The absolutely unthinkable: financial losses for the people who have been making money by covering up the fact that they are destroying the planet for their own profit.
Add in one of the best-financed propaganda/obfuscation campaigns maintained for seven decades and public opinion mirrors what it gets fed from big-oil-owned media outlets.
Yeah this is the answer right here. The fossil fuel industry and their conservative allies (as well as far too many liberal politicians) have been feeding into a propaganda machine that has been fear-mongering climate change policies, telling the public continually that all those policies are going to do nothing but raise the price of gas or remove some convenience they have. I remember that time when Republicans were fear-mongering that the Democrats were coming after people’s gas stoves, as if that was something that was even remotely likely. It was so fucking stupid but people were like “You can’t take my stove!!!” like a bunch of dumb shits. I remember one dingus on Fox News who strapped himself to his gas stove like there was a demolition team coming to his house to take it down any minute as an idiotic publicity stunt. Literally no one but the drones who watch Fox News cared.
The stove thing was in response to legislation that passed here in California. The law says that no new residential construction may include gas appliances.
Big Cringe in response to minor cringe
That was not a complete ban. They are still allowed to construct houses with gas fixtures for gas stoves and appliances. But they are mandated to include electric fixtures for electric appliances and heating so effectively you would have to pay for the installation of both if you wanted gas.
Though it should be noted there is a plan to pass a law in 2030 fully banning natural gas installations in new housing.
And honestly, IMO it is quite a stupid ass move. California has massive power issues and the idea that they’re going to increase their load before they have a sufficient supply is just moronic.
Thanks for the clarification, clearly I conflated the two pieces of legislation.
Umm? Power problems? We managed to hit 100% renewable power production for the state several times this year. We don’t need fissile fuels, except as a stop gap.
I will fully admit that due to my excessive amount of solar production, and battery backup, I don’t ever know when there is a power outage. So if they are having issues, I wouldn’t be aware of it despite living in San Diego
https://abcnews.go.com/US/california-blackouts-power-grid/story?id=89460998
Literally the entire State has to walk on eggshells power wise during the summer in order to avoid a cascading failure or having controlled blackouts in order to prevent a cascading failure. And they’re proposing to add even more power demanding appliances to that grid. I’m sorry but this is a poorly thought out plan of action. Maybe if they built a couple more nuclear plants they could manage but wind and solar farms aren’t going to cut it.
Edit: all of this on top of the fact that our climate is getting hotter year after year so even more power is going to be necessary for air conditioning in more and more areas within the state even those that don’t see such hot Summers previously will start to put a strain on the grid trying to keep cool in the summer. All of this on top of the likely dwindling supply of power from the Hoover dam due to the receding Colorado River, also due to climate change BTW.
Educated populations tend to be more liberal, and exhibit more critical thinking. It’s not a guarantee, but it tends to form a shield against blind indoctrination and especially religious fundamentalism.
Conservatives do not want an educated population.
Educated populations tend to be more liberal
Liberally educated populations tend to be more liberal. Kids coming out of Bob Jones University, Arizona State, and Yale can be as archly conservative as anyone you see on FOX News or read the byline of in the WSJ.
Conservatives do not want an educated population.
Conservatives want conservative propaganda to be the believes that decide who is taken seriously and who is dismissed as unserious, uneducated, and extremist. There’s a rich body of conservative literature and ideology that you need to absorb before you can be taken seriously in the upper eschalons of the movement. The rank-and-file might revel in being a bunch of Know-Nothings, but the prelate class requires you to be well-versed in their dogma.
Education helps establish your priors and cements your conviction. People who don’t know anything on a subject can be easily swayed. People who have a ingested a certain quantity of coherently structured works are much more intransigent. That’s why institutions like the SCOTUS are such a joke. Its nine people who already made up their minds compromising to form a majority opinion before the case even starts, not nine idiot-savants rapidly accumulating an education on diverse subjects from a variety of experts before crafting a well-considered conclusion.
Liberally educated populations tend to be more liberal. Kids coming out of Bob Jones University, Arizona State, and Yale can be as archly conservative as anyone you see on FOX News or read the byline of in the WSJ.
The quality of the education matters. I’d argue that Jesuit priests, despite being educated in highly religious schools, tend to be the more liberal branch of Catholicism due to their emphasis on logic and analysis.
