![Firmin DeBrabander. Smog hangs over a construction site in Weifang city, Shandong province, Oct 16. 2015. Air quality went down in many parts of China since Oct 15 and most cities are shrounded by haze. [Photo/IC]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/deberbander_china.jpg)
Professor of Philosophy Firmin DeBrabander, Maryland Institute College of Art, has joined the growing list of greens who think “autocratic” governments like China are better climate custodians than Democracies.
Why is climate change such a hard sell in the US?
June 8, 2017 12.36pm AEST
President Donald Trump on June 1 took the dramatic step of removingthe U.S. from the Paris climate agreement – the product of many years of diligent and difficult negotiation among 175 nations around the world. Recent polls reveal that six in 10 Americans oppose Trump’s move. However, a significant portion of climate skeptics remain – especially among Trump’s base and the Republican politicians who cheered this move.
The unfortunate truth is that environmentalists and their allies have failed to ignite widespread passion around climate change. And now they are faced with an administration stridently opposed to environmental regulation, slashing the EPA’s budget drastically and reversing President Obama’s climate change initiatives.
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Learning from the past
I suspect that because of all these hurdles, climate change is not liable to be solved by democracies. Autocracies might do better – like China, for example. Given the severity of its current air pollution – a veritable “airpocalypse” – China’s government does not need to be prodded or persuaded to act; the necessity is obvious, and urgent. And China has the ability to take dramatic measures on climate change and act quickly – just what scientists are calling for – dragging the people with them. This is, after all, the nation that lifted half a billion people into the middle class in a single generation.
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Read More: http://theconversation.com/why-is-climate-change-such-a-hard-sell-in-the-us-78794
China in particular has a long and shameful track record of pollution and disregard for the environment; cities choked with smoke, toxic waste dumped into the nearest convenient lake. Communist China has a long history of utter disregard for the needs of ordinary people.
DeBrabander’s claim that Dictatorships like China “might do better” at handling climate issues than countries whose governments are accountable to the people is absurd.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Benjamin Franklin
That said, Cuba does a lot better job of hurricane evacuations than New Orleans.
P. J. O’Rourke in his book Eat the Rich suggested the only part of Cuba’s national infrastructure which worked efficiently was their police service. He committed some minor traffic infraction and got picked up and ticketed a few blocks later by a different cop.
Noble Cause Corruption: Arguing that the end justifies the means. Thus argued Hitler.Today the greens argue for a global dictatorship via the UN carbon tax.
The climate change must be suppressed, at any price. Nothing is more important. Alarmists are going to build the Fourth Reich.
Is the Professor proposing that President Donald Trump be made dictator?
In the narrative that already has happened, you don’t get CNN/MSNBC? The Washington Post has a dedicated team on this topic.
It is s infuriating to read about this type of garbage from a so called green researcher that is so ignorant of the real world. I have done work in China and other dictatorships and they are not the environmental stewards that these so called researchers claim. All it would take is visit to one of their power plants to confirm this. There is absolutely no incentive to maintain equipment. If it breaks it is bypassed or the system is shut down. The environmental control systems are all designed with bypasses so when the world is not watching the equipment is bypassed resulting in pollutants being emitted as before. During the Olympics the systems operated and not bypassed and the air was relatively clean. After the Olympics equipment bypassed and back to normal. The equipment is also built so cheaply that the life would be about 5 years or less before it is no longer functional. In the U.S. the equipment on power plants are designed for 25 years life. However that has been slipping in recent years due to lack of coherent energy policy in the U. S.
“Ok, so the author of the article wants to appoint an authoritarian government apparently believing it will get him what he thinks he wants.”
Isn’t that what all Leftists/Totalitarians want? They don’t trust the People. They think the People have to be led down the socialist path for their own good, and for the good of the Leftist worldview.
This is more confirmation that environmentalism is a means to an end – communism. In our discussion circles, I need to keep reminding people that in the United States our federalist model (not democracy) is a true “firewall” (sorry about the over-use of this word) to the central government. States are to be considered primary in the governmental structure. I don’t have any problem when the left-coast states begin to environmental programs on their own. That’s the way it should be! I believe one of the supreme court justices summarized the 10th amendment declaring that states should be laboratories of democracy.
