Saturday, 4 June 2016
Classic Rant: Back to The Cave Thinking: Want Proof?
Let me begin by emphatically repeating that I'm not a "climate change denier". I'm quite certain that climate change is happening. I'm unwilling to give an absolute cause for its happening quite yet, but I'm willing to concede that human industry has played a role in this climate change (or in accelerating it).
What that doesn't mean, however, is that I accept the proposals of the Environmentalist Left as to what to do about it. You see, if someone tells me my water-pipes are rusted, I might believe them or not; if they showed me sufficient evidence, I wouldn't doubt it. But that doesn't mean that if they then tell me my only option is to never have running water again, I don't care whether they were right in the analysis, their proposed solution is moronic.
And arguably, malevolent. You see, time was I'd be talking about the Radical Environmentalist Left, but in this day and age, it seems that the old radicals are the mainstream of that movement. Consider the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, an extremely revered environmentalist thinktank, who are far from some "lunatic fringe". They have worked with Al Gore and were part of the team that comprised the International Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Prize in 2007.
In a classic example of "Back to the Cave" mentality, they have published a paper now, hailing Genghis Khan as a Eco-hero for having slaughtered 40 million people. If that's what the "mainstream" is presenting as its "solutions", I guess that "radicals" in environmentalism these days would be those arguing for total human extinction.
"Oh, come on, Pundit", you tell me, "the report wasn't saying WE should kill 40 million people; it was just a study of the climate impact that had, right?"
Well, in fact, some of them are advocating for killing far more humans than that. Eric Pianka, an eminent biologist, made a speech in front of the Texas Academy of Science where he suggested the extermination of 90% of human population through airborne viruses; that would be a lot more than 40 million, closer to 5.5 Billion. He was applauded for that position by his peers. Later, when a media shitstorm ensued, he tried to backtrack and claim he was taken out of context; but even then he couldn't resist showing his true position: "I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us... We need to make a transition to a sustainable world".
So there you have it. "Sustainability" is, just as I mentioned in my "back to the cave" rant, a code-word for mass human extermination.
This is not anything recent or new, either. John Holdren published a 1977 book called "Ecoscience" where he advocated the imposition of a "planetary regime" to enact such "sustainability" measures as forced mass sterilizations to cull the human surplus, as well as drugging the water supply.
Crazy fringe nutbar, right? Back in 1977 his views might have made him so; but today? He's the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; or in other words, the Obama Administration's "Science Czar". Jesus Christ, no wonder the "new world order" conspiracy theorists go apeshit!
Let's not forget such lovelies as the publicly-funded British Lobbying group 10:10, which made a series of commercials last year where children who didn't agree with lowering their carbon emissions were brutally murdered. That was stupid and in bad taste, and of course the people making the video did not really believe that those who refuse to go along with authoritarian programs to oblige people to be "sustainable" should be killed, right? Especially not children. Except of course that the general consensus in the "new mainstream" of the Environmentalist Left seems to be that human population has to be reduced to about five hundred million people, and that the "crisis" of climate change means it has to happen really fast. So how exactly would that happen without killing people; except of course by sustainability measures itself killing people.
There'd be no need to actually press a little button to blow up children; you just have to impose the "sustainability measures" that these assholes want! If we become "sustainable" in our farming practices (which really means basically cutting out all of the advances of the Green Revolution and giving the environmentalists their revenge for Malthus having been proved wrong), it will mean the death of BILLIONS of people as food becomes unreachable for them due to distance or cost (we produce less food, the price of food will skyrocket).
But, in the end, the 10:10 commercial was nothing more than stupid propaganda (and badly thought out at that). I would much rather bring your attention to the new model: "planned-opolis". Brought to you by the Forum for the Future, a supposedly "moderate" organization meant to "work with leaders from the public sector and business to create a green, fair and prosperous world". No fly-by-night organization, the Forum provides masters courses in " Leadership for Sustainable Development", and publishes the magazine "Green Futures", and has partnerships with over 90 organizations in the public and private sector. They recently produced a series of commercials of visions of how cities could be run and maintained in a "sustainable" future, in the format of little cartoons that showed city life in 2040.
