ari_ormstunga (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ari_ormstunga) wrote2022-02-26 05:25 am
ari_ormstunga) wrote2022-02-26 05:25 am
Global Warming Or...
I know our politicians look pretty dumb on a lot of issues, but they labor under a few conditions that probably make them seem much dumber than they really are (well, I sort of hope this to be true, anyway). First off, they have the burden of getting elected, meaning that they have to spout a bunch of bunkus to their constituents to get into office in the first place. Second, to be competitive in their campaigns to get elected, they need lots of money, which special interest groups are happy to give them, in exchange for favors. Finally, once the poor bastards get elected on a national level, they have to deal with the vast, unelected bureaucracy that apparently really runs DC. Our elected officials are just the smiling, platitude mouthing faces of the machine.
Still, they have to know more than they let on. I assume that if I, a backwater peasant of no particular import, know something, they probably know it too. For a politician, knowing something and being able to admit and take action on something are two different things, though, for the reasons mentioned above. If something big and unpalatable to the electorate is coming down the pipe, sometimes it probably has to be dealt with obliquely, which brings me to the great climate change scare.
Now, I'm not really in a position to confirm or deny anthropogenic climate change. That the climate is changing is obvious, and I've seen charts and graphs assembled by scientists that look pretty convincing to me linking the burning of fossil fuels and rising temperatures. I can accept it while still having the awareness that all human life will not be threatened by the rising temperatures; we as a species have lived through hotter temperatures in the past. That doesn't mean it's going to be particularly fun to live through for a lot of people, though, or that there won't be a cost in human life and misery.
Our mindlessly pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere is something we will be stopping soon enough for another reason; we won't have a choice. As has been noted on JMG's blogs, resource depletion is back, energy prices are skyrocketing, and more and more industrial countries want a piece of the energy pie. How long will we the peasants be allowed to tool around in our petroleum fueled toys? Apparently not much longer.
Obviously, our country and communities are designed for the convenience of automobile ownership, so transitioning away from a gas-powered country to one powered by something else is going to be quite an endeavor. Since the only available options are much less powerful and reliable than our rapidly depleting fossil fuels, it is also going to be fantastically unpopular to try to sell to the electorate. Sure, they've been promising all is well, we have been working on alternatives, blah blah blah for a long time now, but at this point the "alternatives'' are mature technologies and they are probably about as good as they are going to get.
So, how do our political figures get people on board? Scare the shit out of them! It really seems to be the go-to strategy for our politicians, which you can see as they relentlessly drum up panics to motivate an increasingly exhausted and beaten down electorate. If you can't inspire people with true leadership, just terrorize them. It's sort of a pattern I've noticed over the years.
The political elites obviously don't really give two craps about global warming, which you can easily observe by watching when they buy coastal property that they assert will be underwater in a couple years and tool around in their private jets on vacations or to business meetings or to bang underage hookers on private islands while foreign powers record them for blackmail purposes.
They don't care about global warming, but resource depletion is real, and it is unavoidable. I have no doubt humans will burn all the fossil fuels we can get our hands on, and long after my peasant rural countrymen and I are living in a whole new world with much less fuel and power, the uber-rich will still be driving around in cars and billionaires will still be flying around in their private jets. But to make it happen, they have to hoard all that fuel for themselves. Meaning they have to get us to quit using it, without making us so mad we revolt and they end up dangling from lamposts or in front of firing squads or one of the other ways an exhausted and beaten down population tends to express their frustrations with the elite class's public representatives.
They could just admit we are running out of fuel, but then they will get booted out of office and replaced by someone who lies about a return to prosperity for all, the good old days (sound familiar? You're going to be hearing a lot of that particular tune). It would allow for more productive approaches to the ongoing crisis to be tried, but obviously our failed leaders are going for yet another round of "scare people into doing what we want instead of telling them the truth and letting them make up their own minds". So, we have fearmongering over global warming as the next big terror of the day to replace the covid scare when that's run its course (the lockdowns didn't due much to prevent the spread of the disease, but they have prepped everyone for a step down in our standards of living and introduced the idea of rationing and reduced traveling and mobility in a rather cunning way).
