You do realize that such places us far far above most of the rest of the world in per capita emissions? Pretty much only Saudi Arabia and a few other Middle Eastern kingdoms are worse. The only way to spin our emissions as not horrific is to look at it normed to GDP - which places us in the middle but not great (both about 15% of the world’s GDP and 15% of the world’s emissions). Yes China has more total emissions but on a per capita basis they produce less than half of what we do.
There is no “only” here and trying to argue that we can skip bothering trying to decrease the emissions and go directly to concentrating on dealing with the damage that our emissions are causing to the world is simply wrong. No question that we need to do that as well (and he is far from the first to be aware of that), but diminishing our culpability and our need to decrease the risk of greater damage by reducing emissions now by spinning our huge contributions as “only” is … immoral.
Sure. The concept is usually referred to adaptation strategies and the EPA has a section devoted to it but Inslee’s camp uses the phrase “resilience”
It is nothing more than beginning to prepare for what are increasingly more likely adverse changes. Pretty much everyone who is not a denier realizes that such is prudent.
Inslee also discusses the opportunities that these responses can create.
Oh. As for other politicians who are specifically taking the angle that the U.S. is “only” responsible for 15% of the world’s emissions and that geoengineering solutions are the way forward … well you won’t find that much on the D side. That has been more the take of people like Lamar Smith -
Randy Weber (R-TX), another long time climate change denier also states “The future is bright for geoengineering” … it is a current go-to for those who want to diminish the importance of mitigation and to argue against regulation.
Yang though does them one better and scaremongers with a geoengineering arms race:
Democrats on the same committee, like Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), are not against researching geoengineering but warn against those who like Yang apparently are willing to see it as some technological magic bullet, and advise moving forward with great caution.
Yang proposes that we now “Invest in any idea that has the potential to reverse the damage done to the environment, for example cloud-seeding technology to increase the atmosphere’s reflectivity.” That is not “less combative” and it is not bold; it is reckless.
Thanks. For anyone else interested, here’s the link. Here are some of the strategies.
To give some context, the title of the article is “DID LAMAR SMITH JUST OUTLINE A REPUBLICAN CLIMATE PLAN?” (the title was in caps)
It’s basically an article of surprise that a climate change denier is getting onboard, admitting that climate change is a problem.
The sentence before the part you quoted here was:
She’s urging that there needs to be more support for scientific research for technologies like geoengineering. That’s what Yang is proposing.
Although it’s a great goal to eliminate all carbon emissions, there are some who believe it’s an unrealistic goal.
Still Yang is advocating for looking for new technologies while eliminating emissions to the extent technologically possible, which is the standard in the Green New Deal.
From a recent interview on Wired.com, Yang is very clear that exploring geoengineering is NOT a replacement for eliminating carbon emissions. Both eliminating emissions and investing in future technologies can happen simultaneously. Yang also is advocating for renewable energy and looking for innovative approaches to dealing with climate damage to buildings and houses. There’s more in that article about Yang’s stance on climate change.
Yearbook pictures of the 2020 candidates in New York magazine. The article includes Biden even though Biden hasn’t declared his candidacy. Most of the people look the same except for Bernie Sanders.
I enjoyed the entire interview. Yang and Jimmy Dore seemed to appreciate each other. The one piece where Jimmy Dore disagreed with Yang is on minimum wage. I agreed with Jimmy Dore there. I don’t buy the idea that small businesses will hire less if the minimum wage is raised. The studies don’t support that. But maybe the point is moot since 6 States have already raised the minimum wage. If the rest follow, the Federal minimum wage might not be necessary. Or as Yang contends, the Freedom Dividend will put enough money into people’s hands that they’re getting an effective raise.
Yang looked pretty nervous and missed Ali’s lead on a couple questions, but this was a nice interview. Ali Velshi did a nice job of helping Yang to showcase his policies. There were no hardball questions.
