The Anti-Environmentalism Subtext

~ Laura

Last week, I commented that one of the many things that irritates me about the global warming hoopla was the culture war subtext. That and the conspiracy theories.

Paul Krugman says the same thing today.

What I think is that we’re looking at two cultural issues.

First, environmentalism is the ultimate “Mommy party” issue. Real
men punish evildoers; they don’t adjust their lifestyles to protect the
planet. (Here’s some polling to that effect.)

Second, climate change runs up against the anti-intellectual streak
in America…So they’re outraged, furious, at the notion that they have to listen to guys who talk in big words rather than sports metaphors.

Published by Laura

55 thoughts on “The Anti-Environmentalism Subtext”

  1. “That and the conspiracy theories.”
    If you look at the emails, there was really some sort of conspiracy going on. It’s not a conspiracy “theory” if the guys up and explain that that’s what they’re doing.

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  2. “…Second, climate change runs up against the anti-intellectual streak in America…”
    The abuse of the term intellectual and anti-intellectual is a big pet peeve with me. I know what an intellectual looks like, and (being very generous) only 10% of the people who are popularly described as such are.
    Anti-authoritarian would be a lot closer to the mark.

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  4. I think it’s an anti-expert streak. I’d rather not use the term “intellectual.” I also think I know what intellectual looks like, and I’m not sure that everyone who is an expert on a subject is such. But I do believe that in our increasingly complex world, understanding a lot of things requires expertise, where the problem just doesn’t turn out to be simple. Furthermore, I think it’s impossible even for a very capable person to have that level of expertise in everything they have to do/think about/decide about in their life. So, we have to rely on experts.
    But, there’s a group of people who see expertise as authority, and want everything to be simple, and reject the explanations when they’re not.
    Climate change is a pretty great example. So are immunizations, screening tests, the global financial system, energy markets, free trade, fair trade, economic development, . . . .

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  5. This seems more than a little condescending. Why do people disagree with me? Obviously, deep seated psychological pathologies! What a relief that I don’t have to engage with anything they say!
    I disagree with the climate skeptics, but in fact, some of them are asking good questions that would make climate science better if everyone weren’t so busy congratulating themselves on how much more enlightened they are than those irrational hayseeds.

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  7. Megan, I know nothing about the environmental science. I can’t tell anyone definitively whether or not the planet is getting warmer. If the scientific community decides that the planet is not really getting warmer as they previously thought, then fine. I’ll keep recycling and doing the meager and probably meaningless stuff I still do. I don’t have a big stake in this fight either way. I’m not sure how devastating those Climategate memos are to the bottom line conclusions of the studies, but it does sound like there was some sloppy work that went on. It’s out there, now, which is a good thing, and I have to let the scientific community tell me what was what. Why? Because I don’t know anything about environmental science. And most of the bloggers on the Climategate bus aren’t scientists either. While average people are perfectly capable of having sounds views on healthcare policy or abortion. I do think you probably need an advanced degree in science to understand the global warming research.
    I also have to wonder why people are so gleeful about Climategate. There is a political subtext to the debate that absolutely nothing to do with science.

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  8. Atrios points to an editorial from Nature, which swings the Hammer of Correction.
    (Back in the day, just reading the titles of articles in Nature used to make my head hurt. I felt very good when I could understand an abstract here and there.)

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  9. “There is a political subtext to the debate that absolutely nothing to do with science.”
    Likewise, there is a political subtext to the pro-global-warming side, a certain excessive eagerness at the idea of culling the herd and making everybody ride bicycles and eat bark (except for attendees at global warming conferences–they’ll get limos, caviar, and free prostitutes). I dislike throwing around the word “hypocrisy”, but that’s definitely an ingredient in the glee.

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  10. Also, AGW seems to fulfill the same psychic needs for some people that the Left Behind books serve for others. The craving for the apocalyptic seems to be a human universal.

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  13. “”a certain excessive eagerness at the idea of culling the herd and making everybody ride bicycles and eat bark” um, no.”
    You’re right–I totally forgot “wear hair shirts” in the list.