As happens often, the ideas in this post are my own ways of expressing ideas introduced to me by JMG and the insightful commenters on his blogs; I have to give credit where credit is due of course.
Still, they have to know more than they let on. I assume that if I, a backwater peasant of no particular import, know something, they probably know it too. For a politician, knowing something and being able to admit and take action on something are two different things, though, for the reasons mentioned above. If something big and unpalatable to the electorate is coming down the pipe, sometimes it probably has to be dealt with obliquely, which brings me to the great climate change scare.
Now, I'm not really in a position to confirm or deny anthropogenic climate change. That the climate is changing is obvious, and I've seen charts and graphs assembled by scientists that look pretty convincing to me linking the burning of fossil fuels and rising temperatures. I can accept it while still having the awareness that all human life will not be threatened by the rising temperatures; we as a species have lived through hotter temperatures in the past. That doesn't mean it's going to be particularly fun to live through for a lot of people, though, or that there won't be a cost in human life and misery.
Our mindlessly pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere is something we will be stopping soon enough for another reason; we won't have a choice. As has been noted on JMG's blogs, resource depletion is back, energy prices are skyrocketing, and more and more industrial countries want a piece of the energy pie. How long will we the peasants be allowed to tool around in our petroleum fueled toys? Apparently not much longer.
Obviously, our country and communities are designed for the convenience of automobile ownership, so transitioning away from a gas-powered country to one powered by something else is going to be quite an endeavor. Since the only available options are much less powerful and reliable than our rapidly depleting fossil fuels, it is also going to be fantastically unpopular to try to sell to the electorate. Sure, they've been promising all is well, we have been working on alternatives, blah blah blah for a long time now, but at this point the "alternatives'' are mature technologies and they are probably about as good as they are going to get.
So, how do our political figures get people on board? Scare the shit out of them! It really seems to be the go-to strategy for our politicians, which you can see as they relentlessly drum up panics to motivate an increasingly exhausted and beaten down electorate. If you can't inspire people with true leadership, just terrorize them. It's sort of a pattern I've noticed over the years.
The political elites obviously don't really give two craps about global warming, which you can easily observe by watching when they buy coastal property that they assert will be underwater in a couple years and tool around in their private jets on vacations or to business meetings or to bang underage hookers on private islands while foreign powers record them for blackmail purposes.
They don't care about global warming, but resource depletion is real, and it is unavoidable. I have no doubt humans will burn all the fossil fuels we can get our hands on, and long after my peasant rural countrymen and I are living in a whole new world with much less fuel and power, the uber-rich will still be driving around in cars and billionaires will still be flying around in their private jets. But to make it happen, they have to hoard all that fuel for themselves. Meaning they have to get us to quit using it, without making us so mad we revolt and they end up dangling from lamposts or in front of firing squads or one of the other ways an exhausted and beaten down population tends to express their frustrations with the elite class's public representatives.
They could just admit we are running out of fuel, but then they will get booted out of office and replaced by someone who lies about a return to prosperity for all, the good old days (sound familiar? You're going to be hearing a lot of that particular tune). It would allow for more productive approaches to the ongoing crisis to be tried, but obviously our failed leaders are going for yet another round of "scare people into doing what we want instead of telling them the truth and letting them make up their own minds". So, we have fearmongering over global warming as the next big terror of the day to replace the covid scare when that's run its course (the lockdowns didn't due much to prevent the spread of the disease, but they have prepped everyone for a step down in our standards of living and introduced the idea of rationing and reduced traveling and mobility in a rather cunning way).
As happens often, the ideas in this post are my own ways of expressing ideas introduced to me by JMG and the insightful commenters on his blogs; I have to give credit where credit is due of course.