So why are conservatards so against acknowledging global warming?

[cdb]

I mean why do they always go on and on about it? Is it just because Al Gore is so high profile?
I don't get it.. or just because it's a "liberal" issue?

[Ediacara]

1. They think (wrongly) that it's "bad for business"

As if having your industrial base under water, relocating billions of people up hill, and needing to build new port infrastructure in cities currently ~75 m above sea level like Memphis and Rochester is "good for business."

[ComerPerro]

27. that's a lot of it. They see it as an appeal for Government Regualtion of Businesses,

which they of course oppose.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. They're contrarians.

We believe in Global Warming, therefore they have to believe against it.

[SpiralHawk]

28. Global warming is not a matter of belief

It is a matter of knowledge.

We don't need no steenking Faith-Based republicon Office of the Environment. We need a Fact-Based Office....

[orpupilofnature57]

3. $$$$$$$$$$

[jilln]

4. According to some religious nutjob on TV the other day

Falwell or one of those guys, believing in global warming is the same as worshipping trees, and you should worship nothing but God.

[rasputin1952]

38. I forgot who said this, but I think it was a preacher of some kind...

"If you want to see God, all you have to do is look at a tree, and how magnificent it is."

I'm cloudy on this, as it was a long time ago I heard that, but it was to show how the earth worked in harmony not discord.

[BOSSHOG]

5. White men can do no wrong

and the notion of global warming being aided by man is just part of the evil liberal agenda.

Actually, the real answer is quite simple. They are fucking idiots and proud of that fact.

[rurallib]

6. For the leaders it's oil money

That's a few thousand. For the followers it is just stubborn stupidity. They will follow right off the cliff.

[guitar man]

7. because they are selfish

and lazy. They think they will have to give up their wasteful lifestyles and put forth some effort to do something about it should they actually acknowledge it.

[treestar]

32. This is it. They will not let reality bother them about facing this

It is like their support of Gulf War I. Back then, there was not even a pretense that it was for any other purpose than to control the oil and to maintain our lifestyles.

[MonkeyFunk]

8. for the same reason

they've opposed almost every environmental cause for the last 40 years - they're afraid it'll cost them some money.

[Yavin4]

9. They Think It's A New Marxism Movement

They recoil at anything that may put limits or any regulation on business. In their minds, a corporation has the right to do whatever it pleases whenever it pleases, and they see the regulations emerging from the global warming movment as a threat.

Secondly, they live in fear of the discovery of alternative fuels and stronger conservation efforts. Those two moves are threats to the oil industry.

[dsweet]

10. Because they have been told to do so.

They follow their leaders talking points.

[Beaverhausen]

20. Of all these answers, I agree most with yours

Right wingers just can't think for themselves, and they love to be told what to think, what to say, who to hate, etc.

[newyawker99]

31. Hi dsweet!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Squatch]

11. They don't want to admit when we're right and they're wrong.

It hurts their malformed sense of pride.

[TacticalPeek]

12. Big Oil.

President Eisenhower recognized the threat posed by Big Oil many years ago, but he underestimated their power, writing in a letter to his brother, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

http://bigdaddymalcontent.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html

Unfortunatlely, a stupid one forced his way into the presidency.

[bowens43]

13. They oppose all science

[Mist]

14. Immaturity. A hallmark of RWers is liking everything VERY SIMPLE, the way a

child would look at things. Black/white, no "nuances" of grey in between. They don't like complicated stuff, and think life is all about not having to worry about much of anything.

[Phredicles]

15. Jonathan Chaitt had a column about this in the LA Times a couple of weeks

ago. I'm too lazy to chase down a link, but he basically said it's fueled by personal animosity: They don't know anything about envirnmental science, but they do know they don't like environmentalists and they especially don't like Al Gore. So when Al & Co. say we need to stop fouling our nest, they decide it's imperative to go right on fouling.

Great way to determine our stewardship of the only habitable planet we know of, huh?:sarcasm:

[BuyingThyme]

16. They miss lead paint.

[chknltl]

18. And DDT

Pity they can't be placed in homes with LOTS of both!

