Environment & Energy
Related: About this forum" . . . A Global Economic Collapse That Will Make The Great Depression Look Like A Paper Cut"
EDIT
Republicans spend a lot of time freaking out about the changing demographics of America, and how the fact that we are projected to become a majority-minority country by 2045 is the flashpoint for the rise of white nationalism in the GOP, but they should also worry about losing voters they already have who view standard GOP policy as a threat to their lives. It could not be clearer that the existing political and economic establishmenton the left, right and centerdo not want to seriously address an ongoing crisis whose only solution is the radical reorganization of society as we know it.
Millennials understand that this is not an either/or issue as far as what climate change will do to the economy. If we do nothing to combat this threat, and the global temperature rises by two degrees Celsius, it will cost the world $69 trillion in damages. Im no math major, but Im pretty sure that is significantly more than Bernie Sanderss $16 trillion plan for the Green New Deal. In fact, that massive figure is 86% of last years global GDP. If you want to boil this crisis down to nothing more than dollar figures in order to fit the extremely narrow gilded constraints of normal political discourse in this country, what we are talking about with climate change is a global economic collapse that will make the Great Depression look like a paper cut.
Republicans are in trouble because they have essentially gone all in on one constituency (old white men) to the detriment of all others. Millennial women have functionally abandoned the Republican Party, and the GOP wipeouts in the suburbs since 2016 are reason to believe that trend is extending to women in older generations as well. If you care about the future of the planet, then that means your priorities do not align with those of the Republican Party. On the whole, young Republicans understand this.
In the 1990s, the argument to combat climate change was portrayed as hippie environmentalist pie-in-the-sky thinking that had no basis in reality, and the Very Serious People ruled the discourse about What Is Possible (which simply translates to whatever makes more money for rich people). Now, the fact that those of us who have not buried our heads in the sand can see hellish reality of climate change all around us has rendered the Very Serious People the unserious ones, as in order to make their Very Serious argument, they must deny observable reality. Doing nothing to fight climate change is objectively the most expensive option, and no matter your political stripes, us young people would like to live on the same habitable planet that our parents did (which is probably already a lost cause). If Republicans do not realize this simple fact rooted in human survivalist instincts, and at least acknowledge the need to do something in order to avoid making their children and grandchildrens lives unbearably hopeless, then the party will follow in the footsteps of the millions of species currently going extinct due to climate change.
EDIT/END
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/11/republicans-have-a-climate-change-problem.html
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)I appreciate the inclusion of the price tag of doing nothing.
corbettkroehler
(1,898 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,947 posts)ancianita
(35,929 posts)The_jackalope
(1,660 posts)The biophysical world is the part of the world that doesn't participate in our socioeconomic fantasy (you might call that part of it the real world.) For the survival of the real world, the sooner and more completely our economic juggernaut collapses the better.
I_UndergroundPanther
(12,462 posts)Mickju
(1,797 posts)Farmer-Rick
(10,134 posts)Only when they start suffering a lot, will global warming be addresses.
Captain Zero
(6,780 posts)It's not a bug, it's a FEATURE.
Farmer-Rick
(10,134 posts)I_UndergroundPanther
(12,462 posts)And have thier lives shattered before the narcissitic over wealthy pigs feel any danger?
safeinOhio
(32,634 posts)Safe's plan, a hemp, hydrogen economy can save the planet.
Orrex
(63,172 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,947 posts)Either way, people are employed. But look at the difference in what you end up with
NoMoreRepugs
(9,368 posts)of much of the planet the water and food wars that will result will be unlike anything most of us can imagine. Change will happen, just have to hope it happens in time for our grandkids.
Moostache
(9,895 posts)Here is the money-shot conclusion:
The dystopia that is 2019 America is the logical end-result of a capitalist systema system fatally flawed by the unrelenting greed of man and the eternal truths of supply and demand. Thats just the way it is.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/09/capitalisms-fatal-flaw-is-something-so-simple-anyo.html
The beginning (and you should check out the whole thing, including the John Oliver Clip)...
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. President Abraham Lincoln in his First Annual Message in 1863.
It is difficult to find figures on Americans knowledge of capitalism. A simple Google search of Americans Understand Capitalism Poll returns a litany of polls revealing that the under-35 crowd prefers socialism to capitalism, a handful of explainers on Democratic Socialism, and a sprinkling of right-wing freakouts over this movement. What this simple Google search does not return within the first ten pages of results is one single poll measuring whether Americans actually understand what capitalism really is. We have all sorts of polling on our knowledge of other factual topics, like climate change, but after a weekend of trying to find any poll measuring Americans ability to understand what kind of system capitalism actually entails, I am stumped as to how to quantify our collective ignorance.