> Was also surprised to read that Montana emits as much ghg’s as Ireland.
Does Ireland have much industry to speak of? I was under the impression that most of Ireland's "industrial" output was effectively tax services. Montana is heavily weighted towards agri-industrial production, so it's not surprising to me that net energy usage per person is ~5x higher.
While agriculture makes up a larger percentage of Montana‘a economy industry overall is significantly lower as is the GDP per capita.
In terms of total GDP for each, Agriculture really doesn’t explain the discrepancy. What does is mostly transportation and heavy use of coal (44% vs 7%). Montana for example see a lot of out of state trucks cross the state. America is often praised for its rail network but it’s underutilized when you consider our geography and transportation needs.
Pop Land Cows/Herd Sheep
ie 5.1M 7Mha 7.4M 2.5M 5.9M
MT 1.1M 38Mha 2.2M 1.3M 200k
without calves^
The intuition most people have is that CO2 is a people scale problem and Ireland has 5x Montana’s population, even though Montana is 5x more spacious. The cows are significant — methane is awful.
[edit: my Irish cow number was out by a factor of 3x, and I’ve separated cows-inc-calves from the adult herd.]
They have a large amount of cattle. Just read an article in the FT (would link but on mobile) about Ireland looking to cull 200k cows to help balance their methane emissions.
Ireland has 7.5m head of cattle[1] - I think that qualifies as a "large amount". And you can add 6m head of sheep and over 1.5m pigs. About 40% of Ireland's CO2 equivalent comes from agriculture/agri-business.
Montana doesn’t even make the top ten list for cattle per state. It’s more that there is nobody there except cattle, not that it is a cattle dense location. That’s only about 3% of the cows in the US.
My very-ignorant assumption would have been peat, although IDK whether the emissions are counted at source or burning site (also, IDK whether peat is still an export...)
The last peat burning plant shut down two years ago[1]. Industrial peat harvesting has ceased. A limited amount of peat harvesting is allowed but just at traditional/family/domestic scales.
Montana also has a lot of coal reserves, which I assume they use some in state for power production. It’s funny because Montana also has lots of hydro.
In 1980, President Carter assembled top scientists in various domains to write a report of the problems we should expect to face in 2000. (If only politicians today were that forward-looking!) It was called the Global 2000 report and was a very thick volume. It does not mention global warming. The closest it comes is discussion of acid rain and of increased "desertification."
What I take from that is that in 1980, while there was some awareness of global warming, few scientists thought it would so quickly accelerate and become the central issue regarding the environment.
The consensus has indeed been forced into extreme caution when it came to dire predictions, there were so many voices accusing scientists of crying wolf. If someone in 1980 would have said that a heat wave would kill a tenth of the number of people it did in 2003, they would have been called dangerous extremists. In this respect nothing has changed, Termination Shock will be mistaken for a piece of history, like Dafoe's journal of the plague year...
I figured the legislature prohibited considering greenhouse gas emissions in a roundabout way, but nope... From the law itself (emphasis mine):
> (2) (a) Except as provided in subsection (2)(b), an environmental review conducted pursuant to subsection (1) may not include an evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions and corresponding impacts to the climate in the state or beyond the state's borders.
Context: Subsection (1) just defines the general what and why of an environmental impact statement. Subsection (2)(b) gives only two exceptions: If the project is being done jointly with a federal agency and the federal agency requires it, or if congress amends the Clean Air Act to define carbon dioxide as a regulated pollutant.
This prohibition, 16 plaintiffs ages 5 to 22 successfully argued, violates their constitutional right to a "clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations."
1. I wonder if there are other activities that could be banned outright for violating Montanans constitutional right to "clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations."
2. I also wonder if there are activities and goods that Montana is compelled to legalize using this same constitutional right.
Yeah, it's pretty vaguely worded. It has text about it being the responsibility of every Montanan to improve the environment, now and for the future. I'm not sure how they would measure or enforce that, and if lawsuits start popping off as a result, I think they will probably just amend the text of the constitution.
