the biggest problem is the climate. with trump winning, most/all of the climate policies will be revered irreparably damaging our planet bringing us to the brink of extinction. ofc it won't be all trump fault, current trends are gloomy enough yet those are the very last few years to actually do something..
Isn't "bringing us to the brink of extinction" rather hyperbolic? As far as I know there is no indication that climate change will be an extinction-level threat? What it will be is hugely damaging for all sorts of other reasons, both to humans and other life.
Beyond that, I agree with you, and it's one of my major concerns as well.
> As far as I know there is no indication that climate change will be an extinction-level threat?
We are currently living in an era of mass extinction. It's not something that's coming, we are in it, it is measurable. 75% of wild animals, insects and trees have disappeared. That is a fact, and it is not related to climate change at all: "just" to how we humans organize the world (mostly habitat loss).
Climate change will bring famines, natural disasters, and global instability (that means wars). This is yet to come.
It is fairly likely that at this rate, we will reach 4 degrees of global warming. At 4 degrees, a large part of the Earth (around the Equator) becomes unlivable for humans (it's too humid and hot, we can't regulate our temperature by sweating, we die). Which means that billions of people will need to relocate. This is not just normal wars: think entire countries that decide to leave their territory and go somewhere else, together with their army.
I don't know what the definition of "extinction-level" means (maybe you only care about some individuals of the human species surviving), but in my book that's as bad as it gets.
I agree with much of that, but I don't think that will really bring us to the "brink of extinction". That said, I'm not keen to find out as we don't really get to reload a save game if you mess up. Sadly, not many seem to agree :-( Or maybe they found a cheat to load save games, idk.
> I agree with much of that, but I don't think that will really bring us to the "brink of extinction".
I think that it was a figure of speech. Whether it brings the human species to the brink of extinction or makes life unbearable for 90% of humans and destroys civilization as we know it is a bit of a technicality, if you ask me.
In any case it is one of the biggest problems of our time.
Maybe. But in the face of a malicious misinformation campaign, I think it's important to be accurate and careful with our words. Hyperbolic statements are not really helpful as it adds just the right ring of truth to the "it's all a load of bollocks by climate alarmists" claims, so it ends up just helping the misinformation campaign.
Right. I understand your point, but I think it's important to understand that if the risk here is not "extinction" in the sense that the human species will disappear, it is actually the end of the world as we know it. And I mean it in the catastrophic way.
If you imagine a big stripe around the equator where people can't survive (it's basically mars) and have no other choice than to "invade" the rest of the world that may already not have the capacity to feed its population anymore, with oceans rising and pushing another couple billions inside the lands (so you can't just build walls as a country, you have civil war).
That's pretty much where we are headed now, and the data seems to show every year that we are actually getting there closer than we thought we were (because when our models "forget" something, usually it's something that made it worse). Not only that, but we are accelerating in that direction.
I personally think we're way passed the point where we can call anything "alarmism". The most conservative scenario I can find without us making drastic changes are all "equally bad" (as in: I don't really care whether or not the human species survives if all my relative and I die in very bad conditions).
That's what I mean with "it's as bad as it gets": between extinction of the human species and the most conservative scenario if we don't change, none of them is acceptable to me.
> In the book of world history things have been way worse[0].
Has it been way worse, really? I think that the climate change that ended the dinosaurs happened slower than what we are expecting with ours (but I didn't check it and I am not completely sure).
I am sure of this, though: the mass extinction we are living now is the fastest we know. Let me rephrase it: we human have made 75% of wild animals, insects and trees disappear faster than it ever happened in the history of Earth.
> In the book of world futures things could get way way worse[1].
"Way way worse"? Do you realise what "20 degrees around the equator becomes uninhabitable" means? It's like half of the inhabited world becomes mars, and the people living there have no choice but to move where the other half is.
Entire regions of the planet could very well become uninhabitable, which would affects hundreds of millions, potentially billions of people. Migratory flows of that size would almost certainly lead to armed conflicts. It's hard to tell how this would end, but it is certainly not going to be pretty.
It could easily lead to the end of civilization. We’ve been seeing global production disruptions for years now. (Currently, quartz for semiconductors. During the pandemic, climate events knockout out PVC production, which meant a global disruption of construction work.)
We’re at the beginning of the exponential ramp on this sort of stuff, where the changes are barely noticeable. For example, until last night (so, assuming best case greenhouse projections), there was roughly a 50% chance that some people reading this will live to see the northern half of Europe turn into a glacier.
