“humans will survive for hundreds millions of years. But I’ll be long gone in like 40 and I’ll have gotten everything I every wanted. So change nothing, and fuck you.”
2015:
Like other Republicans, Paul would repeal Obamacare, partially privatize Social Security, move Medicare to a " premium support" system for future retirees, and block-grant Medicaid and food stamps. But he’s also proposed budget cuts of 20 percent or more to NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and the EPA — and cuts of 60 percent or more to the National Science Foundation, State Department, and Interior Department, among many others. Plus he’s proposed eliminating the Departments of Energy and Education entirely. “It’s the most detailed expression of what a libertarian approach to budgeting would look like to date,” Matthews writes.
Off to a great start!
Yeah, start terraforming other planets please… but don’t use money to do it, I want the money. I’ll give it to my friends instead, but please go terraform other planets for me.
No, see, he gives $1 billion to his friends so that they can put $1m toward terraforming other planets
“Libertarian”: zero mention of the DoD budget.
Dude is not a libertarian, he just likes to think he is. He’s just another “small government” republican.
I maintain that we have a battle of world views going on here. In some ways it’s about the myths we believe in. Most environmentalists believe in what I call the Hobbit Paradigm: we live in a beautiful garden, and if we grounded ourselves in relationships with our communities (including nature) we would have a good and sustainable life. Many technocentrists believe in what I call the Star Trek Paradigm: humans are limitlessly ingenious, technological solutions will save us, and Nature is viewed with an anthropocentric utilitarian ethic.
I do not believe in the Star Trek Paradigm. It’s hubris. I also don’t think it’s a very pragmatic paradigm. We live in a world we evolved to live in. Not worrying about this world because we think terraforming other planets and setting up space bases might be a possibility is not comprehending the Good or risk very well, IMHO.
I suppose a third paradigm is cold-blooded, individualist Realpolitik; It’s a dog eat dog world, fuck you, I’m just trying to get mine as hard as everyone else is. In this case Space Colonisation is just a beard to disguise a callous and usurious relationship to the beings is this world.
That makes the conflict one of story, of myth, which means no one will have their minds changed by facts. They’re belief systems. We need to expose those fundamentally short -sighted or selfish beliefs. We need to tell better stories, and expose the ridiculousness of the other stories.
The issue is once you educate yourself in science and engineering, you realize that teraforming planets isn’t something you just do. And you can’t realistically rely on a technology that doesn’t exist. The real problem here is one of education. The facts and the seriousness of climate change do not support his dumbass argument, and we’ll all be dead by the time everyone comes to an agreement and realizes, oh shit nobody is going to save us from climate change but us.
I’ve heard this phrased as Wizard vs Prophet
https://grist.org/politics/wizards-and-prophets-face-off-to-save-the-planet/
There’s also a fourth attitude. We live on a planet uniquely suited to the kind of life it gave rise to, such as ourselves. The climate of it before we began pumping tons and tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere was generally tolerable. Sometimes we had great periods like the medieval warm period and sometimes we had natural devastation like the little ice age. We’re in the process of going from bad to worse and if we don’t let up with our emissions soon we’re gonna have to get a lot better at every form of engineering really fucking fast
we’re gonna have to get a lot better at every form of engineering really fucking fast
Unfortunately that’s what we humans are really fucking good at. Nothing quite like a deadline, a sprinkling of procrastination, and a daunting technological existential hurdle to inspire a half-baked, good enough for now solution.
I figured that both sides are eventually going so far to their side they meet halfway. The good ol’ horseshoe theory.
In this case tech would go so far with genetic engineering while resource depletion forces them to go bio-punk and arrives at basically high tech treehouses.
I suppose a third paradigm is cold-blooded, individualist Realpolitik; It’s a dog eat dog world, fuck you, I’m just trying to get mine as hard as everyone else is.
This secret third one is the one that basically everyone has, yeah, it’s pretty depressing.
I dunno, at this point I’m more given to a kind of blade runner, or maybe mad max paradigm, of like. Even if the star trek future is the shit, right, even if they come up with and use terraforming technologies, which we could probably do at least for offsetting carbon emissions if the theoretical short term proposals are anything to go by, we don’t have any real way of understanding what the real knock-on effects of those short term solutions would be. We would probably be just as likely to increase ocean acidification by a couple points in our quest to sequester carbon by dumping a shit ton of iron oxide in the ocean, and then end up killing a bunch of sea life which is connected to everything else. It just becomes a kind of whack a mole style game where you trade one consequence for another at the expense of the environment, and if that ends up happening, I expect pretty quick humanity will attempt to totally shutter off any consequence which might pose a threat to humanity or capitalism, and put them off onto the broader environment instead, and the people who are reliant on those environments to survive. I.E. you get put into a horrible blade runner future, where the survival of humanity isn’t in question, but humanity’s humanity has gone extinct.
Star Trek Paradigm: humans are limitlessly ingenious, technological solutions will save us, and Nature is viewed with an anthropocentric utilitarian ethic.
That’s not Star Trek at all! The United Earth Government already abolished currency and converted to a socialist mode of production before the replicator was invented. More technology doesn’t necessarily help. When 21st century Earth got more technology, they used it to do the Eugenics Wars and WWIII. Replicators haven’t helped the Cardassians, the Ferengi, the Romulans, or the Klingons with solving poverty, pollution, scarcity, or slavery. The reason Earth has solved those problems and its technological peers have not is that Earth is more socially advanced. Humans do not use money. They work to better themselves and their species. Picard’s family makes wine on a vineyard. Sisko’s dad runs a creole restaurant. Earth is the picture of human harmony with both society and with nature. Most humans have never even eaten a dead animal anymore.
Plus, Starfleet exists to explore the infinite diversity of nature and of society out in space. Starfleet is full of biologists who love exploring strange new worlds. The sovereignty of indigenous life is respected, so much so that it is called the Prime Directive.
Politicians are extremely shortsighted. Many cant even see past their own noses
They can track down your money by smell, though
True
The reality is that Republicans cannot determine any difference between surviving and thriving.
If you start with the assumptions that Earth is regulated by YHWH by divine intervention and that all other planets are gifted to humanity by the same to do with as we will, this absurd belief follows naturally.
“Surviving” is one thing. Why can’t we also continue to enjoy life like you guys got to do? You wouldn’t have been able to last a day in the world you left for us. Which is why as it got closer and closer to affecting you too, you just pushed harder and harder to keep it away from you, doing more and more damage for the rest of us to feel instead.
Does this guy even understand what Energy is mostly about? What does he want to happen to all of this country’s nuclear infrastructure?
What about what he said implies he thinks human-caused climate change isn’t possible on Earth? He just thinks it won’t kill us.
People are more than isolated tweets. He’s a man who’s made hundreds of public statements on climate change in the past, only one of which is contained in this tweet.
