Websites hosting major US climate reports taken down

i think what contributes the most to my sense of dread is the feeling that if you were to tell these decision makers in govt right now "but this'll kill people!" they'd respond "good"

They don't care about people. Senator Joni Ernst when told that people would die due from the spending bill responded with, "Well, we are all going to die."

>I really don't care, do you?

> Senator Joni Ernst when told that people would die due from the spending bill responded with, "Well, we are all going to die." reply

Well, how many times has she seen a doctor in her life so far? Of course, more than one. Then, why did she do that if she is eventually going to die one day?

Because she doesn’t see herself as “one of them”.

She is the living embodiment of the Lord Farquaad meme: “Some of you are going to die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take”

And then doubled down with a later Instagram post making fun of everyone. How are these people our elected officials? It’s unbelievable.

>How are these people our elected officials? It’s unbelievable.

Voters are stupid?

They’re not stupid. These voters see government as a means to enact cruelty on outgroups they don’t like. That’s why they vote for cruel people who don’t care about hurting others. They are not stupid. They know exactly what they are voting for and are overwhelmingly supportive if it.

That sounds so incredibly short sighted I think it could still be reasonably described as stupid.

It's not even hypothetical:

https://www.latintimes.com/trump-ally-slammed-saying-alligat...

At least we know what to do with the guy when he finally gets convicted.

We shouldn’t excuse these voters as merely stupid, like they’re just innocently ignorant or uninformed. They are deliberately malevolent, and vote specifically for cruel, terrible politicians because they, themselves are cruel and terrible people and desire such representation.

And they are not just supporting cruelty. They are cheering and screaming for it. They want more.

I think many are single issue voters. I read a Reuters piece following 20 Trump voters and many voted because they thought he would make the economy better. Misinformation is strong.

> How are these people our elected officials? It’s unbelievable.

Because they know that the vast majority of people advocating for climate change to be a high priority issue is because they want to use that to slow down capitalism - the system that made the US the country they love.

I never hear growth-minded solutions for climate change: Let's get rich enough so everyone (even European hotels) can afford AC? Drug companies make enough money so even poor Africans can afford medicines and theraputics? Deregulate the solar industry? Reduce regulatory barriers for autonomous vehicles? Fast track nuclear power? Stop the fight against ride-sharing?

If the problem was climate change & it was a severe existential issue, I'd assume you'd support all of the above?

I've spent some time reading r/leopardsatemyface, and there's just an unending stream of people who say something like "I didn't vote for this. I voted to inflict this cruelty upon other people, but now that it's coming for me I'm upset. Please redirect this toward people who deserve it. That being said I still support Trump."

This quote from 2019 really sums it up:

  “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this... I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” [1]

The "good thing" he needs to do to according to this voter is "hurt people who deserve it".

I've honestly tried to avoid this conclusion for years, thinking there has to be more to it, but at long last it seems there's not. People want to hurt other people, and they see Trump as their vehicle to do so, because that's what he promises; "I am your justice...I am your retribution" was his literal campaign pitch. [2]

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/tr...

[2] https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2024/former-pres-trump-...

> Because they know that the vast majority of people advocating for climate change to be a high priority issue is because they want to use that to slow down capitalism

Is this really what you think? That the people concerned about climate change are really just interested in changing economic policy? The real motives of environmentalists is to erode capitalism? Respectfully: that's nuts.

> Let's get rich enough so everyone (even European hotels) can afford AC

This "proposal" does nothing, and in fact makes things worse, if that AC is not clean energy! Your "growth-minded" solution is not only not a solution, it's a problem exacerbator. But yes, many of us do in fact advocate for deregulation of the solar industry (I have canvassed on this very issue), and support fast tracking nuclear power. And is there even a fight against ride-sharing to stop?

I just feel like your comment is coming from a different world than my own.

That is the Wizard's First Rule for a reason.

"Wizard's First Rule: people are stupid." Richard and Kahlan frowned even more. "People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool."

> The real motives of environmentalists is to erode capitalism? Respectfully: that's nuts.

Is that really controversial? Reducing consumption and crippling new economic developments like mining/pipelines/logging/large construction projects etc has always been a huge part of environmentalist movement.

Even here in Canada whose economy depends heavily on oil, lumber, and mines...One of the biggest responses to US aggression is to try to reverse that as opposed to years our of GDP growth declining in favour of climate activism and interference by native groups stopping any new projects.

You can't even build a road in BC without activists stopping it.

idk about the US but it's hard to find any industry not impacted by it here.

I feel like my understanding of politics dramatically improved once I considered that some voters are malevolent. Some voters consciously support inhumane policies, but due to social pressure, they feel that they can't be truthful about it.

So they will claim to be in favor of more socially acceptable policies, but vote against those policies giving some nonsensical reason, and it gives the appearance of stupidity.

It's no excuse at all, just pointing out that the malevolent/stupid dichotomy is a false one.

Is it really controversial to say that most environmentalists want to protect ecosystems, not destroy capitalism? No, it's not controversial, it's just wrong. Must protecting ecosystems mean a hatred for capitalism? No.

