We have our recurring themes and ongoing causes here at YSDA: pay college athletes, appoint retired judges to the PSC, deemphasize race and gender in American life.
We’re going to return to another of our favorites today: to fight climate change do NOT talk about climate change. The latest and most compelling evidence to date for that argument comes from a piece in the New York Times. For those of you unfamiliar with the Paper of Record, it is not often cited as a bastion of conservative thought. And yet, here are some excerpts from that story.
In conversations with activists, policymakers and corporate executives, it becomes clear that a save-the-planet argument doesn’t go very far. Most people won’t buy green technology unless it will clearly save them money and wows them with stunning designs or jaw-dropping performance.
Many, conservatives in particular, chafe at the prospect of the government forcing them to buy electric cars or ditch their natural gas appliances, polls show. That’s perhaps why those pitching the technology often avoid mentioning climate change. They emulate evangelists who don’t lead with Jesus when trying to win over nonbelievers.
…..
Jae Landreth operates a solar installation business in Baldwin City, Kan., a rural town southwest of Kansas City. Though he believes in climate change, he said, he “learned the hard way” not to mention it when marketing solar panels to his neighbors.
“That’s not how you sell it,” he said over coffee at his home. “Nobody’s ever going to make a decision unless it benefits them in a money sense.”
….
(One of his customers) Mr. Leach has since encouraged other farmers to install solar panels. “I’ve had several friends of mine that were, you know, not necessarily trying to save the planet,” he said. “They just wanted to save money.”
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(Energy Secretary Jennifer) Granholm stopped at universities and elementary schools, a hardware store and a Baptist church (in the South). She made the case that federal investment in clean energy is creating thousands of jobs, saving consumers money and even protecting the nation against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has used fossil fuel exports to exert pressure.
Not on Ms. Granholm’s list of reasons to go green: climate change.
Sipping black coffee at a Starbucks outside Memphis. Ms. Granholm said she liked to focus on how Biden administration policies were turning the region into a vibrant manufacturing hub. “It’s important to lean on the message that makes sense for people where they are.”
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“The climate has always been changing,” said Sue Burns, 59, at a gathering of Pontiac car enthusiasts in Murfreesboro, Tenn. “The left is out of control” in insisting that burning fossil fuels is causing a planetary crisis, Ms. Burns said.
Yet Ms. Burns drives a Prius — a far cry from a Pontiac muscle car — that runs on an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. She said she had bought the car to save money on gas.
Among residents benefiting from the economic boost, attitudes may be softening. Outside Dalton, Ga., Qcells, a maker of solar panels, is planning to expand a manufacturing plant. The factory is in the congressional district represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who has called fossil fuels “amazing” and climate change a “scam.”
William Turner, 49, one of Ms. Greene’s constituents, said he didn’t “really buy into that stuff” about global warming. But he added, “I don’t have anything against solar, especially if it’s creating jobs.”
An irony in all this is that most of the investments from Pres. Joe Biden and Democrats’ climate change bill are going to places that voted for Trump and represented by Republicans who didn’t vote for the bill and who question the severity, if not the reality, of climate change.
And that seems to be having some impact. As the story continues:
There are tentative signs that conservative opposition is wavering.
The Republican-controlled Legislature in Alabama, where Mercedes-Benz makes electric cars and Polaris builds the Kinetic, has allocated $1 million a year for a campaign to encourage residents to buy electric vehicles.
As I’ve noted before, it seems like the main resistance to doing anything about climate change is a visceral negative reaction to preachy, virtue signaling liberals. If you’re a liberal who is passionate about climate change the very best thing you can do, it would seem, is just shut the heck up about it. The last thing that most Americans want to hear is that everything is going to hell and that it’s their fault and whatever it is they’ve already done it’s not nearly enough. Only those who can afford to spend another $20k on an EV are the truly righteous.
