#100DaysToOffload End of the myth of rational public discourse - The example of climate change
A couple more items that make it clear that climate change is not going to be stopped. National interests are more important than planetary problems.
Here's Noah Smith with a piece about climate change as the only policy goal and how viable that is:
But despite what many of my friends and colleagues thought back in 2017, climate change is not actually the main reason for industrial policy, nor will it be going forward. And so they are shouting into the wind.
The main reasons for this are:
- people are not moved enough to care about climate change to vote differently (in the US, but I'd wager in Europe, too. They are for sure not willing to pay for it.)
- the green energy transition will come regardless of it not being the only priority (but I will add that the energy transition itself will not make climate change go away: yes, technological advances mean that switching to (mostly) solar + battery is going to happen, because its the cheapest way to produce electricity/power nowadays, but western countries are not the main polluters and even then everything that can be done is too little, too late. In a way the energy transition is almost decoupled from climate change. Taking the Jevons Paradox into account, we should expect more consumption and therefore more production, more use of resources and a bigger toll on the planet in the end.)
- national security and reindustrialization are more important than climate change and climate change needs to be an argument for this reindustrialization to make any waves at all (Security and reindustrialization mean bigger footprints, not smaller ones)
In short: The changing world-political landscape makes it highly unlikely that rational arguments or strategic protests will persuade humans to change their ways (I think I'm allowed to generalize here).
And for individuals this means that we have to learn to live with ever hotter summers. As for example this professor expresses:
— Youtube: Climate records keep getting shattered; expert says this is the new normal
So, yes. We can stop asking the question, how we can mobilize the public for climate change and against biodiversity loss and start asking the question how we can live in a world that is not going to bend to reason (at least at larger scales … I'll have to explain that soon in more detail).
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