Thread by @BlairKing_ca

I find the most frustrating thing about talking to activists is that since none of them have any reasonable education in the field of environmental science/history that we don't have a common baseline for a reasonable dialogue 1/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

These film students and political scientists don't understand the language of toxicity, they have no grounding in empirical science and have no understanding of what we have learned from the past. They imagine they are the first to have had ideas 2/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

We advance science and other empirical fields by incremental advances in the knowledge-base. We build on ideas and research carried out in the past. This knowledge-base is passed on through environmental education 3/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

None of the activists have undergone that education. They don't know what they don't know because they have wandered into the field because they "care about the environment" but this leaves them woefully unprepared for reasonable discussion 4/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

The idea of the Environmental Kuznet Curve and that we have to satisfy human needs absolutely goes over their heads because they all grew up in a society where their daily needs were always being met 5/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

Moreover, most come from an urban background so they really don't understand where food comes from and what it takes to provide the necessities of life. They don't understand where the things they take for granted come from 6/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

Clean water, plentiful supplies of food in the stores, buses and subways are all just the norm for them and they don't ask how does that food get to the store or what inputs go into ensuring we have clean water in our taps 7/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

What is funny is that they then insult me because I point out something that is a well-understood truth. That when we damage our economy the first set of priorities that get defunded are the environmental ones 8/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

In Canada, The Green Plan was killed when the economy went south and when the economy came back up so did environmental protection initiatives. When have we set aside the most land for conservation? During economic upturns 9/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

The economy and the environment are eternally linked and absent a solid economy we will not have environmental improvement. Investment in renewable energies requires "investment" and those funds disappear when times are tight 10/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli

This is the sort of thing someone who has spent the time to learn about the issue would know but when I point it out I am informed that I am blaming the poor for environmental degradation which is looking at the topic exactly backwards 11/ #bcpoli #abpoli #cdnpoli