Guest essay by Eric Worrall
David Hochschild, environmental commissioner on the California Energy Commission, thinks climate activists should learn lessons from the same sex marriage movement, about how to convince the public to take action on climate change.
How Gay Marriage Suggests A Strategy For Climate Change
Jeff McMahon, CONTRIBUTOR
I cover green technology, energy and the environment from Chicago.
The iPhone shows how rapidly society can change if it wants to, a California energy commissioner said last week, and same-sex marriage shows that change can happen in public policy too.
Climate policy could be next, said David Hochschild, the environmental commissioner on the California Energy Commission and an architect of Proposition B, San Francisco’s successful $100 million solar initiative.
“There was gay marriage nowhere until 2004, then we saw that state by state by state by state it got adopted, and now of course it’s in all 50 states,” Hochschild said during a Stanford University seminar last week. “Over a very short period of time. You go back 12, 13 years and you ask how many people think gay marriage is universal and I think most people would assert, it’s not going to happen.”
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The iPhone is his model for change potential: “It’s gone from basically not existing to being ubiquitous in a decade,” he said.
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The point well meaning people like Hochschild don’t understand, is there currently is no viable alternative to fossil fuels.
The IDEA of renewables is popular. I like the idea of renewables. Who wouldn’t want a magic solar panel on the roof, which makes all the utility bills go away, forever?
The REALITY is renewables don’t deliver a viable alternative to fossil fuels. The cost and unreliability of renewables is a showstopper.
In 2014, a team of top Google engineers admitted failure – there is no economically feasible means to replace fossil fuels with renewables.
Leading greens like Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and prominent British environmentalist David Attenborough acknowledge the problems – they want a Renewable Energy Apollo Project, to fix the problems which prevent renewables from being a viable solution to the world’s energy needs.
Until the problems identified by Google, Gates and Attenborough are solved, no solution for making renewables viable is available. There may never be a solution to making renewables a viable replacement for fossil fuels.
Hochschild can mount as many public campaigns as he wants, but the most Hochschild will achieve with currently available technology is misery and public waste on a vast scale.
Climate activists should learn lessons from SCIENCE. Things like EVIDENCE. Ever heard of it? Nah, I thought not. Things like prejudice, bigotry and ignorance must eat up a lot of your time.
Hear hear.
Pat Frank in his posts is totally correct. A civil union contract CAN have the exact same rights as a marriage contract because in law, that is all marriage is, a contract between two people. In usual marriage it is “assumed” and “automatic”. Nothing in law prevents those right from being documented in a civil union. It’s a contract between two people and protects the “assets”, when it breaks up. Nothing more, nothing less.
It makes all the sense in the world of political action campaigns. Why use a campaign model that failed when one that worked can be used. After all, deceit, fear, hatred, outright lies and obfuscation is the hallmark of the Left/Greenies.
Whenever reality becomes ideologically inconvenient, prog-leftists push to legally rewrite reality. If you prefer to live in reality, then you will be affected by whatever they’re pushing for, sooner or later.
Well, sodomy and “climate change” both involve sticking it to someone, so I can see why the state of California would support both.
I believe that most honest and reasonable people would agree with the premise that same sex marriage is a form of legalized child molesting which should never be encouraged or promoted in any way.
Well, certainly not if they don’t adopt children.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of perverts out there: people like Chad Sevearance, and couples like Frank Lombard & Kenneth Shipp, Mark Newton & Peter Truong, George Harasz & Douglas Wirth, etc.
Except letting my gay friends get married doesn’t cost me anything, except maybe wedding presents. Same-sex marriage doesn’t raise my cost of energy, or destabilize the electric grid.
I had to cross my eyes and bear down where the sun don’t shine to parse it out and realize that his same-sex argument is not actually about tupping.
It is about indoctrination. Which hilariously, doesn’t involve real doctors either.
I think my dictionary is broken.
And this is an argument for their side how? It would work just as well if not better for our side. Clearly publishing scientists with skeptical views have had a tremendous row to hoe. As have loving couples finding room for their views on getting a marriage license let alone finding a fricken wedding cake or flowers in their local shopping venue, or for the rare church or court that would let them in to seal the deal.
I really hate posts like this.
I think Hockschild’s analogy is perfect and makes total sense. Let’s take it all the way shall we.
Let us say I am absolute ruler of the world and the homosexual community has convinced me that the homosexual choice is the only choice so I command that everyone must be a homosexual. What would be the result? Mankind would end within a couple generations. If on the other hand I had commanded that everyone be a heterosexual what would be the consequences? There would really be no consequences as everything would pretty much go on the way it has for thousands of years.
The point is that the homosexual choice really isn’t a credible or doable choice as it can’t exist in the absence of heterosexuality. The same goes for solar, wind and many other alternate choices, they can not provide the power necessary for our modern life in the absence of fossil fuel or nuclear.
I have no problem with solar or wind I just don’t want some jackass telling me that they must be my choice or that I have to subsidize those who make it their choice.
> there currently is no viable alternative to fossil fuels.
Yes, there is: nuclear energy.