But How Will You Pay For It?

 

This post stems out of a conversation at the work lunch table. Someone brought up that Brooklyn Bug-Eye’s economic illiteracy. “We’ve chased Amazon away! That’s three billion in tax incentives that we can spend elsewhere!” Not quite how that works. The discussion moved on to banning cow farts and air travel and so forth. I’ll spare you the details, you’ve heard ’em all before. The problem is that by the time you get to how you’re going to pay for such a thing you’ve already lost the argument.

Here, let’s have Rachael Carson tell it.

Rachael Carson:

It is not half so important to know as to feel.

From a game @MattBalzer and I were developing.

By the time the right winger gets to the question of paying for a thing he’s no longer speaking the same language as the leftist. Your right-winger is considering the question “Is this a good idea?”; the leftist is asking “Is this a good thing?” She’s considering the quality of the objective, and not whether the means taken to get to that objective is appropriate or even doing more good than harm. The right-winger looks at the Green New Deal and asks “is this remotely possible?” He decides it’s nonsense and laughs at it as such. The leftist asks “is this a step in the right direction?” She answers “Yes”, and favors the proposal even if she doesn’t expect it to go anywhere, or achieve it’s goals. As long as the heart is in the right place.

Knowing and Feeling

There’s a tendency among the right to dismiss leftist emotionalism as worthless. In the same way that I, as a smart-alecky little brat, decided that logic was superior to everything because I was good at it, or the way that dentists think that proper flossing is the key to happiness. Logic is important, but so is emotion too. If your logic leads you to a conclusion that your gut is telling you is awful then you’ve got good reason to go back over your logic. Somewhere along the line, you’ve slipped a syllogism, or one of your postulates is less true than you want to believe.

On the flip side, you can’t just believe that everything is true that you want to be true. That leads to madness, in a literal sense. The best way to go through things is to know what your postulates are, and when someone disagrees with your postulates take the possibility into account that they might be right and you might be wrong. Consider their logic, their point of view, and most of the time you’ll still come away believing what you did beforehand, but you’ll always learn something. This takes work, and maturity, and is largely an unpopular approach. It’s much easier to just talk past each other.

Arguing with the Left

What you say is “Our best research tells us that Pre-k education doesn’t actually improve outcomes for kids; we’d be better off spending that money elsewhere. What a leftist hears is “I think kids are less valuable than money” which she quite reasonably takes to mean that you’re evil. Who doesn’t like children?

It doesn’t matter that the Green New Deal is completely unworkable, or that DDT wiped out malaria in these United States, or that throwing money at schools doesn’t actually improve the education they provide, or that taxing the rich doesn’t make enough money to provide for things, or that cutting greenhouse gases to the level we’re told is necessary would reduce our quality of life a heck of a lot more than merely dealing with the consequences of any Global Warming as those consequences arise. It doesn’t matter what sources or data or logic you have; you’ve already classified yourself as a hater and hence unworthy of being listened to.

And on the right? I doubt I have to describe this to you; you know how you react to leftists. Idiots who haven’t thought their bad ideas through to their inevitably disastrous conclusion. No point in listening to them because none of their ideas add up. Right? Right? And that’s even when we agree on the conclusion. Try this same discussion over gun control; it only gets worse.

This becomes a serious problem because you can’t deal with bad people. A leftist won’t ever listen to you if she’s dismissed you as evil. There’s no compromising with evil. It’s okay to punch fascists, right? And a right-winger dismisses any ideas which are so ludicrously impractical. People don’t believe the other guy has anything worth saying and simply don’t listen anymore. More than almost anything else this literal inability of the Left and Right to communicate makes me think the coming Civil War is inevitable.

This is the part of the post where I pivot from explaining the problem to discussing how to solve it

If you’ve been following my previous posts about politics you’ll probably be able to guess my answer. “What do we do about this? I don’t know.” Let’s run down the possibilities, shall we?