Iirc they had amended the Constitution specifically with vague wording because Montana has historically been exploited by large corporations, and they wanted to make it easy for citizens to protect the environment.
The article says “as a result, statutes prohibiting climate impact analysis and remedies are now invalid and permanently enjoined”.
Page 6 of the ruling says that in March this year — three years after the suit was filed — the laws in question were repealed by the governor. Two weeks later Montana tried to have the case dismissed for “mootness”.
Was the state was trying to unilaterally settle — and avoid a public trial — by saying “fine then, we’ll undo the law if you hate it so much, happy now?” and attempting to storm off in a sulk, only to be dragged out of their room and back into court?
More like having to fight established precedent in the courts is much more dangerous and expensive than to continue your lobbying efforts as you always have and write (or repeal) laws at your convenience.
Of course we aren't talking about the state of Montana at this point, but rather the "stakeholders" who are in the politicians' campaign chests and ears 24/7/365
Keeping children out of our political system enables us to ignores their rights and needs. It's a form of discrimination.
Young people get thrown under the bus, politically, all over the west. Non-dischargeable loans, reduction in spending for youth clubs, completely ignoring their needs when it comes to city planning.
We are literally destroying the future of our society.
Sure, we shouldn't discount the opinions of a 15-year-old, they've probably got a novel perspective on things and there are issues that affect them that they can articulate an opinion on. But five? They've only just learned to walk and talk and they literally believe anything that their parents tell them. A five year old would believe that global warming was a scam invented by Martians if their parents told them so.
For the five year old: is that not the point? Adults can, and do, things that are against their long term interests. Yet they have to go to adults to intercede, both because they have little autonomy and because they need someone to assess if it is against their long term interests.
Cases like this give them an opportunity to argue their position. It's not as though they are actually making the decisions.
> A five year old would believe that global warming was a scam invented by Martians if their parents told them so.
Millions of middle-aged and elderly Americans believe global warming is a scam because that's what conspiracy theorists told them. Have you seen the things these Q-Anon folk believe because some fool on the internet told them so?
Just as we trust parents to look after the needs of their children in every other way, we also trust them to defend their rights and privileges of citizenship. That includes suing if somebody infringes those rights and privileges.
I don't know about you but when I was five I was busied myself by picking my nose and playing my gameboy.
If given a soapbox I would probably voice something to the effect of being allowed to do the former with unlimited access to the later.
I suspect there may be a reason in that in the present (and past) children really don't get the final say on anything really.
Edit: I responded to your pre-edit comment. I don't live in the city, have any debts, etc. nor am I child so I don't know the social state they are in.
A five year old child is a person who has rights. If those rights are being trampled on, then it’s 100% appropriate for the child’s guardians to seek legal recourse on their behalf (provided that it can be shown to the appropriate legal standard that the guardians are acting in the child’s interest, which seems like it wouldn’t be difficult in this case). What the child would say with a soapbox isn’t the relevant question.
I do not advocate for the oppression of children. Nothing I said have called into question the rights of a five year old. I never said that guardians can't advocate for their children.
In fact the only point I made that you addressed you said wasn't relevant. So I will repeat myself clearly for others that are confused.
Five year olds can not be expected to advocate for themselves.
Five year olds do not get the final say on decisions concerning them.
Edit: What children would say with their soapbox is very much relevant it illustrates my above points.
Furthermore is it common practice to do edits without annotations? They are really annoying to keep up with frankly. This is the 2nd in this chain alone.
Well, starting a lawsuit on behalf of children is the mechanism we have to prevent oppression of children. It’s not about giving them a soapbox and certainly not about giving them the final say. The legal system will not decide that five year olds deserve unlimited Game Boy access just because they claim to want that. It will (one would hope) decide that they deserve a future with a habitable planet because that’s been shown to be in their best interest after the arguments on all sides are weighed, whether the child understands it or not.
(As for edits, maybe you’re responding to someone other than me, but my comment was not edited in any way.)
Parents are charged with responsibility for their children, and therefore, parents must be the advocates for their childrens' interests, while exercising adult-level discretion.
