If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

it's not just industrialists, we as a society as to look at ourselves and our consumption. Especially those who live in S. California and ruin the world with their greedy choice of living (kidding about the especially)

Of course, and I recognize that; but my point was that the political resistance toward climate change is coming primarily from the big money in fossil fuels who mainline funds to lobbyists, not from Southern Californians.

Altering the semantics of our political rhetoric probably won't make those industrialists feel differently about the proposals themselves.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Industrialists only exist because of willing customers. It's not like every person against green initiatives does it because they've been lied to by Exxon; many are well aware that increased regulations will affect their own bottom line. Americans would be pissed if suddenly our gas prices tripled to European levels.

 

[Einherjar86]

Sure, they probably would.

But those customers aren't willingly giving their money to lobbyists who start a political firestorm over climate change, often by throwing facts to the wind and calling climate change a left-wing hoax.

People can desire their gas prices to be low and for some initiatives to be pursued that counteract climate change. This might be a difficult duality to maintain, but at least it isn't entirely counterfactual.

Ultimately, fuel companies are aiming to provide an effective product that they can make a profit on. That's what businesses do, and we can't hold it against them for doing that. This is why governmental regulations are a necessary aspect of a complex market-based state.

 

[The Butt]

Anyone hear about the festival in Montreal that was cancelled because of protests about Graveland? http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/pr...-black-metal-band-with-alleged-neo-nazi-ties/

Yup. gotta love fighting fascism with authoritarianism, censorship, threats and violence. #NoToAntifa

 

[rms]

imo the most sensible and direct way to attack over-consumption is just to tax the shit out of consumption.

I think most of the energy problems (burning coal over natty) is from home based electrical decisions but I hate VAT's --- corporations never bite the bullet. Little man can't win.

 

[Dak]

Nuclear is the cleanest, most efficient energy source available. Unfortunately there's still a downside (one relatively easily remedied, and it isn't the one that gets the majority of press).

 

[CiG]

Thanks for contributing.

 

[Dak]

Thanks for contributing.

That's the level of his contribution to the board in general, other than a launching pad for reactionary actual contribution.

 

[CiG]

Maybe if we attracted more female tween users.

 

[Einherjar86]

Worth referencing, from John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007):

Realist thinking cannot avoid the threats posed by environmental crisis. Peaking oil reserves and global warming are the other face of globalization - the worldwide spread of the mode of industrial production based on fossil fuels that has enabled the economic and population growth of the past two centuries. This process is not far from reaching its limits, which are not so much political as ecological. Industrial expansion has triggered a shift in global climate that is larger, faster and more irreversible than anyone imagined, while the non-renewable fuels that power industry are becoming scarcer as demand for them continues to rise [footnote to sources on climate change, listed below]. These facts have implications for war and peace, some of which I have touched on in earlier chapters. Yet the military-strategic implications of ecological crisis have rarely been examined, and the subject remains taboo. When a Pentagon group issued a report on 'An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for US National Security' in October 2003, its analysis and proposals were uncongenial to the Bush administration and it was shelved.

The report considered the geo-political consequences of abrupt climate change, and identified food shortages due to increases in net global agricultural production, decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions and disrupted access to energy supplies. The overall effect of these changes would be 'a significant drop in the human carrying capacity of the Earth's environment' - in other words, a reduction in the human population the planet can support.

[...]

The Pentagon report was pioneering in accepting that abrupt climate change could lead to a drop in the planet's capacity to support human life. Its account of the types of conflict that could follow is plausible, though it may have underestimated their intensity. The analysis assumed they would be regional-strategic conflicts with religion playing no part in them, but much of the planet's remaining patrimony of oil lies in Muslim lands, and conflict over resources could be intensified by antagonisms surrounding the 'war on terror'. The risk is that resource war will be mixed with wars of religion and the otherwise far-fetched theory of clashing civilizations become self-fulfilling.

Also, this a few lines on:

It has become conventional wisdom that the basic environmental problem is not human numbers but their per capita resource uses - in other words, the way humans live. In fact, humanity has probably already overshot the carrying capacity of the planet. Current human numbers depend on petroleum-based agriculture, which hastens global warming. Population growth is not always highest in developing countries - it is around twice as fast in the United States as in China, for example - but it is much too high overall for a worldwide switch to alternative technologies to be practicable. A mix of solar power, wind farms and organic farming cannot support six to nine billion people.

 

[Dak]

Obviously at some point you could max out the carrying capacity of the earth. But Malthus was wrong about that number before. We probably won't know until after the fact.