The Tenth Amendment of the constitution states that “all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Sorry about the rant…
From the article: “I have long wondered why climate change is such a hard sell in the U.S. Is there something about it that makes it liable to doubt, skepticism or inaction?”
Yeah, there are many things about it that make it liable to doubt and skepticism, like the fact that it is unproven that humans are causing the climate to change.
You are expecting people to believe in something that has not been proven to exist, and then you wonder why they don’t believe. Perhaps you should examine your own understanding of the matters. The flaw may not be in the skeptics, it may be in you.
This is a clear case of catastrophic human stupidity — CHS, for short — which could readily send the world into a downward spiral for humans, making more room for lower creatures to enjoy a higher quality existence.
Lower animals unite ! … Rejoice and welcome more of this kind of … “thinking”.
Beasts of Ireland, beasts of England. Beasts of every land and clime! Four legs good, two legs bad!
Easier to fool one dictator than 340 million.
Exactly. A dictatorship can take a single “scientific” idea to its absurd conclusion. The Chinese one child policy is the prime example of a western Green ideology implemented by dictatorship. A couple hundred million fewer Chinese girls later…..
The irony is strong. The Conversation has finally admitted that having a conversation is not really the way they prefer to do things. What they really mean by “conversation” is that they talk and everybody else listens and obeys.
There is a difference between climate and the environment. So Dictatorships are great in creating pollution and even better at limiting access to power (clean or otherwise) “Keep them hungry and in the dark” and “Controlling information and controlling dissent are part of what goes into maintaining a totalitarian state,”
Kaiser Wilhelm would be encouraged by this and his plan 3 document would not have been shelved.
I think it is time to set up a sanctuary cities for all those would-be green dictators, their would-be followers, and all the world’s assorted climate refugees. Free one-way tickets included. How about we start with Portland, Oregon?
Philosophy! Alchemy evolved into chemistry but the mighty Phil devolved into post normal neurosis. I remember when fewer than 5% went to university and there were demanding educational requirements. A friend of mine didn’t make the cut but he made a fine electrician.
Then we got inflicted with lefty ‘intellectual democracy’ and the doors were thrown open very wide. Students basically couldn’t be turned down and remedial English and math had to be hammered into millions of hard heads with expected mediocre results. They had to invent many dozens of new faculties with odd disciplines (recent peer reviewed paper on feminine glaciology! What reviewer has the cojones to turn this kind of stuff down? ).
What to teach these basically average folks (35 – 40% of population) ? Well it turned out that Victimhood 101, and Introductory Activist Dialectics and Recalcitrance 101 were popular. Women’s Issues were big. And I suppose this has been spun off with the growing number of genders.
I thought science was immune to this, at least requiring some level of math. However I was mistaken. Some years back I hired a young lady for a geological mineral exploration program only to learn in the progress of the work that she couldn’t identify common minerals! When I asked about it, she told me she hadn’t taken the mineralogy option, deciding on the remote sensing option! I had to give a crash course in mineralogy tailored down to the species that we were most likely to be encountering. I can’t for the like of me figure out what she would be sensing remotely.
Now climate science is a perfect fit for even philosophers to take up, and psychologists and cartoonists. Philosophers, however want to lock up and kill skeptics. Where does that come from?
It seems to me that there was never a shortage of philosophers with a totalitarian streak — Karl Popper made a career out of this observation.
“China’s government does not need to be prodded or persuaded to act; the necessity is obvious, and urgent. And China has the ability to take dramatic measures on climate change and act quickly ”
Yeah here is China’s response to pollution and CAGW.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-china-social-environmental-costs
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
Seems they have no problem destroying their own environment and poisoning their own citizens to mine the materials used to make the magnets for wind turbines. Notice the two articles are 3 years apart, during which time apparently no improvement occurred.
So ‘Professor’, do you still think autocracies can (or will) better handle climate change?
Human nature can’t be denied; individuals are too easily corrupted. This is why concentration of political (government) power is to be feared. It also explains the failures and evil deeds of all collectivist and totalitarian systems.