We could listen to the left more. It’s always good to understand the other side, where they’re coming from, and how they work. That won’t solve the problem. Once you’re listening to them, you’ve got two options; either to agree, which is surrender, or to argue the points with them. Which is ineffective, because they think you’re evil.

We could learn to speak their language. You voice your concerns with their proposals in words they’ll understand. If they don’t think you’re evil right off the bat they’ll listen to you and… decide you’re evil anyway because you keep telling them not to do the things they think are good.

We can convince them to avoid the government as a solution to problems. A leftist trying to make the world a better place without calling down the power of the government on all who oppose them can be a really good thing. You can still help people working towards an impossible goal and never actually getting there. It doesn’t become oppressive until you’re coercing other people into helping you or paying for you. Except getting the government to work on a social problem is always easier than working on the problem yourself. And so I’ve got no idea how to convince a leftist that that’s a bad idea because all the reasons why it’s a bad idea come from the right side of the aisle. That is, they all have to do with reasons why the project will lead to bad consequences in the end, and they have nothing to do with why the goal might not be a good thing in the first place.

We can convince them that their grand designs are impractical and that they’ve got to worry about what will work as opposed to just what’s aimed at a good goal. This is called being ‘mugged by reality’, and once you’ve convinced someone of that then they ain’t a leftist anymore. If we could do that wholesale we would have done so already.

There’s a commonality in all these failed solutions; they all describe what we can do. None of them require any action from the left. That’s the thing about communication; you need two parties to want to communicate before anything happens. I don’t know of any way of compelling leftists to want to communicate short of outright violence. And the left has so thoroughly convinced itself that we’re all racists and evil and whatnot that I don’t see anything on their side which gives them any reason to want to communicate with us. When you can’t negotiate then your options boil down to power plays; political chicanery, street fighting, and eventually revolution.

Do you see why I worry that Civil War is inevitable?

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  1. Nanda "Chaps" Panjandrum Member
    Nanda "Chaps" Panjandrum
    @

    Rachel Carson, dying of breast cancer, was enraged, felt impotent (not mutually-exclusive) and needed someone to blame…Feelings fueled the creation/manipulation of facts.  Ta-Da! 

    • #1
  2. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    If the Green New Deal actually took place, I would expect that at least 4-5 countries would launch an invasion of our country. By that time we would dying of starvation and defenseless.

    • #2
  3. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    Good post.  It is hard for a person that is both logical and emotional to explain things to someone ruled by emotion.  Worse yet, they don’t have the self-realization to know they are ruled by emotion.  They think they are the “tribe of science”, but they are really a “tribe of children”.  As for how to be persuasive, I sometimes have luck engineering a problem in real-time. 

    • #3
  4. Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke
    @HankRhody

    Nanda "Chaps" Panjan… (View Comment):

    Rachel Carson, dying of breast cancer, was enraged, felt impotent (not mutually-exclusive) and needed someone to blame…Feelings fueled the creation/manipulation of facts. Ta-Da!

    Everything up there is written assuming people are acting in good faith. I don’t wish to deny the existence of evil people in the world, or liars or charlatans taking advantage of things for their own ends.

    • #4
  5. Nanda "Chaps" Panjandrum Member
    Nanda "Chaps" Panjandrum
    @

    Ah, but only those who’d not signed on would be starving  and defenseless; those of occasional cortex use would still be well-fed and well-protected: See “Venezuela”

    • #5
  6. Nanda "Chaps" Panjandrum Member
    Nanda "Chaps" Panjandrum
    @

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke (View Comment):

    Nanda "Chaps" Panjan… (View Comment):

    Rachel Carson, dying of breast cancer, was enraged, felt impotent (not mutually-exclusive) and needed someone to blame…Feelings fueled the creation/manipulation of facts. Ta-Da!

    Everything up there is written assuming people are acting in good faith. I don’t wish to deny the existence of evil people in the world, or liars or charlatans taking advantage of things for their own ends.

