Ah yes, another wedge issue, last time it did not work, not even for Zuckerman who is really an astronomer and not really an expert in sociology or population science. He has many years of experience with racists though, and a way to fail at takeovers.
In any case, real experts in the matter do not shy away from recommending family planning, and as noticed before the reality is that there is one big reason why this is not discussed more, when Environmentalists do mention population control there are conservative groups ready to denounce the environmentalists.
The real experts mention family planing, education and the reduction of poverty as the key to make everyone, even immigrants, reduce the number of children they will have.
Pacifism.
Affirmative action.
Same sex marriage*.
ACLU-style backing freedom of speech for complete moral failures**.
Atheists who get overly anxious about separation of church and state**.
*As opposed to civil unions. Civil unions might arrive quicker.
**I hate Illinois Nazis.
***Talking atheists who make literal federal cases of hicksville nativity displays-- let the baby have his bottle.
There’s a Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, which I don’t think counts as the Village but it’s pretty close. I was trying to say those chains have a bunch of locations throughout the city. It’s not like the Village is the only liberal outpost in town.
How on earth do you figure any of these are the same thing? Taking a principled stand against something that might benefit you personally, or even taking a principled stand based on flawed principles, is not at all the same thing as refusing something you approve on solely because a particular unattractive label is applied to it, when a synonymous label without the emotional baggage lacks the same effect.
Okay, the same-sex marriage (with the explanation) and “atheists who …” ones stuck, but I don’t see what aspect of liberal ideology the others contradict.
In the original example, we see the conservative values of saving money, efficiency, and pragmatism being violated (by conservative-leaning subjects) in favor of the anti-environmentalism value.
And more importantly, it’s not even in favor of any value. The words “energy efficient” mean, in this context, exactly the same thing as “environmentally friendly.” The new phrase does not impart any new information, and the extent to which “environmentally friendly” products are inferior to regular products is precisely the same extent to which “energy efficient” products are inferior. The only difference is the wording by which you gain the information that product A uses less energy than product B.
So an equivalent would be like that: what wording A would give liberals exactly the same information as wording B, but would make them less likely to purchase the product?
Knee jerky opposition to GMO food is the other big one, other than nuclear energy, as far as common lefty political positions which are anti-science and anti-progress.
ISTM that there is vastly more actual harm done by the left’s anti-nuclear and anti ag-science positions than the pet scientific illiteracies of the right, like the denial of the realities of evolution or the inability to acknowledge the consensus of climate scientists.
So these are equivalent? What other word, in context, means exactly the same thing as GMO but leads to lefty folks liking the product? (And no, “hybrid” doesn’t mean the same thing in context: GMO refers to an organism created through specific means, in context, just as “organic” in context doesn’t refer to carbon molecules).
The wording in the OP and the thread title was not that restrictive, though.
Genetically modified foods are credited with saving huge numbers of lives among poor people in developing or impoverished countries, and normally those kinds of issues are very important to liberals. But if you say something about the way the foods were altered, often you get a lecture about FrankenFoods and Monsanto and bullshit bullshit bullshit. It’s the ultimate in First World Problems.
By personal experience I can grant you this one, but there are many exceptions and there is a measured opposition coming from the right also.
But before getting to the GMO one has to point out that IMHO the denial of evolution was one big factor why DDT was not controlled properly to prevent insect resistance from becoming one big reason why DDT was almost lost as a tool to control Malaria, the right then just blamed the environmentalists for all the deaths that are taking place because DDT can not be used as before. The myth that they use is to claim that environmentalists were the sole cause for the banning not evolution or other fauna being affected, on top of that, it is also a myth that its use was banned in all situations, DDT is still being used.
Regarding GMO, I’m on the record of raining scorn on the leftist elements that oppose it, unfortunately for this thread this subject is also full of NIMBY, groups opposed to GMO make a big point of having many independents and conservatives on their side. This can be seen on polls regarding GMO labeling:
And, lets not forget that many scientists, that are also mostly from the left side of the isle nowadays, are the biggest defenders of GMO:
Indeed, elsewhere, in places like South Korea conservative leaning people are slightly more opposed to biotechnology than left leaning people, now the centrists, those guys are really silly.
Leftys love “environmentally friendly” paper bags. In reality, modern plastic bags are also biodegradable. However it takes more energy to make paper bags and paper takes up more landfill space. But paper is more recyclable. So it’s not necessarily so clear cut that paper is superior to plastic.
Yeah I have to agree that this study doesn’t show much.
There is usually no free lunch and environmentally friendly products will generally have additional production constraints which make them more expensive and/or lower quality on some dimension. If you don’t care about the environment it makes sense to avoid them. And since we don’t have time to carefully evaluate every single product we buy, it makes sense to use signals like labelling even when they aren’t always accurate as long as they are useful on average.
I have no problem with school vouchers as long as the private schools accepting them play by the exact same rules as public schools (ie not charging anything in addition to the vouchers, accept any child who lives in the local area including disciplinary problems & special ed kids, same curriculum & standardized tests, same anti-discrimination policies, etc).
On vouchers, I think there’s a disconnect between liberals on the street and liberals actually involved in politics. teachers unions are a major source of funding for the Democratic party, so other interest groups in the Democratic coalition have their backs.
There’s a lot of issues where regular folks and activists disagree. Activists don’t just have principles, but recognize how those principles fit into the larger political picture.
Indeed. Our local school district is involved in a legal dispute with charter schools, not because they have to give part of their budget to the charter schools, but because, due to a loophole in the charter school law, they have to give the charter schools a portion of their funds that are used for things the charter schools don’t offer. So the charter schools get part of the funds for running buses, for operating the free/reduced lunch program, for offering ROTC programs, etc, even though the charters don’t run buses, offer students lunch, or offer ROTC programs. The local school system has to make up the deficit from their general budget, since the amounts they spend on these programs is federally mandated.
Things like that lead to some of the friction between charters and publics.
