Ron Paul’s phony populism
- Thread starter ColdBlooded
- Start date
No the point of my post is the libertarian idea can also be "I recognize living without some impact to the environment is impossible so as along as I am living within the accepted standard of damage to the environment, leave me alone. If I go beyond the limit, then I am negatively impacting others beyond what is acceptable and I should be stopped/punished."
But then I'm a libertarian too - I do advocate maximization of individual freedom within what is ecologically acceptable. The problem is that the limitations on individual freedom that ecological limits impose are such that they fall very very far away from any end of the spectrum of what is politically and socially acceptable to even discuss so most people look at it as no freedom at all.
September 29, 2009, 12:29 PM
Holdren’s Ice Age Tidal Wave
By JOHN TIERNEY
As a long-time student of John P. Holdren’s gloomy visions of the future, like his warnings about global famines and resource shortages, I can’t resist passing along another one that has just been dug up. This one was made in 1971, long before Dr. Holdren came President Obama’s science adviser, in an essay just unearthed by zombietime (a blog that has been republishing excerpts of his past writings). In the 1971 essay, “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide,” Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age.
They certainly weren’t the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can’t think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich wrote:
The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.
But that would just be the beginning. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich continued:
If man survives the comparatively short-term threat of making the planet too cold, there is every indication he is quite capable of making it too warm not long thereafter. For the remaining major means of interference with the global heat balance is the release of energy from fossil and nuclear fuels. As pointed out previously, all this energy is ultimately degraded to heat. What are today scattered local effects of its disposition will in time, with the continued growth of population and energy consumption, give way to global warming. … Again, the exact form such consequences might take is unknown; the melting of the ice caps with a concomitant 150-foot increase in sea level might be one of them.
I confess that I don’t quite understand Dr. Holdren’s particular 1971 vision of global warming — why would nuclear fuels be contributing to it? — but let’s not get bogged down in details. What interests me are not the disaster specifics but rather Dr. Holdren’s tendency to foresee worst-case situations that require new public policies. (In the 1970s, he and Dr. Ehrlich discussed controlling population by giving sweeping powers to a new “Planetary Regime.”
I’ve previously written about criticism that a climate-change report from the White House and federal agencies exaggerates the threat of natural disasters. Does Dr. Holdren have a worst-case bias in his interpretation of data?
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/dr-holdrens-ice-age-tidal-wave/
Holdren’s Ice Age Tidal Wave
By JOHN TIERNEY
As a long-time student of John P. Holdren’s gloomy visions of the future, like his warnings about global famines and resource shortages, I can’t resist passing along another one that has just been dug up. This one was made in 1971, long before Dr. Holdren came President Obama’s science adviser, in an essay just unearthed by zombietime (a blog that has been republishing excerpts of his past writings). In the 1971 essay, “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide,” Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age.
They certainly weren’t the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can’t think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich wrote:
The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.
But that would just be the beginning. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich continued:
If man survives the comparatively short-term threat of making the planet too cold, there is every indication he is quite capable of making it too warm not long thereafter. For the remaining major means of interference with the global heat balance is the release of energy from fossil and nuclear fuels. As pointed out previously, all this energy is ultimately degraded to heat. What are today scattered local effects of its disposition will in time, with the continued growth of population and energy consumption, give way to global warming. … Again, the exact form such consequences might take is unknown; the melting of the ice caps with a concomitant 150-foot increase in sea level might be one of them.
I confess that I don’t quite understand Dr. Holdren’s particular 1971 vision of global warming — why would nuclear fuels be contributing to it? — but let’s not get bogged down in details. What interests me are not the disaster specifics but rather Dr. Holdren’s tendency to foresee worst-case situations that require new public policies. (In the 1970s, he and Dr. Ehrlich discussed controlling population by giving sweeping powers to a new “Planetary Regime.”
I’ve previously written about criticism that a climate-change report from the White House and federal agencies exaggerates the threat of natural disasters. Does Dr. Holdren have a worst-case bias in his interpretation of data?http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/dr-holdrens-ice-age-tidal-wave/
The bottom crowd on the picture you quoted was a Ron Paul rally. I'm voting for Ron Paul. Not being a war monger is probably his biggest political weakness. I'm assuming you thought I was talking about voting for Santorum or that you're trolling. Either way.
I didn't say that meaning that I am a libertarian, I said to illustrate that it is not very useful to criticize someone for not using words as having the same meaning you give to them when he used them the way the majority of people use them.
According to your definition I am a libertarian, but that doesn't mean much because that's not how most peopple understand it. And we can talk about logocide all we want, the point remains.
Also, in general, one should stay away from any ideology because an ideology is never good for one's thinking. We do have to take it for granted that the world is in principle knowable using a combination of factual observations about it and rigorous logical inferences, but from then on it is who and what is correct that matters, not what some ideology dictates.
According to your definition I am a libertarian, but that doesn't mean much because that's not how most peopple understand it. And we can talk about logocide all we want, the point remains.
Also, in general, one should stay away from any ideology because an ideology is never good for one's thinking. We do have to take it for granted that the world is in principle knowable using a combination of factual observations about it and rigorous logical inferences, but from then on it is who and what is correct that matters, not what some ideology dictates.