Guest essay by Eric Worrall
PHD student Christian Elliott is worried that democracy, the tendency for Conservatives to sometimes win elections, is impeding vital progress on climate change; though he hopes that reframing the issue and tackling negative stereotypes may bring Conservatives on board.
Both conservatives and liberals can agree on action on climate change
October 16, 2019 9.18am AEDT
Christian Elliott PhD Student and Researcher, Department of Political Science, University of TorontoWe tend to assume that democracies, over the long arc of history, work towards progress and justice. But with an issue like climate change, we’re running out of time.
It may come as a surprise, but at the moment, democracy may be an obstacle to the rapid action we need on climate change.
Democratic governments naturally swing back and forth between conservative and liberal control. But environmental issues are increasingly associated with liberal values exclusively in countries like Canada and the United States.
The transition from a liberal government to a conservative one often leads to a relapse of environmental policies, including program cuts, delays and even outright rejections or silencing of the science underlying climate change.
…
If political psychology is any indication, there’s clearly an opportunity to bring conscientiously minded conservatives into the environmental movement.
…
We have real world examples of this approach at play. Though by name the “Green New Deal” is associated with large-scale American public investment and thus “big government,” it’s also sensitive to the plight of citizens that might otherwise embody a conservative anti-environment sentiment.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/both-conservatives-and-liberals-can-agree-on-action-on-climate-change-124878
Christian goes on to argue coal miners and oil rig workers will ultimately embrace the green new deal, because the GND will provide renewable jobs to replace lost fossil fuel jobs.
No doubt Christian will soon find a home for his political science skills in a policy think tank or ministerial advisory panel, where he will work hard to reduce the scope for Democracy and partisanship to interrupt efforts to save the world from climate change.
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Which Socialist country are you looking at Christian that prevents pollution; is reducing their CO₂ emissions; and is gladly sabotaging their economies by exchanging consistent producers of high quality electricity in favor of territory eating, bird and bat destroying inefficient unreliable renewable energy?
Next, Student Christian Elliott, what have you done to eliminate all usages and dependencies of fossil fuel in your life?
No heat, no synthetic clothes, no synthetic insulation, no metals, no plastics, no vinyl furniture or shoes, no clothes that you did not harvest, clean, card, convert into roving, spin into thread/yarn, knit/weave into clothes, no fossil fuel cooked meals, no straws, no plates, no cups, no glasses, etc. etc. etc.
Otherwise, you are just as phoney as you intimate others are as you pretend that totalitarian government will save you, your country, your Earth.
You’re a fool, Christian. And utterly delusional fool.
I would allow for the possibility, given the age of most grad students, that he is merely utterly miseducated.
Oh, yeah…and a fool.
I hear Venezuela is producing a lot less CO2 than they used to.
And they did it in the traditional sociliast manner. By impoverishing everyone except those in power.
The climate cult has always been a thinly disguised excuse to over throw capitalist democracy and replace it with a global totalitarian socialist state. Then siphon the money of the first world and equally divide it amongst people who don’t know how to make it.
The problem is when you get rid of capitalism there is no more money and everyone lives in poverty, but the climate cult thinks wealth will magically keep producing itself.
There is progress (i.e. monotonic), but dissimilar from their conception. Still, there are overlapping and converging interests, so reconcile.
Surprise? Not!
You know it will take a dictatorial form of socialism to implement the diktats of Climate Change fraud.
But, fear not Comrades – it’s only a transitional state to ‘true’ communism.
Socialism and communism are a package deal. You can’t really have one with out the other. This is why I do not make the distinction between the two and why I ignore academics who call me ignorant for not doing so.
“…he will work hard to reduce the scope for Democracy and partisanship to interrupt efforts to save the world from climate change.”
It would be a great feat if he could decrease the partisanship that has plagued the issue of climate change. Science and its interpretation should not be partisan. It seems to me that policy issues are too often conflated with science, or reflected in the ways that people view the science. The rational approach is to look at the science on its own merits, and then based on that make policy decisions. My impression is that many conservatives are so concerned with policies that would be suggested by the science that they want to reject the science, and this is not rational. Nor is it rational to reject the science out of a desire to believe that liberal ideology has corrupted the way science is done and interpreted by the majority of scientists, especially when most people get their views of science from the media rather than from the original research papers.
Correct. Science should never be partisan. However, you are talking about climate science which is all politics.
