[yodsanklai]

> In my experience with some conservatives, it seems that they believe global warming is happening but they are skeptical of how effective left-leaning politicians can be in combating climate change.

Interesting, I was under the impression that most conservatives were climate change deniers (or at least mild deniers as in it may be real but not a big deal).

That being said, a conservative friend of mine argues that what we need to solve environmental issues (and GW in particular) is more growth, more production and consumption. In his opinion, a side effect of this will be more investment in research and eventually new solutions to the environmental problems (as it has happened many times in history, for instance, think of horses being a nuisance in NYC). I would call that a serious leap of faith, but at least there's some logic in the reasoning!!

[VLM]

A better example than horses would be the decline in solar prices over the last half century. No amount of asceticism, or holier than thou preaching, or apocalyptic ranting, or suicide, or willful destruction of the economy could produce that graph of capitalist cost decline in solar energy. Enormous effort on the brains of STEM people, sweat from the craftsmen building and staffing the factories, bean counters financing incredible expenditures... that's how that cheaper than coal solar panel got made. Doesn't matter if one or one billion flailed themselves or felt really guilty, the rise of solar energy is a triumph of the right and capitalism not the left. Thaaats how coal dies as an energy source.

We didn't leave the stone age because of social status signalling holiness spirals declaring the in-group hates stone and stone workers. Or by making everyone feel guilty about the earth only having a finite calculable amount of usable stone. Or by patting ourselves on our backs for a job well done by lowering the third derivative of stone use to a slightly lower yet still large positive number.

[vilmosi]

Isn't solar energy getting massive amounts of investments and subsidies from the government, across the world?