Climate Change | UN Report: Code Red for humanity
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Isn't that just and opinion piece? And even if it's an editorial, the WSJ is known to have insane editorial writers.
It's written by a member of the editorial board.
I thought it was important that the 1st/2nd most prominent business paper in the world wants to actively destroy the planet
If I remember correctly, the editorial board are ardent Trumpites, or on that level of idiocy, and the general news staff have little to do with that. Either way, I do agree that it sure is annoying to see these people around still (and in influential places, too), and other idiots like them. (The large Dutch populist opposition parties' main complaint about the new government's plans is their intention to do more about climate change, alongside these parties' complaints about immigration. Piss off already you dinosaurs!) But I think it's clear stuff like this is now wishful thinking on their end. The actual battle isn't with denialists anymore, it's with those who think drastic action is too expensive.It's written by a member of the editorial board.
I thought it was important that the 1st/2nd most prominent business paper in the world wants to actively destroy the planet
Yep, both the NYT & WSJ have slightly out there editorial boards.
bin democracy to save the planet?
Whilst I wouldn’t normally agree that authoritarian leadership is required, every democracy has processes in place to remove such rights in cases of emergency. From Romans suspending democracy in times of war to Covid restrictions, every area has cases of flirting with authoritarianism.
I know that not many of these cases ended well but this is a crisis that will impact each and every one of us and we can’t afford to pander to those who refuse to acknowledge the problem, either for real or for money, or deny that it even exists.
There has to be a point where everyone gets in line.
We are at the point now where we need a dual approach.
First, your classic steps to reduce emissions, global temp, etc. So that someday things might improve.
But we are also fecked in the short term and we need to understand how to adapt to what's coming.
Unfortunately most governments have their heads deep in the sand or worse, don't care.
First, your classic steps to reduce emissions, global temp, etc. So that someday things might improve.
But we are also fecked in the short term and we need to understand how to adapt to what's coming.
Unfortunately most governments have their heads deep in the sand or worse, don't care.
Most governments reflect their voters.
I haven't read the piece, but on the face of it this statement is definitely correct:
we must put climate action over democracy and adopt authoritarian governance if democracies fail to act on climate change.
If we don't act on climate change, not having democracy will be the least of our worries. And in fact democracy is very unlikely to survive severe climate change anyway. Just imagine the kind of nationalistic and xenophobic sentiment which is going to grow in the west in the face of tens of millions (at least) of climate migrants. We'll be lucky to avoid concentration camps, honestly. And, obviously, it's not like the West is going to survive global warming unscathed either, and just "suffer" refugees. Imagine the cold war, except a lot more chaotic and filled with resource wars.
When you can't feed the population, it matters not if there's an authoritarian government or not, you can only lock up so many people. It will be interesting to see how all those complaining about governments infringing on their freedoms are going to cope in the next few decades. We have way too many armchair politicians now who just parrot shite they read somewhere.
Really?
Regarding climate change, I'm convinced yes.
Very dangerous but reluctantly it might have to be considered. In ancient Rome and Greece when things went to pot and there was an existential crisis a dictator was brought in to solve issues that a senate or a democracy simply could't do because of the strife caused by demagogues or because society was at each others throats. Still, it's extremely sad that it would have to come to that. The whole pandemic and the absolutely crazy amount of misinformation proliferated by social media has been really disturbing and god knows what kind of strange things we'll hear in the future regarding climate change/migration.
Individuals struggle to do the things that need to be done that's why governments have to be the initiators of effective, meaningful legislation not just optics.
I agree, I was referring to the not caring factor. Unfortunately I don't think the majority of voters care about climate change.
Well, I'm not privy to the global psychology report, but where I'm from democracy is a farce, basically rooted in class, education, race and tradition. Most people here don't know what climate is, never mind that it's changing. Based on this limited viewpoint, I feel very tempted to extrapolate it to most other democracies too.