Anyway, without modern civilization, we probably won’t survive 10,000’s of years of such stuff. The global population bottlenecked at a few thousand the last time this happened.
Unfortunately, it will get really grim and bad that even if literal extinction is improbably (humanity seems to have already bounced from less than 10k people) it seems to be bad enough to warrant this hyperbole.
Like, if most of the tropics reach wet-bulb temperature and more than a billion people live there - that will be grim.
If we had a functioning congress, laws could be set. The president really is not _meant_ to have a lot of power here. Administrations have been trying to do more, as congress really won't pass laws any longer. However, each administration just throws out the policies of the last administration. Actually passing laws in congress does not necessarily have this same problem.
Precisely. Regardless of your political leaning, Congress has been playing hot potato for a long time. Instead of actually creating rules or regulations, they do nothing and let the administration or courts decide. That way they can go to their constituents and beg for votes or contributions to fight the same branches that they relinquished power to by not doing anything.
A large part of the Republicans' strategy is to appoint partisan judges & let them legislate from the bench for the rest of their lives. Talking up thread about "the biggest problem", this is probably it. In the context of climate change, recently we can see SCOTUS shooting down environmental protections. This happens in lower courts too, but those don't make national news.
The problem is that trump believes the president is king of America, and that a dictatorship is the best form of government. Even bigger problem: far too many Republicans seem to agree with him and will try to hasten the descent into a fascist authoritarian dictatorship. I have no idea if they will be successful, but it doesn't look like there will be much to stop them.
I think the problem is that when the Democrats are in power, they also attempt to inflate the power of the executive branch. Both parties have been doing this for a while, and are AGHAST when the opposing party gets elected. No one seems to want to take back the power the executive branch, which makes each new bad president more and more of a disaster.
I don't think the president does have much power over this? The most important things are indeed enshrined in legislation. I think it's pretty unlikely they are going to spend any political capital on undoing any legislation in this space.
"The President might not sign the bill, however. If he specifically rejects
the bill, called a veto, the bill returns to Congress. There it is voted on
again, and if both houses of Congress pass the bill again, but this time by a
two-thirds majority, then the bill becomes law without the President’s
signature. This is called “overriding a veto,” and is difficult to do because
of the two-thirds majority requirement."
I am not sure that's the case. The main supporter is a guy who produces e-cars with all the interests to sell more of them.
The way I see it, he will continue with the transition whenever it benefits him/the country. Which means some programs might be canceled, especially if they go against such interests.
> The main supporter is a guy who produces e-cars with all the interests to sell more of them.
Sure Elon might have an impact on CO2 emissions in the transport sector but I don't see him moving things that don't directly benefit him, say, electricity/heat production or agriculture.
Tesla literally has a massive (electrical) energy storage business alongside solar. There are huge battery installations that are helping regions like Hawaii and Australia pivot to renewables.
That visual shows that road transport is 11% , making it the second highest category, as the poster said. This is a great graphic though, thanks for sharing!
Edit: actually in the graphic it's the largest sector! My bad
Not sure how reliable all this is... Yet it seems "road" is nearly 10-11% which is big enough to solve and to have already an impact in everyday life. Then it cascades to other sectors too.
Musk does seem to have gone bonkers in the last two years or so, but I agree. I suspect he might end up being a surprisingly moderating, rational influence on Trump. He might have (at least publicly) aligned himself with conspiracy theorists, outrage merchants and general grifters for now, but I think at heart he's still pro-science.
You know you're in trouble when Musk of all people is considered a moderating influence compared to your president.
I'm not convinced Musk cares all that much about the environment anymore, if he ever truly did. EVs were a bet that car buyers (and governments) would care about the environment.
Musk just wants to go to Mars and leave Earth behind.
I guess he is pro science indeed. And opportunistic too. He might also morally align with Trump more than with Dems, who knows. These elections were just an unfortunately ridiculous show.
Why wouldn't we take his public rhetoric and actions at face value? Why is this possibly a good idea to simply say 'well in his heart he trusts science' when he is demonstrating the contrary?
I don't want to live in fantasy land here. Based on observable actions, Musk isn't brining any positive force to the table
Isn’t that obvious? He knew he could only get to the position he’s now in (or at least have the best chance of doing so) if he joined in with the MAGA brigade.
He clearly does align with the movement in some ways, but he also is responsible for SpaceX, for example. Don’t you think that marks him out as being a bit different from the others?