Among these was "Planned-opolis", which detailed how car ownership would be limited to the ultra-rich, energy use at home would be strictly rationed, meat would be forbidden or unattainable (again, except to the ultra-wealthy and powerful; at least they're being honest about who they expect will have to be the new serfs and who will get to keep having business as usual), people would have "calorie cards" limiting how much they were allowed to eat, children would be assigned careers by the authoritarian government and no one would have free choice of where to work, and where those who resist these authoritarian policies will be forced into ghettos. I kid you not. Watch the video. And its not like any of the others in the series are really better; each of them demonstrates the kind of authoritarian social control and drastic reduction of quality of life that would be needed to take that step back into primitivism that they call "sustainability" (save the first one which is meant to show you the terrible evils of market capitalism). And remember, this video is them TRYING TO SELL YOU ON IT. They're trying to put the best face they can on "Sustainability" while still making a realistic projection. Imagine what the fucking reality would be, then!
So again, no, I do not question science's diagnosis of the climate; I do heavily question "Environmentalist" Activists' proposed "solutions" (which often masquerade as science).
Remember, "Sustainability" is NOT a true solution; it is a failure from the start, because it posits a world where humanity collectively gives up, and voluntarily chooses to step back toward primitivism. You head that way, and the end result is a dying humanity returning to the caves it once evolved out of. That is all these assholes can offer us, because while they "believe in the science" to tell them what the problem is (of course, they believed in the "problem" decades before the science could actually confirm it), they have a fundamental lack of faith in science, progress, civilization, or humanity itself when it comes to being able to innovate REAL solutions that do not require the end of our civilization, mass human extermination, and a drastic reduction in the average human quality of life in order to bring them about.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Castello 4k Collection Canadian + Image Latakia
(Originally posted February 1, 2011)
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Well, the Left has always been in favor of mass murder. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim...mass murder of the citizenry is always at the top of their list of solutions.
ReplyDeleteMatt Celis, you know that the Nazi party was a fascist political organisation right? I.E. Rightwing Authoritarianism.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBenjamin: fascism was an outgrowth of the Left. Hitler and Mussolini were both Socialists. It's time to put to rest the Stalin-era Soviet propaganda painting those rival Socialist movements as "forces of capitalist reaction."
ReplyDeleteThe real Right in Europe at the time was Aristocratic (Hitler hated aristocrats; Mussolini was content to co-opt them) and Christian (both men were staunchly anticlerical). Stop letting 1930s Russian propaganda writers affect your judgement.
Wow. Just wow... Revisionism at its finest.
DeleteTrisegistus...your really trying to characterise the corperatist alliance between business interests, authoritarian state and the catholic church in italy as socialism?
DeleteI must agree. I don't have a problem seeing the problem, I do have a problem with the politically motivated solutions and the growing backlash against people daring to question the nature of the problem and the solutions.
ReplyDeleteYou'll notice that none of these "environmentalist" wacko "elites" ever has the courage of their convictions to just remove themselves from the planet post haste--or even to scale back their own lives to reduce their "carbon imprint." (Al Gore, I'm looking at you.) No, it's always other people they want to die off, preferably those in "flyover country" who aren't in a Designated Victim Group.
ReplyDeleteIt's because the whole point is that the special elite are obviously entitled to keep owning cars and eating meat if they want, and to jetsetting around the world to teach us 'awareness' about how bad we are for owning more than one ligthbulb, because they have the right Social Training.
DeleteIf you look further back, to say the birth control policies of the 60s and 70s, it's fascinating how they predominantly targeted poor, unwashed, backward "peoples" of the third world ... almost like there was a population reduction agenda. Oh, wait ... there was. Anybody remember "The Population Bomb"? I remember being scared out of my wits about the world ending when I was a kid in school back in the 80s and early 90s.
ReplyDeleteSurprisingly, it hasn't ended.
"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..." - The Population Bomb, 1968
Yup.
Deleteor, maybe, the wealthy already had contraception and it's self evident that the people who need financial assistance getting contraception are the poor?
DeleteThis post is stupid beyond belief. 1) The article isn't "hailing Genghis Khan as a Eco-hero," it says "Though Genghis Khan's legacy as one of the world's cruelest conquerors isn't likely to change because of the unintended "green" consequences of his invasions, Pongratz hopes that her research can lead to land-use changes that someday might alter how future historians rate our environmental impact." The point of the article is that land use even in pre-modern methods can affect climate change in ways that people who think it's all about smoke stacks and coal might not realize. Never says a nice thing about the ol' Khan. It takes a pretty willful intent to deceive (or incredibly slanted preconceived notion that those damn Greenies must be saying something horrible I know I'll find it I will!) to turn see "Cruelest conqueror" and interpret that as "eco-hero."
