a redstate friend of mine recently waxed poetic about the official debunking of global warming. it went something like "it's cold out. ha ha, stupid liberals." i'm clearly being unfair here, it was at least slightly more waxy than that, but it did it's part to wane intelligent. this is on the heels of a foxnews review of claims that a cold winter actually supports the idea of global warming. the idea is to debunk global warming by pointing out that it is cold, and then debunk proponents of global warming theory by dismissing the claim that they will use any evidence to support global warming, even if it makes no sense.
of course those that want to demonize global warming hysteria are not particularly interested in scientific scrutiny, and to be fair, neither am i. i like to think that i was never particularly invested in global warming theory, i never gave them money, although i did rent an inconvenient truth once.
sometime in the nineties i read about the great horse poop scare of the eighteenth century, and it kinda made me swear off the apocalypse. my eschatology is cyberpunk at best. i can't wait for someone to blow up all the factories, because that will somehow bring us closer to the day when robots and aliens rule the planet. not really a vision of heaven on earth, unless you are a hopeless sci-fi geek who regularly conflates utopia with distopia, so i'll let you decide where i come down on all that.
anyway, i like to believe that i never completely gave in to global warming, because i've been hurt before, and i hate being let down by that sort of thing. plausible solutions to the world problem (world +x=total devastation and the end of times, solve for x) are amusing, but don't keep me up nights. i had my fill of mutually assured destruction and the dream of nuclear annihilation back in the cold war. don't get me wrong, it was fun to think about, but unlike cartoons and videogames, i kinda outgrew it. i do think that my world will be destroyed in fifty years, but by my world, i mean the sum total of everything that makes sense to me right now, and by destroyed i mean changed beyond the understanding and recognition of a ninety year old crank.
of course global warming and the glowing promise of a man made apocalypse is just a pawn in the cribbage board of tree hugging anti-pollution fanatics. "tree-huggers" is one of those cleverly crafted insults that the right use to give force to their arguments along with the tentative theory that they posses some useful creativity. along with profoundly moving critiques like "bleeding heart" and "obamacare." they seem to mean something, and often are self sufficient in an argument. something to the effect of "just because the top marginal income tax bracket was cut in half for the last decade, and that group, unlike the rest of the country enjoyed remarkable success, doesn't mean it would be right to raise it, that would be class warfare." of course it needn't be discussed how it is class warfare, what it is, or how or why it is bad, class warfare is assumed to be bad, although oddly enough, actual violent warfare is not. tree huggers are clearly a bit daft, even if they don't raise images of hippies chaining themselves to trees to protest the harvest of old growth forests. there was a time where much of the population was pro-tree and even in some instances pro-hugging, but somehow that is a separate issue.
so if we are to accept the premise that all conservatives (or neocons because i think that is gathering pejorative connotation, in that conservatives are meant to carry the weight of history and class to justify their inevitable allegiance to bankers, and neocons, seem more like the nouveau riche with their garish ideas and naked self-interest) oppose trees and hugs (and i really just want to propose this because there is not enough gratuitous hostility towards the right personally) then we can better understand, why they don't think global warming exists, don't think it's existence is a problem, and certainly don't want to do anything about it.
of course i'm not sure global warming exists. possibly for the same reasons that the neocons are suspicious. it seems like a lot of plausible pseudoscience (science that is not really science, but effectively does the same thing) that i am way out of my depth to verify. i'm not tryin to have faith in that sort of thing, aspecially if it means i might have to think about solving an unsolvable problem. i believe that the glaciers might be getting smaller, but i haven't been up to the polar icecap to measure it, and i'm not sure how i would go about doing that sort of thing. it certainly doesn't make me think about driving less.
really what this is all about is freedom. the right considers freedom generally to be the right to do whatever they want to do, with the only limitations being property and person. so much of what we do in life involves some form of pollution, even going back to the horse turd. the first world consumes many times the resources that the rest of the world consumes. it can be argued that this is a result of freedom. we consume because we can. attempts by the left to instill a sense of compassion or fear that would lead to responsability seem to fail and breed resentment. global warming is an attempt to up the ante for pollution controls, carbon emission being the latest vogue.
i don't like pollution. i think it's dirty, and while i think there is some nobility in dirt, that comes from hard work and production, i still think less dirt is better. the frustration is the inability to translate this conviction to modern ethical dialogues. if it were as simple as biblical times, we could say cleanliness is next to godliness, gluttony is a deadly sin, and let's all try to behave properly. oddly enough, christian conservatives, can seldom be plied with christian arguments, and do not seem particularly interested in conservation either. the left for its part seems generally unwilling to use religious arguments, so it's back to name-calling and fear mongering.
i find over consumption distasteful, and gratuitous waste unethical. the idea that waste is a byproduct of success is disturbing, and the machismo surrounding it appalling. i'm not gonna threaten you with the end of the world here, and i'm not sure if fire and brimstone are on tap either. i just wanna say it's badbadbad. i like the idea of making things as close to perfect as possible, and i understand that protecting the purity of a brand could mean destroying factory seconds, but i like factory seconds, and i like used goods. somehow this all collects in some cancerous cantankerousity that makes me want to stop it all. i think about all the behaviour that annoys me, and it makes me so hot under the collar that i think the world is gonna explode.
it would be totally fair to say that this is my problem, and for the most part it is. if human behavior makes the planet incapable of supporting human life the doomsday prophesy would finally have its day. my discomfort with the way other people live their life should not interfere with their consumer habits. unfortunately it's not that simple either. the decisions made in my social sphere do affect me, down do consumer choices. i feel better about society when it makes stuff i like. at some point i'll just get over myself, but it won't be today.
No comments:
Post a Comment