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> If we can’t pass a carbon tax due to lack of political will, find other points of leverage and exert force. It’s remarkable to me how fast people are willing

> If we can’t pass a carbon tax due to lack of political will, find other points of leverage and exert force. It’s remarkable to me how fast people are willing to resort to authoritarianism when they can’t get their way via a democratic process. Jesus, you people scare the fuck out of me.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Interestingly, living within our carbon budget scares you, but not climate change. This is an extremely concerning position to someone like myself who believes in climate change (based on all available evidence). If you’re in your 50s, you won’t even be around when the worst of this hits. You’re ordering dinner for a table you won’t be at when it arrives. Democracy is great when everyone is an educated, engaged, rational voter. It is not so great when significant cohorts are uneducated, ignorant, and/or vote their feelings, or worse, gerrymandering, the electoral college, and other political systems giving overweighted control to political minorities who would otherwise not have the power they have. Citizens should be entitled to representation, but not over representation (which is what holds us back currently).
- kcplate 3y ago
  > Interestingly, living within our carbon budget scares you, but not climate change No. What’s scares me is a bunch of people willing to resort to authoritarianism to impose their will and moralities on other people to get their way who ought to know better from literally the whole of human history. Your argument is the same tired shit I have heard for decades from various groups with an eye and agenda for control and power (evangelicals, fascists, elitists, now these leftist authoritarians) and its always the same lame excuse—“They are not educated and cannot be trusted”.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Saving the rest of us from climate deniers is authoritarianism? It sounds like self preservation to me. We’re just insisting on folks stop ruining the ecosystem the rest of us must survive in. There’s nowhere else for us to go once this one is ruined. ~1.8M voters over the age of 55 age out every year in the US, so while the argument may be tired, older folks won’t have to hear it for long (and change, while constant and inevitable, can be hard to accept).
    - sandspar 3y ago
      Note: Keep this guy in mind.
    - kcplate 3y ago
      You know, nearly every generation that proceeded you made some form of the “preserve the earth and society for when we are your age” argument. Your generation seems to be the only one that I can think of that wants to make it happen via authoritarian means. Once upon a time, us liberals argued against that sort of thing. Probably because we saw first hand what it does to a society. Good luck, like you said, you will need to live under the fist in that world you create, I’ll be thankfully gone.
      - acdha 3y ago
        > Your generation seems to be the only one that I can think of that wants to make it happen via authoritarian means. This is hard to support if you study much history. Every environmental law has been criticized as authoritarian. In the middle of the previous century, Los Angeles had smog so bad it was common not to be able to see across the street and some conservatives argued that doing anything about it was tyranny and would devastate the economy; California’s air quality laws were so effective that they were widely copied and it devastated the economy into 5th place globally. Very few of the critics ever admitted being completely wrong about that, even if they will admit that it’s easier to breathe now. That pattern repeats for water quality, bans on all kinds of pollutants, anti littering campaigns, etc. because there are a lot of industries which have a financial incentive in preserving the status quo. Often those pushes cut across industry lines, too: for example, a decade ago there was an astroturf campaign arguing that DDT restrictions were responsible for malaria deaths (based on people not knowing that evolved resistance was already a major problem in the 1950s), and that appeared to be funded not by the chemical industry but by the tobacco companies who were looking for attacks on public health agencies in Africa in response to successful anti smoking campaigns.
        kcplate 3y ago
        But in all those cases the political process ultimately prevailed to create the laws it needed create to resolve the problem. It was not necessary to toss out the political system and move to an authoritarian one just to make it happen. People may describe things as authoritarian in process, but once the law is established by elected representatives, it is by my definition NOT authoritarian.
  - redserk 3y ago
    Could you provide us your definition of "authoritarianism"?
    - kcplate 3y ago
      I think the parent comment I originally quoted and commented on is a fine example of the attitude I am concerned about. “If we can’t pass a carbon tax due to lack of political will, find other points of leverage and exert force.”
      - acdha 3y ago
        What is your definition of authoritarianism? It can’t be “if you don’t get immediate consensus for a big change, give up and stop trying to fix the problem”. Just in this context, for example, many Americans have been trained to have a strong negative reaction to the word “tax” which leads to many things being done less efficiently using other mechanisms, but it’s hardly authoritarian to find a compromise position following the democratic process.
      - redserk 3y ago
        This isn't authoritarianism. Just to review: In the US, even at the state-level, you elect officials to handle governance on your behalf. You typically elect an official to a lower legislative house, an upper legislative house, and a governor. All 3 must cooperate in some fashion for legislation to become law, unless the state has a stipulation that a threshold of legislative members may override the governor. As a resident you have say in each legislative chamber and for the state-level governor seat. Now, it's the responsibility of a truly functional legislative body to respond to unpopular political objectives by determining if the electorate wants another solution or wants the issue dropped altogether. If the legislative body makes an error, one may vote out their representative via a party primary or via scheduled elections. If they have made a grave error, typically this can be resolved via the courts as a check. While a carbon tax may very well be unpopular due to political will, a bill is proposing an alternative mechanism. This is a legislative body working as designed. So no, this isn't authoritarianism.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Indeed. I'm happy with the Reich's strong stance against the undesirables, and I don't see why the Allies want to impose their will and moralities on us to get their way. Likewise, the Suffragettes are just using authoritarianism to push through the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. And I can't believe those barons are strong-arming the monarch, who near-everyone agrees should be ruling the country, into never enacting a tax without their say-so! Your argument is too general: it 'proves' too much. The way you talk, any kind of social change is 'authoritarianism'.
