Well, your addition of this last line changes things a bit.
I am not advocating actively killing anyone. Strawman.
And fuck the rest of the world.
Because it won’t be you dying if anyone does.
You’re sitting there saying that if we stick a one cent value on every African life, for example, then a $1000 business hit doesn’t make sense.
You don’t see how self-serving that is? So long as the money makes sense, there’s no ethical component to it? It’s all about the cash, and it’s all about America?
As for not advocating actively killing someone, if you take an action that kills people, how are you not responsible?
Businesses are held responsible for causing deaths and injury all the time. Why should this be an exception?
Good. It seemed so to me, too, but apparently jsgoddess believes I am ready to roast infants for an afternoon snack.
I agree with this… however, I would point out two things: first, the CAFE standards have been beaten out of legislation in no small measure by pressure from unions, which have traditionally been associated with a Democratic party agenda. Remove the union influence, Democrats, and you can get CAFE standards passed.
Second, a concept that will no doubt cause a fainting spell at the jsgoddess residence: one side effect of implementing CAFE will be… increased traffic deaths.
You increase mileage in large measure by reducing vehicle weight. Reduced vehicle weight means increased danger for occupants of lighter vehicles. Oh noes!!1! A calculation that involves death! Whatever shall we do?
Note that in spite of this potential visit by the Grim Reaper, I generally favor the CAFE standards.
Who’s fighting 'em? Seriously, the only specific name I can put to this one is Ted Kennedy, who infamously scuttled a proposal. I’m sure there are others, but not me. I favor wind power farms.
And I have long been a proponent of nuclear power, even when I was viciously attacked by environmentalists for supporting it. (Hmmm… I am beginning to see a theme here).
Sorry, the sun’s output has been declining since 1985. Unless you’re saying that less solar output causes GW by some unknown mechanism. See here, for example.
And that’s a very odd conspiracy theory. What sorts of “more restrictions in our private lives” would the worldwide left want to establish? And don’t you think liberals would be, well, pretty opposed to that? We like freedom in our personal lives.
Oh no. I couldn’t possibly believe that. After all, you’re pro-life, and we all know how precious human life must be to you.
The preceeding sentences suggest that you are reading some other message board, somewhere, that also has a poster with the handle “Bricker,” and getting confused about which of us you are responding to. I don’t recall ever making the statements above that you impute to me.
Businesses are held responsible when they cause death or injury by actions or inactions that legally constitute negligence, jsgoddess. Not when they ask their government to adopt certain standards and then follow those standards. Here, the business interests are lobbying the government to take, or not take, certain actions. No business, to my knowledge, has ever, in the history of the country, been held liable for an injury or death resulting from following a government-mandated standard, even if they asked for the standard to be enacted.
Have they? Do you have an example that I have forgotten, or was unaware of, that you’d like to bring to my attention at this time?
Agreed.
Where did I state that we should do nothing? I haven’t made that call yet. (I would like Greener Tech anyway, even if GW wasn’t happening.)
I am merely pointing out that the debate is full of rhetoric from both sides, and I, as an individual, am having trouble parsing out the truth from the hyperbole. (And hyperbole really turns me off.)
The Human Caused Global Warming advocates in this thread are acting as if the issue has been decided, and that those who deny HCGW are the exact same class of people who deny that cigarette smoking may lead to lung cancer or other respiratory ailments (e.g. Phillip Morris lawyers. a.k.a Damn Liars).
Reading back, I agree with John Mace and Bricker. We need to approach the issue rationally. Not in a panic.
We should, but being a bit of a cynic, I really don’t expect any other country to fall over themselves in awe of our selflessness. Taking the lead would only be a small piece of the overall answer.
From this cite, the US appears to be holding steady in CO2 emissions, but China and the other developing countries are increasing at a dramatic rate. What we need is to convince those developing nations to implement greener industry now, when it’s cheaper to do so, rather than retrofit them later.
So, you didn’t say that it’s a purely economic decision and you mentioned ethical considerations somewhere? Where?
Why are you hiding behind the government? You can’t hold people responsible for things unless the government tells you you can?
You are very confused over the meanings of words, and apparently over how things work in the world, on such a large scale that I cannot fathom how I could possibly begin to unravel your confusion.
Yes, I am pro-life, and yes, that means that life is precious to me. It does not, however, imply the conclusion that the moment one life enters the equation, all other considerations vanish. If I were to adopt such a ridiculously juvenile method of analysis, it would in the end be detrimental to the cause of human life, because in the end, we can save and support more life by acting judiciously.
Here is a simple example: our hero is driving a bus full of kids down a mountain road when a child appears in the road in front of him. He can avoid hitting the child only by steering off the road and plunging to almost certain death on the rocks below.
He chooses to hit the child rather than the alternative.
Now, persons with a only a simple, undemanding view of the world might infer that the driver was not “pro life” since he did, after all, kill a child when there was an alternative. But I am confident that you, jsgoddess, are not such a simpleton as that theoretical person, because you can see that the interests on the other side of the equation ALSO involved life.
