They're getting stupider

[andygates]

Wired has this rather unsettling story about a survey which shows that Americans seem to be deciding that global warming's nothing to do with them:

Over the last year and a half, the number of Americans who believe the Earth is warming has dropped. The decline is especially precipitous among Republicans: in January 2007, 62 percent accepted global warming, compared to just 49 percent now.

Is this just election-year partisan bullshit, or is it general-public-can't-think-longterm bullshit, or what?  A reaction against Al Gore for daring to tell people what to do?  Just Plain Dumbness?

See, this is why humanity is fucked.  Because humanity is too damn stupid to save itself.  Do not waste time trying to save modern civilisation, just plan for you and yours to ride out the storms, water wars, economic collapse, famine and mass migration.

Comments

[alacerus.livejournal.com]

I think that you tube clip with the Australian guy interviewing Americans about the world sums it up. In one clip he's asking them to name a country starting with U (one guy says Yugoslavia, honest to God!) and another, well just watch.....

[simoneck.livejournal.com]

which is worse, believing (despite the evidence) that nothing is wrong and doing nothing.
Or believing that there is a problem and still doing nothing, which I think sums up the UK position a bit better.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Well there is that. I still find willful ignorance to be a particularly poor way to go about things, though.

Poor old Stern. He breaks down everything in economic terms that clearly show the long view, and everyone says "good job, we don't dare actually do anything though in case we get voted out."

Another reason people are screwed.

[estaratshirai.livejournal.com]

Actually, it may coincide with, as I've noticed, a more distinct push to get people to believe it's happening and do something. Americans hate being told what to do, even (especially?) if it's something they know they should do.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Just plain ornery Rugged Individualists? Fucking childish.

[estaratshirai.livejournal.com]

Fucking childish.

Well, yes. We're a childish country.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm surprised it's managed to hold the attention span of the American Media for so long.

In NZ we're having some interesting fights, the government is trying to Tax everyone, but the big businesses don't want them to. The journalist in the street is all for it, until he realises that it means they'll pay more for petrol and electricity. They haven't quite dawned on the fact that all the 'price-setter' industries will just carry on and pass the costs onto the consumer. In fact they're backing up the journo's because they see it as a reduction in disposable income (ie sales levels). The ones who are really squealing are the export industries because they'll be at a massive disadvantage in international markets if there's non-Kyoto Agreement competition! OF course we've just gone FreeTrade with China so most of our polluting multinationals will just overload their carbon burden process into China, who are likly to ignore carbon demands and be happy for the investments.

Our biggest danger at the moment is our Government wants to handle all our national carbon credit warehousing, and portion out the requirements on a "production unit" basis. Which means anyone actually making an effort to be more carbon/nitrous friendly will be penalised - first for the cost of implementation and research of their own processes, second for lose of income and business for price hikes to recover those costs, and lastly by the government who does not recognise their efforts. Also possibly for the costs to prove to the government* that the adjustments are carbon friendly (or perhaps even "not worse" than industry standards due to non-standard systems.
On top of that any progress done now, or by other early implementers, will not be recognised when/if controls/charges are brought in, as my government will consider the lower figure to be their initial set-point. It is now in the interests of all effected firms to *increase* their footprint until the law is altered to have some historic date as target, not just as covered by law 'from this date forward'**. The sooner the companies up their footprints then the easier it will be to show "reductions" and "earnest effort" later, and this will be reflected in the dollars the government will charge them, so it's not just an image thing it's business economics.

* NZ is very very Bureaucratic (sp!)
** NZ laws are not supposed to retrospective, and it has been tried a couple of times, using with disastrous results including the complete abandonment/revocation of that piece of legislation.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

'tis true that measures need to be done right. Kudos to the NZ government for actually trying.

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it has been public knowledge abroad or not. G.W. Bush had forced for several years the PhD.s that worked for the white house to rewrite climate reports so that they did not support the idea of global warming. So for the majority of 8 years this man has been using his position to mislead the less educated Americans.

All American's are not stupid. However, there are many many Americans that are poorly educated. I don't know if anyone noticed, but the map with the flags was mislabeled. So that the land mass that looked like Australia actually read North Korea. I did not note if it also said France, but I would surmise such. Americans as a whole go to school, graduate, either get a trade job or go to college and then get job. They live their daily lives in an effort to feed, clothe, and otherwise support themselves. They seek to have fun beyond that much like Brits do. Fundamentally though, if they have not been encouraged at any point during their education to think globally they wont. I would imagine that a lesser educated Brit might be the same way about something like Burma or Tibet. If they don't know about it through the education system they are unlikely to pick up the extra knowledge through osmosis.

The catch phrase, "think globally act locally" has been picking up momentum. As with all change it takes time.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's public knowledge that W's administration bullied scientists into toning down their reports and fired people who didn't comply.

"We create the reality" indeed. That's going to come up against a big hard dose of real reality soon enough. No amount of wishful thinking, spin or faith is going to magic up more drinking water or mitigate storm effects - and extending the denial just ends up with hilarious Lysenkoism.

I'm not really digging at Americans here so much as at *people*. The whole damn biomass. *sigh*

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Welcome to my world.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Been there already, apart (clearly) from the gall at seeing them get stupider. Stupid I expect, stupidER just seems so bloody wretched. I so need to see Idiocracy

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

My Grandpop used to say that human beings were a cancer on the planet. we grew without a check or balance to our growth or even regard for our impact on our host organism. He was of the opinion that some day in my life time mother nature would strike back and re-establish a balance. He believed there would be great floods and great droughts. That there would be famine and disease resulting from the environmental havoc we had wreaked upon our good host.

I miss him a great deal sometimes. He was a very smart uneducated American. Ironically he died from lung cancer as a result of a smoking addiction.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Your Grandpop shared a vibe with the current revenge-of-Gaia crowd.

I disagree. We're no more a cancer than termites or algal bloom are. We sometimes get out of check, and sometimes die off. We nearly died out completely, once. It's in the mitochondrial DNA.

[alacerus.livejournal.com]

Andy I'm being stupid(its a well known fact and one I've known for ages), what the heck is Lysenkoism? I don't think all Americans are stupid either, that vids very biased - fucking hell I wouldn't know what John Howard looked like. For all the arguments about being stupid if you look through human history its seems to me the ones who do the most damage in the long run are the intelligent ones. Also, is willfully ignorant mean that theres a problem and you just ignore it?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Lysenko was the Communist agriculture scientist who proposed farming changes based on Party dogma. Stuff like "plant wheat ten times more densely, the stems will support one another like the workers support the State." Yes, so incredibly dumb that you couldn't make it up. Alas he was a pal of Stalin's, so the policies were implemented.

That's the point at which reality caught up with dogma and there was a massive famine. Many thousands starved to death.

Dogma only works so far - only as long as you stay within people's heads. If policies are going to operate outside their heads then they have to have some bearing on the real world!

The intelligent ones just make decisions. I reckon the dim bulbs are cheerfully consuming what the smarties are selling them; they're doing the damage. The smarties are just empowering them to do it. Which is why the solution needs to change the way people do stuff - you can't say "buy green lightbulbs", you have to take un-green lightbulbs off the shelves.

[alacerus.livejournal.com]

So if your born stupid you don't really have a chance. I suppose thats evolution for you.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Nah, you have plenty of chances. If being stupid was dangerous then we wouldn't have any stupid people any more, they'd all have died out in the Olduvai Gorge back when we sussed fire and spears.

But we're crossing the streams now between "just plain dumb" and the flat-earthy decisions that the climate-change denial camp engage in.