    - kcplate 3y ago
      Do you really think giving examples of complacency due to fear to an authoritarian regime and a social change process that ultimately resulted in a democratic change somehow disproves my point? I don’t want an authority that is so feared that the people are afraid to speak out against it or cannot be changed.
      - wizzwizz4 3y ago
        There were plenty of people who were die-hard in favour of the Nazis' purges (and still are). There were loads of people opposed to women's suffrage (and still are). I don't know if there were objections to Magna Carta, but if there were, I'm pretty sure complacency due to fear wouldn't have been a major factor. And sure, there was lots of support for reform, in each case… but there's currently widespread support for (the idea of) taking positive action against climate change. Today, there are people afraid that, if they engage in climate activism, they will be evicted from their homes, denied medical treatment, and left to starve to death. Several governments are labelling people 'extremists' for blocking traffic with their (somehow) non-violent protests, and enforcing laws against them that were originally designed for terrorism. > I don’t want an authority that is so feared that the people are afraid to speak out against it or cannot be changed. To be clear: I agree with this. But this definition of "authoritarianism" isn't compatible with what you were originally complaining about. Every action is an imposition of will on the universe: imposition of will is neither the main problem with, nor the characteristic feature of, authoritarianism.
- alephknoll 3y ago
  > Citizens should be entitled to representation, but not over representation (which is what holds us back currently). But it's the climate change advocates like you who are overrepresented? You don't represent the majority. Not just in the US, but even more so globally.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Advocates and activists are almost never the majority. People who agree with the advocates, though? In this case, my search engine says they seem to be. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/09/14/in-response-to-climate-change-citizens-in-advanced-economies-are-willing-to-alter-how-they-live-and-work/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/09/14/in-response-to... https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/09/despite-pandemic-many-europeans-still-see-climate-change-as-greatest-threat-to-their-countries/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/09/despite-pandem... Recent polls suggest that opposition to climate change has decreased in the US in the past few years, but it's still just about a majority (and a clear bipartisan majority, if you only count under-30s). https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/07/14/americans-divided-over-direction-of-bidens-climate-change-policies/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/07/14/americans-div... Do you have a reason to believe otherwise? We all have a tendency to think our views are more common than they are (unless we're, like, being heckled for them in the streets): maybe the people in your local area are disproportionately opposed to anti-climate-change action?
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    https://ourworldindata.org/climate-change-support https://ourworldindata.org/climate-change-support ("Our World In Data: More people care about climate change than you think: The majority of people in every country support action on climate, but the public consistently underestimates this")
    - alephknoll 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - deleted 3y ago
neon5077 3y ago
We've been trying the democratic process for almost a century. This is not fast or sudden at all.
- kcplate 3y ago
  And if you are not able to get what you want from it, then perhaps what you want is not appropriate or desired by the people around you.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Therefore, if something is not currently a law, we should not ever try to make it a law! Georg Hegel was right: we have reached the absolute ideal free society. https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/348 https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/348
    - kcplate 3y ago
      That’s not what I said nor what I was arguing. I quoted the parent commenter in my original comment.
kadoban 3y ago
In what way is this not the democratic process? It's a law under consideration in a state. Is Connecticut not a democracy?
- mortify 3y ago
  It is the democratic process and this is why the country was founded as a republic because they saw democracy as a kind of tyranny by the majority. Even if everyone in CT voted to kill Bob in Granby, it would be illegal although it would be democratic to kill him.
  - kadoban 3y ago
    Is your point that this action is some sort of direct democratic process and thus problematic? I'm having trouble finding any other reading of what you're saying. But it isn't, this is a bill working its way through the state senate. That _is_ the republic part. It's not a ballot initiative.
- kcplate 3y ago
  I was referring to the comment above me.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Interestingly, living within our carbon budget scares you, but not climate change. This is an extremely concerning position to someone like myself who believes in climate change (based on all available evidence). If you’re in your 50s, you won’t even be around when the worst of this hits. You’re ordering dinner for a table you won’t be at when it arrives. Democracy is great when everyone is an educated, engaged, rational voter. It is not so great when significant cohorts are uneducated, ignorant, and/or vote their feelings, or worse, gerrymandering, the electoral college, and other political systems giving overweighted control to political minorities who would otherwise not have the power they have. Citizens should be entitled to representation, but not over representation (which is what holds us back currently).

