I keep coming back to the basic contradiction in liberal discourse on climate crisis, on display in this poll but also US media in general (see: last week's Feasibility Scolding of Sanders GND in NYT): if one believes the science what the fuck difference does the cost matter?
reading that NYT piece handwringing about Feasibility and Costs of the Green New Deal I was imagining a bunch of guys w/ clipboards yelling at firefighters putting out a house fire that they were wasting too much water. Theres a massive, lightyears gap between science & response.
Others have noted this but it's worth repeating I think: in the Year of Our Lord 2019, handwringing about the costs of confronting climate crisis is denialism. It literally means you don't agree on the urgency of the problem and thus don't accept the science, full stop.
someone recut the movie Armageddon but about 20 minutes in Bruce Willis and his gang are stopped by a handful of Deficit Hawks in Congress and NYT op-ed writers who just dont know How We Can Afford To Stop the Astroid. Cut to a massive trillion ton nuclear explosion then credits
I do suspect one of the drivers of climate denialism is the contradiction in liberal rhetoric & political action. On one side of the NYT dot com is a study showing we have a few years to stop the literal end of the earth & on the other, an article worrying How We Will Pay For It.
This is wildly incongruent but it happens about 10 times a month and i think it begins to read as false.
