(relatively low stakes, as in like not 9/11 or JFK level)
Mine: plastic straw (and now plastic cutlery) ban initiatives are directly funded by petrochemical companies. Plastic straws are one of the most common and useful types of disposable plastic an average American encounters every day, so banning them causes people a huge inconvenience and tarnishes the idea of other green initiatives (that might have actual teeth) as more nanny state "not allowed to have this"-ery (also has the side effect of making gullible libs think they're actually doing something to help the planet by using a reusable straw while they get their plastic container of meat products)
So, anyone sane can see that there is an ecological disaster of epic proportions. Air pollution, deforestation, over fishing, dead rivers, urban spawl. The earth is fucked from every direction, but if you want to not do anything about it, you frame it in the way lends itself most to debate. Co2 is invisible, the effects are supposed to occur in the future etc. By bringing it front and center along with the climate denier discourse, you can simultenously do little or nothing about it, but also drown out other ecological concerns.
It's what I'd do if I were a sociopathic capitalist.
ah so you meant to say "most deniable", not "most falsifiable".
Yes that's right. Middle of the night at night shift job. Wasn't thinking super straight.
All of the stuff you mentioned are mostly local issues while climate change is a global one.
Deforestation and the over fishing is a local issue?
Yeah, even if it is done everywhere, deforestation of a specific place will have a negligable effect outside of that place. What i meant by "local" wasn't that it's not being done everywhere, but that each deforestation is independant of each other regarding their cause&effect.
Overfishing is debatable because of migration disruption, but is still mostly local.
My definition of a global problem is its a problem all over the world, so that's what I mean when I say global problem
Oh okay, i misunderstood then, sorry.
Wait so you're doubting the greenhouse gas effect is a thing or what? Who is "pushing" global warming (climate change is the shitty Frank Luntz-Bush administration term meant to pacify people concerned about the globe warming)?
And the effects are already here, we're already in the future we talked about 20 years ago. Half of America is on fire right now, all of Australia was just on fire, Greenland is melting, Siberia is exploding methane out of melting permafrost and leaving craters everywhere. Who knows if the Clathrate Gun has been fired yet, but warming feedback loops are already in motion, meaning in a few years, literally a few years now, it won't matter what humans do about global warming anymore since nature's carbon emissions will dwarf humanity's and we won't even be able to slow it down.
I don't doubt the green house gas is a thing. I am saying if I wanted to not do anything about the enviroment I would take a global environmental problem that is the least tangible, then frame it so that there appears to be two sides, and then using liberal brain damage logic most people will tend towards the "centrist" position of, sort of acknowledge it, but then don't really do anything about it because the economy. If you push this narrative hard enough, it will tend to push other enviromental catastrophes into the backdrop so you don't need to address them either.
And sure, it's looking more tangible now, but that's pretty recent. It has basically been a scientific consensus for 30 years, but most of that time people were projecting it into the future.
Again Deforestation and desertification. Look here is a forest, here are tree stumps or ash. Here is a forest, here is a desert where the forest was. Tangible easy to understand and difficult to deny. Ever heard of a deforestation denier? Sure, you here people saying its not a problem, but I have never heard someone simply flatly deny that it even exists, and thats something you can do, and people have done with climate change for decades.
You can't really gaslight about acid rain. You go to Sudbury Ontario chip off a piece of rock and find out the black rocks used to be pink. You absolutely CAN and people DO gaslight about climate change "These crazy SJWs, climate change is a chinese conspiracy to end the toothpick industry" or whatever.
Ok, I think I get what you're saying, but the problem being framed as revolving around CO2 (or any greenhouse gas) is not some liberal brainworm frame job, that literally is what is causing the problem and CO2 is the form that most human-made carbon gets released into the atmosphere. There are worse greenhouse gases that are released from natural sources, like methane, but human industry doesn't usually deliberately release methane into the air since it is a valuable gas to capture and sell if possible, so CO2 is humanity's main contribution to the problem.
Deforestation and acid rain and drought might be tangible symptoms of global warming, they are not the cause of it, which is an overabundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It might be better to focus on them visually, but explaining the problem as "fight deforestation" somewhat minimizes the full scope of the problem.
I mean, most of the world doesn't have any issue understanding and believing this is a major issue except the USA, where oil billionaires just paid people to go, "nuh uh" on TV for the last 50 years.
Well yeah and no. Deforestation and desertification, air pollution (non greenhouse gas: soot, acid rain &c.) , loss of ocean life via plastic swirls and over fishing, urban sprawl etc. and many other things are all direct non GHG emission contributors to climate change and they are talked about to some extent, but the issue is usually framed in the media as a GHG issue and not an issue of a general break down of Earth system's on a whole variety of fronts. You look at government responses, at least in the west, and they are all almost entirely focused on GHG emissions, but if we lowered GHG emissions and addressed none of those other issues we are still going to be fucked by the ecosystems of the planet all completely collapsing.
You can also make money off of Co2 through whole slew of things you can sell to libs: tesla's, solar panels, off grid homes etc. How do you make a buck off planting trees instead of cutting them down? or not fishing tuna instead of fishing tuna? You can't. GHG is the liberal democratic dream. You can make money off of it and it fights nicely into a two party system discourse.
Of course, its also true. As I said, it has been a scientific consensus for ages.
On another note, you have seen all these XR posts recently? Funnel the libs into some dumb ass do nothing organzation, make a file on them, and then gaslight them, and ultimately nothing really changes. and you have to admit, despite all the noise and, at least in canada, 80% of people thinking the government needs to do more about it, nothing basically happens.
To reiterate that its not a US problem only, the Canadian govenrment just bought the trans mountain pipeline to ensure that it gets rammed down the through of native peoples and we all fry.
The Conspiracy here is that a bunch of people got together on a caroselle and said "this environmentalism stuff is getting out of control. How do we effectively gaslight, but maintain our legitimacy."