What I’m saying is that a good education is one that emphasizes critical thinking; that indoctrination is not education; and that people with strong critical thinking skills tend to be liberal. I believe that it’s because the antithesis of dogma is critical thinking. Sure, it’s not a guarantee, and the fact that Einstein was staunchly religious, and that Jesuits exist prove that you can have good logic and critical thinking skills and still be prone to religiosity. However, history shows that educated populations tend to be more progressive and less prone to falling for rhetoric and ideology.
Your point is important, though, and I’ll emphasize my comment that it’s important to distinguish between indoctrination and education. PragerU tried to call itself a university, but that doesn’t make it one; and education curriculum directed by governments tend to include a fair amount of indoctrination.
There’s a scene in The West Wing where Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) is talking to, I think, Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter). As I remember it, there was a paper arguing a conservative viewpoint on something, and Sam reveals that he wrote the paper as part of a debate exercise. I always thought that was the epitome of a good education: being able to switch your viewpoint and really understand the other side’s argument to the point where you can win a debate arguing for something you oppose. It reflects that you deeply understand both sides, not just your own dogma or opinions; it reflects that your position is probably based on the fact that you’ve considered both sides and chose your position thoughtfully. A good education will force people to debate a viewpoint they disagree with; a bad one will only have them debate the position they already hold. I wish I could find that clip on YouTube; I may have to rewatch the entire series (at least up until Sorkin left) just to find it again.
Yeah, it took me longer than I would’ve thought to understand that. It’s really hard to dumb yourself down and see their viewpoint a lot of the time. Scapegoating seems to work well for these folks.
-
you might inconvenience them by taking away their plastic straws, plastic grocery bags, or making them separate recyclables.
-
you prevent them from rolling coal or dumping other combustion byproducts in the air, or toxic waste in the ground or water. That costs money to clean up or filter.
-
you make things cost more when you force them to expend effort to responsibly harvest natural resources like trees.
Basically watching the earth burn is cheaper, more profitable, and less inconvenient to the people who have a problem with having clean air and water, and a habitable planet.
-
Not a denier, but people fear the immediate costs. It’s not clear what meaningful climate action looks like. But realistically it would very likely mean a higher cost of living in the immediate future, because not all economic sectors can be trivially decarbonized. There are also possible immediate benefits. But in any case that’s what people fear.
For the last couple of decades, people’s quality of life have been decreasing while productivity numbers are still going up.
Trickle down supply side economics has completely failed. Taxing the wealthy and moving people from the marketing bullshit scam sector of the economy back towards manufacturing would put those increased productivity numbers to better use which would mean we could maintain the current quality of life while building infrastructure needed to have a better future.
The status quo is maintaining our current slow decline out of fear of change. The economy is shit for anyone but the wealthy right now, so why should we be afraid of changing things? Because the wealthy are telling us to be afraid?
When the higher cost of living is more important than actually living.
But but muh coal mining towns!
I remember when there were programs to retrain coal miners to work with renewable resources, completely paid for by the renewable resources companies, but Big Coal and Big Oil threw a fit. I think Manchin ended up killing a lot of those things since his daughter or son is an exec in a coal company that he also invests in or some shit.
Appalachian here. No doubt curbing demand for coal and doing little to take up the slack in viable livelihood has dropped an economic bomb on an already historically depressed region. All of the programs you hear about teaching coal miners to code and such are superficial window dressing and often non-profit grifts that fold in a short time leaving executives to float away on golden parachutes. Whichever way you turn it, people here are exploited and propagandized. Most often attributing their woes to the wrong sources. Folks that are for sure feeling the effects of a changing climate with frequent severe storms, 1000 year floods, etc.
But my coal job! I live in Virginia! If I’m not going to slave in the mines, by Jove, what else can I do? Install solar panels? Ha! I think not!
(I’ve never really heard one of these people give a satisfactory explanation for why not, but for the moment I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to lived experience. Be nice if I knew though.)
The sad part is, some small towns with single employers like coal mining towns will probably become ghost towns as part of the transition. There’s really not many ways to transition a local economy rapidly enough to save the town. And with coal mining in particular, the skillset needed to work in the mines is not necessarily a skillset that will translate well into other fields, at least not in the time the towns will have between the mine closure and everyone leaving for greener pastures
What if we go through all the work to make a better world for no reason?
