According to an internet report two of the nation’s leading pollsters released polling results with strategies to elevate conservation issues in the 2018 midterms while conceding policies like climate change and public lands were low priorities for voters in the 2016 presidential election.
This is what they concluded:
- Both pollsters admitted that issues broadly defined within the conservation sphere—including climate change or public lands policies—did not resonate with the vast majority of voters polled, with just 2 percent naming environmental concerns as having an effect on their 2016 vote.
An interesting question is why the Democratic Party has bought into climate alarmism and many of the environmentalists’ land use objectives as well. Is a two percent impact on elections worth the Democratic Party’s increasing identification with the environmental left? As discussed here, the Democrats’ support of environmental causes cost them at least two elections: 2000 and 2010, and apparently did not save them in 2016.
My question is why one of our two major parties would take the risks that the Democratic Party has taken in this respect? It appears irrational to me, even if they actually believe in the environmental doctrines they espouse.
As previously discussed, climate alarmism appears to be based on an invalid scientific hypothesis. Some of the public land use decisions made by recent Democratic Presidents appear to have antagonized important political groups in some western states. President Trump, with the support of the governors involved, recently reduced the size of some national monuments created by previous Democratic Presidents and has so far not encountered much opposition.
The Democrats or at least the Clintons can obtain money from their contributors. Left wing foundations. foreign sources looking to hobble America. Silicon Valley. Hollywood. New York City. These funders must not care about the lack of good ideas to persuade voters that democrats can help the country to improve. There is funding for climate change no matter how preposterous the science. Anyone who supports the USA is called a racist. The democrats are for open borders and free health care for the world.
The democrats have major league problems offering any reasonable ideas to voters outside of their cheerleaders in California and New York.
Climate change is illustrative, but it is not their only problem. The rotten ideas run deep.
The Democratic Natuonal Committee is near penniless. This may owe to competitors for donations like the Clinton Foundation or Obamas Organizing for America.
The National Republican Party is in a stronger financial position. Republicans may have more loyalty to their tribe.
Perhaps because seeing themselves as financial underdogs, democrats my be more willing to stretch the truth to help themselves as they show shamelessly with climate change.
Because energy is economically important, the climate scam may provide ruthless politicians with good opportunities to make money. For instance, it has been estimated the Clinton foundation picketed $150mm from a uranium caper.
Players from Russia or Saudia Arabia might provide under the the table funding to us politicians or their friends to inhibit us production or use of fossil fuels.
Thus what might appear irrational on the surface is helping democrats under the table in some way so their love of alarmism might be more greedily self interested than is public knowledge.
Another problem for democrats is killing a stale bad idea once your tribe has loudly adopted it. How do you get rid of a lousy idea? It’s hard as long as environmentalists are inside your tribe and they don’t care that alarmism is false. it would take emergence of a leader willing to repudiate past dogma as wrong. The party seems to lack such a leader right now.
Another reason for alarmism is democrats have long thought of themselves as working class little guys against powerful interests. They like to bash bad guys like oil or coal companies. Climate alarmism suits their appetite for villains. This is a political convenience that disregards the pursuit of honesty with science.
Someday, after they suffer enough losses, democrats willl likely adapt and distance themselves from climate alarmism. Right now however they have staked too much on this fake cause to be able to reverse course.
Expressing concern for the environment is a form of virtue signaling. It is a way for politicians to signal how worthy they are of being entrusted with your vote, because they care.
If seen as virtuous, there may be spill over benefit for other policy positions. Politicians may gain more than just Eco voters but the votes of others within the party coalition. via this tribal loyalty they may subtly gain more than the mere two percent of Eco voters.
Another possible reason for the strange persistence of alarmism is the collapse of socialist ideas. Democrats have few useful policy ideas beyond throwing money at voters with new entlements. climate alarmism allows them to seem virtuous in collaborating with other nations to save us all. This gives them a worthy purpose, fake though it is. It also gives them ways to pump money into scientists or to give money to pals. And to posture as champions of science and the future. These may seem Like clever marketing ploys until somebody blows the whistle and it becomes widely known that alarmism all just a pile of embarrassing nonsense and voters are not voting for virtue but charlatans.
The Democratic Party embrace of climate alarmism strikes Dr. Carlin as irrational. Carlin himself is relentlessly rational, so must wonder why so many others are less so. This is a good question to discuss.
I have myself been turning to books on psychology to try to better understand the curious lunacy of so many people who unthinkingly accept climate alarmism.
I will plink out some possible reasons. I type on a smart phone rather than a large screen so prefer a series of short posts.
Living in Germany, arguably the country most affected by alarmist irrationality, I have been pondering for a long time why my fellow-citizens are proving particularly susceptible to the green mania. Unlike the US, in Germany the population is nearly unanimously in favour of alarmism and the attendant irrational policies, notably the “Energiewende” (“the energy turn”, meaning the ill-advised, coercive push towards “renewables” at the expense of proven energy sources). Enthused popular compliance amounts to a religious unity among Germans more pervasive in my impression than the Christian faith that prevailed widely among Germans until its steep decline from the 1960s on. Here is a post (including pertinent further posts at the end), in which I propose a number of hypotheses concerning the nature of green irrationality in Germany.
http://quaesivi.blogspot.de/2018/01/germanys-vicious-green-circle-country.html
Angela Merkel became a minister during an administration headed by helmut kohl. She headed a department for the environment, nature conservation, and nuclear safety. Her subsequent career seems not far removed from this heritage of 25 years ago. What could be nuclear safer that eliminating domestic nuclear energy?