it is natural to empathize more with people we know. I'd also say that it is totally unreasonable to ignore what is happening to other people when forming ones opinion on something. Maybe it is normal but I can not understand why you would think that it is in any way reasonable.
      - wbsss4412 4y ago
        If you only care when something affects you/your immediate family, that’s selfishness, not empathy. Empathy is when you recognize the basic humanity of others and are able to put yourself into their shoes and feel what they feel.
  - buildsjets 4y ago
    Yes, it most certainly is. The definition of hypocrisy is claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which your own behavior does not conform.
    - caymanjim 4y ago
      I think it ceases to be hypocrisy when you make a change. It's something, but let's not completely dismiss a positive change. Is that not the entire objective of education and awareness via activism? People deserve credit for acting.
      - buzzdenver 4y ago
        Hypocrisy was probably not the perfect word to use, and I am happy for the positive change. Having said that, it needs to be pointed out when somebody supports policies that disadvantage people right until the point when those policies start negatively affecting them. Maybe "lack of general empathy" is the right phrase, like somebody else in the thread said.
    - hgomersall 4y ago
      There's a necessary extra bit, which is that you seek to change other people's behaviour but not your own. It's critically important that we're able to hold moral positions inconsistent with our behaviour, otherwise moral discourse simply reflects peoples' desires about how they wish to live. Indeed, we see this without any unnecessary charges of hypocrisy (people's moral positions are really just positions of convenience).
  - tinsmith 4y ago
    Even if we abandon the word "hypocrisy" for the sake of this discussion, being unable to care about an issue unless it directly effects you is just as bad, if not worse in some ways.
    - andrew_ 4y ago
      We're a reactive species in general. We rarely act in a proactive manner and require personal experience to change habit and thinking, especially after the age of 25 when neural pathways become harder to change.
      - harry8 4y ago
        Empathy is a thing worth considering, working on, being better at. I try.
      - tinsmith 4y ago
        Harder, but far from impossible. I work with the adult (26+) I/DD population in the US (individuals with developmental disabilities) and one of their biggest challenges is coping with and learning to buffer emotional reactions, while also being able to understand the emotional experiences of others. This often takes years of practice, and sometimes therapy for a neurotypical individual to master. And yet, I see progress regularly enough in the I/DD population that I often wonder what excuse the neurotypical population has when they collectively display a lack of emotional checks and balances, or empathy. We're reactive, sure, but let's not throw that out there and use it to discount the fact that we can, without a doubt, learn to control those reactions. Social change often moves at a glacial pace because of this attitude, when the reality is that it up to us, right now, to break the cycle or change the pattern.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    I think the objection is that they did not change their minds based on the merits of the situation, but because it suddenly was personally. Its hypocrisy because the relavent deciding factor was personal not general.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Sometimes personal acquaintance with a topic has a profound impact on people. Even politicans are human. Look at LBJ.
bcrosby95 4y ago
I don't see why it boggles the mind. There's a significant portion of the population that doesn't care about something until it perceptibly affects them.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Whether reasonable or not, we generally expect loftier motives from our elected officials.
- afry1 4y ago
