Thanx george76 !
Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 06/19/2006 10:13:56 PM PDT by goldstategop
Observers of contemporary society will surely have noted that a liberal is far more likely to fear global warming than a conservative. Why is this? After all, if the science is as conclusive as Al Gore, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and virtually every other spokesman of the Left says it is, conservatives are just as likely to be scorched and drowned and otherwise done in by global warming as liberals will. So why aren't non-leftists nearly as exercised as leftists are? Do conservatives handle heat better? Are libertarians better swimmers? Do religious people love their children less?
The usual liberal responses -- to label a conservative position racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic or the like -- obviously don't apply here. So, liberals would have to fall back on the one remaining all-purpose liberal explanation: "big business." They might therefore explain the conservative-liberal divide over global warming thus: Conservatives don't care about global warming because they prefer corporate profits to saving the planet.
But such an explanation could not explain the vast majority of conservatives who are not in any way tied into the corporate world (like this writer, who has no stocks and who, moreover, regards big business as amoral as leftists do).
No, the usual liberal dismissals of conservatives and their positions just don't explain this particularly illuminating difference between liberals and conservatives.
Here are six more likely explanations:
-- The Left is prone to hysteria. The belief that global warming will destroy the world is but one of many hysterical notions held on the Left. As noted in a previous column devoted to the Left and hysteria, many on the Left have been hysterical about the dangers of the PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance of phone numbers (incipient fascism); secondhand smoke (killing vast numbers of people); drilling in the remotest area of Alaska (major environmental despoliation); and opposition to same-sex marriage (imminent Christian theocracy).
-- The Left believes that if The New York Times and other liberal news sources report something, it is true. If the cover of Time magazine says, "Global Warming: Be Worried, Very Worried," liberals get worried, very worried, about global warming.
It is noteworthy that liberals, one of whose mottos is "question authority," so rarely question the authority of the mainstream media. Now, of course, conservatives, too, often believe mainstream media. But conservatives have other sources of news that enable them to achieve the liberal ideal of questioning authority. Whereas few liberals ever read non-liberal sources of information or listen to conservative talk radio, the great majority of conservatives are regularly exposed to liberal news, liberal editorials and liberal films, and they have also received many years of liberal education.
-- The Left believes in experts. Of course, every rational person, liberal or conservative, trusts the expertise of experts -- such as when experts in biology explain the workings of mitochondria, or when experts in astronomy describe the moons of Jupiter. But for liberals, "expert" has come to mean far more than greater knowledge in a given area. It now means two additional things: One is that non-experts should defer to experts not only on matters of knowledge, but on matters of policy, as well. The second is that experts possess greater wisdom about life, not merely greater knowledge in their area of expertise.
That is why liberals are far more likely to be impressed when a Nobel Prize winner in, let us say, physics signs an ad against war or against capital punishment. The liberal is bowled over by the title "Nobel laureate." The conservative is more likely to wonder why a Nobel laureate in physics has anything more meaningful to say about war than, let us say, a taxi driver.
-- People who don't confront the greatest evils will confront far lesser ones. Most humans know the world is morally disordered -- and socially conscious humans therefore try to fight what they deem to be most responsible for that disorder. The Right tends to fight human evil such as communism and Islamic totalitarianism. The Left avoids confronting such evils and concentrates its attention instead on socioeconomic inequality, environmental problems and capitalism. Global warming meets all three of these criteria of evil. By burning fossil fuels, rich countries pollute more, the environment is being despoiled and big business increases its profits.
-- The Left is far more likely to revere, even worship, nature. A threat to the environment is regarded by many on the Left as a threat to what is most sacred to them, and therefore deemed to be the greatest threat humanity faces. The cover of Vanity Fair's recent "Special Green Issue" declared: "A Graver Threat Than Terrorism:
Global Warming." Conservatives, more concerned with human evil, hold the very opposite view: Islamic terror is a far graver threat than global warming.
-- Leftists tend to fear dying more. That is one reason they are more exercised about our waging war against evil than about the evils committed by those we fight. The number of Iraqis and others Saddam Hussein murdered troubles the Left considerably less than even the remote possibility than they may one day die of global warming (or secondhand smoke).
One day, our grandchildren may ask us what we did when Islamic fascism threatened the free world. Some of us will say we were preoccupied with fighting that threat wherever possible; others will be able to say they fought carbon dioxide emissions. One of us will look bad.
Well, technically, we have only been told (most explicitly, in fact!) that the earth will not end in flooding.
Other than that, we have not been warned.
-- Good article. Yes, the liberals fear death, because they (in general) have been taught that we have no "Life after death."
The political left is prone to hysteria, extremism, and FANATICISM. Leftists want to use the global warming hysteria to push worldwide leftist control of politics and economics. It is no accident that an arrogant smarmy little twit like Al Bore has seized upon this as his ticket to power, or that the strongest proponents of global warming hysteria are socialist weasel bureaucrats in the EU and UN. This issue gives them a kind of prominence, power, and potential control they would never have without it.
The biggest story which is not being told concerning the IPCC meeting in Paris last month is that there is no story. The Neocom press along with fictional movies(remember the Da Vinci Code)hawked by Al Gore has the world talking about a global warming report which hasn't been written yet. Arguments, discussions, and firings are taking place all over the place based on a "summary" of the cataclysmic global warming event which will destroy the planet in ten years. The fact is that there can be no summary because the final IPCC report has not been completed and will not be ready until 04 May 2007 at the earliest. When will we who make life and death political decisions take false reporting represented as news(not editorials)to courts across this country, and prove that blatantly false statements by the press may, and will cause demonstrable tangible harm to those of us utilizing news information to make important life altering decisions?
Global Warming may become the Left's "bridge too far." I fear that they may pursue a scorched-Earth policy to keep Global Warming alive.
-PJ
GLOBAL-WARMING CAN BE A FAD BUT I WOULD LIKE TO CALL IT A RELIGION. EITHER YOU BELIEVE IN IT OR NOT.
DO WE BELIEVE IN THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM? 3,000 PEOPLE WERE KILLED AT THE TWIN TOWERS SITE. DO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CARE ANYMORE?
DO WE HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL IT HAPPENS AGAIN AND AGAIN?
CLINTON SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING WHEN THE GARAGE AT THE TWIN TOWERS WAS BOMBED, BUT HE WANTED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO THINK HE WAS A FUZZY PERSON.
WELL, HE HAD ONE OF HIS AFFAIRS AND LIED ABOUT IT TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. DO YOU THINK HIS WIFE IS BETTER?
VULTURES
Pretty straight, but think further down the logical stream. If we reverse the Industrial Revolution, abandoning electricity and automobiles, we are condemning to death the weakest in our societies, the ones libs say conservatives are trying to kill. The sick and old are the ones most helped by provisions of plentiful power. Simple things like no air conditioning will put strains on the bodies of cardiac and pulmonary patients. Think how they will fare if they now have to walk to work, the store, the mall, etc. In fact, I think Bush and Congress should proclaim adherence to the Kyoto Protocol, then announce that our reductions will come by completely denying electricity across the US for 10 days. No electric pumps for gasoline, no communications, no refrigeration, etc. Think global warming will be a winning political issue after that?
This one hits home with me. I get grief all the time from my PhD Brother in Law, who is an expert in his field, but impossible politically. The average Freeper would leave shred his arguments in 12 seconds.
bttt
Global Warming is an excuse to hate all the achievments of the Industrial Revolution on without coming out and saying you hate humanity.
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