2016 Hottest Year on Record (Third Record Year in a Row)

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
IlliniDave
Posts: 3837
Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:46 pm

Re: 2016 Hottest Year on Record (Third Record Year in a Row)

Post by IlliniDave »

Tyler9000 wrote:
Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:29 pm

Exactly.

A Facebook meme bashing "climate deniers" is the new carbon credit and it has about the same effect on the environment. The number of people today who take serious personal action to improve the environment rather than simply virtue signal is vanishingly small.
Yes, outrage at the deplorables is all that's needed to achieve righteous status. Shake that fist. Among my small circle it even happens that the most vocal climate activists (among the full-fledged adults) live in the biggest houses (sometimes two homes) and spend the most time/miles crisscrossing the country and circling the globe for recreation using fossil fuel. But raising an eyebrow at the 97% cannon, now that is some evil stuff. :?

BRUTE
Posts: 3797
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: 2016 Hottest Year on Record (Third Record Year in a Row)

Post by BRUTE »

Tyler9000 wrote:
Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:29 pm
The number of people today who take serious personal action to improve the environment rather than simply virtue signal is vanishingly small.
brute fixed that for Tyler9000. humans are social animals. they almost always prefer virtue signaling over improved outcome. always have, always will. they need to be lied to or brainwashed in order to accidentally achieve anything good if it doesn't happen to overlap with their social angst.

ThisDinosaur
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Joined: Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:31 am

Re: 2016 Hottest Year on Record (Third Record Year in a Row)

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@Brute, that sure seems like a good argument AGAINST an unregulated, libertarian, free-for-all being the best solution for all human problems.

@Riggerjack, You're right. I'm probably just very naïve about what this sort of rule would accomplish. I don't believe that there are perfect solutions to problems this complicated, but I do believe incremental improvement is worthwhile. Also, we should probably consider why it has been so hard to get this sort of reform passed. My impression is that its because there is a lot of pushback from the donor class, who like things the way they are.

7Wannabe5
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Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: 2016 Hottest Year on Record (Third Record Year in a Row)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@BRUTE: I think it depends a bit on the degree to which "the good" is abstract or concrete. Climate change is going to be like a million babies starving on the other side of the planet, until/unless it becomes one starving baby on your very own doorstep. I believe that you would choose to care for that one starving baby even if you were alone in the woods where nobody could observe you signaling BRUTE DO GOOD.

For the moment, I am back living in one of the Meccas of the Affluent Liberal after several years of living and working in realm that was like tiny microcosm of every refugee problem on the planet combined with severe post-industrial urban blight. It is very nice here. It is an environment built up to the level of allowing humans to accomplish work at the margin of the mass of all prior human accomplishment. There aren't as many burnt out houses, neglected babies in the middle of the street, piles of litter, illiterate 8th graders or stinking drunks urinating in alleyways here.

Last weekend, I was helping my politically conservative BF buy 11 acres of trees that shares frontage with humans who can afford to buy lake property and backage with humans who are quite likely members of a regional militia (and maybe even a bear!) It's very nice there too. So, to me it is just as boring, because predictable, to listen to some humans signal whatever they are signaling when they communicate that other humans are only signaling good, as it is to listen to the other humans who are maybe only signaling good. Yeah, I get it already. NOBODY (whatever color jersey) who lives someplace nice really wants to include some not very nice places, people or projects into their system, because that makes finding an equilibrium solution WAAAAAY harder.

The thing that sucks, sometimes referred to as "reality", is that all those starving babies, all that litter, all that need for education, all those other people and places and projects that are seriously, truly royally f*cked up, and all those lousy hypocrites living in that other nice place, are already attached to your system. DEAL.

Spartan_Warrior
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Re: 2016 Hottest Year on Record (Third Record Year in a Row)

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

Riggerjack is certainly correct about the futility of campaign finance reform. You have to figure the people who benefit from Citizen's United are the same people who bought it in the first place. Now, how did they do so if CU is the problem? No, CU is a problem, but it's not the problem. Capital always has and always will wield influence over others because it is necessary for survival. It's not plausible to suggest regulating away this coercive influence. Thus, the question is who gets to wield that influence. Under capitalism, it is an increasingly few people, who see their capital compound year after year at the direct expense of the working class that sees less and less in wages for its productivity. I believe last year it was eight people who held half the world's wealth; this year it's down to five? The problem is not that the politicians are taking the money; the problem is that some few people have so much money to throw around. You cannot have a democratic society with unequal distributions of wealth, the two are negatively correlated. If you want democracy, you need a more democratic wealth distribution. If you don't want the disproportionately wealthy to have influence, you need less disproportionate wealth. It really is as simple as that... sadly.

ThisDinosaur
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Joined: Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:31 am

Re: 2016 Hottest Year on Record (Third Record Year in a Row)

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@SW
Well, I'm pro-democracy for libertarian-ish reasons. People tend to vote their perceived self interest. Since all humans are essentially similar, voting for what's good for you often (but not always) benefits other individuals as well.

Problems happen when voters are misinformed. So priority has to be given to limiting misinformation. Especially intentional misinformation by individuals whose self interest is NOT in line with the majority. In this case, the wealthiest individuals can pay our elected leaders to distribute misinformation in schools, for example, delaying a resolution for another generation.

Maybe no answer to this will be perfect, but intervention is warranted when benefits outweigh risks. Even a Burkean conservative should agree with that.

In that vein, I was patiently waiting for a Republican to come out and say something like, "yes, fossil fuels cause climate change. They also raise the standard of living of our civilization. If you subsidize green tech companies with taxpayer dollars, the green tech CEOs will get rich at the expense of literally everyone else." Rubio came closest to saying that last year. But he sucks for other reasons.

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