  The mind boggling thing is that he was the right person at the right time. If some other Republican had been in office, they probably wouldn't have pushed as hard as he did to take action on the issue. And where would we be today if history had gone just a little bit differently? Heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, deforestation, mass extinction, AND I can't go outside without dressing like a beekeeper? It gives me a cold feeling in my stomach.
FooHentai 4y ago
The same Ronald Reagan that had the White House solar panels taken down. Kinda ironic (to me, at least).
refurb 4y ago
Source? Everything I read tells me that’s just a guess. Keep in mind that Dow made billions on CFC replacements.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Carter banned CFCs in aerosol sprays and planned to remove them from refrigeration. Reagan EPA head and Gorsuch mother calls CFC threat an unsubstantiated scare story, DuPont halts work on CFC alternatives, and CFC production peaks during the Reagan administration: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-linden-ozone-hole-history-20180202-story.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-linden-ozone-hol... Reagan removes skin cancer from nose in 1984: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/08/06/reagan-says-cancer-found-on-skin/cc4e4566-cfe9-4586-ac0b-9c0161d89060/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/08/06/r... New Reagan EPA head appointed in 1986 pushes for Montreal Protocol ratification: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/reagan-seeks-to-protect-ozone-layer-1987-1067252 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/reagan-seeks-to-pr...
  - refurb 4y ago
    So basically coincidental information?
  - DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
    That is an extremely tenuous connection.
noneeeed 4y ago
Another reason the Reagan took it seriously was that Margret Thatcher vouched for the science and that it was serious. Before becoming a politician Thatcher was a research chemist (she studied X-ray crystolography under Dorothy Hodgkin) and so understood the science behind it all. She had a brief "green" phase in the late 1980s which helped environmental concerns be seen as less of a "treehugger" thing in the UK and supported the creation of things like the IPCC and the Montreal Protocol. Unfortunately she later reverted to treating it as a political issue. It's frustrating to think about where we might be now if she had continued to treat it as a serious issue that needed cross-politics action rather than treating it as a partisan issue.
- andyjohnson0 4y ago
  > Another reason the Reagan took it seriously was that Margret Thatcher vouched for the science and that it was serious. > Before becoming a politician Thatcher was a research chemist (she studied X-ray crystolography under Dorothy Hodgkin) and so understood the science behind it all. It's worth clarifying that Thatcher's study of crystallography was for her final-year undergraduate dissertation at Oxford. She got a second-class degree in Chemistry, and this was her only earned academic qualification. She did nothing that would be regarded as academic research. As for her work after graduation, she worked for just four years as an industrial chemist at a company that made plastics, before starting a legal career. There is no evidence that she had any particular knowledge of atmospheric science. Perhaps her degree gave her an understanding of chemistry at an undergraduate level, but I'm always a little irritated by her being described as a "scientist" or that she did "research". I don't think that either claim is true.
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    Was her knowledge and familiarity with the subject better than Reagans? Maybe that's why he believed her. She knew some of the societal costs (being a world leader) and some of the science too. Ad Hominem? Makes me a lot irritated, folks claiming that no degree of education is quite enough to understand whatever science they disagree with.
pfdietz 4y ago
The bigger reason was because the benefit/cost ratio of phasing out ozone destroying substances was so large.