Also, there are observable actions. If you listen to some of the podcasts he’s been on recently (as painful as they can be) you’ll hear him very flatly rejecting suggestions of quackery and ‘vaccine scepticism’. He’s so obviously not stupid, even if he’s degenerated somewhat, as many of us have, by constant exposure to poisonous social media.
He had some wins (SpaceX, Tesla) certainly, but that doesn't mean his bizarre behavior and clear display of bizarre beliefs aren't concerning or he's somehow immune believing other nonsensical things.
You can't predicate the fact he has had success with those companies and somehow say his actions are some undercover operation to gain a position of power that will help average Americans or moderate the administration or whatever you want to say with that.
We should be focused on public actions and as it sits over the last 4 years in particular, Musk's actions are very concerning and there is serious cause for concern.
You haven't proven he isn't fully bought on MAGA bullshit with this. Its fantasy thinking running contrary to available evidence. He's broadly bought into Trump and the policies that brings, that much is clear.
Yes I have, he's broadly comfortable with MAGA ideas. Taken together with rhetoric and how he acts, it seems like a rationale conclusion.
Just because someone does a sit down interview and nudges around the edges about things they disagree with doesn't mean he's not fully bought in. There is zero evidence he meaningfully disagrees with Trump on anything of consequence
He donated at least $132 million dollars to the Trump campaign and GOP allies[0], for god sakes. Do you really think anyone donates $132 million dollars to something they aren't fully bought in to?
When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
He's not bought in to the anti-vax movement, and he doesn't deny anthropogenic climate change. Aren't those both quite MAGA?
> There is zero evidence he meaningfully disagrees with Trump on anything of consequence
What I just said above is evidence, I think. There certainly isn't zero evidence.
> Do you really think anyone donates $132 million dollars to something they aren't fully bought in to?
Yes — absolutely. People make compromises all the time, and employ strategies that exchange short-term (even reputational) cost for long-term benefit.
> When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
He has shown us who he is, so far, by his actions in building companies and promoting rationality and science. Yes, he's also recently gone down the rabbit hole of nonsense on Twitter, but for now I don't think that fully represents his underlying nature.
I have no particular dog in this fight. I'm not American and nor do I have any particular love of Musk. However, I think you're overreacting.
As for your source: I know how much he's donated, and it is a shocking amount. However, in the wake of Trump's re-election, the share price of Tesla has just gone up 15% making Musk $15 billion richer. Makes that $132 million seem like pocket change. At worst, he's a self-interested opportunistic capitalist. But he's not a moron or a religious zealot as others are.
I expect he will either indeed be a moderating influence on the administration (remember this is in the context of Trump; I'm not saying he counts as a moderate in the usual sense) or will quickly lose favour or otherwise become disenchanted with Trump and Trumpism and vacate whatever position he's granted and move on.
Also remember: I'm not arguing he's particularly sensible or even acts like a grown up (he doesn't). I'm arguing that he's not 'literally Hitler' as some seem to be insinuating.
What makes people think Trump is going to run the show? I have a feeling he's going to be the rubber stamp while Vance, Thiel and Musk and gang will run the show behind the scenes.
as someone from eu - doesn't us now/under dems extract top amount of fossils from all the time? I mean it's not like it was good now. It looks like it'll get worse but the current path wasn't good either...
The US has been on a strong downward trend for CO2 output per capita for decades now [1]. The IRA is expected to significantly accelerate this trajectory, although it's unclear how much of that will now come to pass.
It does, thank goodness. Otherwise it would come from Saudi and other despots. We should be producing as much as we can in the US to quit funding horrible regimes.
There is the short term reality that we are dependent on gas and oil and, decreasingly, coal. The difference between the two parties is the long term vision.
Dems want to have international treaties to address the problem and are willing to spend money to move away from fossil fuels. Republicans downplay the science (or outright deny it) and think international treaties make the US less independent and therefore weaker, and they would much rather cut taxes for Elon Musk than spend money on energy infrastructure.
Unsustainable practices lead to exhaustion of resources and subsequent spikes in prices. Prices today will be nothing compared to the prices we face when the earth exhausted of topsoil, the sea is exhausted of fish, and the water table exhausted of clean water.
Voting against the environment in favor of lower prices will ultimately lead to higher prices.
Global energy prices are high because of wars in Europe.
The rise of right wing forces globally and anti immigration forces, is a consequence of immigration from regions that are not only crushed by wars, but also by climate instability.
Since solutions are too complex and require global cooperation, its easier for governments to not do anything.
As this keeps up, and larger areas of the world become uninhabitable, more migration will occur, leading to more power to demagogues and dictators.