ReplyDeleteWhen historians posit that the Black Plague ended slavery and serfdom in western europe, are they promoting plagues as the cure to modern human trafficking? Of course not.
2) As for people like John Holdren, again, you're not presenting what he actually said. Here's a quote from Ecoscience: "Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea. As those alternatives become clearer to an increasing number of people in the 1980s, they may begin demanding such control. A far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that the means of birth control, including abortion and sterilization, are accessible to every human being on Earth within the shortest possible time. If effective action is taken promptly against population growth, perhaps the need for the more extreme involuntary or repressive measures can be averted in most countries." It's advocating for giving people the CHOICE to control their own reproduction. Because, in a fit of good luck, it turns out that everywhere you actually let people have control of their own reproductive destiny, population growth slows down from an exponential rate to about even with the replacement rate (ie, births in a year equal deaths). Holdren, and the politician he advises, about about 7 months away from retiring from political office, after seven and a half years in power. If they were *actually* going to do anything to force people "back to the caves" they would have done it already. Show me a real, actual policy proposal or shut up with the conspiracy theory "But he said something over thirty years ago that sounds bad out of context!" whining.
How do you obtain a 'sustainable' future that:
DeleteA) doesn't require the death of at least half the current human population
B) doesn't use nuclear power (because the Environmentalist Left won't let you)
C) doesn't require that the vast majority of people living in the first world suffer a reduction of their quality of living (not being permitted, for example, to have limitless water-supply, car ownership, 24-hour electricity, or affordable meat)
D) doesn't force us to stop our industrial expansion and economic growth in a capitalist system?
If you can't answer that, and you can't, it's because the "sustainability" idea is a nonsense-term that is being used as a cover to attack western capitalist civilization and individual freedom. The people who advocate for "sustainability" are one of two categories: either they KNOW this and are filthy fucking liars who despise the West, or they do not realize the implications of "sustainability" and are thus naive morons.
lots of baseless accusations, zero response to any of the substantive points I raised. Isn't this the "want proof" post? Show some proof of your accusations. The Mother Jones link already answers your points anyway (briefly, solar and wind are already over 60% of the kWh productive capacity installed every year and growing as price keeps dropping with economies of scale, there are prominent environmentalist who support nuclear, most notably every single elected pro-environment politicIan in the country if not world).
DeleteReally? Then why have European countries SCALED BACK on nuclear at a time when (I'm sure you'd agree) it is more vital than ever to use nuclear to replace dirtier forms of energy? Why hasn't the US been able to build new nuclear reactors in years? Why does the left go apeshit with opposition using fearmongering tactics every time someone even suggests nuclear as a viable alternative energy source?
DeleteAgain, you're not bringing a single item of proof. Lots of accusations, no evidence. To take your last question first, I'm sure there are people who "go apesit with opposition using fearmongering tactics" but they're not elected officials, they are not actual leaders of anything besides there own little cults of personality. If you want to argue that point, please respond with actual elected or appointed gov't leaders, ie, someone who has actually been demonstrated to have a reasonable sized follower base. (There are 300+ million people in America; some fringe party with three thousand people or basement free paper with 10k readers is such a minor figure with so little actual influence as to not be worth discussing, unless someone is groping for a boogeyman to prop up)
DeleteAs for the issue with new nuclear reactors in America, here's an article from (a left leaning) journalism website Vox investigating that problem, but the basic answer is that they cost a lot and simply haven't made economic sense. The article compares to overseas locations that have kept the price of reactors low (primarily south korea) and discusses what we can learn from them to make reactors more economically feasible here. (It basically boils to "we haven't done it in a while so no one here has the skills to do it, we'd have to set up lots of custom links in the supply chain and train new people from scratch,") -- http://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-us-france-korea
So that's two major left wing news / advocacy organizations I've shown you that are supporting renewed support and consideration of nuclear power plants. Your flat, evidence free declarations of "Nuh uh all environmentalists think in one monolithic anti-nuclear way," are sounding pretty misguided, at the very least.