Science and its interpretation should not be partisan
Indeed it shouldn’t. Climate Science however has been nothing but for decades. The IPCC is a political, not a scientific, body.
Haven’t you seen the quotes of various Climate “Science” leaders talking about how the manufactured climate “crisis” is nothing more than a vehicle to implement their political goals.
PS: It’s not the skeptics who are getting people fired for the sin of not believing as they do.
RE: “It would be a great feat if he could decrease the partisanship that has plagued the issue of climate change.
Nice sentiment…. but I remember the partisan Kristi Silber that gleefully cheered “WooHoo! Away with ye, scoundrel!” at the resignation of Scott Pruitt from the EPA, after his personal information (home address, family information, phone #s, etc) were publicized and his family received threats. Partisan politics, at its worst… cheered on by partisan Kristi Silber.
Truly “Hoist by your own petard!” Kristi!
RE: “It would be a great feat if he could decrease the partisanship that has plagued the issue of climate change.”
Nice sentiment…… However, I remember the partisan Kristi Silber that cheered on (“WooHoo! Away with ye, scoundrel!”) the resignation of EPA chief Scott Pruitt, after his family’s personal information (home address, phone #s, childrens schools, etc) were published for partisan attack. The Pruitt family was assaulted with an assortment of extremist partisan physical threats, driving Scott Pruitt to resign to protect his family. “WooHoo…..” for partisan extremism.
Truly, “Hoist by your own petard!” Kristi.
ref: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/05/scott-pruitt-out-at-epa/
How ya’ doin’ Kristi?
‘Nor is it rational to reject the science out of a desire to believe that liberal ideology has corrupted the way science is done and interpreted by the majority of scientists’
Yeah, it actually is. It is that exactly.
Since it can be demonstrated that liberal ideology HAS corrupted the way science is being done, why is it irrational to believe that?
Are you saying that we should be like liberals and ignore the evidence in favor of supporting the ideology?
Renewables outpaced coal for electrical generation in the U.S. in April.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39992
In case that’s thought to be a one off, they also outpaced in the UK in Q3 2019.
https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/465744-renewables-generated-more-power-than-fossil-fuels-in-uk-for-first
Point being, two of the world’s major democracies have no problems decarbonizing due to economics. If we want to look for problems, let’s look at China.
But really, this is typical of alarmism. The model says democracy shouldn’t be able to decarbonize while totalitarianism can do it easy. Yet the real world data is the exact opposite…
Fix to second link: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/465744-renewables-generated-more-power-than-fossil-fuels-in-uk-for-first
Decarbonizing is unhealthy for carbon-based lifeforms. We are not decarbonizing. We are simply using a currently less expensive ‘fossil’ fuel (natural gas) to reliably feed and stabilize our electrical grid while propping up the unreliable, intermittent, and frequency variable hazards of energy generated from inefficient sunshine and wind.
CO2 is the essential nutrient for all plant growth on planet Earth. ‘Decarbonizing’, a misnomer for reducing atmospheric CO2, is akin to restricting sunlight and water to plants. If the plants could talk, they would shout “How Dare You try to starve us!”
Wow, more subsidized renewables are being built than coal plants.
And the troll actually thinks that this is something to crow about.
Coal plants aren’t being built at all because at present natural gas is cheaper.
Now, if you actually want to be relevant (for once) how about comparing renewables to natural gas?
PS, if renewables are so great, why do they have to pass laws requiring power companies to buy renewable power?
“We are running out of time”
ie: If we don’t get this free enterprise democracy thing reined in and the populace under tight control quickly, our manipulative climate fraud will be exposed, and all our work will have been wasted.
Hi Richard,
The “manipulative climate fraud” may already be exposed. Veteran Meteorologist Joe D”Aleo and I are writing a paper now, and are just waiting for the final harvest data from the Northern Great Plains.
The IPCC’s CAGW hypothesis assumes that increased fossil fuel combustion will cause increased atmospheric CO2 and runaway global WARMING, and also assumes that the Sun has little or no impact on global temperatures.
Decades ago we rejected that CAGW hypothesis as false, and in 2002 I published a prediction of global cooling starting by 2020-2030, modified about five years ago to “about 2020 or sooner”, primarily driven by low solar activity, not CO2 – and that prediction is now materializing.
Maybe it’s “weather, not climate” – it’s too early to know for certain – but it is the exact OPPOSITE of the climate alarmists scary predictions of runaway warming. The alarmists will probably shift effortlessly to their “wilder weather” nonsense, a “non-falsifiable hypothesis” that is non-scientific drivel.
