For people who run around thinking they're the intellectual sect of conservatives, the mental gymnastics libertarians perform to deny science and scientific consensus in the public and private spheres is astounding. The denial of it means that either all the experts are wrong, or that there is a conspiracy running so deeply in the world that only tin-foil hatters at WorldNetDaily should be peddling it. Not skeptics that make a show called "bullshit".
Frankly – I’m sympathetic and even lean towards the left-branded anarchist circles myself. But I’ve never been able to commit to any kind of "libertarianism" for one reason alone. It’s not the fact that I feel addicted to the nanny state. It’s the fact that no “non-system” or system that rejects or does whatever it can to minimize authoritative involvement with society is capable of handing disaster well; be it disasters caused by nature or disasters created collectively by man.
The grand majority of Libertarians, for the most part, outright deny the existence of climate change, or deny man being the driving force behind it. They’ll point to Climategate – nevermind all eight organizations looked into it they found no foul play or distortion of scientific data.
Or they’ll say it exists but it’s not mankind’s fault – they’ll blame sunspots or whatever. They tend to find 100 little paper cuts so they can smugly roll their collective eyes at the idea, (like the carbon footprint of cow farts). But the reality is the principled and supposedly intellectual side of the conservative moment outright denies the findings of scientists over the last 50 years or more, and instead hold on to a scattering of corrupt studies funded by vested industry.
Why? Why would they deny it? Because it’s a shared problem. It’s shared between consumer & factory & farm alike. It’s shared between people in all states, in all nations. This isn’t something the courts are going to fix. It’s not something the market is going to fix. So rather than admit “hey – my philosophy is not equipped to handle a problem of this nature” they either deny it, question the science behind it (nothing wrong with that if the questions are genuine - which they're usually not. Questions are more often used to muddy an argument, not to be answered and proved aka concern trolling), question how much man contributes (when these facts are pretty well known and agreed upon by 90%+ of the scientific community). And then have the audacity to think they are hardened "skeptics". They are only skeptics in the way that people who believe in homeopathy, reiki healing, tarot cards and healing crystals are "skeptics" of traditional medicine. Nothing more. A bunch of fucking hacks who care more about philosophical purism than living in reality.
Libertarians have they have a one-size-fits-all-problems-philosophy that doesn’t bend that this problem throws a wrench in. So rather than admit that this collective problem needs collective solutions, and even solutions from authority, from regulation, they deny what is inconvenient for them.
And like or hate Al Gore - his video was appropriately named. Because for a conservative/libertarian/capitalist in this decade, it is inconvenient to admit this is real. Even though in the 1990s - even most conservatives agreed climate change was real and man made. It wasn't until industry started bankrolling campaigns and fake studies attempting to throw doubt on the situation the exact same way the tobacco industry tried throw doubt on the health claims of cigarettes - did the public discussion change. And now - things like, caring for this earth, has become yet another topic you can't talk about in mixed companies because conservatives have all become such extremist, unrealistic, living-in-a-fantasy land, blowhards.
Disaster, like climate change, can be looked at through the lens of the Great Influenza. In this book, it shows the cities and states that handled quarantine and minimized the damage of the pandemic the best, were the places that took hardline, authoritarian, central and collective control of the situation. Ther