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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34984 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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The Finnish election happened last Sunday. The ruling centre-left government and its parties lost seats, though the Social Democrats could recoup some of their losses from other governing parties. The right-wing parties won a resounding victory, though it remains to be seen whether the neoliberal National Coalition, now the top party, will build a right-wing government with the nationalist Finns Party or a centrist liberal government with the Social Democrats. Many options will be considered.

More on this and the past four years can be read from the following article.

Culture-war-wise, this election probably confirmed that 1. economic questions (the base for National Coalition's victory, particularly debt) still come first in Finland and 2. while immigration probably played a role, and perhaps stuff like trans issues or generic anti-wokeness, the main culture war in Finland still is basically what could be described as "environmentalism vs. standard middle-class way of life", ie. whether the so called green shift and strict climate targets are electorally compatible with people's fears over losing their job, seeing costs of living (fuel, electricity, food etc.) go up, and generally whether environmentalism is just an urban academic fad incompatible with normie life, particularly in rural areas. It's hard to see this one winding down in the future, either.

the main culture war in Finland still is basically what could be described as "environmentalism vs. standard middle-class way of life", ie. whether the so called green shift and strict climate targets are electorally compatible with people's fears over losing their job, seeing costs of living (fuel, electricity, food etc.) go up, and generally whether environmentalism is just an urban academic fad incompatible with normie life, particularly in rural areas.

The dilemma facing progressive parties everywhere is that while saying "We need to address climate change" is popular, measures to address climate change aren't. In recent years, Covid has good and well emptied people's tank of virtuous self-sacrifice. Even if it hadn't, climate change doesn't present a visible immediate threat like Covid did. If you mess with food and fuel prices, the apolitical masses will leave the sideline.

The ideal strategy, of course, is to pay lip-service to the cause, pass a few paper straw initiatives, and let be. Unfortunately, this strategy risks you getting overrun by True Believers who grab the wheel and try to steer you into an iceberg. (See: "Defund the police")

If you mess with food and fuel prices, the apolitical masses will leave the sideline.

The US midterms in 2022 showed they will not.

If there's one thing I know is a popular opinion among the apolitical masses, it's that paper straws genuinely made everything worse for absolutely no tangible benefit. It's like sucking on an Argos catalogue. And they come packaged in plastic most of the time anyway!

FUCK paper straws. They are truly horrible and in a just world they wouldn't exist. I don't have anything against trying to make things better for the environment. LED bulbs, for example, work great and save energy. Win-win, awesome. But paper straws just suck (heh) at being straws. I'm not willing to tolerate functionality getting worse just for some environmental benefit, you have to give me a product that works just as well.

I'm not willing to tolerate functionality getting worse just for some environmental benefit

I am, if it actually makes a dent. I find it hard to believe replacing straws, of all the things, is so great for the environment.

Supposedly the organization that popularized plastic straw bans wanted it to be a kind of pilot project for larger-scale bans on single-use plastic. They thought a ban on plastic straws would be more acceptable given how insignificant straws are. It seems this backfired and people ended up thinking the ban on plastic straws was itself the goal and that it was pointless.

They thought a ban on plastic straws would be more acceptable given how insignificant straws are.

Un?fortunately, straws are not insignificant; the intent of "just make everything worse at gunpoint, besides, don't you know fast food is bad for you?" here was loud, clear, and accurate. I think they had more success with the reusable bag thing, but even the poor have cars to store the bags when not in use.

And they come packaged in plastic most of the time anyway!

Hmm. Maybe that's a new opportunity. Sell individual paper straws where the packaging is useful as a plastic straw once you remove the paper.

A boba straw. Inside it is a regular size of paper straw. Inside that is a plastic coffee stirrer.

One local fast food joint switched from paper cups and plastic straws to plastic cups and paper straws. Hooray for environmentalism.

A local fast food joint made that switch, then switched back, and finally settled on plastic straws and styrofoam cups.

I assumed supply chain issues at the time.

I mean, this just seems like it totally gives up on deciding what sort of impact climate change itself will have on your country.

One would think, maybe rather optimistically, that environmental policies are, well, about the environment? Surely the actual environment has to come into it somewhere. Instead, this sounds like the only question is the political struggle - for the sake of itself.

I remember reading a take about AI safety that posed the debate entirely about a "war of vibes", about whether which side would sound more convincing and achieve more mindshare. I wanted to grab this person by the shoulder and yell, "we are talking about physical objects! Objects that will actually exist!"

Realistically Finland is a tiny country that can’t cut back on its energy use too too much or people will freeze to death, so it’s not going to have a noticeable impact on emissions anyways.

I mean, this just seems like it totally gives up on deciding what sort of impact climate change itself will have on your country.

One would think, maybe rather optimistically, that environmental policies are, well, about the environment? Surely the actual environment has to come into it somewhere. Instead, this sounds like the only question is the political struggle - for the sake of itself.

That's the way politics actually work, though. I'm not implying that's how it "should" work, and I guess if you had to ask me one way or another, climate change is a serious issue that "should" be adressed — all the little Finlands in the world "should" virtuously decarbonize as China increases its daily burn of oil by 500k barrels/day per year, and all the little Finnish politicians "should" spend their political capital on climate action rather than own hobby horses or policies to earn them votes, and all the little Finnish voters "should" cast ballots to impoverish themself for the Greater Good while American SUVs get bigger by the year. That's not how it goes. People are not willing to set themselves on fire to warm up a room that's slowly getting colder.

Dan Ariely is discredited as a behavioural economist but I agree with everything he says here. People don't care about climate change. This isn't because they're lying, but because it's almost psychologically impossible to care. When activists agitate for climate action, it's mostly in service of something they actually do care about, like dismantling capitalism or dunking on conservatives who don't believe the science. When voters vote for climate change, it's to assuage a vague worry in their stomach; that vague worry immediately goes to the nether realm when economic hardship or another emotionally salient issue emerges.

Political parties have to respond to what their constituencies want, or Moloch destroys them. What their constituencies want is to know that Something Is Being Done™, not for something to actually be done, at cost. It's the same reason they put up useless plexiglass and had you wear masks to your restaurant table during Covid. It's the same reason towns across the US make a huge fuss about their recyclying programs and separating your various types of garbage, when 90% of it ends up landfills halfway across the world anyway.

At least Finland has pretty much solved the landfill problem. About half of the waste is recycled and the rest is incinerated.

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