All of that ignores that population growth is already leveling off in most of the world, we just have about ~100 years before things start going the other direction if the current trends continue - unless suddenly the high birthrate Muslim countries start picking up the slack left by everyone else.

I like the sterile talk about "a lack of water in key places". What makes something a key place is something that we have more control over. Like HBB said, stop trying to turn the desert into a lush lawn (for instance).

 

[Einherjar86]

It looks to me like you're making tangential oversights into central aporias.

Obviously at some point you could max out the carrying capacity of the earth. But Malthus was wrong about that number before. We probably won't know until after the fact.

Talk about tautological.

All of that ignores that population growth is already leveling off in most of the world, we just have about ~100 years before things start going the other direction if the current trends continue - unless suddenly the high birthrate Muslim countries start picking up the slack left by everyone else.

That wasn't the point of the quoted sections, and it probably will have very little impact on the environmental changes we've recorded over the past century or so. And according to Gray, it doesn't matter whether population growth is declining because the population has already reached critical mass. It isn't ignoring anything if the point is moot to begin with.

I like the sterile talk about "a lack of water in key places". What makes something a key place is something that we have more control over. Like HBB said, stop trying to turn the desert into a lush lawn (for instance).

Gray isn't talking about California, or any locations that are trying to turn oases into oceans (in a manner of speaking). Again, this is tangential to his argument.

 

[Dak]

Well as far as I can tell he's claiming we are past carrying capacity absent petroleum production, and that petroleum production (resource harvesting in general) is significantly intertwined with politics etc. Well duh. I'm addressing "tangential" stuff because there's nothing interesting there otherwise.

 

[Einherjar86]

I quoted it originally because you (and others) expressed skepticism that political responses to climate change may also yield consequences for the threat of global terrorism. I think Gray cites some convincing evidence for this being the case, and provides some compelling reasons why.

I guess your interests shift with the wind.

 

[Dak]

I quoted it originally because you (and others) expressed skepticism that political responses to climate change may also yield consequences for the threat of global terrorism. I think Gray cites some convincing evidence for this being the case, and provides some compelling reasons why.

I guess your interests shift with the wind.

"Global Terrorism" is vague enough, as is "Climate Change", that I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to suggest some sort of connection. But going green in the US isn't going to alter Wahhabist doctrines.

 

[rms]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trump

Pretty long article, but I think the author is limited on establishing the myth creation and challenging the idea that social media/liberal institutions aren't interested/active in a "PC culture." Her bias against Trump is so strong that it causes her to fail to establish her thesis fully.

Interested to hear other's, especially Ein, as I think he would agree with her premise at the very least.

two quotes from the article;

Political correctness” became a term used to drum into the public imagination the idea that there was a deep divide between the “ordinary people” and the “liberal elite”, who sought to control the speech and thoughts of regular folk. Opposition to political correctness also became a way to rebrand racism in ways that were politically acceptable in the post-civil-rights era.

These pieces committed many of the same fallacies that their predecessors from the 1990s had. They cherry-picked anecdotes and caricatured the subjects of their criticism. They complained that other people were creating and enforcing speech codes, while at the same time attempting to enforce their own speech codes. Their writers designated themselves the arbiters of what conversations or political demands deserved to be taken seriously, and which did not. They contradicted themselves in the same way: their authors continually complained, in highly visible publications, that they were being silenced.

 

[Dak]

I disagree strongly. While there are certainly outlets for "non-PC talk", the established mouthpieces are all incredibly bound by as certain PCness. Furthermore, it is detrimental career wise to be in any way non-PC, insofar as it is vocalized in particular fields. This has both selection effects and production effects in the sciences and in the media and in politics. The author of that paper is so immune to the danger that they are blind to the existence. Or, to attempt to be evenhanded - they are so removed that they do not have the opportunity to see it in effect.

 

[Einherjar86]

Political correctness is a genuine problem, not a fantasy drummed up by the right.

And those on the right don't handle it well at all. Many purposefully go out of their way to be offensive, which is juvenile.

I'd say the platforms for PC and non-PC speech are nearly evenly split, 50/50.

 

[CiG]

50/50 by what reasoning? I agree with the rest of your post though.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well, the internet merely reflects popular opinion, which is pretty divided.

As far as legitimate news, the left has cable news except FOX (the most-watched cable news network in America) and several major online magazines. The right has talk radio, which is a major source of news for conservatives and very extensive; it also has several significant online sites, such as Breitbart, Free Republic, National Review, etc. These all get linked on Facebook fairly regularly.

All things considered, I'd say the access is pretty even for both sides.