Are Conspiracies and Oligopolies Complex Adaptive Behaviours?

Posted on September 4, 2006 by Dave Pollard

With the anniversary of 9/11 looming, there has been a recent resurgence of attention given to so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ — e.g. that 9/11 was a neocon plot, that the recent ‘terrorist busts’ in the UK, US and Canada were scripted and hyped by Homeland Security to make the authorities look less incompetent, that the Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 presidential votes (and hence the election results) were rigged, that Paul Wellstone’s plane crash was an assassination, that the government is using chemtrails to try to mitigate global warming, that the most recent oil crisis was deliberately precipitated to reduce public resistance to environmentally disastrous domestic drilling activity, and so on.

Conspiracies, and conspiracy theories, can only thrive in complex situations — where all of the relevant information is not only undisclosed but unknowable (there is just too much of it to capture), and where analysis and causality and predictability break down because there are just too many variables to consider, and the relationships between them too complex and multivariate to completely fathom. When your phone breaks down, there are a finite number of possible causes, and you can ‘systematically’ go through them, find the cause(s) and rectify the problem. The mystery is solved. But when ecological or social systems break down, or function in mysterious ways, we often never understand why, or what to do to ‘solve’ the problem. In fact, a ‘solution’ may be impossible — we may have to settle for ways to cope with the problem’s consequences.

Reader Holly Hartman suggested to me that this ‘unanalyzable, unsolvable’ feature of complex system ‘failures’ might actually encourage exploitation by opportunists for personal advantage, that one possible ’emergent behaviour’ in complex adaptive systems is conspiracy, because the conspiracy is impossible to prove with any degree of certainty. If we appreciate that, in today’s world, no one is really in control, then if someone can conspire effectively to do something really diabolical, there will be a natural inclination among the public to believe they didn’t do it, that they couldn’t have done it, that ‘no one could have pulled that off’ — because it’s just too complex. Could Bush really have conspired with Bin Laden without anyone blowing the whistle? Could two US elections be stolen without anyone behind the scenes, and without anyone in the media, coming up with and revealing the smoking gun evidence of the conspiracy? Our skepticism causes us to believe the answer is no. But this very human reluctance to believe that such monumental conspiracies are possible paradoxically increases both the likelihood of them succeeding, and the likelihood that extremists will try to orchestrate them.

Holly also suggested that really dysfunctional behaviours like our North American propensity to work longer and harder every year (happy Labour Day, everyone!) could also be an emergent quality of modern complex political and economic systems, a ‘conspiracy’ to keep us so busy and distracted we don’t have time to realize what is really happening in this world, how we’re being exploited, and what to do about it. In a sense, our co-dependency with our exploiters, and specifically our addiction to consumption and debt brought about by the existing systems serve the rich power elite very well, and could be said, in Darwinian terms, to be selected for, and self-perpetuate. As Holly puts it:

The abusive overwork standards of today’s American free enterprise system keep our vitality so low that it reduces the likelihood of an uprising…I believe we collectively are the victims of grand sweeps of socioeconomic forces which are not appreciably alterable by grass roots efforts…The more I see why the world really works the way it does, the less empowered I feel to do anything about it.

That’s not to say the rich and powerful are deliberately, consciously conspiring to keep us off balance, exhausted, distracted and addicted. But because that situation serves to reinforce the status quo and is not discouraged, it has emerged as a self-reinforcing quality of our modern wage-slave economic system.

So not only is conspiracy encouraged and more likely to succeed because of our instinctive skepticism of its possibility, but complex system inertia and learned helplessness come into play reducing both our awareness of situations that conspire (often circumstantially, not deliberately) against our collective interest, and our time and energy to try to change those situations.

Like the two-income trap, the consequence is a vicious cycle in which exploiters and exploited dance together complicitly and co-dependently. The exploiters are encouraged and emboldened to conspire against us for their personal advantage, and the exploited believe, and want to believe, that there is no conspiracy, that everything is OK, that things are the only way they can be, and that there is nothing they can do to change it anyway.

The front line of those seeking self-liberation from this vicious cycle are the so-called Truth Movements, exemplified by the well-established, feisty, diverse and activist 9/11 Truth Movement. This movement has three main factions: (a) believers that the Bush Administration orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, (b) believers that the Bush Administration had foreknowledge of and deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, and (c) believers that the Bush Administration was guilty of staggering and catastrophic negligence in failing to act to prevent the 9/11 attacks, and has since frantically tried to cover up evidence of that negligence (out of fear that public fury if the truth were discovered could actually bring down the government, perhaps in a revolution rather than ‘democratically’).

