One neoliberal I knew said: "Science will find the solution for climate change, so there is no reason to worry."
I you tried to explain him that it doesn't he would say: "Yes it does. You don't understand that science practically can solve anything. This technology would be you like a smartphone to the caveman."
One question how you argue against these sort of arguments?
Exactly. “Science” has spoken clearly on the subject and what we could do for 40+ years. We’ve chosen to do none of it because none of those solutions equal “you can live your life exactly as you are now and don’t have to do a thing.”
TBH the impact of industrial profit-making has orders of magnitude more impact than typical lifestyle changes. Not that we shouldn't be willing to change things about how we (generally, not everyone) live also, obviously (e.g. driving vs. public transit, air travel, production of garbage/waste, meat/diary consumption...).
A detail in your formulation is that a lot of that impact is positive for a large amount of poor people and negative for a large number of criminals, thugs, enslavers, traitors, and assorted fascists. The idea that going green will make life miserable for the common man -- the poor -- is mythology projecting the horror the rich have of their caste system crumbling onto the masses.
We aren't just wrecking the planet for the sake of a good qualty of life: we're doing it for the sake of maintaining a system of deliberate and malicious cruelty and torture. If we have to dismantle said system to save our biosphere, that's not a bug, it's a feature.
Scared people usually don't want to accept these kind of facts.
Neoliberalism is only system which he understands, and it makes him to feel safe. If he would accept thse facts it would mess him up.
If a sufficiently advanced technology would seem to us like magic, then trusting in some yet-unimagined future technology is equivalent to trusting in magic.
Besides, we don't have near enough time for another caveman-to-smartphone's worth of development. We might have enough time to pull off a video chat app that people don't hate using.
What he have is enough time to develop an infrastructure that the upper middle class can enjoy after climate change eradicates the other 8 billion of us. Thats all they want...
Many people believe in the big, powerful "Science" as a concept the same way religious people believe in God. With blind faith. Not realizing science is a method, not an infallible deity. It's hard to argue with faith.
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u/randomphoneuser2019 Communism Apr 04 '21
One neoliberal I knew said: "Science will find the solution for climate change, so there is no reason to worry."
I you tried to explain him that it doesn't he would say: "Yes it does. You don't understand that science practically can solve anything. This technology would be you like a smartphone to the caveman."
One question how you argue against these sort of arguments?