You are the one who's full of shit. The Environmentalist Left goes into an outrage at the thought of any expansion of nuclear power, and after the Fukushima accident, they pushed Europe to scale back on nuclear power. In the US, while there are economic reasons, one of the things that has utterly stopped nuclear expansion is that the political cost is just too high. Trying to allow local authorities to have a new nuclear plant in their local area is almost impossible, THANKS to the Environmentalist Left.
DeleteUh huh. Nice job with the proof-free crazy-guy-on-subway rant. If you bother spend even 2 minutes looking at the links posted in this thread already, you would find evidence of environmentalists doing exactly what you say they refuse to do. You can't point to a single person in government, to a single proposal, that would do what you claim is their goals. Why are you so desperate to deny that people either agree with you or are considering that you might be right? Do you need someone to hate that badly?
DeleteI pointed to major, MAINSTREAM (or what passes for "mainstream") groups in the Environmentalist left presenting what they want IN my main article.
DeleteAlso, you're idea that the Environmentalist Left are totally gung-ho and all for Nuclear Power Plants is just so patently ridiculous in light of reality that it isn't worth arguing. Again, you have FAILED to adequately explain why no western nation has been able to make the kind of progress with nuclear it should be doing.
I suppose you'll dismiss Bernie Sanders as not an "actual leader"? His campaign plan for environmental reform explicitly put Nuclear power COMPLETELY off the table: https://berniesanders.com/issues/climate-change/
In fact, Sanders demanded “a moratorium on nuclear power plant license renewals in the United States.”
The IPCC has stated lukewarm support for nuclear power, but Greenpeace and the Sierra Club are both unequivocally absolutely OPPOSED to nuclear. Are those 'tiny' 'extreme' or 'not really left' groups?
Read the book "Science Left Behind" by Berezow and Campbell, it has all kinds of details about how the Left has opposed nuclear power, hydroelectric power, and wind power. They advocate 'clean energy' and 'sustainability' but anytime that they can find an excuse (fish, birds, whatever) that involves any kind of impact on nature, the Left turns on non-fossil energy at blinding speed. That's because fundamentally, the left is anti-Human.
Given that all you've been able to present is a VOX article, am I right in figuring you're an under-30 humanities student? And American?
Maybe you aren't aware of the what the Environmentalist Left has done in Europe. You didn't really respond to it when I brought it up twice. So here's one last link to give you a very basic education on the subject, at your grade-level I hope:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8546608/Why-Germany-said-no-to-nuclear-power.html
The "examples" in your original post are invalid for reasons I already explained (which you never responded to), but I'll briefly summarize.
Delete1) The Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology paper you categorized as "hailing Genghis Khan as a Eco-hero" actually called said "Genghis Khan's legacy as one of the world's cruelest conquerors isn't likely to change because of the unintended "green" consequences of his invasions, Pongratz hopes that her research can lead to land-use changes that someday might alter how future historians rate our environmental impact." The point of the article is that land use even in pre-modern methods can affect climate change in ways that people who think it's all about smoke stacks and coal might not realize.
2) Eric Pianka *actually* argues "Humans have overpopulated the Earth and in the process have created an ideal nutritional substrate on which bacteria and viruses (microbes) will grow and prosper. ... In addition to our extremely high population density, we are social and mobile, exactly the conditions that favor growth and spread of pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes. I believe it is only a matter of time until microbes once again assert control over our population, since we are unwilling to control it ourselves." His point is a *warning* that we are creating the conditions that have lead to pandemics before (He cites the Black Death in medieval Europe, smallpox in the Americas after Columbus, and the Spanish Flu after WWI as examples of what he would like to *prevent*. Now, you can go ahead and dismiss this as "trying to backtrack and claim he was taken out of context," but you're not a fucking mind reader, so who the hell are you to tell me what's really in someone's heart of hearts? When you quote him as saying "I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us... We need to make a transition to a sustainable world," first, you (or, since I doubt you bother to fact check any of the agiprop you unquestioningly consume and regurgitate, the people you're quoting) are butching what he said, which was "I do not bear any ill will toward people. However, I am convinced that the world, including all humanity, WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us." Second, when compared to the rest of his writing, it pretty obviously means he thinks we're setting ourselves up for a massive pandemic and it would be great if we could just avoid that from happening. He's suggesting we slow or stop population group through voluntarily (like just handing out birth control to anyone in the world who wants it) instead of waiting until disease and death takes us the same endpoint in a much more grisly manner. Agree or disagree (or, like me, think it's a big conjuncture that hasn't had enough research or peer review to prove or falsify) be he's OBVIOUSLY not calling for death camps. Oh, and by the by, the guy is famous for his contributions to the field of *herpetology,* not public policy. You've never even shown that this person has *any* influence over the discussion among full time environmental scientists or policy experts. Show me some peer review of his positions, a policy proposal white paper based on them, ANYTHING to demonstrate he has more influence on the public than any other random member of the public has.