These three factions allege three different ‘flavours’ of conspiracy: (a) active conspiracy, (b) complicit conspiracy, and (c) cover-up conspiracy. What’s interesting to me is that, while I’m more inclined to believe (b) than (a), and (c) than (b), several writers, especially among conservative bloggers, seem to find (c) even more “outrageous” than (a) or (b)? What are we to make of this? Is this a knee-jerk reaction of adherents to the strict-father morality frame that being weak is worse than being wrong?

My take-aways, and messages to think about as yet another anniversary of 9/11 nears:

We need to be alert to the possibility that our skepticism about conspiracies actually plays right into the hands of conspirators (remember Watergate?), and maybe we need to become a bit skeptical about our own skepticism; and
We need to support Truth Movements, even though they include some wacky elements — as a result of the near-complete absence of investigative reporting among the mainstream media, it is only these movements, and the die-hards in the indymedia, that discourage the exploiters from exploiting us even more abusively, and work relentlessly to bring true conspiracies to light and their perpetrators to justice.
Corporatist oligopolies, which are nothing less than global conspiracies to control and distort markets in the interest of power elites and against the interest of everyone else, are overt, endemic and in today’s corrupt and ‘deregulated’ political environment almost unchallenged — their success emboldens and even legitimizes other, more dangerous anddiabolical conspiracies, and we must take action to end them.

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18 Responses to Are Conspiracies and Oligopolies Complex Adaptive Behaviours?

Wendy Farmer-O'Neil says:

September 5, 2006 at 00:52

Ahh, conspiracies…one of my favourites. Yummy. Conspiracy literally means to breathe together. We have seen conspriacies of hate, of fear, of greed. What might happen if we had a conspiracy of love? My fave conspiracy guy, Robert Anton Wilson of Illuminatus! fame, once said that the important thing was not an actual belief in conspiracies, but a willingness to believe in them.
Jake says:

September 5, 2006 at 04:35

If only all Americans were this perceptful, logical, and determined. What apathy here towards everything. I guess scholars are finally getting together on this, but I’m not sure what convincing evidence they’ll come up with.Most American’s aren’t paid to think (esp about these things!), as it were ;)
Raging Bee says:

September 5, 2006 at 08:32

…But this very human reluctance to believe that such monumental conspiracies are possible paradoxically increases both the likelihood of them succeeding, and the likelihood that extremists will try to orchestrate them.Yup…uh huh…sure…So, people who look at as much evidence as they can, and discount conspiracy theories for faulty logic and/or lack of supporting evidence, are helping the conspirators; while people who swallow uncritically whatever theories pop up on the Web are bravely pursuing the truth and trying to make our world safer. Riiiight. So tell us: were the people who discounted Hitler’s Jewish conspiracy theory helping the conspirators to succeed?Here’s why conspiracy theories are as dangerous as they are false: once you accept the notion that there is, or could be, a conspiracy of the magnitude normally alleged, you end up locking yourself into a self-reinforcing pattern of thought, in which supporting evidence proves there’s a conspiracy, lack of evidence proves there’s a coverup, and contradictory evidence proves how far-reaching the coverup is. Thus the conspiracy theory becomes a basic article of faith, which controls the organization of information, not a conclusion based on reasonable analysis of evidence.
David Parkinson says:

September 5, 2006 at 17:38

…once you accept the notion that there is, or could be, a conspiracy of the magnitude normally alleged, you end up locking yourself into a self-reinforcing pattern of thought…What nonsense. Once you accept the notion that there could be a conspiracy etc., you free yourself to evaluate all evidence in that light, instead of working to fit it into the official story. Nothing entails becoming credulous and abandoning reasonable skepticism. Just because Hitler’s fantasies of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy are known to be false, this does not mean that all hypothesized conspiracies are false.”Thus”, forsooth.
Raging Bee says:

September 5, 2006 at 21:42

Your attempt to create a false either-or choice between “working to fit it into the official story” vs. accepting the “notion” of a conspiracy (more like an “assumption” in my experience) is yet another sign of the intellectual dishonesty that invariably comes with such conspiracy stories. Can’t we question the “official story” without resorting to even more outlandish tales? Can’t we criticize Bush without imaginining he’s an invincible evil genius?Just because Hitler’s fantasies of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy are known to be false, this does not mean that all hypothesized conspiracies are false.It does when the “hypothesized” conspiracy “theories” are supported by the same faulty, manipulative and dishonest thought processes, and by the same inconsistent and selective reading of the evidence. The 9/11 conspiracy theories are no more supportable than Hitler’s or LaRouche’s.And when Dave alleges that “our skepticism about conspiracies actually plays right into the hands of conspirators,” he’s echoing, word for word, the hysteric’s standard response to reason and skepticism. People who questioned the hysteria surrounding drugs, WMDs, “satanic ritual abuse,” and Terri Schiavo got the same treatment. I’ve heard it a thousand times before — it never results in anything good.
ob fusc says:

September 6, 2006 at 05:12

Minor point: That’s not to say the rich and powerful are deliberately, consciously conspiring to keep us off balance, exhausted, distracted and addicted.I disagree – they are – precisely because this state is profitable for them, as you described in your post. They don’t set out explicitly to do this in these terms (they don’t say, “I want to make someone distracted and addicted today”), but they do set out to make profit, at any human cost (this much is provable and is no conspiracy theory), and the above are the effects – the results of us being good consumers and producers in ways conducive to capital accumulation. Major point: W/regard to conspiracy theory, the greatest conspiracy theory of all in my view, and also demonstrably and banally true, is that the world is run in the interest of capital, rather than that of humanity or that of life. Wars are fought, countries invaded, democratically elected leaders toppled, populations repressed, alliances forged and broken, treaties ignored, habitats despoiled and polluted, all for the interest of capital accumulation. This is the “game” which is being played by leaders; the calculations they make, the considerations they have, their perceptions, all are informed by this purpose. The sense of timescale and narrative, also. And the modality – linear, expansionist, competitive – is in contradiction to that of life – which is holistic, cyclical, cooperative, restraint, complex, rich, mature. Accordingly the effects go against the interest of social human life, always impinging on the latter. A minority benefits, but only materially so (existentially they suffer adversely too), and in step with that they have power to promulgate the order of things – which they feel it is in their interest to do, because their horizons are also narrowed to just material affairs as they become divorced from moral, ecological, social or spiritual contexts. (in a sense I’m describing all of us in the North, butespecially the elite, so to speak). One very important related factor: we, you and me, ordinary people, probably have a belief in common natural modest human goodness. This is probably often a significant constraining factor on believing conspiracy theories which involve instrumental malevolence by those in power. However, this kind of basic, modest human morality, is something which inheres in normal social life, where our horizons and our perspectives are those of family members, workers, citizens, etc; the narrative and the perspective of someone implicated in the promulgation of a specific configuration of power must be very different. Here, again, one is involved in reproducing the primacy of capital accumulation over life, and making those calculations – institutionalisation of evil, effectively. (what’s the root of all evil, again?)Anyway just some scattered thoughts, sorry for the length, enjoying reading your work as always-
Raging Bee says:

September 6, 2006 at 10:44

…the world is run in the interest of capital, rather than that of humanity or that of life.This statement is, at best, very poorly phrased, and creates a false dichotomy. Why is the world run in the interest of capital? Because EVERYONE needs capital to meet their material needs and wants. “Capital” is not an entity or agent in its own right; nor is it unconnected to human needs. It doesn’t wage war or destroy the environment on its own; people do these things — or pay others to do them — because they believe (not always wrongly) that that is what they must do to meet their material needs. Why do oil companies reap huge profits by raping the land and selling a fuel that pollutes the air? Because hundreds of millions of innocent people make it profitable by paying for something they need to heat their homes and cook their meals, and that’s what’s available. Calling this a “conspiracy” stretches the word way beyond its well-defined and agreed-upon meaning.And the modality – linear, expansionist, competitive – is in contradiction to that of life – which is holistic, cyclical, cooperative, restraint, complex, rich, mature.You mean animals never compete? High-tech humans never cooperate? Populations never expand in the wild? How is a snake more “holistic” than a human? Are you sure this sentence wasn’t meant to be a satire of postmodernist drivelectical somethingorother?
ob fusc says:

