Right-Wingers Aren’t “Anti-Science,” They’re Anti-Nature

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“The most beautiful thing about a tree is what you do with it after you cut it down.” – Rush Limbaugh (denial payback)

California and Oregon wildfires - August 2018
Record fires burn in California & Oregon (August 2018). “Now is not the time to talk about climate change” say brain-dead Republicans. Such thinking is an evolutionary dead-end.

What sort of ignorant conspiracy-nuts would look at a scene like that and blame it entirely on lack of logging or “job-killing” water regulations while refusing to acknowledge global warming as a major factor? Who would keep parroting rationalizations like “the climate’s changed before” with chronic resistance to established facts and the latest insights?

Stubborn right-wing idiots, that’s who. With all due respect to conservatives who can see the world beyond money, let’s call these people what they really are. We need to thin the deniers, not the trees (housing sprawl justifies understory fire-suppression). It’s long past the point where debates about man-made environmental problems are a case of “agree to disagree.” There’s a swamp of avarice badly in need of draining.

Here are some typical right-wing views on the environment, loaded with greed, pettiness and evil:

  • They think the economy must grow indefinitely, spurred on by the weakest possible environmental regulations. It’s a mindset of making money and destroying anything that lacks a utilitarian or recreation purpose. They see wilderness-preservation as an economic impediment, unless of course hunting is allowed. Everything’s about human wants, with no intrinsic respect for nature. Zinke under Trump and Watt under Reagan are prime examples of that attitude. Note that “Green Growth” is driven by many of the same attitudes, covered at length elsewhere on this blog.
  • They decry immigration (wise in a carrying-capacity context) yet defund contraception for impoverished nations, which could actually reduce the pressure. They’d rather build yuugely expensive walls to support resource-guzzling, make-work construction jobs. Their ability to grasp root causes and effects is limited by archaic beliefs and small-mindedness. A typical right-winger wants to know as little as possible about the nuances of a topic and far more about the latest slogans. Mind you, this is also true on the far Left, but they’re more forgiving of racial differences, even though some of it is naive.
  • Mindless global warming denial is an automatic response from Republicans. CO2 supposedly disobeys the laws of physics just for them. Some of the smarter ones acknowledge the science but would rather tow the party line and keep the threat vague, or throw free-market solutions at it. They “forget” that the free-market necessitated the EPA after decades of industry inaction. They now support filth-mongers like Trump, bent on crippling the EPA’s taken-for-granted progress. This speech by Steven F. Hayward is one of the worst (or rather best) examples of AGW-denial. He’s got no science background but rubes are easily fooled by his calculated language, just as shapely Fox News babes beguile them.
  • A number of wingnuts literally hate nature and take pride in pillaging it. Look in any comment section on endangered species articles and you’ll find some GOP dirtbag wanting a cost-benefit analysis of its very existence, wishing it gone for economic expedience. “Wipe your ass with a spotted owl” was a popular white trash slogan, as if decimating forests is a good thing. If that’s not an evil, sadistic attitude, what is? Creationism is common among that ilk, with emphasis on “subdue” in Genesis 1:28. One species, arrogant under God, united to destroy.
  • They call themselves “pro-life” yet resist reasonable gun laws and wrap their egos in firearms (a tool is just a gun). Many enjoy killing non-human life for entertainment and sleazy pseudo-conservation, e.g. smokeapackaday.com. Many “avid hunters” will shoot anything they can label a pest or game animal, often just to test new rifles or bows. Trophy hunters are like people who’d cut down an ancient tree just so they can “own” it. The intrinsic quality of a trophy is lost the moment it’s taken by force. The evil motives of quasi-hunters have become very clear in online media. Here’s what many “sportsmen” are up to, grinning all the while. Clearly morally superior to any subhuman mongrel.
greed - redneck rampage - prairie dog shoot - rolling coal
Greedy by nature, with “All the killin’, twice the humor, half the intelligence.” (spot-on slogan for a video game), plus prairie dog serial killers and wasteful diesel coal-rolling.

