Its not an aversion to nuance, but rather a deliberative exploitation and purposeful conflation of nuance, and the proper qualification and conditionals. Textbook pseudoscience manipulation and distortion of "the gaps."
AGW denial will disappear down those gaps in the next decade or two (there's a generational effect at play there as well), but given the cluster-hump we're racing into it really will be technically difficult to attribute causes in every case. Future historians will find this period an endless source of publishable papers and books
.
And the same kinds of ideologues will find the message they want in it, of course. As the great Mark Twain put it, "History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes".
I do expect
sustainability to become a point of political competition, each party claiming the others plans are
unsustainable. True conservatism will return.
Different faces of the same unsustainable practices, pollute, exploit and loot the commons to generate personal profit while avoiding the costs and responsibilities of such actions. You can't blame people for the practices, when they are condoned and encouraged, but complaining about the taxes that must be raised for cleaning up such messes and neglected responsibilities is certainly hypocritical or duplicitous.
That's people for you.
There are actually places, such as the Forest of Dean and the New Forest in Hampshire, where the commons have been managed successfully for many centuries. There is that potential in people.
sounds like the record of history. Generational transition/conflict is largely without resolution, the channelling of such into non-violent fads and shifting traditions is possible when tolerance is a key societal value in situations where basic needs are largely met (food, water, shelter and basic public services), when these elements are left unmet, revolution and unrest are common results.
After revolutions there usually comes a time when the generational issue is
temporarily resolved, because it is generally conservative. Anti-radical, from living-memory experience. And the old leeches have been purged. Gradually new leeches emerge to suck onto the status quo, and tension rises again.
Societies generally change in fits and starts, like dragging a brick across a surface with a rubber-band. There's a sort of pattern to it.
In this case (and most, IMO) "white" is more incidental than structural to the issue.
Indeed.
All of the "old money" I've ever been in contact with really didn't care about the color of your skin, only whether or not you were an obstacle to their goals.
I agree with that. For the seriously moneyed, money itself is the only criterion. Old Money has no problems mixing with Russian gangsters who made out in the Yeltsin years, or Saudis two generations along from goat-molesters. Money is not judgmental.
Most old money really doesn't care about AGW one way or the other, they are (for the most part) adequately positioned to survive and thrive regardless of climate conditions. It would be silly to expect them to make major changes when there are no laws or penalties to counter-balance the benefits of business as usual. This doesn't mean that they are stupid, Old Money are the prime investors in alternatives and green industries, but they aren't going to push for heavy implementation while there are still profits to be earned from the system already in place.
The knee-jerk reaction of those doing well out of the
status quo is to oppose change. There's also a great tendency for such people to
believe that the world they like is the best of all possible worlds, and no end of people willing to tell them why that's so, for a price.
The Koch brothers really do believe in their Libertarian claptrap. They're opposed to immigration not because of racial prejudice but because it
changes things.
Japan's nuclear problems, IMO, are relatively minor, and as you state, more involved with a regulatory step back and fifty-year old technology pushed well beyond its design-life and then subjected to un-designed for natural disaster. That is the reason most of those pushing for reasonable (and necessary, IMO) expansion of US nuclear power, aren't advocating for a deregulation free-for-all of the industry. Site-planning and impact studies (as well as continually updated decommissioning plans) are, and need to remain, a part of any major expansion of nuclear power in the US, especially in light of the changes we can expect from climate change over the coming centuries.
Promised after 3 Mile Island and all sorts of horror-stories are emerging now.
In the ongoing cluster-hump nobody's going to risk another potential hump, and
risk is the word that most people carry away from the discussion. That and images of evacuations and children getting scanned by men in scary suits before boarding ...
And nuclear can't get funded. Fuggedaboudit.
Unless there's a radically new design actually implemented soon.
As if Japan didn't have enough to worry about with an earthquake and tsunami. Hadf that had been the end of the matter they'd have coped very well. As it was, they had a nuclear power plant built with integral protection against tsunamis. It was a location known to be at risk from tsunamis. Why not somewhere that isn't? You can just design against earthquake then.
The impression most people take away from this major news story is a lack of trust. Another nuclear renaissance fails to get off the ground.
Its only short-sighted, individuals with near-term alternative agendae who seek to exagerate the costs to forestall the transition and associated benefits that are prone to complain about the "alligators" and use the danger from them as a distraction from the fact that the swamp is the root problem.
Sadly, most people are easily distracted.
Drain the swamp and the alligator problem is largely resolved moving into the future.
That's where the revolution comes in.
If you are a true entrepeneur, you market the gator meat and hides to help offset the costs of draining the swamp.
Indeed, Old Money is far from entrepreneurial, but tends to kid itself. The corporate world is a far better way up.
The problem isn't necessarily that people are short-sighted, its that there is no clear-cut guiding vision that consistently lays out the problem and the course that needs to be taken to resolve it.
Providence preserve us from people with a vision
.
Those who have politically polarized the issue (on both sides of the divide) are primarily at fault in this regard.
The Aussie PM made a remarkable speech on climate change last week. Laid it out straight.
.
17 March 2011)DOI:doi:10.1038/471265b Published online16 March 2011 Vote to overturn an aspect of climate science marks a worrying trend in US Congress.