    Absolutely, not aimed at your choices, Hank.  Carson has been an irritant of mine for a long time.

    • #6
  7. Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke
    @HankRhody

    Nanda "Chaps" Panjan… (View Comment):

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke (View Comment):

    Nanda "Chaps" Panjan… (View Comment):

    Rachel Carson, dying of breast cancer, was enraged, felt impotent (not mutually-exclusive) and needed someone to blame…Feelings fueled the creation/manipulation of facts. Ta-Da!

    Everything up there is written assuming people are acting in good faith. I don’t wish to deny the existence of evil people in the world, or liars or charlatans taking advantage of things for their own ends.

    Absolutely, not aimed at your choices, Hank. Carson has been an irritant of mine for a long time.

    Yeah, well, the fact that I had the card up and ready to post should tell you a thing or two as well.

    • #7
  8. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    I feel obligated to point out that a) I’m a Rachel Carson fan, and b) this is a very good article.  

    • #8
  9. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    I feel obligated to point out that a) I’m a Rachel Carson fan, and b) this is a very good article.

    Me too. Agreed. 

    • #9
  10. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke (View Comment):

    Nanda "Chaps" Panjan… (View Comment):

    Rachel Carson, dying of breast cancer, was enraged, felt impotent (not mutually-exclusive) and needed someone to blame…Feelings fueled the creation/manipulation of facts. Ta-Da!

    Everything up there is written assuming people are acting in good faith. I don’t wish to deny the existence of evil people in the world, or liars or charlatans taking advantage of things for their own ends.

    When attacked, go full Joan Rivers, “HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU CALL ME A RACIST! TAKE IT BACK! NO! YOU TAKE IT BACK RIGHT NOW! HOW DARE YOU!”

    Then go 100% on the attack, Make them own it.

    • #10
  11. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    Nanda "Chaps" Panjan… (View Comment):

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke (View Comment):

    Nanda "Chaps" Panjan… (View Comment):

    Rachel Carson, dying of breast cancer, was enraged, felt impotent (not mutually-exclusive) and needed someone to blame…Feelings fueled the creation/manipulation of facts. Ta-Da!

    Everything up there is written assuming people are acting in good faith. I don’t wish to deny the existence of evil people in the world, or liars or charlatans taking advantage of things for their own ends.

    Absolutely, not aimed at your choices, Hank. Carson has been an irritant of mine for a long time.

    “Ra-chel,

    Ray-Kill,

    How many Africans

    Will you kill?”

    • #11
  12. Nanda "Chaps" Panjandrum Member
    Nanda "Chaps" Panjandrum
    @

    Once I found out about the backstory, everything Carson wrote didn’t ring true or seem beautiful anymore…I don’t begrudge anyone their enjoyment, but this ruined mine.

    • #12
  13. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    That’s why when dealing with an actual person I prefer to point up the government control rather than the costs. I work on trying to get them to understand that someone who knows nothing of you, your life, your interests will decide what you can and cannot do. The other person keeps claiming that he or she will not be subject to such control (as he or she is of the proper virtue with which the government mandate will align), so I have to keep hammering that such will not necessarily be the case. In any event, the government control of the person’s life seems to be a more direct issue of concern than what to that person seems to be the abstract concept of cost.

    • #13
  14. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    C S Lewis observed that:  while Christianity may teach you to feed the hungry, but when it actually comes time to do it, you don’t need a Christian, you need a cook.

    • #14
  15. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Others have already brought up Rachel Carson, so I don’t think I’m hijacking this thread in defending her.

    Silent Spring was published in September 1962. Carson died in April 1964. DDT was banned from use in the United States in 1972. The EPA and the entire U.S. government and the manufacturers of DDT had ten long years to defend its widespread use. Ten years. If her fears were as unfounded as people make them out to be, why were the pesticide companies not able to reassure the public about the safety of their product over those ten years?