What exactly is a right-winger vs. an honest conservative? List of basic traits:

  1. Like other crass individuals, these people make few attempts to control their reptilian brains and unrefined amygdalas, but they do it in a specific ideological context framed by ethnic heritage. They wallow in the worst human traits while framing it as a freedom agenda.
  2. They tend to be shifty-eyed, incurious people who claim to be honest and fair but will lie & cheat if something cramps their style. You can tell when you’re speaking to one by a certain blank look, frequent sarcasm and flashes of anger. They like Trump because those behaviors suit him. Evangelicals who voted for Trump were sleazy all along (“mystery” solved).
  3. They’re always gloating about God, guns and greed. The Chosen Ones preach the loudest, shoot the fastest and grab the most resources. They’ve twisted blatant self-interest into a frontier-morality legend. Their false belief that frontiers are still plentiful drives much of their anti-regulation mindset.
  4. They prefer a bare minimum of knowledge to “git ‘er done,” e.g. “I don’t need book learnin’ to remove my catalytic converter and piss off the EPA.” If you ask them to think beyond what they “already lernt” they get agitated, in part because many lack intelligence and are jealous of those who have it. Basic stupidity explains some radical conservatism.
  5. Having general disdain for expertise and intellectuals, they dumb-down complicated topics and over-complicate basic ones to suit ideology. Global warming denial is loaded with that attitude. Global shutdowns due to COVID-19 “coronapanic” (arguably extreme) were lumped in with “climate alarmism” in right-wing circles. Everything’s seen as a government control plot, with different cases and contexts ignored. Worrying about any major topic except bank accounts and gun restrictions is seen as personal frailty.
  6. Morally, they’re the white equivalent of black or Hispanic ghetto thugs, with similar gun and vehicle obsessions. A common thread is “We do whatever we feel like and if others are affected, tough luck.” The appearance of having power, even when unearned, is vital to them.
  7. As with ghetto gang-bangers, everything bad that happens to a right-winger is someone else’s fault, often the government’s. In morally decent countries (which America aspires to be) corrupt people whine the most about “big gub’mint” because they resent how it controls their corruption, which they pass off as “individual rights.”
  8. They fixate on their own rights and everyone else’s responsibilities, choosing to shirk the latter when it cramps their style.
  9. If you catch them doing something morally wrong or illegal, they’re likely to keep doing it just to spite their accusers. Polluting and wasting energy on Earth Day or shooting game out of season are typical examples.

When a right-winger lies about humans having minimal impact, or talks about “plenty of land remaining,” refer them to Google Earth time-lapse imagery. Start by showing them lands with so-called sustainable logging and watch them go silent. Forests are constantly being pillaged because the population never stops growing. The process is also known as “job creation” among those who respect no other benchmark.

Many conservatives apply logic and justifiable cynicism to social issues, but ditch the facts when nature is under discussion. Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson is a prime example. He calls for personal accountability when making life choices, yet pretends the laws of nature don’t apply to people and it’s OK to be an energy wastrel because Man must “thrive.” He’s claimed to not be a right-winger, yet shares their anti-environmental ideology, portraying concern for the planet as a leftist agenda (social angle, not scientific). Peterson thinks any real acknowledgment of climate change and human overpopulation would slow economic growth, which is all that really matters in that worldview.

Per the topmost photo, this was written while surrounded by forest fire smoke, which gets one thinking about mass stupidity and denial as a political agenda. Don’t just blame the likes of Trump, blame your neighbors who thought he was fit to lead and supported his anti-EPA, monument-shrinking agenda. The current POTUS is merely the latest incarnation of a piss-on-nature mentality that Reagan kicked into high gear. People like that have been around since America was founded, and exist all over the world. They should be corralled in the foulest possible cities while decent people try to do the actual RIGHT thing.

