Religion of Global Warming Exposed by one of their own.

[icehorse]

How? Environmental issues (including but not limited to climate change), are inexorably connected to human activities (including but not limited to economic behaviors that result from practicing economic ideologies). I don't see how we could come up with any workable solution for environmental issues while ignoring a major causal variable.

We already fiddle with our economies. One specific, concrete action we could take would be to stop subsidizing - already profitable - big oil to the tune of billions / year, and redirect those subsidies to R&D for renewables.

Another concrete action would be to stop subsidizing beef production. The cost to the planet of a pound of beef is probably on the order of $20-$30 / pound. The reason we pay a fraction of that is because we - mostly unknowingly - subsidize the cattle industry. Producing a pound of edible mammal requires about 2000-3000 gallons of fresh water. So instead of demanding low flush toilets that might conserve 600 gallons of water per year, we could all eat four fewer big macs per year.

Another concrete action would be to stop subsidizing big agriculture, shift from monoculture farming to techniques like permaculture farming, and stop using pesticides which are only effective in the short term anyway (but are quite profitable).

All of these would have minor impacts on our overall economy.

 

[siti]

Climate Change is a "fixed" report for reasons of control IMHO

I guess it will continue being a hotly contested subject matter

Not if you live in Kiribati or the Marshall Islands (for example) - or in one of the 46 coastal and riverside villages in Fiji earmarked for relocation within the next decade due to measured sea level rise and more frequent extreme weather events that are already happening. Some villages have already been relocated following Cyclone Winston last year which was the biggest storm ever to hit the South Pacific Islands. I suppose you'd have to be pretty cut off from reality to miss it in Florida for that matter.

 

[siti]

Not necessarily
The Sustainable Economy

Doesn't change the focus, just the calculations...such an approach - if it were adopted by a somewhat wider range of corporate entities than an outdoor clothing and gear company and a corporate strategy consultant - might minimize the immediate impact of capitalism but it still puts economic sustainability ahead of environmental sustainability as a driver of corporate policy. Until we change that focus entirely, any 'sustainability' gains we make are, in the bigger picture, merely short term postponements of the inevitable conclusion - capitalism itself is not long-term sustainable.

 

[sayak83]

Doesn't change the focus, just the calculations...such an approach - if it were adopted by a somewhat wider range of corporate entities than an outdoor clothing and gear company and a corporate strategy consultant - might minimize the immediate impact of capitalism but it still puts economic sustainability ahead of environmental sustainability as a driver of corporate policy. Until we change that focus entirely, any 'sustainability' gains we make are, in the bigger picture, merely short term postponements of the inevitable conclusion - capitalism itself is not long-term sustainable.

I disagree. Capitalism is rapidly moving from "material-based" systems to "knowledge-based" systems where knowledge, information and innovativeness is the commodity being bought and sold, rather than goods. The main goal is to decrease the resource intensity of growth and to allocate costs using life cycle analysis of products. Let us see how this can work in a free-market system.

Let us assume that company X, Y, Z are involved in prodiction and sale of certain goods to consumers.

Companies A, B and C are involved in the maintaining the resource raw materials and waste-management and recycling business upstream and downstream.

It is in company A, B and C's interest to reduce the cost of its operation and hence it will charge, say company X more for extracting resources in a messy manner or creating hazardous wastes, reducing X's profits compared to Y and Z.

This incentivizes X to invest in technologies that help it to streamline its operations.

Now all of this happens only is the government is not partial to any specific player in the market and is an independent body. Which is why free market fails if certain companies are able to spend money for and influence elections that bring their "bought" candidates to office.

So the first thing to save the free market is to institute a second wall of seperation, between the Market and the State as there is one between the Church and the State. Otherwise not even the best economic policies are going to be effective.

 

[siti]

Hmmm! You have used some carefully selected words to make it sound like that's what happens but the reality is usually more like this:

X, Y and Z want to maximize their profits so whilst it is sensible to reduce production costs as much as they can, there is a point at which taking reasonable care to safeguard resources and the environment become economically nonviable - they can only pass on so much cost to the consumer without denting profit margins by decreasing sales - its always a compromise

A, B and C have different imperatives - depending on which part of the cycle they are in, but generally, their profits depend most on selling more - the more oil they sell the more money they make. The more water they extract for commercial production (soft drinks for example) the more money the make, the more waste they process they more they can charge X, Y and Z for processing it. And the more environmentally sound the waste management operation is the more expensive it is likely to be placing an incentive on X, Y and Z to avoid 'best practice' and opt for the cheaper alternative - or just dump it when nobody is looking.

