When Children Protest, Adults Should Tell Them the Truth

Sometimes I wish that we could depoliticize the environmental debate - but as environmental damage is externality, it is inherently political, someone’s balance sheet wins at the expense of someone else’s.

We probably need to recognize and own that reality.

Re: When Children Protest, Adults Should Tell Them the Truth

#5

Post by deogeo » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

GreeniFi wrote: post #4

Sometimes I wish that we could depoliticize the environmental debate - but as environmental damage is externality, it is inherently political, someone’s balance sheet wins at the expense of someone else’s. We probably need to recognize and own that reality.

There's a difference between being political, and divided across party lines in the US. Similar to how the 'torches of freedom' campaign associated cigarette smoking with women's lib [1], by tying anti-environmentalism with the conservative identity, the polluters assure the debate remains hopelessly divided, and nothing gets done. The reason the environmental debate is so divisive (in the US - I haven't noticed the same in Europe), is because it's profitable to keep it so.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom

Re: When Children Protest, Adults Should Tell Them the Truth

#6

Post by eigenspace » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

splintercell wrote: post #2

Very misleading title. The author is being called out in the comments.

> The author is being called out in the comments.

The comments look like a fairly mixed bag as far as I can tell. But also, sentiment analysis on internet comments are probably one of the poorest ways to gauge public reception. Almost by definition, it's the people on the fringes of a polarizing topic like this that are most likely to comment, even if they represent a vanishingly small demographic.

Re: When Children Protest, Adults Should Tell Them the Truth

#7

Post by eigenspace » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

deogeo wrote: post #5

GreeniFi wrote: post #4

Sometimes I wish that we could depoliticize the environmental debate - but as environmental damage is externality, it is inherently political, someone’s balance sheet wins at the expense of someone else’s. We probably need to recognize and own that reality.

There's a difference between being political, and divided across party lines in the US. Similar to how the 'torches of freedom' campaign associated cigarette smoking with women's lib [1], by tying anti-environmentalism with the conservative identity, the polluters assure the debate remains hopelessly divided, and nothing gets done. The reason the environmental debate is so divisive (in the US - I haven't noticed the…

It's pretty shocking how easy it is for disinformation campaigns to derail any semblance of coherent, thoughtful discussion on climate change.