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  14. Some background on me: my father has been banned as a commenter several times at PZ Myers’ blog. My dad advocates intelligent design (though he is an atheist and a liberal, ftr). When it comes to the expert scientific community looking down their noses at those who do not agree with the scientific consensus, I know a little bit about that from the other side. I would prefer not to have accusations lobbed at me that I am looking down my nose at the hayseeds.
    I just don’t see that in the climate change controversy. First, for years these same people who chortle over Climategate denied that global warming was happening. When the evidence that it is happening became undeniable, they switched gears and started insisting that climate change is not caused by humans.
    There are some very powerful interests who have a stake in policy responses to climate change. I think it’s not out of line to say that the oil industry and its advocates are some of the most powerful people on this planet right now. To persuade people that climate change is happening is to reduce the amount of power these people have.
    I don’t see quite that same political influence on the side of those who acknowledge the realities of climate change. Follow the money–that will usually tell you what you need to know.

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  15. There are real questions to be asked about the details of the data and models and science that underlie our understanding of the global atmosphere. But, those questions aren’t coming from the climate skeptics. They’re part of the internal debate among climate scientists, who are a far-reaching bunch.
    Here’s an answer to Dave’s comment: about “built-up” areas:
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements.htm
    But, there’s fatigue in the scientific community in responding to these debates, over and over again (on vaccines, and evolution, too, and probably others), fatigue engendered by the understanding that no science will convince some. How, for example, to “engage” with Inhofe: “This line of reasoning allows Senator James Inhofe to conclude “This whole idea of global warming, I’m glad that’s over. It’s gone. It’s done. We won. You lost. Get a life!” It’s frustrating to argue the same arguments, over and over again.

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  16. “There are some very powerful interests who have a stake in policy responses to climate change.”
    Yes, like whoever is planning on cashing in on Obama’s promised 5 million “green jobs”.
    “President-elect Barack Obama wants to spend $150 billion over the next decade to promote energy from the sun, wind and other renewable sources as well as energy conservation. Plans include raising vehicle fuel-economy standards and subsidizing consumer purchases of plug-in hybrids. Obama wants to weatherize 1 million homes annually and upgrade the nation’s creaky electrical grid. His team has talked of providing tax credits and loan guarantees to clean-energy companies. His goals: create 5 million new jobs repowering America over 10 years; assert U.S. leadership on global climate change; and wean the U.S. from its dependence on imported petroleum.”
    http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/04/business/fi-greenjobs4

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  17. But Amy, this has been going on since long before Obama was elected. The green jobs thing is just a drop in the bucket compared to those who have control over the oil. I mean, WARS have been fought over oil. The whole Cape Wind to-do in MA is negligible in comparison.

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  18. The economic interests are relevant to the discussions of particular solutions to the phenomenon of global warming (solar v wind v smart grids v efficient toilets v nuclear power, . . .).
    But, those interests are well balanced by those with interest in the continued production of CO2. It’s always good when the economic interests split up, though (as in the decision of major utilities to leave the chamber of commerce).

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  19. What I generally look for in determining whether a differing opinion on a scientific issue is valid or “cranky” is whether it is an internationally held view, or just American. Intelligent Design was somewhat popular among the American right wing, but no other country’s right-leaning parties seemed to care for it.
    The same thing is going on here. There is no denial of the existence of climate change among the right-wing parties of England, or Italy, or Germany. Just us.
    That strikes me as a controversy stirred up for political reasons — not scientific ones.

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  21. I was just reading this piece about the climate change denialists, and I think it’s got a point that I’d like to flesh out a bit. The reason why “we” on the “left” talk about the psychological pathologies of the denialists is because there is a distinct difference between the “denialist” mindset and that of people like, uh, me. That difference is that I don’t have a worldview that is set in stone. I don’t believe in religion of any kind. I don’t have a heck of a lot of hard and fast truths I live by. I really just mosey through life doing the best I can, open to the fact that I could be wrong.
    That kind of thinking just cannot exist for most people who believe in a certain kind of Christianity, for one, and also for people like Megan, who believe so fervently and (I think, blindly) in that economic libertarianism that seems to derive from Randian thinking. Amy, Megan, and others want to attribute some sort of psychological pathology to those of us who are not denialists, some sort of apocalyptic mindset. But you know what? I think that’s projecting. It seems so impossible to those with fixed mindsets that others don’t have this way of thinking.
    The problem is that climate change denialists (as well as creationists) have to fit everything into a fixed mindset. There’s no room for stuff that doesn’t fit in. But I (and I am guessing people like me) do have room for a lot of different stuff that doesn’t always make sense together. Scientists become attached to their pet theories, it is true, but that’s why there is a system of peer review, so that they can be challenged by their peers and forced to consider alternatives.
    And … I have no idea how I was going to finish this comment as I’ve been interrupted a few times to mediate disputes between squabbling children. The 7 year old is bored because he was home sick all day.

