Home
Todd Suomela's Library tagged → View Popular, Search in Google
"Public meetings and consensus conferences seem to be the tool du jour for many government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Agriculture. Designed to give the public a voice in policy decisions, they can, in some cases, provide valuable insights into the local public’s views and opinions on certain issues. But they can also have disastrous consequences when used as a policy-making tool designed to tap public opinion more broadly. And the likelihood of failure is particularly high when debates emerge in a community about if and where to build controversial facilities for storing nuclear waste or conducting research on potentially deadly biological pathogens."
-
But, if not through public meetings, how can policymakers achieve a consent-based approach while conforming to democratic ideals, particularly for controversial scientific issues? Our recommendation would be to focus more time and resources on pro-active, systematic assessments of public opinion that gives an equal voice to all members of the community. Decisions like this with tremendous societal and political impacts should not be left only to those with strong views who are willing to make the most noise at a public meeting.
-
Consensus works whenever there is substantive agreement in principle among the group, and, more importantly, it works when there is an informed lack of agreement plus a genuine collective interest in achieving such agreement.
-
If the differences lie in the more malleable parts of our ideologies — beliefs in what is possible or what is really happening — it may be possible to bridge the differences through the telling of stories that allow the participants to grasp how a difference of perception of the current reality or future possibilities has arisen.
- 2 more annotation(s)...
"You don't need look far to see that consensus in action -- just check out the current debt ceiling brouhaha. Paraded around by carnival barkers as supposed proof of unprecedented division and rancor, the moment's manufactured crisis in Washington actually exemplifies all the hallmarks of transpartisan consensus, as the Democratic president and the Republican congressional leadership essentially agree that Social Security and Medicare should be slashed, corporate taxes should be cut, taxes on the wealthy shouldn't be significantly raised and defense spending should face only minimal reductions. The only real "debate" is about the specific numbers -- not about whether such an extreme set of priorities is the proper way to balance a budget."
-
Recall, for instance, recent news out of Connecticut -- a state of Big Money politics that's also home to many major multinational corporations. Thanks to intense third-party organizing and pressure by the Connecticut Working Families Party, this same corporate-dominated locale legislated the nation's first statewide law forcing companies to provide paid sick days to employees.
In New York, the home of the financial industry behemoth, the Working Families Party is now regularly billed as one of the state's single most powerful political forces. Over the years, it has played a critical role in everything from halting unbridled gas exploration to raising the minimum wage to reducing consumers' utility bills to taking on the real estate industry's most rapacious practices.
In Oregon, where the Working Families Party has only recently started organizing, the fledgling third party led a campaign to end the state's dependence on Wall Street with a proposal to create a state-owned non-profit bank. Though the bill ultimately failed, the party managed to power it through a series of legislative committees -- and the proposal will likely be back in the next session.
And, not to be forgotten, is Vermont -- the state that recently made national headlines as the first in America to successfully go up against the for-profit health insurance industry and begin legislating a single-payer system. That's the same state that is home to the Progressive Party, which regularly elects its candidates to municipal and state legislative office.
"Hirschman pointed out that conservative arguments come in three distinct theses. First is the “Perversity thesis” where any well meaning reform produces its opposite outcome: ‘welfare makes you poor’ – that sort of thing. The second is the “Jeopardy thesis” where reforms put at risk more than they can ever deliver– the fear of extending the suffrage is typical. Third is the “Futility thesis” where reforms are simply pointless – fill in any and all opposition to global warming.
Greenspan begins with a few vignettes concerning Ford’s inability to get a credit rating on an ABS and how the banks will suffer if their ATM card fees are regulated, but he soon hits his stride. I gave him a “Hirschman Scorecard” of four perversities, three jeopardies, and two futilities in one column, which is the rhetorical equivalent of carpet-bombing the opposition. These ranged from bemoaning how “consequences cannot be readily anticipated” (Jeopardy), to noting how prop-trading rules will force operations abroad (Futility), and hand waving about complexity regarding “undesirable repercussions that might happen” (Perversity)."
When global warming skeptics draw misleading comparisons between scientists’ nascent understanding of climate processes in the 1970s and their level of knowledge today, “it’s absolute nonsense,” Schneider says. Back then, scientists were just beginning to study climate trends and their causes, and the probability of finding evidence to disprove a particular hypothesis was relatively high. Nowadays, he contends, “the likelihood of new evidence to overthrow the concept of global warming is small. Warming is virtually certain.”
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Top Contributors
Groups interested in consensus
-
OECD High Level Fora Aid Effectiveness
Includes Paris Agenda, Monte...
Items: 3 | Visits: 26
Created by: Arabica Robusta
Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »
Join Diigo