Dreading it on one level but also looking forward to the entertainment of a watch a slow motion train wreck. If he actually follows through on promises like mass deportation and forcing Ukraine peace that could get intense.
I am pretty sure india is taking more steps than USA. you cannot blame them anymore. They are even pushing more money into nuclear and created a breeder reactor.
You would be wrong. The IRA is projected to remove a California-sized block of US emissions by 2030. The IRA is the single strongest climate action tried by any country since the Paris Accords.
It's a graph that shows a steady and consistent increase in atmospheric CO2 for the last 40 years regardless of the elected political party in the US at the time.
In other words, it seems to indicate pretty strongly that no matter how you vote, climate change is going to destroy us.
Climate change was barely a political issue this cycle because China is the runaway leader renewable energy tech (solar, batteries) and the Biden Admin SANCTIONED them for it.
It's difficult for many people in America to accept that the "climate change" narrative is primarily a propaganda tool and wedge issue to rally votes, and that the DNC doesn't actually care about "solving" it. Just like abortion.
Two things are true: climate change and reproductive rights are genuine issues, and they are also weaponized for political nonsense. People need to be away more skeptical around these debates and stop getting so angry/depressed about them (which is the goal of those groups trying to manipulate you through powerful emotions).
> Until China and India take steps to decarbonize their economies as opposed to making empty pledges we all know will never be met, then whatever the U.S. or the rest of the West does will not matter.
This is such a bullshit way of thinking. No one snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche. "But China…", "But India…" is not an excuse for not giving a shit. I hear the same arguments over here in Germany, and they're usually coming from the "I don't want to change" crowd.
> you have to get everyone to cut as much as they can
But the point being made isn't to emphasize the importance of everyone collaborating on cutting emissions. The point being made is that we may as well not cut back because someone else might not. It's especially disingenuous to bring up India when they emit less than the US does (and especially on a per-capita basis).
Well then, the good news is Trump has the guy more responsible for electrifying American cars (a major contributor to CO2 emissions) than anyone else on his team.
Also the state that has more renewables than any other state voted for Trump.
Are you referring to Elon Musk? He also torpedoed a mass transit project in California and built the stupidest version of a train ever conceived in Las Vegas. It's not clear that Elon Musk has a good sense for efficient means to reduce climate harming activity - just that he wants, and is good at getting, government money for his projects.
> It's not clear that Elon Musk has a good sense for efficient means to reduce climate harming activity
I think that this is one of the most incorrect, and, what’s more, plainly and obviously incorrect things I’ve ever read. I am almost at a loss for words when I read it.
Are we going to pretend that people would have adopted EVs anyway in the west without Tesla? Did you think we would just abandon the entire western auto manufacturing infrastructure and start driving BYDs? Did you forget what the auto industry looked like before (and during, in the early years) Tesla?
This is like saying that he doesn’t have a good sense for building orbital rockets. The guy has basically only done two big and meaningful things with his life and attacking the #1 carbon emission source is the bigger of the two.
> Are we going to pretend that people would have adopted EVs anyway in the west without Tesla?
EVs are growing, and will continue to grow, for reasons unrelated to climate.
They are the superior product in nearly every way. Regenerative braking is a huge objective improvement. The acceleration and torque control is a huge improvement. The lack of maintenance is a huge improvement.
The only downside of EVs is range and charge time, and both of those are being actively improved.
Elon deserves some credit for joining on to Tesla in 2004, long before these benefits were clear, and for being at the first company to really demonstrate these benefits in reality with the Roadster in 2008. But I do not think the existence of Tesla accelerated the adoption of EVs by more than a couple years.
The Model S was released in 2012. The Nissan Leaf was released in 2010.
Improved private cars, electric or otherwise, are an unserious solution to climate change or a sustainable future. Simple geometry makes this obvious - they're quite literally the worst solution to moving many people. If I asked someone, "move ten thousand people ten kilometers," and they came back with "I will put each one in a 2x2 meter box with four seats, but only one will be occupied by a person. The box needs to be stored at the origin and destination, and independently operated by every single person," how could I do anything but laugh them out of the room? Addendum: "by the way, the infrastructure to sustain this means the box is required for trips of all lengths greater than 1.5 kilometers, and sometimes even less!"
Attacking cars as a carbon emission source would not mean killing an HSR project on purpose. It would mean building public transit.
Anyway EVs aren't special. Every major car manufacturer has them now, and the PRC makes shitloads too. Elon Musk probably beat the market, but it's not like his designs were genius - they lacked critical, simple safety features for example. Need I truck out the stories of people slicing their hands open on the cybertruck frame?
