How has the discussion on GCC degenerated into 'us' and 'them' instead of 'we?'

Question

Whether we approach this from the community level, the national front or on a planetary scale, we all share the same planet. So much of what we do has effects that spill over beyond borders.

How can we recoup the 'we' in debating climate change? Other than the planet itself, what is our common ground?

Answer 1

"How has the discussion on GCC degenerated into 'us' and 'them' instead of 'we?'"

Because there is more than one side in this debate. It is fairly typical, in a debate, to describe the other side as 'them'.

"And this guy?"

Admiral Truly again?

Answer 2

I'm afraid that your supposition is not accurate.  The discussion has always been about us vs. them.

I'm not sure how long you've been at this, but I surely remember back to the late sixties.

From the very beginning of the modern environmental movement, when Rachel Carson began a campaign to expose what unrestrained business interests were doing to the environment, there was an immediate backlash.

And how could there not be?  Environmentalists implicate our very way of life as the source of the problem.

Due to historical circumstances, environmentalism became associated with counter-culturalism.

Of course, it's a natural fit between the two - but the association was amplified and the issue was framed in such a way as to polarize it completely - so you would have straight red-blooded patriotic god-fearing free market true Americans on one side and dope smoking hippy weirdo communist American hating atheists on the other.

Just look at the nonsense that gets posted on this site.

I personally believe there was, and is to this day, a deliberate campaign by reactionary forces to paint environmentalists as extremists bent on destroying the American way of life.  And the diatribe continues from the right to this very day.

The negative message is “Stop Killing the Earth”!

The positive opposite is “We need to work together to fix some problems and prevent a possibly catastrophic outcome”.

But nobody wants to deal with hypotheticals.

Nobody wants to be told they are wrong.

Especially not that our pretty much our entire way of doing things has gone horribly off track and nothing short of a societal revolution is going to fix it.

I would think:

Look! Look at the world! Look at what we have done! Please Stop!

and

We can have our cake and eat it too if we would just be smart about it.

Would be enough…

But apparently it’s not, or is the wrong approach.

Because when you start talking about the real issues like population control, real limits on development, real preservation that makes large areas of land and sea off limits, real reforms to energy production and use, real reforms that change land use and encourage local economies...

…the majority of the people have no idea what you are talking about, and when they begin to get it they get a feeling like someone kicked them in the chest, and they default to labeling you an crazed environmental wacko… Because bless them, they just can't deal with it.  The problem is too big.

I believe the situation is much worse than even the average “environmentalist” believes, and the Joe Six Pack has not the first clue what we are up against.

Education is the answer, but it’s getting late even for that.

Vote and organize for progressive leaders who can sway the vast middle of the populace.

Answer 3

I think the place to find common ground is to separate what we know from what we assume. For example, we know that climates change all over the world and we know that this went on long before human existence. This is something we can all agree on.

It is the assumptions that are the problem. We cannot assume that change is bad, that warming is worse than cooling, or that human activity causes one or the other.

If the AGW proponents truly believe there is a problem to be solved, they will shift their efforts from North America and Europe to China and India, the new leaders in greenhouse gas production. If they don't, it's because the real issue is economics, not the environment.

Answer 4

It depends on what you mean by "we" - - - individuals cooperating voluntarily, or governments forcing individuals to live, or refrain from living, certain lifestyles.

If you have no problem with the latter then you're a collectivist - you would define "we" to include three people mugging two.

And sometimes, as in Rachel Carson's case, it's not simply a matter of arbitrariness, but of being wrong, and having disastrous long-term consequences.

http://www.rachelwaswrong.org/

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/092120...

Answer 5

It would be great not having to be on the defensive constantly. I have quite a few relative questions to ask. But why?...when your going to get a standardized cut and paste answer, or lambasted into the (it doesn't matter) realm. This forum has changed my demur for the worse and I regret it.

Answer 6

Amy you need to realize that those who sponsor AGW only want to enhance their profits. They are against any and all technical or technological solutions to solving the problems. If it does not involve the greater use of oil, gas or coal the AGW promoters will fight to the last ounce of gasoline to prevent its use.

Repeted for information:

Space based solar is the best all around answer but it needs to be supplemented by nuclear for more reasons than I can answer here. Problem is when he was president Jimmy Carter at the prompting of the big oil companies put in place a series of presidential decrees that banned space based solar and crippled nuclear to the point it became to expensive to use economically. One of these orders prevented recycling any nuclear material and forcing it to be stored forever until it rots away.

Yes nuclear fuel rods lose their power because a skin forms on them kind of like rust that lowers their efficiency. The rods can be sent through a recycling process that removes this nuclear rust and the rods becomes as good as when new. Then the rust can be collected for making new rods that are even more powerful than the original fuel rods were, this rust is called plutonium and can be either made into bombs or high power reactors. Right now we are using our fuel rods for only a short period and throwing them away.

What Jimmy Carter did with that presidential order would be like you buying precharged ni-cad batteries and no charger, using them once and throwing them away. His order makes about that much sense and so nuclear fuel rods that are good for a hundred thousand years if recycled properly are wastefully scrapped after 10 or 12 years of service when the plutonium skin lowers their efficiency a little. And his order on preventing space based power plants from being built through cutting back the space program makes even less sense when you realize that this country would be the worlds largest exporter of low cost electricity today. Instead we are the world’s largest importer of oil to produce very costly electricity instead, dumb, very dumb indeed. Thank you Jimmy Carter for the problems in the middle east, the boom and bust bubble economy, and the energy crisis that is breaking our economic backs.

Answer 7

Because that's what the US is doing right now.

John McCain says he's open to any proposal on Social Security, nothing is off the table.  And gets savaged by Conservatives for not being "tough enough on taxes".

Barrack Obama says he's open to a compromise on energy.  And gets savaged by Liberals for not being "tough enough on drilling".

And then people complain that government can't do anything.  This is a decent enough democracy, WE get the government WE ask for.

Like this:

"Amy you need to realize that those who sponsor AGW only want to enhance their profits."

Like most all scientists, eh?

EVERY major scientific organization has issued an official statement that this is real, and mostly caused by us.  The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

And this guy?

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)

Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut

Answer 8

People are out for the money

Answer 9

Amy, it's always been like this in the Yahoo Answer community. Mainly in the respect of pointing the finger at the US.  I'm sure if you look outside this community it's not like that, that's why it floors me that China's building coal power plants and worse yet, without all the pollution controls built into them.

So I'd say our common ground is making sure our air quality is safe to breath, our fresh water is free of pollutants, that we move away from using growth hormones in our food production, that we practice the old adage of rotating the crops we plant, so we don't deplete our soils nutrients, that if we cut down a tree we replant two to replace it and we protect the rain forests. We have a lot of common ground. We just have look at the big picture and stop allowing what essentially is a non-issue to cloud our vision.

Answer 10

Because there are blowhards on radio and TV who's livelihood (and wealth) are dependent on their ability to create animosity between groups.  The larger the divide and the more hostility these people create, the more their viewers/listeners grows and the more money they make.

Polite intelligent discussions (as can be seen on a few PBS shows) doesn't achieve the level of ratings the divisive yelling, name-calling type programs achieve.