[mudesi]

17. They're ignorant and stupid (nm)

[Arkansas Granny]

19. There was a good post on this yesterday and a link to an

article.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=90674

[KansDem]

21. Conservatives come in two groups based on the characters from "Invaders from Mars"

1953


The first group are the "brains" of the neo-cons, represented by this character:



They're the "money men"--the Bush Family types: A small group, they never get their fingernails dirty, never "go to war" but have others go in their place, never have to worry about getting their hair mussed. They "plan," then commit fraud (stolen elections), lie (Iraq WMDs), torture (Abu Ghraib) and murder (people killed since BushBaby seized control of White House) to achieve their goals of more money and more power.

The second group are the knuckledraggers, represented by this character:



A much larger group, they are dependent on the little guy in the glass bulb to tell them what to think, how to feel, what to do. They cannot think for themselves so the little guy does it for them. They blindly accept whatever the little guy says and they are very obedient.

So the little guy, who opposes the notion of global warming because it threatens his ability to make more and more money, tells the knuckledraggers that global warming is a myth dreamed up by godless, liberal pinkos and the knuckledraggers accept and believe it.

That's my take on it, anyway.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Because it means giving up their SUVs and their three-story

trophy houses with whole-house climate control systems set to 68 degrees in the summer and 78 degrees in the winter. Or if they don't have to give them up, they'll at least cost more.

[Jonathan50]

23. It will require global cooperation if warming is to be stopped..

If it even can be stopped at this point, something I tend to doubt.

Cooperation is anathema to neocons.

[chknltl]

24. Because they are anti-everything espoused by liberals

...so I have recently started reminding them that we liberals believe that the Earth is actually round like an orange, as opposed to round like a pizza.

True consevetard story: I once got in a debate with one who asserted that history proves that if a society "breaks down" (his words), and allows for gay marriages that society is in a final spiral to oblivion. He actually was able to name several long dead cultures which permitted these relationships and by golly they really are long gone cultures.

I kept a very straight face and asked if he supposed those very societies had buttons. He said that this was quite likely but "what does buttons have to do with anything?". "Buttons", I pointed out, "have likely been used and allowed by even more dead societies than gay marriages, therefore buttons must be the culprit!"

Naturally he thought "I" was the one who was nuts.

(Well if my "magic buttons" have kept me from being trampled by a rampaging elephant since kindergarten they could be good for flabergasting a conservetard too, don't ya' think?)

[WePurrsevere]

25. If they admit that global warming is REAL & that humans have played a great part in it....

they ethically and morally would have to DO something about it. It's easier to live in denial then to accept responsibility and take the action and make the sacrifices needed to help save this planet. As Al Gore has said.. Global Warming is an inconvenient truth.

[damntexdem]

26. Because they serve the interests of companies that pollute.

And of companies that benefit from the production of greenhouse gases.

So, the answer is simple: they are prostitutes who do the bidding of the scummiest of business interests.

Meanwhile, businesses that think of the future are realizing that they want to HAVE a future.

[WinkyDink]

29. It's God's Will, if global warming exists; and He will save us, if it exists.

So attempting to subvert God's plan = heresy.

[Kelly Rupert]

35. There's a few crazies who believe that,

but the bread-and-butter of the conservative movement are simply people who are fundamentally against government intervention in industry.

[warren pease]

30. Four reasons, one for each group of selfish bastards...a long but well-punctuated rant

First, our leaders and their employers in the oil biz. If they were to acknowledge the truth of human-caused global climate change, and recognize that the petroleum economy is unsustainable, they would then have to do something about it. Which would mean that they'd have to act against their short-term economic interests, and that's just not going to happen. Thinking long term -- as in pouring some of these hideous quarterly profits back into intense R&D with the goal of leading the world in clean fuel technology and making that their future cash cow -- that's simply impossible in wall street's lust over the 90-day wonders. Even if these companies had the best of intentions -- and that's pretty hard to imagine -- they would still be slaves to the quarterly report and, if their profits slipped a bit because their R&D budgets rose dramatically, investors would just look elsewhere for their quick bucks and, if the trend continued, the CEO would be out on his platinum- plated ass.