Alternatively, if the fed didn't just print money to pay for unnecessary vote-buying schemes then the inflation rate would have been only minimally (if at all) impacted by the points you made.
If you want a straight line drawn in markers for something like the global economy - I mean, sure?
Given the forum though, I hesitate to place you amongst such company. I am guessing you know what the Fed's remit is, and therefore WHY they are printing money.
shame they’re either unwilling or unable to trace the source of the inflation.
also, it’s going to get worse for that person’s grocery bill under trump. the middle class will come under even greater short-term pressure over the next few years as trump’s “concepts of a plan” begin to materialize.
but hey, at lease my kitten is safe. just wish someone would do something about all the geese here.
We can't be 100% sure about that. We know that agriculture can't survive a constant rise of temperature. At some point the roots are unable to grasp water from the soil, and then everything dies at the same moment.
I was of the impression that US contribution to global emissions was relatively low for our population size and per capita energy usage thus making domestic climate change policy relatively small potatoes. Is that not true? Is there more to it than that?
> I guess another angle is that he is best buddies with Elon who could potentially do some interesting things there.
Elon is comoditizing space. If that's profitable, he will get SpaceX to a point where people go on holiday in a rocket. That's exactly going in the wrong direction in terms of climate.
Commoditizing space brings a lot of issues, I'll agree on that.
But if you don't see how it is an environmental one... well I don't know how I can help. And I mean that honestly. I see a lot of comments about SpaceX where people seem to genuinely think that it is "helping the human species". And I just don't see what to say against that... it's just pure faith to me.
To me, regarding SpaceX it sounds like engineers saying "if you keep walking one step after the other for long enough, then you'll reach the Moon" and then focusing really hard on the next steps. And if someone says "well if you keep walking you'll surely stay on Earth", they answer "He has a plan, someday a solution will come".
Its increasingly difficult for me to believe that climate change is a critical issue when the attendees of World Economic Forum + Al Gore + Bill Gates + Leanardo Dicaprio all fly around in private jets while lecturing me on why i should be not be eating meat.
I think solar is only cheapest at point of production. Once you factor in transmission costs, grid congestion, intermittent supply, etc. Solar is still expensive at point of consumption.
It's not to argue directly against your point but just that we still have a lot of work to move over to a sustainable electrical grid. And that will be helped by favourable policy
Emissions in the US are pretty much negligible compared to China and India. It would have to be a radical shift that is going to take way more than four years to make US climate policy even relevant to the planet as a whole.
You need to account for indirect emissions. Because all the factories are in China means that China emits more, but those iPads are not being sold and used in China.
When you import goods, you import their emissions. It's just super hard to measure (and we like to blame it all on China).
This is irrelevant for looking at the effectiveness of climate policy. Restrictions on emissions in the US and EU are not going to reduce the emissions from factories in China even if the resulting products are sold in the US/EU.
How do you mean that? China would not produce iPads for the rest of the world if the rest of the world was not buying iPads, right?
The graal of climate policy would actually be to be able to know precisely the impact of every single action we do. So that we could optimize properly. But because we can't do that, we have to rely on proxies, and that makes it error prone and practically very challenging.
If the issue is emissions per capita then the solution is simply to increase the population faster than the increase in emissions.
Similar, countries with aging population will see an increase in emissions per capita regardless if they are actually decreasing emissions, as long the population loss is greater than emissions decreases.
And if the economy starts to turn (or maybe even if it doesn’t) say good by to the relatively apolitical Fed and rate-setting. Which’ll bring a boom, more inflation, and a hard crash on the other side.
What are you talking about? The US has the 2nd heighest emissions behind China, almost double India's. The only countries higher than it per-capita are Canada, Australia and petro-states or tiny countries.
And China is already leading the world in moving to renewable technology, they are moving in the right direction (not entirely for altruistic reasons - it fulfils their ambitions of energy self-sufficiency).
Another example of Democrats being really poor communicators on specific important issues—they could easily frame renewables as a protectionist issue and make it relevant but instead they don't know how to talk about it so they just avoid it whenever possible.
I do wonder whether democrats will shift to post-conservative messaging. "Let's preserve what we have left of our beautiful American forests" might be able to resonate. Idk.
That exact message has been tried and energy independence/stick-it-to-OPEC remains fairly common way of trying to sell it. Actual measures to onshore renewable industry were successfully demonized as corrupt, didn’t go over well.
I'm sure in some meeting somewhere someone floated that exact idea and then got promptly laughed out of the room by a bunch of people who live in a filter bubble in which protectionism is too politically close to populism to be palatable.
