I don’t like the word “webinar”.
So, Slacker, what’s your proposal to fix this problem? We don’t have a whole lot of time, and nobody else is even coming close to proposing a solution that respects the scope of the problem. This seems unrealistic? Well, shit, we’d better make it realistic, because we ain’t got shit for time to fix this. “LOL look at this radical bill there’s no way that’s going to happen” is like… the opposite of helpful.
I was thinking about it today while driving on the interstate.
It could be that the green revolution begins locally, and then over time, gains federal support. But the way I see it, I think what would be a game changer is that if you had a major city, like Rome or Amsterdam or Tokyo - whoever - that demonstrates what kinds of things can be done by making a city green, and then somehow that gets copied and applied here. Let’s say a city not like New York, but a more ‘average’ city like Pittsburgh or Columbus or St. Louis innovates and becomes super green and ends up saving the city money and also creates jobs. An added benefit could be that the environment is so clean and enviable that it attracts people and companies. I think it’s going to take cities and states competing with each other, with a handful of communities basically kicking its neighbors’ asses economically and otherwise with green energy that the citizens in other places demand to get in on the game.
My proposal is to increase renewables in a realistic and reasonable way. We took decades (centuries) to get to 20%. Getting to 50% by 2030 would be impressive.
I’d also be in favor of a large gasoline tax (around here, gas is $1.99 a gallon, which is crazy low), but only if the money collected is rebated to every citizen equally. This is a Tom Friedman proposal that I really like. Just send every household a monthly or yearly rebate check, in the amount of 1/300,000,000th of the total tax money collected, times the number of people in the household.
But I don’t accept all this millennialist Chicken Little talk about how we’re DOOMED if we don’t dramatically reverse global warming in the next 12 years or whatever. :rolleyes: I think we can adapt to it just fine. But this point never even gets debated, because it’s all a silly argument over whether global warming is actually happening (obviously it is).
Georgetown, Texas, population 70,000. Certainly not a major or even average city, but it’s a start. It’s too early to tell if the solar move will attract people and companies like you say, but it helps that it’s already a nice little spot and very convenient to Austin.
Here is where you show the ignorance, that time is essentially what other researchers calculated for us humans to avoid going over 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The issue is that not doing much when it was seen as a big growing problem by science about 40 years ago has get us to this state.
Well more ignorance, **it has been debated many times before. **
GIGO, I’m not denying that prevention would be cheaper over the long term than adaptation. Are you under the illusion that this is how public policy is set in the U.S.? There are a billion things (at least) that would benefit from the “ounce of prevention” approach, from infrastructure to nutrition to economic policies. But that’s just not how politics works in the U.S. You can bemoan that, but ultimately doing so means you are on the political sidelines rather than engaging the political system in the ways that do sometimes work.
Missed the edit window, but wanted to add:
Jimmy Carter proved this in the late 1970s. He installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, and went on TV in a cardigan and nagged Americans to turn down their thermostats. Ronald Reagan defeated him in a landslide, came in and tore down the solar panels and told Americans they could just go whole hog and not worry about it, and went on to win an even bigger landslide (49 states) four years later. We’ve got to take baby steps, or the same thing will happen again.
I’m not under the illusion of fighting your straw man, I was not talking about the politics there, but your ignorance about calling the time we have left a “chicken little” point, and then we got that even more ignorant bit from you about thinking that experts or people in the SDMB never discussed that bit about the adaptation before.
Regarding the politics, I already did mention this before, the history of prohibition shows that baby steps is not how big issues are dealt with in the USA. Only If you lived under a rock it is that you will not realize that currently the pieces are getting into place, and the coming political disaster will befall the Republicans once again for not listening to the evidence.
Absolutely baby steps are how big issues are dealt with in the U.S. There aren’t many issues bigger than health care, for instance. First we provided government-funded health care for veterans through the VA. Then seniors got health coverage via Medicare, and the poor were provided Medicaid. Decades later, children who otherwise would not be eligible for Medicaid were the beneficiaries of the CHiP program. Dubya added a prescription drug benefit for seniors; and then Obama expanded Medicaid and provided subsidies for the uninsured. It hasn’t gotten us to 100%, but we are a lot closer than if we had not taken any of those baby steps. OTOH, both presidents Truman and Clinton attempted a more sweeping move to national health insurance, and those efforts failed and got us bupkis.
Of course ignoring again what the Republicans got with prohibition does not lead others to take seriously your absolutist point here, (There are indeed things were baby steps were not taken and now a big move was needed) I should had added that the big things in America do happen because a big disaster takes place, sure they are times when baby steps occur, but you do really live under a rock when you missed what the Republicans tried to get rid of CHip and still think that getting rid of other health steps is a good idea. So baby steps are not a guarantee that we will not get bupkis, we need to get rid of the weakest link.
GIGO, your comments are frequently hard to parse, but it sure looks like you are imputing to me some kind of support for Republicans. There is none!
Or maybe you just can’t help yourself, because your script doesn’t have any contingency for debating these points with a Democrat, which is what I am.
And not doing so would be a fucking disaster. We do not have a choice in the matter here; it is do or die. You think the GND isn’t politically viable? Well come up with an alternative, because we need one.
Oh right, you’re one of those stupid denialist fuckwits who insists that if we bury our heads in the sand everything will be fine despite all available evidence. Fuck you. Fuck you and everything you stand for. Your kids will curse your name.
No, I am not a denialist. I don’t dispute that the earth is warming, nor do I dispute that the cause is greenhouse gases that are a byproduct of industrial civilization, magnified by other gases that are released from the oceans and elsewhere as an effect of that warming.
I just think we have more than enough ingenuity and adaptability in the 21st century to weather it (so to speak), just fine. The world is getting to be a better and better place to live, and I expect that to continue unless a superintelligent AI enslaves/kills us, or someone unleashes nanotech that turns us all into grey goo. Nuclear terrorism could make the world worse too, not so much from the direct effects but from the curtailing of civil liberties in response. So those are legit things to worry about. But if we dodge those, it’s going to be a golden age.
ETA: Let’s note that BPC just said to someone who has said he is all for substantially increasing renewable energy and imposing a big additional gas tax, “Fuck you and everything you stand for”. Now *that’s *how you build a sufficiently large political coalition to get major things accomplished! :rolleyes:
Well fuck mate, the whole “look at the best evidence available, we need to do something now” route didn’t get you on board, so fuck if I know what will.
:smack: You’re not getting it. Someone who supports going to 50% renewables in ten years and jacking up the tax on gasoline IS “on board”, or at least enough so that I’m not your opponent, not the linchpin or stumbling block. Do you really think you can assemble a majority coalition that is entirely to the *left *of my position? Dream on. :dubious:
Thing is that you clearly continue to drink from unsavory sources. Otherwise there is very little explanation of why you come with the intention of ignoring cites that already pointed at how reckless is to continue to assume that adaptation will be easier, cheaper or even politically viable.
This is actually just like the final stages of denial that the Republicans and conservatives are falling for. That we will need to do adaptation is not an excuse to dismiss stronger efforts to mitigate the issue.
“Will?”
What do you mean “centuries”?