Are We Making Progress in Our Discussions on Climate Change?
Frequent commenter Cameron Atwood notes: Climate denialists in congress have now slowly gone from claiming human climate disruption is “a hoax,” to “it’s nature, not humans,” to admitting “I’m not a scientist.” I’d say that’s a little progress.
I guess you’re right that this represents progress, though, to be honest, I’m not sure which one’s more ludicrous. Following an assertion about science with “I’m not qualified to speak on the science” is absurd.
Isn’t it? Maybe I’m just not getting this. Certainly their audience doesn’t seem to notice ….
To me, it’s no less ridiculous than my saying “the S&P 500 is about to see a 15% correction” and then to say, “you are, of course, aware that I really don’t know anything about the stock market.”
Craig: I think you are right in what you say.
I “feel” things are changing slowly, but not at the “influential level”, rather among young students, who will become influential in the near future; but is it soon enough?
We don’t have much time to react, and each day we have less. (can’t wait for the students to become professionals and then enterpreneurs and then…)
I gave a speach about my wind turbines and renewable energy at the national university got an incredible interest as soon as they realized we CAN do something if we dedicate the time and effort. The private universities seem to be interested (but there is no money…)
But as you say: we have to continue to push and get the message out that there is a way, but it’s rapidly going to be too late.
Truth — Non-Violence — Cooperation — Direct Action — Perseverance
Craig,
You have to realize that the November elections were decided by ~34% of the population.
The young and the minorities didn’t show up to vote because they never do during the off-year elections… but far less of anyone else showed up to vote as well. I believe that had to do with two factors:
First, the democrats were so desperate to try to pick up votes (knowing that youth and minorities would stay home in an off-year election) that they tried to act like republicans… attacking the president and claiming ground as far-right as possible for every policy. This didn’t impress republican voters who have been dulled by propaganda to just voting for whichever person has an “R”, but it did repulse many of the more moderate left, all of the far left, and convinced even more youth and minorities to stay home than would usually be the case.
Second, The moderate republicans are starting to flake off. This is post-ACA. The republican propaganda had convinced the ever-gullible dumbasses that watch FOX that the world would be a Mad Max setting by now. Instead, we’ve had ever-accelerating growth. Putin – the hero of Fox News – has caused his nation to crumble into a huge contraction just as Bush – Fox’s last hero – did to our nation… The U.S. is enjoying peace and prosperity… and eventually the endless fear and hatemongering just wears itself out by being wrong on every issue every time.
While the result for 2014 was bad, it was far better than 2010 (the last off-year vote), and it should not in any way be considered indicative of the pulse of the country – as only ~1/3rd of the adults in the country went to the polls. 2016 will have a better turnout, and the republicans will lose ground vs 2012…
We’re getting better. The republicans are in their death-throes. They’re this century’s Whig party. The problem is that a wounded monster can do a lot of damage in its death-throes.
I agree. The things the Republicans stand champion vis-a-vis sustainability are getting harder to stand behind every day. I think that’s the reason that 12 +/- GOP presidential hopefuls sound so stupid to most people nowadays: they’re trying to defend the indefensible. It would like entering a debate and finding out that your position is Holocaust denial. You can be Winston Churchill, and you’re still going to look pretty foolish.
In spite of our Republican and Democratic traditions, it is now said that there are really only two political parties – the Populist camp and the Corporate camp. But the path we must tread is that of vigilance and communication, and the bright horizon to which we again set our eyes must be the universal freedom and right for all to live in dignity and prosperity.
What now seems essential is a widespread popular movement that is unfettered by party ideology. It would nevertheless need to validate and supportively co-opt the best values that have been traditionally advocated in the rhetoric of the dominant ideologies. Among these are liberty, equality, unity, sustainability, fiscal responsibility, personal privacy and representative government. These would be blended in combination with other critical values – historical perspective, universal compassion, conscientious natural science, and holistic economics.
One basic tenet of this movement might be to defend and advance the Public Commons. Another might be to define business growth and technological progress in terms that truthfully account for the cost of the depletion and pollution global natural resources (a vital part of the Public Commons. Other core goals might be enhancing the true prospects of all future generations by promoting the most widespread sustainable prosperity and incorporating the soundest, most comprehensive and multidisciplinary empirical data available.
With our proven ability to harvest and store the free and abundant energy in the modern sunlight that pours down upon the globe every day, the prosperity and stability which we who live here in the U. S. often ascribe to the 1950’s, and the social consciousness to which we aspired as a nation in the 1960’s, can both be achieved – for all the people in the developing nations of the world, for ourselves, and for future generations.
The now glaring alternative encircling us is the perpetual indentured servitude of the entire human species to an autocratic and monopolist collective whose sole endeavor is to blindly exploit and deplete the people and resources of our world in order to increase the opulence of an elitist few.
Our choices: dignity or slavery, liberty or death. It has often been so. Many civilizations have perished through blind and cruel devotion to monumental waste.
However, given our massive arsenals of indiscriminately lethal weaponry, if we fail, we may not be merely the next… we may be the last.
