What went wrong. A Climate Paradigm Postmortem, or "How the Fossil Fuel Industry, the Republicans, and the Climate Science Moderates of the 80's stole the rest of your life"
This is a great article. I like the way you write in short bursts of differently-formatted thoughts, much easier on my ADHD-addled brain than my own dense paragraphs of long sentences... Right on, I agree with your point on Carter, he could have been just the moderate we needed, if he hadn't faced such an ambitious and well-funded psy-op by the oil companies. He would be utterly inadequate today, but if he could have initiated a long-term program of investing in alternatives, we'd be in a different place today.
One key point on your reading of the 1970s "oil shock". When you look in to the history, the OPEC export ban was announced at a meeting with Americans in the room, literally during an OPEC meeting that "happened" to coincide with the outbreak of War in Israel. At the time, America was essentially a member of OPEC, since Chevron owned and operated Aramco. There were Americans at the table, negotiating on royalty rates, everyone wishing that oil prices were higher, right when the war conveniently broke out in Israel. There was never a shortage of oil; the market was already globalized, and some Aramco oil was diverted to Asia while more oil came into the U.S. from South America. You write that OPEC was "Punishing us for our support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli Wars, they had caused fuel prices to soar and Americans to have to stand in line for gas." If they were punishing us, they were doing it with our own countrymen telling them what to do. The American oilmen convinced them it would be in everyone's best interest to do something to raise oil prices.
It was a carefully staged piece of historical theater that was designed to rally Americans to the twin causes of Israel and oil. It was a psy-op by oilmen, and as you point out, put them in a position to leverage American's anger at oil prices to OPPOSE any interference from anyone like Carter, to utterly run over the nascent environmentalists, who were, as you point out, mostly on their own payrolls anyway at the time.
I am autistic and experience kinesthetic synesthesia around text perception. It influences the way I format my writing.
While I agree with you, that the events around the 70's oil shock are in-and-of-themselves a complete story. I am referring to what was "common knowledge" at that time. This is one data point in my narrative and in this case a tangential one.
My focus here is on the history of the Current Climate Paradigm in order to understand its flaws, why it is about to collapse, and what the Newly Emerging Climate Paradigm will look like.
The climate "moderates" want to talk about the hope of organizing political pressure on industries and government to accept responsibility and make changes. None of them speak of ending our capitalistic growth-based lifestyle.
That's too "radical." Better to hold on to prestige and institutional positions. We just need to make everything electric and solar and slap heat pumps on everything. Just green-up capitalism! Problems solved!
Nothing is more radically destructive than our cultural lifestyle. And moderating the catastrophe is cruel insanity from the scientists who know better, but for one reason or another, refuse to speak the full truth.
The Climate Moderates basically gave up on a political system that never seemed to reward their efforts. They have convinced themselves that, instead of political action, they can use economic and social power to achieve their goals.
If we had 40 more years of time then maybe we could do it their way. We don't have that much time.
They don't want to hear that, and their intellectual dishonesty around that fact makes them "bad faith" advisors. They are selling "false hope". That's disinformation and it's callous.
They understand that to achieve their "grand electrification" we need economic and social stability. They are selling "hope" and the promise of "a better world" in order to get people to stay at their jobs.
Knowing full well that only "the survivors" will get to live in that world. Their hidden expectation is that they will be among "the blessed".
There are climate scientists that I follow just so I can keep apprised, but the thing that most of them share is being rigidly data-centric. If there’s no data, it doesn’t exist. I mean, are we even able to collect and synthesize the data quick enough to keep up with the rate of change at this point? What of the data we aren’t collecting because of physical/economic constraints and ignorance?
When posed with these questions, they immediately deny it’s an issue.
At least once a month I see a science article stating the effects of global heating are occurring “faster than expected.”
This should be a clear indication that the climate scientists have underestimated the rate of change. Why do they still remain conservative with their views? Why do they become frustrated and claim the questioner is misinformed or wrong? Why do they fear negative information? If it’s true, does it matter if it’s negative?
They fear nihilism and apathy, but what’s more nihilistic than deciding that people cannot handle the truth?
If we can’t face brutal truths, what actual hope can we have?
Those KKKoch payments certainly motivated the Republicans to LIE, Lie, LIE….AND THEY STILL DO. What isn’t discussed is the ocean’s currents—the entire system is failing, stagnating . . .and where will our weather be then? This year, Amazon tributaries have dried up. Good luck Repugs—maybe Koch’s Gang of fascist, libertarians will donate their money to solving the problems instead of setting up the populations for disaster (the Libertarian’s welcome that—it’s called “The Shock Doctrine.”
