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It's almost like there's a... mass campaign against science and facts! Perhaps spearheaded by the very corporations that benefit from oil and gas extraction! An

It's almost like there's a... mass campaign against science and facts! Perhaps spearheaded by the very corporations that benefit from oil and gas extraction! And orchestrated by politicians who are given vast amounts of money from these companies to tell their party members not to worry, that those who believe in all this are damn dirty liars and to continue to spend spend spend!

doitLP 3y ago
It’s almost like…several major scientific and political institutions spent the last 3 years destroying what little trust they had left, campaigning under the banner of “trust the science!” /s The information war rages on both sides. But the fact remains that too much doomerism without any clear way for an individual to make a difference and politicians carrying on like normal leads to apathy. Our movies and TV are already saturated with barren hellscapes. Why confront the actual reality when you feel powerless to stop it, and doing anything necessarily means austerity?
akira2501 3y ago
Or fatigue. You can't continually hype total doom and "near catastrophes" lacking any sort of solution, and in some cases explicitly denying that there even could be a solution, for a decade and expect people to keep showing up to care. This recent version of climate doomerism lacks all practicality and provides no solutions other than total tyranny of the state over the individual, for your own good, of course. It appears to me that the movement has been fully captured by politicians who are no longer interested in actual science or engineering of solutions. Personally, I checked out about a year ago. As I suspect the people pushing this message the hardest don't actually want to work with me to improve the future, they just want to control my purchasing decisions.
- fnimick 3y ago
  If you mean you can't purchase stuff that would harm the planet.... yeah? That's how a solution works? We can't say "everyone has the freedom to pollute as much as they want" and get through this.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    There is so much international shipping of consumer goods that the entire shipping fleet is the 5th largest source of pollution on the planet. It outranks most nation states. From here you could address the wage issues that cause this amount of shipping to occur in the first place. You could make the fleet more efficient and use newer technologies and fuels that pollute less. You could simply incorporate the cost of that pollution into the "cheap" consumer products so conveyed through one of any of a dozen means. You could do all of these at once. So, my point would be, where is the prioritization here? It seems like corporate profits come first, then environmentalism entirely at the consumers expense comes next, mostly to make the corporations feel better about their blood money. And.. I'm supposed to be on board with this because of "sustainability?" I'm on board. The issues do actually need to be addressed. I don't believe we are currently doing that in any meaningful way.
    - sfn42 3y ago
      Nah man, just you and me we start buying less stuff and this whole corporate machine grinds to a halt by the power of our wallets. /s
mdasen 3y ago
I'd expand on this to say that it's not just a campaign against science and facts. It's also a campaign that certain ways of living are a lifestyle or even essential. If something is essential, then even if it's killing the planet we can't do anything to change that. For example, living in a suburban house with multiple trucks/SUVs and driving a lot is seen as part of a lifestyle that borders on essential. Suggesting that people can drive smaller, more efficient vehicles will receive such vitriol in so many parts of society. Suggesting that cars should pay for their road use will get people attacking you in online forums. Even the right-leaning Tax Foundation believes that drivers pay for about half of their road costs - and they don't account for things like pollution [1]. Drivers will say that their gas taxes, tolls, and registration fees fund the roads they use, but that really isn't the case. When we map out carbon emissions, cities do very well and suburbs often use 2-3x more than cities [2]. It's not just a campaign against science and facts. It's also a campaign that pushes a narrative that many of the things that pollute are what you should desire in life. You should want a big grass lawn. You should want a large vehicle that can fit 5-10x more than you normally carry on a given day. I think it's also tough because many of the things we need in order to combat climate change will require an amount of change that can cause resistance. Taking space away from cars for bike or bus lanes means that if you made the choice to live in a car-dependent area, you can find your commute getting slightly worse. It's usually not as bad as drivers fear because more efficient transit options often divert a lot of people who would end up as traffic with the drivers, but it does make things slightly worse. Housing is the biggest investment in most households and two-thirds of Americans own their homes - higher in car-dependent areas. Telling such a large group of people that they made a slightly worse choice is hard. Even if their investment is secure, it might not be as positive as they had assumed. Right now in Arizona, there are huge water issues in communities that haven't secured long-term water resources. People bought houses, invested their money, and they want the government to ensure their investment is prosperous - which means having access to affordable, abundant water. They don't want to be told that they shouldn't have built outside of the Scottsdale municipal boundaries and that there was a reason the land was cheap there. Likewise, suburban owners don't want to be told that their location isn't as sustainable and that in order to ensure life on the planet we'll need to wean them off of parts of their lifestyle (which will become more expensive compared to urban dwellers). It's hard to change how people think about their world and their position in it. So many people think of cities as "that's now how I live." We've spent the better part of a century painting a picture of what prosperity means that is now running into the reality of climate change. It's not just the campaign against science. It's also about how we've shaped what people think of as good and desirable; what they see as their lifestyle and even what they see as essential. There are lots of suburban Democrats who believe in climate change, want the government to address it, but will balk at the idea of driving less, increasing housing density, or living in a slightly smaller home that doesn't require as much fuel. They'd rather talk about giving up straws while their cars put out way more micro plastics from their tires. They want to find the things that they can "sacrifice" without major lifestyle changes. The campaign against science is important. I think the social perception of what defines prosperity and a good lifestyle is also important. It's been shaped by decades of policy and media and it can be hard to combat even when you're in a circle of people who believe in climate change. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ [2] https://coolclimate.org/maps https://coolclimate.org/maps
morkalork 3y ago
Don't worry, those just stop oil protesters blocking roads for the average citizen will save us!
- hellomyguys 3y ago
  Mocking protestors feels a bit like punching down. They're just regular people trying to do anything possible to wake people up. Not their fault those with power seem to be doing very little to change things meaningfully.
  - fnimick 3y ago
    "Those with power" are the voters, the vast majority of whom would gladly run them all over in order to save a few dollars. We're getting exactly what we deserve.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Remember, republicans regularly vote because "gas went up" while they choose to drive a pickup truck that gets half the fuel economy of other options while they never even use the truck bed, and while they ignore that if gas going up a few cents a gallon significantly impacts your financial situation then you were in a very bad place already and you should maybe consider how that happend (it's probably not the liberals who have had like six years of total fed control over the past 40 years and have basically never held power in actual states) and also you can cut your fuel usage in so many goddamn ways that don't involve voting for the party that refuses to allow military appointments because he's upset that we allow trans people in the army.
      - fnimick 3y ago
        People regularly vote because "gas went up". It's not just Republicans. Unfortunately the party that says "climate change is a hoax and you don't have to change" is always going to win over the one that says "we have to conserve and you have to live less luxuriously in order for us to make it." I live in a liberal area. Hardly any Trump voters here. Getting people to drive slightly less or even allowing a bike lane to allow other people to drive slightly less is viewed as the apocalypse.

