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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (23002)	7/6/2006 3:10:10 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541355

Economic growth is the biggest political stumbling block you will run into as you try to get the world behind a determined anti-GW strategy. If you ever spent any time in the American south and west, you would know that is where most growth has happened in the US in the last few decades, and nothing works without air conditioning in those climates - not the homes, offices, school or shops. People have created elaborate worlds in places where 40C is a typical July afternoon. The people who live there and the politicians who represent them will not undo those worlds. Since the local culture is predicated on ever-increasing growth and expansions, they will not support anti-growth politicians. Looking several decades down the line, we can build an infinite number of nuclear plants to take over power generation. But you can be sure we will use all the coal too. I don't know if your oil estimates include the oil sands in Canada, but they will become more and more important to US consumption as more come online. People will pay $4-5 per gallon if that is what it costs. Europe has done that for many years without slowing the growth in cars on the road every year. Looking back over this whole debate on the thread, there is a big disconnect. The GW crowd can't clearly define the problem and the solution to the satisfaction of those outside their circle; it is far from clear that incremental steps will have much if any impact since the definition and resolution of the problem aren't clear; and the long-term goal of putting less CO2 into the atmosphere is utterly at odds with the economic growth engines in Asia and the US. If one of the major UK parties became firmly anti-GW and anti-growth, do you think they would form the next government? I don't. Or anywhere else for that matter. Given that political reality, there is room for skepticism. But the evangelical quality of Gore's mobilization style leaves no room for the skeptics. They become the baddies, impeding the salvation of civilization. That rhetoric turns as many people off as on.