All of those things lower profits of the current few people profiting the most (oligarchy).
The rest is just like sports - ‘my team is better than yours regardless of record’.
One of the rationales of sane people regarding alternative energy sources is the cost of using “more expensive” energy sources when cheap (at least for the time being), albeit more polluting, alternatives like coal and natural gas are readily available.
The argument is that if Country A switches to full renewables, in the time it takes for the prices to become low enough to be competitive against coal, Country B, which is unscrupulous in its development and continues using coal as its main energy source, would gain a significant advantage over Country A.
You could even argue that for Country B, switching to alternative energy sources would be unfair, considering that Country A enjoyed decades of rapid growth and development using cheap coal, whereas Country B would not. Since Country A won’t fully switch to alternative energy sources to maintain its supremacy, and Country B won’t change for the sake of its development, we’re effectively in a deadlock.
Personally, I think all countries should work together and switch to renewable energy sources to reduce the impact of climate change. Unfortunately, the world is not so simple, and the conflict is more nuanced than simply “keeping profits vs. creating a better world.”
We’re already at the point that renewables are far cheaper than the alternatives. It’s just the capital costs that are higher (compared to keeping existing FF), but that’s not a huge issue for rich, developed countries.
So rich countries can massively invest in renewables and press their advantage. Ideally, these rich countries also subsidise renewable energy in developing countries (and to some extent, they are). But even without that in many cases it’s cheaper to just skip building a whole FF industry altogether and go straight to renewables.
If only all the countries could come to some kind of climate energy agreement. Maybe they can meet someplace like oh say Paris or something and sign an agreement like that. 🤔
It’s just long term vs. short term thinking really. And the question of who pays.
It costs an insane amount of money to have wars to secure the oil supply. But it’s not the oil industry that pays that cost. So oil is only “cheaper” from a very limited context, but in a broader context, it’s insanely expensive.
From an economic perspective, investing money into the infrastructure needed to eliminate dependency on oil is a no brainer. It’ll probably cost less than the next oil war, and once that cost is paid, there is no need for multiple future oil wars.
Given the US pays for most of the costs of oil wars, you’d think the US would be leading the charge towards transitioning off of oil. But instead there’s a lot of resistance in the US for this. There’s a strange denial that leads people to simultaneously demand the government to make gas cheaper, while also being against wars in the middle east. How do people think the government makes the price of gas cheaper?
With some exceptions the answer is likely very simple:
They aren’t denying climate change because they believe it isn’t happening, that doesn’t matter. They’re denying it because they:
- Are among others who claim they deny and so they conform or become outcasts
- Dislike and fear change they don’t understand on a fundamental level
- Fear challenging those beliefs because doing so risks admitting a regular part of their life has been lived in the wrong
Eventually these three things combine until denial becomes their natural state.
I know it’s a weird take, but some of these people also seem obsessed with their cars, to the point they use it as a fashion accessory and a way to interact with people.
So they know if climate change becomes more popular, they risk people losing interest in their expensive toy, because they can’t rev their engine anymore to assert their “alpha male” status. Reving their engine will actually push people away
I think part of climate change acceptance is finding people other hobbies honestly
This is such a straw-man argument. I’m highly in favor of renewables, but I’m not blind to what other people think.
Say you’re someone who legitimately doesn’t believe that climate change is happening, or at least that if it’s happening it’s not being caused by humanity. (People who believe those things are definitely out there.) In that case, what’s the worst thing that can happen?
- Having cheaper energy from renewable sources?
Obviously this isn’t something that people who think climate change is a hoax are concerned about. They’re worried that renewable sources will be more expensive and less reliable.
- Never running out of oil?
People who don’t believe in climate change also don’t think we’re anywhere close to running out of oil. In fact, they think it’s the same people pushing the “climate change hoax” that are pushing the idea that the planet is running low on oil. “Peak oil” has been predicted for decades, and they just keep finding more and more oil.
- Being independent from unstable countries with bad human rights records?
