Today we debunked the claim that scientists in 1970s commonly believed that the Earth was headed for another ice age and had a number of discussions about global warming and environmentalism—including whether politicians should talk about climate change less and other advantages of sustainable policies more.
Image by Andrea Della Adriano.
Commenter StormDaughter argues that it may be time for politicians to change their approach when trying to push sustainable initiatives:
You know, I'd like to see politicians focus less on "global warming" propaganda (both the accurate scientifically based stuff and the more ridiculous pseudo science) and focus more on the other (so many!) benefits of moving society towards cleaner, more sustainable civilization (and not just the benefits from "clean" energy, but from sustainable farming, land use, construction practices, waist [sic] management, water use, transportation, everything)
Attempting to browbeat people who have illogical or ill-informed beliefs into changing their minds is not only an exercise in futility, its also incredibly distracting and counterproductive. You won't win by calling them stupid, instead everyone will lose.
toasterStreudal counters that climate change creates a sense of urgency:
Its harder to push your agenda when there isn't a crisis - even if the crisis has paused for the past 17 years... Good thing we have models which show there is still a crisis they can use.
StormDaughter replies that what we need isn't crisis response, but a cultural shift:
What crisis would that be? Last I checked, the massive water shortages in the US would make a great platform for "stop waisting water an use better farming practices, idiots!" if they really needed one.
Which they don't. Crisis based propaganda (I'm only in my 20s and I've seen three so far related to not being so institutionally waistful [sic]) never works out in the long run. What we need in a cultural shift, where everyone wants* to live in "cities of the future" that are self sustaining and beautiful and fed from of high- yield-low-impact farms.
*Correction: where everyone admits that is what they want. Everyone already basically wants that.