# Canadian 'dopers, Freedom Convoy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 10, 2022, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-dopers-freedom-convoy/959186 "2022-02-10T00:07:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 829
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2022, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-dopers-freedom-convoy/959186/829 "2022-07-13T01:34:06Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > And GIGObuster has a point about the asymmetry of your assessments of the levels of “crazy” in different participants. When governments trying to mitigate climate change institute energy policies you don’t like, you say they’re “crazy”. Only when they are actually crazy. I have said all kinds of supportive things about various climate policies. I have supported a carbon tax. I’m a fan of elextric cars for many applications. But cratering 30% of your food supply when there are food shortages IS crazy. It show a complete lack of understanding of the costs and benefits involved with climate change policy. Trying to replace baseload power with intermittent power is crazy. Mandating ‘Net Zero’ carbon emissions country-wide by 2035 is crazy. It can’t happen. You’ll destroy the economy and people’s lives trying, far more than what climate change would do, because climate change at least harms us more slowly and gives us time to adapt. Shutting down nuclear plants in Germany when Europe is already bracing for severe power shortqges is also crazy. Self destructive. Opening coal plants in exchange for closing down nuclear is the opposite of what we should be doing. From a global warming, energy security OR economic viewpoint it is madness. > [@](#): > > When Putin invades Ukraine, you argue that the energy policies you don’t like somehow made him do it? ‘Somehow’? I said exactly how: It gave Putin leverage over Europe, and especially Germany to stay out of the war. And gas sales to Europe also gave him the money to pay for the war. The Ruble is stronger today than it was before the war, largely on the strength of gas sales to Europe. Biden pulling out of Afghanistan also helped. When he did it I predicted on this board that it would embolden the worst actors in the world. > [@](#): > > As though Putin and Russia have no metric for sane and rational policy decisions other than “whatever we might conceivably be able to get away with?” Of course they do. But it wouldn’t have mattered if they didn’t have the hard currency to pay for the war, or had to worry about Europe entering the conflict. Germany indeed has been dragging its feet helping, fearful of Putin cutting off their gas. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Likewise, when farmers in the EU protest government emissions policies, you’re shrilling in alarm that this is some kind of fatal warning about how “crazy” those policies are. Because they are. Reducing nitrogen fertilizer by 30% will reduce crop yields by almost as much. The Netherlands is a farming country that feeds a good chunk of the world. We are already getting warnings about starvation-level food shortages in parts of the globe. Sri Lanka devastated its farm economy by trying to force them away from nitrogen fertilizer. When bad climate policy causes countries to fail and misery to break out, I’d call it crazy. And unworkable. Governments that try it will fall or become autocratic You are now fucking with people’s means of existence. Food and energy security are absolutely essential to civilization, and ideologues going too far are threatening both. > [@Kimstu](#): > > When the BLM movement protests American policing policies, you shrug and call the BLM leaders Marxists. So much for public unrest being a wake-up call for misguided public policy, huh? I call them Marxists because they ARE. Cwrtainly the leaders of the movement are. And I called ‘defund the police’ crazy, not the protests themselves. And guess what? It WAS crazy. The people who have been paying the price, as I predicted, are the poor people in the cities where crime has been skyrocketing since the riots. Mostly poor black people, whose lives also matter. Thousands of people are dead that would not be dead if the riots had never happened - almost all of them black. I assume you’ll accept VOX as a cite? > From 2014 to 2019, Campbell tracked more than 1,600 BLM protests across the country, largely in bigger cities, with nearly 350,000 protesters. His main finding is a 15 to 20 percent reduction in lethal use of force by police officers — roughly 300 fewer police homicides — in census places that saw BLM protests. > > Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests. That means from 2014 to 2019, there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests. Note that this does not include the huge riots in 2020 and 2021, which will make those numbers worse. This has always been the effect of riots and street protests. They devastate the communities around them - some of which never completely recover. But the mob and the media pat themselves on the back for their ‘awareness’ and move on to the next Current Thing while murders spike and poor black peoole live in fear and their neighborhoods and schools crumble. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Your criticisms of specific policy initiatives, not all of which are wrong or based on misunderstanding of your sources although some of them are, would be more convincing if they weren’t so obviously and systematically biased. And here we get to the part where I am the only SDMB poster continually harassed for not being more ‘balanced’, despite the fact that I concede far more to the left of this board than almost anyone on that left is willing to concede to the right. This is a partisan, adversarial board when it comes to politics. It’s bloodsport, complete with a ‘pit’ for personally attacking people you don’t like. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that if I agree with the consensus I’m less likely to post a ‘me too’ agreement? Especially for people who delight in attacking me personally whenever they can get away with it? So I tend to post when I don’t agree, which to you makes me ‘one-sided’. You know, the guy who is okay with carbon taxes, pro-choice, pro-trans, pro-gay, and hates Trump. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/canadian-dopers-freedom-convoy/959186)._