    Cancer was increasing in this country at an alarming rate in 1962. She wrote a book expressing her concerns that perhaps it was being caused by pesticides and other dangerous chemicals that had come into popular widespread use after World War II. She expressed her concern that they were being used rather carelessly, and perhaps too confidently at that time, and that we knew little about them or their long-term effects.

    What everyone misses about her book is this: It was a call for transparency in government. Most of the studies she cited had been kicking around the government’s back offices for ten or twenty years. In essence, she said, “We have a right to see them. The American people are intelligent and can understand scientific and technical information if it is presented correctly.” Her book was an attempt to prove to the American people and to the government the very principle upon which our great nation was founded: that we are smart and can learn and we have a right to information so that we can make up our own minds.

    I love chemicals, but I also know they need to be handled with great care. All she was trying to say was, “Let’s be careful because once these are unleashed into the environment, we cannot get them back.”

    This was her statement to Congress in 1962. At no time did she recommend or suggest a complete ban on it. She merely said we needed to use it and many other new chemicals with caution.

    • #15
  16. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    We’ve been told that the key to understanding Trump is to take him seriously but not literally, that when he said he would make Mexico pay for the wall his supporters did not take that as a literal policy proposal, but simply thought “finally, a candidate who is actually serious about border security!”

    I wonder, is it possible we’re making the same mistake when we take progressive proposals like the “Green New Deal” literally?  That when many Democrats say they support it and vote for the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, they don’t really expect anything like the GND to actually be enacted into law, they are simply expressing their frustration with politics-as-usual and saying “finally, someone who is actually serious about tackling climate change!”

    • #16
  17. Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke
    @HankRhody

    MarciN (View Comment):
    Others have already brought up Rachel Carson, so I don’t think I’m hijacking this thread in defending her.

    Go right ahead. I’ve got not much invested in maintaining that particular point though. That quote just gives me the willies.

    • #17
  18. Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke
    @HankRhody

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    We’ve been told that the key to understanding Trump is to take him seriously but not literally, that when he said he would make Mexico pay for the wall his supporters did not take that as a literal policy proposal, but simply thought “finally, a candidate who is actually serious about border security!”

    I wonder, is it possible we’re making the same mistake when we take progressive proposals like the “Green New Deal” literally? That when many Democrats say they support it and vote for the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, they don’t really expect anything like the GND to actually be enacted into law, they are simply expressing their frustration with politics-as-usual and saying “finally, someone who is actually serious about tackling climate change!”

    As much fun as it is to make fun of that girl, I don’t think it’s wise at all to dismiss her or her ideas. Laughing isn’t persuasive to people who already have firm opinions.

    • #18
  19. Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw Member
    Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw
    @MattBalzer

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke (View Comment):

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    We’ve been told that the key to understanding Trump is to take him seriously but not literally, that when he said he would make Mexico pay for the wall his supporters did not take that as a literal policy proposal, but simply thought “finally, a candidate who is actually serious about border security!”

    I wonder, is it possible we’re making the same mistake when we take progressive proposals like the “Green New Deal” literally? That when many Democrats say they support it and vote for the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, they don’t really expect anything like the GND to actually be enacted into law, they are simply expressing their frustration with politics-as-usual and saying “finally, someone who is actually serious about tackling climate change!”

    As much fun as it is to make fun of that girl, I don’t think it’s wise at all to dismiss her or her ideas. Laughing isn’t persuasive to people who already have firm opinions.

    Her, maybe not. The ideas, probably.

    • #19
  20. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke (View Comment):
    I don’t think it’s wise at all to dismiss her or her ideas. Laughing isn’t persuasive to people who already have firm opinions.

    I agree it’s not wise to dismiss her, nor Bernie “free college” Sanders, nor Elizabeth “wealth tax” Warren, nor Kamala “ban private health insurance” Harris.  To the contrary, I’m taking them seriously, if not literally.  I think there’s a very decent chance one of their ilk will be President by 2025 (if not sooner).