People vote for the party their parents voted for. They really don't consider the pros and cons. This is why democracy is a joke.
Democracy can't achieve the change required to prevent climate change that's for sure. It's going to be politically inconvenient on too many occasions.
I'm sure we'll see some change but it'll only be enough to placate the populace. Half measures and deal with the fallout later.
I know that the WSJ is a Murdoch property, and their line reflects that (though usually less directly than Fox). But just because it seems extreme doesn't mean it should be ignored. It's either influential or reflects a segment of elite opinion.
I agree that denialism has mutated into many forms. Not wanting to do too much. Arguing over the correct ways to transition, especially by pushing for gas (that leaked Zoom call from Exxon showed how they support this strategy, also this recent "undercover" reporting shows how this type of transition is simply denialism in new clothes).
Sound appealing, in theory it can work...In practice? I doubt it. A couple of reasons:
The barrier to action on climate change in a democracy is (at least) equal parts fossil fuel and related lobbies, and voters refusing to changing/lowering lifestyles.
Those fossil fuel interests also exist in a dictatorship - no country is ruled by exactly one person, there is a ruling class always, and given the current state of the world, those interests will be a part of it. This doesn't change whether it's nationalised or privatised. In Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, the government in theory can choose to stop oil production tomorrow. Let's assume the next Saudi prince (as close to a 1-person ruler as possible) is a rabid environmentalist, deeply committed to saving the planet. Will he shut the wells down? No! His country's entire economy is based on oil. A collapse in that sector is a collapse in every other sector, hurting people within the ruling elite but also across the country.
Look at a very different dictatorship - the USSR of 1980s- still existed today, with large oil production propping up the economy of some of its republics. I can believe that some of the party leadership might have a commitment to ending climate change. But the power brokers of the oil regions (necessarily linked with the oil economy), and the workers of those regions will resist this move. In the interest of union harmony, the central leadership would probably back down. Which brings up the second point - evil voters in a democracy have too much power.
All successful governments have a basis of legitimacy. I don't know much about Saudi but it's some combination of religious authority and oil-based easy economy. In China it is a party that threw out 100 years of foreign humiliations and invasions, then reinvented itself and delivered the largest poverty reduction in human history, all the while increasing China's global influence. The government's legitimacy rests on its population accepting that narrative.
What narrative would work in the west? What are the population being delivered from? There simply isn't enough poverty for a China-style narrative to work. Maybe a right-wing fascist/xenophobic dictatorship can deliver people from the perceived migrant hordes. But would that party be interested in addressing climate change?
Without that narrative and legitimacy, a dictatorship asking its subjects to tolerate a decline in living standards is going to go very badly.
The movements that ended the Warsaw Pact dictatorships happened in the 80s for a reason. It wasn't enough that there was limited freedom of speech and blatant lying from the top. It is when the economy collapsed in the 80s that the parties lost all legitimacy. So a semi-popular dictatorship presiding over a decline of living standards could end with a revolt.
Finally, the one thing where a dictatorship should manage better regardless- long term planning without interference from election cycles. Yes, a Saudi prince may not be able to shut down the wells today, but can plan for 30 years later when they are shut down. He then looks over his shoulder at the Gulf states and sees them pumping up their production for these 30 years, stealing his country's market share and prestige. So, even if a dictatorship, accepted by the population, plans out a just and fair transition, it will be left behind by competitive states.
The basis of the global economy within and across countries is competition. Solving this requires cooperation at all levels. You can't have polluter countries leaving transitioning countries behind. You can't have a laissez-faire approach to resource use. Changing from democracy to dictatorship doesn't solve that.
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How do you solve this within a market system that is underpinned by competition and laissez-faire values?
Regulate the minimum passengers on flights? What happens to flights where a few people booked, are they routinely stranded? What happens to repositioning flights overnight which allow the convenient, cheap, dense scheduling of low-cost airlines? Wouldn't a clever airline fill a flight with the minimum number of people (paying people minimum wage to fly on a plane) and so keep its slots?