So, in a capitalist system, 'organizations' are not especially concerned about 'maintaining the resource raw materials' or 'reducing costs' except insofar as these are perceived to be economically expedient methods of maximizing profit margins and maintaining a reasonable reputation with their customer base. To suggest otherwise is either unduly optimistic or even disingenuous (not on your part - but on the part of 'economic theorists' who propound such arguments). If any of the sustainability, ecological responsibility etc. actually works on the machinery of the capitalist system it is because theorists have 'fooled' the practitioners into believing its in their best economic interests. But because an essential part of the system is to concentrate wealth (or at least control of the production of wealth) in the hands of the brightest and the best, it will not take them long to either see through it or find a way round it.

That all means that really consumers actually have the most power of all - nobody can sell us what we refuse to buy - but most of us will go for economical over sustainable (heck, even over our own health) most of the time - if we even bother to think about it at all. And the 'market' itself - which is really only a collective noun for the total of our (consumer's) mostly unthinking financial decisions - makes no moral or ethical judgements at all (or at least because it is a collective thing they all cancel out more or less) - so 'sustainability' becomes a purely economic concern if it is a concern at all. It says - in effect - yeah, we'll take care of the environment if we can afford to - but we can't really. Its the same economic decision we each make on daily basis, only magnified several billion times.

And that's why we will not respond responsibly to the challenge of global warming even though it is as obvious as the nose on our face - at least not until it is already at least a crisis and rapidly developing into a catastrophic tragedy - and probably not then.

 

[psychoslice]

I'm technically a Stalinist, but I suppose you're 50% right.

Poor thing.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Economic conservatives have been saying this for years, that Global Warming is a religion promoting a theocracy with the Socialist State as God and the objective to defeat capitalism. Blind faith strikes once again.



She’ll probably have to walk that one back...somehow. Anybody catch this on CNN, or NBC/CBS/ABC/NPR/NY Times/Washington Post...etc.

Good lord, who cares what some lady from the UN said? It doesn't change what the actual SCIENCE says on the subject. And just because you and others are too ignorant to comprehend the science involved does not make it fake. It just means that you failed to educate yourself on how the scientific method works and worse yet have absolutely no desire to learn. Truly sad.

 

[psychoslice]

The earth has always been changing for how knows how many years, its never going to be the way we want it to be, it doesn't care about us, for me its one big money making lie.

 

[sayak83]

Hmmm! You have used some carefully selected words to make it sound like that's what happens but the reality is usually more like this:

X, Y and Z want to maximize their profits so whilst it is sensible to reduce production costs as much as they can, there is a point at which taking reasonable care to safeguard resources and the environment become economically nonviable - they can only pass on so much cost to the consumer without denting profit margins by decreasing sales - its always a compromise

A, B and C have different imperatives - depending on which part of the cycle they are in, but generally, their profits depend most on selling more - the more oil they sell the more money they make. The more water they extract for commercial production (soft drinks for example) the more money the make, the more waste they process they more they can charge X, Y and Z for processing it. And the more environmentally sound the waste management operation is the more expensive it is likely to be placing an incentive on X, Y and Z to avoid 'best practice' and opt for the cheaper alternative - or just dump it when nobody is looking.

So, in a capitalist system, 'organizations' are not especially concerned about 'maintaining the resource raw materials' or 'reducing costs' except insofar as these are perceived to be economically expedient methods of maximizing profit margins and maintaining a reasonable reputation with their customer base. To suggest otherwise is either unduly optimistic or even disingenuous (not on your part - but on the part of 'economic theorists' who propound such arguments). If any of the sustainability, ecological responsibility etc. actually works on the machinery of the capitalist system it is because theorists have 'fooled' the practitioners into believing its in their best economic interests. But because an essential part of the system is to concentrate wealth (or at least control of the production of wealth) in the hands of the brightest and the best, it will not take them long to either see through it or find a way round it.

That all means that really consumers actually have the most power of all - nobody can sell us what we refuse to buy - but most of us will go for economical over sustainable (heck, even over our own health) most of the time - if we even bother to think about it at all. And the 'market' itself - which is really only a collective noun for the total of our (consumer's) mostly unthinking financial decisions - makes no moral or ethical judgements at all (or at least because it is a collective thing they all cancel out more or less) - so 'sustainability' becomes a purely economic concern if it is a concern at all. It says - in effect - yeah, we'll take care of the environment if we can afford to - but we can't really. Its the same economic decision we each make on daily basis, only magnified several billion times.

And that's why we will not respond responsibly to the challenge of global warming even though it is as obvious as the nose on our face - at least not until it is already at least a crisis and rapidly developing into a catastrophic tragedy - and probably not then.

I will have to get back to this later. I will have to find an example where it works on the ground and explicate the details carefully. I am boiling other eggs in my plate (big bang, evolution, hinduism etc.) and cannot get to this right now. As far as this thread is concerned, we agree,
1) Global warming is real and a very serious threat that needs a global solution. So is the rapid degradation of worlds natural and ecological systems.

For a short one-liner, I was thinking on something on the lines of the car insurance industry which encourages safe driving behavior as its responsible for paying for damages when accidents happen.

 

[siti]

The earth has always been changing for how knows how many years, its never going to be the way we want it to be, it doesn't care about us, for me its one big money making lie.