I’ve been pondering the UBI vs. minimum wage question and why not both as well. The comments on this Reddit thread have some good discussion on both sides.
Amazon paying $0 Federal income tax is one of Yang’s major talking points. CNBC did a nice piece on why Amazon does not pay Federal tax and what effect that has on the economy.
Yang uses the fact that big tech. giants pay no Federal income tax as the reason for his VAT. While companies can get around income tax, it’s more difficult to get out of paying a VAT.
Andrew Yang has been busy on MSM this weekend. On Friday night (4/5), he was on Chris Hayes, All In. On Saturday (4/6), he was on Joy Reid, AM Joy. On Sunday (4/7), he was on ABC News with George Stephanopoulos.
Chris Hayes gave him the hardest time, asking him why he should be President. He didn’t ask other candidates that question that I can recall. Stephanopoulos asked the usual stuff. Reid talked super fast, but it was a pretty routine interview.
Also on Sunday, Ben Shapiro released an interview he did with Yang. I don’t care for Shapiro, so I wasn’t going to watch this interview. I started watching to get a sense of it, but I was soon mesmerized. I found it to be really interesting. Shapiro had done his homework. The MSM interviews have become ho hum. Superficial stuff that is mostly the same. Shapiro actually made a comment on whether Yang was surprised at how the MSM was handling his candidacy. Yang was upbeat about it as usual.
But Shapiro had read Yang’s book and quoted from it. He asked some of the questions I’ve been wondering about and gave Yang the time to answer them. They both had a lot in common, both having gone to law school and then only practicing law for months before getting out. They both had some of the same concerns but differed in the way they handled the solution. But the amount of agreement was surprising. I’m still not a fan of Ben Shapiro, but that turned out to be an interesting interview.
Also over the weekend, one of the guys on the subreddit created a wiki on the videos of Yang in interviews, town halls, speeches, etc. It’s a nice list. I’m often amazed at people on Reddit. That wiki went up in a day, powered by several people chipping in to find the sources, but the guy creating it was precise, thorough and fast.
Politifact rated Andrew Yang’s statements as mostly true.
Today starts Yang’s Humanity First tour. He’s going to 15 States in 50 days. His calendar is packed with events, including the CNN town Hall on April 14 at 8 pm. Maybe Yang is thinking about that hologram right about now. It’s like he’s in two places at the same time sometimes.
Yang says he qualified for both Democratic debates in June and July.
Right now, Lawrence Lessig is interviewing Yang in Concord, NH in a town hall style format. I’m looking forward to watching that.
I was not disappointed. This was amazingly great to me. I’ve been a fan of Lawrence Lessig for years. He was awesome.
The main topics were getting money out of politics, rank choice voting, the electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression, H.R.1 (anti-corruption bill), mass shootings, revolving door of politicians becoming lobbyists, not vilifying politicians but instead questioning the system.
Some of Yang’s policies that touch on these topics - not taking PAC money, he’s for rank choice voting, making election day a national holiday, automatic voter registration, making the voting age 16, earmarking, electoral votes allocated proportionally, commit to POTUS1 to push for H.R.1, federal background checks for guns, mental health initiative with mental health professionals in the White House to help destigmatize mental health issues. term limits to Supreme Court justices of 18 years, open to increasing the number of Supreme Court justices.
NBC News put up a 6 part tweet on Yang’s Freedom Dividend (UBI). In it, an Alaska State rep. is quoted:
Bernie Sanders stated that he’s for guaranteed jobs with the implication that he’s not for UBI.
Yang tweeted a blog-type post on Slate Star Codex on a comparison between UBI and a jobs guarantee. Obviously, it’s a pro-UBI stance.
Lots of arguments there that I hadn’t considered that no one seems to mention. For example, the guaranteed job would likely be in a place where there’s a concentration of jobs. That would likely increase housing and transportation costs to the point where there might not be an appreciable difference to having a job. Add to that, the employers would have so much leverage since that’s your last chance. . . or is it?