As for orbital rockets, that doesn't really have anything to do with climate change.
The fact that EVs aren’t special, and that every major manufacturer has them now, are almost entirely the result of his hard work. I think a lot of people forgot what the world was like before Tesla. This is sort of like saying “every phone manufacturer makes touch screen phones”. The foregone conclusion that “this is just how phones/cars are now” wasn’t foregone until someone made it that way, at scale, first to show everyone the better way.
Also, I think your idea that cars themselves are the problem is probably incorrect. Decarbonization isn’t primarily about reducing overall energy use per person, although you can possibly deflect with the argument that it requires both that and also clean energy.
In any case, American culture and cities are car culture and cities, and even if you could do the impossible and magically deploy tons of HSR between every metro in the US it wouldn’t make people stop driving. Any solution that requires first rebuilding the whole country and replacing its whole population with people who don’t want to drive a large vehicle to the grocery store is obviously a nonstarter.
Nah the nissan leaf was released about 15 years ago. Electric mobility was a proven use case years before the release of the roadster or model S. It wasn't the paradigm shift that the iPhone was. (and I don't have any doubts we wouldn't have gotten to an iPhone experience a few years later, either. I used smartphones before the iPhone with touchscreens, less smooth and intuitive, but already had miniaturized mobile-first apps based on touch. Android was released a few months after iOS and had been in parallel development for 5 the previous 5 years prior to iOS being unveiled...)
Tesla accelerated the electric car market several years, that's for sure. But nothing more than that.
The most important development for the feasibility of electric cars has not been automotive innovation (not the powertrain, the motor, the wheels, the interior or whatever), but battery innovation.
And battery innovation (i.e. cheaper, lighter, more capacity, better heat management, better durability) has been ongoing regardless of automotive even existing as an industry.
This has been the driving factor for the electrification of cars, not any one car company but the battery industry. Tesla simply was the best first mover.
What do you propose we do about the volcanoes that in a single eruption emit more methane and carbon than human activity does over a span of two centuries?
It's clear that Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords and famously wants to start up a massive amount of drilling for oil.
Whereas recent democratic cabinets banned certain oil drilling, dedicated the US to the climate accords, installed large subsidy programs including one that prevented Tesla (fully kickstarted the electrification of the entire automotive industry indefinitely) from going bankrupt, and just recently launched the IRA which is the biggest climate change prevention investment ($3 trillion) in the history of the world, prompting the EU to follow with a similar program to compete to attract green investments and innovations.
There is simply a massive policy difference between the two parties here. And showing a graph of world emisions that have kept going up in the decades prior to mainstream climate change awareness, is grossly misleading. For one because it says nothing about US policy. Two because it happened prior significant climate change policy and a divergence between republicans and democrats on this issue. And third because without frontrunner countries there is no way that you can ever overcome the tragedy of the commons issue with climate, because India/China are certainly not going to make investments if the US doesn't and fucks the climate anyway. We can't all use that excuse, certainly not if you're the richest and most innovative country.
Well yes but thats not a binary situation, is it. We can fuck up future of our kids a lot, a lot more or way a lot more. And so on.
Anyway, our descendants will hate current generations for what we have 'achieved' with the only place we can realistically live en masse for next 1000 years at least, almost all in in past 20 years, I'd say rightfully.
But as long as their stocks are up many folks here properly don't give a fuck. Tells you something too, don't put automatic morality into folks just because they have above-average intelligence, selfishness is a very powerful emotion from which none of us is completely immune from.
Everything you say is true. However it's bizarre for me to read you lamenting as if this election somehow had any bearing on that trajectory.
Under a continued Biden regime or a renovated Harris regime the climatic trajectory was similarly in overshoot. Like if you pay attention to what scientists, or even just general NGO representatives are saying... You should know that we are far off the rails.
Id encourage you to read the world meteorological organization's report from just last week; we are no where near what is manageable for a stable and prosperous future for our descendants. The climate has absolutely destabilized and we now have left a dismal future laced with intermittent catastrophe. Our generations greed and myopia means we have also left a momentous task to our descendants who might seek to try and restore the planet to equilibrium. Trump or Harris at the helm --it makes no difference-- the ship is going down.
Future generations will inherit a ruined biosphere, food insecurity, resource wars, etc. Humand can obviously mitigate tha somewhat but there's not a single political entity in the US or perhaps even the West as a whole that is currently engaged in doing so.