kcplate 3y ago
> Interestingly, living within our carbon budget scares you, but not climate change No. What’s scares me is a bunch of people willing to resort to authoritarianism to impose their will and moralities on other people to get their way who ought to know better from literally the whole of human history. Your argument is the same tired shit I have heard for decades from various groups with an eye and agenda for control and power (evangelicals, fascists, elitists, now these leftist authoritarians) and its always the same lame excuse—“They are not educated and cannot be trusted”.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Saving the rest of us from climate deniers is authoritarianism? It sounds like self preservation to me. We’re just insisting on folks stop ruining the ecosystem the rest of us must survive in. There’s nowhere else for us to go once this one is ruined. ~1.8M voters over the age of 55 age out every year in the US, so while the argument may be tired, older folks won’t have to hear it for long (and change, while constant and inevitable, can be hard to accept).
  - sandspar 3y ago
    Note: Keep this guy in mind.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    You know, nearly every generation that proceeded you made some form of the “preserve the earth and society for when we are your age” argument. Your generation seems to be the only one that I can think of that wants to make it happen via authoritarian means. Once upon a time, us liberals argued against that sort of thing. Probably because we saw first hand what it does to a society. Good luck, like you said, you will need to live under the fist in that world you create, I’ll be thankfully gone.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > Your generation seems to be the only one that I can think of that wants to make it happen via authoritarian means. This is hard to support if you study much history. Every environmental law has been criticized as authoritarian. In the middle of the previous century, Los Angeles had smog so bad it was common not to be able to see across the street and some conservatives argued that doing anything about it was tyranny and would devastate the economy; California’s air quality laws were so effective that they were widely copied and it devastated the economy into 5th place globally. Very few of the critics ever admitted being completely wrong about that, even if they will admit that it’s easier to breathe now. That pattern repeats for water quality, bans on all kinds of pollutants, anti littering campaigns, etc. because there are a lot of industries which have a financial incentive in preserving the status quo. Often those pushes cut across industry lines, too: for example, a decade ago there was an astroturf campaign arguing that DDT restrictions were responsible for malaria deaths (based on people not knowing that evolved resistance was already a major problem in the 1950s), and that appeared to be funded not by the chemical industry but by the tobacco companies who were looking for attacks on public health agencies in Africa in response to successful anti smoking campaigns.
      - kcplate 3y ago
        But in all those cases the political process ultimately prevailed to create the laws it needed create to resolve the problem. It was not necessary to toss out the political system and move to an authoritarian one just to make it happen. People may describe things as authoritarian in process, but once the law is established by elected representatives, it is by my definition NOT authoritarian.
- redserk 3y ago
  Could you provide us your definition of "authoritarianism"?
  - kcplate 3y ago
    I think the parent comment I originally quoted and commented on is a fine example of the attitude I am concerned about. “If we can’t pass a carbon tax due to lack of political will, find other points of leverage and exert force.”
    - acdha 3y ago
      What is your definition of authoritarianism? It can’t be “if you don’t get immediate consensus for a big change, give up and stop trying to fix the problem”. Just in this context, for example, many Americans have been trained to have a strong negative reaction to the word “tax” which leads to many things being done less efficiently using other mechanisms, but it’s hardly authoritarian to find a compromise position following the democratic process.
    - redserk 3y ago
      This isn't authoritarianism. Just to review: In the US, even at the state-level, you elect officials to handle governance on your behalf. You typically elect an official to a lower legislative house, an upper legislative house, and a governor. All 3 must cooperate in some fashion for legislation to become law, unless the state has a stipulation that a threshold of legislative members may override the governor. As a resident you have say in each legislative chamber and for the state-level governor seat. Now, it's the responsibility of a truly functional legislative body to respond to unpopular political objectives by determining if the electorate wants another solution or wants the issue dropped altogether. If the legislative body makes an error, one may vote out their representative via a party primary or via scheduled elections. If they have made a grave error, typically this can be resolved via the courts as a check. While a carbon tax may very well be unpopular due to political will, a bill is proposing an alternative mechanism. This is a legislative body working as designed. So no, this isn't authoritarianism.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  Indeed. I'm happy with the Reich's strong stance against the undesirables, and I don't see why the Allies want to impose their will and moralities on us to get their way. Likewise, the Suffragettes are just using authoritarianism to push through the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. And I can't believe those barons are strong-arming the monarch, who near-everyone agrees should be ruling the country, into never enacting a tax without their say-so! Your argument is too general: it 'proves' too much. The way you talk, any kind of social change is 'authoritarianism'.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    Do you really think giving examples of complacency due to fear to an authoritarian regime and a social change process that ultimately resulted in a democratic change somehow disproves my point? I don’t want an authority that is so feared that the people are afraid to speak out against it or cannot be changed.
