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The Swerve

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141–150 of 207 posts

Re: The Swerve

#141

Post by voganmother42 »

haswell wrote: post #119
voganmother42 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuanced is an interesting way to describe what happened - especially with a description like draconian! The disdain is for ignoring the science, the health of other people, and negative externalities… it is not likely to change, nor are the minds of those who are dug in and feel as though their entitlement to the status quo will outdo entropy. The anchor is sad about being dragged?

> The anchor is sad about being dragged? This, to me, summarizes the problem. Comparing an entire group of people to a heavy metal object at the bottom of the sea. It’s a tempting dismissal, sure, but will never help someone stuck in their ideology see beyond it. > nor are the minds of those who are dug in And is it any wonder that those minds will not change when we hold nothing but disdain and shout at each other?…

“I don’t see an anchor being dragged. I see people who see their way of life threatened, and are willing to fight against that.”

Fighting against what? Change? The science that says its not sustainable? Young people who want a future?

Way of life? As the anchor analogy was a joke, arresting progress and getting dragged, (made fun of)… this feels like a joke, but anything can be your way of life if you are stubborn enough and willing to make it your identity I guess?

“Yeah you’ve got ghosts in your blood, better do cocaine about it!” - Old timey doctor whose way of life is threatened

Re: The Swerve

#142

Post by atweiden »

simonh wrote: post #40
danhak wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause. And now looking at outcomes across different states (e.g. Florida vs. California)--and considering ALL outcomes (public health, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, mental health, truancy, g…

The differences in policies were heavily hyped, but if you look at overall policy and people's actual individual behaviour both Florida and California went through pretty stringent lockdowns. In practice a lot of work places enforced social distancing, masks, pushed vaccines. The two states certainly had much more similar public behaviour and policies with each other than either had with some other countries like Ecu…

> both Florida and California went through pretty stringent lockdowns

In Australia, police would patrol the streets to ensure people were staying within a 5 km radius of their residence, and to ensure they were only out for a reason deemed essential by the government.

This was accompanied by international, interstate and intrastate border closures, i.e. you couldn’t enter Australia, and couldn’t enter another state within Australia if already in Australia, nor could you in some cases even drive from one part of the state to another, without a special exemption.

I hesitate to ask what Florida did to enforce the lockdowns, because I’m fairly certain what passed for a “lockdown” outside of Asia-Pacific was a joke by comparison. I strongly doubt any of the above measures were done by any state in the US at any point in the pandemic.

Re: The Swerve

#143

Post by andybak »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #135
andybak wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got "Communist" in the title. For all I know it might not even be about communism in anything other than a metaphorical sense. I'd certainly assume that from the context. Yet someone it feels like you're insinuating that he writes books advocating a communist revolution. That feels dishonest. Maybe it's not but with throwaway comments like this, my hackles rise. Would I be correct in assuming you've not read the…

I mean I was responding to a comment that just said "What?" so I didn't have a lot to go off of. I am not just getting this from that article. I am stating that he writes books about a post-scarcity society where everyone has their needs met without needing to work, and that this is intended to be a form of communism, In his book Walkaway, the title of the first chapter is "Communist Party" and it is about a party (t…

In which case, I apologise to some degree as I completely misjudged the intent of your original comment.

Re: The Swerve

#144

Post by shepherdjerred »

actionfromafar wrote: post #127
sbierwagen wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you define "rich and developed" as NATO+Japan then that's more than a billion people. Forcing that many people to reduce CO2 emissions to third world standards wouldn't require a "yank of the steering wheel", it would need nuclear war.

So, you are saying there is still hope?

Are you saying nuclear war is preferable to climate change? What exactly is your definition of good? It sure isn’t the well-being of humanity or the planet.

Re: The Swerve

#145

Post by presentation »

ncmncm wrote: post #116
syrrim wrote: post #96

This analogy is too hopeful for a couple reasons. First, the swerve is made to seem like a decisive action that is taken once and then is never repeated. In practice, if people don't like that we've slowed the bus, they can speed it right back up again. Second, the one's blocking the swerve are supposed to "first class passengers", which seemingly stand in for the rich and powerful. In practice, its many of the least…

You imagine poor people in position to make choices that affect their future. But it is the billionaires who make those choices and impose them.

