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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2362 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 15, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Pollution gets plenty of attention. See the op-eds about how Trump is going to personally shit in your drinking water.

On the position page you linked the word "climate" appeared 9 times in 334 words, and the only reference to any other form of pollution was "quality of our air, water, and land." It begins and ends talking about climate change and trump not believing in climate change, and in the middle there's some stuff about climate change. That's the entire environment policy statement summary.

The interesting part is the backing down from the "Climate Crisis!" phasing that was so popular until recently. But they don't even mention any specific non-climate environmental issues. Nothing about fracking of course, but also nothing about sulphur, acid rain, lead, freon and the ozone layer, racist highway noise, deforestation, or endangered species (seriously, not a single spotted owl or polar bear in sight!). If you're young you have no idea how different this looks to the early 00s.

They've completely dropped the messaging on all of those things, and it seems like they only persist in the niches they do through bureaucratic inertia, and because they're still making money for some client group.

I agree that climate change gets the lion’s share of messaging, especially in outward-facing, soundbite-oriented places like that website. It has won the coveted position of shorthand for its whole cluster of related policy.

I don’t actually think that indicates loss of support for the old policies. More that their low-hanging fruit has been picked. Or, I guess, that the bureaucracy to do so has already been put in place.

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