This is essentially the same reason that women didn't have the vote in the past. They didn't need it. Because the man of the house was the representative of the entire family: husband, wife, children, servants, other relatives living on the land. A landowner could have a large family, and his vote represented the collective interests of the entire family. Western consumerism and individualism, killing off the concept of the family, has caused everyone to decide they need to individually represent themselves and their own selfish interests, rather than their family, neighborhood, community, employer, etc.
You compared parents' responsibility for their children to the past voting system where only the man of the house voted, representing the whole family. However, this comparison is flawed. Just because a man voted for the entire family in the past doesn't mean it was fair or right. Each person has unique needs and opinions, and it's not logical to assume one person can represent everyone's interests.
For example, imagine a family where the children have different hobbies and preferences from their parents. The parents might not always make choices that reflect what's best for each child individually. Similarly, a man voting for his entire family in the past wouldn't necessarily know or consider the unique needs of his wife, children, or servants. Individual voices matter, and while parents have a vital role in supporting their children, comparing this to historical voting practices doesn't make sense.
> it's not logical to assume one person can represent everyone's interests.
Actually that is the fundamental proposal of representative Democracy, so I have to lol at this proposition that your Senator or MP or MEP can't represent your interests. (No, not everyone's, but must represent constituents fairly throughout the district.)
See, you're speaking from a modern perspective of individualism, and that's exactly why "one family, one vote" won't work anymore. I have no particular interest in going back to that situation, because the whole world has changed around it, and it doesn't make any sense anymore. But I am just telling y'all why it made sense before, because of the remaining collectivism that united families under the same/similar/allied ideals and values.
Of course, as individualism deconstructs the family and splits us into one-man (one-woman) (Gnome Ann) islands, with our own ideals and values and votes, then the issues change. In the past, the issues may have been focused on legislation that affects the family as a unit, something that affects landowners in a certain favorable way, something that, say, encouraged procreation and childbearing. Or it encouraged farmers to grow a certain crop, or something. Or labor reforms improved the situation for a working man who was feeding a substantial family.
But nowadays, issues focus on indivuality, and what we can get for ourselves. The less relevant a family unit is to government, the more relevant is the individual, and the more likely that individuals fight for individual freedoms and individual rights, because the individual vote gives them that sovereign rule over their own household of one. So there's no going back, no. Feline suffrage is on the table.
I'm sorry, you're saying that in the same way children shouldn't need to vote, women shouldn't need to, vote? Or are you arguing that children should be involved like this and more, but just doing it obtusely?
They can't be trusted. They are like children. God put the man over his household. The list goes on. This stuff is ingrained in a lot of people. Maybe progressivism is the fad.
Are you saying they can't testify about wanting to live in a future where Montana doesn't greenlight every fossil fuel project without an environmental impact review?
Or are you saying they don't know what those words mean?
I think you can get a meaningful testimony from them (yes, "I like hiking, I like swimming in our local lakes, I want policies that protect our environment because I want to continue to be able to enjoy it" - nothing here seems incredible for a five year old to say)
You might ask "ok but why? Isn't the case well represented by older kids? Isn't it well funded?"
I have no inside knowledge of this, but if a five year old's older sibling is participating, they might want to too? Does that make their testimony more or less valid? It shouldn't
Plaintiffs don't make any arguments in court, and do not have to have any understanding whatsoever of the legal issues in their case. That's a task for their lawyers.
Fortunately, we live in a adversarial legal system, where each side in a courtroom makes a self-serving argument, as opposed to a balanced one, and its up to the jury and judge to figure out a balanced path that reconciles those self-serving viewpoints.
(And if we're going to limit rights to people who can understand complicated issues and make balanced arguments about them, an awful lot of 85-yer olds are going to be in a bit of a pickle. I agree, though, that it would be interesting to explore excluding anyone who, say, needs to wear diapers from both political and legal processes... There is a minimum voting age, after all, why not a maximum one?)