Another argument I’ve read a lot, even from UBI proponents is that if people get money, they’d lose a sense of purpose that comes with a job. With something like 67% of people who don’t like their jobs, that seems improbable to me. Here’s a tiny portion of the counter-argument in the piece:
People are setting up watch parties for the CNN town hall. The town hall is an hour before the Game of Thrones premiere, so they’re billing it as a double feature.
Yang met with Trae Crowder to discuss UBI for a documentary Trae Crowder is doing called Inherent Good. The documentary is slated for a fall release. I’m a fan of Crowder too. Ever since Trump got elected, he’s been coming out with some funny stuff.
Even if this campaign goes nowhere, I feel like Yang has gotten people talking more about some basic issues that hopefully people will continue talking about.
Yang has a letter out on his website, calling the next part of his campaign Phase Two, realizing that the future of the campaign hinges on whether they can use the internet success they’ve garnered to translate that into something “serious”.
the UBI he proposes does that replace things like food stamps or other current government payments? I have heard people talk about that type of payment going away with UBI but I don’t know if Yang says that in his proposal.
Yang’s UBI is opt-in, so if you’re liking the benefits you’re getting or they’re higher than the $1,000/mo, then you get to keep the current benefit. But you don’t get the $1,000/mo on top of the benefits.
Yang’s CNN town hall got moved to 7 pm tomorrow April 14, 2019. It was originally scheduled for 8 pm. He says there are 150 watch parties organized around the country.
CNN and several other outlets are reporting about Yang’s hologram demo that TMZ found out about. I like the reaction of the TMZ guys when Yang explained what it was they found. They couldn’t figure out why Yang was dancing with a hologram of Tupac. It was actually a hologram of Yang dancing with a hologram of Tupac. He’s planning on using the hologram on the campaign trail to be in 2 or 3 places at the same time.
After a rally in Boston that drew a crowd (estimated at a thousand), Yang did an interview [youtube] with Jon Lovett, from Crooked Media, the Obama camp that got together to form a news media outlet. It was on the Lovett or Leave it platform which is supposed to be comedy, but this wasn’t very funny. The crowd was behind Yang and not behind Lovett even though it was his show. That seemed to annoy Lovett. His questions were slightly condescending, not anything like the deference that AOC or Elizabeth Warren got. But that was to be expected probably. They were MSM type questions. Still, the crowd was behind Yang. Not sure if they followed him in from the rally earlier in the night. Lovett was admonishing the crowd a couple times. The more I watch it, the more I like it.
The CNN town hall on 4/14/19 went great. There were over 150 watch parties in 48 states. That’s the most energy I’ve seen from Yang yet.
The next day, Yang held a rally in DC that was estimated at 2,000 people. I love the picture. It looks so pretty.
Pre-town hall, Yang was polling at 3% in the Emerson poll. Hopefully that will increase even further after the town hall.
Some celebrity donors. “I will put our celebrity donor list of Nicolas Cage, Rivers Cuomo, Noah Centineo and Sam Altman up against anyone’s.” Jack Dorsey, CEO of twitter/Squarespace, donated $1,000. Dorsey mentioned in an interview separately that he’s been looking into Basic Income to redistribute his wealth. I took a quick scan of the list of donors over $200. It looked like a lot of software developers, engineers and generally tech people donated. There were quite a number of professors as well.
CNN showed a list of the percentage of donors with contributions of less than $200 for each candidate. Yang was second at 81% to Bernie’s 84%. Bernie’s number of $18M with 84% donating less than $200 each is really impressive.
Someone made Yang a definition in Urban Dictionary. There was also a silly piece to the Lovett or Leave It interview that I missed earlier. Yang would go to Panda Express (obviously!) at the food court of a mall, would wait for CPK for 20 minutes before going to the food court and gave the right answer on how many spaces after a period – 2. He’s a Spiderman fan.