Well you are just saying the same what I've reacted to - its all same. I disagree from my limited viewpoint - trump was super eager to open drilling oil in Alaska in natural reserves, downgraded env protections for parks etc.
Environment aint just directly co2 or temperature raises, its everything. And everything is connected.
Just because the ship has sort of sailed it doesnt mean giving up and ignorance is the right course, especially when vuewed on really long term scale
Ultimately I'm not giving up, and I would say being aware of this fact is the opposite of ignorance.
The very first step here is to phase out extraction of fossil fuels. Kamala Harris was not going to even stop fracking, which is by far the most environmentally damaging extraction, let alone phase out drilling.
Basically no state/country nor any politician is going to save us. Currently it's up to regular people to work on building a better world, restoring the biosphere, coming up with ways to adjust our manner of living towards a sustainable course and one that will be resilient to catastrophic climate events and even social upheaval.
Instead it seems a lot of people want to just cast a ballot and then forget about it, but this will be a fundamental lifestyle change, and it's going to involve sacrifice.
No, no it has not. It has been about a multitude of subjects like the oceans and forests and preserving habitats from human interference. Humanity mishandling those has consequences for humans, but that has historically not been the crux of the message.
It has never been about “floating rocks” either, but the life in it, nature as a whole.
There is no other way though. Climate change is not a technical problem, it's political. We've had the tech to fix climate change for long time, we know how to do it, that part is quite easy and obvious, we are just not doing it.
You can't say "other way" when you're comparing to something that isn't a way in the first place.
Climate change absolutely is a technical problem and not a political one. It's about the cause and effect patterns of actual weather phenomena, and has nothing to do with conflict resolution within human societies, or anthropocentric psychosocial rituals.
We don't really have the technology to purposefully engineer macro-scale climate patterns, and we absolutely do not have the technology to secure wide-scale cooperation among vast numbers of people with different value systems and incentive structures. We've never had that.
Science tells us how climate works, technology provides renewable energy, but it's up to politics to do the switch. If we don't, then we will simply run out of time, problem will grow, and then we will get into a dead end where we really won't have the technology to fix it. There was a last chance to do it right around these years, we blew it by two trump presidencies instead. If that isn't politics, then nothing is.
Where do you get the idea that politics has, or has ever had, the ability to do anything of the sort?
> There was a last chance to do it right around these years
You're not getting it. There was never any chance to do it. You might as well be arguing for sacrificing goats or reciting ritual incantations. There is no political solution to climate change, and there never was.
Because there were guard rails in place. Now the Supreme Court has said he can't be prosecuted for official acts and he has a VP in place who is on record as saying he wouldn't have certified an election that Trump legitimately lost.
Things have changed since 2016, go ahead bury your head in the sand about it. Don't come crying to anyone else when the leopard eats your face, though.
The Ukraine bit may have absolutely devastating Europe-wide side effects.
The EU can't let Russia "win" as it would set a precedent. If the US withdraws their support, the EU will have no choice but to ramp up theirs, meaning funneling money to the military complex. Double or triple that if Trump goes through with his NATO defunding/withdrawl threats. This could easily destabilize the EU economy, cause internal friction, provide fertile ground for nationalism and, ultimately, lead to the fracture of the EU. Now recall Trump's cordial alignment with Putin, which will undoubtedly encourage this sort of development, and it all starts to look outright scary.
The EU will do nothing if it falls outside of the US imperial mantle because it’s not a proper political entity, it never was, it never will. Maybe individual countries like Poland will try to do something, but they’re too small in the great scheme of things.
If Germany had any strategic autonomy left (which they don’t, they’re just a US vassal through and through) they would do a second Rapallo, maybe this time also involving China, at that point they’d still have a chance to put their economy back on track.
No one (great majority of people) in the EU wanted/wants this war. It was a dish put on the stove put by the hawks in Obama administration. But I think it is way too naive to think US can just pull out. They are far too financially invested. The question is, ia Ukraine too big to fail for US imperialism
However the world let the annexation of Crimea slide in 2014 and that emboldened Russia. Let them chop off a piece of Ukraine now and that will embolden them even more. After all Finland was a province of the Russian Empire before the revolution of 1917 and parts of Poland were under Soviet's control prior to 1941. And that's without going back into middle ages. Lots of places to take back.
You (and people like you) are way too bold to allow yourself to speak for "the world" or for "the EU". As a member of the world and the EU, I'll say that I personally never wanted for my taxes to be spent to prolong this war. Moreover, if it turns out, as you suspect, it all can change on a whim of a president of the USA, it logically follows it never in fact was "the world" or "the EU" who decided that in the first place. It definitely wasn't mine decision, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't yours.