3) Your interpretation of John Holdren, was, again factually wrong and easily demonstrated as such. Which I already did. Explain how "A far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that the means of birth control, including abortion and sterilization, are accessible to every human being on Earth within the shortest possible time." equals "advocated for the imposition of a "planetary regime" to enact such "sustainability" measures as forced mass sterilizations," or you're argument is baseless here too.
Delete4) Your last piece of "evidence" is a series of advertisements. Fucking ads, that's your big trump card? Here's a news flash: Sometimes, advertising people don't actually understand the product they're selling. The trailers for "Fight Club" made it look like a movie about male bonding over violence with a love triangle subplot. You expect them to get climate policy right? Of course it's not an accurate presentation. They can't present cars, movies, or snack food accurately and that's literally 99% of their job. And I say this as someone who's worked in marketing for twelve years.
So there you go, that's all five of your pieces of evidence, and they boil down to being willful misrepresentations of what people actually said or judging something based solely on the commercials. And, most amusingly, even *if* you were right on all of them, only two (Carnegie and Holdren) have *any* influence on actual policy discussions. 60% of your evidence comes from a Lizard scientist and a couple NGOs who have never accomplished *anything*. And even Carnegie and Holdren don't actually *make* policy, they at best, get to pitch their case to people who actually make policy. Your case is stupidity piled on pointlessness.
As for Sanders, you want to make the case that a guy who's getting less than 8% (49 out of 630 super delegates) of the endorsements of the support of elected members of his own party is in any way a party leader? Remind me, what was the last big policy Bernie introduced that was signed into law? The last time Sanders played an important part in a congressional negotiation? He's got a seat in the highest legislative body in the country and he can barely leverage that perch to get his home town post office renamed. He ran for President and lost in the primaries. He didn't even get as far as George McGovern, and tell me, what great victories did McGovern lead his people to? Sanders did less than that.
DeleteI presented as evidence articles from Mother Jones (Alexa rank 3,677 worldwide) as well as Vox, (1,097). Your counter is Green Peace (14,537) and the Sierra Club (48,057). I think my cites are pretty obviously of greater reach and influence. Again, when was the last time lawmakers took Green Peace seriously? If the answer is "zero times in the last 30 years," guess what, they're unimportant groups more interested in striking a "purer than thou" pose than actually *influencing* *people's* *lives.*
The IPCC, who you just write off, is the group governments (the people who would have to implement these "back to the caves" policies you claim to be so concerned about) actually sanction and might one day listen to.
And I'm sure that "Science Left Behind" book has lots of lovely anecdotes of stupid lefties making scientific mistakes. Lets be generous and assume that none of them are mistaken or outright wrong, like your four big points in your original post were. There are, what, 8 billion people on this planet? You can find anecdotes to support or oppose anything. Show me an actual study, done following the scientific method, that was peer reviewed and published in a respected journal, and then you might have something. Since you claim to understand and care so deeply about science, I'm sure I don't need to explain to you why that's a lot more relevant than anecdotes.
As for the Environmentalist Left in Europe, if they're so monolithic and powerful, why does 75% of French electricity come from Nuclear power plants? You know, France, the country with a left wing government, as opposed to Germany, which has been lead by their Right wing party since 1982 (with only one six year interruption)?
You say 'advertisements' as if those videos were made by Pepsico or something. They were made by major Environmentalist political lobbying groups.
DeleteYour elimination of Sanders' policy amounts to a "no true scotsman" argument. But in case you didn't know, Hillary Clinton has also officially stated that her energy policy is absolutely non-nuclear: http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Hillary_Clinton_Environment.htm
Also, calling Merkel's government "right-wing" is nonsensical.
