Climate Is Now a US Culture War Issue : usa

[-] [email protected] 120 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Now? Now?

I grew up with evangelicals who were enraged at the blasphemous insult that God did not control the Earth absolutely, and therefore the earth couldn't be getting hotter unless God decided it was time for judgement day, in which case, celebrate, because those jews are finally getting what's coming to them.

This sounds like mental illness to normal people...

[-] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago

I grew up with evangelicals who believed it was blasphemous to say the icecaps are melting because God promised to never flood the Earth again lol

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

good looks at current state of humanity "Well, looks like I changed my mind"

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But it was a pinky swear!!! /s

[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Did you ever ask them about nuclear bombs and we could wipe out all life except cockroaches several times over and make the earth uninhabitable for 10000 years or did this not count?

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

"Have faith. God is perfectly capable of turning the Russian missiles right around and sending them back to Moscow." — fundie uncle

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

America is God's vessel.

Seriously, that's what "Under God" meant to them.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, "under god" was not added to currency or the pledge until 1954, in response to the civil rights movement of the era. The founding fathers would have be rolling in their grave if they could.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/14/the-gripping-sermon-that-got-under-god-added-to-the-pledge-of-allegiance-on-flag-day/

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

That's their entire Middle East policy, fulfilling the end times prophecies

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If Jesus came back without all the jews penned in Israel so he could nuke them all at once, how can Christianity live with itself?

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Yeah, what's this "now" bullshit?

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I came here to comment this. It's always been a culture war, beyond religious views, it's never been popular with the majority to say that our largest industries and companies are willfully ignoring and hiding the truth about what is in humanity's best interests in order to achieve growth.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I don't get this line of reason I ng, cause wasn't earth given to the humans by God to be the caretakers of the planet? If so, were doing a pretty shitty job of it.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Evangelicals rewrite the Bible in places where convenient.

God didn't give the earth to humans for caretaking, he gave it to us, and no man can undo what God hath wrought, so even if it is ruined somehow, God will rapture the faithful to a new realm leaving the damned to burn on earth for eternity as the new purgatory/hell.

Its muddled, but the point is it means evangelicals win no matter what, so don't worry about it.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Exactly. And you don't need to go that far into the Bible to see that, just look at Genesis 2:15, 19-20:

15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field

That sounds to me like God is handing things over to Adam, and by extension people.

And then you have the parables of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) and the vineyard owner (Matthew 21:33-46) in the New Testament (among others) that are all about stewardship.

So my question for people who use this argument is, would God be happy if He came to visit today? How would He feel about how we've treated the Earth He made?

This goes for any religion with a creation story.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure it is mental illness....

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We're not allowed to say that, or they might lose control and get violent because you incited them.

[-] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago

Now? Now as in the last 50+ years?

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It wasn't fully polarized by party until around 2009, when the fossil fuels industry decided to buy off the Repiblicans in response to an attempt to pass cap and trade legislation.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

"They're only 14 years behind the times, not 50."

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

As someone who grew up on the early 00s, this is inaccurate. It was fully polarized during the Bush years.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It was polarized, but not fully. This ad is from 2008

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[-] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

alway has been

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

No it's a capitalist issue. The biggest problem by far is corporations. Anything distracting from that fact is propaganda as far as I'm concerned.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Slow news day?

FYI The Sky is now blue.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I get the impression most people in US don't realize how severe the impact of the climate breakdown is going to be for them personally. A river in Colorado that around 40 million people rely on is drying up while California is running out of fresh water as well. Heatwaves resulted in massive crop loss in 2021, in 2022 farmers were killing their own crops and selling cows because of extreme drought , and this year farmers are set to abandon wheat crops at highest rate since 1917.

A paper from 2009 predicted that nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe damages to US crop yields under climate change, and we're now seeing this unfold in practice. US could easily end up in a dust bowl type scenario in the near future where food production collapses and a famine starts.

Then there are megafires, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events like the recent Texas cold snap. All of this is putting stress on the failing infrastructure and straining supply chains to the breaking point. At some point there could be an internal refugee crisis within US as parts of the country become unlivable.

All of this is happening today, this aren't things that might happen in the future, these are existing crises that are becoming more severe every year while majority of the population doesn't understand the larger implications of what's happening.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If it was just the conservatives who suffered from this I would be 100% "let them die". Unfortunately the rest of us are stuck dealing with a global problem.

