[shakezula]

People _do_ care deeply for the planet. Climate change policies are widely popular, despite what the media might tell you.

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of...

However, our political and capital power to do anything about it has been systematically and purposefully limited.

When we discovered the dangers of CFCs, we didn’t depend on the public at large to stop using items that produced CFC byproducts. We didn’t point to personal CFC footprints and little CFC calculators that guilt trip you for existing. Why should we do the same with CO2?

[triceratops]

> People _do_ care deeply for the planet

They say they care. I'm sure they even believe they care. But at the ballot box, they act very differently.

Why does almost no Green Party win an outright majority in any European national election?

Why does half the US continue to vote for a political party that outright denies man-made climate change?

> our political and capital power to do anything about it has been systematically and purposefully limited.

By the current set of politicians. Who are ultimately voted in by voters. If climate change was really a top-priority issue for everyone, we'd have a different set of people in office.

If you think about it, voting isn't that much of a personal sacrifice. No one is asking people to ride bikes in freezing conditions, or go vegan. And yet, people can't even do that.

We could take action on CFCs by enacting laws. Because we had slightly more sensible politicians back then. If we want sensible politicians again, we have to vote for them.

[aspyct]

I think it's worse than that.

We all pretty much want the same: survive (at least). The thing is, we can't seem to agree on the best way to do so. ICE vs electric cars. Nuclear vs wind vs solar panels. Apartment vs homesteading...

So when voting, we all vote for what we believe in. But we don't believe in the same thing. And then there's "thinking fashion".

All in all, we do a step in one direction, then in the opposite direction. And we get nowhere.

[the_other]

> Why does almost no Green Party win an outright majority in any European national election? > Why does half the US continue to vote for a political party that outright denies man-made climate change?

The story I have heard a few times is that the candidate with the biggest budget wins. Climate movements have smaller budgets than incumbents funded by decades-deep vested interest.

[shakezula]

> But at the ballot box, they act very differently.

> Why does almost no Green Party win an outright majority in any European national election?

> By the current set of politicians. Who are ultimately voted in by voters.

> voting isn't that much of a personal sacrifice

> Why does half the US continue to vote for a political party that outright denies man-made climate change?

Average citizen preferences have no bearing[1] on the adoption of legislation. [1](https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...)

> Because we had slightly more sensible politicians back then

I cannot understate how much I disagree with the idea that politics was somehow more sensible "back then". Politicians are not more stubborn or unreasonable today, because __people__ are not more stubborn or unreasonable today.

[triceratops]

> Average citizen preferences have no bearing[1] on the adoption of legislation.

Stated vs revealed preferences. Saying you care and voting like you care are 2 very different things.

> I cannot understate how much I disagree with the idea that politics was somehow more sensible "back then".

How did every country manage to come to an agreement on phasing out CFCs? How did the US set up the EPA? And can you imagine proposing something like a public library system today, if it didn't already exist?

Politicians were equally (or more) corrupt, morally suspect, and duplicitous in the past. I just think that they also managed to pass more legislation about things that really mattered.

[shakezula]

> stated vs revealed preferences

It doesn’t matter what your stated vs. revealed preference is when that preference doesn’t matter to the status quo.

> How did every country manage to come to an agreement on phasing out CFCs?

Every country /didn’t/ come to an agreement on CFCs, that’s how. China is still emitting measurable amounts as recently as 2019[1].

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1193-4

They were not more reasonable, the system and incentives were simply different. A world view where people are more or less reasonable based solely on the year they are being examined is not a world view based in reality.

[triceratops]

> It doesn’t matter what your stated vs. revealed preference is when that preference doesn’t matter to the status quo.

You're saying if every single voter in America had showed up for say, Bernie Sanders and similar minded Congressional candidates in 2016, it would have made 0 difference to the status quo? Barring widespread election fraud, I find that hard to believe. There are so many single-issue voters for stuff like abortion, guns, or religion; where are all the single-issue climate change voters?

> Every country /didn’t/ come to an agreement on CFCs, that’s how

China has signed the Montreal Protocols. Any emitters there are in violation of Chinese law. Presumably these particular emitters are either well-connected or particularly careful to hide their activities (or both). The point is that by and large, collective international action has worked.

> They were not more reasonable, the system and incentives were simply different

Fair enough. Voters were perhaps less single issue and polarized back then than they are now, and there were fewer political consequences to enacting necessary legislation.

[pyrale]

> Why does almost no Green Party win an outright majority in any European national election?

Because ecology is not the only thing people have in mind. That's a limit of direct democracy, as opposed to a system where people would vote for policies.

Also because some of these parties are trainwrecks.

[chriswarbo]

> They say they care. I'm sure they even believe they care. But at the ballot box, they act very differently.

One catch-all vote every few years is a very noisy metric for measuring people's agreement with one specific issue. Even more so when the choice is quite limited (e.g. two-horse races, between mostly similar horses, like many US votes between slightly-more-right-wing-authoritarian versus slightly-less-right-wing-authoritarian)).

[triceratops]

> with one specific issue.

It's not any old issue though. It's an existential one.

[missedthecue]

I think there is a strong case of stated vs revealed preference going on here