Continuing this thread, in NewScientist (25 March 2017) Owen Gaffney may have touched on the real reason Russia interfered in the United States elections – climate denier and new EPA chief Scott Pruitt:
Pruitt’s appointment, part of a grander, darker geopolitical strategy, makes that reshaping less likely. This is not about the science. It is not about economic priority setting nor conflicting values. It is not about a desire for small government, the primacy of individual freedom or myopic belief in capitalism. The only fact that matters is that solving the climate issue means killing the fossil fuel industry – arguably the most influential on the planet. …
Dealing with climate change means summoning the economic “gales of creative destruction” – economist Joseph Schumpeter’s phrase for how innovation kills and replaces old industries to drive economic growth.
The first gales are here. Zero-carbon technology is now cheaper and easier to install. Renewables promise individual freedom through energy self-sufficiency.
The world economy is at a crucial inflection point. The US is well placed to ride the storm and capitalise on the next economic revolution. But vested interests dominate the landscape and US policy could delay the revolution.
In contrast, there are no Russian gales. Its economy is a basket case. Apart from oil and gas, it produces little anyone wants to buy. A clean energy revolution is likely to put its economy in a death spiral.
And, being a strong man country in its essence, Putin cannot afford to look in the least weak. Obama’s war on Russia has put Putin in a precarious position, and the restivity demonstrated by the citizenry recently must have made him nervous, although I suspect he works hard to keep the police corrupt. An honorable citizen is his most frightening enemy.
Russian attempts to influence elements of the United States is a subject we’ve discussed before, but it’s worth noting how Gaffney ties it to Putin through his euphemism – death spiral of the economy. But this may be more desperation than sinister plotting, because the free enterprise system, for all its faults, is tied to freedom of choice and free flow of information, and therein lies the key to proper decision-making. Are some American citizens misinformed? Inevitably. That’s part & parcel of the system. Russian influence may result in more misinformed, misbehaving citizens than normal. But so long as those who believe in truth and the essential goodness of their fellow Americans continue to speak out, disseminate real information, and practice Strong Science, industry will take note and change in order to follow the money. We’ve already seen this with the advent of Tesla, tapping into a surprising demand for electric cars. States where science is strong are moving away from polluting technologies.
Just gotta keep shouting.