The US is the #1 global oil producer. Canada is 4th on the list. Brazil is 8th. Mexico is 11th. Norway is 13th. With Natural Gas it’s similar, US is #1, Canada is #4, Australia is #7, Norway is #9. Aside from the obvious jokes about the US being an unstable country with a bad human rights record, this concern is overblown. If OPEC limits production the prices will go up, but that means more profit will flow to the US. Assuming this is meant for a US audience, that’s obviously a good thing for their economy. If it’s meant for say the UK, there’s going to be more dependence on fossil fuels from Russia, but it isn’t like all fossil fuels come from enemies of the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_production- Having cleaner air?
A lot of the people who are pro-fossil fuels are older. They’ve seen the air quality go up consistently over their lives. They don’t think of the current world as a hellscape with dirty air, they see it as the cleanest air they’ve ever had. The problem is that the pollutant that most people are worried about now is invisible and… unsmellable? Unlike the soot and smog that makes pollution so obvious.
- Investing in local and domestic research, education and fabrication
The US is the country that produces the most oil and the most natural gas, it also makes the most gasoline / petrol by far. Domestic research, education and fabrication is a US thing when it comes to oil and gasoline. By contrast, most solar panel components are produced in China. 96.8% of photovoltaic wafers are made in China. Wind Turbines are also largely made in China.
Sure, theoretically investment could mean that generation is shifted away from China and to manufacturers in the west. But, when was the last time the west ramped up manufacturing to compete with China in anything?
–
The reason that so many people are opposed to change are:
- They’ve been convinced that climate change is a hoax. Nobody realistically knows how to fix people’s beliefs about this. And, it’s unlikely to change unless there’s a radical change in media company ownership and bias, which means it’s probably going to take decades to fix. It’s more likely that the climate change deniers will die off of old age, than they’re going to change their beliefs.
- They believe the current system works, so why change it? This is key. Even if they believed that climate change is real, it’s really hard to convince someone to change a system that works.
- They believe (probably correctly) that the current system is good for their economy. Of course, most of the profits are flowing to the rich, and not being shared with the workers. However, the current system does employ a lot of workers.
- They think that renewable systems only work when it’s sunny or when it’s windy. There’s a bit of truth to that, and for continent-wide purely renewable grid, you’d need to figure out some way of storing energy for when conditions aren’t right for renewables. But, the problem is overblown because those solutions are coming online as fast as the grid is being updated.
Right on. No matter how well meaning people may be, if we misunderstand the issues then we’re unlikely to craft working solutions.
The only comment I would add to yours is that local economies are interconnected with the global marketplace. If the price of oil goes up overseas, domestic producers will increase their prices too. Additionally, the cost of energy is baked into the price of imported goods. Even if a country were completely energy independent, a spike in the price of energy on the global markets would increase price of just about everything at home.
I’d like to add that a lot of these people work in the oil or coal industry or have family members who do. The work, as dangerous and comparatively ill paying as it may be, may be the only thing that puts their town on the map and keeps food on the table. Not seeing a way out for those who can’t or won’t be retained for another job can be pretty scary, a fear that is very much preyed a upon by conservatives.
I just learned so much in such a short amount of time. Thanks for taking the time to drop some knowledge.
They’ve been convinced that climate change is a hoax. Nobody realistically knows how to fix people’s beliefs about this.
Well the problem is that the solution is unthinkable. Most people, not just fascists but also liberals, parrot certain ingrained dogma that has been programmed into them. They are deathly scared of regulating or nationalizing news or social media and want to abdicate government power to the seemingly neutral market. Meanwhile PR agencies and think tanks deliberately crafted and spread the climate hoax lie, and that side is where the money is.
The tankies, the people previously known as socialists, know precisely what to do about this shit. Except their system is ruled by the same calculus of power and wealth. So you’d need to deliberately choose a system that will be less liberal to fix climate change and propaganda by the capital.
Fully nationalizing news would be a terrible idea. But, having an American version of ABC, BBC, CBC, etc. would be a smart move. The national broadcaster is what keeps the news in countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. from going as insane as the US. Often the national broadcaster is boring and stodgy, but because they’re not profit-driven they can tell the full, true, boring story.