September 6, 2006 at 12:08

phrasing – ok – fair cop. Not going to defend my grammar in that, it was a speed job! It’s an interesting picture you paint, of capital being necessary, serving peoples’ needs, and people choosing for it to be their means of getting the things they need and want. I’m going to argue it’s a superficial and ahistorical picture. One has to understand the specificity of capitalism to unpack this. People don’t need capital per se; they need ploughs, and houses and roads; and can quite well make them for themselves without capitalism. So what is special about capitalism, what does it mean when we say that under capitalism, these things become capital, in the way we understand it today? One aspect is that capital can be and is accumulated by particular owners, by capitalists, commonly corporations today; so these material goods can be the source not just of ploughed fields, shelter and travel, but of wealth. It is run together to make a single entity within the particular capital vehicle. A dollar can be invested in Nike, an ethical clothing company or a company which clearcuts rainforest, and the money earned will be the same. Not only can it be accumulated by capitalists, but in this system, it must be; that is to say, a capitalist who does not attempt to accumulate more than his/her/its (if a corporation) competitors will fail, be bought out or go out of business, and cease to be a capitalist. Because of the power of capitalists over public policy, the latter becomes geared (governments support capitalist expansion, ostensibly in the national interest – but it is only in the national interest under this system), to the interests of capital for itself, per se, for its accumulation. Walmart does not just provide cheap convenience goods; it also provides return on investment for investors, for its owners. And is run with this aim in mind, towards which costs are cut and environmental and humanitarian corners cut. So capital comes to predominate over human and social concerns. It sounds like you accept this much. But by failing to see the historical and social specificity of capitalism (a way of ordering our affairs which is only after all about 500 years old at the most and widespread for much less), you conflate material goods, or factors of production with capital, as it behaves under capitalism. Ellen Meiksins Wood is good on the origins of capitalism. To be clear, we, humanity, do not need oil when it pollutes the air and sea, causes catastrophic climate change, and leads to hundreds of thousands of innocent lives being taken in oil conflicts – the reason we are consuming so much of it, is precisely because it is so profitable (ExxonMobile’s profit for Q2 this year – $10.4 billion) for us to be doing so; the enormous concentrations of capital in corporations and the sway they come to have over government policy is what creates the situation. Of course, the “realist”/status quo apologist will scoff and say, of course we need oil en masse, what are you going to power civilisation on? Leaving aside all the alternatives of various kinds which have been sabotaged by oil interests which leave us unable fully to know where we would be without the entrenched interest of oil (another juicy conspiracy theory for you), the enormous oil need we have now has of course been progressively created over time by precisely these interests. That doesn’t help with facing it – but it’s clear they (oil and other corporate interests) are not going to let us manage a powerdown sanely, equitably and peacefully. That much is shown in the killing fields of Iraq and Lebanon. So do we continue with a system which, you agree, is run in the interest of capital, or replace it with one which envisages life and can preserve it? The difference between the two is not diammetrical opposition, and this is what allows you to make your argument – of course, human beings will always need matter to survive. Wecan’t do without it and live in a weightless nirvana. Nevertheless there are numerous alternative configurations for the organisation of the provision of man’s material needs. The question is the matter of degree. Do we have a system which enshrines and institutionalises the running away of wealth and greed for a minority, while a majority cannot meet needs; or do we have one in which all meet their basic needs before anything else is contemplated; one in which man is in the sway of matter, or one in which matter serves man?
ob fusc says:

September 6, 2006 at 12:17

Second point – this is a complex question. Of course animals compete. Let’s put it this way, humans (I believe) have an obligation to act in a different way than animals, because we have the potential to have ecological effects which are system-wide, able to disrupt and destroy nature on a global scale, and, we are able to be conscious of this and to do something about it (theoretically). We have behaved as animals thus far, and now we must learn from nature and copy its modes, which are, fundamentally, renewable. There are all sorts of ways to do this; completely different social and political structures are needed. One technological means is permaculture.
Raging Bee says:

