I generally don’t watch videos. Do you believe that watching the video would change my opinion about the argument that America currently has too few people to produce smart people? Or my opinion that listening to smart people isn’t really high on the republican politicians’ priority list?
And this is why I think democratic means can no longer be trusted. You say “conservative” as though there’s some constituency that deserves to be taken seriously that thought this speech made sense. As though we should take those people seriously. As though we should treat them as though they aren’t aiding and abetting the greatest global disaster in human history. And you’re not wrong - that’s a significant number of people. Which means that we’re fucked. What Mike Lee had to say was, even if you take it as charitably as possible, completely fucking insane. I really hope this doesn’t need explaining. No sane, honest, well-informed person could come away from that speech thinking, “Yeah, that’s a good response to an upcoming global catastrophe!” So… those constituents you speak of… stupid or evil? Which one is it? And given that there are massive systems in place to encourage these people to be stupid and/or evil (notably Fox News), what the fuck do we do? How does democracy fix this?
Oh wait, I wrote this post assuming that you were aware of the facts on climate change. Are you aware of the timeline we’re looking at right now? Are you aware that the longer we delay action, the harder it’s going to get to keep below levels that will be far worse, far more disastrous than anything we’ve seen thus far? Are you aware that if I were to have children now, by the time they’re out of high school, it’ll be too late for them to actually do much about the problem?
So the solution is to have more kids, and the kids are going to solve the problem of climate change. Not today, that’s crazy talk. We don’t need to do anything today except have a bunch of kids, and those kids are the ones who are going to solve climate change in the future. And there’s no need to listen to the kids today who wanna solve climate change, because they’re socialist snowflakes who need to grow up and get jobs instead of complaining. The solution to climate change today is to remove socialist environmental protections that are harming our economy, let our economy grow, and then future generations will solve all these environmental problems, not now, but later. We will listen to the smart kids when they grow up in the future, but we absolutely positively cannot listen to smart adults today, because we can’t trust scientists who think they know better than us.
Sounds legit.
If you’re a jellyfish professional who’s single and ready to mingle, send me a private message!
Democratic means are the most untrustable means, except for all the other means which are all worse.
It is worth noting that the niftiest thing about the “Have more babies! Some of them might be smart!” is that this approach requires us to wait an entire generation before there’s any hope of even starting to improve things. Which is good if you’re a corrupt politician getting kickbacks from oil companies not to change anything (and if you are a sociopath who cares about nobody else including your own progeny), but is pretty much by definition the third worst plan possible, closely behind “swearing on your mother’s souls to never ever ever ever try to correct the problem” and “Fuck it, let’s nuke the entire planet now.”
Nobody cares. We’re going to keep having elections whether you like it or not. In Utah, we’re going to keep electing senators that we approve of. They probably won’t be ones that you approve of. Learn to cope with that, or don’t. IDGAF.
There’s just one problem with Lee’s thesis, more Americans would make the problem worse, not better:
Article:
*The United States, the world’s biggest oil consuming country, consumed 18.5 million barrels of oil per day (mbd) in 2012, which accounted for nearly 20% of the world’s total oil consumption per day. *
More babies mean more consumers and markets, yes, but that gets cancelled out by more consumption and waste, thru the lens of climate change.
Lee’s argument also fails because innovation and new technology is trying to happen today, in spite of Conservatives’ best efforts to tamp it down. Ideas are happening now. What if effective solutions are in-hand now, but politicians are preventing them from seeing light?
There are multiple problems with Lee’s thesis.
He’s proposing ways of coping with that. That’s kind of the problem.
How do you think politicians would be “preventing them from seeing light”?
That’s a fair point.
Denying climate science, refusing to consider policy changes that may have positive impacts on emissions, easing emissions standards, supporting policy that does not encourage innovation in the energy sector (coal), and mocking proposals that did not originate in one’s party, as a few examples.
Dude.
Get your story straight. Is climate change a hoax? Or is it such a serious problem that there’s no way we can solve it with the current generation of scientists and engineers, and we have to wait another 30 years until we’ve trained many, many, many more scientists and engineers, and they can solve the problem.
Because both positions are fucking moronic.
If all the “effective solutions” “in-hand now” rely on action by our notoriously-dysfunctional federal government, I don’t think that I’d use the word “effective” to describe them. They sound more like fantasies.
Anyways, I thought you were imaging some sort of government censorship or suppression or something. People and organizations are not being prevented from sharing or publicizing their ideas or “effective solutions”, agreed?
They maybe haven’t yet managed to persuade enough of our elected officials of their effectiveness to provide taxpayer funds to support them, but that seems a far cry from “preventing them from seeing light”.
Only if you use cloth diapers. :dubious:
So the new generation of American babies will come up with a novel way of persuading enough elected officials to provide taxpayer funds?
Perhaps. The current generation of American babies seem to generally suck at it.
You support a party that puts people in charge who think global warming could never happen because Jesus wouldn’t let it happen. Any solutions you suggest or ideas you’re told to believe must be viewed through that lens.
Pretty much. Mike Lee is fairly obviously arguing in bad faith here. You can’t support the republicans and pretend to care about climate change.
They can pretend to care, but they shouldn’t expect me to believe them.