<p>Why don’t conservatives believe in Global Warming?</p>
<p>It’s called the RAPTURE. </p>
<p>They all plan to be out of town at that point.</p>
<p>That’s about as funny as the “fart jokes” on the Stepanie Miller show. :)</p>
<p>Sorry, type - Stephanie.</p>
<p>Sorry, type - Stephanie.
Okay one more time: typo: Stephanie.
Can’t do this and make dinner at the same time!</p>
<p>First off, let me state that I’m the only vegetarian Republican you’ll ever meet…</p>
<p>I am concerned about the environment; I do think that we need to, as a society, work to ensure that our environment is preserved. As an engineer, I can tell you that it’s cheaper to prevent than to fix - think of pollutants like the cream in coffee - once you mix it in, it takes a much larger expenditure of energy to separate the two components out again.</p>
<p>That said, I think that regulation is best done on the state or local level. NYC is the most energy efficient city in the country, but it’s dirty, stinky, and polluted. Environmental concerns in NYC are very different from those of, say, rural Montana. </p>
<p>As with anything, I’m concerned that gov’t action tends to reduce the desire for personal action. Personal action by highly caring, motivated individuals does make a difference. Eight years ago, when I stopped eating meat, almost no one cared about the environmental (and health) effects of animal farming or fishing practices. Now look at the organic market, sustainable agriculture, and increased vegetarianism. </p>
<p>Yes, environmentalists are fanatics. I’m sick of explaining that I simply do not care if one chooses to eat meat when I’m at the table - I respect their food choices as I hope they will respect mine. I’ve even considered eating foie gras, though, in protest of what the activists are doing - very anti-libertarian, very patronizing, and ridiculous in light of the other (worse) conditions in which animals are raised. Choose your battles!</p>
<p>Environmental concerns prompt liberals to do silly things like propose gas taxes. Liberals are supposedly all about helping the little guy, but what about when it comes to financing their pet projects? A recent Boston Globe letter to the editor endorsed a 9 cent gasoline tax, which would raise $300 million for infrastructure. California’s Prop 87 wants to raise billions by taxing in-state production of gasoline. I can’t help but look at those numbers, divide by the population of the state, and see it as a tax of, say, $500 per person (every adult, child, elderly person, etc). Prop 87 is back by venture capitalists, who stand to make a fortune on alternative energy sources. Why can’t the VC people finance this - and take the risk - on their own? Are there not sufficient financial incentives to alternate energy sources? </p>
<p>…if not, why the government intervention?</p>
<p>Note the ominous TIME MAGAZINE cover article last spring that said in effect:</p>
<p>“DEBATE CLOSED, MAN-MAN GLOBAL WARMING IS HERE AND ITS TOO LATE, BUSH IS AT FAULT but wait there is a very small chance if a dem is elected to White House in 2008 - the world can be saved”</p>
<p>T</p>
<p>FACT 1 "The U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98)[14], which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”.</p>
<p>FACT 2 “The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.”</p>
<p>FACT 3 - Bill and Hillary now are blaming George Bush for man-made Global warming, even though they did nothing</p>
<p>FACT 4 - its all irrelevant anyways because MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING is largely a leftie media induced hysteria, and a few decades back the same crowd was screaming about THE COMING ICE AGE. The earth is constantly in warming and cooling phases, and the speed or those changes is constantly varying in instensity.</p>
<p>ariesathena – I definitely respect your position, but I’m not quite sure I see why you think that regulation on a local level would be effective. Many companies that pollute (including the meat industry, as I’m sure you are aware) are multi-state and even international corporations. There simply aren’t incentives for them to stop polluting.</p>
<p>**The division seems to me once again due to our wonderful leadership in the White House and our wonderful president’s long-term dissing of the importance/severity/legitimacy of the global warming issue. **</p>
<p>Say what? </p>
<p>I’m just waiting to hear global warming is all Clinton’s fault.</p>