P.S. This author is not technically liberal; just pointing out the worst of human nature from various angles. There are still good conservatives, meaning ones who actually conserve resources and respect wildlife. They unfortunately get drowned out by the far right. More are switching to Independent status but it doesn’t do much for elections.

This page may be updated and reworded at random with new information. If you cite it, please post the link instead of a pasted snapshot.

17 thoughts on “Right-Wingers Aren’t “Anti-Science,” They’re Anti-Nature”

    1. Respect Silence Post author

      D.B. Is that real or a parody of an illiterate wingnut? Check that grammar. You address nothing about the details of this topic, but of course that’s normal for the low-information crowd. If this whole post offended stupid people, that was the point.

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  2. mgraham

    It’s not just so-called “right” wingers. The Obama administration also granted permits for both hydrofracking and mountaintop removal and continued supporting the oil industry through tax breaks, all in spite of Obama’s “environmental legacy.”

    Consider also Mexico’s president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose energy strategy could have been taken straight from the playbook of any American conservative: generate more electricity, expand refinery capacity, and iexpand oil and gas drilling.

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    1. Respect Silence Post author

      Right-wingers are much more vocal in their disdain for nature, but you have a point. Nature wasn’t helped by Obama’s subsidies for industrial wind turbines; the most environmentally-invasive “clean” energy technology ever invented (see other posts here). It’s all part of the same mindset that tries to build our way out of various messes while creating new ones.

      “100% renewable energy” is an utter lie based on carbon credits. Those who think we can simply vilify fossil fuels and fix energy problems are deluded because they don’t grasp scale. Major infrastructure will depend on dense carbon-based energy for an indefinite time to come. It’s impossible to build just a single wind turbine blade or gearbox without fossil fuels in the chain.

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  3. Curt Kastens

    I think that the chances that humans do not emerge from the 21st century are 99.5%. But if we do emgerge it will only be if we can generate nuclear fusion power, AND figure out what actions to take to counter act the consequences of global warming that are already set in motion. AND adopt a world wide maximum 2 child per family policy which hopefully with the intent of of achieving less than 2 children per family as some women would no doubt chose to have only one or no children at all. AND that humanity figures out how to go in to a type of economic hibernation while still managing to feed everyone with out making some people feel like they are slaves to those doing little work. Developing benevolent AI would help to figure out how to solve some of the problems that I listed above. But attempts to create a benevolent AI could backfire and lead to the creation of a hostile AI.

    Ok so in summary the key that unlocks the door that might save us is,
    Nuclear Fusion
    Economic Hybirnation
    A Demographic Shift
    Climate Triage
    (Possibly aided by aritificial intellegence)

    We are not dead yet. We now should be talking about
    A.) giving up and carrying on as we have been until we can not carry on any more. At which point the militaries of the world will supply the populations of their countries with cyanid capusles so people do not have to starve to death if they do not want to. After all failure is going to be really really gruesome. Suicide on an industrial scale will be very humain by compairison. Everyone has to die though. I do not like one bit the idea one bit that huge numbers of people from the third world, who did not create these problems, should die and then millions of rich north Americans and Europeans manage to pull through because of some kind of technological miracle.
    B.) carrying out an overthrow of the world wide capitalist system and replacing it with a socialist system which would be the only way that the world’s economy could be power downed with out creating social chaos by living billions of people to starve to death. The conditions of economic hybernation would hopefully buy enough time for nuclear fusion to be developed and climate triage policies to get some results.

