"This is because a further piece of social-science research suggests that collectivist, social-welfare societies are a better incubator of pro-environmental behaviour than individualist ones where welfare is looked on with suspicion."

AHGERKGKN!!!! Shhhhhhh!!!!

Just a few days ago, there was a post of an article from the Christian Broadcast Network claiming that environmentalism was a front for communism in the US - and everyone here thought that just showed how insane the right was, to conflate communism with environmentalism.

Now that Dobson has made the connection so clear, will people back off their statements? Because it looks like CBN was right! Environmentalism and anti-market forces go hand in hand!!!

I find it highly ironic that Dobson casts this as some kind of "political" solution to the problem.  This may be a fruitful theoretical framework for research. He may in fact be factually, 100% correct. But to spout off like a book-knowledge liberal northerners that "research proves that the invisible hand encourages man to selfishly kill mother nature..." - and claim to be looking for a 'political' mechanism to get folks involved and reducing emissions...

Please. These kinds of phrases are political DISASTER here in Georgia and anywhere else on my latitude. I promise you, 30-48% of this country will have NOTHING to do with environmentalism if its associated with 'collectivism' or social 'welfare'.

If Dobson is right, and a politics which emphasizes community, not self-interest, is needed, there is only one institution you can tap into, one set of rhetorical tools that you can go to in the American South. I'll give you a hint: it has a steeple.

Sorry guys. But like the good ex-Defense Secretary said, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had.

I have no faith in moral obligation and the last thing we need is a struggle for social engineering.   Moral obligation did not enable civilization.  That credit goes to criminal laws against murder and theft.  

Our civilized moral obligation is to make the destruction of our atmosphere an international crime.  No local social structure, not even anarchy, can receive safe harbor for destruction of civilization, the rich intricate beautiful history of human culture.

The wisdom of making the burning of fossil carbon a crime will become inescapable.   Our survival depends on enlightened leadership.

Because if, like me, you do, then the only thing to do is try and reap as many benefits from global warming as possible.

Trying to "fight" global warming or ameliorate it is not only impossible, but stupid.

The world is NOT black and white. Anyone that bothers to look can see that a whole range of governments exist with regard to emphasis on free markets vs. control economies. And each model's relative success differs, especially depending on how you measure success. And what works for one may not necessarily be ideal for another. Context matters.

Continued flapping of the greenhouse-gas piehole about evil commies is distinctly unhelpful (another Rumsfeldian word). Regardless of where you live.

At any rate, I'm not going to contribute to narrowing the debate further by not even linking to social democrats outside the U.S. - who by the way are pretty much centrists in world politics.  We've seen subject after subject ruled out of discussion, and taboo after taboo instituted  in the U.S. in an attempt to appease the extreme right, and it has not been successful.  The Conservative Democrats finally beat lunatic right wing Republicans in the last election when they stopped appeasing and started showing a gut or two.  There are some parts of the population you are not going to convince. (They may convince themselves, but that is another matter.)  The time has come to stop trying for a consensus to win over every part of the population, and concentrate on majority building.

And Sunflower, no I don't think we should stop appealing to self-interest. But we need to appeal to moral principles as well and stop letting the lunatics claim the high ground. What people really want is to well by doing good. And fighting global warming is an opportunity to that - to preserve ourselves and our civilization, and live better lives with a more robust economy at the same time.  But I think Dobson provides a needed balance to those who want to totally eschew morality - just as Lovins provides a needed balance against those who totally want to eschew arguments of self-interest. We need to argue for both, the better life, and the more just life.

Incidentally, the Next Hurrah just did a nice write up of some of the social history on how, and why, folks hat communism in the South.

Been reading the Obama article in the New Republic today - a lot of stuff about Saul Alinsky style organizing. Its just my style of politics, where the emphasis is not on purity of ideas, but on getting people together around a cause and doing something about it.

Thats kind of where I'm coming from. That, and the feeling that we do need to learn how to talk with the right, and the south, and the Christians, on this issue - because theres enough of us that the world will need us to cut our emissions too.

But I'd like to suggest that even Southern Baptists can be spoken to about non-market based solutions and the dangers inherent in over-reliance on self-interested individualistic solutions.  They, too, live within a moral framework--one they explicitly reference in many political situations.  And I think that the time is coming when, even in America, we'll be able to start talking about capitalism and market-based solutions as what they are--social constructions that serve some interests above others, and that are good at solving some problems and bad at handling others.  

I'd love to have a public (America-wide) discussion on the question "can market capitalism be reformed?"  I think that this discussion can be had on a variety of fronts, not just within the environmental realm.  And that is, perhaps, how we draw Southerners and conservatives into the mix.  Free market capitalism also causes them problems, right?  It seems we can all agree on that, and start a conversation there.  And if folks like us are willing to clearly explain what we mean when we say that, in some situations and contexts, capitalism is a problematic aspect of our social ordering, then maybe we can move away from the capitalist/communist dichotomy.  

Its just my style of politics, where the emphasis is not on purity of ideas, but on getting people together around a cause and doing something about it.