    • #20
  21. namlliT noD Member
    namlliT noD
    @DonTillman

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke: By the time the right winger gets to the question of paying for a thing he’s no longer speaking the same language as the leftist. Your right-winger is considering the question “Is this a good idea?”; the leftist is asking “Is this a good thing?” She’s considering the quality of the objective, and not whether the means taken to get to that objective is appropriate or even doing more good than harm. The right-winger looks at the Green New Deal and asks “is this remotely possible?” He decides it’s nonsense and laughs at it as such. The leftist asks “is this a step in the right direction?” She answers “Yes”, and favors the proposal even if she doesn’t expect it to go anywhere, or achieve it’s goals. As long as the heart is in the right place.

    (First off, if you’ve accepted the pejorative “right-winger” you’ve already lost.)

    This is the opportunity to win and educate.  If you agree with her goals then she can’t think of you as evil.  If she’s passionate about her position, she should be passionate about the success of getting to the goal and averse to making the situation worse. 

    Port: “This is a good thing”

    Starboard: “Do you really think so?”

    Port: “Yes!”

    Starboard: “You’re passionate about that?  It’s worth a lot?”

    Port: “Oh yes!”

    Starboard: “I’m with you.  This specific plan, however, will actually make the problem worse.”

    Port: “But it could work…”

    Starboard: “And there are no mechanisms to make corrections or fix things along the way if it doesn’t go as planned.  In the private sector, we care about the about the success of a project and perform regular evaluations and make adjustments every step of the way.  It’s as if the designers of this don’t actually care about success.”

    Port: “Well…”

    Starboard: “And it’s chock full of opportunities for graft and corruption.  Which seems to be the whole point.”

    Port: “But this is important.”

    Starboard: “We tried [something similar] before.  It didn’t work.  It made the problem worse and cost a lot of money.  Can these folks fix that first?”

     

    • #21
  22. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    We’ve been told that the key to understanding Trump is to take him seriously but not literally, that when he said he would make Mexico pay for the wall his supporters did not take that as a literal policy proposal, but simply thought “finally, a candidate who is actually serious about border security!”

    I wonder, is it possible we’re making the same mistake when we take progressive proposals like the “Green New Deal” literally? That when many Democrats say they support it and vote for the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, they don’t really expect anything like the GND to actually be enacted into law, they are simply expressing their frustration with politics-as-usual and saying “finally, someone who is actually serious about tackling climate change!”

    But proposals like the Green New Deal don’t even have a kernel of seriousness in them.

    • #22
  23. Mrs. Ink Inactive
    Mrs. Ink
    @MrsInk

    Full Size Tabby (View Comment):

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    We’ve been told that the key to understanding Trump is to take him seriously but not literally, that when he said he would make Mexico pay for the wall his supporters did not take that as a literal policy proposal, but simply thought “finally, a candidate who is actually serious about border security!”

    I wonder, is it possible we’re making the same mistake when we take progressive proposals like the “Green New Deal” literally? That when many Democrats say they support it and vote for the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, they don’t really expect anything like the GND to actually be enacted into law, they are simply expressing their frustration with politics-as-usual and saying “finally, someone who is actually serious about tackling climate change!”

    But proposals like the Green New Deal don’t even have a kernel of seriousness in them.

    Oh, they are serious, all right, but they are serious about implementing a police state, not “tackling climate change.”

     

    • #23
  24. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke: You see why I worry that Civil War is inevitable?

    I hope this country undergoes a “divorce” before this happens.  I’m starting to think the USA splitting into two separate countries is the only way to save both sides . . .

    • #24
  25. Jim Chase Member
    Jim Chase
    @JimChase

    The kind of pragmatism inferred by the question “how will you pay for it” has been on the endangered list for so long now that a committee review can probably declare it extinct.  Unfortunately, the defeat of fiscal conservatism isn’t limited to the grand social engineering designs of the left to build the wonderful community of tomorrow where equality of outcomes is guaranteed.  Manageable debt is fine, don’t get me wrong, but the federal system has gone far past manageable.