So, too, it is here, only at several removes. You hear “business interests” and apparently think of fat white men in three piece suits, smoking cigars and counting piles of cash in their fancy boardroom. But the business interests I refer to are the ones that keep people employed, fed, housed, clothed, and transported – in short, that provide life and a quality of life for hundreds of millions. In short, “life” is on both sides of this equation, too.
I work in technology, and Y2K was a very real problem that absolutely demanded the level of attention that it got. The fact that ignorant people flipped out about it on the basis of unreasonable fear-mongering (“airplanes are gonna fall out of the sky!!1!”) doesn’t mean the issue wasn’t entirely legitimate. If that’s the best you’ve got, and if your understanding of global climate change is equally as ill-founded, then you might as well check out of the debate right now.
They’re better braised anyway.
Oh, come now. How about a real-life example?
Our hero supports policies that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis through a ridiculous war, to the deaths of thousands of Africans through AIDS policies, and now says that the decision to do anything on global warming depends entirely on money.
Of course he’s pro-life. How could we call him anything else?
Once again, you’re misquoting me, now by misquoting my rebuttal of your first misquote.
Tell you what. If you have an issue with things I’ve said, why don’t you use the quote tag to reproduce what I have said, and then identify your specific rebuttal to it.
Again with the imprecision of speech! What does “hold responsible” mean in this sentence? Do you mean legally, by lawsuit and recovery? Do you mean that you and your friends will nod solemnly and agree that these people are responsible for some heinous act or condition? What?
I absolutely agree with this.
One problem, obviously, is that it’s hard to convince someone else to take an action if half of your political apparatus is still shrieking that it’s not necessary.
It seem to me, jsgoddess, that this real-life example is bringing into this debate things are not part of this thread or this debate. It’s unclear to me what, specifically, the deaths of Iraqis in the ridiculous war, and the deaths of the Africans through AIDS policies have to do with global warming. Perhaps you could explain the connection.
If not, I’d say it amounts to an ad hominem argument. Wouldn’t you?
Yes.
Well, if there’s money to be made and we want to be one of those countries, then I would be in favor of getting the government out of the way of that happening (to the extent that they are in the way). It doesn’t necessarily follow, as I believe you are implying, that the government needs to make these things happen. If they do, that would suggest to me that there isn’t money to be made after all. That is not to say that the government shouldn’t take action if there isn’t money to be made, but let’s just be clear on what we are doing and why.
Maybe, maybe not.
No doubt. What’s preventing better and cheaper wind and solar power from coming into being? I believe we are, in fact, getting those things better and cheaper all the time.
I missed the reference to what those steps are.
Suggest you expand your sample size. My relatives on one side of my family, all of them die-hard Democrats and labor folks, believe that global warming is a plot to take American jobs and send them to India/China/Mexico.
I can keep offering anecdotes to match anecdotes, if that’s the evidence one wants to use. Ironically, your underlying premise of more Democrats believing in global warming is almost certainly correct, and could have had some support in statistics if you’d tried by even doing a 5-second Google Search.
Gallup sez - Republicans are much, much less worried about the risks of global warming.
(I do find it alarming that 55% of those identifying as “Democrats” were worried that global warming could cause human life to “cease to exist” on this planet. Maybe we should talk about that disinformation, huh.)
This survey over the years probably gives a better showing of belief trends among Democrats and Republicans - again, Democrats have more belief over time than Republicans. Note that in April 2000, the gap between Democrats and Republicans in terms of worry about global warming was a mere 14%. It’s somewhat alarming that this has gone down since, but then it dipped for both parties - see the trendlines for Democrats and Republicans. I guess some other issue came to the forefront in 2001; what it is we’ll never know…
However, Fox News sez: 72% of Republicans believe global warming exists - and 30% believe that people’s behavior is responsible (with 42% saying it’s a combination of factors). While this is less than the Democratic numbers of 91% and 52% respectively, if you combine the “humans only” and “combination” values, you get 82% of Democrats acknowledging global warming has a human component, versus 72% of Republicans (of those acknowledging existence, period). Hardly a landslide on one side or the other. Nonetheless, Democrats maintain a lead in that poll as well.
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/020207_global_warming_web.pdf
Of course, I picked the first two polls I found by Google. Maybe a broad-based meta-survey would be needed to better quantify this.
I quoted every time. Have you mentioned ethics in any of our exchanges? Feel free to point to instances and I will apologize for missing them.
“Hold responsible” can mean using the law if that’s an option. There are times when it isn’t. It hasn’t been possible to use the law to bring George Bush to task for Iraq, but that doesn’t mean I, and some other voters, don’t hold him responsible for all of those deaths. It doesn’t mean that I don’t hold Americans responsible for electing him. It doesn’t mean that I don’t hold Republicans responsible for continuing to shill for him. It doesn’t mean lots and lots of people in the rest of the world don’t hold us responsible for our unprovoked and insupportable actions.
Now, I’m sure you smile smugly about the ineffectiveness of such “holding responsible.”
It wasn’t an argument at all. It was an observation.
I simply think you are hilariously hypocritical.
Well, it would be hilarious if people weren’t actually dying.
I had less interest in what percentage of people believe what than in who are the vocal ones and why. But thanks for the info.