What about a regulation on the slots themselves? During bans and low demand these occupancy rules should be suspended... What about intermediate periods, when air travel is allowed but is low, and is expected to be back in the future - does that count as a time for an exemption? How is low demand defined? Can an airline manipulate the numbers to protect its slot during a more normal time? What about a competitor airline that is still flying with passengers and has to take poorer slots because its established rival has its empty slots protected?
As long as every individual and firm and country is competing against each other, and they are encouraged (and required) to maximise self-interest, none of these things can be properly resolved.
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That is in all probability what will happen.
Glasgow and COP26 and all the platitudes have conviently faded from the headlines and reality is back.
Aside from Covid, the current concern is the price of fuel. Fossil fuel. And how to make it more affordable.
And I am as bad as anyone else. It is freezing outside and we have no real alternative but to turn up the gas boiler. But at least I walk as much as possible instead of driving.
Remember a similar (same?) story from last year too.
That is the primary challenge for many green projects.
Doing just about anything requires energy. And we are still some way away from being able to get more out than we put in. But technology is rapidly improving and unless you try, you will not succeed.
In case anyone had expected anything else.
Report: Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 - NewClimate Institute
Longer news article: Climate pledges from top companies crumble under scrutiny (nature.com)Nature Briefing said:
Report: Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 - NewClimate Institute
Think I've mentioned this a few times, but folks have got to read Naomi Kleins book "This changes everything". It goes into how our economic system and its norms and values cannot actually deal with climate change because the system is the cause of the problem. She doesn't advocate for communism or anything like that, but she simply states that global warming is a negative externality of the economic system and because of the structure of the system, there is no reason to be the one company that tries to solve it. By trying to address the negative externality, it actually undermines the system they benefit from.
This is why so much contemporary literature starts to question whether humans are actually capable of addressing global warming, or whether it's one of these problems that eventually ends a species (not a topic touched on by Klein though).
I should have a look at that.
The 'why should I start this' rhetoric is the same for states and individuals btw. It's on display everywhere.
I read this (which I'm guessing was before the book or excerpted from it) about 10 years ago, and it's pretty much been proved true: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/science-says-revolt
whatever hellscape follows will hopefully, eventually, be bad enough that a few generations later there will be enough people wanting something different.
Jeff Bezos pledged a billion squillion dollars to combat climate change recently didn't he? Contrast that with his mega yacht sailing through Rotterdam and it's just mind boggling to think how warped someone's perception can get.
I really don't think capitalism can solve this problem which is what i think 99% of people are optimistically thinking will happen. Some boffin will fix it all eventually etc.
I really don't think capitalism can solve this problem which is what i think 99% of people are optimistically thinking will happen. Some boffin will fix it all eventually etc.
Unfortunately, the issue stems a huge amount from a function of human intelligence distribution. It's the result of this: out of a million people, there are ten-thousand in the 1%. These people clump together as the 'smart' people - your doctors, lawyers, some PhDs etc. And that group is large enough to sway things when they come up against the much smaller group above them. Now, compared to the actual smart people in the 0.001%, these people are UTTER feckING MORONS and the general public cannot tell the difference: derp derp that one's a doctor I'ma listen to her. Some 0.1% doctor can be one hundred times dumber compared to a 0.001%er than the average dude compared to the doctor, but because there are so many more of the latter, their voice prevails.
So that 'actual smart people' group is miniscule compared to the second-rate tier and below. Which means is that the general public in the end not only goes along with that larger group, but that larger group in general ends up pandering to the general public on whatever side of any issue, because they believe they're the smart/elite and they get all that positive feedback.
So unless there arises an ongoing comprehensive actual eugenics-type program to continuously identify and eliminate all but the top 0.001% and above - think Sparta, except for intellect and emotional awareness - the bolded part of your post simply can not physically happen. And even then it's a toss-up as in theory the phenomenon might persist.