Why cherry-pick per-capita when what matters to the climate is actual output, not output per capita. Lets take Australia, as an example, their total co2 output is around 1% of the world's co2 output. If Australia ceased producing all of its co2, it wouldn't make much difference at all. Per capita figures are just a waste of everyone's time.
As someone from a smallish country (UK), I don't think I agree. Per capita is the only-) way of measuring emmissions that doesn't wind up a proxy for just listing the biggest countries.
Almost 1/5 people are in China, if tomorrow the country divided itself up into smaller nations would thay change anything about the pollution bring emmited?
I always try to convince people the best metric is CO2/land area. It actually adjusts for the size of your country without the silly idea that having more people means your country is doing "better" from an emissions perspective.
Great, let's just move everyone to Australia! Or wait...
Unless you have policy recommendations to change the total number of people on Earth (please don't) then global emissions per capita are the only stat that matters.
What could Trump do in that respect? Bring back coal? Coal isn't coming back. The economics aren't there short of literally paying for the burning of coal. And while Trump seems to lean into the AGW deniers, he does seem to at least respect reducing the classic "silent spring" sorts of pollution that obviously dirty air and water.
US oil production is the highest in the world, the highest in its history, and is so maxed out that there are loads of drilling rights that aren't even being exercised as oil companies all realized that it was pyrrhic with current low oil prices.
On the climate position I don't think things can go back. Wind, solar and evolving nuclear just make it a silly thing to do.
He can, and has basically promised to massively subsidize fracking. Fracking is still not profitable, never has been, probably never will be. It's existence is purely political.
This is intriguing and I've actually never heard this take. (Not disagreeing, to be clear.) My laymen's understanding is that domestic natural gas production has gone way up in this century and I lazily assumed this was why.
Yes, there is strategic value in being able to extract fossil fuels domestically, and fracking allows this, only at great economic (and environmental) cost.
Opening up coal mines just to bring back jobs in the rust belt does not make any sense. Start mining silicon and other minerals used in solar, batteries and chips instead. It makes a lot more sense even though the initial investment is higher.
He could take away government subsidies and incentives for clean energy production. And subsidies for converting consumption to electricity (like EVs, heat pump furnaces, water heaters, and stoves).
He could target research into clean energy technology, ending government initiatives and taking away research grants.
He could remove regulations on energy efficiency.
He could put giant tariffs on anything made in China that is used in clean energy production (like solar panels, batteries, and electronics).
He could make it harder to get approvals to install clean energy production, siding with NIMBYs who oppose solar, wind, and battery projects.
He could cut federal funding for public transit.
I don't know how much of that he would actually do, but in the past he has expressed support for a lot of it. So I think he will try to do some of it.
It's possible we have already reached a tipping point where the total cost of clean energy production and consumption is cheaper even without all of these subsidies and so on. If so, then the transition might continue anyway. But if so, I think it will still be a slower transition.
That promise played upon the listener thinking the US had somehow suppressed oil production. In reality oil/gas production has gone wild, now with a large surplus over domestic consumption. There are huge numbers of rights that have been granted but not exercised because the world is so awash in oil that the price makes most non-conventional fields unprofitable.
There just isn't anything to really be done there.
“ That promise played upon the listener thinking the US had somehow … “
this is the summary of trumps entire campaign platform. i’m honestly not even sure he expressed a concrete policy on anything. he said he wants even more aggressive tariffs and will start deportation on day 1 (and was relatively nonchalant about some “legal” immigrants being caught up with “illegal” ones). cut dei.
there’s honestly no plan or policy, just a nebulous wish list that appeals to the base impulses of humanity.
the only real expectation that i have is that justices thomas and alito will retire early in his term to allow him to appoint new ones early enough to not allow democrats to stall like mcconnell did.
The same thing that happens when you subsidize EVs - we just use more. If you lower the cost of consumption, consumption goes up. If you lower the cost of alternative means of consumption, total consumption still goes up.
It goes up either way, you might as well have the source be here instead of from a foreign adversary.
I think this is doubtful, and it's a testament to the way the IRA was written. There are now bipartisan constituencies who support different parts of it. And there was no real chance we were going to get anything new on the climate regardless of the outcome. I think this issue will just be status quo for this term.
Climate policies were already getting gutted under this administration due to reversal of Chevron deference by SCOTUS (packed by previous Trump/Pence administration).