“A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.” – Karl Popper
The gullible public may be deceived, but honest, competent scientists will not – based on all the evidence, the CAGW hypothesis is falsified to all except the most deluded and corrupt climate extremists.
Regards, Allan
HISTORIC MIDWEST BLIZZARD HAS FARMERS SEEING “MASSIVE CROP LOSSES…AS DEVASTATING AS WE’VE EVER SEEN”
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/historic-midwest-blizzard-has-farmers-seeing-massive-crop-lossesas-devastating-weve-ever
by Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/15/2019 – 13:25
[excerpt]
Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
An unprecedented October blizzard that hit just before harvest time has absolutely devastated farms all across the U.S. heartland.
As you will see below, one state lawmaker in North Dakota is saying that the crop losses will be “as devastating as we’ve ever seen”. This is the exact scenario that I have been warning about for months, and now it has materialized. Due to endless rain and horrific flooding early in the year, many farmers in the middle of the country faced very serious delays in getting their crops planted. So we really needed good weather at the end of the season so that the crops could mature and be harvested in time, and that did not happen. Instead, the historic blizzard that we just witnessed dumped up to 2 feet of snow from Colorado to Minnesota. In fact, one city in North Dakota actually got 30 inches of snow. In the end, this is going to go down as one of the worst crop disasters that the Midwest has ever seen, and ultimately this crisis is going to affect all of us.
According to the USDA, only 15 percent of all U.S. corn and only 14 percent of all U.S. soybeans had been harvested as of October 6th.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
{excerpt]
10. I wrote in an article published 1Sept2002 in the Calgary Herald:
“If [as we believe] solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
I will stand with this prediction – for moderate, natural cooling, similar to that which occurred from ~1940 to the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1977, despite accelerating fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric CO2. Similar cooling occurred from ~1945 to 1977 as fossil fuel consumption accelerated.
I now think global cooling will start closer to 2020. The following plot explains why (Fig.10).
I hope to be wrong, because humanity and the environment suffer during cold periods.
Fig.10 – Apparent Coherence of Total Solar Irradiance, Sea Surface Temperature and Lower Tropospheric Temperature, interrupted by the 1998 El Nino
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/offset:-1360/scale:0.2/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1980/plot/uah6/from:1980
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/22/nasa-announces-new-record-growth-of-antarctic-sea-ice-extent/#comment-1456283
G. Karst says: October 23, 2013 at 6:48 am
I guess I must be the only person on this earth that views increasing polar ice as “bad news”. Warming should be regarded as the failsafe direction for climate change. Cooling should be regarded as the dangerous direction. I suppose… I am just too confused to know what is up with that. GK
**********
You are not the only one GK. Several informed parties have pointed out that cold kills many more people than warmth. I wrote this to some friends early this morning:
[excerpt]
Excess winter mortality is still a significant problem in the UK, in that it is reportedly significantly higher than some other Northern countries. The data is kept separately for England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Excess Winter Mortality in the UK now typically totals about 30,000 souls per year, of which 2000-3000 are in Scotland. This tragic statistic has dropped from about 60,000 per year in the UK in the 1950’s, so there has definitely been some progress. I want to understand why.
My concern is humanitarian, but extends beyond the attached information.
The UK has severely damaged its energy systems through the foolish adoption of grid-connected wind and solar power, in an ill-advised over-reaction to global warming hysteria. We warned against this foolishness in articles published in 2002*.
It now appears that Earth is heading into a global cooling period in the next few years, and winters will be getting more severe. I (we) predicted this imminent global cooling cycle in an article I wrote in the Calgary Herald in 2002**. I hope I am wrong, but natural global cooling by 2020 or sooner is looking more and more probable. There has been no net global warming since about 1997 and slight cooling in recent years.
Meanwhile, most UK politicians are still obsessing over global warming and still promoting ineffective green energy schemes, placing their populations, particularly the elderly, at greater and greater risk.
[end of excerpt – the original document contains references, etc and notes the increase in Sea Ice Extent in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.]
Allan
“An unprecedented October blizzard that hit just before harvest time …”
I remember an October blizzard about 1997 that shut down Denver and surroundings for about four days. So much for “unprecedented.”
Clyde – Denver is a mile high in elevation. It often gets early snow.
