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Dr. Genevieve Guenther Profile picture
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17 Feb, 6 tweets, 3 min read
I usually love @EENewsUpdates, but this story on the politics of the Texas blackouts is garbage.

We did not see "partisan arguments" about whether to blame renewables or fossil fuels.

We saw GOP LIES blaming wind power and reality-based FACT CHECKS correcting the record.
And this paragraph's false equivalence makes my head spin.

People's criticism of Texas Repubs is not the same as these Repub's criticism of CA Dems.

Repubs are being criticized for lies and hypocrisy. Dems were being criticized for *supporting renewable energy*.
And, finally, it wasn't "some" conservative groups who attempted to use the grid failure to scare people away from climate action. It was the *entire* right-wing spin machine, from the Texas Public Policy Foundation to Fox News, who LIED about the blackouts to en masse.
The whole story is here👇

eenews.net/energywire/202…

Honestly I couldn't get past the third paragraph, it was just too infuriating. But have at it, y'all!
People love to cite the vast money and power of the right wing as what makes their messaging so effective, but to my mind what makes it effective is the way their messages are repeated and/or normalized in putatively "reality-based" discourse. This is the real problem to solve.
That my son's very left-wing, intelligent, thoughtful teacher can hear right-wing messaging on BBC radio and (understandably) repeat it in class is, to my mind, emblematic of a much bigger problem than the mere existence of a vast right-wing echo chamber.

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More from @DoctorVive

Dr. Genevieve Guenther Profile picture
17 Feb
OMG it turns out that at his CNN town hall last night, @JoeBiden didn't tie what's happening in Texas to climate change or to his plans to decarbonize the grid.

@TheDemocrats are STILL making the same messaging mistake. They are scared to connect disasters to climate!

THREAD
I argued *three years ago*, after Hurricane Harvey, that the Dems had been essentially bullied by the right into not talking about climate while people were actually suffering and (sociology suggests) most receptive to climate messages.

medium.com/@DoctorVive/po…
This fear and weakness is part and parcel of the Dem's reluctance to discuss climate policy as a political fight with clear stakes and clear antagonists. But are the Repubs reluctant to do this?? Of course not! They say nothing without demonizing their opponents.
Read 5 tweets
Dr. Genevieve Guenther Profile picture
16 Jan
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is very much in the news right now, so I think it's time to review what the @IPCC_CH says about CDR in SR 1.5.

First: they say that CDR "deployed at scale" is speculative or "unproven"and relying on it to halt warming at 1.5C is a "major risk."👇

🧵
You'll often hear energy experts and the people who listen to them say that "we need CDR," as if this were a scientific fact about the carbon system or a level of emissions to which we are already locked in.

This is not true.

2/n
If we halted all GHG pollution within the next year or two, say, we would not need CDR to halt warming at 1.5C.

3/n
Read 15 tweets
Dr. Genevieve Guenther Profile picture
21 Dec 20
Now that @JoeBiden has made #ClimateAction his priority, the political press is going to spend the next few months asking his administration "tough questions" along two separate, quasi-denialist lines.

Let's take a look...

[thread]
First, they're going ask how his climate plan will make life tougher for "ordinary Americans." They're going to ask whether families are going to be forced to "sacrifice"—or they're going to ask what "enforcement mechanisms" the administration is going to put in place.

2/n
These sorts of questions obviously pick up on the right-wing talking point that Democrats want to outlaw hamburgers and forbid you from flying to see Grandma for the holidays.

3/n
Read 22 tweets
Dr. Genevieve Guenther Profile picture
4 Dec 20
This is a LONG thread composed of screenshots of the entire first chapter of Kim Stanley Robinson's novel *The Ministry for the Future*.

Please read it all.

Don't look away.

#climatechange #ClimateAction #ClimateEmergency

—————————

"It was getting hotter."

1/n
"Here there was no escaping it."

2/n
"All over town the stressed hum of windowbox air conditioner fans buzzed like giant mosquitos."

3/n
Read 42 tweets
Dr. Genevieve Guenther Profile picture
9 Nov 20
If this is how @SpeakerPelosi and @TheDemocrats are going to message climate change—"framed" or *hidden behind marginal issues like "habitat" or "clean air, clean water" or even "health" or "morals"—we are going to get KILLED once the fight begins.

THREAD
I know these "frames" poll well in focus groups. But in the field they are ineffective, as experience has shown time and time again.

They are ineffective because they are *decontextualized*. They fail to account for political opposition and the effects of disinformation.

2/n
Even selling climate action as a jobs creator, while powerful in political campaigns (which are largely won and lost on promises of increasing prosperity), will fail once the policy fight begins.

Why?

Again, because it fails to account for opposition and disinformation.

3/n
Read 17 tweets
Dr. Genevieve Guenther Profile picture
23 Sep 20
Guys, this is really, really bad. Our message is not getting through.

In a new @YaleClimateComm @ClimateNexus poll, #ClimateChange came in 13th out of 18 issues "most important" to respondents' votes in November.

People STILL don't understand the urgency.

1/n
If we are not half-way to zero emissions in the next ten years, we are fucked. (Not doomed, of course, but fucked—important distinction.)

Half-way to 0 emissions means we must start NOW.

This is the most consequential election in human history due to THE #CLIMATECRISIS.

2/n
Everyone who follows me on Twitter knows this, of course.

But voters still don't.

We are failing.

3/n
Read 10 tweets

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