Second, religiously insane fundies -- those enlightened folks who believe the earth is about 6,000 years old, the bible is the literal word of god, and the rapture is coming to take them to a better place -- are unfortunately a dominant voice in american politics. Because they vote as a bloc, they're capable of electing other nut cases who either believe as they do, or pretend to believe so they can grab all those votes. So they put people in office who are as screwed up as they are, who promote the idea that climate change is just another unproven belief system that competes with the holy word of god, and who agree that human-caused climate change is impossible because it's not in the bible. So the idea that humans are a global problem, rather than the fundie view that they're god's chosen creatures and masters of all they see, is impossible to get their little minds around. They want even more people on earth because god said be fruitful and multiply, provided they're not those damn brown and yellow and black people, even though they paradoxically support any effort to keep birth control methods out of the "off-color" hands of those who really need them. To wit: lately, fundies paid with tax dollars have been dispatched around the third world by BushCo to preach against condom use, never mind that AIDS is killing tens of millions of the very people they're talking to. And another thing: if it turns out that climate change is real, then it must be god's will and it's not for us to know the mind of god.

Third, we're blessed with a bumper crop of dull-normals in this country who are incapable of critical thinking and whose opinions are formed by PR and advertising adn whose idea of serious reading is the sports pages. They tend to be wingnuts because that's the only group that openly welcomes dull-normals and tells them they're actually smart and have the whole thing figured out -- which is to say, anything that could disrupt their lives of stunning ineptitude and mediocrity is blamed on lefties, liberals, commies, feminazies, envirofascists, sexual "deviates" and the usual brown, yellow and black people. And how do they know this? Because Rush and the thousands of redneck motormouths he spawned tell them so. And it's a self-reinforcing world view; like-minded idiots hang together, get drunk and talk bad about women who won't have anything to do with them, shoot a rabbit for the fun of it, get up and go off to their depressing, oppressive jobs and, come Friday night, somebody's gonna pay for their free-floating rage. Global climate change isn't even on the radar, except when Rush calls it an anti-capitalist conspiracy and these guys know that capitalism is the best system ever devised by man because Rush tells them so, even though it's grinding them into powder and shipping their shitty little jobs to the far corners of the earth.

Fourth, wingnut elites are content to live in gated communities, drive Navigators, have a drink or two at the club and generally ignore anything that doesn't serve to make them richer. To these miserable parasites, climate change is for suckers. Let somebody else deal with it. Their money will protect them. Hell, maybe they'll buy a huge chunk of northern Manitoba permafrost for pennies an acre, wait till it thaws out and sell it for a huge profit to some poor wheat farmer whose former place in Iowa is now a desert. There's always money to be made for a guy willing to take advantage of changing circumstances. So burn another 20 gallons getting to the mall. Who gives a shit. There will always be more if you've got the money.


At least that's how I see it.


wp

[Canuckistanian]

33. They're scared of change. Any change.

They think that Global Warming will force them to do something different.

And that by stuffing their fingers in their ears and singing LALALALALA, it will all magically go away.

[Kelly Rupert]

34. Because their position is, at its deepest level, against

government manipulation of and restriction on corporate behavior. Admitting that GW is a problem, and that the gov't must step in to fix it, is (to them) tantamount to admitting that their entire economic perspective is so flawed as to be useless.

[butterfly77]

36. Money and the rapture...

[distantearlywarning]

37. Simple answer:

Because RW media and their pretzeldent told them to think that way. Seriously, it's all about the sheeple.

If for some reason global warming became bad for oil companies, and Bush decided that everybody should start worrying about it, two weeks later every right-wing nutjob in this country would be ranting and raving about the threat of global warming. And probably also demanding to know why the Democrats hadn't done anything about it yet. :crazy:

Baaaaa! Baaaaa! Baaaaa! That's what I think of morons who never heard of global warming until Faux Snooze told them to stop believing in it.

[supernova]

39. Because that would me they would have to say we liberals

are correct about something! And conservatives just can't have that!! They would rather be on the wrong side of a debate than admit that we are right about the issue, even if it is to their ultimate detriment.