Stephen Gordon fired off a tweetstorm yesterday:
Politicians have to deal with an unpleasant climate change fact: Canadian voters are rank hypocrites. We are willing to do … (1/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) May 14, 2013
… whatever it takes to reduce greenhouse gases – everything except suffer personal incovenience. Regulations are popular because … (2/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) May 14, 2013
.. politicians can claim that since they aren’t taking any $$ in, consumers won’t be paying more. Cap-and-trade is popular because …
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) May 14, 2013
… politicans can claim that only Big Polluters (ptew! ptew!) will pay, and not consumers. Both claims are demonstably false, yet those …
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) May 14, 2013
.. narratives are the only ones that can survive, given our manifest unwillingness to face the fact that real climate change action ..
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) May 14, 2013
… involves accepting personal inceonvenience. No politician wins votes by saying “you people are hypocrites”, so these fictions …
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) May 14, 2013
… will dominate Canadian climate change discussions until Canadians accept their responsibilities. That is to say, never. /rant
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) May 14, 2013
Unfortunately for people like Mr. Gordon most Canadians don’t believe in anthropogenic global warming. The earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age and will continue to do so till the start of the next one. What caused sea levels to rise in the pre-industrial middle ages or in Roman times?
Comment by Bill — May 15, 2013 @ 09:04
I’m on record as being against the sort of massive authoritarian re-organization of our lives that most climate change activists demand, even if their models and the real world they attempt to simulate were much closer than they are. The models they depend on are clearly not tracking well against the actual climate over the last decade and more, so government intervention in all our economic affairs to “fight” climate change cannot be justified.
That being said, Mr. Gordon isn’t wrong about the phenomena of Canadians being in favour of certain policies as long as they don’t in any measurable way impact the daily lives of those same Canadians. That’s true of just about any nation, but particularly true about smug, self-righteous Canadians (think of the demographics of the Toronto Star or Globe and Mail readership).
Comment by Nicholas — May 15, 2013 @ 09:15