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by FooHentai 1739 days ago
That Upton Sinclair quote "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it". Except here we're talking about upbringings, lifestyles, social position, and career all in one caboodle. So if we buy into that quote, this is an even wider example that perhaps has just as strong if not stronger potential for resistance to change.

Also, there's a layered stack of argument underneath outright denial to overcome - Even if climate change is real the climate has changed before, and I can't do anything about it, and <easily adoptable green tech> isn't perfect so why bother, and even if it is real it's not going to happen in my lifetime, and remember <all those predictions that have been wrong>, and so on and so on.

2 comments

> <easily adoptable green tech> isn't perfect so why bother

Going to stick my neck out here. IMHO the people overzealously pushing green tech when it isn’t suitable isn’t helping.

It just makes people skeptical when these zealots are the face of green tech. People aren’t stupid, they can see that these zealots are only interested in pushing green tech and don’t really care about their needs and wants.

To some extend this bleeds over and tarnishes the reputation of the climate movement.

We need a realistic view of green tech use - not an evangelical one - where its limitations are acknowledged and taken into account when considering for deployment.

I don't want to flamebait by giving examples, but this is my issue with a lot of advocacy.

The True Believers try to push a radical/extreme set of changes. These changes have some level of adoption, but not as large as the True Believers want. There's a pushback by the general populace against the change. Moderates in the movement subsequently attempt to push smaller change, but get attacked from both sides: the True Believers for not believing strongly enough, and the populace for being associated with the changes.

I get really frustrated by basically every part of this cycle, especially when I agree the issue needs fixing. I understand _why_ it happens, but I sure wish it didn't.

> <all those predictions that have been wrong>

It's not about predictions of climate change being real or not. It's about predictions what measures contribute to what degree which is questionable.

Society or media is pretty bad at predictions or communicating predictions. In march I saw (worst case) predictions for incidence rate (covid) of 2000 ( university researchers in my city ). What happened instead: incidence rate dropped to 5 before it started climbing again. What I've learned: nobody can predict anything.