How Conservatives Have Duped Us in the Global Warming Fight

By Joe Brewer, The Rockridge Institute
Posted on April 1, 2008, Printed on April 1, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/80874/

The movie Field of Dreams had a wild idea -- that a person could build his dream in the corn field and others would come from miles around to take part. This attitude is not restricted to Hollywood: It is a common notion in government that if we build a good policy the people will come rally around it. But because most policy solutions are bureaucratic and technical, people are often uninterested. To get people to care and to rally around good policies, we need to advance the ideas from which the policies flow.

When it comes to the climate crisis, there's been plenty of talk about cap-and-trade, carbon offsets, taxes on fossil fuels, and investment plans for renewable energy. But there is hardly any talk about what all this means to everyday folks or why public understanding matters. What most people are missing is that the solution may well lie in the way people think about and understand the climate crisis.