That is something I did noticed many times before, many Republicans just are not aware, or do not want to be aware about how out of tune (or more in tune with fossil fuel corporations) the Republicans in power really are.
True, a slim majority of Republican voters are for carbon taxes.
Yet, the vast majority of elected Republicans oppose them.
Just goes to show that the Republicans don’t even reflect the wishes of their own voters.
Blaming Democrats for a lack of action on climate change is absurd.
It’s funny [not the right word] because this is one of the “market” solutions.
Not only that, but it is arguably the market solution with the least negative externalities.
Carbon tax is exactly the sort of solution that principled, good-faith conservatives would’ve offered as a solution 20 or 30 years ago. Instead, today we get somewhere between “la la la can’t hear you” to “chinese / liberal / democrat / scientist / child activist / satan created / 9/11 america haters / communist stalinist maoist hoax” to “haha fuck my kids and all of humanity, I got mine, let the earth end 5 minutes after I die” often with two or three of those at the same time.
Or, cap & trade. It would be wonderful if we could have a real debate over whether a carbon tax or a cap & trade system is the better one–they each have merits. Cap & trade seems the more market-based solution and so that might have been the conservative position vs. a more liberal tax-based approach.
That said, I think you have to go back more than 30 years for principled conservative solutions.
A suppressive tax is anathema to a glibertarian type like Sam Stone. However, they seem to ignore all the subsidies that fossil fuel industries receive – at least one study done twenty years ago said that leveling the subsidies out would result in a motor fuel price 3-to-10 times above the common retail.
Because the glibertarians yell “freedom”, but they fail to adequately acknowledge externalities. If I shit in the river that flows down past your house, you have the right to sue me for befouling your stretch of river, but at that point, the shit is in the river, and anyway, who the fuck are you to curtail my freedom to shit in the river? The conflicts are irresolvable within glibertarian dogma.
This. 100X this.
Haven’t been following the debate about GMOs, I see.
There’s enough stupidity and denial on the Left on that and other scientific/medical issues to engender humility, even though right-wingers and the politicians who cater to them have considerably more to answer for.
There are stupid people on the left, certainly. The trouble is, the right is only stupid people.
Also, as per:
“GMOs are bad” is distributed pretty evenly among the political spectrum. It’s American stupidity, not liberal stupidity:
It’s not a trope; it’s the truth:
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The liberal groups Greenpeace and the Sierra Club (among others) are virulently anti-nuclear and will brook no compromise. There is NO conservative equivalent with the size and influence of the liberal environmental wing.
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Bernie Sanders is one of the more influential liberals in the last 5 years who has come fairly close to being the Democratic nominee. His policy towards nuclear power is: “Ban Nuclear Energy: We must stop building new nuclear power plants, and find a real solution to our existing nuclear waste problem”. In 2016 Hillary backed off a bit on her (tepid) support for nuclear energy and Elizabeth Warren did much the same this cycle. This is not something they would have done if liberals generally supported nuclear power. There is no prominent Republican who wants to shut down plants; I think Carson was skeptical.
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Yucca Mountain was started by Reagan and supported by Bush. In the 90’s it stalled under the Clinton administration, who among other things vetoed a bill that would have cleared the way for its use. Bush Jr. started the project back up. Obama’s campaign promised to shut it back down which it eventually did, which the GOA said was a purely political decision.
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The Green New Deal does not include nuclear power and most vocal supporters are hostile to it.
Now, that said, there are signs of hope. For the first time since 1972 the Democrat policy platform includes pro-nuclear planks. A couple of the minor (and younger) Democrat challengers were pro-nuclear. Maybe the tide is changing. I hope it’s not too late.
It’s so nice that ‘The Left’ is whatever ‘The Right’ needs it to be for any given argument.
Even the straw industry needs support.
The actual rational argument I’ve seen about nuclear is not that nuclear itself is bad, but that letting either a capitalistic system or the government of the US (with all its anti-regulation people) would result in loose standards and thus a disaster. It’s all about our track record.
That seems a perfectly rational point that could be rebutted with letting actual scientists vet things, and make sure that, even in a failure, it would still be safe, due to redundancies.
With modern conservatives, I fail to find such a rational point that we could work on to find a solution.
It’s still not rational. It’s not that nuclear accidents aren’t bad, it’s that we could have a chernobyl every single month and still do far less damage to the Earth than the normal, safe operation of all the coal plants we run. Our normal forms of energy generation are an unmitigated disaster, causing countless damage and health effects, but because you can’t point to one particular exotic disaster - they just run that way every day - it’s apparently no big deal.
As a counter to that, I noted then (and you ignored) that Arizona was a red state then (it may change soon) and there was talk to start a nuclear dump since others were getting cold feet. But, even in one of the most red states the idea did fizzle. (NIMBY triumphs)
OTOH, the Democrats here are not running with the idea that we should close the nuclear power plants in Arizona, they should remain until renewables become more efficient and prevalent as Matt Kelley (for the senate) noted.
I see BigT’s reply as incomplete, a lot needs to be done, particularly in the education front, to directly benefit the people that live close to the new nuclear power plants, and Government organization planing and building. Like they did in France.
Unfortunately, as I noted many times before, that solution reeks of socialism for many conservatives; so I don’t have much hope until education and more trust in science and technology is implemented.
From the report cited:
(Emphasis added).
I agree that in the past decade, the question of whether GMOs damage human health has been settled in a way that it was decidedly not settled in the mid-nineties, and people should keep up with modern science. However, the question of the effects of specific GMOs on the environment is NOT under scientific consensus.
Sez you.
Sez Sierra Club (remember, your claim is that they brook no compromise):
Asking for adequate safety measures and oversight != virulent opposition.
You’re right about Greenpeace and Bernie Sanders. Again, the conditions have changed over the last few decades, and new nuclear reactors appear much safer than old ones. Folks need to recognize changes in science.
Well, @LHOD and @deeg, you’re both wrong (and both right). Funny how life works that way…
Deeg, you say that groups such as Greenpeace and Sierra Club are liberal and I have no argument with that, but as for conservative equivalents, I would note that both the Oil and Gas Industry tend to lean conservative (they don’t like regulations) and have no love for Nuclear or other alternative energy sources feeding at the government trough–and they have many billions to commit to advertising and lobbying.
Left Hand of Dorkness, The Sierra Club does say moderate things, but look again at the words; “Resolution of”, “adequate regulatory machinery”. And since they get to define what they mean by those terms, they could end up never being satisfied that things have been resolved or adequate regulations are in place. It’s all in how you define the words…
That said, I agree with both of you that more and better education is needed on the improvements to nuclear reactors and the changes in science. France and Japan are two good examples of what Nuclear power can do to help with the climate crisis. But I must needs fear it will get crunched between the protesters on the left and the Big polluters on the right.
Press on. Interesting discussion.