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Salted Grits's avatar

Liberal solutions may be hot air, but until the majority of conservative leaders and voters accept, as you did, the reality of climate change and the role mankind has in that change, it is all we have. I hope you can help effect a change of heart and mind amongst conservatives. I am not optimistic. Just as with COVID-19, the climate crisis is politicized. There is power to be obtained in denying humans are contributing to climate change and in resisting any measures to mitigate.

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SGman's avatar

The (continuing) denial of climate change being a real issue has prevented discussion of real solutions to the problems. Some undoubtedly was due to the economic consequences of proposed solutions (not least from the companies most likely to be affected), and it was easier/more profitable in the short term to deny rather then engage and offer alternative/combined solutions. This approach ignored Ben Franklin's adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure": this failure is also plaguing our handling of COVID.

Some was also undoubtedly a knee-jerk reaction to Democrats: "If they want X, then I'm against it".

I'm glad you've finally accepted the reality of climate change as an issue needing serious attention. You're correct that *some* ideas from a more conservative perspective will be better than from a more liberal perspective, and that the only things we can directly control are what we the USA does.

"We do need to find a way to deal with this problem before it causes some very negative effects, like changing the salinity and chemistry of the oceans, sinking coastal cities, altering global weather patterns, creating deserts in places once filled with lush vegetation, causing massive droughts, floods, fires, famine, and livestock die-offs, and a whole bunch of plagues we haven’t thought of. The question is not “if,” given the evidence, it’s “when.” But “when” is, and remains, a very open question."

The problem here is that this statement is aimed at prevention, and at this point ocean salinity is already increasing, and the chemistry is already acidifying. Coastal cities are already more at risk of flooding due to increasing sea levels, caused by a feedback loop of melting ice creating more water that absorbs more solar energy that melts more ice.... Global weather patterns are changing to longer fire seasons here in the West and hurricane seasons in the East. Desertification is increasing, permafrost is thawing (leading to increasing releases of additional greenhouse gases and ancient viruses).

It's (likely) too late to prevent these issues from continuing, and we may now be stuck with mitigation.

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