[ul][li]Step 1 - melt the ice caps.[]Step 2 - sell life vests to polar bears.[]Step three - profit![/ul] [/li]
On a less serious note, one wonders if the authors of the listed book have ever compared the environmental records of authoritarian governments like Red China or East Germany with those of the West. What leads them to believe that the authoritarians are going to give any more of a shit about the environment than they do about human rights?
That’s the trouble with these watermelons. They always think they can ride the tiger of authoritarianism, and that it will never eat them.
Really? Millions if not billions are being spent on research by democratic governments. And you only have to look at the success of making smoking and drink-driving anti-social to see the power of the people in effecting change.
I seem to recall other folks saying the same thing about democracies once or twice before. They gambled that the democracies wouldn’t be able to get their shit together to stop certain folks from running roughshod all over the place. In most cases, they were wrong about that.
I don’t think that anyone outside of the most extreme nutters are claiming that if we don’t do anything humanity will be wiped off the face of the Earth in less than a generation. Even if we just twiddle our thumbs and do nothing until the ice caps completely melt away, we’ll still be around, and so long as we’re around, there’s hope that we’ll get our act together well enough to fix the mess that we’ve made. Hopefully, too many people won’t have to die while the rest of us get our shit together.
The book sounds pretty stupid. Most dictators don’t give a crap about the environment. And if they’re fantasizing that it will be environmentalists who will be the dictators, I’ll do them one better and fantasize that I am the dictator. Then We’ll get things done!
That being said, what’s the bearing of this book to the question global warming? How does it make global warming less plausible?
These guys are committing a classic error: “Plan A isn’t working too well, so we have to switch to Plan B!” But who’s to say Plan B won’t be even worse?
Also, I have a hard time figuring out how global warming means the end of civilization. A lot of times people seem to equate any really really bad possibility with the Apocalypse. For example, some people think we are all fighting for our very survival against terrorists.
It doesn’t. however it does give some people the chance to pop off loudly on a book they haven’t read. I don’t think authoritarian forms of govt will deal with climate change any better than our current plutocracies.
As a civilisation we’ve already decided we’d rather see billions die than do anything serious to deal with the problem before it’s too late. In 25 years time I fully expect us to be nuking refugee African hordes.
I’m not really sure what smoking and drunken driving have to do with climate change. There may be a lot of research spending on climate change, but I’m seeing a lot of reluctance to actually do anything because it might upset people or prompt cries of “you’re going to ruin the economy!” Didn’t Congress go 30 years or so without raising fuel efficiency standards, for example?
If you were referring to my remark that science and democracy have an uneasy relationship - I stand by that. A lot of the fight against smoking was largely based around the issue of secondhand smoke, and while I’m not up to date on the research, I’m given to understand that there are some serious questions about how dangerous secondhand smoke really is. Science doesn’t always make good soundbites, so I think a lot of people don’t understand that if last winter was cold, it does not rebut global warming or climate change (for example). Part of that is a failing by scientists, but it’s also human nature to overlook long-term risks that are harder to see, and people can’t necessarily judge the validity of a particular scientific study.
Right, exactly. It’s the old “Who recycles the recyclers?” problem. These guys aren’t advocating dictatorship because dictators handle the environment better, they’re advocating a pro-environment dictatorship.
(sister to the ministry of silly walks), tells me i can’t heat my house this winter, what recourse do i have? Will they advise me how to insultae myself with old newspapers?
I am all for energy conservation. I think American’s waste of energy is a crime. But setting up some government hacks to fix the problem? Ha!
Why don’t we just put a tax on cars, by engine size? Let the Hummer 7 liter V-8 engine owner pay for his addiction-LEAVE ME ALONE!
Ahhhh, yes, This proves that ALL MAINSTREAM ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE FUCKING FASCIST WACKOES :ROLLEYES:. Fuck everyone who wants to use this to characterize everyone who doesn’t want their coastlines inundated with water (read: the sane half of the world,) and fuck the few who do think that authoritarianism is a better solution to the environmental problem.
It’s easier to solve these problems with market driven controls, or even state democratic socialism, than with authoritarian socialism.
That said, setting up the environmental goals in the first place can be difficult under any system, as the ones who are setting up the goals many times have conflicts of interest, either who they are getting paid by or thoughts of future employment.
It’s worth pointing out that “a willingness to accept government by qualified expertise rather than popular election” is actually a very old idea in American political culture, going back to the early 20th Century Progressive Movement, one slogan of which was, “There is no Democratic or Republican way to pave a street.” (A false premise, of course: When you have to decide which streets to pave and who is to pay for them and how, there is no way to avoid partisan or class or sectional interests coming into play.)
Well, for one thing your car accounts for significantly less of your total polluting activity than you might think.
Also, does decrying one hypothetical set of government hacks, while simultaneously proposing a new tax that would be administered by :eek: a different set of government hacks, not seem a tad ironic to you?
Give it up, guys, they got us. Can’t fool sharpies like Shodan, who can instantly see the insidious plan for World Domination. We look at Al Gore and see a fairly bright guy with all the charisma of cottage cheese, they instantly see the jackboots of Liberal Facism. Damn that Jonah Goldberg! We are outsmarted again.
We should fall back to Plan B: continue to rot away the intellectual power of the American people with lolkatz and Mind of Mencia.
All authoritarian regimes make the claim that only a strongman can solve the most fundamental problems facing their societies. But contrary to popular belief, Mussolini didn’t make the trains run on time. Even if we had a way to measure the pureness of heart of our new environmentalist overlords (much less a way to ensure those hearts remained pure once handed unlimited power), the machinery of authoritarianism is just as – actually, much more so – given to inefficiency, corruption, and competing internal political interests as liberal democracy.
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These guys aren’t advocating dictatorship because dictators handle the environment better, they’re advocating a pro-environment dictatorship.