Climate Change

Despite all the denialist noise Americans still want to do something about climate change.

That's simultaneously inspiring because that means the will is there and depressing because it's another case of the American government being far less progressive than its citizens.

I chalk it up to combination of not wanting to fall short of meeting the demands of its war machine's efforts to act upon its interventionist foreign policy and lobbying by industrial interest groups that stand to have their profit margins diminished by increased anti-pollution policies.

There are many policy measures that are individually popular but won't sell at the voting booth because of their perceived affiliation with left-right politics.

For example, a recent study showed that people who self-identify as conservatives will reject measures or products that they would otherwise support if they are associated with Obama, liberals, Democrats, or environmentalism.

edited 23rd May '13 8:56:59 AM by Fighteer

I'm just gonna come in and blame Fox News.

If it wasn't for the fact that the republicans are by far in the pocket of big business, we'd be much more advanced in green tech and such.

our political system is such that people have only 2 options, which depending on your point of view vary between good/evil, bad/slightly less bad, completely terrible/not so bad.

Was there a study done recently that some people are less likely to buy the same energy saving light bulbs if the packaging said "environmentally friendly" instead of not.

edited 28th May '13 3:46:55 PM by nightwyrm_zero

Yep

Thats because theres a certain fring of people who assume "I vote republican" means "I cant support being seen as environmentally friendly."

In light of the recent IPCC report, I want to make a few comments:

Honestly, I still believe we can turn the climate change situation around. Yeah, sure, the world is warming up, and that could hurt us. But I still think that not only is it possible to convince mankind of the threat, but that we can and will avert at least some of the worse consequences of global warming, through our own actions.

And, honestly, I think we need to be willing to convince ourselves of that. If we let ourselves be convinced that it's hopeless and that we should give up, it's not likely that we'll be able to bring ourselves to do much, and catastrophe will ensue for certain. However, if we believe that we can do something to stop climate change and improve our future, it'll be that much easier to actually do so.

So, let's start thinking of ideas. I have a couple:

• When we convince people, if nothing else, we need to respect them as people, even if we feel their opinions are wrong. This is as true with global warming as with anything else.
• If we can find ways to reverse carbon emissions, in addition to reducing them, we could theoretically weaken the greenhouse effect back to what it would have been minus pollution, maybe. If we can do that AND stop emitting greenhouse gasses so much, we've got global warming as good as licked.
• And of course, we can't let setbacks like Climategate get to us. As long as we can convince enough people of what needs to be done, we can still stop global warming from wrecking our planet.

Those are some good points.

People like Trump and Duterte want to abandon anti-CC policies because of double standards.