There is some truth to what you say but it's highly tempting to think in terms of intelligence and tiers (of economic factors weighed against mental capacity, because surely anyone who discerns such a nuance is placing themselves within one of these selective tiers or close to it?).
It is more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding and necessary, to realise that we have to remove the "self" from "political interest". This ties into your point but to expand: the principle is what must be elevated, the talking head or whatever icon who espouses it must be devalued to an almost happenstance level of arbitrariness. A potentially useful conveyor of information but not the final authority. A doctrine based in logic and scientific fact which calls for social redress can work if you eliminate the tendency for ideologues right at the outset. Do not put anyone on a pedestal. Take their argument and leave their personality behind. Once you do that, you rob people of whatever celebrity which attends a given cause celebre and which tends to obfuscate the issue. No one should be getting rich on "climate change awareness" or "social change" in general. That is antithetical to the entire premise.
For example, many academics and journalists and even politicians (some) will know very well what needs doing but are rather invested in their own position to the point that they do not want to jeopardize it. That means they are compromised by their own self interest. Many who teach Marx and seem self-assured of their own Marxist bona fides are credentialed members of the bourgeoisie. This class of people, self-confessed vanguards of the liberal revolution, has utterly failed and should be judged incredibly harshly. I'm not a Marxist, but neither are they. The difference is they would assume the role of gatekeeper to Marxist ideology, which they are, almost a priori, unfit to hold.
tl;dr change of this kind will come from the bottom up. Persistent social pressure to the effect of "do this or get out of the way, your time is up". Principle, not personality.
I agree - in principle (teehee) - but the bolded part is impossible to achieve when the second-tier will always act against it. (We're clearly talking about the same thing.) That second-rate tier will always try and act to elevate themselves above said principle. The 'get paid what I'm worth' crowd is physically incapable of understanding that the minority above them who work for less do so because they're intellectually capable of understand the destructive effects of making more.
A mere physician (or a sociopathic tech company CEO) for example will 99.99999% of the time respond with, ]what's wrong with getting paid with what I'm worth?' 'Yes, I'm smarter than pretty much most people.' While ironically, a super-genius responds with 'if I make more than X, it actually impacts negatively in Y and Z ways, so no thank you. No, I'm not smarter than anyone else. Our bodies all perform roughly the same amount of net calculations with respect to the environment.' #commiebastard
Not dismissing anything you posted. I'm not disagreeing with the 'principle.' (Again, we're clearly talking about the same thing)
The earlier post was just commenting on that one aspect of how sustaining a positive social pressure towards maintaining that principle is doomed to fail without engaging in eugenics-type manipulation, (and even then maybe doomed)
Yes, we probably agree. I just do not go along with "tierology". There is, in every society, a group of people less amenable to change because their stake in said society makes them second guess any measure by which they would lose a sizable portion of it. Still, it is better to lose a sizable portion and remain well off than to embrace the alternative which will absolutely lead to systemic revolt of one kind or another in the not too distant future. Remains to be seen what happens.
Or, where you say "tier" I instead think apparatus or commentariat within said apparatus (talking heads who promote their own self interest at the expense of a cause, what some people call "green washing": the "media circuit"). That kind of commentary is less about systematic change than it is about telling you what is going to happen and packaging it within a "radical" filter. They are there to convince you of the facts and to narrow the scope of possible action you might take in response to said facts. Paid members of the commentariat who are not necessarily stupid but are always "useful idiots" in the old Soviet sense of the term.
All you need is a set of simple goals which adhere to a common principle. Taxation, economic reorganisation, and so on. Keep those goals and jettison the rest. You cannot infiltrate a movement which runs according to objectively common interest. To discredit any given person is irrelevant when the principle is what counts. All spokespeople are therefore expendable and should be. Nor can a "tier" suppress it. It will reach a point when that tier itself, to use your term, will be clamoring for revolutionary change, once the sizable majority is set in motion it cannot be denied by any number of spokespeople or airbrushed by PR or talking heads.
