|
pooley wrote: If you are not winning public opinion with your arguments, find better ones.
But why?
I'm not being flippant here, I'm intrigued as to why you make this suggestion. Is it because you believe such an approach is Right (in some moral / ethical sense)? Or is it because you believe it's the most effective way to social change?
Frankly, I dispute both claims.
Firstly, I do not view the public as an accurate ethical or moral barometer. Just because a majority (even a massive majority) believes something to be right, does not make it so. In fact, I view democracy as uniquely problematic precisely because it so often masks immoral or unethical behaviour with the supposed respectability of "the democratic process". As though "lots of people want it" could ever be a moral justification.
pooley wrote: It's a very simple equation - get people to agree and things will change.
Secondly, while there's no doubt that changing public opinion can be one way to bring about social change, experience teaches us that it's far from the only way. And interestingly, experience also teaches us that changing public opinion is not even a guarantee of changing public behaviour. If you were to ask many of the people who fly regularly, or use a car a lot, or have patio heaters (or whatever), they will insist that they believe in the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
Changing the opinion of a group does not always change its behaviour. And arguably, on the issue of climate change, public opinion has already been changed to a large extent. Therefore, one must look into alternative methods of changing public behaviour beyond merely pointing out the negative consequences of that behaviour.
Pretty much everyone on the planet who smokes cigarettes is aware that they are causing damage to their health. A huge number even make a lot of noise about how they wish they didn't smoke, but can't help themselves. So long as it's only their own body they are destroying with their addiction, we tend not to feel comfortable sanctioning prohibitive intervention. And nor should we.
But when an addiction -- like the addiction of over-consumption gripping the 'developed' world -- starts to threaten the well-being of large numbers of others, then most accept that intervention is necessary, whether or not the addict wants it.
I pesonally see Climate Change as part of the larger, more complex issue of sustainability. I believe that if, as is likely, we fail to shift towards a sustainable social model within the next handful of years, we'll be condeming billions of people -- some living now, many as yet unborn -- to extreme and unnecessary suffering. What exactly could be more unethical than that? Ignoring the opinion of an over-fed and self-obsessed consumer public doesn't even come close.
If we do, en masse, choose to cease our over-consumption then fantastic! And I'm right behind any attempts to make that happen. But based upon my reading of the public mind, I don't believe that we will choose to act in time. So those who seek ways of forcing that change also get my support.
EDIT: I hope it goes without saying that I'm not claiming that chucking custard over Mandelson is necessarily an effective strategy for forcing social change. I was discussing the general, not the specific.
|