The truth is that, according to another story in the Times that ran alongside this one, we’re making great progress and achieving our greenhouse gas reduction goals much faster than predicted. And that’s not happening because of liberal preaching or altruism. It’s happening because people are seeing benefits in their own lives. In fact, there’s now stronger evidence than ever that hammering people with climate guilt works in exactly the wrong direction.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
This is all fine and well in the short term, but at some point the culture of rampant science denialism and selfishness that led to this point needs to be addressed as it’s going to keep creating more problems.
Is condescending preaching by a segment (certainly not all) of the left about climate change a contributing factor? Yes, but the true mark of a mature person is being able to acknowledge someone is right even if they’re being a jerk about it.
Right-wing dilution of public education funding and media echo-chambers backed by fossil fuel money are much bigger culprits here than whiny liberals.
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I don’t think it’s ever been true that we get very far by leaning on altruism. We have to demonstrate the practical, personal benefits of doing the right thing.
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First off, while I agree we haven’t gotten far while using altruism as an argument, I’d argue that demonstrates a failure of our society – but regardless that’s only a small piece of what I was saying.
The pervasive culture of fact-denial is a much bigger issue, and simply rebranding the climate-change argument around short-term financial self-interest does nothing to address that.
On a tangent though – someone really needs to call out the right for their fiscal hypocrisy on this issue too. They claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, but advocating for fossil fuels and in-turn perpetuating the devastating impacts of natural disasters and relocations caused by climate change costs far more than up-front investments in transitioning to renewable energy. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
(In that way it’s similar to the argument about the ACA that insurance for the neediest ultimately costs taxpayers less then footing the bills for uninsured emergency room visits).
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That’s deeply absurd and cowardly.
Climate change is a clear and present danger. We must have the courage to confront it. Not cater to science deniers and corrupt pols.
It’s like saying in WWII that we shouldn’t mention Nazis because it would upset America First people.
Maybe pay attention to the massive PR campaign to stop cllimate action. Oh, right. That doesn’t help you beat up on liberals and progressives. And people who accept science.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1047583610/once-again-the-u-s-has-failed-to-take-sweeping-climate-action-heres-why
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I just want us to be successful in fighting climate change and the evidence is that the best way to do it is to NOT emphasize the environmental issues, but rather the personal benefits of alternative fuels. Apparently, Sec. Granholm agrees.
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I agree that getting conservatives to be on board to combat “climate change” or “global warming” is to first avoid using those terms. When conservatives hear those words, their ears go directly into “do not disturb” mode. Treating this as a sales job makes abundant sense, and our entire conversation with conservatives should be revamped to be in sync with that reality.
Let’s first come to agreement on exactly what solutions we’re going to sell, because that will have a direct impact on the message. To do that, we need to know how close we are to the brink of disaster, and I am very sure that we are staring into the abyss. All that has to happen is for 15-20% of global agriculture to be forced offline, and food prices will go straight through the roof and never come back down. With every summer now hotter than the previous summer, I estimate that we are less than five years away from such a world-destabilizing scenario, so the solutions we need to contemplate must be effective within that time frame.
With our backs against the wall, we are now forced to consider “geoengineering” solutions which include making modifications to earth’s oceans and/or atmosphere to cool and stabilize global temperatures. Examples of such solutions include altering seawater chemistry to absorb more carbon, spraying chemicals or particles into the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight away from the earth, and scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it.
So how do we sell THAT to a skeptical conservative audience? The answer is I don’t know, other than to point out that this will prevent us from dying soon and badly. We can package it as something which will be “farm friendly” and which will reduce or at least stabilize food prices, but the deeper truth is that our lives will likely depend on getting global temperatures under control in the very near future.
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More money needs to be spent educating everyone on the existential threats because while there is progress on smaller scale solar there is a lot of propaganda getting people to stand up against industrial solar and wind. They are placing restrictions on locality with policy in cities and towns that eliminate the possibility of wind or solar near them. The reasons for not wanting them are very strong in our area for some reason. Climate change should definitely be connected to our actions without making it political.
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