In fact, it won't even really be the voting citizens of the USA who make any decisions, because when red/blue splits 50/50 it isn't "tyranny of the majority" anymore, it's tyranny of luck.
I was nowhere close to "speaking for the world". I merely stated an obvious fact - one country chopped off a piece of another and it got off scot-free.
Re: your taxes - it'd be prudent to look beyond short-term effects and consider what different scenarios would lead to in the long-term. The EU had no choice but to help Ukraine to resist. Consider where things would've been now if they didn't.
Some interesting facts about that. The guy running the state at that time was Georgian. It was not Ukranians per se that were targeted by government policy of collectivization, it was the land owning peasant class, kulaks. Whether the famine itself was intentional is very debatable ie it wasnt an official policy to kill people
EU does not have money to spare. Their economies are on the brink of collapse. They have committed harakiri by sabotaging their own energy security and industrial might. EU do not have they any clout on world stage and will decline. Without US - ukraine is sitting duck.
I would genuinely like to see your thought process on this:
Trump promised to deport all the undocumented migrants. All of them. That's roughly 10 million people.
How would you, within 4 years (he is famously a man of his word and we can count on him to accomplish his campaign promises within his presidency), find and then move 10 million people, and to where would you move them?
What does it look like to move 10 million people against their will? What mechanisms would allow for this?
I have an idea, but I'm curious your alternatives:
First, to find them, you could create a federal bounty program. Rat out illegals, get 100$ a head. Well, that might lead to rampant suspicion and neighborly misbehavior... somewhat exploitable too since you can get ICE to kick your annoying neighbor's door down by claiming they're harboring an illegal... not ideal. Maybe instead give NSA blanket wiretapping access to root them all out? Well, now they're listening to everything everyone says, but hey, anything in the name of freedom!
Regardless, awesome, now we've got ICE kicking down doors and dragging screaming families into the street. Part 1 accomplished. They load them into paddywagons and take them to local jails. Oops, those filled up within the first five days of the program. Now what? Stadiums? We're using those. Walmart parking lots with UNICEF tents? Sure, but what's to stop them from simply running away? Fences. We need lots of fences, and lots of UNICEF tents. Cut in some latrines (jobs!), run some plumbing, done. We've got some great staging areas.
Obviously, we should centralize these, right? We don't want to just take over every walmart parking lot in the country. Instead, while we negotiate with mexico and some other countries about how we're going to dump 10 million people over the border, we'll park them in several centralized locations, preferably out in the middle of nowhere because nobody wants a concentra--- sorry, undocumented migrant staging area, in the middle of their town!
That's a lot of people to move, 10 million. A greyhound bus fits, what, 30 people? 50? That's too many busses. We need trains. We can build the undocumented migrant staging area in remote areas with train access, just add an offramp straight into the camp- sorry, undocumented migrant staging area. Fix up some cattle cars, jam the people in there, gorgeous!
Oops, mexico told us to fuck off and won't take these migrants, now what? We can't just let them loose after having stuffed them up in there for a couple months, can we? I guess we can just keep them in there a bit longer while we try to negotiate with a couple other countries...
This sounds like the good version of America, right? With the screaming families being dragged onto mass transit and shoved into unicef tents? The alternative (aka, status quo for decades) is just lawlessness.
The argument that mass deportations are some impossible ordeal is only defended by those that are deeply invested in that they don't happen.
Most illegal immigrants are only in the US for economic reasons. Don't give them any welfare, make hiring them actually illegal and punish the companies that hire them. When this happens, many of them will just go back to their country.
Then if somehow their countries refused to take in their own citizens, they can just be sanctioned, or stop being given foreign aid by the US.
The only reason you believe that mass deportations are impossible and would cause an apocalyse, is because you really want it to be true.
The larger voices on the more milquetoast side of the original "alt right" crowd who are still online and streaming push for two broad ideas to implement as policy:
- any business that employs someone who is not a citizen of the federal government and also not a US National, forfeits their business
- all welfare benefits for non-citizens cease
They believe that with these two major policies in place, most of the unlawful aliens will self-deport, and just considering human incentives on an elementary level, yes most of them will self-deport.
Dreading it on one level but also looking forward to the entertainment of a watch a slow motion train wreck. If he actually follows through on promises like mass deportation and forcing Ukraine peace that could get intense.