Comment by mitigating | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mitigating | Hacker News Reader

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"builds an easy win for opposition by demonstrably doing nothing of substance "

It has some effect and if you want a big change sometimes it's better to start small. For example, if you wanted to get in shape you start by running a small distance.

"In other words it serves only to be divisive and give an opportunity for people to have strong opinions about something irrelevant; which is actually the point of much of politics, cement your support base by getting people riled up about inconsequential and thus risk free issues."

This is even more disturbing; you think that people on the left (and yes I'm just going to name the sides here) want to help the environment solely to anger the right? I have never met anyone who cares about the environment admitting to me their only and true motive is to anger the opposition.

Is the reason you think this because that's your motive? For example "owning the libs". It is because you can't possibility be wrong about environmental policies that the other side must have another motive?

Do pickup truck owners roll coal on cyclists because they think cyclists are out there riding just to shove that fact in their face? That they are putting all that physical effort as virtue signaling?

No I think politicians don’t give a shit and gravitate towards issues that won’t get them in trouble with actual groups (like regulating industrial fishing waste) and are visible to their constituents and get their constituents motivated. Nothing motivating like a polarizing issue that your voters can argue about. And given the political landscape and how people get elected, the only way you win is by focusing on bullshit issues people can argue about.

> Do pickup truck owners roll coal on cyclists because they think cyclists are out there riding just to shove that fact in their face? That they are putting all that physical effort as virtue signaling?

Do you think the kind of person that does this has another more enlightened reason?

> It has some effect

No.

> You think that people on the left want to help the environment solely to anger the right?

He never said that, and I doubt you have psychic powers.

Environmentalists have always favored ideology over effectiveness.

It is more important to show their friends that they are "doing the work", even though the actual results are almost always worse for the environment.

Seventy years of environmentalists fighting against nuclear power is why most of the US is still powered by coal. Bad for atmospheric carbon, bad for the nation, but great if you make your money from NGOs.

> Environmentalists have always favored ideology over effectiveness.

I don't know if that's actually true or not (it would be worth a macro study). Unfortunately, this is often true for almost every group for whatever it's fighting for. It's ideology that brings people together. This is easily seen in NGOs, and is very well examined in Dead Aid [1]. I highly recommend reading it... emotion is what drives most giving, and almost certainly how people fight for a cause. It's hard to be rational all the time.

> Seventy years of environmentalists fighting against nuclear power is why most of the US is still powered by coal. Bad for atmospheric carbon, bad for the nation, but great if you make your money from NGOs.

Can you give evidence to support that environmentalists fighting nuclear is why we have so much coal? Seems like the coal lobby has been pretty strong lately for their own survival, independent of any environmental concerns.

[1] https://dambisamoyo.com/book/dead-aid/

>Can you give evidence to support that environmentalists fighting nuclear is why we have so much coal? Seems like the coal lobby has been pretty strong lately for their own survival, independent of any environmental concerns.

Nuclear is (or at least can be) long-term cheaper than coal, the biggest cost of nuclear is the initial construction cost which can go way down if the process isn't bogged down with local environmental opposition and if instead of a few one-off plants you have a consistent schedule which allows for effectively mass-produced power plants. Government usage of nuclear scaremongering to prop up power and support the geopolitical struggle with the USSR and the environmental adoption of this attitude put the construction of nuclear plants severely behind and limited research and development of better, cheaper reactors. In other words, much of the cost of nuclear can be attributed to opposition to nuclear which if it had not happened would have resulted in much less carbon being burned for electricity. Lobbyists can do a lot but they can't make major economic benefits magically disappear which is why coal shutdown has been slowed but not stopped by the fact that coal is now among the most expensive electricity and nobody wants to buy it.

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