08-24-2019, 11:17 PM
rjmacs wrote:
The climate is an issue where the closer you get to the details, the worse an electoral issue it is. Keep it general - we're fighting on the right side.
Yep. It's going to take a lot of money and some noticeable changes in life style to get CO2 emissions down enough to make a significant difference. IOW, it's going to require sacrifices that a lot of people - voters - will be reluctant to make.
The problem is that the vastness of the problem of climate change isn't obvious if you don't follow the science. Tough job to both sell the science and sell the sacrifices of money and life-style changes. Of course, the Democratic primary voters are probably mostly sold on the science, but I suspect even many of them will be reluctant to buy into the scale of the sacrifices that would be required. In the general election nationalistic impulses get in the way of a message of international cooperation as is needed to effectively deal with climate change. Maybe some candidate like Buttigieg can make the science and sacrifice cases and convince enough people that international cooperation is very much in our nation's best interest, but I think it is going to be really challenging.