This American Life, one of the most listenable and ingenious hourly shows that public radio has ever offered, has done a piece on climate change, that a lot of people have told me about. Finally got the chance to listen, and its well worth it. I recommend putting it on when you have some quiet work to do.
If you can’t listen to the whole hour right now, I’ve excerpted 4 minutes here from the long segment that profiles Bob Inglis. Inglis is a conservative Republican who actually believes in science. As far as his former constituents in South Carolina care, (at least, the tea party nut bags who dominate the primary process) he might as well as come out of the closet as a Gay Muslim Rastafarian. Small piece of his interview here – but even more revealing, a chat with a Republican congressional staffer, who chose to be anonymous. He discusses the abject terror that a small number of closeted science-literate GOP reps are living with, should anyone ever find out that they, too, accept the overwhelming mainstream scientific view.
It’s not a profile in courage.
Below, when he was still in congress, Inglis made a sharp point to his colleagues. Guys, this is all on video. Your children are going to know what you did, and what you said, when it counted.
This video is private?
sorry. “public’ is the normal default setting, must have bumped the mouse or something. Let me know if this does not work.
Excerpt isn’t working.
try again
Both clips worked okay for me FWIW. Aussie using Chrome if that helps.
The sad thing is that Inglis’s analog isn’t even precise.
The 2 doctors (or 3% scientists) don’t even have a consistent alternative explanation. They just try to reject random details in the 98 doctors arguments and seldom do they agree whats then the truth – only that the majority is wrong.
It’s gonna take a disaster, a calamity, an utter failure. These “conservatives” have to be Portmanized. They will have to have the climate hit them off the side of the head, repeatedly.
Neil
They are about to be hit upside the head by a tsunami of new voters coming down the line who will not stand for their future being sold out to petroleum interests. The smart ones will see the wave coming,and adapt,the rest will be caught lingering at the (Tea) party too long.
Can’t happen fast enough for me.
“portmanized”?
It’s a portmanteau. 🙂
Rep. Sen. Rob Portman changed his mind on gay marriage when his son came out as gay. Sometimes it take an incident close to home for someone to see the light.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/15/174390242/sons-coming-out-leads-sen-portman-to-reverse-on-same-sex-marriage
Talked yesterday with a Republican friend about the Chinese dirty coal/aerosols issue.
As I said: The aerosols last 5 days, the carbon a thousand years or more, he quipped: Subscription model vs Mortgage model. Gallows humor.
In the past, he would patiently listen to me, then roll his eyes, then repeat a Fox News point.
Now, he’s a mid to top administrator at one of the nation’s largest hospitals. Not your typical Ditto Head. But Republicans ARE being squeezed from the young and the educated in their party.
The times they are a changing.
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Listened to the whole thing. Very interesting, and depressing at the same time, and it leaves me feeling sort of hopeless about the whole thing. Nobody cares. Nobody will care until it’s too late, and even beyond that, they won’t care until the birds are already on the roost. The soil baking all the crops off, uncontrollable wildfires, cities under water, disease rampant in vulnerable areas, kids in poor countries dying in droves, extinction rates increased dramatically.
The oil company executives themselves are frank and honest about it, and yet the Republican base can’t even seem to hear them. Their ears turn off at that point because the message doesn’t fit.
I wonder what those CEO’s think they’re doing when they fund anti-renewable efforts, anti-climate science think-tanks, at the same time they are acknowledging their product causes climate change, and that we’re on course for a 5 degree increase. They didn’t get to the top by being stupid, so how are they meshing their actions with their acknowledgement of the science?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJUA4cm0Rck&feature=share&list=PL73604EC54E73A2F9
2:20 forward – Chomsky answers your question. Pretty much a CEO has a legal obligation (in the U.S.) to maximize short term profit. If he doesn’t do it, the next guy in line for the job will. Chomsky says they’re caught in an ‘institutional contradiction’.
Oops – wrong video: I was on a playlist, instead of an individual video. Let me try again:
http://youtu.be/FJUA4cm0Rck
Which is why GOVERNMENT is so important. When we were a functional, as opposed to a dysfunctional society, the answer to that would be clear: change the rules so that ALL players are on a level playing ground.
Kind of like “Stop me before I kill again”.
We had a name for industry controlling government a while back: fascism. And the prospect of it scared the piss out of us. Rightly so.
Right on.
The government is in the business of facilitating business (and special interests). It’s 99% of what they do. They are professional middle men. A Democrat is someone who likes money and a good conscience. A Republican is someone who likes money and friends.
Those are broad brush strokes, but it’s essentially true. Don’t hold your breath expecting government to reform itself. Anyone in power long enough gets to understand the real game and becomes a part of it.
This isn’t quite fascism, not exactly. And it isn’t democracy. We’re built from and operating on the love of money and selfish interests, and we’re institutionally allergic to long-term and voluntary sacrifice for the good of others – a less than promising formula for truly addressing climate change.
The ONLY way we can get to climate change is if we radically tackle campaign finance and lobbying reform first. Here’s what President Obama has done so far:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-29/politics/38902141_1_president-obama-advocacy-group-fec
To get campaign finance and lobbying reform, we’d need a massive public outcry for change. To get that would require everyone turning off their TVs and starting to think for themselves instead of daily being brainwashed by moneyed interests – but that’s even harder to achieve than reforming government.
And, btw, not unrelated:
The Exciting World of German Campaign Finance:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/09/the_exciting_world_of_german_c.asp
Party finance in Germany:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_finance_in_Germany
And regarding television in Germany:
http://www.ctnow.com/news/nationworld/ctn-public-tv-in-germany-its-no-pbs-20120912,0,5337124.post
And:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting#Germany
There are some VERY good reasons why Gemany is different than the United States.
Terracide: N. the effort to kill off an entire planet
See: http://tinyurl.com/oeo5gve
Terra = Earth
so terracide means to kill this planet, which is of course impossible unless a passing star perturbs our orbit enough to send it into a star. A collision with another planet would just make one or more planets.
Planetacide or planeticide to kill a planet
Ecocide, biocide, or biosphericide is more appropriate for what’s happening now.
Phew…
I was getting scared there.
The recent study by Cook, et.al., confirming the 97-98% consensus seen in other studies, is important because of the nonsense that still spills from Republicans in Congress.
Consider Utah Rep. Chris Stewart, the newly appointed Chairman on the House Sub-Committee on the Environment given oversight over scientific issues regarding environmental policy: “…the claim that 98 percent of scientists agree that humans are the singular driver of climate change has been repeatedly discounted. This oft-cited statistic is based on an online survey with a sample size of only 77 people, and the survey didn’t even ask to what degree humans contribute to climate change.”
http://m.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobile3/56130738-219/climate-global-stewart-regarding.html.csp#comment-863327028