Exactly. If the 5 year old can understand "These people are making climate change worse and will make the world hotter when I grow up." (which is in the capacity of most 5 year olds) then it's perfectly fine. There are adults who don't understand intricacies of their positions, why should a 5 year old?
It is an idea that many floated as soon as Greta turned up in the news.
They didn't like the message, so they decided to attack her rather than the ideas. Use some media based pareidolia and they had a conspiracy to make the world seem right again.
It is easier to attack the person and the ideas of climate change, to stay pure in ideals and intent, than to accept dirty truth that we the people may have had any influence on the world that is even vaguely negative.
I know a lot. Her parents are quite well connected and used their child because it works well in the media.
Children want to please their parents and mimic their views. It's not a great idea to push young children into the media spotlight. It rarely turns out well for the child.
This is what I meant with that you know nothing about her. Her parents didn't push her into the media spotlight. I'm certain some Youtube channel has told you otherwise, but the facts are that she herself was the driving force behind her activism, and she was the one that pushed her family to become more conscious about climate change.
Tell me you don't have children without telling me.
When a child makes it to a top tier of media attention parents are always involved. Children do not have the drive or capability necessary to do such things on their own. Of course the parents say it was all the child's doing, because the real story is not inspiring and actually somewhat ugly.
I do have children. Children with their own wills and drives, that don't all originates from us. They aren't in any way unique in that way.
So you don't know anything about Greta, and has instead this made up story of her that isn't supported by any evidence, and you make up things about what you imagine children are to support your made up story.
It does seem weird that you can just hire random children for astroturfed legal campaigns like this, where the child has no direct connection to the case. Seems like that should probably fall afoul of child labor laws at some point.
I assume that the young citizen is a resident of the state of Montana, and is potentially being harmed by the state. What other "direct connection" to atmospheric gasses and climate change do you need? That's what gives the child standing.
This talk of "hiring" is just trolling, but since you brought it up. Montana is currently considering weakening its child labor protections, so there's that.
The reason they're having success in Montana is because Montana's constitution says "The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations"
It would be nice if we could amend the US constitution with something similar.
I want to know wyat this constitutional right to "clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations" is. Is it a state constitution thing? The article told us nothing about the case.
Section 3. Inalienable rights. All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment and the rights of pursuing life's basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways. In enjoying these rights, all persons recognize corresponding responsibilities.
Section 1. Protection and improvement. (1) The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.
(2) The legislature shall provide for the administration and enforcement of this duty.
(3) The legislature shall provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation and provide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.
You have to be some kind of economic stupid to shut down your nuclear reactors, plan your country completely migrate its energy sources in a few decades, and then rely on piped Russian natural gas to fill transition energy needs (with no seaborne natural gas terminals!).
What? Germany is a net exporter of electricity[1] - this was in 2022 and the trend is that net exports will increase this year. France (65% nuclear) imports more electricity from Germany than it exports to Germany.
I don't understand why this lie about Germany is repeated so regularly on here and yet is so easy to google/check.
German wholesale prices are pretty much bang in the middle of European average which is what you'd expect given the high level of integration between each country's domestic market and the large amount of capacity for import/export and the liberalised nature of the markets (liberalised by EU decree in 2008).
There was a huge spike last Summer but it was caused not by a domestic shift in German supply and demand but by the fact that over 50% of French nuclear capacity went offline in August/September which meant France needed to import huge amounts of electricity from its neighbours (primarily Germany) which pushed up wholesale prices across much of Europe.
You can be a big exporter - and Germany is the biggest electricity exporter in the world[1] (like the US is of natural gas for example) but this doesn't prevent domestic prices from responding to external prices.
Germany has essentially replaced nuclear 1:1 with renewables (mostly wind).
Unfortunately, even though they've been building renewables in a seriously impressive way, they could have also had nuclear at the same time.
The root issue was completely ceasing construction of a fixed-lifetime generating resource in 1983+ that accounted for ~25% of a country's energy mix, with the majority built in the 1970s.
But I'm going to take some convincing to decide that +375 TWh of stable, baseload electrical power wouldn't have helped the German (and European) economy.