Look, it is wonderful to come up with better ways of telling our stories. But you can't always be in storytelling mode. Sometimes you have to figure out what you want to do before you decide how to explain it. And you cripple our ability to do that if you go "eek" at every third word.  Think of the word "empire" to describe the U.S.  Up until recently, that word invoked the "eek" reflex. But then in the run-up and early days of the Iraq war, the neocons started using that word. And so a few years later, you now see mainstream liberal and conservatives using the word. Not that all of them agree with the description; but it is now a word you are allowed to use.

Maybe that word should have been used more before the run-up to this freakin war. At any rate it makes no sense to let the far right define what words we can and can use. I'm not giving up hope on evangelicals or  southerners. But I'm not going to drop whole categories from my thinking to appease them. And you know what I think by doing that I'm showing them more respect that you are; I'm not going to hold to the prejudice that they are children who simply can't deal with grown-up ideas. There are times when your think is done - when you are simply finding a good story to convey the idea. But there is also idea formation, where you are discussing things that have not been thought through. To stick ultra-purist rules of framing when discussing strategy would cripple your ability to have those discussions. I suppose you could debate strategy only in private: but that particular form of elitism would bar you from a lot valuable input.  

So bottom line: yes tell our stories so that people who are normally closed to them can hear them. But don't expect every conversation to be campfire tales; there are going to be unframed discussions

Thats kind of where I'm coming from. That, and the feeling that we do need to learn how to talk with the right, and the south, and the Christians, on this issue - because theres enough of us that the world will need us to cut our emissions too.

Yes, everybody will have to cut their emissions. But it does not mean everybody has to make an individual choice to do so. You are showing the very atomistic bias Dobson is criticizing.

Ultimately, all available consumer choices need to be "Green". When you turn on the switch and a light lights up, you should not have had to check a special box on your utility bill for that power to be low emission. That should be part of the deal when you buy electricity.

Anyone reading this have an infant who eats baby food or an infant who is on forumula? When you go to the store do you seek out the special brands free of rat poison? Nope, you take it for granted that any baby food you buy won't have micro-doses of rat poison in them.

Similarly, when we go to the store, we should not have to seek out the special brands at models that won't contribute to the destruction our civilization. Not destroying our civilization should be a built in feature of any product we buy.

Look I think we can win many Southerners, and many white evangelicals. But we are not going to win 100% of any group; consensus is not how democracy works.   Alinsky had flaws as well as virtures as an organizer. But one mistake he never made was to try and build a society-wide consensus Consensus was something he sought within his groups and among his allies; believe me the man who invented the fart-in to pressure his opponents was engaged in majority building, not seeking consensus.

At Mass, we had heard the entire Passion narrative from the Gospel according to Saint Luke, the sweetest and most consoling of all four of the canonical Passion narratives ("Into thy hands I commend my spirit," says the dying Jesus, uniquely in that Gospel).  And O'Connor's "The Resurrection" accords nicely with that hopeful spirit.

But my story, perhaps the most violent of all O'Connor's stories, recalls the Passion according to Saint Mark, my patron: the collapse of justice, the crumbling of the living in the face of the forces of death, the apparent inefficacy of prayer, and even of the name of Jesus.  So much, at least on the surface; but the final dialogue is profound, and scholars wiser than I may indeed find more there than what lies on the surface.

To be sure, the story resonates with the "memento mori" given on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent: "Remember, human being, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return."  Or words to that effect.  It certainly is far more powerful, IMHO, than Mel Gibson's vivid but shallow "Passion of the Christ"; and I needed to fall back on professional resources, more than once, to get myself through the reading.

In this connexion, I want to say that I am deeply disturbed by Mimi's digging herself into a Southern (or more particularly Georgian) obstructionism.

It should be quite clear and manifest that I think the world of Mimi, and consider her a friend.  And so I wish her all the best, and I want her to write constantly to Gristmill.  And not just to flush out all the boring trolls and techno-bots, but because she has really interesting things to say.

But I would like her to relax her sense that Southern Christians are more truly Christian than us Northern Christians, and are more motivated by their Christian values than we are by ours.  Aside from that being offensive, it is untrue.

Has it occurred to anybody that the establishment of a solid, utterly secular, religiously neutral polity could be a matter of great value to Christians and Jews?

And I would also ask her to re-examine her interpretation of Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 DNC.  Not that my own interpretation is authoritative, but I certainly do not hear him saying that we should cave in to exclusivist Southern religious sensibilities.

As for the wickedly false confusion of good neighborliness, communitarianism, and willingness to support the common good, on the one hand, and totalitarian communism on the other, that is a serious matter for progressive spokespersons to address.  But by no means should that involve a retreat on core progressive values regarding community and the common good.

