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Here, Patrick explains with common sense & compelling examples that Europe has a degrowth/anti air-con mentality and is told that "these are just anecdotes". This is a type of argument often employed by so-called "moderates" that has done much damage in the past decades. Basically, for every talking point, you have a bunch of degrowth/extreme left crazy people that are fairly well-embedded in institutions and "respectable". The polar opposite right-wing/libertarian position is almost never represented in respectable institutions. Then, you have the moderates. They often distinguish themselves by insisting on "statistics" and hard facts and refusing to accept common sense arguments and "what is before their eyes". The "just anecdotes" dismissal treats empirical observations as epistemically worthless unless accompanied by a regression table. But quantitative evidence itself is abundant for things that powerful intellectual institutions want to measure. It is scarce for things they would prefer not to examine too closely. The intellectual landscape ends up looking roughly like this: 1) On one side, there is a well-funded, institutionally embedded, socially respectable body of opinion that is broadly degrowth, skeptical of markets, skeptical of air conditioning etc. These views appear in EU policy documents, in academic journals, in mainstream journalism and in NGO reports. They might not be held by most academics broadly construed (e.g. engineering profs), but they are held by the small minority that studies these topics and that is enough. 2) On the other side, the full-throated pro-growth, pro-energy and pro-development counterargument exists but is largely confined to think tanks that are routinely described as "industry-funded" or "right-wing," which in respectable discourse functions as a full rebuttal. In the middle sit the moderates, who pride themselves on not taking sides, on demanding evidence, on resisting "populist" or "anecdotal" reasoning. This moderate position is not symmetric in its effects and moderates do not apply equal skepticism to both sides. Overall, the lack of actually balanced perspectives leads to the polarization of those who are more right leaning and suspect something is amiss. But because they lack any institutional home, they end up becoming cranky and conspiratorial. End result: broad erosion of public dicourse. Also if you wonder why AC has become a right wing shaped topic, it's also because of the craziness of the discourse, caused by the above.

RuxandraTeslo ↗