You put the hard-core professor in the footsteps of Marco Polo. If he ever returns, he is cured. Healing during stay (in China). I would recommend this to anyone with similar experiences, to spend 10 years in China. By the way, Marco Polo, after all, preferred Venice’s clay chambers- system to the progress of China of which he recounted incessantly upon his return. .
Problem: Why the “climate change” pig doesn’t sell here.
Answer: Not enough, or wrong shade of lipstick.
Solution: Keep trying different shades, and more layers of lipstick.
Also, keep alternating from the hard sell to the soft sell, and back. Because people forget easily.
Simples!
I wonder if the good professor obtained his PhD from one of those schools that gives every student an “A”.
Ah, the Socialists waxing lyrical about getting Socialism right this time round.
Insanity is doing the same thing every time and expecting a different result….. Socialism and Socialists are insane. Completely insane.
They are going to litter the landscape and choke the rivers with corpses in their quest to make a better World. Insane.
And only the completely insane are completely convinced of their own sanity.
I see lots of capacity to improve the environment once China comes up the level of compliance equivalent to that of the Clean Air Act of 1963. Then there is Air Quality Act of 1967, Clean Air Act Extension of 1970, Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977, and Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
The Chinese govt, autocratic or not, is responding to popular gripes about the smog. They are NOT motivated to eliminate CO2 emissions, and, in fact, early on were skeptical about global warming and still are. Their role in the Paris Treaty is inconsequential. They were, in fact, bribed, like the third world nations by being promised funding from the wealthier nations, or in their case, with emission reduction goals that meant nothing. It was all about getting everyone to sign the treaty. The funding by Obama’s crew had to do with paying like minded “scientists” to produce junk science articles and studies supporting their position.
Asking the public about the Paris Treaty is like asking them about Relativity – they know nothing about it and therefore their opinion means nothing.
This is because the “Greens” are not really green at heart, they are Red. They do not really care about the environment, they care about expanding socialism.
I recall the old Soviet Union was very good at suppressing the dangers of radioactive waste from their atomic bomb and reactor programs. Chelabinsk for example. And they marched entire groups of workers into seriously radioactive areas, left huge vats of high-level rad waste open to the atmosphere, and today have a big mess in Murmansk with abandoned nuclear submarines, too hot to go inside. There were no objectors to any of that, all were silenced rather quickly. Al Gore has already declared that “climate change deniers” (to compare us with Holocaust deniers) should be put into prison to shut them up. Maybe that’s what the professor is referencing, but I hardly consider any of it as being a “custodian” of climate or environment. Just the opposite.
Not only all that, but the Soviets at one point used nuclear warheads as excavation tools! If you want to see real environmental damage, look no further than collectivist and totalitarian run countries. When “everyone owns” something, nobody acts like they do. “It’s not my responsibility” is the common refrain. This is human nature and all the wishful thinking in the world won’t change that.
Hell, we can’t even hire decent FBI directors that can keep private conversations out of the media. If such highly paid government professionals readily get down to play with pigs, what chance do any of us have regarding anything of national interest? Who the hell turned our government into a Payton Place?????
I think I am going to find the remotest piece of land I can guarded by rattle snakes and spend the rest of my life fishing. What I saw today in the Comey hearing (what a ponderous self-grandizing scumbag) turned my stomach so bad it will take months of fishing just to get the nasty taste out of my mouth.
I was knocked over that an FBI director was taking notes in a meeting with the President and he had his golf buddy turn them over to the NYT! Man I thought leaks were a problem but not at this level. How long until we get a Judicial Committee to investigate this (crickets). I thought his handling of Hillary’s email stuff was unconscionable in both directions.
“I thought leaks were a problem but not at this level. How long until we get a Judicial Committee to investigate this ”
Trump has already filed a complaint with the Justice Department. 🙂
Let’s sum up the hearing:
Trump is not the target of any FBI investigation.
There is no evidence of obstruction of justice on the part of Trump or any of his administration.
Pamela, “we” didn’t hire Comey. He was Obama’s with a history with the Clintons going beck to Whitewater.