Don’t. Give. Up.
As I responded to Glenn Doty, I believe the right wing is losing ground because more people are realizing how catastrophic those values really are. I don’t follow public sentiment on most of the mainstream news issues too closely: gun-control, healthcare, contraception, the growing gap between rich and poor, etc. But I DO try to follow Americans’ sensibilities on energy and the environment, and here it’s simple: more people are wakening to facts like climate disruption and the other eco-horrors. Two things happen when they wake up: a) they migrate in the direction of the party that seems more tuned into the problem and its solutions (and that’s certainly not the GOP), and b) they realize they’ve been lied to, and that provides even more motivation; they really don’t like that.
I’m sure there are those who doubt that the right wing in the U.S. is, in fact, losing ground. But the statistics of what American viewers watch on television supports my belief: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/03/1355341/-Fox-News-Is-OFF-the-Air-and-the-Foul-Odor-of-Deception-has-Ceased?detail=email. Of course, Fox News viewers are only a portion of right wing voters. It’s possible that there is some bastion of intellectuals sitting around, e.g., 500,000 George Wills. Seems unlike.
The values I spoke of are not those actually pursued by wither party, but instead are often referenced merely rhetorically – liberty, equality, unity, sustainability, fiscal responsibility, personal privacy and representative government… to which i added, historical perspective, universal compassion, conscientious natural science, and holistic economics.
Bribery is predictably at the roots of all the deepest evils in American politics, and the CU v FEC and McCutcheon rulings is a boatload of fertilizer for those roots.
In 2012, all the elections for president, house and senate cost about $6.2 billion ($21 per American), and ExxonMobil, by itself, profited $44.8 billion that year alone. That means ExxonMobil, all by itself, could have bought all the federal elections in the country with just 14% of its 2012 PROFITS!
If ideas based on logic and sanity are to have a chance in this game (the stakes of which could not be higher), we must stop the bribery.
If money to be regarded in law as Free Speech, then the elite few and their corporate objects will scream through bullhorns while the voice of the People is reduced to a smothered and gasping whisper.
The greatest threat to our national security is therefore here at home – it’s the very flood of bribery capital that has taken our state and national Capitols by storm.
The words of Abraham Lincoln illuminate the danger of inaction against the fixated and methodical army of corporate lobbyists – 11,000 strong and pouring out bribery at an average of $6 million per congressperson in 2012 alone…
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Both parties are captured by bribery – the GOP leadership is just significantly more proud of that fact.
How do we remove the influence of money from the system?
Truth — Non-Violence — Cooperation — Direct Action — Perseverance
That’s exactly correct, Cameron. I hope the electorate is capable of understanding this.
Where are we with the proposals to overturn Citizen’s United? On a similar note, Lawrence Lessig’s attempt to elect honest people failed in 2014, but I’m glad to see that he hasn’t quit. Can you update us on that too?
Move To Amend had this to say about Lawrence Lessig’s laudable but perhaps misguided effort: https://movetoamend.org/mayday-superpac-lesson-failure
However, in terms of successes, November 5th & 6th 2014 statements by Move to Amend shared the following:
“In Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Florida, citizens voted overwhelmingly yesterday for their legislators to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling and declare that only human beings – not corporations – are entitled to constitutional rights and that money is not speech and campaign spending can be regulated.
“Residents in dozens of cities had the opportunity to vote on measures calling for an end to the doctrines of corporate constitutional rights and money as free speech, and in every single town the vote was supportive. Often by an overwhelming margin.”
“In Mentor and Chagrin Falls, Ohio the votes were respectively 66% and 70% support. In Alachua County, Florida, voters supported Move to Amend’s campaign by 72%. Voters in Edwardsville, IL supported Move to Amend’s resolution by 77%. The final vote count is still being tallied in the 18 legislative districts that voted last night, but the results were the same as in other states.”
“According to Wisconsin Move to Amend, the state chapter of the national coalition working to overturn Citizens United, residents of 12 Wisconsin communities voted in favor of amending the U.S. Constitution to reflect that:
“1. Only human beings — not corporations, limited liability companies, unions, nonprofit organizations or similar associations — are endowed with Constitutional rights; and
“2. Money is not speech and, therefore, regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limited political speech.
“The local measures, which were all similarly worded, gained anywhere from 70 percent of the vote in Milwaukee County to 83 percent support in the village of Park Ridge. There are now 54 jurisdictions in Wisconsin that have called for such an amendment, in addition to 16 state legislatures and well over 500 municipalities nationwide.”
Incidentally, Move to Amend also has a page comparing the merits of the language in various other amendments forwarded across the country recently – nearly all of which either fail to concretely address 1) the legal fraud of “corporate personhood” or 2) the lie that money is Free Speech – or both 1 & 2:
https://movetoamend.org/other-amendments
Notably, the page illustrates that the three respective smoke & mirrors.amendments introduced by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), and by Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), all FAIL to address BOTH aspects of the notorious CU v FEC SCOTUS decision.
Of all those amendments compared, only the Move to Amend language purely declares that corporations are not people AND money is not Free Speech.