This blizzard was much more widespread across the Northern Great Plains and it IS unusual – especially in terms of the large crop failures.
Lab, Oct 16. I do think that a basic test be conducted. Herein Australia we had a case of a elected MP of Chinese origin is being investigated by the Electoral Commission She had a big poster in Chinese outside the booths and when later translated it was telling the Chinese who did not speak English how they had to vote for her.
MJE VK5ELL
Dang!
How long did it take for someone to translate it?
“…democracy may be an obstacle to the rapid action we need on climate change …”.
Hooray!
“…the tendency for Conservatives to sometimes win elections, is impeding vital progress on climate change.”
I would have to say he got this part right.
People who know a liar is lying, and are sitting in control of the levers the liar wants to pull, will indeed make life more difficult for said liars.
With a bit of luck and a lot of tenacity, we can indeed make life very difficult for them to get on with their evil plans an ridiculous nonsense.
Too bad they have realized this.
We need to shut this guy up!
🙂
If these people want rapid action on climate change then they should start acting by disconnecting themselves from the grid, selling their cars and stopping their air travel. Of course what these people are demanding is that everyone else must suffer except themselves. Good luck with that !!!
I think you are pushing it to describe the other side as just “liberal”. Socialist (or further left) would be a better description.
I love the language of authoritarianism. So gentle and self assuming. Lets just take away a persons democratic rights. No harm. BTW as Gaulieter of the RedGreen Climate warriors (the new SS) he will probably be allowed business class for all flights.
And it doesnt worry them. Look at the basketballer Le Bron (I think thats his name). Pesky democracy activists in Hong Kong, “getting in the way of my payday”!
Pushing it my eye.
It is a contrived lie, as big as the lie that Nazis were right wing.
I refused to use the word liberal, or progressive, to describe any of them…they are leftists, simple as that.
And getting leftister every day, by every indication.
A meaningless and many times déjà vu nonsense – now as part of a PhD – on “applied idiotic propaganda to push totalitarianism” … the Monty Pythonian climate clownery never ends … 🙁
I hate it when conservatives win elections and undo the damage done by liberals.
All ideologues hate democracy, both left wing and right wing. The first thing ideologues do when they get in control of a government is to suppress the opposition, and cut the nuts out of democratic institutions like the press and free speech and free association, and apolitical government bodies like the judiciary, department of justice, etc.. All such get declared as “the enemies of the people” and “deep state”.
Sound familiar to all you Trumpkins here? It should. Trump is following exactly the same playbook followed by Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Lenin, and now Vladimir Putin – Trump’s current boss and patron.
Democracy is always the enemy of ideology, whether it be political or religious ideology. Freedom of thought and freedom of action and freedom of self-determination is anathema to any True Believer, left or right.
Duane – that’s not even wrong. Trump an ideologue? You’ve got to be kidding.
Following the playbook of all those leftists? You mean like Antifa (brown/black shirts), secret trials, accusing opponents of what the accusers themselves are guilty of?
Yeesh buddy, get a clue.
You have to remember, to socialists, bi-partisanship is both parties working together to implement socialism.
An ideologue is someone who still disagrees with me after I tell him what an idiot he is.
I see Duane can’t let go of his conviction that Russia is the reason why Trump was elected.
Like most on the left, he just can’t accept the reality that the people liked Trump more than they liked Hillary.
For many of them. For many others it was that they disliked Trump less than they disliked Hillary. It really was a matter of choosing the “lesser evil” for a large portion of the voting base (let’s not forget that there also were many on the other side who held their noses and voted for Hillary only because they disliked Trump more than they disliked her). The voters weren’t blind to Trumps foibles but they voted for him despite those foibles because the alternative was much worse.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/07/child-miners-aged-four-living-a-hell-on-earth-so-you-can-drive-an-electric-car-awful-human-cost-in-squalid-congo-cobalt-mine-that-michael-gove-didnt-consider-in-his-clean-energy/#comment-2123720
[excerpt]
2. In the developing world, you don’t get to choose between good and bad – you get to choose between bad and worse. In Tunisia during the hot war in Libya next door and Arab Spring, I tried to explain this to some influential friends. I said “Just because you throw out a ‘bad’ leader doesn’t mean you will get a better one.” In fact most or all the countries involved in Arab Spring got worse regimes than the ones they threw out.
Regards, Allan
The same is true for the cold war period.
Lots of liberals got all bent out of shape because the US backed leaders who were well short of perfect.
