I can understand that certain issues break down along liberal/conservative lines: abortion, health care reform, the death penalty, same-sex marriage, etc. But conservatives almost universally reject the theory of global warming, and, for reasons I’ll get to shortly, that surprises me.
I hope you’ll read the article I’ve linked here, explaining how Robert Hurt, who won Tom Perriello’s House seat in Virginia, says clean-energy legislation would fail to “do anything except harm people.” The tea party’s “Contract From America” calls proposed climate policies “costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.”
But why are well educated people like these taking this position? Being “conservative,” shouldn’t we have expected the precise opposite? Don’t people with conservative approaches to life normally buy insurance, and take general precautions against risk? Since the idea of global warming is accepted by nearly all scientists studying the issue, wouldn’t prudence require conservatives — or anyone — to at least hedge their bets?
I’m hoping for a few comments here that will shed light on the phenomenon.
5 comments
I’ll bite. 🙂
The conservative ideology is based strongly on irrationality. Conservatives don’t believe that human beings are capable of coming up with rational, reasonable responses to the issues that affect us. This is where the religion aspect of the right wing comes in. They believe that it takes something or someone outside of humanity to come up with the solutions. For many, this means god, for many others this means the market, which brings us to the right’s tie to market forces.
The right is comprised of many, many, many fossil fuels million and billionaires. The Tea Party, itself, is funded by several organizations that have long been funded, themselves, by oil companies. Global climate change legislation would absolutely hurt their bottom line because they’ve entered the alternative, renewable energy game far too late. In fact, now that some of the energy companies have invested some money into alternative energy sources, their tone is starting to change. With little ability to refute the fact that global climate change exists and is definitely man-made, they’re now turning toward a policy of adapting to global climate change rather than working to slow or stop global climate change.
It all works together to make some very rich conservatives who have some very ignorant, often very confused citizens right under their thumbs, voting the way that they want to vote. You’ll find them giving all sorts of reasons why regulation shouldn’t happen from those you stated above to biblical verses in Genesis that the truly delusional believe grants us complete safety (at least until the rapture).
In short, conservatives don’t care about people, they care about money and to them global climate change is just a zero sum game involving their very full bank accounts.
This is the most bizarr shit I have ever heard. Lol! You realize that your great grandmother was likely Republican. You sure have alot of nice things to say about her.
You guys in San Francisco still don’t understand what conservative vs liberal is all about. “abortion, health care reform, the death penalty, same-sex marriage” are minor issues. The real core is about MONEY, TAXES, and the SIZE OF GOVERNMENT (ie regulation and bureaucracy). You NEED to understand this if you’re going to get anywhere. No one outside SF gives a crap about gay marriage. You need to get into the real debate which is about the role and structure of government and you need to clean the corruption out of the Democratic party – stop playing to the hands of unions and other corrupt parasite organizations. Only then will the democrats be able to do anything about climate change!!!
The core of the conservative thought is that the white man is better than everyone – even nature…
The whole controversy makes no sense at all.
The Ice Age has been over for thousands of years. It’s delusional to deny that the globe is warming.
Green energy advocates, on the other hand, contend that if we merely reduce the rate of increase in carbon emissions that we will magically stabilize the planet’s temperatures at their (maybe 1970?) levels. Can someone do the math on this for me?
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