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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29505 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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A missing mood in development news: Environmentalists pin hopes on tiny fish to stop Highway 413.

From a plain reading of the article, the logic goes:

  • Activists don't like the proposed Highway 413
  • They searched for a way to stop it.
  • They found these fish, and the strategy may be effective.

In a sane world filled with people arguing in good faith, you might see a similar situation:

  • There are endangered animals in an area
  • Environmentalists discovered development posed a risk to them
  • Therefore they oppose that development

If you trust the CBC's reporting, then the activists would be better described as anti-development rather than environmentalist. The discussion is centered on the highway, the political situation around it, the promises that Doug Ford (bad!) made, and the actions the Federal Liberals (good!) took which slowed it down.

There's a reason the wisdom for landowners who discover endangered species on their property is 'shoot. shovel. shut up.'.

Unfortunately, in this world, the way it works is

  1. Law is proposed

  2. People opposed to the law note it can be easily abused by people acting in bad faith.

  3. Their objections are overruled; no one would do that and surely there are safeguards against it

  4. People acting in bad faith abuse the law

  5. The people in 2) note this and complain

  6. Those in charge insist on taking the bad faith objections as if they are in good faith. ("Maybe that tiny fish really is vital to the ecosystem. Can you PROVE otherwise?")

  7. Repeat step 4-6 forever.

This is a tale as old as environmental law. In the 1970's, the discovery of the endangered snail darter blocked completion of the almost-finished Tellico Dam by the Tennessee Valey Authority. Congress had to pass a specific exemption to complete the project.

We later found out that the snail darter also lived in other rivers in the area, and the completion of the dam did not drive it to extinction.

For another variant of the problem, see the wildlife 'separate populations' discussion Kagan brought in Loper-Bright was about this case asking if the Washington State population of the squirrel subspecies sciurus griseus griseus was distinct enough from the Oregon and Californian populations of the same subspecies to 'count' as a species-as-legal-term for the Endangered Species Act. Or where local regulations effectively traded off unproved harms committed by politically disconnected actors against much-more-established risks by powerful ones.

I grew up in the San Diego area, and recall environmentalists opposing transmission lines from new desert solar plants into the city because it threatened some desert tortoise's habitat. Environmentalists have been this way for decades, at least right wing environmentalists like Uncle Ted and the anarchoprimitivists are honest about their intentions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Powerlink

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/energy/sunrise_powerlink/index.html

Also for anyone wondering after reading the environmentalist article, given that I grew up less than a mile away from the edge of the Cleveland National "Forest," it ain't no forest.

See this is exactly why I don’t like environmentalists as a group. I can understand the need to protect a species, and I’m generally in favor of protecting the environment where possible. But there’s a point where you have to be pragmatic about these things. We need roads, power plants and wires. Planning around a major habitat I get. But if you oppose everything people want to do even when it’s 95% of what you want, then I see no reason to take them seriously when they suggest we need to retool our infrastructure to protect the environment.

In their defense they are like the various right wing commenters here who refuse any compromise on guns, abortion, environmental law, etc. on the grounds that the left will just run rampant over them if they compromise and the only winning move is complete defiance and opposition to anything the enemy does. Even if each action is indefensible individually. I don't have a high opinion of either group.

In their defense they are like the various right wing commenters here who refuse any compromise...

Then just come out and say it.

"No gun control" and "Full ban on abortion" are both within the Overton Window, albeit as fringe positions. "No new development in Ontario" would be derided as batshit insane. If they're going to refuse any compromise, then they should at least have the balls to stand by their convictions.

State your arguments, gather support, and fight for your goals. Anything less than that has too many shades of conspiracy for my tastes.

That "the left will just run rampant over them if they compromise" is also obviously true with guns in a way it is not with the right for the environment. Containing the tiniest little compromise, the Bruen decision has resulted in it remaining illegal for me, a citizen of the State of New Jersey with no criminal record, to buy a gun anywhere in the United States or to carry one outside my home in New Jersey or anywhere in New York. Whereas the environmentalists not winning every battle on the environment has not resulted in lead back in gasoline or the Cuyahoga river catching fire again.

Obstinate Gun Owners is a thing, but I don't think they're analogous to environmentalists. Gun owners and its advocacy are working with much different incentives. Gun owners online can be annoying like environmentalists, but gun owners are mostly fine to stay out of the news. Most change is bad, most coverage is bad. Status quo is the best thing. They rarely receive friendly reporting when they organize, so they haven't learned to leverage media the same way as environmentalists. Generally, 2A advocacy groups fight in in the courts, or in some places on online forums (lol), but not in big displays of protest.

When gun owners do mass it's usually not so much a shock-and-awe lever, but a more traditional "we exist, there's lots of us, we will walk to the state capitol, clean up, and leave."

Generally, 2A advocacy groups fight in in the courts, or in some places on online forums (lol), but not in big displays of protest.

Sure, but fighting in court is what we've been talking about this whole thread, not protests. Environmentalists also do silly protests, but those aren't what we are talking about and I'm not making a 1 to 1 analogy or making this especially about the 2A.

It's good politics if you care about your goals. Centrist opinion doesn't matter in the long run. Only control of institutions does.

Centrists vote for the status quo. So all you have to do is be the status quo.

If you want something different out of politics, you have to be Lenin, not Talleyrand.

In the long run, I think Talleyrand spent more of his life getting what he wanted than Lenin did. And he saw a lot of change in his life, too. He just didn't think he could control it.

It feels like one of those intentionally bad metaphors. It's so bad I can't make heads or tails of it, but, also, to quote Bertrand Russell on Marx,

"His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process."

I feel the same about all these people who look down on centrists and Talleyrand.

I don't look down on him. He was an incredibly competent and useful man, and without his involvement France may not even still exist.

But he is also not who you want to be if you have political goals. He went with the flow, only altering fate in small ways.

If you want to make a mark on history and change things you need to hire guys like him, but you can't be like him.

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