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Erik Uden 🍑's posts Post Back to profile
Erik Uden 🍑

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How much money do you think the United States has spent since 1945 on the Cold War? Sometimes they ask this question then from the back of the audience comes in answer ‘billions and billions‘. A huge underestimate – billions and billions. The amount of money that the United States has spent on the Cold War since 1945 is approximately 10 trillion dollars. Trillion, that’s the big one with the ‘T’. What could you buy with 10 trillion dollars? The answer is: You could buy everything in the United States except the land. Everything. Every building, truck, bus, car, boat, plane, pencil, baby’s diaper. Everything in the United States except the land, that’s what we have spent on the Cold War.

So, now let me ask: How certain was it that the Russians were going to invade? Was it 100% certain? Guess not since they never invaded. What if it was only let say 10% certain? What would advocates of big military buildup have said? We must be prudent. It’s not enough to count on only the most likely circumstance. If the worst happens and it’s really extremely dangerous for us we have to prepare for that. Remote contingencies if there is serious enough have the prepared for. It’s classic military thinking – you prepare for the worst case.

And so now, I ask my friends who are comfortable with that argument, including the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, why doesn’t that same argument apply to Global Warming. You don’t think it’s 100% likely? Fine. You are entitled to think that. If it’s only a small probability of it happening since the consequences are so serious, don’t you have to make some serious investment to prevent it or mitigate it? I think there’s a double standard of argument working and I don’t think we should permit it.

— Carl Sagan, An excerpt of a speech given on the 2nd of September in 1990 at the 5th Emerging Issues Forum at NCSU

4 March at 20:00 | Open on mastodon.de
16 comments
Jim

@ErikUden It's one of the quirks of the decimal system (that we use). Everyone thinks the numbers go up by ten. So a Billionaire is ten times richer than a Millionaire, I doubt many people fully appreciate just how massive a billion is.

4 March at 20:05 | Open on mastodon.social
Ted Lemon

@ErikUden @hosford42 The problem with arguments like this is that the person you are arguing with is in it for the money, not the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle worked to justify the Cold War, so it was used, to immense profit. The same principle works against continue profit in oil, so it is no longer the right argument to use. The point is to keep the cash cow going, not to prevent disaster.

4 March at 20:08 | Open on mastodon.nl
Ted Lemon

@ErikUden @hosford42 So if we want this to change, the vast majority of people who already know we need to do something and already want to do it (that’s us!) need to find an effective way to use what power they have, and need to actually use it and not be discouraged by all the deliberate attempts to discourage action through doomsaying and other propaganda tactics.

4 March at 20:10 | Open on mastodon.nl
Aaron

@abhayakara @ErikUden Consider who is reading this, though. It may not work on the person being actually addressed, but the rest of us can see the hypocrisy. And if enough of us take notice and apply pressure, we can change what is profitable for those in power. So posting these sorts of things is far from pointless.

4 March at 20:11 | Open on techhub.social
Ted Lemon

@hosford42 @ErikUden The thing is, we are already aware of the problem. We already want to fix it. We are even aware of the hypocrisy. That’s not the knob that needs to be turned.

We need to be activated toward effective action. Not just activated. What is the effective action? What is the next step to take? That’s what we should be talking about.

4 March at 20:13 | Open on mastodon.nl
Aaron

@abhayakara @ErikUden I'm on board. Let's talk about it. What are the most effective actions we can take, right here, right now? Are there organizations we can join to help us coordinate those actions for maximal effectiveness? If not, we need to create them.

4 March at 20:17 | Open on techhub.social
Ted Lemon

@hosford42 @ErikUden

I think fundamentally the task is that we need to use what power we have to (1) slow further acceleration in the wrong direction and (2) take the power from people who are not doing what is needed and give it to people who will.

(1) is, e.g. in the U.S., vote in the election, even though our choices are between the person who's going to accelerate harder in the wrong direction and the person who's going to accelerate less hard in the wrong direction.

4 March at 20:20 | Open on mastodon.nl
Ted Lemon

@hosford42 @ErikUden

We have to do this, even though it might feel like we're supporting something bad.

Also in (1) is doing our best to hold on to what power we have and restore that power to people who've lost it (voting rights).

But (2) we need to get involved in the process of deciding who is put forth in the election, and we need to figure out how to win. And that's a long-term thing—we can't get discouraged if we don't win the primary this time.

4 March at 20:21 | Open on mastodon.nl
Ted Lemon

@hosford42 @ErikUden

This is about trying to get the rocket ship back on the right course: if you are going in the exact wrong direction at .5c, and you can only accelerate at .05c per year, it's going to take a while to start actually moving in the right direction, and THAT'S OKAY!

4 March at 20:22 | Open on mastodon.nl
Ted Lemon

@hosford42 @ErikUden

And also I think we really really need to rejoice in our wins. A lot of really good stuff is happening. Just because a lot of bad stuff is also happening is not a reason to be discouraged.

A lot of effort is being expended to /get us/ to be discouraged. One of the ways we can make progress is to learn how to not be affected by those efforts—to see them for what they are, and laugh at them and at ourselves for our tendency to believe them.

4 March at 20:25 | Open on mastodon.nl
Ted Lemon

@hosford42 @ErikUden

We really need to approach this with kindness rather than hatred, because it's incredibly hard to stay positive if you feel like you have to spew negativity all the time, and if you act on that belief.

4 March at 20:26 | Open on mastodon.nl
Ted Lemon

@hosford42 @ErikUden

Like, yeah, the rich old folks who don't want to have stranded assets in the form of oil fields are doing a lot of harm. We want them to stop doing that harm. We don't need to hate them to stop them. We just need to stop them.

4 March at 20:27 | Open on mastodon.nl
Ted Lemon replied to Ted

@hosford42 @ErikUden

BTW, part of the point of getting involved in primaries (in the U.S., or the equivalent elsewhere) is that it scares the people in power more than protests do. Protests have as a second-order effect that they might motivate some people to vote differently. Voting differently is the actual threat—the protests aren't.

4 March at 20:30 | Open on mastodon.nl
Ted Lemon replied to Ted

@hosford42 @ErikUden

What protests are great for is consciousness raising and community building, but there are lots of ways to do that besides protests that are less likely to get you arrested.

E.g., throw a party. Seriously.

4 March at 20:31 | Open on mastodon.nl
Stu

@ErikUden My word, we could have used Carl Sagan's counsel right now, as we blunder deeper into our mess.

4 March at 20:14 | Open on hachyderm.io
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