    The thing is you the reader of this comment have no role to play, except to carry on doing what ever it is that you have been doing, until choice B is made. If it is ever made. At this point in history there is only one group of people who could in theory chose option B for the world. That is the field grade officers of the American, Chinese, and Russian militaries operating in complete harmony with one another.
    Now a natural human reaction would be to say that it is insane to even suggest such a thing could happen. But to believe that such a thing could not happen you would have to believe that all the field grade officers of these three nations, despite being highly educated, are complete idiots. Or that OK maybe there are one or two from each country who are not complete idiots but they no doubt do not have any children of their own and are not concerned about the future fate of other peoples children.
    Well if there are any people in those militaries who can see beyond their nose how is it that we have gotten to this point that we are now in? That is a good question. Could it be because the general officers of one of these militaries, was exceptionally corrupt beyond even the level of your garden variety nazi, and that this group of general officers had a huge head start in organization over those who finally woke up to the fact that those generals are the people that they should have been protecting their population from rather than cooperating with those generals plans for the world’s future. Sadly if there were people who reached such a conclusion, until they step out from the shadows for the world to see, they exist only in my imagination.
    Because even though I do not think that all field grade officers are idiots I do not know how many think that the world’s tipping point was 350 ppm CO2 and so the point in which the world could be saved is long past and the only thing to do now is to play a starring role in a real life war movie until production of the real life zombie movie starts. That means that a few good men may never emerge from the shadows.

    A final thought about AI. Even a benevolent AI could be a disaster for humanity if it causes people to be even lazier intellectually than they are now.

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      1. Curt Kastens

        Well what I will say is that if things were done differently after the second world war in terms of economic development we could have been in a much better position today to handle our problems, Under different circumstances than we have now wind and or solar power could have been desicive in creating a comfortable sustainable society. First of all it would have been important NOT to have built the interstate highway system which allowed urban sprawl. Second an electrified railroad network needed to be built to move food and other goods long distances. In addition the US needed to renounce the idea of maintaining a world wide empire. That would have allowed the defence policy of the United States needed to take advantage of its position that is unique in the universe. The United States could have realied on a very inexpensive and energy efficent policy of maintaining a nuclear trip wire. Because of that any nation or group of nations would have had to even prepare for an invasion of the USA this is no chance that this nuclear tripwire would have ever been challenged. The hydrocarbons that the USA burned would have been used primarily for farm tractors and heavy equipment. That is if the solar power and wind could have powered the railroad network. Any additional power could have then been used to provide for our TVs, radios, washers, and possibly dryers, and refregorators. But the last 3 would not have been absolutely neccessary. Although a washing machine is really a time saver for the spouse who does the family laundry. I remember a time when my grandmother had to do all of the laundry by hand. And she dried it on the line. She used to really get pissed when a bird would shit on the bed sheets before they were dry.
        So if the benifits of technology would have been shared reasonably people in the 1970 up until now could have live a life of perhaps 24 hours of work per week with the rest of the time playing baseball, basketball and soccer, playing chess, go, backgammon, dominoes, and card games, painting, playing music, reading books for pleasure, riding bicylcle, and going to the theater. Time could have also been spent watching TV and listening to the radio.
        Things could have been much different. But our future was hijacked by child molesters masqurading as leaders. Many of these so called leaders were confederare officers dressed in union army uniforms. But the soldiers could not see these military leaders for who they really were. Or they were proud to serve with them knowing full well that they were serving in the confederate army.

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      2. Respect Silence Post author

        “Under different circumstances than we have now wind and or solar power could have been desicive in creating a comfortable sustainable society. ”

        Sorry, wind turbines are bleak as hell when you really see what’s going on (see other posts here) but I’m for rooftop solar with emphasis on a small footprint, as all “green” technologies should. Wind power fails that test out of the gate. Solar’s at least mountable on existing structures but all of it’s built with fossil fuels and becomes a net energy farce when you run the math, e.g. Mark Jacobson’s popularized scheme.

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  4. Curt Kastens

    I am mere sociologist not a mathamatician or a physicist But, Manuel Garcia Jr, is a physicist. He seems to think that solar had (has) potential.
    https://manuelgarciajr.com/2018/11/19/climate-change-action-would-kill-imperialism/

    One other thing that I forgot to bring up as at least a stop gap measure. That is that nuclear fission power be reconsidered. There have been quite a number of engineering proposals made since the 1980s that claim that the redesign of nuclear fission power plants can make nuclear fission power much safer and also deal with the radioactive material produced in the process.