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  22. “….Megan, who believe so fervently and (I think, blindly) in that economic libertarianism that seems to derive from Randian thinking.”
    With all due respect to MM (who may be still in the area), she is a Northeastern urban squish and has very few dogmatic bones in her body. Ideologically, she’s still gelling. Just a few days ago, she was pooh-poohing Climategate.
    “Amy, Megan, and others want to attribute some sort of psychological pathology to those of us who are not denialists, some sort of apocalyptic mindset.”
    Not you personally, but it is out there. Some people rather too obviously harbor a desire to punish fellow Americans for driving cars that are too big, living in houses that are too big, eating meals that are too big, and being too big, too. Coming from a religious tradition that values asceticism, I understand where this impulse to self-denial is coming from and that self-denial for self-denial’s sake can be heroic, but inflicting self-denial on others is much less admirable.
    “The problem is that climate change denialists (as well as creationists) have to fit everything into a fixed mindset.”
    How regularly do you rethink your position on values like reproductive freedom or the badness of an able-bodied person parking their car in a handicapped spot? A fixed mindset is nothing to be ashamed of.

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  23. “How regularly do you rethink your position on values like reproductive freedom or the badness of an able-bodied person parking their car in a handicapped spot?”
    Well, the first, rarely, because it is an ideological position (though my views became even more vehemently pro-choice after I went through my pregnancies). The second, well, lot’s, for example, when a blogger, who has since died of ovarian cancer, wrote about getting *the look* when she parked in a handicapped spot in her last days of treatment. She *looked* able-bodied, on the outside.
    And, that’s the key. There are positions I do not re-think, or at least re-think rarely. But, most of my positions are amenable to being shifted by data, on health care, on school vouchers, on charter schools, on energy markets, math curricula, and, yes, on climate change (to name a few).
    Can we say the same about Inhofe?
    Of course my biases my biases influence my interpretation of data, but, first, I admit that, and second, I try as hard as I can.
    And, incidentally, I do not consider this a “pathology” because I think that being biased, and un-open to data is pretty normal human behavior. We learn to avoid it, just as children learn to share.

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  24. Actually, I wasn’t particularly concerned about climategate (just immensely concerned about the “how” of cutting carbon emission) until I read McCardle’s latest post on it. The key quote (MM quoting Feynman):
    When they got a number that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something must be wrong–and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan’s value they didn’t look so hard.
    That is very real, especially when you get to larger projects with a handful of investigators. The new result is almost certainly challenging a finding of one of the investigators or their mentors. It doesn’t get hidden, but it does get checked again and then once more. Not that it is a bad idea either, since you can’t check everything and something that makes an experienced investigator say “Huh?” is a good place to start. But, it is a bias.
    Anybody who thinks peer review can stop that in any large percentage of the cases has never written a peer-reviewed paper or reviewed one. The peer-reviewer doesn’t have the raw data or the cleaned data (usually). Even if they did, the peer-reviewers wouldn’t have the time to do checks that would basically require re-analysis (i.e. a week or more of unpaid work).
    Peer-review does force the consideration of alternative hypotheses. But that isn’t what stops this type of problem since the issue is testing too many hypotheses. What stops it is self-conscious researchers. And when you see researchers discussing how to quash FOIA requests, you have a very serious symptom.

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  25. ” And when you see researchers discussing how to quash FOIA requests, you have a very serious symptom.”
    Completely, because ignoring/subverting FOIA requests is illegal.
    But, scientists talk about that all the time. For example, that funded grants are “foiable.” You can, if you want, go to NIH reporter, search for anyone you want, and then write to NIH requesting their grant. Then, as a PI, if your grant is requested, you are given the opportunity to redact personal and proprietary information before release. Know how much time this takes? way more than any researcher wants to spend time on. What do researchers do? Well, they try to avoid them, by all means that stay within the bounds of the law. A common plan, for example, is having conversations in person, so that you can avoid leaving the paper trail that can be requested via FOIA.
    FOIA requests can, and are used to harass researchers doing work that people disapprove of (from AIDS, to drug abuse, to, yes, climate science).
    I do not defend breaking the law. But, I do understand scientific dismay over FOIA requests, if only for the tedious bookkeeping they require.