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      There were plenty of people who were die-hard in favour of the Nazis' purges (and still are). There were loads of people opposed to women's suffrage (and still are). I don't know if there were objections to Magna Carta, but if there were, I'm pretty sure complacency due to fear wouldn't have been a major factor. And sure, there was lots of support for reform, in each case… but there's currently widespread support for (the idea of) taking positive action against climate change. Today, there are people afraid that, if they engage in climate activism, they will be evicted from their homes, denied medical treatment, and left to starve to death. Several governments are labelling people 'extremists' for blocking traffic with their (somehow) non-violent protests, and enforcing laws against them that were originally designed for terrorism. > I don’t want an authority that is so feared that the people are afraid to speak out against it or cannot be changed. To be clear: I agree with this. But this definition of "authoritarianism" isn't compatible with what you were originally complaining about. Every action is an imposition of will on the universe: imposition of will is neither the main problem with, nor the characteristic feature of, authoritarianism.
alephknoll 3y ago
> Citizens should be entitled to representation, but not over representation (which is what holds us back currently). But it's the climate change advocates like you who are overrepresented? You don't represent the majority. Not just in the US, but even more so globally.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  Advocates and activists are almost never the majority. People who agree with the advocates, though? In this case, my search engine says they seem to be. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/09/14/in-response-to-climate-change-citizens-in-advanced-economies-are-willing-to-alter-how-they-live-and-work/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/09/14/in-response-to... https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/09/despite-pandemic-many-europeans-still-see-climate-change-as-greatest-threat-to-their-countries/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/09/despite-pandem... Recent polls suggest that opposition to climate change has decreased in the US in the past few years, but it's still just about a majority (and a clear bipartisan majority, if you only count under-30s). https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/07/14/americans-divided-over-direction-of-bidens-climate-change-policies/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/07/14/americans-div... Do you have a reason to believe otherwise? We all have a tendency to think our views are more common than they are (unless we're, like, being heckled for them in the streets): maybe the people in your local area are disproportionately opposed to anti-climate-change action?
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/climate-change-support https://ourworldindata.org/climate-change-support ("Our World In Data: More people care about climate change than you think: The majority of people in every country support action on climate, but the public consistently underestimates this")
  - alephknoll 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago

neon5077 3y ago

We've been trying the democratic process for almost a century. This is not fast or sudden at all.

kcplate 3y ago
And if you are not able to get what you want from it, then perhaps what you want is not appropriate or desired by the people around you.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  Therefore, if something is not currently a law, we should not ever try to make it a law! Georg Hegel was right: we have reached the absolute ideal free society. https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/348 https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/348
  - kcplate 3y ago
    That’s not what I said nor what I was arguing. I quoted the parent commenter in my original comment.

kadoban 3y ago

In what way is this not the democratic process? It's a law under consideration in a state. Is Connecticut not a democracy?

mortify 3y ago
It is the democratic process and this is why the country was founded as a republic because they saw democracy as a kind of tyranny by the majority. Even if everyone in CT voted to kill Bob in Granby, it would be illegal although it would be democratic to kill him.
- kadoban 3y ago
  Is your point that this action is some sort of direct democratic process and thus problematic? I'm having trouble finding any other reading of what you're saying. But it isn't, this is a bill working its way through the state senate. That _is_ the republic part. It's not a ballot initiative.
kcplate 3y ago
I was referring to the comment above me.