Trump’s victory calls for serious reflections on how people see the government as the enabler of change in environmental policies :
No meaningful change is ever enforced from the top , we should start dedicating a bit of our time and money to convince those who see their financial future jeopardized by the policies on climate change (e.g. coal and oil&gas workers) and not just talk and discuss with people who already agree with us . If we fail to do this we’d have a situation where people would feel threatened , abandoned and full of resentments towards those who forced a change upon them at their expenses , these are the sentiments which enabled the surge of populism across the political scene in 2016 , these are the sentiments which enabled a buffoon like Trump to become the US president
Also if we succeed in doing this we should take our responsibilities as 1st world countries to do the heavy lifting in reducing CO2 emissions given how developing countries heavily rely on fossil fuels to power their already weak infrastructure
Finally in 2016 , where people can go Google what their favorite celebrity ate a year ago , so called environmental activists like Leonardo Di Caprio are counterproductive given that clearly they are not willing to give up their jet set resource burning lifestyle , when even a 100% vegan environmentalist like me is enraged by his hypocrisy , how can we even think of convincing those who put economic prosperity and more specifically their economic prosperity above anything else?
Trump’s victory calls for serious reflections on how people see the government as the enabler of change in environmental policies :
No meaningful change is ever enforced from the top , we should start dedicating a bit of our time and money to convince those who see their financial future jeopardized by the policies on climate change (e.g. coal and oil&gas workers) and not just talk and discuss with people who already agree with us . If we fail to do this we’d have a situation where people would feel threatened , abandoned and full of resentments towards those who forced a change upon them at their expenses , these are the sentiments which enabled the surge of populism across the political scene in 2016 , these are the sentiments which enabled a buffoon like Trump to become the US president
Also if we succeed in doing this we should take our responsibilities as 1st world countries to do the heavy lifting in reducing CO2 emissions given how developing countries heavily rely on fossil fuels to power their already weak infrastructure
Finally in 2016 , where people can go Google what their favorite celebrity ate a year ago , so called environmental activists like Leonardo Di Caprio are counterproductive given that clearly they are not willing to give up their jet set resource burning lifestyle , when even a 100% vegan environmentalist like me is enraged by his hypocrisy , how can we even think of convincing those who put economic prosperity and more specifically their economic prosperity above anything else?