Where to even start. I think I would start first by noting the huge problem with your choice to label a climate catastrophe as someone's "favorite" issue. To my mind this is a manner of playing games with words that's immediately self-disqualifying. I imagine that a climate scientist's favorite thing, their actual favorite thing, depending on the person, might be experiences with friends and family, their favorite books, their comfort at home.
A favorite "political issue" could have connotations of being some curious side hobby that absorbs a person's time, like a guilty pleasure for which they might make apologies for their interest, like being into trains in public transportation, or nerding out over Federal reserve policy.
If someone is a climate scientist, and reviews a bunch of models and research showing catastrophic consequences for the planet, and wants to communicate about that, labeling that as a "favorite view" is a representation that misses 99% of what's important about why a person is motivated to communicate about it, because nothing about it has to do with the selection of a personal interest or the satisfaction of becoming immersed in it. So it's not a description that passes a step zero sanity check.
Next is the notion that by communicating about this they have inappropriately crossed lines from science into politics. I think talking this way repeats something that I believe is a pretty fundamental confusion regarding the fact value distinction. And without getting into a long version of it, I think Hillary Putnam is a pretty excellent philosopher on the specific question, and on the ways that people use the fact value distinction to attempt to insulate policy from being informed by facts in ways that allow people to be more deeply harmed.
But no, the state of the Earth and the environment in the choices we make about it are all already intrinsically political, in the sense that there's something important at stake where we have to collectively weigh what choices we want to make, and this is not a case of a frivolous one that's a mere indulgence. There is no pre-existing state of nature that has become newly violated by climate scientists sounding the alarm. We can and do allow our best and newest information to inform policy. This is about as wrong as it gets.
>And if you associate yourself with the position that "we have to take immediate and drastic cuts that will cause huge numbers of people to quickly die,"
I pretty closely follow the state level organizations and my home state that work on environmental issues, and I've even volunteered with them from time to time. I could tell you as a pretty ironclad matter of fact that they don't advocate for anything like you're claiming. In my state they're advocating for things like incentives and rebates to install heat pumps and solar panels, as well as regulations that help utilities more effectively accommodate renewable energy. Stuff like that. As other commenters in this thread are noting this is a massive strawman.
> I could tell you as a pretty ironclad matter of fact that they don't advocate for anything like you're claiming. In my state they're advocating for things like incentives and rebates to install heat pumps and solar panels, as well as regulations that help utilities more effectively accommodate renewable energy. Stuff like that.
Sorry, but what are we talking about? You cannot make even a tiny dent in climate change with rebate programs for solar panels. Yes, it's going to help at the margins, but it's the kind of small-fry change that doesn't change anything in any meaningful way.
This thread is about preventing 1.5C warming. According to climate scientists, we have ~250Gt left in our carbon budget before we lock-in that 1.5C warming. There are all manner of media stories beating people over the head over this.
You can ban all cars, all trucks, all electricity, all global aviation, do it tomorrow, and you've only delayed things by a few years.
>You can ban all cars, all trucks, all electricity, all global aviation, do it tomorrow, and you've only delayed things by a few years.
It's already worse. It's not going to get better for hundreds of years. But IF we were seriously head in that direction IMMEDIATELY ... we can could stop the MUCH MUCH worse from arriving ... forever. We missed our chance to avert what we've got. It's not a case of ALL or NOTHING. We -can- make changes to avert some of the damage that's already arriving ... for ourselves and our descendents.
A favorite "political issue" could have connotations of being some curious side hobby that absorbs a person's time, like a guilty pleasure for which they might make apologies for their interest, like being into trains in public transportation, or nerding out over Federal reserve policy.
If someone is a climate scientist, and reviews a bunch of models and research showing catastrophic consequences for the planet, and wants to communicate about that, labeling that as a "favorite view" is a representation that misses 99% of what's important about why a person is motivated to communicate about it, because nothing about it has to do with the selection of a personal interest or the satisfaction of becoming immersed in it. So it's not a description that passes a step zero sanity check.
Next is the notion that by communicating about this they have inappropriately crossed lines from science into politics. I think talking this way repeats something that I believe is a pretty fundamental confusion regarding the fact value distinction. And without getting into a long version of it, I think Hillary Putnam is a pretty excellent philosopher on the specific question, and on the ways that people use the fact value distinction to attempt to insulate policy from being informed by facts in ways that allow people to be more deeply harmed.
But no, the state of the Earth and the environment in the choices we make about it are all already intrinsically political, in the sense that there's something important at stake where we have to collectively weigh what choices we want to make, and this is not a case of a frivolous one that's a mere indulgence. There is no pre-existing state of nature that has become newly violated by climate scientists sounding the alarm. We can and do allow our best and newest information to inform policy. This is about as wrong as it gets.
>And if you associate yourself with the position that "we have to take immediate and drastic cuts that will cause huge numbers of people to quickly die,"
I pretty closely follow the state level organizations and my home state that work on environmental issues, and I've even volunteered with them from time to time. I could tell you as a pretty ironclad matter of fact that they don't advocate for anything like you're claiming. In my state they're advocating for things like incentives and rebates to install heat pumps and solar panels, as well as regulations that help utilities more effectively accommodate renewable energy. Stuff like that. As other commenters in this thread are noting this is a massive strawman.