Because some university dipshit 10 years ago didn’t want to upset the chamber of commerce by suggesting we not increase production as a solution.
There's a lot of truth in your comment, but I don't think this part is quite fair.
How do you tell people the sky is falling? How do you get them to believe that the sky is falling, but it won't really start to fuck up their lives for a generation or two? How do you sell this to the United States in all the optimism and arrogance of the end-of-history 1990s? How do you -- at the zenith of capitalism -- get people to take a problem seriously when the only solution is dismantling capitalism? How do you do this in the face of a massive, coordinated propaganda effort to the contrary?
That's a monumentally difficult task with no obvious winning strategy. I can believe the "lead with the worst-case scenario" strategy would have failed, too, so I find it hard to judge them for not choosing it.
You tell them that the sky is falling. You just tell them. Because it is falling. There is no larger game here. You tell them the truth. Plus you can't separate that decision from its relation to capital. There wasn't a situation where they couldn't tell the truth because capitalism did propaganda. They were part of the capitalist propaganda. The scientific consensus stuff was part of it. People were never given the chance to take it seriously. The real group that needed to change was the industrialists who were doing the most emissions. But they couldn't tell all the wealthy fucks to stop living their lives like kings, they had to sell a narrative that made them feel better about their choices. They lied to normal people in that process. What you're saying is that they had to lie to us because we couldn't handle it. We could and can if we had gotten the chance.
Also, we know that history doesn't change based on how educated or rational the public is. The public wasn't the largest emitter of CO2. The public didn't have any substantial political power. It's not that people were too irrational to handle it. It happened because the material conditions were that they had to tell the wealthy to stop being as wealthy.
There's a lot of truth in your comment, but I don't think this part is quite fair.
How do you tell people the sky is falling? How do you get them to believe that the sky is falling, but it won't really start to fuck up their lives for a generation or two? How do you sell this to the United States in all the optimism and arrogance of the end-of-history 1990s? How do you -- at the zenith of capitalism -- get people to take a problem seriously when the only solution is dismantling capitalism? How do you do this in the face of a massive, coordinated propaganda effort to the contrary?
That's a monumentally difficult task with no obvious winning strategy. I can believe the "lead with the worst-case scenario" strategy would have failed, too, so I find it hard to judge them for not choosing it.
You tell them that the sky is falling. You just tell them. Because it is falling. There is no larger game here. You tell them the truth. Plus you can't separate that decision from its relation to capital. There wasn't a situation where they couldn't tell the truth because capitalism did propaganda. They were part of the capitalist propaganda. The scientific consensus stuff was part of it. People were never given the chance to take it seriously. The real group that needed to change was the industrialists who were doing the most emissions. But they couldn't tell all the wealthy fucks to stop living their lives like kings, they had to sell a narrative that made them feel better about their choices. They lied to normal people in that process. What you're saying is that they had to lie to us because we couldn't handle it. We could and can if we had gotten the chance.
Also, we know that history doesn't change based on how educated or rational the public is. The public wasn't the largest emitter of CO2. The public didn't have any substantial political power. It's not that people were too irrational to handle it. It happened because the material conditions were that they had to tell the wealthy to stop being as wealthy.
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