<p>Nope, but you may try to figure out if ANYTHING positive for the environment happened in the White House when Clinton ozone-filled-sidekick was there for 8 years. Did you see an explosion in the budgets for alternative energy under Clinton-Gore? Oh yes, the budgets probably followed the same patters as the funding for education … meaning they regressed. </p>
<p>The issue of global warming trascends the political parties: they are equally hypocritical and clueless about it. Americans, in general, are NOT prepared to make the sacrifices that are needed for POSITIVE contributions. </p>
<p>As I said before, this country is populated by people who complain about the gas prices and the environment in the same sentence. </p>
<p>Would YOU, Mrs. Bleeding Liberal, be willing to pay $6 per gallon of gasoline? Would you? Nah, let me guess: as long as the money --like taxes-- comes from someone else’s purse, all will be well.</p>
<p>ILoveBrown ~</p>
<p>Yes and no. You can certainly regulate whatever goes on in your state. I do believe in federal regulation for things which are inherently multi-state issues (such as river pollution) - that’s the point of a federal government.</p>
<p>Despite this, you cannot convince me that, when dealing with the BIG issues - those which cause the most harm - that straight-up federal regulation is the best and only way to deal with things. If NYC - already the most energy-efficient city in the country - wants to become more environmentally friendly, it would do that in a different way than people would in rural Montana. New Yorkers could work on public transportation, eliminating long commutes in traffic, clean-burning buses and subways. If people in rural Montana want to be energy-efficient, talking about public transportation is just a joke. You have to talk about retrofitting homes for better energy usage, developing wind power and solar power, and land use. </p>
<p>Xiggi is completely correct that people will not make the sacrifices to be energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. That involves giving up the sprawling suburbs (so prevelant in uber-liberal California); ditching their cars for public transportation (found mostly on the East Coast, not exactly the bastion of the environmental wing); live in apartments and condos, not houses; build vertically. Never going to happen - all of the “green” people will complain that they have to give up their SUVs and how else can they tote their camping gear around? </p>
<p>The infrastructure of this country is not designed for environmental friendliness. If it were, we would all live in cities like New York - very condensed, few cars, all travel by bus, subway, bike, or walking, have small living areas, and eat vegetarian. It is almost impossible to get that level of eco-friendliness unless you live in a city large enough to not have a car, or a town small enough to walk anywhere. You’re never going to get Americans to give up the 1950s ideal of the suburbs.</p>
<p>I think, taking Aries’s idea even further, that Americans are simply too selfish and individualistic to look at the common good. Our tradition is not based on common goals, and she is completely correct in noting that people are never going to give up on their beloved (albeit, wasteful) lifestyles voluntarily. Economics would have to force the issue.</p>
<p>Mini, you keep referring to the neo-liberal view. What do you mean?</p>
<p>I would suggest that the OP says it all:
that is, “Global Warming” is–properly put–a liberal “issue” not a human “concern” within the context of the OP’s plaint.</p>
<p>From top to bottom, “Global Warming” is a political/cultural issue (the term itself invites flights of romantic fancy within the minds of those who think BIG—a category that would not exclude political knuckleheads); not an issue of science or fate but rather stylized liberalism in the tradition of PETA’s hysteria/theatrics, and the SAR’s and Avian Flu panics (“millions will die”…of course they will). </p>
<p>Here, to be wrong is a cause for celebration not an “I told you so” so the Chicken-Little shtick is safely beyond critique when it is proved to be no more than the paranoia of the perpetually agitated, as it most often is. “The Patriot Act will turn us into a totalitarian state” and as it does no such thing we simply enjoy the fact that we still have our liberties and avail ourselves, however tepidly, of them. No complaints.</p>
<p>Global Warming is deliciously abstract and therefore quite appealing to the rich tastes of the distempered gourmand. How much the better that the ‘issue’ comes pre-packaged with cigar chewin’ “bad-guys” (capitalists and others who make a buck on their investments, efforts and inheritance).
