the two major political parties in the US (...) people think is most likely to reduce existential risk
No comment on the main question, but if you really care about an issue you should try like hell to prevent it from becoming a wedge issue. There’s no longer any meaningful discussion of AGW in the US, because it’s now a wedge issue. Even if you observe a huge correlation between political tribal affiliation and getting the “right answer”, you should never point this out. Once people start to absorb their position on a topic into their self-image, they will never change their minds about it.
It’s worth noting the success of reducing Mercury pollution without much media coverage in the Obama administration while at the same time the administration didn’t went far on climate change.
more to the point, it gets to be used in an endless good cop bad cop routine in which political groups hang it over the heads if captive constituencies who get threatened with ‘vote for us, the other guy is WORSE’, and then nobody does anything since they can always claim tbat the other guy would have done worse or they would have done better.
No comment on the main question, but if you really care about an issue you should try like hell to prevent it from becoming a wedge issue. There’s no longer any meaningful discussion of AGW in the US, because it’s now a wedge issue. Even if you observe a huge correlation between political tribal affiliation and getting the “right answer”, you should never point this out. Once people start to absorb their position on a topic into their self-image, they will never change their minds about it.
It’s worth noting the success of reducing Mercury pollution without much media coverage in the Obama administration while at the same time the administration didn’t went far on climate change.
more to the point, it gets to be used in an endless good cop bad cop routine in which political groups hang it over the heads if captive constituencies who get threatened with ‘vote for us, the other guy is WORSE’, and then nobody does anything since they can always claim tbat the other guy would have done worse or they would have done better.