While the planet burns our politicians fiddle
theglobeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
I've been told repetitively that I'm wrong to "believe" in climate change, I hope I am, at that point: being wrong is our only way for salvation.
But thanks for the comment ... It clearly illustrates that plenty of pro-global-warming people don't care about global warming except as a way to get their will done on other issues, in this case campaign financing.
The present political mess, including in the US and in the UK, and across Europe is clear fall-out from these problems.
In this context, imposing further high-taxes to restrict energy use is political suicide, and simply won't happen.
In the longer-term, moving to wind and solar will help, especially as energy storage technologies improve. Countries such as Spain and Portugal are showing us the way in this respect.
The governments (its actors, known or unknown) are the ones with considerable resources and power consolidated in a few hands and intelligence agencies leaders who write books about deceiving their own people saying "we'll know our job is complete when everything the american people believe is a lie".
USA is mired in military action in 76 countries that we know of - USA was at war for every single day of all 8 years of Obama's presidencies - Drone Strikes, Mass Heroin overdoses, San Francisco homeless & human feces poop map's but we finally got those plastic straws replaced with good old american democracy and know how.
What a contrast. What prioritizing.
With every passing day, more and more people are starting to realize it's not ineptitude, it's deceit. And the more heed paid to the government, the more reliance on and guidance from the government - the worse.
The main deceit comes from right-wing populist disinformation.
You can also read Thomas Piketty on how wealth inequality allows the very wealthy to spend money to influence politics. In the US, that's taken the form of anti-government disinformation.
>the more heed paid to the government, the more reliance on and guidance from the government - the worse
What does this even mean? Are you ideologically opposed to mandating seat belts and fire codes and that kind of thing or are you only talking about climate change when you say "the more heed paid to the government, the more reliance on and guidance from the government - the worse."?
The problems we cause "take too long" to become an problem in the influencial lifetime of the most powerful people in our society, so it is always the problem of someone else until it is too late.
Is there a technology-based solution to this? I don't know, but maybe technology could be used to improve the tragedy of the commons issues that are wrecking the planet. Please unflag this post.
+1 Please unflag this post.
And as much as I want to blame politicians as an easy target, it's still a democracy and they are ultimately just reflecting the views of the public. The Seattle Times is running stories on the wildfire smoke, and their comment section is depressingly filled to the brim with nonsense like "ACTUALLY this is because the environmentalists clear out underbrush and create more forest fires, CHECKMATE LIBRULZ". We're going to sink under the waves still screaming culture war nonsense with our last breaths.
Seems more like a reflection of the views of corporations than the public
Climate change obviously plays a role, but it's not the primary driver.
I think some activist groups and the media are purposefully muddying the water on this issue.
http://mjr.jour.umt.edu/how-journalists-fan-the-flames-of-wi...
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2018/08/western-washington-smo...
(he's not an expert, so take it with a grain of salt)
I don't condone dishonesty or propaganda, but using these events to help point out that a) climate change is really happening, b) it's not just a few extra hot days during the summer, seems perfectly okay.
FWIW, here in BC the 3 summers that we had fires coincided with the record beating heat.
The consequences of bad forest management from earlier decades will still play out for a while longer, but now that the correct policies are in place, it will cease to become an excuse, while the consequences of climate change are only going to worsen. Forests have been increasingly drier and hotter. Logging activity has cut down the most fire resistant trees and replaced it with flammable young ones. Trump suggests to increase logging and blame the liberals. When politicians blame forest management from a century ago, it is an argument in bad faith, as a way to ignore the myriad impacts of climate change. We should be constantly improving our forest management, yes, but it's something already being worked on, while there is so much resistance to policies to reduce climate change.
In my experience, many of those in the disinformation bubble have no idea that climate change denial benefits oil and gas companies and is heavily funded by them.
If you’re interested in disinformation and how it affects climate change policy, the book and movie Merchants of Doubt is really great- it explains some of the strategies used.
You could give conservatives great environmental solutions for free, and they'd still reject them, because they know liberals would like it. They hate wind power, hate solar power, and it's got nothing to do with economics. Yet they like nuclear power. Why? Hippies don't like it.
And I don't think the politicians are close to blameless. They've cultivated this for 25 years. They're not just reflecting the will of the people, they're shaping it.