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What if we go through all the work to make a better world for no reason?

I think it's mostly tribalism and fear.

For everyone, to some extent, belief is social. You tend to believe what your in-group believes. If your in-group is big on science and admitting fault and such, it's not so bad. But if your beliefs are... I'm too tired to be nice... Right wing dog shit ahistorical afactual nonsense.. then you're in a worse place as far as having beliefs that match reality goes.

Secondly, fear. Admitting climate change and pollution exist means admitting uncomfortable truths. It means admitting things need to change, that the future may be from, and you have some culpability in the current state. The way things are now is familiar and comforting. Most people are, frankly, cowards, and will go to great lengths to avoid this kind of fear. Especially if it involves them not being a completely faultless person.

The longer you go being a denialist, I imagine the harder it is to change. Admitting fault isn't something most people do well. Again, because they are on some fundamental level cowards. Many people are deeply uncomfortable with admitting they were wrong about anything. Admitting you were fooled by climate denialism is a blow to the ego. Can't have that. Better stick to the current stance. And if it happens that the in-group also believes that, great, that's comforting.

We should probably come up with a way to make right wingers (the most scared people of all) think that addressing climate change plays into their in-group. Convince them solar is AMERICAN INGENUITY and that coal is a Chinese plot to poison the white race, and maybe you'd make some surprising (and awful) allies.

That or, like, completely destroy the Republican party, spend fifty years hard deploying green technology, and wait for conservatives to defend it because that's what they know, now.

But my coal job! I live in Virginia! If I'm not going to slave in the mines, by Jove, what else can I do? Install solar panels? Ha! I think not!

(I've never really heard one of these people give a satisfactory explanation for why not, but for the moment I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to lived experience. Be nice if I knew though.)

We made the world a better place for NOTHING?

Yeah but have you thought about woke? /s

It costs the shareholders money and destroys many billionaires empires.

Having cheaper energy from renewable sources?

They think it's more expensive due to the very first time they saw renewables used when they weren't as cost effective as oil, and have been propagandized to with that narrative ever since by billionaire-owned media.

Never running out of oil?

They think there's always going to be enough, and we can just take more from other countries or also use coal to fix that problem.

Being independent from unstable countries with bad human rights records?

They don't care about anyone who's not American, and even then, they're very distanced from the reality of the working class.

Having cleaner air?

They simply never consider this as it's never brought up by any of the media they watch. They also probably just don't think it's a big deal since "I can breath this air just fine already!"

Boosting local economy

See: people like Donald Trump saying clean energy would help china and harm the American economy

Investing in local and domestic research, education, and fabrication?

See above.

These people definitely want these things, they just don't actually believe it will do anything in the first place to help with them, or simply aren't aware that an issue exists at all because of the heavy pro-oil propaganda they've lapped up over the years.

These are considered a negative for people who actively want Neo Feudalism

Bbbbut... cOmMuNiSm

Big car doesn't go vroom vroom