Time magazine published an article about basic income that mentioned Yang. The gist of the article was:
It would be nice if more of the proponents of UBI came out of the woodwork to either support or critique Yang’s UBI plan. There are a lot of UBI proponents out there who have been championing the cause for years and decades. It would be nice to hear from more of them. Scott Santens, a big proponent, has been championing Yang big time. His twitter feed is all about UBI and Yang. I’ve read a lot of professors talking about UBI. Maybe those are the same professors contributing to Yang’s campaign.
Next stops on the Humanity Tour are Atlanta, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Des Moines/Iowa. Yang’s non-stop schedule is impressive.
The Atlanta rally was livestreamed. I happened to be online at the time and saw it live on Facebook. It felt oddly more “live”. It ws a nice sized crowd. It also looked like a pretty diverse crowd. By the cheers, there were Trump supporters, Libertarians, Independents, Democrats, Progressives, far-left Liberals. Conservatives were silent.
Yang has been doing a lot of interviews. He was on PBS, Fox News and Velshi and Ruhle with Stephanie Ruhle. Ruhle seemed to be intrigued and asked him to come back for a round 2.
Stephanie Ruhle also interviewed Anand Giridharadas separately about wealth inequality. Is Taxing The Ultra-Wealthy ‘Punishing Success?’ | Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC A lot of Anand’s point is mirrored in Yang’s platform. At the end of the interview, Ruhle said ‘humanity first’, which is Yang’s slogan. It wasn’t related, but it was an interesting bit of serendipity.
Tucker Carlson was speaking positively about Yang’s position on paying President’s a high salary while they’re President and then forbidding them from making money on the speaker circuit or as a lobbyist.
Obama recently spoke on the need for UBI. “We’re going to have to re-imagine economic security in the time of rising automation, we’re going to have to consider Universal Basic Income”
Yang is scheduled to be on the Bill Maher show in June.
Two publications covered the DC rally. One for the American Conservative on the right and one for the Verge on the left. Their description of the same event couldn’t be more different. But it does seem to mirror how media is seeing these events.
Kyle Kulinski on Secular Talk, a Progressive youtube channel, did a piece on how mainstream media covered Yang’s CNN town hall.
After the CNN townhall, there has been an increase in interest and donations, based on Yang’s website. “Our website traffic has spiked, press asks have been streaming in, and we’ve raised over $250k in donations and swag sales since Sunday.”
Yesterday (4/22/19) was a rally in LA. There were approx. 7,400 people getting a ticket on Facebook. On a local news report, the reporter said that they were expecting 3-4,000 for the event. It looks like a sizeable crowd. The campaign staff claimed it was 2,000+.
The guy who organized the SoCal YangGang says he was a Trump supporter. He gave a talk as a warm up to Yang at that event. It was a riled up crowd. They were cheering for pretty much the whole speech. There were more women than the Chicago rally but still not half. The crowd looked relatively young.
Brett Baier from Fox News did a podcast with a roundtable of guests talking about Yang’s candidacy. It was a pretty neutral piece, IMO.
Joy Reid from MSNBC admitted that the MSNBC graphic didn’t include Yang’s name even as he was interviewing with several hosts on the network. [In this, she’s not talking to Andrew Yang, it’s another Andrew on twitter]
It’s eye-opening to see how much the media leaves out when they’re supposedly stating facts. The people registered to run for President in 2020 is not an opinion.
Just about every day, Yang puts up an example of automation that can take jobs. Today’s headline was:
If Elon Musk is right, there are some people who underestimated the arrival of self-driving cars.
A nice note on the Yang2020 website about the Democratic voting process and the timing of the votes. He explains how superdelegates will not be voting in the first round like last year, so that could change the playing field for how long candidates might last.
Yang is in Las Vegas doing another rally there tonight.
Hey, nobody’s making you read it. I am skimming this thread big time, myself, but I’m grateful to H&R for collating this exhaustive information for those who are interested.