As for those buildings with the steeples: They are hardly a model for community activism.  The doctor's waiting room in Flannery O'Connor's "The Resurrection" makes this clear enough: this ought to be a community, but they are scarcely that; there are lots of steeples down South, after all, appropriate to different classes, races and complexions.  No thanks, we should not pander to that mentality.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Candis, thank you for being so sweet, and I very much enjoyed your Easter tale. I want to say strongly that I do NOT think that people in the south are more Christian than people in the north. I don't know what that would mean - I'm not in a position to judge that sort of thing, or even argue one side or the other. It'd be like arguing that the Whigs were more Christian than the Tories. They are just different types of Christian, and the relationship between politics and religion was different for the Tories than it was for the Whigs.
    What I am trying to say is that if you working on an issue or a campaign in the South, (and I have worked on several - Kerry 04 in Tallahassee, against Ralph Reed for Lt. Governor in 06, and several minor local races) I'd evaluate any religious-coded rhetoric for its political valance, because your audience will. If you are selling a candidate or issue which is somehow connected to negative religious rhetoric, like communism, or abortion, or mormonism, or what have you, you're going to have to think about how to deal with that issue.

"Has it occurred to anybody that the establishment of a solid, utterly secular, religiously neutral polity could be a matter of great value to Christians and Jews"

Hmm. I've seen Christian-Jewish political conferences take place, but they tend to be about Israel, or about anti-Semitism and they address the theological issues that underpin various forms of Zionism and anti-Semitism. I'd say they are religio-political, rather than secular. And, there are structures with political capital in GA that are secular: Homeowners associations, neighborhood committees, parent-teacher associations, can be very politically powerful here. Although they can't lock up votes the way they do in some Northern cities, I've definitely left political campaigns of candidates whom I like very much because they failed to secure the support of either in city-wide elections. Newspapers carry a lot of weight in primary voting, as do specific advocacy groups. But no one can take on the Church in this region by using uncautious rhetoric.

"And I would also ask her to re-examine her interpretation of Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 DNC.  Not that my own interpretation is authoritative, but I certainly do not hear him saying that we should cave in to exclusivist Southern religious sensibilities."
I don't know much about Obama, I am still learning about him. I'd have to look at that speech again to respond. But it seems to me that part of his appeal is that he can be an idealist and Hillary, McCain, and Guiliani, and the rest in a bare-knuckled political brawl.

I agree with your general point - I don't think that we should cave into exclusivist Southern sensibilities. What I'm saying is, given that general principle, don't inadvertently trigger them because you are unaware of the regional political discourse. Idealism exists in the south. Community exists in the South. Forgiveness, respect, charity, democracy, love, exist in the South. They just go by different names.

Theres a lot less room for error down here than in more democratic cities. In the absence of great leaders who can work magic, you choose between worse and worst. You can't advance the cause for flu vaccinations for illegal immigrants, and keep RU486 in ER room rape kits, and have needle exchanges, and get intelligent design out of science class, and pass a gay marriage amendment (for, not against) and increase the budget for public transport. Each one runs against the tide, loses you net votes, and we're already in the minority. And the opposition is very conservative, and they do not pull any punches, its borderline-unconstitutional hardball, all the way. The first thing Karl Rove did when the GOP took the state was put in place new Voter ID restrictions that will shrink the ability of the black community to get to the polls. In your home state, I don't know what political issues you're debating in other states alongside global warming. Here its still Jim Crow.

I don't know that progressives in Georgia pander to prejudice so much as we're getting our asses kicked by prejudice. Pick an issue and talk to me about how we shouldn't have to compromise or pander to certain sensibilities, and I'll tell you a horror story about whats going on in the state because we didn't. My solution has been to pick my battles, acknowledge that the level of debate is where it is and go from there, build big-tent coalitions around specific issues, look for wedge issues that will hurt the opposition, and first and foremost, use language people understand.

I think we are in agreement here about when framing comes in. I have absolutely no problem with that.

But Dobson's suggestions carry into framing, not just about idea formation. To me, what he is saying is that A. labeling something "free market" or "self-interest" is a social cue for the listener to act self-interested, and B. theres just no way to structure incentives and channel self-interest in favor of lowering emissions because the environment is inherently a larger-than-self thing.

Regarding A.: If you hail someone as citizen or brother or neighbor, rather than consumer, perhaps you will see marginally different, better, effects. Thats interesting, I'd like to see what the margin is. And, I would like to add, that if you hail them as Comrade, you're going to get an angry response and no effect whatsoever. It is true that don't have any studies to back that up, but I think it is true regardless.

Regarding B. I just don't see that he's proven his point at all. I can't think of any examples of price signal or information based regulation on unsustainable behaviors that failed specifically because price signals and information based regulations are fundamentally unsuited to limit unsustainable behaviors. Except for tobacco - and thats not a good example.

Its actually hard for me to tell whether he is talking about capitalism in general, or a small set of policies which are commonly used in the US and Europe etc. which are informed by economic theory. Dobson writes, "The problem is that the "can market capitalism be reformed?" question shows little sign of being debated in wider media discussions of climate change." I can't help but sense that Dobson's answer is no, and he thinks social science can prove it.

My feeling is that the rest of the world, and most social scientists, would say that we fought that war and lost, market capitalism can be reformed, and we're living in it. A lot of behavioral scientists have been tweaking economic models of behavior and showing that theres more than self-interest at play. I've never met anyone doing this kind of work who believed they were doing any more than fine tuning the basic theory, not overthrowing the model. I don't see what about the research Dobson is looking at which revolutionizes his concept of human nature. I'm sorry, but I think its his ideology talking.