Not sure I have an over-arching answer. It’s probably a complicated thing that goes back decades.
‘Planet’ is a metonym for ‘the only known site of living things, and suitable habitation for humans’. It does not mean an iconic distressed fat blue man wiping his fevered brow.
Similarly ‘saving the planet’ does not mean that it will physically explode and leave a void in space.
It just means we shouldn’t shit on the rich inheritance of life and biodiversity that keeps us alive, without any idea of what would replace it, or how much shitting-on is enough to make that web unravel enough to become inhospitable to us.
Having grown up in the house of a hard-core Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity right-winger of a father who claims to despise the Republican party, yet votes for them every time without fail - it’s because their hatred of Democrats overrides everything else. They are positively convinced that the Democratic Party is the embodiment of evil.
There is some of that certainly. My father was the same as your father. He didn’t have to like the Republicans to vote for them, because he thought the Dems were Un-American.
I think some of them have also been conned into supporting policies that are to their own detriment. They were told that tax cuts pay for themselves, and that too much government spending and government regulations are why this or that recession has occurred…government strangling the private sector, and so forth. They often end up opposing policies that would help their own geographic areas, such as not supporting the Medicaid expansion, because they’ve been sold on the villainy of government and “socialism”. Also, there’s some identity politics in play in fear-mongering of certain minority groups, which bought Pubs a lot of votes in the 60’s and 70’s. Early on, there was a view that Republicans were stronger on foreign policy, too, and that Dems are either weak or anti-American. There’s the anti-Hillary and anti-Clinton views as well. I think there’s a mix of reasons, including some things I haven’t mentioned. It’s not an easy question to answer honestly. I used to be Republican myself, mostly because I thought they were more grown-up on foreign policy & I used to buy into their economic supply-side views. I now see them for the frauds that they are. But most people don’t switch parties ever. Once they identify with a party, it’s set in stone almost forever.
Yep, this is another huge part of it. A common refrain was: “Republicans are terrible, but at least they don’t hate America like the Dems!”
I used to think similar on that “hate America” part.
It’s easy to sit in a bubble, and think the worst of the “other”, whomever the “other” is.
Let’s not forget that it was the government that propped up slavery for so long in the first place. It was a terrible initiation of force on many individuals. Like I said, some things, like the state ending it’s violence in certain areas, is certainly progress.
The forcible integration was a squabble between state and federal governments, so it doesn’t really bug me. That said, I imagine such a forceful move sowed the seeds for bad things later.
So no, it is not unqualified progress that the state stuck a gun in somebody’s face or that they killed many thousands. Imagine that.
This is very interesting, because I have a fundamentally different interpretation of things like the end of slavery, women’s suffrage, integration of the public school system, and so on. I don’t see the fundamental issue as the government sticking a gun in someone’s face and forcing them to do something. The way I see it is that the federal government is (metaphorically) forcing a private citizen or a state government to put down the gun that they are holding on someone.
In other words, in my view of the world, the federal government is like the Big Brother who is protecting Little Brother from Not Quite As Big Brother. At least it was until Trump came along.
Would you have advocated a less forceful move to effect constitutional rights? If so, I’d be curious as to what that would be.
Yeah, that’s what it comes down to. I’m not an environmentalist because I give a shit about a species of owl or tree. I am an environmentalist because I care about my own survival and comfort, as well as that of other fellow human beings.
But, conservatives do like to mock liberals when they refer to the Earth, the only planet known to harbor life, a planet where life can be found in every square inch, and even not only in the soil under our feet, but even down in the rock near the mantle, as a living planet. I can only reason that is because they prefer to change that status.
Mars and Venus are (most likely) dead planets. The Earth differs from that. To say that the earth is a living planet is not the same as anthrompozing it, but that can be a subtle nuance that escapes those who read for gotchas, rather than comprehension.
Your reasoning is faulty.
Actually the point is that the reasoning of the conservatives is faulty here about what they think in general about why we should not worry much about our environment.
My reasoning was somewhat tongue in cheek.
But since you are here, would you like to explain why you mock the idea of the Earth being a living planet?
There is no legitimate human-centric rationale for limiting the use of fossil fuel technology. Humans have flourished under the exploitation of fossil fuels like in no other period in human history.
What if the price we pay for our fossil fuel-based flourishing over the past century is multiple centuries of misery and suffering due to environmental catastrophe?
I agree absolutely that having a dense and convenient energy source completely changed our lives. Fossil fuels replaced our slave labor and our dependance on draft animals.
OTOH, even if you are not concerned about the effect to the climate that we humans live in, it’s gonna run out at some point, so there may be a basic physics and logical rationale for suddenly stopping, as the spigot goes dry. We may want to ween ourselves before that happens.
And then there is the climate. I don’t know if you are a climate change denialist, if so, then I don’t really care, you are wrong, end of story. If you are not, then you recognize that this is our world that we live in, and we can make it rather uncomfortable, or even inhospitable, if we do not limit our use of CO[sub]2[/sub] emitting technologies.
Was there any “legitimate human-centric rationale” for decreasing the sulfur acids that were being produced by coal power plants? is there any reasons that humans should care about the ozone layer?
Yes, there is.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06827-x
And horses and carriages did so before, we dumped them as soon they were seen as not needed, regardless of sentimentalities back then.
Only because something better came along (mass availability of autos with IC engines).
Has something better than fossil fuels come along that is readily accessible by the masses?
If so, I don’t think people will be sentimental about abandoning fossil fuels.
The reply was made because that pleading for that sentimentality is a running and silly point many many many times before by the other poster.
By taking into account the real costs of emitting global warming gases into the atmosphere and the costs of alternative power vehicles the time when they were better was yesterday. But if the environmental costs are perversely ignored we could see alternative energy as cheaper soon.
As for better, just in the area of health alone, ending the idea of treating our atmosphere as a sewer will give us a lot of benefits.
wrong! A 300 hundred lb shoplifter was stopped and attacked cop