doitLP 3y ago

It’s almost like…several major scientific and political institutions spent the last 3 years destroying what little trust they had left, campaigning under the banner of “trust the science!” /s The information war rages on both sides. But the fact remains that too much doomerism without any clear way for an individual to make a difference and politicians carrying on like normal leads to apathy. Our movies and TV are already saturated with barren hellscapes. Why confront the actual reality when you feel powerless to stop it, and doing anything necessarily means austerity?

akira2501 3y ago

Or fatigue. You can't continually hype total doom and "near catastrophes" lacking any sort of solution, and in some cases explicitly denying that there even could be a solution, for a decade and expect people to keep showing up to care. This recent version of climate doomerism lacks all practicality and provides no solutions other than total tyranny of the state over the individual, for your own good, of course. It appears to me that the movement has been fully captured by politicians who are no longer interested in actual science or engineering of solutions. Personally, I checked out about a year ago. As I suspect the people pushing this message the hardest don't actually want to work with me to improve the future, they just want to control my purchasing decisions.

fnimick 3y ago
If you mean you can't purchase stuff that would harm the planet.... yeah? That's how a solution works? We can't say "everyone has the freedom to pollute as much as they want" and get through this.
- akira2501 3y ago
  There is so much international shipping of consumer goods that the entire shipping fleet is the 5th largest source of pollution on the planet. It outranks most nation states. From here you could address the wage issues that cause this amount of shipping to occur in the first place. You could make the fleet more efficient and use newer technologies and fuels that pollute less. You could simply incorporate the cost of that pollution into the "cheap" consumer products so conveyed through one of any of a dozen means. You could do all of these at once. So, my point would be, where is the prioritization here? It seems like corporate profits come first, then environmentalism entirely at the consumers expense comes next, mostly to make the corporations feel better about their blood money. And.. I'm supposed to be on board with this because of "sustainability?" I'm on board. The issues do actually need to be addressed. I don't believe we are currently doing that in any meaningful way.
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Nah man, just you and me we start buying less stuff and this whole corporate machine grinds to a halt by the power of our wallets. /s