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  26. It is a pain, not that I’ve ever had to comply with that particular hassle. Just related ones. But researchers should be in the habit of making their raw data available to other researchers, especially if the work was government funded. I don’t know about the U.K., but that’s pretty standard here. After the planned analysis in the grant, it’s open season.

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  27. MH, it’s true that peer reviewers don’t usually get their hands on raw data, but the system has other checks in place. One scientist and his buddies aren’t the only ones doing research in this area. There are competing teams at universities around the world. The system is set up to reward people who come up with new findings. That’s how people get tenure. No one gets tenure reproducing existing studies. They either have to create new studies that come to the same conclusions or, better yet, mark new territory.

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  28. “How regularly do you rethink your position on values like reproductive freedom or the badness of an able-bodied person parking their car in a handicapped spot?”
    See, you really cannot understand. 🙂

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  29. As I’ve mentioned before, I really like the Pedant-General’s global warming flow chart. It’s the top one here:
    http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/crudgate-why-this-cant-be-swept-under.html
    I’d go further and say that even if CO2 causes dangerous amounts of warming, there’s no hope that current remedies will have any positive effect. Here’s a worst case scenario:
    1. We enact some very large global carbon regime with lots of restrictions on developed countries and few on developing countries.
    2. The US loses even more manufacturing to China (where factories will run on immense quantities of coal from dangerous, sulfurous mines).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_China
    3. The US has less of a tax base available to pay back our substantial government borrowing.
    4. An even larger share of goods will be transported across the Pacific, leading to yet more CO2 emissions.
    If I cared about CO2 production, the whole thing would sound like a nightmare. I think it would collapse eventually (most likely from there being no money to run the Rube Goldberg contraption), but there might be 5-10 years of misery before we managed to sort it out.
    There’s also the issue of carbon credit fraud:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/03/copenhagen-summit-carbon-trading-scam

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  30. Laura,
    My peer-review crack was directed to Wendy’s over-confidence. I thought I was relatively kind to peer review. If I were being cynical, I’d say the main function of peer review is so the reviewer can make sure you’ve cited their papers.
    As you say, there are other checks, but they operate with a lag of several years or more in most fields. The more technical the research, the fewer people even understand it, let alone look at the detail.
    Of course you need your own studies to get tenure. But, given the costs of collecting data in some fields, doing new analysis of existing datasets is basically the only way most of the young ones get started. I don’t like hiding raw data collected at taxpayer expense.

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  31. “”How regularly do you rethink your position on values like reproductive freedom or the badness of an able-bodied person parking their car in a handicapped spot?””
    “See, you really cannot understand. :)”
    What is there to understand? You have deeply held beliefs which you are not going to change, and in most cases, you shouldn’t change them. Barring a serious brain injury, you’re not going to start littering, shoplifting, deep frying everything, or smacking your kids around.
    Here’s a related digression on mental rigidity and its uses:
    As a philosopher’s wife, I’ve been through Ethics repeatedly over the years (without being in the classroom, just hearing about the course at home). There’s this thing called virtue ethics that is associated with Aristotle, as well as with Elizabeth Anscombe, the Catholic philosopher and student of Wittgenstein who popularized the idea in the mid-20th century. Very roughly, virtue is what the virtuous man does, and the focus of virtue ethics is on forming a character of a particular sort, rather than on the rightness or wrongness of particular actions. Practicing virtue ethics is more like painting a picture than doing a multiple choice exam. We form ourselves with our actions, with the grooves that we wear in our daily lives, not through choosing on a particular occasion, but through having chosen.
    On a more mundane level, I’m a big believer in moral automation. If I have chosen that I am going to spend a certain percentage of my income on charity, I set that percentage aside every month, rather than choosing every month between giving or not giving, or leaving the amount up to how much the spirit moves me. The money has been set aside. The only question is how to spend it. (Of course, an even more virtuous person might automate that, too, but stuff comes up–fires, erring husbands of large families, graduate babies, etc.)

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  32. I don’t think, though, that climate change falls into the moral category. The degree to which it’s happening; what the causes could be; those are factual questions.
    What to choose to do about it is surely informed by moral views. Choosing not to do anything also has moral implications. But the melting of glaciers, for example, is not a moral question. Let’s keep our categories reasonably clear here at 11D.

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  33. Further to MH’s and other folks’ comments about openness of data, this from the Nature editorial I mentioned above:
    “But for much crucial information the reality is very different. Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur meteorological services to improve researchers’ ease of access, governments should force them to do so.”