This is a great article. I like the way you write in short bursts of differently-formatted thoughts, much easier on my ADHD-addled brain than my own dense paragraphs of long sentences... Right on, I agree with your point on Carter, he could have been just the moderate we needed, if he hadn't faced such an ambitious and well-funded psy-op by the oil companies. He would be utterly inadequate today, but if he could have initiated a long-term program of investing in alternatives, we'd be in a different place today.
One key point on your reading of the 1970s "oil shock". When you look in to the history, the OPEC export ban was announced at a meeting with Americans in the room, literally during an OPEC meeting that "happened" to coincide with the outbreak of War in Israel. At the time, America was essentially a member of OPEC, since Chevron owned and operated Aramco. There were Americans at the table, negotiating on royalty rates, everyone wishing that oil prices were higher, right when the war conveniently broke out in Israel. There was never a shortage of oil; the market was already globalized, and some Aramco oil was diverted to Asia while more oil came into the U.S. from South America. You write that OPEC was "Punishing us for our support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli Wars, they had caused fuel prices to soar and Americans to have to stand in line for gas." If they were punishing us, they were doing it with our own countrymen telling them what to do. The American oilmen convinced them it would be in everyone's best interest to do something to raise oil prices.
It was a carefully staged piece of historical theater that was designed to rally Americans to the twin causes of Israel and oil. It was a psy-op by oilmen, and as you point out, put them in a position to leverage American's anger at oil prices to OPPOSE any interference from anyone like Carter, to utterly run over the nascent environmentalists, who were, as you point out, mostly on their own payrolls anyway at the time.
Thanks for your time and attention.
I am autistic and experience kinesthetic synesthesia around text perception. It influences the way I format my writing.
While I agree with you, that the events around the 70's oil shock are in-and-of-themselves a complete story. I am referring to what was "common knowledge" at that time. This is one data point in my narrative and in this case a tangential one.
My focus here is on the history of the Current Climate Paradigm in order to understand its flaws, why it is about to collapse, and what the Newly Emerging Climate Paradigm will look like.
The climate "moderates" want to talk about the hope of organizing political pressure on industries and government to accept responsibility and make changes. None of them speak of ending our capitalistic growth-based lifestyle.
That's too "radical." Better to hold on to prestige and institutional positions. We just need to make everything electric and solar and slap heat pumps on everything. Just green-up capitalism! Problems solved!
Nothing is more radically destructive than our cultural lifestyle. And moderating the catastrophe is cruel insanity from the scientists who know better, but for one reason or another, refuse to speak the full truth.
Thanks for speaking the unspeakable.
The Climate Moderates basically gave up on a political system that never seemed to reward their efforts. They have convinced themselves that, instead of political action, they can use economic and social power to achieve their goals.
If we had 40 more years of time then maybe we could do it their way. We don't have that much time.
They don't want to hear that, and their intellectual dishonesty around that fact makes them "bad faith" advisors. They are selling "false hope". That's disinformation and it's callous.
They understand that to achieve their "grand electrification" we need economic and social stability. They are selling "hope" and the promise of "a better world" in order to get people to stay at their jobs.
Knowing full well that only "the survivors" will get to live in that world. Their hidden expectation is that they will be among "the blessed".
I have little respect for them.
There are climate scientists that I follow just so I can keep apprised, but the thing that most of them share is being rigidly data-centric. If there’s no data, it doesn’t exist. I mean, are we even able to collect and synthesize the data quick enough to keep up with the rate of change at this point? What of the data we aren’t collecting because of physical/economic constraints and ignorance?
When posed with these questions, they immediately deny it’s an issue.
At least once a month I see a science article stating the effects of global heating are occurring “faster than expected.”
This should be a clear indication that the climate scientists have underestimated the rate of change. Why do they still remain conservative with their views? Why do they become frustrated and claim the questioner is misinformed or wrong? Why do they fear negative information? If it’s true, does it matter if it’s negative?
They fear nihilism and apathy, but what’s more nihilistic than deciding that people cannot handle the truth?
If we can’t face brutal truths, what actual hope can we have?
Those KKKoch payments certainly motivated the Republicans to LIE, Lie, LIE….AND THEY STILL DO. What isn’t discussed is the ocean’s currents—the entire system is failing, stagnating . . .and where will our weather be then? This year, Amazon tributaries have dried up. Good luck Repugs—maybe Koch’s Gang of fascist, libertarians will donate their money to solving the problems instead of setting up the populations for disaster (the Libertarian’s welcome that—it’s called “The Shock Doctrine.”