They seemed to actually believe that absent US interference, these countries would have been run by saints and nobody would have suffered.
The reality was, the leaders the US opposed were worse than the ones we supported.
Can anyone rationally claim that Vietnam was better off after the US left? If so, please explain the 10’s of thousands who were willing to risk death in order to escape.
“Sound familiar to all you Trumpkins here? It should. Trump is following exactly the same playbook followed by Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Lenin, and now Vladimir Putin – Trump’s current boss and patron.”
That’s just delusional. The Congressional Democrats are the evil, constituion-destroying ones, not Trump.
The Radical Left is creating a false reality with Trump as the embodiment of Adolf Hitler, and themselves as saviors, and are living in it. They have lost their collective minds.
Got any examples of Trump suppressing the political oppostion, Duane? Other than brow-beating them and calling them out in public?
What I don’t understand, Duane, is you are able to see that the Alarmists are lying to you about human-caused climate change, but you can’t see that the Democrats and the Leftwing Media are also lying to you about Trump.
Duane,
You need to take your meds.
President Trump has been better for our Republic than any president in my life. That means President Eisenhower thru President Obama. He is not perfect, but he does follow the Constitution and the law.
“He is not perfect, but he does follow the Constitution and the law.”
That’s exactly right.
There’s Reagan, but he had to work with a heavily Democrat congress.
Of all the avowed socialists I knew in school, absolutely none of them envisioned their futures as one of the “workers”.
It’s the same garbage we’ve been hearing for years, especially from the poly sighers. In their confused, greenie, marxist-addled brains, they think they can win over the opposition by simply re-framing their arguments, usually by pushing the “green” jobs angle. Despite years of failure, they still think it boils down to the way they “communicate climate change” to “conservatives”. Another angle they consistently use is to try to pretend that the “climate change” issue is about the environment, when nothing could be further from the truth. It’s laughably pathetic.
Hire me because I have all the published credentials for a job in the Climate Crusades with the right set of blinders on and straight-faced insanity.
Conservatives as I see them do not reject science, although they have the temerity to question that which cosplays as science. e.g. they don’t question the notion that climate is changing, but they do question the notion that none of the change whatsoever is natural or recovery from the LIA and is instead 100 % co2. Indeed, it is the anti-conservative dude that is problematic, e.g. ignoring arctic soot and antarctic geothermal heating and ascribing all temp increases as co2 based. Not to mention the problems of waste heat, land use change, concrete, (ie a long list of things that contribute to warming.)
Moreover, conservatives seem right to question motivations of those who demand cessation of capitalism given that the west can not enforce cap/trade or green ideals upon the greater world population (China and India for a start.) Any plan to “fix” warming that doesn’t include the majority of earths inhabitants can’t work — this is patently obvious to anyone — hence conservatives are held to be anti science to question this?
Seriously?????
Democracy is the alternative to tyranny.
Their “solution” to climate change is tyranny.
A valid cause might help. And maybe put a little science into it.
I am assuming he was referring to the US Constitution as being too limiting as it was intended.
“…if we’re going to be successful within the 12-year window outlined in the IPCC’s recent report to keep global warming to 1.5C” – Scientists have been begging the media to stop reporting this falsehood.
“Research in political psychology has identified robust correlations between political orientation and personality traits” That study was debunked two years ago.
America and Europe are the world’s democracies and produce only a small percentage, total, of the world’s carbon emissions. China, one of the least democratic countries that exists, produces the most and it is increasing annually. Seems to me democracy lessens carbon emissions.
As observed by Winston Churchill: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that ‘democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’”
Christian Elliot ABD seems to be arguing for a more efficient, responsive form of government. That is, he wants immediate action and he is willing to sacrifice personal freedoms in exchange for the most effective form of government – a dictatorship. What he fails to realize is that if his wish were to be granted, he wouldn’t have the liberty to complain about things he doesn’t approve of! What more evidence does one need that this is a person who doesn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain? What is even more troubling is that The Conversation thinks that his ideas are worth promoting.
“he wouldn’t have the liberty to complain about things he doesn’t approve of”
But if he is a dedicated follower of the party line, he would never disagree. He would always adjust, just as the rally speaker in Orwell’s 1984 seamlessly switched the enemy from Eurasia to Eastasia right in the middle of a speech when the change was announced.
“democracy may be an obstacle to … action … on climate change”
So democracy is good.
Democracy has always been an obstacle to…..Communism.