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  34. “What is there to understand? You have deeply held beliefs which you are not going to change, and in most cases, you shouldn’t change them. ”
    You would be surprised at how often I think I could be wrong. And if I am wrong, my whole worldview doesn’t have to change. That is my point. bj made it a little better. I’m having a week with sick kids, and it’s affecting my ability to be coherent.

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  36. I’m sure that Megan McArdle, or Greg Mankiw, or Eugene Volokh, or others who might fairly be classified as being “on the right,” consider themselves just as open-minded as Wendy considers herself. Since I can’t imagine an objective metric for such a quality, and self-reporting yields inconclusive results, this doesn’t seem like a worthwhile discussion.

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  37. Since I can’t imagine an objective metric for such a quality, and self-reporting yields inconclusive results…
    There goes half of the social sciences and about a quarter of medical research.

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  38. Doug said:
    “What to choose to do about it is surely informed by moral views. Choosing not to do anything also has moral implications. But the melting of glaciers, for example, is not a moral question. Let’s keep our categories reasonably clear here at 11D.”
    Certainly, but I point you to Wendy’s comment from up-thread:
    “That difference is that I don’t have a worldview that is set in stone. I don’t believe in religion of any kind. I don’t have a heck of a lot of hard and fast truths I live by. I really just mosey through life doing the best I can, open to the fact that I could be wrong. That kind of thinking just cannot exist for most people who believe in a certain kind of Christianity, for one, and also for people like Megan, who believe so fervently and (I think, blindly) in that economic libertarianism that seems to derive from Randian thinking. Amy, Megan, and others want to attribute some sort of psychological pathology to those of us who are not denialists, some sort of apocalyptic mindset. But you know what? I think that’s projecting. It seems so impossible to those with fixed mindsets that others don’t have this way of thinking.”
    Also, I should have added a step 5 in my earlier comment:
    5. The US economy goes into free-fall and the Chinese achieve hegemony over the Pacific while global CO2 emissions remain the same or increase.
    I don’t think we’ll go that far and I think the process is mostly self-correcting (i.e. US voters boot out anyone associated with the carbon plan), but it’s an unnecessary waste of time, what Obama would call “a distraction” from the real business of dealing with the problems of globalization.

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  39. I think if anybody wanted to reduce U.S. greenhouse emissions, the best bet would probably be to use language like “energy security” and “the Saudis sure do like their terrorist-enabling charities” to get support from non-environmentalists to put a limit on oil imports. This would involve a replacing oil with electricity in the transit area. The quickest place to get the electricity would be coal, but nuclear would work and the infrastructure/technology that developed would be much more adaptable to greener energy sources than what we have now. Then I’d use cynical “greenhouse” arguments to restrict (or stigmatize) Chinese imports. Thus encouraging industrial workers/owners to become (highly selective) envirnomental activists.
    Greens don’t have the votes alone and are trying to shift peoples’ views, which is always going to be nearly impossible in the short term when everybody can count the costs to the nearest dollar and the benefits are diffuse, uncertain, and long term. But a green/jingo/manufacturing alliance would be hard to stop if you had a leader who could structure the coalition and who didn’t care what the rest of the world thought.

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  40. “But a green/jingo/manufacturing alliance would be hard to stop if you had a leader who could structure the coalition and who didn’t care what the rest of the world thought.”
    I would be very happy to see a voluntary food labeling program so you can see instantly what country food comes from without spending 30 seconds per item scanning tiny type. A big, prominent “USA” on groceries would make me a very loyal customer.

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  41. In between classes, so incoherent again, but I hate to let too much time pass in a thread.
    The point of the link I posted as well as my own comment was that a lot of people have a fixed worldview, often informed by religion ubt sometimes by the religion of libertarianism (i.e., markets are good, government is bad). Those who hold those kinds of world views have more trouble understanding that some of us walk through life not really caring about such a thing. We just do the best we can every day and look at the evidence and make conclusion based on what we see. If we come across evidence that challenges our worldviews, we don’t have to freak out and we don’t have to deny evidence. We just adjust our worldviews accordingly.
    I think that’s where a lot of denialism comes from. You have to deny to make it fit.
    Without the fixed worldview, you don’t have to deny anything.
    And… I have to runa gain.

