No I agree with you about decentralisation of powrrr, sustainability etc, but many members on this forum are pretty right wing and support a few conspiracy theories.
1) Check out Malf's post, big oil knew about manmade climate change for years and suppressed it. All in name of the mighty dollar!
2) It's not just the money spend on denying it, its the money earnt from fossil fuels etc.
Well, I'm not right-wing at all, yet I also support
A FEW "conspiracy theories" - the ones which pass my personal three-criteria test for separating (potentially) valid "conspiracy theories" from invalid ones:
1) they have specific verifiable evidence behind them,
2) they use falsifiable rational argumentation,
3) they do not require support of reactionary and/or authoritarian ethics and policy.
9-11 false flag / controlled demolition and JFK organised assassination theories are a perfect example of a valid - in my opinion, correct and vindicated - "conspiracy theories" that fully pass the test. Note that both are
LOCAL "conspiracy theories" - the ones which, unlike
GLOBAL ones, do not require the idea of an incredibly complex, worldwide, prolonged for decades (or even centuries), united superconspiracy behind them. Neither they are based on baselesss, incoherent and repressive
moral panics - the outbursts of sex-negative, reactionary, parental-anxiety-based witch-hunts like the infamous Satanic Panic debacle of the 1980s and its "reincarnation" - the modern mythology of Pizzagate.
I want also to remind that some local "conspiracy theories" - such as Watergate, Iran-Contra and COINTELPRO - or, to mention to more recent times, WMDs-in-Iraq deceptive propaganda campaign - were officially, institutionally confessed and accepted, so the very existence of conspiratorial activities in the Western elite circles is an undeniable fact. What is open to debate is where, when, how often, how successfully, for what reasons and by whom such activities are pursued; but, as I said already, insistence that they they do not occur at all requires complete divorse from veridical reality.
And - do you understand that your claim that Big Oil knew about the consequences of their commercial activities for decades and supressed it - in an intentional, organised, clandestine way - is, effectively, a "conspiracy theory" of its own? That's what is especially funny about the critics of "conspiracy theories" as such: they
ALWAYS support some "conspiratorial" notions of their own - they just refuse to accept that their explanatory models are "conspiracy theories", preferring to call them "investigations", "exposures" etc. But, no matter what names they use, they still require postulation of a conspiracy - so, they are "conspiracy theories" in a strict descriptive sense.
What makes me sad is that a lot of Skeptiko people are eager and willing to move much, much, much beyond the logically and evidentially valid support of a few conspiracy theories and support many - if not most, or even almost all - of them, including the global and united ones, as well as moral panics, with all their wild and empty speculations, their repressive and regressive implications.
P.S. And, Roberta, I want to ask you once more about Green Party presidental candidate, Jill Stein, and
her support of alternative "conspiracy theory" of 9-11 events (which is not just her personal opinion, but a part of her presidental campaign claims). Does it make her "right-wing"? I hope you will answer this time!