Developing countries that want to become wealthy don't want to handicap themselves because of the problems that rich countries created.

Re: The Swerve

#146

Post by people_not_bots »

Comrade Cory Doctorow is correct as usual its tragic how absolutely capture capital and political systems are by dying generation of reactionaries whose entire political ideology is a refusal to change with the times.

Re: The Swerve

#147

Post by aidenn0 »

jacquesm wrote: post #49
aidenn0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two examples of what I (in the US) decry as "COVID denialism" both are people known personally to me (extended family actually). These are from mid 2020. Both people eventually pivoted to "being opposed to draconian policies" 1: The numbers coming out of NYC are grossly exaggerated; probably only about 1/10th of those reported as "dying of COVID" actually died of COVID. Other people died from different causes but jus…

The mistake in your reasoning is to believe that the fatality rate is the only thing that matters. But fortunately with climate change it is that easy: you or your descendants will either die or you won't, and hopefully there will be a recognizable society left for the survivors. Enjoy the ride and make sure to snap pictures.

Of course fatality rate isn't the only thing that matters; however I was giving an example of one person claiming that fatalities (not fatality rate) were overstated by an order of magnitude, and another person claiming -- I'm not sure what -- that multiplication is wrong.

These are both denialism, even with the common ground that 1M dead Americans is a bad outcome.

Re: The Swerve

#148

Post by throwamon »

yongjik wrote: post #64

> Incredibly, climate denial still festers. “There’s no cliff,” they insist. “This bus is on a smooth road that goes all the way to the promised land. Only a fool would swerve now.” I think I get the main theme, but I don't think "climate cliff" is a useful analogy. It makes one picture a scene of relative calm until suddenly (and abruptly) the shit hits the fan, when the reality is going to be far more messy. (Just…

Maybe a better analogy is a bus moving into a desert rather than out of it, while some people desperately try to tell the driver everyone's gonna die of thirst while others insist there's an oasis nearby and others still believe they're heading towards a city. Some also know they're going into the desert but believe there's enough time to go back when they run out of water.

Re: The Swerve

#149

Post by jjeaff »

troupe wrote: post #33
danhak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to be engaging with the main point here: there were places that DID take COVID seriously--that shut down overnight, paid the price of mass unemployment, homelessness and growing tent cities, increasing substance abuse / overdose, loss of education that will never be recovered and countless other second-order effects. And those places did not emerge with a significantly better COVID outcome. Without an…

Covid turned out to be much less lethal than originally thought when the only people that were identified as having Covid were the ones sick enough to go to the hospital. The places that "DID take COVID seriously" were places that were initially reacting to statistics that didn't consider how many people had already had Covid and hadn't been to the hospital. I wonder if we'll someday look back on some of the things w…

I don't think it actually changed as much as you are implying it did. Some studies of infection in the general population have indicated that infection rates were much higher than estimated, but some of those studies were rushed and haven't held up well.

I remember some earlier ranges that said it could be as high as 3-5%, but mostly it has stayed around 1% and that fell significantly after the vaccine.

I mean, if we assume that every single person in the US has been infected already with COVID, that puts the death rate at 0.2% and without a vaccine, it would have been a lot higher.

Re: The Swerve

#150

Post by blooalien »

mulmen wrote: post #122
yongjik wrote: post #64

> Incredibly, climate denial still festers. “There’s no cliff,” they insist. “This bus is on a smooth road that goes all the way to the promised land. Only a fool would swerve now.” I think I get the main theme, but I don't think "climate cliff" is a useful analogy. It makes one picture a scene of relative calm until suddenly (and abruptly) the shit hits the fan, when the reality is going to be far more messy. (Just…

It's more like we are stuck in a confined space and slowly gassing ourselves with CO2 and we are arguing over turning the engine off. Oh, wait, no, it is literally that.

Pretty much, yeah, sadly…
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