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  42. A big, prominent “USA” on groceries would make me a very loyal customer.
    Really? Why? Among other things, one of the big complaints against US agricultural products in other markets is our lax SPS standards and inspection system. I think those fears are usually over-blown, and that most fears, both at home and abroad, are ginned-up frauds made by local vested interests, but it certainly shouldn’t be assumed that “local” groceries would be safer or better.

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  43. but it certainly shouldn’t be assumed that “local” groceries would be safer or better.
    It’s assumed that local cars are worse, but I still drive them (though the latest one was actually assembled in Canada). The auto-bailout may have killed that attitude in me as far as cars go. Not sure yet.

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  44. Matt said:
    “Among other things, one of the big complaints against US agricultural products in other markets is our lax SPS standards and inspection system.”
    As opposed to Chinese shrimp, milk, dogfood, and toothpaste. I realize that the US has its issues (like this year’s peanut butter contamination), but most US problems can be prevented by thorough cooking.
    Wendy,
    There is roughly 0% chance of you loading up an old appliance or piece of furniture, driving it out in the country or woods, and surreptitiously dumping it to avoid extra garbage fees. You do have a fixed world view.

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  45. There is roughly 0% chance of you loading up an old appliance or piece of furniture, driving it out in the country or woods, and surreptitiously dumping it to avoid extra garbage fees. You do have a fixed world view.
    I have a flexible world view. I’ve completely switched my position in this issue over the past 15 years.

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  46. “There is roughly 0% chance of you loading up an old appliance or piece of furniture, driving it out in the country or woods, and surreptitiously dumping it to avoid extra garbage fees. You do have a fixed world view. ”
    I could certainly imagine how it could be the best solution to a difficult problem.
    Amy, you’re not going to win on this. I’m perfectly willing to admit that in some circumstances I could do all sorts of things that might be considered awful. The reality is no, I probably wouldn’t. But I can envision a time or place when it might be necessary for me to dump old furniture in the woods. To imagine such a thing–heck, to DO it–does not violate or damage or shake any worldview I might have.
    But for someone like Megan, to pick on her because she’s an easy target ;), to imagine a time when a government should have lots of power is a violation of her world view, so she would probably have to deny facts in order not to have her whole world view shaken.

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  47. I want to meet the person who doesn’t have a fixed view on whether the government should prescribe a single religion and force all its citizens to adhere to it, or whether democracy is preferable to dictatorship, or whether the government should authorize its soldiers, in lieu of pay, to rape any foreign women they come across. I want to meet someone who has no fixed opinons on matters like these, but whose opinion changes week to week based on the latest factual evidence. But I surely never have.

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  48. Amy P- I’m not opposed, in principle, to country of origin labels on items, but they are often much more complicated than people think, in part because products are often made in multiple countries (this is true of food products, too) with materials from multiple sources, and also because it can lead to serious trade distortion. Given these facts it’s often unclear whether they are worth the trouble. And, of course, you didn’t say that you wanted to avoid Chinese products (I think the fear is over-stated there, though somewhat more understandable. Still, I think more people were hurt recently from a US Peanut Butter plant than from Chinese products.) Rather, you said you’d buy products labeled “made in the USA”, but that’s far, far from a clear path to safer products. It’s just a confusion to think otherwise.

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  49. “In between classes, so incoherent again, but I hate to let too much time pass in a thread.”
    You should try keeping up from my time zone…

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  50. “There is roughly 0% chance of you loading up an old appliance or piece of furniture…”
    About 20 years ago, we merely burned old couches in the backyard. I have no idea what the rest of the guys did with whatever springs and stuff remained. Admittedly, the backyard was in rural Tennessee, but still.

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  51. “5. The US economy goes into free-fall and the Chinese achieve hegemony over the Pacific while global CO2 emissions remain the same or increase.”
    This looks rather like a gauntlet on the floor. If tomorrow is sufficiently slow for me, I may pick it up. For now, it must suffice to say that there is a significant number of wrong assumptions built into that statement, and it might be worthwhile to tease some of them out.

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  52. But I can envision a time or place when it might be necessary for me to dump old furniture in the woods.
    Dumping old furniture in the woods can be a beautiful thing if the time is right and you feel ready for it. But it’s not something that anyone should ever feel is necessary.

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  53. “Rather, you said you’d buy products labeled “made in the USA”, but that’s far, far from a clear path to safer products. It’s just a confusion to think otherwise.”
    I’d still rather not give my kids Chinese juice boxes.

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