The typical “soft denial” argument:

“You do know nothing gets accomplished in politics without compromise? What’s more important: your ideology, or actually doing something?”

Me: Ecology doesn’t run on polls; it doesn’t “take into account” what we think. It merely deals with the balances or lack of it. We need to face up to that, and “adapt” (which means to figure out what it takes to stick close to “balance”, or be consumed by its absence.)

Them: “So there is no compromise, so there is no progress. Better to die with your ideology than make any progress at all, right?”

Me: You’re placing some notion of expedience over the cold hard facts. Keep telling yourself that. The planet doesn’t take that into account, sorry.

Them: “And we’ll both die a cold hard death because some refuse to compromise.”

Me: “Just don’t get it, do you? Compromise is the way to that death, because it keeps us from doing anywhere near enough. We accept the compromise, we die. Again, the world’s ecosystem doesn’t reason: “Oh, you struck a deal! Then I’ll just back off and ignore the inherent balances required, because you “asked nicely”, and did “something”. If it’s not enough, it’s insufficient. Bottom line. This is what the governments of the world, the U.S. in particular, have been doing for 30 years. “Enough” then would have been so much easier and so much more achievable. But because we refused to act in any significant way, we face a much steeper climb. FAR steeper.”


Them: “You just don’t get it. Standing your ground and never compromising is the way to certain death. Even faster because nothing is done. What you abysmally fail to see is that once a compromise is made, people will see that the change is not only doable, but it’s not so bad. Then they buy into more compromise. Eventually much change is made, in increments.
Meanwhile, in Dale’s world, the climate spirals out of control because people refuse to compromise. Mass populations die slow, painful deaths because compromise was refused. But the ideologues will sleep better, knowing they remained true to their cause.”

Me: I guess you simply don’t take the warnings seriously. They say in no uncertain terms that the way we’ve been doing it so far is not going to get the job done. It will take a serious and sustained and radical change to accomplish this, and these “compromises” have always nixed the radical changes, and will EVERY TIME. Status quo will not accomplish the goal.
You say: “Eventually much change is made, in increments.”
Case in point. That won’t get it done. These “increments” have only put us further behind, and made it even harder to climb up an ever steepening hill.

“Mass populations die slow, painful deaths because compromise was refused. “
Another argument that again highlights your need to read the science, and understand the human costs of continuing this style of “compromise” that we’ve been doing for 30 years +.


Them: “How do you propose to ‘move the unreasonable people aside’ and, probably more importantly, what exactly does that mean?”

Me: I say we do what WE can do, just like we do with our faith callings. We don’t protest that “What about all the other people in the world who don’t accept Jesus?” It’s better for all , the more people do, but that is not to be “a deal breaker”. We’re dealing with that within this country, with cities and states and municiplaities saying “We’re still in” to Trump’s pulling out of the Paris agreements. (not even to get into how even the Paris agreements” are also not enough.)


An argument from another : [on the need for] “agreement on the need for incremental progress, as long as we can agree that there is a need for progress”

Me: Always ends up being non-existent when the “increments” are wildly disparate (ranging from no urgency and little to no real action, to earnest, urgent , radical action (which , though radical, is still going to be “incremental” as long as everyone isn’t on board…..it will be “incremental” in the U.S. for sure since we have the drag of politics and public opinion and money influence, unlike China who can simply order it to be done (which , in this case, has its merits, as in “life” as opposed to death.) 
“Increments” is a pretty useless word now for the above reasons.

“Please show me where I have ever discounted the urgency in this”

This thread is just the latest example of where you do that. You simply do not believe that there is NO TIME to “increment” our way to this. This is what we’ve been doing for 30 years. And the ppm are now at 415. Again, Carl, READ THE SCIENCE. You do NOT get it.