    Would that we could see the rise of a Pragmatist Party (PP), advocating for a systematic rigor in the identification of national priorities and mission areas; clear, concise objectives with identified needs and investment requirements to achieve, all supported by legit cost-benefits analysis; funded based on legitimate ability to pay, apart from a magic cupboard; managed with transparency, accountability, and constraint. 

    Everyone would hate the PP, by design, of course.  But the bumper stickers would write themselves.

    • #25
  26. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Hank Rhody, Meddling Cowpoke: We could learn to speak their language. You voice your concerns with their proposals in words they’ll understand. If they don’t think you’re evil right off the bat they’ll listen to you and… decide you’re evil anyway because you keep telling them not to do the things they think are good.

    I especially liked this remark. I think you have a very good point, and I know I don’t use their language. I realize they don’t want to talk to me, and they don’t trust me, and they don’t like me, but if we ever do have the chance to talk, I’ll keep this point in mind. Thanks, @hankrhody!

    • #26
  27. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    MarciN (View Comment):
    Silent Spring was published in September 1962. Carson died in April 1964. DDT was banned from use in the United States in 1972.

    She basically made up the science to tell a horror story.  This was used to justify a global ban, since scared people are not capable of rational thought and Yankees don’t care about dead kids in the South or in Africa.  She’s a “hero” in the same sense that Al Gore is. 

    • #27
  28. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    DonG (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    Silent Spring was published in September 1962. Carson died in April 1964. DDT was banned from use in the United States in 1972.

    She basically made up the science to tell a horror story. This was used to justify a global ban, since scared people are not capable of rational thought and Yankees don’t care about dead kids in the South or in Africa. She’s a “hero” in the same sense that Al Gore is.

    There is no comparison between Al Gore and Rachel Carson.

    If you’d ever read Silent Spring and reviewed her sources, you would see that. She quoted the government’s and pesticide company’s own research.

    Silent Spring is a primer on how cells work. She was a gifted writer and teacher.

    • #28
  29. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Hank/Rachel?:

    ‘We could learn to speak their language. You voice your concerns with their proposals in words they’ll understand. If they don’t think you’re evil right off the bat they’ll listen to you and… decide you’re evil anyway because you keep telling them not to do the things they think are good.”

    How about expressing your logical ideas in ways that the emotional left will respond to in an emotionally positive way?

    For example, instead of asking ‘How much is this going to cost? ” or “Who is going to pay for this?”, or even    ” How in hell are we going to pay for this?”, one could point out, like in the case of Ms Occasio-Cortez ‘s Green proposals, that given that poorly thought out massively  intrusive environmental regulations of the recent past have demonstratively destroyed millions of working class jobs and have created great poverty, pain and homelessness among the poor and minorities , how are your new proposals going to realistically avoid such horrendous consequences among those same minorities and poor?

    Now of course one could say the Leftist knee jerk response would be to challenge the record of such consequences, but then you would  have  at least the beginnings of a conversation where logic, evidence and data could play a role.

    Again for example, one could then point out that during the wondrously “Progressive” Obama Administration  which shoved down our throats   millions of questionable new  “Progressive” regulations in the same vein as Ms AOC’s proposals,  a full 17 million people were forced to leave the workforce with  black and male employment levels reaching  their all time worst levels  causing horrific pain and suffering.  Or then one could give the example of my great State of California, thanks to an untold number of ‘Progressive” new regs where  we have achieved perhaps the worst poverty and homelessness in the nation, home to  three and a half times the per capita national average of welfare recipients, even though we are home as well to the center of both the Tech and Entertainment industries and should have great employment opportunities. 

    • #29
  30. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    MarciN (View Comment):
    There is no comparison between Al Gore and Rachel Carson.

    But there is. Both are advocates for the precautionary principle.  The term may not have been around when Rachel Carson was, but that is essentially what she is arguing in Silent Spring. The precautionary principle is guilty until proven innocent. 

    • #30
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