September 6, 2006 at 14:26

We have behaved as animals thus far, and now we must learn from nature and copy its modes, which are, fundamentally, renewable.If you look at an idealized overall general picture of “nature,” you will, I suspect, see a grand, complex, cooperative, “holistic” system of innumerable complex parts. But if you look any more closely, without the rose-colored glasses, at what each individual creature does, why it does this, and what the result is, then you will see that the reality of “nature” is not a placid utopian planned community — it’s Thatcherism: populations are constrained by scarcity, competition for food and mating is a daily occurence, the strong rule, the weak are left behind, creatures eat what’s available, those who can’t eat what’s available die, and “recycling” is a matter of necessity and opportunity, not of enlightened farsighted choice.One aspect is that capital can be and is accumulated by particular owners, by capitalists, commonly corporations today; so these material goods can be the source not just of ploughed fields, shelter and travel, but of wealth…Don’t be fooled by all the buzzwords about the capitalist “system.” The same things happened in non-capitalist and pre-capitalist societies, only on a smaller scale: those who accumulated wealth, and/or controlled a point-source of something everyone else needed, such as a mine or well, accumulated power, and thus increased their sway over their less-advantaged neighbors. “The historical and social specificity of capitalism” is merely a result of advancing technology — not a fundamental change in human nature or behavior. We were animals before, and now we’re animals with bigger guns and car keys. (But the night life is a lot more fun, and we have books and the Internet too…)To be clear, we, humanity, do not need oil when it pollutes the air and sea, causes catastrophic climate change, and leads to hundreds of thousands of innocent lives being taken in oil conflicts – the reason we are consuming so much of it, is precisely because it is so profitable (ExxonMobile’s profit for Q2 this year – $10.4 billion) for us to be doing so; the enormous concentrations of capital in corporations and the sway they come to have over government policy is what creates the situation.Hundreds of millions of people need oil to cook their food and stay warm; the resulting pollution does not change that fact. We use it because, and as long as, it’s relatively cheap, plentiful and reliable in supply. The profit and “sway” that oil companies have is the result of that need, not the cause of it.Leaving aside all the alternatives of various kinds which have been sabotaged by oil interests which leave us unable fully to know where we would be without the entrenched interest of oil (another juicy conspiracy theory for you), the enormous oil need we have now has of course been progressively created over time by precisely these interests. That doesn’t help with facing it – but it’s clear they (oil and other corporate interests) are not going to let us manage a powerdown sanely, equitably and peacefully. That much is shown in the killing fields of Iraq and Lebanon.First, which specific alternatives were “sabotaged” by oil companies, and how, exactly were they sabotaged? If they really were viable alternatives, why haven’t others resisted the sabotage? Second, what do Iraq and Lebanon have to do with any of this? Lebanon is not an OPEC country, and the Iraq war has nothing to do with oil (or if it did, then Bush is even dumber than I think he is): if Iraq’s oil was the top priority, we could have got it by peaceful means.
Dave Pollard says:

September 6, 2006 at 15:34

My thanks and condolences to those who have taken on the task of rebutting RB’s tiresome and obtuse arguments. I’m no longer interested in arguing with those who just don’t get it. Just a caution — As long as you keep taking his bait, he’ll keep coming back for more. Cheers! /-/ Dave
dave says:

September 7, 2006 at 04:36

why don’t we just put this topic to bed: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html
ob fusc says:

September 7, 2006 at 08:01

dave, with a small d, that link puts the topic to bed like an alarm clock. One of the refuters cited is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is “a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce”. Unfortunately until there is a fair independent investigation, this topic will, and should, stay very much, up and about. I don’t want to hog the thread or outstay my welcome, but I would just say I thought RB’s points were well-made and a very good precis of the “realist”/centrist/rightist thinking, and from that perspective it can be interesting imo to meet them and answer them. I’d quite like to do so, but I don’t want to go on and on and stop other debate – or try our host’s patience, as it sounds like you have had these discussions before! It’s very interesting to see how our two worldviews intersect and see the differences in assumptions, perspectives, and identifications which inform each of them… nobody will ever be proven right within the terms of the debate, but it’s my belief that by shifting perspective, a different range of conclusions comes into focus, so by understanding how this operates one can make an informed choice between the two of them.
ob fusc says:

September 7, 2006 at 08:03

PS – serendipity? – from one of my favourite blogs, Lenin’s Tomb, a neat answer to your last point, RB: In fact, throughout the 20th Century, oil multinationals have worked extremely hard to roll back alternatives wherever they have emerged, often to the great detriment of the hated consumer, as when in 1940 GM, Standard Oil and Firestone acquired and dismantled electric rail links in parts of California. They also ripped up and dismantled the electric rail and car system in Los Angeles and motorised downtown – they were all convicted of criminal conspiracy in 1949, but fined so little that it hardly mattered. Now, Los Angeles has beautiful smog sunsets. Even on such piddling matters as Kyoto, the Global Climate Coalition – an axis of oil and car companies including Shell, Texaco and Ford – has been working overtime to block even the slightest shift, bribing politicians and parties to achieve this. This sort of thing is referred to as ‘corporate greed’: it is the competitive accumulation of capital and those who run the system couldn’t do otherwise if they were self-abnegating puritans who preferred the lifestyle of ascetic monks.
Raging Bee says:

