- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
The “State of Climate Action 2025” report from the World Resources Institute found that the world’s governments are failing on all 45 indicators of progress towards limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees. Of these, 29 indicators are “well off track”, meaning at least a twofold and for most a fourfold acceleration of progress is needed to meet end-of-decade targets.
Five indicators—the carbon intensity of steel production, the share of kilometres travelled by passenger cars, mangrove loss, share of food production lost, and public fossil fuel finance—are heading in the wrong direction.
There is not even enough data to analyse the trend for the remaining five: the rate of retrofitting buildings, the share of new buildings which are zero-carbon, peatland degradation, peatland restoration and food waste.
If what you’re saying is true, it doesn’t explain why the greatest increase in capitalism has historically occurred under governments that were not liberal (by the dictionary definition. Or my simplistic one.)
Unless, that is, that what you’re saying is that all the pro-capitalist governments were liberal by your definition (or some redefinition to which you and certain others believe is, or should be, correct). That, I think, is a ridiculous way to go about things, and smacks of trying to steal the word or besmirch people who would otherwise use that word to describe themselves.
In short, I think you’re being disingenuous.
You: what does this word mean?
Them: five paragraphs of explanation.
You: I dunno… seems fishy.
Me: The Earth is round.
Them: Several seemingly legitimate paragraphs, patiently explaining that it’s flat.
Me: …
Someone else brought up the term “neoliberal” and I might have gone along with that. A prefix can do a lot of heavy lifting in allowing the rest of a word to mean something else entirely, even opposing the original meaning.
What I’m gathering is that economists have redefined the original word, and what I think of as liberal, they call progressive.
My guy, you’re the anti-intellectual person here. I’ve been nice and here you are getting to extreme levels of arrogance.
Could you tell us all how you learned about what these words mean? Have you gone to university for it? Are there any professional educators you follow that offer free courses or lessons? Could you name any books you’ve learned from? You mentioned looking it up earlier, where?
Apparently I’ve misunderstood the word liberal every time it’s been used across my life in the same way that people think that “epitome” is pronounced “ep-i-toam” because they’ve only ever read it.
When I looked up liberal, one of the places I looked was https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liberal but I did not click through to liberalism, which might have taught me a thing or two.
But please note the bit at the bottom of the link where the meaning has recently split into meaning “leftist” which is a lot closer to what I thought it meant… so apparently it hasn’t been just me getting it wrong, but a significant portion of the English-speaking world.
Did you seriously not read my explanation and then called it disingenuous? That’s in there.
Edit: This response is not showing up where I want it to. I can’t tell whether my stupidity is preventing me from replying in the right place or this interface is suddenly acting screwy. @[email protected]
Perhaps I should reword one of my previous comments:
Me: The Earth is flat.
Them (You): Several paragraphs patiently explaining that it’s round.
Me: …
Sensible things look a lot like lies when you’re stood on your head.
Perhaps I should reword one of my previous comments:
Me: The Earth is flat.
Them: Several paragraphs patiently explaining that it’s round.
Me: …
Sensible things look a lot like lies when you’re stood on your head.
Liberals have never been progressive.
Compadre, I don’t know how you could think someone would spend that much time trying to explain something to you and be completely faking.
Yes, that is what it is. It is not my definition, it’s how the people who study these topics professionally use the terms. You can take your time to live with it.