The last decade is the most progressive political period in US yet all we did is the worst damage to the climate crisis (on the flip side, how much worse could it be?). So let's face it, the political show does not really matter. Nothing will change until we crash and nature will force the change upon us. This is nothing new in the history and in a few millennia every thing will be renew and we will be forgotten (and forgiven).
The inevitability is built into the large number theory. As long as there are too many drivers on the wheel and too many cooks in the kitchen, the average will rule the society and the average will always be shallow and near sighted. So before the actual crisis hit nearly every one, the society is incapable of change direction.
In the analogy, money would be the gasoline and we have too many feet on that pedal. The market absolutely destroys any kind of responsibility. Meanwhile, passengers, either enjoy the ride or embrace yourself.
And it's not like we haven't seen that the average person can make better decisions because of education, than medieval age lets say. Maybe we just need faster ways to improve the population.
We should differentiate knowledge from intelligence or wisdom. Knowledge can be fake, misleading, or contradictory. We have more knowledge and access of information than medieval age typical Joe, but do we have more intelligence or wisdom?
To make the comparison easier, do we have more intelligence and wisdom than Plato (whom I am certain that we possess more knowledge)?
1. Science. To the point that average joe understands that the prediction of climate change is concluded from the same scientific methods that helped us finding cures for diseases, inventing computers, and sending people to the moon. Science is not always perfect the same as we dont always have perfect cure for some diseases at the moment. But that is the best we can do for now, and it's the work of many experts over many years. So it is logical to either believe it or contribute to it scientifically, financially, auditing-wise, or something else. After all we believe in scientists not because that they have the title, but because we believe in scientific methods, in scientific approach.
2. Social science. Pure science is about causality. Social science can teach us value, what is good, what is bad, and happiness. Then we can discuss whether not acting upon climate change will make you more happy or less happy.
To be educated IMHO, we should care about reasons of what they say more than the title of what they say. It is not unusual for scientists to draw wrong conclusions from the the right reasons, and those right reasons can help you draw your own right conclusions.
When each of us can maintain our own set of knowledge/conclusions under a set of consistent reasons, then the society will be much more resistant to any kind of appeal to authority/popularity logic fallacy.
Get out in the streets and put your body on the line if you believe this is real.
We are the worlds first experiment in self governace. We believe in government for the people, by the people. We can accomplish so much more by showing up and standing up for policy change.
Exercise your right to assemble. Exercise your right to speak. Join. Donate. Walk.
If you don't have a community of people around you willing to fight for this, make one. Host lecturers, host sign making jams, make art, make friends.
http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly050525a.htm
What you're recommending is a way to feel good without achieving anything. Nobody in power gives a shit about protests unless they become overwhelmingly large and people are willing to die en masse.
Also, we are not the world's first experiment in self-governance. that's a bedtime story for people who don't read history books.
Maybe if I add more qualifiers to it you'll see past that quibble for the larger point.
As if we needed more performative signaling today...
I don't necessarily share GP's viewpoint but it's incredibly naive to assume that the US government isn't completely controlled by monied interests at this point... More than half of Trump's cabinet donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Furthermore, just being a whimsical, creative person doesn't wrest power from those who control our nation... the 60's and 70's pretty conclusively proved that if you needed evidence. If you want to take power from those who have it (which is the definition of enacting climate change legislation) then you literally have to take power. Given that money was used to move power away from the people, it seems a good place to start in taking it back.
Whimsy is not what I advocated. If that's how it came across perhaps I chose my words imperfectly. I'm trying to figure out secular, modern ways of building community. MLK used the power of religion to build and sustain his movement. And to pretend that it didn't successfully create change is historical revisionism.
0. Letter from Birmingham Jail - Martin Luther King https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
I do not think it is just an odd coincidence that most people have forgotten the economic, political, and social militancy that came with the Civil Rights movement in favor of a disney-ified[0] version where mere marches, willpower, and belief in a certain set of principles caused widespread change.
[0] http://inthesetimes.com/article/14524/santa_clausifying_mart...
I'm very much aware that MLK had a larger vision for shared economic prosperity, a vision for "a beloved community," that is very much sanitized by the mainstream narrative. The article you posted doesn't really do service to telling the actual message. I recommend this On Being interview where Vincent Harding [0] gives an overview.
0. http://www.onbeing.org/program/vincent-harding-is-america-po...
Reality gets sink in, not by watching TV or listening to activists. So for me, try to open my eyes and sort out my logic is the action to make. When enough people understand the reality without internal contradiction, the right action will show up.
So I am acting on my belief, advocating truth and logic here.
We speak and march to create visibility, to bring to light and make tangible the struggles that are hidden and quiet and disconnected. There's only so much typing messages into the infinite electric void can accomplish. Be careful to understand the difference between truth/logic and beliefs you choose to hold to keep you sheltered in your apathy.
0. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
All references to climate change have been deleted from the White House website...
That said, he is unlikely to push climate change one way or another globally. With how cheap wand and solar has gotten coal is on the way out and would take significant subsides to become competitive.
he is unlikely to push climate change one way or another
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/15/trump-ca...
For too long, we’ve been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy
industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary
policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.
Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages
by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.
So I think it would be a mistake to dismiss it as pure conjecture considering that it has been partly validated by events. It would be quite easy to file a FOIA request to find out whether there were requests for ground-based hardware. Trump is already on record expressing a desire for military parades: http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/trump-to-hold-military...
To me, the problem is less that Trump claims to believe climate change is a Chinese hoax, and more that such insane claims are what got him elected, because they seem refreshingly honest to so many Americans.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/23/ratifiyi...
There is no wisdom in trying to be neutral. There is no smartness and tolerance in trying to protect and tolerate things that are by themselves intolerant and harmful.
He's likely to push climate change one way -- that is, in the direction of reinforcing the current trend. He's may be unlikely to push substantive policy responses to climate change, but that's a different issue.
EDIT: But even after two cadencies it would probably not be close to it.
Perhaps I am still dreaming that he will do an about face and actually be a good president. Regardless of who is president we can still dream, can't we?
Other forms of energy have been undercutting it since thermal steam rigs started working in North African farms. Probably longer when you consider the history of wind power.
If Natural Gas wasn't so arduous to obtain, a carbon liberator, and damaging to the water table to obtain, I suspect we'd be more excited about it.
We really need to work out practices where we actively remove carbon from the air.
(as of today)
We'll get better results from improvements on alternative power than from political agreements anyway.
Unfortunately, it's lose/lose for skeptics:
If you turn out to be right and Florida becomes unlivable in the next 50 years, you turn the skeptics into scapegoats and curb stomp them into submission. However, if you turn out to be wrong you just get off scot-free and say "Well, I turned out to be wrong because of X factor that everyone overlooked, but I came to the best conclusion possible with the evidence I had at hand. The skeptics were still wrong to have rejected science."
Can we put up a wall to keep the alligators out during the flooding?
Judging by the way the US handled the flooding in New Orleans - no.
But least the alligators will take care of the PR problem of corpses floating in the streets.
The population still panics at every progression as if it is a surprise is an evidence that we by far are not realizing the reality. This is understandable -- our perception scale is simply too minuscule to the scale of the actual problem.
Only when we convince ourselves that we are really cornered with no acceptable alternatives, only then, we will figure out and try our really admirable effort (to fight).
What we will have to do regardless is deal with rising storm surges and sea levels. Pretty much every major city will need a significant storm barriers. We should consider land buy back on easily flooded harbor barriers, and perhaps even abandonment of smaller coastal communities.
Unfortunately, the everglades are sunk, and Florida will become increasingly unlivable, as salt water infiltrates almost all groundwater supplies.