Real experts might disagree with your political position, it’s much safer to appoint party hacks instead.
What, the geopolitical climate set in no small way by US Neocons? Labour laws, you say? Difficult?
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Human beings as a species are almost completely incapable of thinking concretely about a problem that lies more than about 15 months in the future. We are asking them to make a problem that will rear its head over the next few decades a priority. I’m sorry but it just won’t happen.
Look at social security. That is just a problem of math, and relatively easy to rectify at this point. Anyone under 45 or so should be making that a top priority or they are likely to see reduced benefits when they reach retirement age. That is an issue where the US is capable of acting unilaterally, the math is relatively straightforward, and the disincentives to acting are few, yet we still cannot galvanize voters around the issue because human minds just tend not to prioritize goals that way.
I understand that many of you believe that climate change is a major issue. I agree with you. It is. Where we differ is what stage of grief we are on about the issue. I’ve accepted that there is likely nothing to be done about this problem no matter how badly I feel there should be. Sometimes bad things happen and there is nothing we can do to stop them. Unless there is some major global political change in the next few years I don’t see any particular entity on Earth being able to do the necessary cat herding to get all the major players rowing in the same direction long enough to get anything productive done.
I think their faces say a lot. Look at bill’s face. He’s concerned, but relaxed. That woman’s rictus could feed hate to a few armies. Holy shit!
Are you Bjørn Lomborg?
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To my admittedly limited knowledge, over the last fifteen years or so there has not been much in direct subsidies for oil and coal, other than the same tax credits available to all industries involved in materials extraction. If you are aware of an unbiased source for information, I’ll be happy to checkit out.
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I am not, but I am familiar with his work. He and I differ on how important an issue global warming is. He doesn’t feel it is very important and doubts the extent of the temperature rise that is being predicted. I have seen plenty of studies that suggest the predicted temperature rise in many climate models may be understated. I’m more upset about our world’s inability to get its shit together than he is.
I suppose we are on the same track though as to what should be done about it. It is likely to be more effective for individual nations to accept our future of global warming as a given and prepare for it instead of investing time and resources trying to avoid it. I get no pleasure in typing that sentence, but as I said before, reality doesn’t require our approval to exist.
If you define everything that is not passing laws as “nothing” then you are correct.
But in the world outside the beltway, US carbon emissions are dropping consistently. Here’s a citation from that well-known right wing teabagger rag, Mother Jones:
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You know, it’s funny I was just talking to my son about this yesterday when we were watching a special about Nazis and their rise to power. I explained to him what the Marshall Plan was and how it differed from the sanctions placed on Germany after WWI and why they had such different effects and I ended saying “Right now, most people will tell you that large-scale government spending will never have a positive benefit, but the Marshall Plan is just one example to the contrary.”
The US has also lead the way on big government projects with the Eisenhower Interstate System, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the WPA as a whole.
I think too many politicians have forgotten their history, to the detriment of the rest of mankind.
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I agree completely on with everything you said there. Big government projects can accomplish extraordinary things and they really aren’t being attempted anymore unless they involve killing Middle Eastern people.
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Economics, as a human construct in and of itself, arguably isn’t ‘reality’ (ask a philosopher or a physicist) Thing is, the US is doing sweet fuck-all about preparing for environmental catastrophe or making any attempts to avert it. Said duo of failures hardly adds up to rational self-interest, does it? And that’s leaving out the previously-mentioned US actions to effectively hinder any international accords to deal with the problem. What happens if the US remains the last serious obstacle to CO2 emissions? There’ll come a point where if it’s the last serious polluter, it’s going to be WWIII, and America is playing the Germans this time round…
Eisenhower Interstate System, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the WPA as a whole
Could never build any of those things today. Not without using all our Luddites, NIMBY’s, and the “precautionary principle” crowd as the first layer of landfill.
Do you think we could build Hoover Dam (one of the greatest clean energy sources in the US) today if it didn’t already exist??
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If you believe the US is the last serious obstacle to a response to climate change then you have a very optimistic view of how easy this problem will be to rectify.
I’m betting there’d be a Greenwash campaign sponsored by the fossil fuel industry stymieing it.
Oh, I’m not saying it is, not at all. But given how it has actively resisted multilateral efforts (the politics and internal squabbling of those notwithstanding), I’m positing maybe it could be. I’m not sure the problem can be rectified, but given the nonsensical bullshit most of the world wastes money and time on, I’d rather we at least tried to ameliorate the problem, and, as you said, develop strategies, technology and a society that can cope with it instead. Because the fact we’ve fucked things up is reality, economics be damned. Much as the field dislikes command economies, we’re going to get one by default if we don’t sort our bloody crack out.
(The saving grace of that gloomy projection is that that will really piss off the libertarians, but it’s a thin veneer of silver in a fucking big cloud)
Now we are thinking along the same lines.
The unfortunate reality of the situation is that if we could get everyone on board moving forward we might have a shot at avoiding the problems climate change has stacked up for us. Getting everyone moving in the same direction is almost impossible though unless someone is shortly elected King of the World, which I don’t see happening.
A large nation like the US that already enjoys a diverse climate can act unilaterally to ameliorate some of the anticipated affects of global warming on our own population. It is kind of an “I’ll be fine sucks to be the rest of you” mentality, but when has humanity ever operated on any other basis?
King of the World, it ain’t, but it does dub itself ‘the world’s only superpower’ (more evidence that we are indeed idiots as a species, if we needed any). I still disagree that we need a World Police per se to do at least something, though. But if Both ourselves, you Cousins and other powerful nations (i.e.Europe) do something, then the rest of the world will follow. I’m not down with the whole conspirameme ‘media is illuminati propaganda’ thing (I’m more of the opinion that it’s because we’re fucking idiots), but America’s export of culture is an undeniably powerful thing. It should be considered along with economics as a reason that other countries would follow suit. Then we’ll all nuke Russia instead, probably. Like I said, idiots.
So what do you propose be done?
Your plan appears to follow underpants gnome logic.
Step 1: US passes sweeping climate change legislation
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Everyone else jumps on the bandwagon and the world is saved.
Just not hindering multilateral efforts like Kyoto would be a start. I’m not sure that your argument that nothing should be done because economics doesn’t have its own tinge of gnome too.
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Sadly, you’re right.
