Comments on: After the defeat

By: Macro

Macro — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 10:57:43 +0000

I’m in the middle of reading Anthony Giddens Book “The Politics of Climate Change”
Bill Clinton says “A landmark study in the struggle to contain climate change…. I urge everyone to read it”
On the topic of attitudinal change and priorities within the electorate Giddens notes:
“A national survey carried out in the US in 2006 showed that 44% of respondents rated global warming as “very important”. However, it is 18th in a list of other concerns about which they were worried”.
Further research in Britain divides the public up into 7 clusters in terns of their appreciation and their willingness to respond to global warming.
They are (the researchers terms not mine), “positive greens”, “waste watchers” “concerned consumers”, “sideline supporters”, “cautious participants”, “stalled starters”, and of course the “honestly disengaged” typified by one interviewee by “Maybe there’ll be an environmental disaster, maybe not. Makes no difference to me I’m just living life the way I want to”.
With all that out there – how do you direct public attitudes towards positive measures to deal with a continually esculating problem?

By: Kiwiiano

Kiwiiano — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:50:11 +0000

What worries me about this danse macabre is that it should all have happened a decade or three ago. With the Arctic ocean methane levels rising and the plankton plummeting, we are running out of time.
Throw in droughts & wildfires, storms & floods, glaciers and Arctic ice in full retreat…. it’s been a bad week.

By: William M. Connolley

William M. Connolley — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:29:54 +0000

That is a long list of the guilty. Odd that “the electorate” isn’t on there anywhere. I’d put them #1.

By: Dappledwater

Dappledwater — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:20:35 +0000

Bill, I’m a wee bit concerned to see polls showing that looney tune, Tony Abbott, ahead of Gillard. Hard to believe the current lack of action to date could get any worse, but with Abbott who knows?.

By: bill

bill — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:55:38 +0000

So you're saying it wasn't a documentary? I also think of that extraordinary museum Australian expatriate Ken Ham assembled in Kentucky, which features a dinosaur with a saddle in the foyer that Charles P Pierce excoriated in his rather wonderful 'Idiot America - How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free'!

By: Macro

Macro — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 05:53:02 +0000

Jurassic Park? It was in colour so therefore it MUST be true.

By: Dappledwater

Dappledwater — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:53:04 +0000

“in the same week we discovered that 30% of Australians believe dinosaurs and humans co-existed” – Bill.

All those Flintstones cartoons perhaps?.

By: bill

bill — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:43:49 +0000

Ah yes – let’s remember the Australian Govt. deciding to put off pricing carbon until well into its second term…

…and, now, in the same week we discovered that 30% of Australians believe dinosaurs and humans co-existed, it now seems a majority may even believe that Tony ‘Climate Change is Crap’ Abbott (aptly described by former PM Paul Keating as Canberra’s ‘resident nutter’) might actually make a Prime Minister! Hardly a coincidence, surely?

So, very probably no second term for a Labor government that has only succeeded in demoralising its own base and seems to have no conception of what it really stands for or wants to achieve, while their opponents are only too horribly certain.

I remember hearing Jimmy Carter wistfully telling an interviewer that he regretted the things he ‘didn’t get done’ as he’d expected to get a second term.

And while the thought of PM Abbott is depressing enough, I’m genuinely afraid of what the next Republican administration might be like…

By: Steve Bloom

Steve Bloom — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:09:59 +0000

Strong EPA action is the best way to get a good bill. While I think that’s the path Obama is taking, look for him to schedule the meaningful action for his second term. That’s a strategy not without risk.

By: bill

bill — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:21:15 +0000

Yes, the US EPA’s responses to the various petitioners have been some of the best, courteous but no-nonsense refutations of ‘skeptic’ talking-points (I’ve mostly encountered them as the ‘Eli can Retire‘ series over at Rabett Run) coming out of a Government body that I’m aware of.

Accordingly I’m sure the Republicans and Tea-Party activists will have them prime in their sights. A point that may well be about to be emphasized by some local trolling activity here…