I still kind of think we should treat conservatives as the existential threat they are. Stop acting like it's "just a different opinion" and start taking action.

[-] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

While conservatives outright reject that the climate crisis is happening, liberals tend to acknowledge it and simply pay lip service without putting any serious effort into dealing with the problem. US has made no meaningful progress in transitioning off fossil fuels so far, and continues to subsidize and expand fossil fuel projects under the democrats. There is no serious plan that's being implemented, and projects that do exist often amount to greenwashing.

We can see what a serious plan looks like by looking at China where majority of renewables are now produced and capacity is growing at an accelerating rate each year. China is also leading in nuclear power and building 150 new reactors now.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The US has actually cut its greenhouse gas emissions somewhat:

Graph of US greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector, 1990-2021. Shows emissions rising until ~2006, and dropping thereafter, mostly due to electric generation emissions cuts

A few states have a lot of renewables in their electric supply mix. Here's California right now: Chart showing California's electric supply at one particular instant. 57% renewables. 6% nuclear. 5% large-scalae hydroelectic

It's not enough to stabilize temperatures; that means actually getting to zero emissions worldwide, but it's a start.

[-] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago

It's important to keep in mind that US has moved out much of its manufacturing hen looking at these charts. To get the full picture we have to look at the global emissions produced when manufacturing goods and services people in US consume.

And then it's instructive to put the gains US made into perspective of what China managed to do. This is a great overview of the progress just this year alone https://nitter.net/KyleTrainEmoji/status/1680243524124516352

Fossil fuels now account for less than half of China's power capacity https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-zero-carbon-electricity

China is also doing huge amount of carbon capture via reforestation https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54714692

and it's now the global leader in renewable energy by a huge margin https://www.csis.org/east-green-chinas-global-leadership-renewable-energy

How is it that China is able to do these things while US cannot?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Basically, China had a bunch of industrial policy around capturing the solar manufacturing, and a willingness to use slave labor to undercut prices in the rest of the world.

It's worth nothing that trade doesn't make a huge difference to emissions.

[-] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago

That's a really dishonest framing of China's policies given that it's the one place in the world where wages are actually going up and poverty is being eliminated:

If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.

The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.

Labor in China is far from being cheapest in the world today, so your whole narrative here is based on a false premise.

What China had the willingness to do was to create a concrete plan to move off fossil fuels and then commit to implementing it long term.

Meanwhile, the relative difference is pretty significant:

For example, the USA has a value of 7.7% meaning its net import of CO2 is equivalent to 7.7% of its domestic emissions. This means emissions calculated on the basis of ‘consumption’ are 7.7% higher than their emissions based on production.

For example, China’s value of -14% means its net export of CO2 is equivalent to 14% of its domestic emissions. The consumption-based emissions of China are 14% lower than their production-based emissions.

And then we have to look at this in the context of per capita emissions which is even worse https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country=USA~CHN

The key part in all this is that China is transitioning off fossil fuels while US keeps talking about it, while having done little tangible work in this regard.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

They're specifically using forced labor from Uyghurs for solar manufacturing. It's a problem, and one that's complicating the ability of China to export solar panels.

[-] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago

There's no actual evidence for this claim. If you want to see actual forced labour then look at US prison system. US has the highest incarceration rate in the world and prisoners are used as literal slave labour. Meanwhile, the smear by US regime is also having very little actual impact on China's ability to export solar panels.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

If it's not real, China can open up the region to outsiders, and let workers communicate freely without monitors present or spyware on their phones.

[-] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago

China has opened up the region to outsiders plenty of people have visited it including western news agencies. Here's one example. You're just regurgitating propaganda your regime is feeding you, there is no evidence for it. Meanwhile, we have lots of concrete evidence for precisely the sorts of atrocities US accuses China of happening in US. Maybe focus on what's happening in your own country.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Lol.

And it’s seen in the fear that was ever-present, just below the surface, on two rare trips to Xinjiang I made for The Associated Press, one on a state-guided tour for the foreign press.

A bike seller’s eyes widened in alarm when he learned I was a foreigner. He picked up his phone and began dialing the police.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Shocking, US in another war

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Literally always has been...

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I think we might be doomed.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Now? Ad nauseum.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If it's a culture issue, then let's frame it as "capitalist culture vs save the planet culture."

[-] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Gonna spam this in 3 different places?

[-] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

this is an opinion piece.

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