There’s already been a vetting process to weed out some resolutions, but this one made it through, which suggests “someone in the party thinks that this is worth debating,” Young said.

“I think this reminds us that the base of the UCP is host to a pretty substantial group of people who do not believe that climate change is real, or they don’t believe that it is driven by human activity, and they think that any actions taken to transition away from fossil fuels are unnecessary.”

  • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

    • SamuelRJankis@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Fair assesment for the politicians and lobbiest.

      What about their supporters, is defunding of education plus the governments doing nothing against misinformation enough to justify their actions?

      • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        *lobbyists.

        For the supporters, in Alberta, where almost a quater of gdp is oil and gas, and culturally the pride is in their meat production, you can’t imagine why they don’t want to believe in climate change?

        • SamuelRJankis@lemmy.world
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          There’s a distinction between believing something exists and ignoring it’s long term ramifications vs “celebrating carbon”.

          If people want to run things into the ground I can’t imagine someone be called anything other than a idiot if you don’t have a exit strategy. Also something to be said about the division of profits .

          • foggenbooty@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Money is the exit strategy. I hear this kind of misunderstanding a lot when conservatives double down on something that seems against their self interest, like “they’re still Albertans, they want a prosperous future for their children too, they just disagree on how to get it”

            That’s true for the average uninformed propaganda regurgitating voter, but it’s not true for the people actually making money from conservative policies. The money they collect makes them hyper mobile. If Alberta crumbles in the future from doubling down on oil and gas they’ll just… leave. When you have millions nothing ties you to where you live. They can ditch their property and move to another province, another country, no big deal. That’s why they focus on extracting as much value as possible from the land and the populace, because it’s expendable to them. They just want to make the most money now while they can.

            So they use the idiots, but I don’t think the people pushing this line of thinking are the idiots.

          • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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            *its - it’s is either it is or it has.

            Anyhow, if you don’t believe climate change is real then why not celebrate carbon?

            And, even for those who do understand/acknowledge climate change, from first order consequences, this isn’t a huge deal for somewhere like Alberta. Yes, bad things will happen but losing almost a quarter of your economy is also a pretty bad thing. (Consider a devastating thing like Jasper… That’s cost about 800 million in insurance claims etc, even multiply that by ten and you still don’t come close to the revenue from a single year of oil/gas (27.5 billion.)

            Frankly, thinking through the numbers, there’s a kind of nihilistic correctness to their position. The costs of climate change, for this generation of Albertans, is much less than the revenues from fossil fuels.

            • SamuelRJankis@lemmy.world
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              I’ve made exponential profits on CNQ and fully understand how much money is generated from O&G. I’m also fully aware that many people lives will have a substantial negative trajectory due to current climate change conditions.

              You can’t keep going to this big profits small costs argument without details of how much benefits and burdens is allocated to the parties involved.

              Also to be upfront about it. I find your grammar thing to be rather annoying so this will be the end of the conversation for me.

              • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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                You can’t keep going to this big profits small costs argument without details of how much benefits and burdens is allocated to the parties involved.

                You are fundamentally misunderstanding the original quote. Only one person’s benefits (their salary) is being considered. That’s basically the entire point of the quote! And frankly, that does seem to be how most people live (if people really cared about the costs to others, no one would buy sweatshop clothes.)

                Also to be upfront about it. I find your grammar thing to be rather annoying so this will be the end of the conversation for me.

                To be upfront about it, I find poor grammar annoying and the second hand embarrassment bugs me. Like people misusing exponential to simply mean lots or rapid, without actually being exponential. (If you’d made exponential profits, even a small investment of 1k would mean you’re sitting on a million now.)

                • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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                  You are placing your annoyance at other peoples’ grammar above the desire to actually communicate with them, which means you’re just here to masturbate in public.

                  You get that, right?

                • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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                  This is a confession that you are not well enough to participate in online discussions. Show this to someone you trust.

  • undercrust@lemmy.ca
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    Fucking UCP government just deep in the pockets of Big Oil. Just rename yourself The Oil Sands Political Party and at least be honest about it, ya fucking loser assholes.

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      Of all the places on earth that might conceivably come out slightly ahead on climate change, Canada and Russia are two of the biggest.

      Can’t help but feel these two countries consistently being some of the worst on per capita emissions isn’t a coincidence.

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        Canada was created as a colonialist apparatus, that exists to facilitate the extraction of natural and human resources, and transfer them to private ownership. It’s literally the reason the country exists, and it has never been reformed. We just cover it up with PR. We don’t emit greenhouse gasses because we are trying to terraform the planet, it’s just the most profitable way to exploit our resources right now.

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      They’re not so much in the pockets of big oil so much as they literally are big oil. At least a part of it.

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    Let’s just release some extra CO2 into these people’s homes for a few weeks and see how they handle such an abundance of such a “foundational nutrient” on their health. Not too much, maybe a little over 5000 ppm or so should be good, I’m not suggesting we kill them or anything.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      It’s not even breathing that’s the problem, it’s the claim that higher CO2 is great for plants. It can be, however the plants that grow from higher CO2 levels (particularly crop plants) produce their plant mass differently than with less CO2 unless compensated for, like in a controlled greenhouse. Directly because they are getting a different ratio of nutrients and gases.

      Add that to all the other factors that threaten food supplies thanks to warming. Someone at some point saw that plants get green at high CO2 levels and thought it would work as an argument against climate change, not understanding the details (or not caring because it suits their purpose).

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    “I think this reminds us that the base of the UCP is host to a pretty substantial group of people who do not believe that climate change is real, or they don’t believe that it is driven by human activity, and they think that any actions taken to transition away from fossil fuels are unnecessary.”

    Or they’re just jerks who know it’s real, but don’t care and are looking to virtue (vice?) signal their right-wing bona fides.

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        If these were the kinds of people who also planted a thousand trees a year and are seriously into conservation, I’d believe it, but they usually aren’t.

        It’s like anti-abortion people who run maternal- and children’s-welfare agencies and give a ton of money to help orphans, work school-lunch programs, etc. They’re about the only ones who are allowed to have that opinion, and they’re vanishingly rare, dwarfed by the kind that just a) hate women and/or b) want to vice-signal.

      • Nik282000@lemmy.ca
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        you know, you really are a moron

        usually puts a damper on all future interactions with those kind of people.

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    My thought process:

    "Hah! The Beaverton really went beyond silly this time.

    Oh, fuck…"