melon said:Most solutions offered by climate change scientists also have a very favorable result that would please national security experts too. It should make liberals and conservatives alike happy, but for different reasons.
melon said:
Of course, I should state that I'm in favor of continued scientific research, but I also do not think it should be an excuse for inaction. Most solutions offered by climate change scientists also have a very favorable result that would please national security experts too. It should make liberals and conservatives alike happy, but for different reasons.
financeguy said:
I do wonder though, not for the first time, why it is that 'liberals' are associated with 'believing' in climate change and 'conservatives' with 'climate change denial'.
After all, why shouldn't conservatives be in favour of CONSERVING the environment, or is this another example of the hijacking of conservative philosophy by extremist pro-free market elements which really, at their core, aren't very conservative at all?
the iron horse said:
My second thought...and I guess I might get flamed for this...but some conservatives (and Libertarians) seem to be more willing to search out info on a topic and not just be persuaded by the current propaganda.
This is why we should not be surprised if the Conservative Party under David Cameron is finally becoming conscious of the message contained in its name. Conservatism and conservation are two aspects of a single long-term policy, which is that of husbanding resources. These resources include the social capital embodied in laws, customs and institutions; they also include the material capital contained in the environment, and the economic capital contained in a free but law- governed economy. The purpose of politics, on this view, is not to rearrange society in the interests of some overarching vision or ideal, such as equality, liberty or fraternity. It is to maintain a vigilant resistance to the entropic forces that erode our collective inheritance.
The conservative understanding of political action, as it was first articulated by Burke, is one that ought to appeal to environmentalists. Burke’s response to Rousseau’s theory of the Social Contract was to acknowledge that political order is like a contract, but to add that it is not a contract between the living only, but between the living, the unborn and the dead: in other words a relation of trusteeship, in which inherited benefits are conserved and passed on.
The living may have an interest in consuming the earth’s resources, but it was not for this that the dead laboured. And the unborn depend upon our restraint. Long-term social equilibrium, therefore, must include ecological equilibrium.
This thesis, which environmentalists are apt to express in terms of “sustainability”, is better expressed in Burke’s way. For Burke reminds us of a motive that arises naturally in human beings, and which can be exploited for the wider purpose of environmental and institutional conservation: namely, love. Human love extends to the dead and the unborn: we mourn the one and plan for the other out of a natural superfluity of good will. True social equilibrium arises when the institutions are in place that encourage that superfluity and channel it towards the maintenance of the social organism. The principal danger is that those institutions may be destroyed in the name of present emergencies, present appetites and the egregious needs of the merely living.
This emphasis on small-scale, observable and believable human motives is one of the strong points of conservative political thinking.
Irvine511 said:
conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.
(i mean, if we're just going to continue this line of thinking)
Irvine511 said:conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.
(i mean, if we're just going to continue this line of thinking)
Yes, and lefties are objective reason based observers or at least much less prone to groupthinkIrvine511 said:
conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.
(i mean, if we're just going to continue this line of thinking)
financeguy said:Once again I'd probably have a slight issue with 'conservatives', per se, being associated with that kind of thinking.
the iron horse said:And Liberals do not do this?
melon said:I think it might be unavoidable for Americans here to relate to "liberalism vs. conservatism" from anything more than an American mindset. I am aware of the various nuances of European politics, for instance, and I think it might just become mindbogglingly difficult to somehow include all the nuances in every discussion of "liberal vs. conservative" that we get here a lot. But I will say that I'll understand if non-Americans here get frustrated by that lack of nuance, as well. I'll try harder, in the future, to get that point across, although I'm sure to stumble some more in the future.
conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.
the iron horse said:
And Liberals do not do this?
MadelynIris said:
I can't believe you just typed that, and certainly can't believe that you actually believe that.