The earth has been changing for its entire (4.5 billion years) existence. So has your body - but that doesn't mean that smoking forty cigarettes a day makes no difference to it.

 

[siti]

For a short one-liner, I was thinking on something on the lines of the car insurance industry which encourages safe driving behavior as its responsible for paying for damages when accidents happen.

Yes - that's an excellent example of where regulation overrides freedom to the benefit of everyone. But how many would buy car insurance if it wasn't either compulsory or economically expedient?

 

[psychoslice]

The earth has been changing for its entire (4.5 billion years) existence. So has your body - but that doesn't mean that smoking forty cigarettes a day makes no difference to it.

No, I don't agree, its one big money racket.

 

[siti]

No, I don't agree, its one big money racket.

Oh - OK - on the basis of this clearly articulated scientific refutation I am changing my mind. Listen up everyone - climate change is clearly a hoax because @ThePainefulTruth and @psychoslice don't agree with the facts. That's settled then - I'm sure my friends in Kiribati will be mightily relieved.

 

[sayak83]

Yes - that's an excellent example of where regulation overrides freedom to the benefit of everyone. But how many would buy car insurance if it wasn't compulsory?

Regulation and free market are not obverse of each other. In fact free market cannot survive without good laws. The point I am making is how to attach proper values to natural reserves so that the market can take note of it. Thus for example if an insurance market is developed for the sustainable usage of oceanic tracts in the Gulf where competing interests of oil industry, tourism industry, fishery, residential safety (from hurricanes etc.) converge then the insurance companies, whose profitability is determined by the continued sustainability of the oceanic tracts for all its clients , will push other usage groups towards that behavior by carrot and stick principle.
Freedom requires laws and checks and balances. I remember some important people in American history said that...

 

[psychoslice]

Oh - OK - on the basis of this clearly articulated scientific refutation I am changing my mind. Listen up everyone - climate change is clearly a hoax because @ThePainefulTruth and @psychoslice don't agree with the facts. That's settled then - I'm sure my friends in Kiribati will be mightily relieved.

And the same goes for you, yea yea.

 

[siti]

I remember some important people in American history said that...

Indeed - but more than a few not quite so important people in the American present seem to have forgotten it - especially in regard to environmental responsibility...but anyway...

 

[Jumi]

When is ever calling things without religious nature a religion useful?

 

[siti]

And the same goes for you, yea yea.

OK - check out the evidence here, noting that 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming that has already happened over the last century is likely due to human activity. Check out the references and the data that is cited in the footnotes and look at these statements from some of the most respected scientific organizations in America and then obtain some actual data that actually refutes all this evidence.

Personally, I am not 100% up to date on climate change research per se being more directly involved in the technical aspects of the measurement part of the process - atmospheric methane, in particular, and ozone levels over the South Pacific, among many other things, but I certainly know, from first hand experience of doing, not just reading about, the science and from my own direct experience of vulnerable coastal communities in the South Pacific region over the last 20 years, enough to be certain that global warming is real.

I have done the science, I have examined the data, I have seen the evidence and evaluated it in my mind - I have thought very deeply and carefully about it. I have even edited a book about the chemical aspects of climate change as they relate to the South Pacific islands (I was invited by a professional body of scientists to do this and I made no money out of it - the proceeds all went to support educational projects). Point is - I know its real - I have no vested interests - except that my children and grandchildren have/are growing up in a country that is vulnerable to climate change.

So no, the same does not go for me. And it does irk me that so many people are so gullibly inclined to take the word of the right wing press without giving a single second of their time to actually examine the evidence, because its my kids future as well. By all means disagree - but an issue this important at least have the decency to do intelligently!

 

[siti]

When is ever calling things without religious nature a religion useful?

Climate change is a religious topic in relation to anti-climate change in the same way that atheism is a religious topic in relation to theism.

 

[Iti oj]

How about regulations? We find other solutions from regulations.

We have many regulations like restricting asbestos and mercury. Isn't this a process that could satisfy your dilemma?

Regulations are

We already fiddle with our economies. One specific, concrete action we could take would be to stop subsidizing - already profitable - big oil to the tune of billions / year, and redirect those subsidies to R&D for renewables.

Another concrete action would be to stop subsidizing beef production. The cost to the planet of a pound of beef is probably on the order of $20-$30 / pound. The reason we pay a fraction of that is because we - mostly unknowingly - subsidize the cattle industry. Producing a pound of edible mammal requires about 2000-3000 gallons of fresh water. So instead of demanding low flush toilets that might conserve 600 gallons of water per year, we could all eat four fewer big macs per year.

Another concrete action would be to stop subsidizing big agriculture, shift from monoculture farming to techniques like permaculture farming, and stop using pesticides which are only effective in the short term anyway (but are quite profitable).

All of these would have minor impacts on our overall economy.

I would add corn subsidies to this list and probably a few others