The economics and politics remain the same. Do we want to allow massive wealth disparity and fascist policies to prevail, while social safety nets and civil rights are dismantled? Technology doesn't change that.
This is a narrative framing from the tech companies who started and continue the AI race. The current administration is following this framing because the tech billionaires helped them get elected, so they are getting their pay back. It's crony capitalism.
And it's not the only thing being prioritized over people and planet, although it's related to ongoing promotion of fossil fuels and wars, along with increased political propaganda.
If the pandemic had been deadlier and even more infectious like measles or smallpox were, would you still be against mandates? Surely there is a scenario like airborne Ebola or 28 days Later Rage virus that would justify mandates.
Climate change being man made is a scientific fact as in humans are driving the majority of warming since the industrial revolution by pumping increasing amounts of green house gases in the atmosphere. This warming is simple physics even if the effect on weather is complex. Venus is an example of run-way greenhouse warming.
A ten year old can debate what they want, opinions don't change scientific facts (burning fossil fuels puts greenhouse gases in the air which trap heat from the sun). Consensus meaning most most climatologists agree on what the data and models are telling them.
There are not two sides to the basic facts of the matter (complexities around which models are more accurate or what society should do is a separate matter).
> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right and not caring what others believe, just like they don’t care about 99.9999% of beliefs held by others either.
Disagree, if you care about truth, you're not going to just let people spread any opinion as if it were fact. It has societal consequences. That way lies the dark ages, witch hunts, wrong people getting into power. Of course one needs to be judicious in which battles to fight.
So it's only a fact if you can verify it, and not if the scientific community can? And you're consistent about this via all scientific findings you haven't verified like the balance in your bank account? You reject as fact any astronomical data or microscopic results you haven't seen with your own eyes? Or any satellite data you haven't analyzed yourself?
Do you doubt that greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere have gone up since humans started burning fossil fuels, and do you doubt the physics of how they trap solar radiation? Do you doubt that climate scientists know how to put sensors in the oceans, in rural areas and released in weather balloons along with satellites to measure temperatures across the planet year by year? Or that they can extract ice cores to measure trapped atmospheric gas from thousands of years ago? That sort of thing.
Yes it's a scientific fact humans have been causing the current warming by burning fossil fuels since the industrial revoluton.
You can make skeptical arguments against this is you're willing to dismiss empirical data and methodology behind scientific facts. The people who do this aren't consistent and cherry pick which empirical data, models and methodologies to dismiss. It tends to align with some belief challenged by the science. Or their financial interests.
It's much harder to be a consistent skeptic, since empirical data is verifiable, and the scientific method works for all sorts of fields and technologies. But it could all be dream of a mental patient in a simulation god programmed while making a bet with the devil.
Those rights came to exist in the west in response to kings and tyrants doing whatever they wanted at the expense of their subjects. Also because communities sometimes do bad things to people not able to simply drive away. Pretty sure Asia has had it's share of human rights abuses.
And if they do enough of that, the other two branches might eventually be motivated to take action to counter it, like packing the courts or impeachments. Or telling SCOTUS to enforce it, as one president did.
Trump's approval rating is in the 30s and has been for a while. He won a plurality not a majority of the votes in 2024. An even larger number of eligible voters didn't vote.
Also Congress was meant to be the democratic representation of the people. Technically, the president is elected by the states.