As for social media, you just need to mandate interoperability and break up monopolies. If you could leave Twitter for Mastodon and keep following and being followed by the same people, almost nobody would stay behind. Unfortunately, not only does that interoperability not exist, the DMCA makes it illegal to build certain tools to migrate off awful platforms. Facebook succeeded because they provided an easy migration path from Myspace. But, if you tried the same thing today, Facebook would sue you to oblivion.
For news, you could set up a trust and transfer ownership of each news station to the workers for a type of collective. Let them vote democratically how they want to run their news station or news paper. Let them elect editors and managers. Or something similar to that. Financing shouldn’t really be a problem, after all governments can print money and run plenty of ministries and agencies.
You could do the same for social media, just transfer ownership to the collective of the workers. After that it is self-governing. That would be a massive change from corporate ownership, profit optimization and catering to advertising. Of course this is unthinkable.
And yeah I like the interoperability, the EU did something like this, mandating interop for messengers. But I’m not sure it really works.
For news, you could set up a trust and transfer ownership of each news station to the workers for a type of collective.
Yeah, because if we know one thing, it’s that a group of people never has outlandish and crazy beliefs.
Financing shouldn’t really be a problem, after all governments can print money and run plenty of ministries and agencies.
Which are paid for by tax dollars. If you just print money endlessly you cause inflation, and eventually hyperinflation.
It doesn’t seem to me like you’ve actually thought any of this through.
Yeah, because if we know one thing, it’s that a group of people never has outlandish and crazy beliefs.
Yeah and that is the big lie right there. People have become so indoctrinated with the idea that profit seeking and unbridled greed is somehow neutral and can be trusted compared to things people might decide. That democracy is itself the problem, not the influence of capital on democracy. That we need to abdicate all power to protect us from the people with the crazy ideas. Instead we now get the best or worst of both worlds, capital using the most extreme beliefs to make money or gain power and social media pushing polarization for profit.
The inflation myth is a common fallacy btw. That only happens when essential goods (with “non elastic demand”) become scarce.
PS: Anyway, I did say these things are unthinkable
If OPEC limits production the prices will go up, but that means more profit will flow to the US. Assuming this is meant for a US audience, that’s obviously a good thing for their economy.
This is the only part I’d take issue with. Profits will be good for the oil companies but so many products will be affected by the price increase that this would be terrible for consumers. We’re already seeing that in food prices as transportation costs (oil) are affecting them.
Profits will be good for the oil companies
Which will eventually make its way into the US economy, assuming that the shareholders are mostly American, which they probably are. Of course, there’s a terrible problem with wealth inequality, and a lot of people who will benefit from high oil prices are the wealthy, but even the wealthy tend to eventually spend their money, even if it’s on something dumb like a penis-shaped rocket.
If it were only US prices going up, I’d agree that it was a net negative for the average American. In that case you’d just have money shifting from the average person to the oil company shareholders. But, in this case, it’s different. In this case, prices worldwide would go up, and people around the world would be paying more for fuel. That means money from around the world would flow to the US because of the big American share of the oil industry. In a fair world, the ultra-rich would pay a 90% tax rate and that money would immediately flow into the government coffers then be spent on things that benefited ordinary Americans. But, even with all the various tax dodges and so-on, it’s probably still a net positive for the US as things stand.
“Peak oil” has been predicted for decades, and they just keep finding more and more oil.
I’ll raise one point on this. Peak Oil isn’t just a question of the gross quantity of existing oil, its about the cost of extracting a new barrel relative to the demand for that barrel. It is possible we can reach a moment in history when the value-add of a burning a gallon of light sweet crude is lower than the cost to extract it. We’ve already functionally passed that point for coal (which is why we’ve basically given up mining it, despite enormous reserves continuing to exist).
The BP Horizon spill is a great example of the consequences of “Peak Oil” as a practical concern. The Horizon rig was only economically viable because of the triple-digit price on oil, going into the late '00s. It was a largely experimental construction, given the offshore depth of the extraction with costs to match, signaling a depletion of “safer” inland wells. And the liabilities it generated (both directly from the spill and indirectly from political reforms instated afterwards and insurance demanded for future rigs) dwarfed the revenue it produced.
There’s still oil in the well Horizon had drilled and we could still conceivably build another rig to go back and keep mining it. But we won’t, because the costs exceed the expected revenues. If we ever see $200-300 bbl gasoline, a business might have the monetary incentive to return. But if wind/solar/nuclear become a cost-efficient replacement, there will never been an economic incentive to rebuild on that patch. We will have passed the point at which oil extraction makes financial sense.
