(07-25-2022, 12:08 PM)SammyOES Wrote:

(07-24-2022, 06:30 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Or more to the point, anyone for whom having their tires deflated "poisons" was already poisoned. Everything in context...they are doing something to a vehicle that is non-destructive and non-violent something most vehicle owners will experience many times through random chance (and more destructively at that)....anyone who experiences this and hates the people who did it so much that they are entirely unwilling to listen to any thing more are not going to be people who are willing to listen to the idea that they should not drive their vehicle in the city because it is the very message that is threatening to them...not the method of sending it.

This is nonsense and you seem to have a pretty poor view of how humans actually react to things like this and issues like this.

Peoples opinions on issues like climate change aren’t binary.  It’s not “you’re our ally or you’re our enemy”.  The biggest problem for climate change is getting people to care and to demand action from our governments to address - even when those actions are going to hurt our individual standard of livings (by internalizing the cost of climate change). 

This ridiculous approach is not going to help us do that!  It’s going to drive people to demand more funding for police (which is bad in itself and also leads to support for parties that have worse climate change policies).  It’s going to turn people off of “environmentalists” and be less likely to be convinced on other important climate change policies.  People are not going to want to be associated with these morons and will be less likely to talk about necessary climate change policies with friends and families.  And so on and so on.

All for the perceived benefit of convincing people SUVs are bad - when they’re not even close to the biggest problem in climate change.  It’s a weird tiny symptom that they’re trying to target in a super ineffective way.  Like is success just people trading SUVs for hybrid vans or cars?  Some fairy tale scenario where all SUVs turn into fully electric cars isn’t going to make more than a dent in greenhouse emissions.

(07-25-2022, 01:31 PM)SammyOES Wrote: Dan, “violence has historically been effective repeatedly in achieving ends” is an inane nonsense statement. It doesn’t even make sense because the scope of the violence, purpose, and results is so fucking broad. But, please, show me sources that back up the idea that violence is effective at changing policy in a democracy. And note, effective doesn’t mean has worked before. It means that it works well and for a reasonable cost/benefit versus other avenues.

And if you think you understand climate change policy and have come to the conclusion that you need to convince SUV drivers to not drive SUVs you absolutely don’t understand the problem.  Both the human/policy problem and the climate change problem.

(07-25-2022, 01:44 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: (For the record, larger vehicles like SUVs are pushed by car companies for several reasons, they are higher margins, they avoid CAFE fuel standards, they are easier to achieve a higher crash test safety rating on because they are bigger and north american safety ratings only consider vehicle occupants, this is not a preference thing, these vehicles are pushed by for profit by corporations).

(07-25-2022, 01:54 PM)bravado Wrote: I think that the approach is asinine, but SUVs are a significant reason why our vehicle emissions have been rising instead of declining like they should have with modern technology.

They aren’t #1 for emissions, but it’s moving the goalposts if we are only allowed to spend effort protesting and controlling the #1 emitter.

(07-25-2022, 01:44 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Alright, here, I'll post this video...for the third time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh4G1Gjv7bA&ab_channel=PhilosophyTube

By the way, calling a statement "inane nonsense" doesn't help. You can make legitimate complaints "it's broad and lacks context" which is true, but that doesn't make a statement "inane" or "nonsense".

(07-25-2022, 04:51 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:

(07-25-2022, 01:44 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: (For the record, larger vehicles like SUVs are pushed by car companies for several reasons, they are higher margins, they avoid CAFE fuel standards, they are easier to achieve a higher crash test safety rating on because they are bigger and north american safety ratings only consider vehicle occupants, this is not a preference thing, these vehicles are pushed by for profit by corporations).

This is why this kind of detailed prescription is not the best way to go. If we’d just had a gradually-increasing carbon fee/dividend since 1980, by now we would have dramatically lower emissions without all the loophole-related nonsense.

Of course, like planting a tree the second-best time is now, but we’re definitely a little late.

(07-25-2022, 01:54 PM)bravado Wrote: I think that the approach is asinine, but SUVs are a significant reason why our vehicle emissions have been rising instead of declining like they should have with modern technology.

They aren’t #1 for emissions, but it’s moving the goalposts if we are only allowed to spend effort protesting and controlling the #1 emitter.

(07-26-2022, 04:45 AM)SammyOES Wrote:

(07-25-2022, 01:54 PM)bravado Wrote: I think that the approach is asinine, but SUVs are a significant reason why our vehicle emissions have been rising instead of declining like they should have with modern technology.

They aren’t #1 for emissions, but it’s moving the goalposts if we are only allowed to spend effort protesting and controlling the #1 emitter.

I wanted to come back to this.  I’m not against this protest because it’s not targeting the #1 source of emissions.

The current big climate goal is “net-neutral CO2 by 2050”.  A goal which is both unlikely to be achieved and if achieved unlikely to be ambitious enough to stop a lot of climate damage.

We’re at a point where achieving this goal doesn’t mean driving fuel efficient cars.  It means only driving cars that have no (net) emissions when driving, no emissions during manufacturing, no emissions when mining the raw materials, no emissions when transporting the cars around the world, no emissions when building the roads, no emissions when generating all the energy used at every stage, and so on. 

I hope that we have the technological breakthroughs necessary that existing incentives will exist to achieve this.  But that seems very unlikely.  And so we need Governments to play a big role to (amongst other things):

* Create incentives (some monetary, some legal) that make companies move to net neutral technologies and processes.
* Fund/incentivize research to develop technologies we’ll need but don’t have.
* Make sure public projects aim for net neutral.

And so on.

One big problem we have is that people think reducing emissions by X% (say 50%) by an intermediate goal like 2035 means we’ll be on target.  But if we do that with only the low hanging fruit (increasing fuel efficiency) it means we’re screwed achieving the rest.  We need to work on the hard parts now so we can scale them up in time.  And the hardest parts need the most government and public support. 

So, yes, fuel efficiency is important.  Every ton of CO2 we keep out now is good.  But we can’t waste political capital and public support on minor fights that aren’t going to move the needle in the most important ways.

(07-26-2022, 05:06 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I advance my goals by spending my energy promoting them and recruiting for them. I don't advance my goals by telling others that their goals are wrong, unless their goals are actually harmful.