Same people are writing the energy policy here. Germany just was further along.
Climate change mitigation doesn't work if the fossil fuels just make it cheaper for other countries to use them. Russia and the Middle East aren't walking away from trillions of dollars in oil reserves and the BRICS aren't going to stop developing to keep the world from getting a couple degrees hotter in a hundred years.
If they really wanted to do something about climate change they'd be pushing next gen nuclear energy to the forefront, make clean electricity super cheap, and drive electrification by outcompeting fossils.
The energy policy we have now in the West was designed by scammers and morons.
Russia and the Middle East can try to sell their oil reserves, but eventually demand is going to crash as a consequence of vehicle and power grid replacement with renewables.
Oil will remain in certain energy dense and/or conservative applications for awhile (e.g. aircraft), but the two above sectors are a big chunk of demand (~50%, roughly).
Compared to renewables' zero cost of fuel, it's hard to balance refining and shipping oil around the world at any price, especially after the current system downsizes.
Only in places that can afford to replace them. Liquid fuels are well understood and supported in the developing world because ICEs are relatively cheap and liquid fuels have amazing energy density.
A village with a tank of diesel can be amazingly self sufficient in the developing world while their grid central power are not reliable.
I understand the urgency of climate change, but doing something obviously unproductive like pretending the developing world is going to eagerly spend money they don't have to preserve the climate 75 years from now, isn't going to help anything.
The former. "Manufacturing output" is a standard statistic, like GDP, used for global comparison and historical comparison so how it's measured is defined by the OECD.
Yes, and if we all go burn our houses down the GDP increases became we create more economic activity. The point being the statistics don't necessarily mean what you'd think they mean, and they do redefine/game them when they want.
I'm responding to the suggestion that Germany doctored the numbers regarding manufacturing output. I found this suggestion weird but I've tried to respond with a straight answer and not assume anything about the agenda behind the question. This was maybe a mistake.
The OECD defines how "manufacturing output" is measured. The same method is used to measure manufacturing output in every OECD country and has been used for over 50 years. Germany was the 4th biggest manufacturer in the world in 1970 and it's still the 4th biggest manufacturer in the world. Why is this so difficult to believe or preposterous?
Look it up, google it, read some wikipedia, look at secondary economic indicators, employment numbers, everything, there is ZERO evidence of a collapse in German manufacturing anywhere.
It was just so obviously stupid. I don't have time to wade through German government websites finding the trail.
Modern civilization, like in Germany, requires a certain per capita level of energy resources. If you increase the cost of energy without a matching increase in economic resources you lose functionality in your infrastructure.
Germany willfully chose to cut domestic energy production and increase its own costs. Now its core manufacturing is crumbling.
BASF, for example, is relocating to China[0]. They claim they're using 100% renewable energy there, but such claims are easy to make in China and hard to verify.
The Western sustainable energy policy is like watching a man hit himself repeatedly in the head with a hammer and then wonder why he has a headache.
Well they are going to have to suffer the consequences of your smarty-pants bad decisions for way longer than you, so I say, we give them a vote proportional to the statistically average remaining years they have left on this planet.
There is no reason at all for anyone but the Head of Household to vote, who's ever paying the bills and keeping it together.
Democracy becomes less stable as voting increases and individual equity falls. It becomes a race by politicians to dumb down the population and elections a race to see who can offer the public the most free stuff from "the government."
Most people live in dream worlds and do not understand cause and effect relationships, especially young people. Getting more and more uninvested people to vote is not a magic alchemical process. If so the biggest corporations would use the model to gain even more power.
But they don't. You need to own shares in companies to vote. That's how they align their decisions with their future needs.
> There is no reason at all for anyone but the Head of Household to vote, who's ever paying the bills and keeping it together.
What about healthy families that share this duty between the parents?
> Democracy becomes less stable as voting increases and individual equity falls. It becomes a race by politicians to dumb down the population and elections a race to see who can offer the public the most free stuff from "the government."
You're not going to improve this situation by reducing the voter pool. This makes it even easier to "dumb down the population and elections".