No, the environmental groups did not directly make those videos. Or atleast not the 1st one you linked; the RT news article actually comments on how it was made by a separate film production company with the writer from "Four weddings and a funeral." 10:10 didn't go out, buy a bunch of cameras, etc. Regardless, you're missing the bigger point which is that a two ~ five minute advertisement is not full policy. Nor are either of those groups influential as either thought leaders, pundits, or public policy organs. Even if the videos are totally accurate summaries of the views of those groups, that doesn't prove anything besides a group of a few dozen publicity hounds are bonkers. Show me how they've influenced a single vote of a single MP in parliament and then they might be important. *Might*. Because, like the Sanders thing, I've been extremely clear from the beginning that the only examples you have that aren't completely fraudulent are from cultish groups or figures who don't speak for anyone except their own ridiculously small membership. They are not mainstream environmentalists. Sanders is a protest politician who has never effectively wielded power either in the legislature or at the ballot box, outside of his winning the single most extreme district out of 535 senate and house seats. One out of 535 is hardly mainstream. If you want to just point and laugh at fringe characters who've never had any affect on anything, be my guest. But saying those fringers represent environmentalists writ large is just lying.
DeleteYes, and 10:10 was able to get Richard Curtis, why? Because THEY ARE A MAJOR FUCKING ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATION. They were associated with a huge number of public and private organizations and other major environmentalist organizations.
DeleteForum for the Future is a massive environmentalist organization (with a 4.5 million pound budget per year), offices in the US, UK and India, 100+ partnerships in the public and private sector, a connection with the University of Middlesex where it offers a masters program in "Masters in leadership for sustainable development".
Your attempt to claim that these are paradoxically either tiny and insignificant groups or somehow groups peripheral to climate change activism is just pathetic.
Almost as pathetic as how you completely ignored the fact that Clinton is every bit as anti-nuclear as Bernie. ALL the significant candidates for president on the American Left are anti-nuclear. So tell me again, bitch, how the political left or the environmentalist left are not anti-nuclear??
BTW, I think it's *awesome* that you accused me of making a "no true scotsman" argument in the same post you said Merkel's government isn't "right wing." Fucking Encyclopædia Britannica Online lists them as conservative; along with over 20 other sources linked off the CDU Wikipedia page. You want to go ahead and "debunk" all that (plus the CDU itself), using actual facts instead of one of those "no true scotsmans" arguments you yourself just decried, I would love to see that.
DeleteAlso, congrats on calling me "bitch," you have achieved your goal of sounding like Jesse Pinkman. At least when you call people "swine" its sort of funny in an anachronistic way; this just makes you sound like someone who still has a fourteen year old's idea of how to sound tough.
All you've been able to show with 10:10 / Forum for the Future is that they do a good job fundraising. Lots of fringe groups on all sides can do that. My point has been, stated repeatedly, that they lack actual *influence.* They have not gotten a single piece of legislation adopted into law. Show me where they've had an effect on law, or else your original contention that the "environmentalist left won't allow nuclear" is still resting on nothing. I'll just add that, since 2010, I've worked (not volunteered, but actual full time staff) for the campaigns of a Democratic Governor, Senator, and three Congressmen. In all that time on all those campaigns, I have literally *never* heard of these groups until talking to you. In the political world they are non-entities, and you have offered nothing that would refute that.
Also, why would it be a paradox to say something is tiny or insignificant or peripheral? "Peripheral" and "insignificant" are literally synonyms (in the "marginal" sense). http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/peripheral Do you understand what these words actually mean, or do you need more time to consult a dictionary?
As for Clinton opposing nuclear, not according to her proposals on her own website! "As part of the Clean Energy Challenge, Clinton will ensure that every part of the federal government is working in concert to help Americans build a clean energy future. This includes: [...]
Innovation: Increase public investment in clean energy R&D, including in storage technology, designed materials, ADVANCED NUCLEAR, and carbon capture and sequestration. Expand successful innovation initiatives, like ARPA-e, and cut those that fail to deliver results." (emphasis added for the slow reader) https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/07/26/renewable-power-vision/ Do you even bother to google your assertions before spewing them out, or just type whatever feels "truthy" to you?