by afry1 4y ago

buzzdenver 4y ago

Same hypocrisy with supporting stem cell research after Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimers, but opposing first. Or the Cheneys' attitudes towards same sex marriage after one of their daughters came out as lesbian.

dan-robertson 4y ago
Is it hypocrisy or just changing one’s mind? I guess I’m generally thankful for people changing their minds rather than sticking steadfastly to one thing (even if that is a good thing).
- wbsss4412 4y ago
  It’s more just a complete lack of empathy.
  - vntok 4y ago
    On the contrary, it would seem like Cheney was/became rather empathetic to his daughter's situation.
    - stemlord 4y ago
      Caring only about one's immediate blood legacy strikes me as more opportunistic than empathetic when one is a top leader whose explicit responsibility is to work to improve the lives of all citizens.
      - Phlarp 4y ago
        On the other hand, this is Dick Cheney we're talking about; an empathetic human response isn't something he's otherwise demonstrated in his business or political dealings.
        dTal 4y ago
        That's not "on the other hand", that's literally the point of the observation.
      - Closi 4y ago
        Eh, these people are human though. Different people care about different things, and these change based on personal experience. Empathy is something you feel, rather than something you calculate.
        verisimi 4y ago
        You don't know the human. You only know a character on TV. That character is intermediated for you by many hands. Maybe the character acts in reality as you think, or maybe they are literally acting to gain your approval. We don't know anything about the people presented to us.
      - iamthepieman 4y ago
        I would argue that this is how you become a top leader. It's really discouraging to realize that only a certain type of people even want to win a popularity contest. Even dictators are winning the "more popular than the alternatives" contest, though the alternative might just be death. Also that might be the stated responsibility, but the implicit one is to improve the outcomes relative to perceived alternatives. Many times the alternatives area manufactured.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      There's an overall trend that this example fits in where people tend to act on spectrum of outright denial, not caring or actively exacerbating/ridiculing/etc, when it comes to problems experienced by people other than themselves. It's only when they themselves, or someone they care about, experiences something that they begin to care about it. It speaks to a selective empathy, one that is ultimately selfish, because it is only given when it starts to impact them. It is especially selfish when that lack of empathy has benefited them in the past, as well.
      - arthurcolle 4y ago
        I feel like this is just how most people behave, for better or worse. I have a set of strongly held opinions about certain things that may or may not be considered socially acceptable and when people I actually know that I care about are experiencing particularly bad consequences as a result of secondary or tertiery effects that "derive from" from views (in the sense of legislation being passed that is in line with the views that I hold, or anything adjacent from this) as such, I sometimes loosen up - isn't this pretty reasonable, natural given that we empathize with people we know more than people we don't know? It isn't really hypocrisy -- it's more of a moderating factor given one's connections with people one might know, assuming the desire to fit in with society and have more pro-social interactions with others.
        Kbelicius 4y ago
        > I have a set of strongly held opinions about certain things that may or may not be considered socially acceptable and when people I actually know that I care about are experiencing particularly bad consequences as a result of secondary or tertiery effects that "derive from" from views (in the sense of legislation being passed that is in line with the views that I hold, or anything adjacent from this) as such, I sometimes loosen up - isn't this pretty reasonable, natural given that we empathize with people we know more than people we don't know? I'd say that it is natural to empathize more with people we know. I'd also say that it is totally unreasonable to ignore what is happening to other people when forming ones opinion on something. Maybe it is normal but I can not understand why you would think that it is in any way reasonable.
    - wbsss4412 4y ago
      If you only care when something affects you/your immediate family, that’s selfishness, not empathy. Empathy is when you recognize the basic humanity of others and are able to put yourself into their shoes and feel what they feel.
- buildsjets 4y ago
  Yes, it most certainly is. The definition of hypocrisy is claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which your own behavior does not conform.
  - caymanjim 4y ago
    I think it ceases to be hypocrisy when you make a change. It's something, but let's not completely dismiss a positive change. Is that not the entire objective of education and awareness via activism? People deserve credit for acting.
    - buzzdenver 4y ago
      Hypocrisy was probably not the perfect word to use, and I am happy for the positive change. Having said that, it needs to be pointed out when somebody supports policies that disadvantage people right until the point when those policies start negatively affecting them. Maybe "lack of general empathy" is the right phrase, like somebody else in the thread said.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    There's a necessary extra bit, which is that you seek to change other people's behaviour but not your own. It's critically important that we're able to hold moral positions inconsistent with our behaviour, otherwise moral discourse simply reflects peoples' desires about how they wish to live. Indeed, we see this without any unnecessary charges of hypocrisy (people's moral positions are really just positions of convenience).
- tinsmith 4y ago
  Even if we abandon the word "hypocrisy" for the sake of this discussion, being unable to care about an issue unless it directly effects you is just as bad, if not worse in some ways.
  - andrew_ 4y ago
    We're a reactive species in general. We rarely act in a proactive manner and require personal experience to change habit and thinking, especially after the age of 25 when neural pathways become harder to change.
    - harry8 4y ago
      Empathy is a thing worth considering, working on, being better at. I try.
    - tinsmith 4y ago
      Harder, but far from impossible. I work with the adult (26+) I/DD population in the US (individuals with developmental disabilities) and one of their biggest challenges is coping with and learning to buffer emotional reactions, while also being able to understand the emotional experiences of others. This often takes years of practice, and sometimes therapy for a neurotypical individual to master. And yet, I see progress regularly enough in the I/DD population that I often wonder what excuse the neurotypical population has when they collectively display a lack of emotional checks and balances, or empathy. We're reactive, sure, but let's not throw that out there and use it to discount the fact that we can, without a doubt, learn to control those reactions. Social change often moves at a glacial pace because of this attitude, when the reality is that it up to us, right now, to break the cycle or change the pattern.
- bawolff 4y ago
  I think the objection is that they did not change their minds based on the merits of the situation, but because it suddenly was personally. Its hypocrisy because the relavent deciding factor was personal not general.
Spooky23 4y ago
Sometimes personal acquaintance with a topic has a profound impact on people. Even politicans are human. Look at LBJ.

