RegYou're quite right about govts since the 80s, and we had a similar imposition of increasingly corporate governments here in the UK too, alongside the same GWPF-style climate denialism from right-wing lobby groups.
...however here in the uk, there has been no point during that entire period that children (in state schools at least) weren't taught about climate change and the need to protect the environment, even in the face of slobby monsters like Nigel Lawson coming on the news to tell everyone it was all nonsense.
It's as if everyone knows but no one has the power to change anything.
Gaëtan Perrault@ReggieHere @504DR @gerrymcgovern
"No one has the power to change anything".
I think this kind of mischaracterizes what's happening. Changing requires sacrifices that a lot of people in power are unwilling to make.
Ask people if they would spend another 5% on income taxes in order to support a green transportation revolution and they'll yell you off the stage. Tell them you want to tax carbon emissions instead of the 5%... They'll take out billboards demonizing you. They'll start convoys. /1
@ReggieHere @504DR @gerrymcgovern
Mandate a rule that urban area houses have 10 years to transition from natural gas and boomers will literally picket your house. Not that the grid could support you today anyways.
Underpinning all of this lack of movement is the fact that whenever it comes time to actually pay for the changes we need, people are unwilling to do so.
We have mass complainers, but we don't have people offering up sacrifices in order to effect change. And we need that first. //
@gatesvp @504DR @gerrymcgovern
There's a lot of truth in what you say, but I think a majority of ordinary people would be willing to pay more tax to secure green outcomes if those options were available and if business was forced to pay its share.
A lot of the problem is that the majority of wealth is wrapped up in the existing system of indefinite growth and fossil fuel exploitation and even the renewable/green initiatives we have have to be geared to profit and growth to gain traction.
@ReggieHere @504DR @gerrymcgovern
I live in Canada. We rolled out a perfectly sensible carbon emissions tax. It actually forced businesses to pay more taxes at incredibly limited cost to consumers. Heck, green consumers often got a rebate.
We had literal convoys of people in the nation's capital yelling "Axe the tax" and blocking traffic for days.
The party that backed this just got 40%+ of the vote here in last month's election.
That "majority of ordinary people" is incredibly slim.
@gatesvp @504DR @gerrymcgovern
Yes, that's undeniably true; it happened.
However, as I understand it, the problem wasn't the tax (rebated as you say) so much as the right wing lobbyists who were able to lead a populist campaign against the tax based on misinformation.....and by extension, their ability to corrupt a population with lies to protect the wealth and assets of the shareholding classes.
Ordinary people weren't uncaring so much as deliberately mis-inforrmed.
@ReggieHere @504DR @gerrymcgovern
There was clearly some form of influence pedaling that helped drive the convoy crowd. But even the current prime minister cut the tax before the election.
Up to the convoy era, I could blame some form of misinformation for bad behavior. But after that, every Canadian News Channel had a clear summary of what the tax actually was and how it worked.
Every Canadian who cared to know how it worked was one search away from learning that truth... /1
@ReggieHere @504DR @gerrymcgovern
But the truth about the tax wasn't the problem.
The problem is Canada's geographic and demographic distribution. A third of Canadians live outside of metro areas (100k or more people). Those people depend on carbon-based fuel to power their cars, do their jobs and heat their homes.
They don't have public transport options. They can't reliably convert to electric vehicles.
Their livelihood is deeply rooted in burning carbon fuels. ... /2
@ReggieHere @504DR @gerrymcgovern
And I don't blame them. Modern electric trucks are not really designed to handle 400 km drives in -30° weather while towing cargo. The electrical grid is not always consistent enough to provide heat in the most rural of areas.
So to many people, this consumer carbon tax is effectively tax on their way of life. It doesn't really matter that it's a fair tax. It matters that it forces them to change significant portions of their lives or be punished by taxes../3
Bob Thomson@gatesvp @ReggieHere @504DR @gerrymcgovern I can relate to this living in rural France now and the same for many back home in Scotland. The necessary transition is a lot more difficult to sell and to implement outside of metro areas.
@ReggieHere @504DR @gerrymcgovern
This is why I talk about people needing to be willing to sacrifice. That third of Canadians is basically keeping the rest of Canada alive.
Agriculture, power generation, resource extraction, resource management.
Everything that enables modern cities to function is underpinned by that rural, carbon powered economy. Cities have lots of low carbon options, rural folks do not.
So we need some other sacrifice and we don't have that ready. //
@gatesvp @504DR @gerrymcgovern
This is all true, but I still don't think it's down to an unwillingness on the part of people so much as a failure of government to manage regulation and subsidies in such a way as to maintain essential ways of working and living.....combined of course with a powerful fossil fuel lobby that will derail any environmental initiative as a matter of principle because they want to maintain their fossil fuel dividends and power their massive data centres with impunity.
@gatesvp @504DR @gerrymcgovern
.....the question of sacrifice is an interesting one because (as you point out) sacrifice is not something that's equally necessary across populations and geographies, and so any inequalities between (for example) rural and urban populations can be exploited to good effect by those who want to avoid environmental protections altogether.....
@gatesvp @504DR @gerrymcgovern
.....agitators aside, it's also wrong to be rewarding ppl in cities where it's easier to rely on renewables because of infrastructure, local amenities and economies of scale, especially when those rewards might be better redirected to developing infrastructure to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels in more remote communities.
I'm sure that there are ordinary ppl who want everything to say the same, but I also don't think they're more than a small minority.