the left and right of global warming

People who describe themselves as left progressives tend to support an extreme global warming, leading us to catastrophe, viewpoint, eg. the ABC

People who describe themselves as politically right tend to oppose an extreme global warming viewpoint. eg. The Australian newspaper

So, the self described left wingers want to reign in the ugly excesses of industrial capitalism. Whereas those on the political right want business as usual or more rapid expansion.

People are social and political animals with viewpoints first and scientific objectivity, which requires hard work, real effort and time, usually comes some way behind this.

John McCarthy has complained of something similar in relation to his web page on progress and its sustainability :

I have a collection of web pages on the sustainability of material progress that treats many problems that have been proposed as possible stoppers. I get email about the pages, both unfavorable and favorable, mostly the latter.

I had believed that the email would concern specific problems or would raise new ones, e.g. "What about erosion of agricultural land?"

There's some of that, but overwhelmingly the email, both pro and con, concerns my attitude, not my (alleged) facts. "How can you be so blithely cornucopian when everybody knows ..." or "I'm glad someone has the courage to take on all those doomsters."

It seems, to my surprise, that people's attitude that the future stems at least as much from personality as from opinions about facts. People look for facts to support their attitudes — which have earlier antecedents.