September 7, 2006 at 11:44

Your latest specific example of corporate sabotage of innovation was from 1949?! Unforgivable acts, to be sure, but not that relevant to present technological advances.You mention more recent bribery of legislators, but you fail to show how such corruption impacts the development of alternative technologies by competing private businesses and local governments — which, I note, show signs of starting to catch up with the problem.The only specific examples of resisting innovation I can recall right now comes from the left, not from business: mindless, hysterical resistance to any form of nuclear power, and the refusal even to discuss improvements in that branch of energy technology. (I may not be pro-nuclear, but I’m definitely anti-hysteria.) Oh, and Ted Kennedy getting all NIMBY on us about a proposed windmill project near Hyannisport.And what’s this about me representing ‘”realist”/centrist/rightist thinking?’ I’ll take the first two as a compliment, but you need to make up your mind — am I realist, centrist, or rightist? Depending on how one defines these words, one may or may not be able to occupy more than one such category at a time. (But thanks at least for admitting there is such a thing as a realistic center.)
Raging Bee says:

September 7, 2006 at 14:35

One of the refuters cited is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is “a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce”. Unfortunately until there is a fair independent investigation, this topic will, and should, stay very much, up and about.And this impacts the validity of which specific refutation how? And what about the other refuters?
medaille says:

September 7, 2006 at 15:14

I always am fascinated by people who “just don’t get it.” I don’t feel like I was born with any special talents or anything, but I don’t see whats so difficult about trying someoneelse’s viewpoint on for a while and seeing how it fits. I’ve come across liberals and conservatives (more prevalent in my mind) who are so entwined with their own viewpoints that they shut out the possibility of any other reality other than the one that currently is residing in their brain. As if they couldn’t just as easily have been raised in a different environment and be filled with other ideas or propoganda that are completely different then their own. They are defending their version reality as if it were a fort and if it fell all would be lost.By evaluating nature, it is clear that diversity is resilient and that uniformity is weakness. As individuals it is in our own advantage to try to see things from as many perspectives as we can, because it makes us resilient and better able to see the scenario as the way it actually is. Clutching and defending the one mindset that we took on as a default is a vulnerable and weak tendency. “What is the definition of the word the?” Someone who is defensive and under attack uses the language as a shield to push other perspectives away. Someone who is open minded works around the limitations of language to come to a mutual understanding of each others perspectives and the commonalities and differences of them. We should all be aware of our relationships in those contexts.With regards to the Raging (angry and violent) Bee, I have two thoughts. When has nature shown a tendency to accumulate material things which we don’t really need at the expense of others. I generally believe that nature tends to compete only for that which it needs. Nature has no need for 3 car garages, shag carpet, or other unnecessary items. Thought number two: Who the hell cares if Rage is a realist, centrist, rightist, communist, capitalist, or some other label? All of them are insults and compliments at the same time. All of them limit observation of the being as it is and encourage divisivness. We should know better, because there are no enemies. We all are people and the vast majority of people want the same things. In our infinite wisdom, we just argue about it and let the elite make the choices for us.Also with regards to fossil fuels being used for heating and cooking. Fossil fuels by definition are a limited resource and their is strong evidence to show that their usage is damaging to “spaceship earth.” At some point in time, global warming or not, we’ll have to find a way to stay warm and cook our foods without fossil fuels. Why not start now and avoid the potential risk that the vast majority of scientists believe is hazardous? We are certainly capable of it. Why stubbornly cling to this mindset that we “need” oil and that oil needs to be cheapest?
Raging Bee says:

September 7, 2006 at 17:43

I’ve come across liberals and conservatives (more prevalent in my mind) who are so entwined with their own viewpoints that they shut out the possibility of any other reality other than the one that currently is residing in their brain.You think that’s bad? I’ve come across extremists of the left and right who are even worse. At least the liberals and conservatives can listen to each other, make deals, and get a few good things things done here and there. All the extremists can do is shout the same slogans over and over, and gang up on the moderates to prevent anyone else getting anything done.At some point in time, global warming or not, we’ll have to find a way to stay warm and cook our foods without fossil fuels. Why not start now and avoid the potential risk that the vast majority of scientists believe is hazardous? We are certainly capable of it. Why stubbornly cling to this mindset that we “need” oil and that oil needs to be cheapest?I totally agree. Delusional grand master plans, refusal to understand human nature, disempowering conspiracy theories and scapegoating, theofascism, intolerance, divisive and infantile public debate, undisciplined and antidemocratic violence — none of this will solve any real problems; but new technology will.