mdasen 3y ago

I'd expand on this to say that it's not just a campaign against science and facts. It's also a campaign that certain ways of living are a lifestyle or even essential. If something is essential, then even if it's killing the planet we can't do anything to change that. For example, living in a suburban house with multiple trucks/SUVs and driving a lot is seen as part of a lifestyle that borders on essential. Suggesting that people can drive smaller, more efficient vehicles will receive such vitriol in so many parts of society. Suggesting that cars should pay for their road use will get people attacking you in online forums. Even the right-leaning Tax Foundation believes that drivers pay for about half of their road costs - and they don't account for things like pollution [1]. Drivers will say that their gas taxes, tolls, and registration fees fund the roads they use, but that really isn't the case. When we map out carbon emissions, cities do very well and suburbs often use 2-3x more than cities [2]. It's not just a campaign against science and facts. It's also a campaign that pushes a narrative that many of the things that pollute are what you should desire in life. You should want a big grass lawn. You should want a large vehicle that can fit 5-10x more than you normally carry on a given day. I think it's also tough because many of the things we need in order to combat climate change will require an amount of change that can cause resistance. Taking space away from cars for bike or bus lanes means that if you made the choice to live in a car-dependent area, you can find your commute getting slightly worse. It's usually not as bad as drivers fear because more efficient transit options often divert a lot of people who would end up as traffic with the drivers, but it does make things slightly worse. Housing is the biggest investment in most households and two-thirds of Americans own their homes - higher in car-dependent areas. Telling such a large group of people that they made a slightly worse choice is hard. Even if their investment is secure, it might not be as positive as they had assumed. Right now in Arizona, there are huge water issues in communities that haven't secured long-term water resources. People bought houses, invested their money, and they want the government to ensure their investment is prosperous - which means having access to affordable, abundant water. They don't want to be told that they shouldn't have built outside of the Scottsdale municipal boundaries and that there was a reason the land was cheap there. Likewise, suburban owners don't want to be told that their location isn't as sustainable and that in order to ensure life on the planet we'll need to wean them off of parts of their lifestyle (which will become more expensive compared to urban dwellers). It's hard to change how people think about their world and their position in it. So many people think of cities as "that's now how I live." We've spent the better part of a century painting a picture of what prosperity means that is now running into the reality of climate change. It's not just the campaign against science. It's also about how we've shaped what people think of as good and desirable; what they see as their lifestyle and even what they see as essential. There are lots of suburban Democrats who believe in climate change, want the government to address it, but will balk at the idea of driving less, increasing housing density, or living in a slightly smaller home that doesn't require as much fuel. They'd rather talk about giving up straws while their cars put out way more micro plastics from their tires. They want to find the things that they can "sacrifice" without major lifestyle changes. The campaign against science is important. I think the social perception of what defines prosperity and a good lifestyle is also important. It's been shaped by decades of policy and media and it can be hard to combat even when you're in a circle of people who believe in climate change. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ [2] https://coolclimate.org/maps https://coolclimate.org/maps

morkalork 3y ago

Don't worry, those just stop oil protesters blocking roads for the average citizen will save us!

hellomyguys 3y ago
Mocking protestors feels a bit like punching down. They're just regular people trying to do anything possible to wake people up. Not their fault those with power seem to be doing very little to change things meaningfully.
- fnimick 3y ago
  "Those with power" are the voters, the vast majority of whom would gladly run them all over in order to save a few dollars. We're getting exactly what we deserve.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Remember, republicans regularly vote because "gas went up" while they choose to drive a pickup truck that gets half the fuel economy of other options while they never even use the truck bed, and while they ignore that if gas going up a few cents a gallon significantly impacts your financial situation then you were in a very bad place already and you should maybe consider how that happend (it's probably not the liberals who have had like six years of total fed control over the past 40 years and have basically never held power in actual states) and also you can cut your fuel usage in so many goddamn ways that don't involve voting for the party that refuses to allow military appointments because he's upset that we allow trans people in the army.
    - fnimick 3y ago
      People regularly vote because "gas went up". It's not just Republicans. Unfortunately the party that says "climate change is a hoax and you don't have to change" is always going to win over the one that says "we have to conserve and you have to live less luxuriously in order for us to make it." I live in a liberal area. Hardly any Trump voters here. Getting people to drive slightly less or even allowing a bike lane to allow other people to drive slightly less is viewed as the apocalypse.