EPA and other regulatory agencies have been stripped of their regulatory powers. Any “vague” law which was interpreted by agencies can now be challenged in courts.
At this moment it does not matter anymore. In the next decades Mar-a-lago will be hit, either if Trump likes it or if not. He just can make it sooner and worse.
I absolutely hope the EU ramps military spending and negates the need for US support. Sometimes, you need a catalyst, and clearly another nation should not be beholden to US defense agreements.
With Putin at their door for so many years, attacking Georgia, Ukraine, bullying other countries, etc., it's absolutely amazing how nonchalant EU was about it.
> Be careful what you wish for.
A strong EU that Putin will think twice before starting anything at their doorstep is my wish. Let's see if they can make it happen!
Hey, it's going to be great for the EU. In fact, I think lessened U.S. influence in world affairs is going to be a net positive for everyone, except perhaps the U.S.
Trump doesn’t want to leave NATO, that would be dumb. He wants those not “paying their fair share” to pay more or the US will leave. It’s a negotiating tactic. So if you don’t want the US to leave NATO and you’re in a NATO country then get them to spend more on NATO.
You probably know this, but just in case: NATO is not a club you pay 2% in to for protection. The 2% is the required spending on YOUR OWN defence. In practice this benefits USA as a major weapon producer, at least it has until now. I have a feeling Europe feels less certain that they will buy American next time.
Doesn't strength in numbers contradict your idea of kicking out the weak?
When I hear phrases like strength in numbers, I think of elephants. When a herd of elephants watches lions circle their community, the strong ones stand around their young to protect them.
That's analogous to "strong" countries subsidizing ones who can't provide for themselves, because having an allied presence is helpful.
Sure, but if they’re not pulling their weight then they’re a detriment. Have you served next to a foreign NATO soldier? I have. I wasn’t impressed. Step up your spending or gtfo.
Your wording, both the use of "paying their fair share" and "get them to spend more on NATO"-part made it sounds like countries actually pay money into NATO. Trump also makes it sound like that, and he certainly gave the impression that if other NATO countries started "paying more" (aka spending more) that would mean more money for the US. The fact is that as long as the USA wants to be able to win two world wars at once, they still need their astronomic millitary budget, and what tiny European countries spend makes no difference. My comment was not about "changing your post", it was to make sure nobody else is confused about this after reading your post.
When that is said, its good that most NATO countries are hitting and exceeding 2%. It's clear that Europe can not rely on USA to be the "world police", we need to be be able to defend ourself.
Also, friendly reminder that article 5 has been used exactly once, and that was to defend USA. Soldiers of my country has died defending USA.
Considering that the biggest threat to independence is probably the USA themselves… I'm guessing not very far. You'll probably be okay if you cater to businesses and foreign investments, but if you stray too far from the USA's preferred economic model you may suddenly find yourself subject to astroturfed protests, coup attempts, or even straight up military intervention.
Chile's attempt at lukewarm socialism didn't fail from internal causes. Cuba didn't brought embargo on themselves. To name but two. Considering the USA has been at war for almost the entirety of it's history, there must be a couple more.
"Club" was a tame euphemism I only took from the comment I was replying to. I think "Mafia" would be more appropriate.
I disagree with the guy you are responding to as well. But I don’t think he’s saying that Trump wants people to pay the 2% like it is a subscription fee. I think he’s just saying that Trump is using the possibility of leaving as a threat in the hopes that countries will meet their 2% obligation.
As to what Trump actually is saying, I have no idea, he’s hard to parse.
And by 'pay more' he means 'buy more US weapons'. NATO is a conveniently captive market for the US arms manufacturers, and no way they're going to want to pull out of that while they still have stock to sell.
Before 2020 elections John Bolton said that Trump doesn't see the point for NATO and will consider withdrawing if he wins in 2020. Because of that a NATO Support at was passed in Congress to block the president from single handly withdraw the US from NATO. That was over 4 years ago, hopefully he changed his mind.
as a veteran i also don’t see the full point. i understand the intent behind it but the actual implementation is garbage. the US is paying large sums of money to protect land we don’t own. but if we very other NATO country steps up well then the collective defense works.
Maybe EU countries should be those that leave NATO so they won't be blackmailed. They have some nuclear capable countries already. It would be much weaker alliance but with nuclear warhead one just need to press the button. Since EU states are getting more and more populists leaders this can happen eventually.
please do, Europe has a fraction of the military might the US does, and nobody owns more nukes than Russia and the US. Russia is also a 3 min flight time to Europe, so you have a literal 0% chance of stopping a Russian nuclear attack. please leave or step up.