bcrosby95 4y ago

I don't see why it boggles the mind. There's a significant portion of the population that doesn't care about something until it perceptibly affects them.

woodruffw 4y ago
Whether reasonable or not, we generally expect loftier motives from our elected officials.
afry1 4y ago
The mind boggling thing is that he was the right person at the right time. If some other Republican had been in office, they probably wouldn't have pushed as hard as he did to take action on the issue. And where would we be today if history had gone just a little bit differently? Heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, deforestation, mass extinction, AND I can't go outside without dressing like a beekeeper? It gives me a cold feeling in my stomach.

FooHentai 4y ago

The same Ronald Reagan that had the White House solar panels taken down. Kinda ironic (to me, at least).

refurb 4y ago

Source? Everything I read tells me that’s just a guess. Keep in mind that Dow made billions on CFC replacements.

lern_too_spel 4y ago
Carter banned CFCs in aerosol sprays and planned to remove them from refrigeration. Reagan EPA head and Gorsuch mother calls CFC threat an unsubstantiated scare story, DuPont halts work on CFC alternatives, and CFC production peaks during the Reagan administration: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-linden-ozone-hole-history-20180202-story.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-linden-ozone-hol... Reagan removes skin cancer from nose in 1984: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/08/06/reagan-says-cancer-found-on-skin/cc4e4566-cfe9-4586-ac0b-9c0161d89060/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/08/06/r... New Reagan EPA head appointed in 1986 pushes for Montreal Protocol ratification: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/reagan-seeks-to-protect-ozone-layer-1987-1067252 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/reagan-seeks-to-pr...
- refurb 4y ago
  So basically coincidental information?
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  That is an extremely tenuous connection.

noneeeed 4y ago

Another reason the Reagan took it seriously was that Margret Thatcher vouched for the science and that it was serious. Before becoming a politician Thatcher was a research chemist (she studied X-ray crystolography under Dorothy Hodgkin) and so understood the science behind it all. She had a brief "green" phase in the late 1980s which helped environmental concerns be seen as less of a "treehugger" thing in the UK and supported the creation of things like the IPCC and the Montreal Protocol. Unfortunately she later reverted to treating it as a political issue. It's frustrating to think about where we might be now if she had continued to treat it as a serious issue that needed cross-politics action rather than treating it as a partisan issue.

andyjohnson0 4y ago
> Another reason the Reagan took it seriously was that Margret Thatcher vouched for the science and that it was serious. > Before becoming a politician Thatcher was a research chemist (she studied X-ray crystolography under Dorothy Hodgkin) and so understood the science behind it all. It's worth clarifying that Thatcher's study of crystallography was for her final-year undergraduate dissertation at Oxford. She got a second-class degree in Chemistry, and this was her only earned academic qualification. She did nothing that would be regarded as academic research. As for her work after graduation, she worked for just four years as an industrial chemist at a company that made plastics, before starting a legal career. There is no evidence that she had any particular knowledge of atmospheric science. Perhaps her degree gave her an understanding of chemistry at an undergraduate level, but I'm always a little irritated by her being described as a "scientist" or that she did "research". I don't think that either claim is true.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Was her knowledge and familiarity with the subject better than Reagans? Maybe that's why he believed her. She knew some of the societal costs (being a world leader) and some of the science too. Ad Hominem? Makes me a lot irritated, folks claiming that no degree of education is quite enough to understand whatever science they disagree with.

pfdietz 4y ago

The bigger reason was because the benefit/cost ratio of phasing out ozone destroying substances was so large.