You’re taking effects (slower pipelines, fewer logging permits) and making those effects the activists’ "true" goal. In reality, many of the people campaigning for stronger environmental safeguards are business-friendly too, such as 1000s of economists (and many Nobel laureates) have backed a carbon tax because it uses market forces to cut emissions.

Calling for long-term accounting of environmental costs isn’t anti-capitalist.

That's not a motive, it's a consequence. There's a difference.

Is environmental destruction a motive of capitalism? Of course not, and it would be crazy to say that. So why say the opposite about environmentalists?

> the vast majority of people advocating for climate change to be a high priority issue is because they want to use that to slow down capitalism

I feel like that's something you want to believe so that you can dismiss legitimate concerns about environmental destruction.

Because that's like saying capitalists want to grow the economy faster to destroy the environment. Which is obviously crazy and untrue.

I love capitalism. I'm also deeply concerned the way it's run currently will destroy the world my children will inherit. These aren't contradictory ideas. Why can't we capitalism better?

There is no other, better, more humane form of capitalism. Capitalism's only concern is the generation and control of capital by the capitalist class. It isn't that capitalists want to destroy the environment, it's that they don't care about the environment beyond it being a resource to be exploited and consumed. "Better capitalism" just means doing more of that exploitation faster and more efficiently.

I don't know what you love and call capitalism but I suspect you've been convinced that as a system it has some inherently moral dimension. It does not, and cannot. It's a paperclip maximizer, that's all.

Exactly. To the extent that a politico-economic system is concerned with anything other than how the capitalist class can maintain control of society through control of the means of production, it is not capitalism. Of course, platonically pure capitalism is rare, and even relatively pure capitalism is mostly a thing of the past since most of the places it was present replaced it with mixed economies in the mid-20th Century, but that's not "kinder capitalism", but simply less capitalism.

> I don't know what you love and call capitalism

Private property and competitive free markets. I just don't like where they end up. I think they need a firm hand to keep from turning into a paperclip maximizer. Maybe that's impossible, but we can't know until we really try.

It's not like other systems have a better track record on environmental protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

> Is this really what you think? That the people concerned about climate change > are really just interested in changing economic policy?

Yes, Here's some examples:

Environmental Justice and Economic Degrowth: An Alliance between Two Movements

https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2011.648839

You can read this wonderful socialist article

https://monthlyreview.org/2023/04/01/marxian-ecology-dialect...

Or from "International socialism"

https://isj.org.uk/degrowth-and-marxism/

Or you can get a degree!

Master's Degree in Political Ecology Degrowth and Environmental Justice

https://www.uab.cat/web/postgraduate/master-in-political-eco...

This is an irritating strawman. I never claimed that no environmentalists have socialist views, or that the movements don’t sometimes overlap in policy preferences even when their motivations for such policies are wholly different.

My point is simply that the vast majority of climate advocates are arguing for policies that conserve and preserve what we have into the future, and that demand the long-term costs of many of our current policies and practices are actually accounted for vs. kicking that externality to the future public. There is no hidden agenda to upend society.

Many of the desires practices are growth-friendly fixes: carbon pricing, deregulating solar, advanced nuclear[1], electrifying transport, ceasing public subsidies for coal and oil. They aren’t campaigning to upend capitalism itself, but to adapt our economy so we can continue to thrive without cooking the planet, destroying ecosystems, and damaging long-term health of the natural world we rely on for life, not just recreation.

Pointing to a handful of degrowth manifestos or niche graduate programs doesn’t prove that mainstream environmentalism is really a Trojan horse for anti-capitalism. If you’re looking to debate climate policy, let’s stick to the proposals most people are actually pushing—and whether they’ll work—not whether some fringe authors happen to share an ideology.

[1] Not all environmentalists support this, I'll grant, but I don't know any who don't personally

>It's not like other systems have a better track record on environmental protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

Socialism is the firm hand keeping capitalism at bay. Environmental laws, labor laws and the abolition of child labor, the 8 hour workday, weekends, minimum wage and overtime, disability rights and social welfare (such as it exists in the US) are all due to socialist activism in spite of the free market. The Black Panthers are the reason American schools have free lunches.

Well great let's have more of that without losing private property or instituting central planning.

Worse, AC in cities is counterproductive because it noticeably raises the surrounding temperature.

(And then it's the poorest people, those that cannot afford AC, and there will always be some (starting with the homeless), that suffer because of it.)

While it is a view that seems to piss off most, I am becoming convinced capitalism and socialism are both equally doomed paths if taken to their unchecked extremes.

An endless game of tug-of-war between the two is the best we can do, and right now it is pulled way way too far in the capitalist direction and needs to be yanked back hard.

Right? This Cold War era mentality of "If you say anything bad about capitalism, you're a dirty commie"/"If you say anything bad about socialism, you're an imperialist pig" is fucking exhausting and pointless.

I don't give a shit whether something is capitalist or communist or socialist. I care about results: prosperity, freedom, happiness, sustainability. Do whatever makes it happen.

What's the quote? "A Republican would happily eat dog shit if he thought a Democrat would have to smell his breath".

I guess they're looking at that $20 trillion in debt and saying "if we want to survive war with china we need to cut the fat and pour everything into war r&d, if we survive the war we can think about climate change again". That's my most optimistic interpretation of it.