He was very correct in calling out EU countries on Russian gas reliance (which is still somehow an issue!), and also on the EU being way too comfortable with letting the US pick up the slack when it came to our defense.
The EU SHOULD be spending the agreed upon 2%, all this weasley shit the EU gov'ts are pulling is a complete joke considering the massive Bear in the room that is Russia.
My theory is that we will leave Nato because he won’t want war when Putin pushes into Europe. His base doesn’t care frankly. The direct cost is too high and they can’t see past grocery prices.
That will all depend on how worn down the Russian military actually is and how long it needs to rebuild. And at any rate the threat of Russian military action will be used to punish any European country that doesn’t accept Russian influence. It will be used on former Soviet republics.
The only thing that may stop Trump and saving Europe is his ego now that he has effective immunity from prosecution as Putin is no longer a threat to him.
We will see who the bigger narcissist actually is. Putin is probably smarter though.
We need some seriously smart republicans.
Countries with right wing Russian aligned puppets may prevent direct conflict by appeasement but nevertheless they will be under Putin’s control.
China will continue being China. Where semiconductors fall will be interesting as will access to battery tech.
Trump will print money to appease his base and we will see exactly how economic forces evolve beyond control.
Until it is. But statements like this are why the world as a society is backsliding, countries putting up walls and isolating themselves instead of seeing the benefits of cooperation in terms of stability and economy. Just look at the economic downturn that happened in the UK when they withdrew from the EU, or how Russia was shunned, excluded and sanctioned for starting an unprovoked war.
Any benefit the US thinks they get for the policies that Trump and his ear-whisperers wants to enact will be short-term. Which is not a problem for Trump as he won't be there to see the long term consequences.
He’s not knee deep in engineering, at all. It’s ridiculous to imagine he is.
He hasn’t designed or engineered a single component. He hasn’t managed any internal project.
I have to ask, are you president of his fan club? You seem personally offended that I pointed out that he doesn’t actually contribute meaningfully to any engineering work.
>I have to ask, are you president of his fan club? You seem personally offended that I pointed out that he doesn’t actually contribute meaningfully to any engineering work.
No. I'm not a fan at all. But I don't have this biased hatred for him that you seem to have.
>He’s not knee deep in engineering, at all. It’s ridiculous to imagine he is.
You are truly out of touch about this guy if you don't know that he's knee deep in engineering. Not even joking here. The fact that you don't know this shows that you don't really know much about him. Dude, just read his biography or if you don't have time watch the above video that sums it up from an unbiased pov.
No, but the volume of hydrocarbons SpaceX are burning to provide a broadband network by cluttering low earth orbit with shiny things is hardly an obvious win.
Really? Are you still buying all your stuff from China where they are standing up new coal plants every day? Just because the pollution doesn't happen here doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
I also expect Trump to roll back many of those policies and create new, worse ones like opening up more federal land for drilling and mining.
That said, you must have a lot more faith in the current policies than I do. The sole focus on limiting carbon in the atmosphere has been woefully misguided in my opinion. We need to focus on reducing our total impact on the planet, not just trying to mitigate it a bit while we continue to consume more resources and use use more energy every year.
If human impact on the planet is going to kill us all with Trump in office, it was going to happen either way.
> opening up more federal land for drilling and mining
I'm honestly not sure how much a difference Trump will make in this. The US greatly increased oil and gas production under Biden.
It seems that policies that supported an energy transition were generally working. If those get rolled back, hopefully things are in a good enough place that more sustainable energy continues dominating.
I'm still not actually clear how an energy transition will even work unless its paired with a huge reduction in how much total energy we actually use.
Moving from fossil fuels to renewables or even nuclear is all well and good, but it takes a huge amount of natural resources to pull off. Nuclear may be easier, renewables require a lot more resources than we currently have.
> unless its paired with a huge reduction in how much total energy we actually use.
This is very unrealistic IMO. That will never happen. It flies against the whole idea of civilization and the development of human history.
Energy consumption will rise on larger timescales. Best you can do is to tame the growth by efficiency and using more renewable, greener energy generation.
If you want to keep bees on your apartment roof that is fine, but we are not all going back to being subsistence farmers at this point.
While I do agree that its unrealistic to this people collectively will learn what it means to have "enough", I don't see another realistic solution.
We're not only increasing total energy consumption every year, we're increasing energy consumption per capita. It may be one thing if the argument is that energy use will rise or fall inline with population, but that's not the case.