    Reguardless of what should, but is unlikely, to happen, we have to ask ourselves what do we do now. I live for revenge myself. I think that things could have been done differently and much better in the past. More importantly I do not think that it was an accident or through stupidity that bad decisions were made. I think that that bad decisions of the past were done with cold blooded intent. For that people have to pay. Such a horrible crime deserves a really horrible punishment.

    Ok yes dreams of revenge are no doubt a type of fantasy. But in these troubling times millions turn to the fantasies of religion, millions more to drugs, millions more to video games, millions more are so busy working two jobs that they do not have time to think. It takes dreams of revenge to get me through the day.

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  5. Curt Kastens

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proposed a 70% tax rate on incomes over 10 million. That is so generous to the rich that it is completely criminal.
    I once created a tax table. It had a 100% top tax bracket. I do not remember anymore at what level it was reached. But I do remember the gist of my tax table was that it was impossible for a family to earn more than 330,000 US dollars per year, in earned income. My tax rates for unearned income was also progressive, starting at 1% at 12,000 US dollars and reaching 100% at 65,000 dollars for those under 65 years of age. For those over 65 it started at 1% over 24,000 and reaching 100% at 78,000 US Dollars. Social Security income would be untaxed. Is it a good idea not to tax social security income if someone makes say 60,000 in Social Security and has other unearned income?

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  6. Curt Kastens

    Back around 1990 I realized that American (US) society was insane and that i had to leave before the society that I was living in drove me insane.
    It took a few years but eventually I left. Now I have reached the point that I think that even though American society is the most insane, the entire planet is insane. I want to disassociate myself from humanity. Yet me my family ties prevent me from committing suicide. There are of course individual exceptions to the general insanity. But collectively speaking those of one this planet that are sitll sane failed at curing the masses of their delusions.
    That does not mean that we were stupid. It means that we had a really really hard job ot start with. We were heavily outnumbered. The lunatics had a big head start. We did not have all the time in the universe.

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      1. Curt Kastens

        That is exactly what I would have told Colonel Theodore Westhuising if I had had the opportunity. A field grade officer has a large capative audiance. Sure he could get in to really big trouble if s/he gets reported for sedition. But the military would be in a loose loose situation. It would be as embarrasing as hell for the military to have to admit that there was a field grade officer in its ranks committing sedition. Or it could ignore the sedition and hope to reel in the officer by other means. Those other means would be unorthodox which would also have negative side effects.
        Sadly I guess once someone gets corrupted they are hesitant to remake themselves in to who they need to be rather than who they have been.

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  7. Curt Kastens

    I found my proposed tax table which I created around 2010. I had it in mind for those who are married filing jointly. It was quite simple. It had a 50,000 dollar family deduction. Then a starting tax rate of 15%. Then the tax rates went up with each 50, 000 dollars until the reached 100% at 350,000 dollars. It would have been illegal for anyone to earn a take home pay of more than 155,000 dollars per year.
    But even this tax table has been over taken by facts on the ground. At this point the only thing to be done is to say all economic activity is illegal except for the production and distribution of food and terrafarming to try to capture CO2 in the atmosphere, until further notice.

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  8. Curt Kastens

    Another thing that really pisses me off is that governments could have enacted policies that would have led to a rapid reduction in the consumption of beef and pork with an increase in the consumption of rabbit and poultry. Not only that humanity could have made much greater use of Bamboo, not only to replace wood but even to replace steel in some cases. It only took a leadership with the intellegence of Wilma Flintstone and Betty Ruble.
    If Cynthia McKinney and Ilhan Omar had been in charge we would probably be living like the people in the Jetsons by now.

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