> Most people live in dream worlds and do not understand cause and effect relationships, especially young people.
You're telling us you've understood that only having the "Head of Household" vote is good. Why is it good (in ways not trivially countered as above)? Show us that we really are living in dream worlds, and you are not.
> Getting more and more uninvested people to vote is not a magic alchemical process. If so the biggest corporations would use the model to gain even more power.
> But they don't. You need to own shares in companies to vote. That's how they align their decisions with their future needs.
Sorry, but this makes no sense. Why would "the biggest corporations [...] use the model to gain even more power"? Who is saying "the electorate can gain more power by becoming bigger" or "the votes are worth more if there are more"? This is a strange non-sequitur.
> kids are great, but there's a reason we don't allow them to make major decisions.
At this point I would rather have kids in British parliament than the current lot.
> BRICS can take advantage of cheaper fossil fuels
This scaremongering is getting out of hand.
I just watched a BBC news broadcast about "how will the world get off coal if this family in the global south needs it to cook their food?" as if this miniscule consumption of coal is in any way comparable to out demands for energy and oil.
>90% of world's electric buses run in China. In UK, the train between 2 biggest cities runs on diesel because it doesn't have access to electricity. If you use an electric scooter in London instead of a car, the police will confiscate it and if they want to, they could charge you with driving without insurance (of course they cannot be insured). You would get a criminal record.
Every 6 months Daily mail writes an article about how bicycle riders have killed all the grandmas, and police get's out at Hyde Parks and start checking motor power of ebike motors and confiscating them. But we are still waiting for them to investigate a machete attach in our neighbourhood.
Just this month a car has maimed 3 people inside a building, and no one cares. Last month a Land rover ploughed into a school and sent 8 kids to the hospital and 1 to the morgue. If you kill someone with a car, you might not even go to prison.
India is a country full of vegetarians but they don’t really have an environmental streak. They have extreme air and water pollution problems, on a scale that perhaps make China’s problems of 10 years ago look tame. Where else can you see dead bodies in a river?
There's still a couple billion people there who need energy to survive and progress and don't care about the climate increasing a couple of degrees by 2100.
> “Montanans can’t be blamed for changing the climate—even the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses agreed that our state has no impact on the global climate," Flower said.
I guess it's a question of "absolutely none" vs "proportionally almost none". The legal issue being of environmental damage done to the state of Montana by climate change, the actions of Montanans do indeed have a negligible impact. (Population 1.1 million)
This argument could be extended to anything by just dividing up the target into smaller chunks, just because individuals have negligeable impact on global climate doesnt mean nobody has any responsibility to reduce emissions. No raindrop thinks itself responsible for the flood.
An individual gun, let alone bullet, kills so few people you can practically treat it as zero if you zoom out far enough. Therefore any regulation whatsoever is meaningless.
Yeah, this is a very convenient rhetorical device for someone looking to trivialize important issues in bad faith.
Experts told Scientific American that Montana's emissions are significant given its population size, emitting in 2019 "about 32 million tons of carbon dioxide." That's "about as much as Ireland, which has a population six times larger," Scientific American reported.
However negligible the impact, the State Constitution says what it says. Imagine if a local US government were to pass a law that totally banned the possession and ownership of firearms within city limits. They could analogously argue that this law does not violate the 2nd Amendment, because the right of the people to keep and bear arms in just this city has a negligible impact on “the security of a free State” overall.
What a ridiculous claim. Does this guy think there's just a single pollution factory in China doing all the damage? Whole Montana cannot be solely to blame, they can certainly share some blame just like any government that has any sort of greenhouse gas production within its jurisdiction. Oh wait, they aren't allowed to do environmental impact studies that consider greenhouse gas so there's no data to support the claim that Montana produces any!
In a June trial, the youths had argued that despite its sparse population, Montana is responsible for an outsized share of global emissions. The state is a major producer of coal, oil and gas that is shipped elsewhere and is also the home of pipelines and other infrastructure needed to ship those fuels.
Was also surprised to read that Montana emits as much ghg’s as Ireland.