Big car doesn’t go vroom vroom
The core is about change. To accept climate change means they have to make changes to their lifestyle, and they don’t like having to change. Beyond that, it’s rationalizations and bad faith arguments from the usual grifters and corporations layered on top of that to justify the position they chose emotionally.
But then I won’t be able to race my black-smoke-belching rolling-coal truck with my manly man buddies :(
Rolling coal is one of the most mindbogglingly stupid things I’ve ever heard of. Truly, it makes it seem like Idiocracy didn’t go nearly far enough in their hyperbole. Nobody could’ve predicted people being this aggressively dumb.
Speaking of doing stupid shit and rolling coal…
https://www.bicycling.com/news/a60747401/waller-texas-coal-rolling-cyclist-crash/Damn that’s horrific, stupid and completely unnecessary.
Ignoring the tragedy of the actual situation, the way the title is parsed for the link implies that a diesel powered bicyclist crashed while rolling coal and that imagery makes me giggle.
If someone put together a diesel powered bike that could coal out I wouldn’t even be mad
idk about diesel, but you can get a 2-stroke to run pretty dirty without much trouble
I pictured a cyclist with anthracite wheels.
They want that mad max life style
Actually if everything else was fixed we could probably still allow things like monster truck rallies etc right?
No reason (other than a weird attachment to breathing in exhaust fumes) you can’t have an electric powered Monster Truck.
In fact it makes a lot of sense. Can have Monster Truck rallies in indoor stadiums. Electric motors are really powerful. Monster Trucks aren’t driving hundreds of miles so wouldn’t need batteries that are all that big.
Hate to break it to you, but they already have monster truck rallies in indoor arenas. That way everyone can hot-box the exhaust.
Yeah I should have said safely have monster truck rallies in indoor arenas.
I meant like continue letting people have their hobby cars with ice, just have to regulate it somehow. This is like in a utopia where the majority of the world isn’t using ice and we have renewable energy solutions.
wtf is this ? a locomotive ?
Yes, in that it’s a motive for locos
Steam locomotives burn far cleaner than whatever the hell this is. An efficiently running steam engine effectively consumes its own smoke and only exhausts waste steam.
From Lemminary’s link
An increasingly popular phenomenon at the time of the incident, coal rolling happens when a driver of a diesel truck floods the engine with more fuel than it can efficiently process, emitting a thick black plume of exhaust across the road. The emissions systems of diesel trucks are strictly regulated under federal law. But some truck owners modify their exhaust systems with illegal aftermarket parts, or fail to fix broken exhaust systems. In the 2010s, rolling coal became a kind of defiant act, an aggressive backlash against the increasing regulation of fossil fuels. People using forms of transportation that don’t burn oil—namely, those riding bikes, walking, or driving an electric vehicle—became targets. Social media apps such as TikTok helped drive the #rollingcoal trend. Videos with captions like “POV: You roll coal on every bicycle you see,” showing the engorged tailpipe of a diesel truck expelling a bubbling smoke, accrued thousands, even millions of views.
Americans truly are a different species
Lead poisoning is one hell of a drug.
I’m convinced some of these people have some kind of brain damage.
that what happen when companies rule the country, and propaganda runs without regulation, who thought that protecting multimillionaire bribes would be a good idea
who thought that protecting multimillionaire bribes would be a good idea
The ones who made billions because of it
Where I live (Midwestern USA), there are guys who drive around just to roal coal on cyclists. It has happened to me a few times.
It’s fucking insane how those manly man with a beer gut feel endangered by cyclists. You get assaulted by a weak little wimp in his tank for choosing a different mode of transportation.
When I see hiw insanely stupid people can get I don’t believe in any hope for humanity.
I worked with a guy who got run off the road on his bicycle by a couple rednecks in a pickup truck and was severely injured. That was 30 years ago, in Texas.
We made a better world for nothing 😡
Exactly. We expect immediate and tangible rewards.
Give that oil rig worker a better job with bigger benefits and they’ll jump ship on the spot. Promise them a cleaner future and they’ll just laugh at you.