So your definition of a relevant and powerful environmentalist is basically Hillary Clinton. Everyone to the left of her is a powerless lunatic who doesn't matter?
DeleteI never said anything even close to that. *You* asserted that the "Environmentalist Left" would never allow nuclear as part of a renewable energy mix. I showed via direct quotes that many environmentalists are open to the idea of nuclear. You tried to support your blanket state of the opinions of all environmentalists with a few groups, who I pointed out aren't the unchallenged thought leaders of the entire environmentalist movement. Some oppose nuclear, but they are not the majority of environmentalists, let alone the unchallenged leaders, and they are not currently in power at any of the levels of relevant government (in the US, at least, which as the biggest per capita polluter in the world and the second largest polluter in absolute terms). Politicians further left than Clinton who support (at least tentatively) nuclear power include Rep and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/apr/09/nation/na-nuke9 Others further to the right of Clinton who oppose it include Harry Reid. It's not a left-right issue within environmentalists circles, it's an issue of how do you do the cost - benefit analysis, likelihood of problems times severity of problem weighted against the positives. Not everyone agrees on the correct values of those three variables, but we're attempting to settle (or at least get a better estimate) of their true values by looking at the science (such as in the Vox article linked elsewhere in this thread).
DeleteIt's not relevant, because they will never be able to get nuclear off the ground faced in the opposition of their own party's environmentalist left.
DeleteIt's like how there are pro-choice republicans but it's not going to matter as long as the GOP has to answer to the Religious Right.
Your cherry-picking of facts doesn't change the reality on the ground. The Left sees mankind as a virus on "mother nature" and considers anything that we do in the world as nothing more than a varying spectrum of harm. They also generally feel ashamed of belonging to Western Civilization, and are constantly betraying it and it's values while mollycoddling much more barbaric ideologies in the hopes that those will help "deconstruct" the West.
It is relevent because the anti-nuclear energy group has nowhere near as much control over the Dems as the Religious Right has over the GOP. The Dem House leader and Presidential nominee as open to nuclear; the GOP would never have a pro-choice politician in either of those roles.
DeleteYou have ignored more popular politicians and well read news and opinion sources to focus on people and groups who have never swung an election or played a part in legislative or regulatory negotiations. The only one Cherry Picking facts is you. You're back to making unsourced, insane claims about how the left sees mankind that are as mainstream on the left as neo-nazism is on the right.
And yet REALITY shows that we do not have any growth in nuclear energy. If your argument was more accurate than mind, why hasn't that happened? It is because of the anti-nuclear political will you are pretending doesn't exist.
DeleteAgain, I never said that anti-nuclear activists don't exist. Not being a fanatic I don't have to hold myself to absolute positions. My point was always that it is an unsettled issue among environmentalists, has many people willing to consider it, and as the science and technology has gotten better over time, more former opponents are reconsidering.
DeleteWhat's really ironic is that most *actual* environmentalists agree with your conclusions in the final paragraph; they do believe in REAL solutions produced by science here, for example, is one article from Leftist mag Mother Jones: "Solar is not a panacea all by itself. To state the obvious, it only works when the sun is shining. But in combination with better storage technologies, other clean sources of electricity (wind, geo, etc.), and nuclear for baseload operation, a green electric grid is no longer a pipe dream. By 2020 solar will probably be the cheapest electric source around, and by 2040 I wouldn't be surprised if fossil fuel electric generation is basically dead in the US. Welcome to the future." (http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/our-long-awaited-solar-power-future-finally-here) The point of every real gov't proposal (and I mean actually introduced by members of congress, the presidents staff, etc, not what some 22 year old stoned blogger posts from his dorm room) is about getting to the point where the KW/H cost of solar is cheaper than coal sooner. Not punishing people for the sheer masochism of it.
ReplyDeleteThe Environmentalist Left will never let you use Nuclear.
DeleteGee, I didn't realize the US Constitution gave "The Environmentalist Left" a veto on laws or regulation. This is why I asked you to provide a real, actual government proposal issued by someone in the legislature or executive branch instead of vague arm waving at boogeymen. Also, fantastic job at sticking to your line even in response to a quote from a member of "the environmental left" contradicting you.
Delete+RPGPundit, great post, too few people are willing to print the truth. And this post is the truth. Those who disagree with this are clearly idiots.
ReplyDelete