Back on topic, they announced a breakthrough in fusion technology today. What they don't tell you is that if the entire world were fusion-ready tomorrow, we would still be in the same position as deforestation continues. They tax goods which are deemed hazardous. They should apply the same logic to all goods which contribute to the climate problem and also reconsider the agricultural madness whereby the EU imports from Brazil (forest destroyed in Brazil to make way for farms and we are incentivising it: what sense does that make?).
Have you ever heard of this?
That in theory is the ideal. In practice, the bolded part is where things usually go wrong - whether it's the 'nobility' in France a few hundred years ago or influencers and the digital priesthood/papacy of today.
Ooh. https://inews.co.uk/news/science/nu...xford-atomic-1449240?ito=social_itw_theipaper
I think you'd like this book.
I saw this tweet in the Ukraine thread:
European countries have made up their minds and found (potential) alternatives really quick about these things based on current events. It made me wonder what it would take for a similar change of pace for climate change action - especially considering that last year's floods in Germany and Belgium apparently weren't nearly bad enough for that!
European countries have made up their minds and found (potential) alternatives really quick about these things based on current events. It made me wonder what it would take for a similar change of pace for climate change action - especially considering that last year's floods in Germany and Belgium apparently weren't nearly bad enough for that!
Now i may be a simple country moron but it seems to me that the market may not after all be able to properly price externalities
Seeing the guy tie himself to the goalpost last night in the Everton match just reminded me of how screwed we are. Don't get me wrong what he did was stupid and all he did was just piss everyone off but it was the action of a frustrated young man who knows his future is bleak because corporations and governments can't/won't change enough.
Unfortunately you'll always find a group of people that will be ignorant and/or arrogant about the various problems in the world, ignorant in saying oh it's not that big of a deal or worse the problem doesn't exist period. And arrogant that even if they acknowledge there is a problem they're unwilling to change anything because it doesn't currently affect their life so there's no point inconveniencing themselves.
And while normal people like you and i can take steps to help it will always be undone by other people's and governments ignorance and negligence. One example being crypto and NFT's, there's lots of information on how it's not good for the environment yet they're the hot new thing that everyone has to have without caring about any consequence. And being honest anyone who buys or had bought an NFT is either a moron, or a genius knowing morons will pay big money for something that's got no value so it's easy money.
But ultimately most governments are full of the wealthy upper class and the only thing people with money and power want is more money and power. So they are incapable of making the sacrifice necessary to truly make a difference and renders anything you or i do pointless. And when something does come along that can potentially help like electric/hybrid vehicles, they're too expensive for most people to buy one.
Unfortunately you'll always find a group of people that will be ignorant and/or arrogant about the various problems in the world, ignorant in saying oh it's not that big of a deal or worse the problem doesn't exist period. And arrogant that even if they acknowledge there is a problem they're unwilling to change anything because it doesn't currently affect their life so there's no point inconveniencing themselves.
And while normal people like you and i can take steps to help it will always be undone by other people's and governments ignorance and negligence. One example being crypto and NFT's, there's lots of information on how it's not good for the environment yet they're the hot new thing that everyone has to have without caring about any consequence. And being honest anyone who buys or had bought an NFT is either a moron, or a genius knowing morons will pay big money for something that's got no value so it's easy money.
But ultimately most governments are full of the wealthy upper class and the only thing people with money and power want is more money and power. So they are incapable of making the sacrifice necessary to truly make a difference and renders anything you or i do pointless. And when something does come along that can potentially help like electric/hybrid vehicles, they're too expensive for most people to buy one.
The simple fact I think we all know is, you cannot fix the climate with our economic growth at all costs greedy system.
Every problem we have is basically linked to greed which in itself is the main success of capitalism.
Every problem we have is basically linked to greed which in itself is the main success of capitalism.