Science and Politics: Science vs. Conservatism
Funny how environment and business interacts. In the case of the earth, until recently, business always ruled over the “natural world”. As long as business wanted to dump their waste in the rivers, they could. As long as someone owned the land (was rich) or had an army (was powerful) they could do as they pleased. As cities came to be and health became an issue; think of a plague, caused by filthy water and sewage in the streets. The was the beginnings of concern health and the local environmental.
Only in the last 60 years has humanity had the knowledge and tools to measure, test and track the impact of human activity. Today the focus on the environment has moved from local to global. The environmental movement truely took off in the 1960s and since then a worldwide battle between the forces of green and the “anything for money” crowd: Laissez Faire Capitalists/Conservatives rages on. While some people who consider themselves L.F. Capitalist and Conservatives are surely environmentalists, the general belief of these folks is that the richest and strongest in society should act without restrictions, especially on financial and real estate issues.
These people, who have preached that “evidence” proves capitalism is superior, have simultaneously bristled at science that shows that this sort of behavior jeopardizes the environment and humanity. In fact when such evidence is presented, they deny the science. They deny the science since it threatens to curb the “freedom” to destroy the environment and put humanity at risk.
How does the battle of Science vs Conservatives get fought? In the US and Canada, it originally took the form of finding “Experts” who initially denied that there was any sort of problem. As problems became more evident, they argued they couldn’t be proven to endager people. When science had finally won the day and convinced the world there was a problem, that it hurt people, the fake experts would then explain that changes can’t solve the problem anyways.
More concretely, this has led to reports written by US government scientists being edited by political appointies in order to remove content that puts at risk the conservative agenda of letting business do anything to the environment if it makes someone rich. The best metaphore here is from Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth corrects previous statements and facts to square with the realities (read that politics) of the day. It’s hard to believe that the environment is debated politically, just because it might cost a few dollars more to live in cleaner, more environmentally stable world.
Fact: there is more CO2 in the atmosphere in the last 150 years than all but several periods in earth’s geology.
Fact: As industrial growth and use of hydrocarbon fuels grew, CO2 grew
Fact: The average temperature of earth has increased since human industrialization
Generally accepted as Fact: CO2, Methane increases in atmosphere are responsible for the increase heat.
Theory - reducing or eliminating CO2 from human activity will slow or reverse heating.