The Two Sides of the Climate Change Debate

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Clarissa

September 22, 2014

The climate change issue has very kooky people on both sides. There are the denialists who think that “it snowed a lot last winter which means there isn’t any global warming” is an actual argument that it is acceptable to use in conversations with adults. They also have a second argument which sounds something like, “Scientists who study climate change get paid for their work which means there is no global warming.” We haven’t yet heard this argument applied to cancer research but I’m not discarding the possibility we might one day.

On the other side of the issue, we have the believers. If they managed to be at least marginally calm and non-hysterical, they could do a lot of good. Sadly, however, they have chosen as their only strategy the painting of apocalyptic pictures of everybody’s imminent demise amidst excruciating suffering. A psychologically healthy person is not going to listen to this doom-and-gloom howling for longer than two minutes.

So the issue is stuck between the idiots and the weirdos and nothing gets done.

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13 responses to “The Two Sides of the Climate Change Debate”

Shakti

September 22, 2014

Most people aren’t equipped to understand anything beyond their nose or long term, global, systemic problems.
I’m not sure what “calm and non hysterical” climate change rhetoric would look like either.
There are people that only care about fire hazards when they are on fire.

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1. Clarissa
  
  September 22, 2014
  
  The alternative would be a non-apocalyptic kind of rhetoric.
  
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  1. Shakti
    
    September 22, 2014
    
    I understand word prefixes; I’m asking for examples because I literally don’t see the difference between this and this in terms of being considered “calm, rational and non apocalyptic” in most people’s eyes.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      September 22, 2014
      
      I’m obviously not going to read this book right now. But I tried watching Gore’s documentary and I turned it off when the pictures of disappearing cities and the drowning Statue of Liberty started to appear on the screen.
      
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  2. Shakti
    
    September 22, 2014
    
    You saw Al Gore’s documentary? (I haven’t seen it.)
    The second link in my comment was to a Hollywood disaster movie.
    Hence the problem, I suppose.
    
    The first link was to a book I received in middle school for being a runner up in a science essay contest. At the time I read the book, thought, “oh, interesting” and went on with my life.
    
    While I agree that apocalyptic visions have not had the effect that climate change activists want, I disagree that they don’t work as a matter of principle. Hysterical rhetoric and apocalyptic visions are very popular politically in immigration and terrorism debates.
    
    The climate change movement doesn’t offer a vision of what will happen if you adopt some of their proposed measures. It only offers a picture of what will happen if you don’t. That is the crucial flaw — not the gloom and doom.
    
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2. Clarissa
  
  September 22, 2014
  
  The rallying cry of all union organizers is “Yes, we can!” It’s not “it’s all hopeless.” An organizer doesn’t tell workers, “The labor movement is dying, we are fighting an enormous corporation with huge resources, you will be persecuted horribly if you join, etcetera”. No, an organizer says, “We will get the union, we will win our contract, we can do it, together we can.” People are not likely to get energized for action by desperate and sad scenarios. This just isn’t how things work.
  
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  1. paranoid
    
    September 23, 2014
    
    The positive ideas are out there, but the ability to spin the publicity for them isn’t where it could be. http://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13/
    
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3. Clarissa
  
  September 22, 2014
  
  And with all my great respect to you, even your comment of “most people aren’t equipped” – which I heard time and again from climate activists – does not lead to a productive vision of the issue. We can’t persuade the deniers of anything. But there are crowds of good reasonable people who want to hear about climate change but who are repelled by the apocalyptic visions and pessimism.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    September 22, 2014
    
    “most people aren’t equipped”
    
    Well I’m one of those most people. I freely admit that I dont’ have anything like the background to actually work through and understand primary sources in order to form my own opinion.
    I’m left to trust the spokespersons of one side or other and frankly I don’t trust either side very much by now.
    I’m therefore putting it in the “I’m not going to think about this now” pile (which is distressingly high at the time).
    
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thevenerablecorvex

September 22, 2014

Apocalyptic rhetoric is also counterproductive when it comes to climate change, because anyone who keeps hearing for thirty years about how the world is just on the cusp of ending is going to stop believing it, even if it happens to be true.

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n8chz

September 22, 2014

The real reason nothing gets done is because the GPP (gross planetary product) shrinkage involved in addressing it is (probably) comparable in magnitude to the degradation of human flourishing that will result from not addressing it. In short, the human species is between a meteorological rock and an economic hard place.

Show me someone who is thinking non-apocalyptically about either the costs of transformative economic change or the costs of climate change, and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t even begun to understand either problem well enough to come up with a realistic game plan for preventing, mitigating, or adapting global warming. So I don’t buy this notion that climate realists* have anything to gain by sugar coating the relevant information.

*(a term which itself has been massaged to mean its exact opposite, of course)

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1. Clarissa
  
  September 23, 2014
  
  Yet in the very next comment you did recognize that anxiety is a destructive emotion.
  
  Apocalyptic thinking is neither healthy nor normal under any circumstances.
  
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  1. n8chz
    
    September 23, 2014
    
    Perhaps “sober” would be a better word.
    
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