MikeJ
4089
I definitely sympathize with the idea that we need to change a losing game (or at least a game that’s not winning fast enough). I don’t know what a credible alternative strategy would be. You have to somehow convince more people that the threat is real, but I don’t know how to do that. The partisan blast doors are down. Any idea of what we could use for dynamite?
CraigM
4091
In less snarky tones, I don’t think it is possible without fundamental changes to one of the following things:
Political funding
Media funding
As is the reality the incentives of both systems encourage the results we see. Companies who benefit from the status quo pour money to spread garbage and prevent any action. It’s profitable for them to continue inaction and pollution in discrete measurable ways, while improving things is not. Because the benefits are spread out, are not as finite and measurable. Nobody makes tens of billions of dollars for not polluting, so there the incentives skew towards the worst results.
And media tends towards ratings. Controversy causes ratings. So even though the basic facts are not scientifically in dispute, the need for controversy and ratings means that the anti AGW crowd gets disproportionate coverage and attention. 4% of the people get 50% of the oxygen in the room. And it’s profitable to do so, because scientists running down the realities and dangers in the academic sense is less ‘exciting’ than a slap fight with an idiot oil industry shill and his ginned up ‘science’.
So we wind up with this fucked up stasis.
Nesrie
4092
See the threat sounds more like a long-term strategy in a short-term fight. We’re now in position where you can’t even talk about straws floating in the ocean without some army of Disney mom’s getting angry or someone pointing to China and India and saying hey what difference does it make when they dump more than we do? So much of the approach feels like a lecture and a punishment but… 2018, I’m think we can offer better than plastic straws.
On a side note, my local recycle / garbage company just sent me a stripped down list of what they will take now, and the list is almost nothing. We’re going backwards in recycling around here, and based on what I have read, so are a lot of places.
What do you suggest instead?
I have a hard time thinking of a democratic political system that can cope with forcing their populace to give up their comfort and wealth in order to save a bunch of other people that they don’t even know from death and destruction. At least that doesn’t involve a super-unlikely one-world tyrannical overlord.
If climate change is real and man-made, we’re fucking dead. My coping mechanism is to try and accept that there will almost certainly be mass death and destruction and displacement, and it could come any time now. Just trying to enjoy the last few years of civilization while it’s here.
Nesrie
4095
Well for example with the plastic straws. We can point to plastic straws and say let’s ban them, let’s tell people they’re not allowed to have them and then spend the next few years arguing about access to these straws for the disabled, as if it’s that’s a huge portion of the population (they’re not), and then continue the next decade discussing how plastic straws could vanish from every corner of the USA tomorrow and we’d still have too much plastic in the sea and talk about how unfortunate paper straws are or… We can recognize that a lot of it is a culture of just consuming without thought and you can slowly wean people off that habit without making it seems some environmentalist liberal is taking something away from you.
How hard would it have been for Disney to introduce new cups to their drinks and slap up signs that straws are available upon demand. And after a few years, just slowly take that away? Instead they do this massive announcement and get this knee-jerk reaction.
I just got a hugely short list of what my local recycle place is willing to take. My trash is probably going to up by maybe 50%. We’ve known for awhile China is taking everything anymore and co-mingle isn’t working out so well so what am I supposed to do. Do we really expect every person out there that runs into this to try and Google whether or not there is something else they can do with their junk mail and magazines other than trash it or could we have had a group help with that?
Are national and world-wide efforts important… sure. But why not engage people at their daily life issue. Plastic bags, plastic straws, recycling… that’s easy to engage.
jpinard
4096
Trump and republicans do. Of course they’re not downwind from an old, dirty, coal fired plant.
Nesrie
4097
Well I don’t believe most of those people think it’s good. I think most of those people don’t care, or they don’t think it’s bad enough to spend money on it which is not exactly the same thing. If they thought it was good, why wouldn’t they just slap their mansion downwind of some coal industry plants… well because they know it’s bad. There are talking points and then there is action. This is why it’s fun to look at surveys and the like from an economics perspective… there’s what people say and then there’s what they actually do.
jpinard
4098
What I meant to imply was that Republican legislators claim it’s fine, they try to shut down wind and solar development, subsidize coal, then the morons that vote for them also think it’s fine while not realizing legislators don’t live remotely near nasty coal plants, but they do.
I’m really not following this. I don’t know what it has to do with this:
I’m also sympathetic to the urgency of climate change and to the idea that we’re doing too little because of political opposition that we simply can’t break through very quickly with education and advocacy. The problem is I can’t imagine what we do instead. Let’s say we stop trying to change people’s minds about climate change and we do something else. What is that something else? I don’t think it’s ‘be more persuasive and practical about recycling’.
Pyperkub
4101
I’d add income inequality and tax rates. If it hurts more to fund those things…
Nesrie
4102
I’m trying to explain that. Disney banned the use of plastic straws in their parks. Cities are banning plastic bags. A long time ago businesses and cities banned some Styrofoam use in various places too. And what has this accomplished? You can remove every straw from the USA and we’d still have problems with plastic in the ocean… but you have to start small, start somewhere right? so why approach it with a ban hammer? We have a bunch of gamers on this board. Massive player bans rarely leads to a positive relationship between the content creators and the players, unless it’s bots which aren’t really players or cheaters. I don’t know that the current approach, lead by punishing, is the best way to do it. And by not know, I would say I do know because the populace buy in isn’t there. It’s simply not there.
Ok, I get that, but you’re basically saying we’re doing it wrong. How would we do it right?
Nesrie
4104
I mentioned it in the same example. If Disney wants to remove plastic straws, instead of trying to get brownie points with big announcements that excite or anger people, you start small. You roll out drinks in cups that don’t require straws, you stick up signs that say straws upon request, and once people get used to not asking for them, you remove them entirely and have a program in place for the Disney Moms with disabled kids, one they’re already used to so when it’s gone they just do what they’ve always been doing. You want people to stop using plastic and paper bags, hand out the recycle bags. Get people used to using them. How did we push LEDs… well we got a lot of rebates on those for years. I know some other countries banded the incandescent b but people have been shifting, by choice, for years now. It’s even advertised in the sales of homes and sometimes rentals now. It’s something most want.
I get that, but how is it applicable to urgent need for action on climate change? Which is the Disney that will encourage people to stop driving, how would they do that, why would they do that, and how quickly can that approach make any difference?
Nesrie
4107
My point is, the urgent need, the ban hammer, the hit people on the head… it’s not working. And it’s not working not because it’s not urgent, it’s just simply not working. At some point, you just have to try something different. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result… some people would call that insanity.
Problem is that we don’t really have any good ideas as to what to do differently.