I say this one’s got a long run ahead of it…Good times…A liberal hootenanny! …Woot!</p>
<p>That is not to say that there is not something like a problem here; a problem worth serious consideration. There probably is (the smart guys in the media say so and they are never wrong). There probably was a serious problem with SARs as well (where the big minds of the talking-heads also said so)…I’m still shaking over the Avian Flu epidemic myself…I say we stop economic traffic and throw big money at it before we all faint!</p>
<p>Next topic:</p>
<p>Have you stopped beating your children?</p>
<p>“Mini, you keep referring to the neo-liberal view. What do you mean?”</p>
<p>The neo-liberal view takes as a given the worldwide adoption of corporate capitalism as the model for all economic activity (even when it impoverishes the world’s poor, and destroys local environments), the idea that we (and everyone else) can “grow” ourselves out of whatever problems we face, that no alternatives to corporate capitalism exist (especially since it is the religion of corporate capitalism that stamps them out), that “free markets” exist even when corporate capitalists deny it. They differ from the conservatives in that they believe a way (the ONLY way) to solve social problems to rake off some of the surpluses gained through corporate capitalism and use them in the service of the have-nots (as opposed to the corporate view that “have nots” are a necessity to depress labor costs and keep populations under control.)</p>
<p>Thank you, Mini.</p>
<p>Here are some articles:</p>
<p><a href=“http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Neoliberalism[/url]”>http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Neoliberalism</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376[/url]”>http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376</a></p>
<p>You should note that the word is very commonly used in the rest of the world; it is virtually only in the U.S. that one rarely hears it.</p>
<p>Actually, Ariesathena, government at all levels was directly involved in subsidizing and mandating our current auto-based lifestyle, from federal tax breaks for oil producers to local zoning laws which make it difficult to find a place to live which does not require the use of an automobile on a daily basis. Any attempt to move away from that will require a change of attitude and priorities and actions at all of those levels. Without commenting on the specifics of Prop 87 or any other individual proposal, I’d note that the government subsidized the “robber barons” who built the railroads of the 19th century, and government subsidized the auto, oil and rubber companies who built the auto culture of the 20th century (wiping out the mass-transit systems which then existed in the process.) It’s not a question of “whether” government will be involved in setting the tone for the 21st century, it’s a question of “how?”</p>
<p>I think, taking Aries’s idea even further, that Americans are simply too selfish and individualistic to look at the common good. Our tradition is not based on common goals, and she is completely correct in noting that people are never going to give up on their beloved (albeit, wasteful) lifestyles voluntarily. Economics would have to force the issue.</p>
<p>I agree. And, it is because we’ll need economics which “work” that it’s important to recognize we have to have a set of incentives in place, starting with adequate rewards for entrepreneurs and investors. We live in a country to applauds --and finds logical-- a company such Youtube selling for close to 2 billions. Yet, our interest in alternative energy waxes and wanes depending on the price at the pump. At three dollars, we talk about crisis; at two dollars, we order the new 10 cylinder F250 (the beast of burden) from Bill Ford. When it comes to the environmental protection, a “controls and fines” system will never work because the fines will always be a fraction of the profits. We really, really NEED to invest in the next technologies, but we cannot expect it to happen without giving incentives to people and companies to do so. Also, we cannot expect the government to lead the way. A simple check on the effectiveness of our National Laboratory will show that, at best, they try to work on today’s technology, if not yesterday’s. </p>
<p>Our country DOES have a fighting chance. We do not pay $6 a gallon (yet) as they do in Europew where the extra taxes have long paid for schools and hospitals. This should be OUR opprtunity to raise the gas costs and DEDICATE the extra revenues exclusively to a series of incentives, ranging from making the hybrid and electrical cars 20% CHEAPER than their gas powered counterparts to other corporate tax incentives. The extra revenues could also be used to build a complete and workable infrastructure for hydrogen and ethanol. Build it and they will come and buy. Oh well, a little cliche does not hurt.</p>
<p>Here’s our choice: we’ll pay a bit tomorrow or a LOT more the day after. The saddest part is that our politicians simply do what … the citizens want, which is spend as little as possible on gasoline without curbing our gluttony appetite and bad habits. </p>
<p>True leadership requires more than that!</p>
<p>ariesathena – I see what you mean, but isn’t a lot of pollution inherently multi-state (and international), like river pollution? Air circulates more slowly than water, but if you’re releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, then you’re affecting the entire world.</p>
<p>Also, if environmental regulation were only on a state-by-state basis, I doubt much effective legislation would get passed. If (to pick a random example) Maryland wanted to clean up its act and passed harsh evironmental regulations, then businesses who “needed / wanted” to pollute would just pick up and go elsewhere, and new businesses would be less likely to come there. There would still be the same amount of net pollution as before in the country, but Maryland would hurt it’s own economy. If, on the other hand, regulations were made at the federal level, they would be inescapable – yes, some companies might move overseas, but that’s certainly not as easy as moving from state to state.</p>
<p>Hear, hear Xig! I agree completely!</p>