This is the main crux of why climate change debates have always felt hollow to me. We can argue about plastic straws, diesel engine emissions, or what an acceptable level of parts per million in the atmosphere is but those are all surface level problems. Assuming the science linking human impact to climate issues is accurate, we're screwed no matter what we do on those issues if we continue to demand more power from whatever today's preferred energy source is.
I fully agree that all these things don't _solve_ anything and it never will, it just delays the inevitable a little bit.
But it is not completely out of the question we could solve abundant nonpolluting energy. Failure there is not inevitable.
> people collectively will learn what it means to have "enough"
Maybe I am too cynical, but I think the problem with this is that means, in practice:
"OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The quality of life you have today? That's it.
Oh, and all you guys still in poverty [there are still billions of people who use very little energy], you're also going to have to stay there. Sorry."
That will in turn cause civil unrest and even more unhappy people than we have today, which means increased totalitarianism, oppression and violence to quash that to keep societies "stable". For all the ills of consumerism and aspirationism, it _is_ serving as an opium to keep people distracted from the harsh realities of the world.
We'd go back to the Middle Ages, in terms of the rate of improvement of the quality of life. I don't think many people are OK with that.
> But it is not completely out of the question we could solve abundant nonpolluting energy. Failure there is not inevitable.
I am pretty cynical and skeptical, so that may be tainting my view here for sure. This idea of abundant, nonpolluting energy feels like a perpetual motion machine to me. Energy systems require control to be useful, from storage to transmission to heat dissipation. Energy systems are inherently lossy and though we could one day find a cleaner or even truly clean energy source, that energy still has to be stored, transmitted, and used.
> OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The opposite side of the coin is interesting to consider as well. We will always think things could be better, and maybe we even can make them better. We need to know what "enough" is though, and that would mean that we could get to a point where we have consumed enough resources and we should slow down or stop. "Progress" as a goal always sounds great on the surface, but it has to be directional (we need to know what we're progressing towards) and it must be bounded when goals are reached.
This is really where my cynicism steps in though. I just haven't seen many examples of people who can actually find "enough" and stop there. We tend to get used to what we have now and imagine ways things could get better. If energy were better used today, for example, I strongly believe that everyone could have the basics of food, water, shelter, and community covered and we wouldn't be stuck hating our jobs and always stressed out. We just collectively don't seem to want that.
> The US greatly increased oil and gas production under Biden.
And critically, I think, the Harris campaign failed to highlight facts like that, and emphasize how she will be different. Instead she completely bungled the messaging and went for "I'll do nothing different from what Biden did except add a Republican in my cabinet".
> “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” co-host of ABC’s “The View” Sunny Hostin asked Harris, looking to give her a set for her to spike over the net. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.
Her campaign, and the democratic party more broadly, made a lot of mistakes. Her failing to distinguish herself from Biden was one of them, but I don't actually think it was the worst. They believed that Biden was going to win and waited way too late to swap in a replacement, it kind of makes sense that they wouldn't try to differentiate if they honestly believed Biden was a good candidate with a viable platform.
That's fair, they definitely waited too late. I guess I also wonder, what if they just left Biden as is. They believed he was going to win, heck he got 80M+ popular votes when he ran. Why risk swap him out. But then, I think, once they did swap him, she could have boosted her position by emphasizing how she will do things better. But perhaps she was also honest and didn't want to lie and she didn't really plan on changing anything.
The only conclusion I could make from the DNC dropping Biden so late was that he was so clearly slipping that they couldn't hide it, or ignore it, anymore. I have to assume that if they kept him on the ticket we would have seen a few months of campaigning that could look an awful lot like elder abuse.
States like New York and California can become Carbon Negative on their own if they wanted to.
The Federal government is not needed for liberals to take the lead on this, but the mediocre center left Democrats who run everything in Blue States refuse to lift a finger.
Climate policies have failed. They're all either empty signaling exercises (carbon offsets, CAFE standards) or economically ruinous proposals to deliberately impoverish people (degrowth). The Paris accords penalize developed economies while giving developing countries a pass on emissions and an unfair advantage in trade. This idea that we can just sit down in a room with all the world's leaders and agree to just reduce emissions is a fantasy.
The real climate policy we need, and one we might just get from the incoming administration, is support for startups that explore new geoengineering technology. We've on our way to being Kardashev type I civilization, and as such, we should establish explicit closed-loop control over our climate.
I feel like they were not only the most useless policies, with decades away targets, but also had the most damage on labour, see car manufacturers all in crisis cutting jobs
