Comment by lapcat
2 days ago
> My hunch is there are not many who want to suffocate while trying to exist for shareholder value.
Have you... read the news lately? You say it's not a matter of politics, but the politicians are absolutely trying to roll back the clock, push dirty tech, eliminate all environmental protections and regulations.
You do us all a disservice by saying “the politicians”. The REPUBLICANS are attempting to ignore reality and burn more fossil fuels. Nobody else in America. Name the problem, otherwise you’re implying it’s a bipartisan effort.
To be fair, looking from the outside, democrats don't seem to be very eager to do anything about it either, most politicians in the US seems to be playing for the same team; the rich and wealthy.
Huh??? Did you just miss Biden's entire term? Democrats literally passed a massive bill that included $783 billion in funds for renewable energy to fight greenhouse gas emissions. Exactly what else do you want them to do?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act
Obama takes credit for U.S. oil-and-gas boom: ‘That was me, people’ https://apnews.com/article/business-5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caa...
You have to be born yesterday to believe that Democratic leaders haven't merely hand-waved and virtue-signaled about global warming for decades. I realized this back in the 1990s.
Democrats have superior rhetoric, and they are less openly hostile, but their long record of doing nothing to help is unsurpassed. They will fiddle while Republicans burn Rome. And don't forget that Joe Manchin for example was a Democrat, one who dominated Democratic policy during the Biden administration.
We need to push for clean tech obviously. I disagree with Republicans blocking wind farm construction and rolling back regulations, but American energy independence is important for national security, which is a shorter term issue than climate change. And developing more domestic clean energy helps with that as well.
Exactly. As a Democrat my eyes were opened when I saw the senior leadership do absolutely nothing to impede Trump other than form a strongly worded tweet.
You do the people causing this problem a great service with false equivocations like this. It is clear one group would prefer us to ignore the problem and do nothing at all - in fact encourage the problematic behavior - and the other would very much like to take action on the issue if they had the political power.
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You’re talking badly about the people who actually crafted real industrial policy for clean energy. It was dismantled by Trump and Republicans - even when the output was going to be a factory making batteries on US soil, wind and solar farms, etc.
Like the Republicans are absolutely embarrassing on this issue, the idea that they’re “two wings of the same bird” is nuts.
I'm old enough to remember the Obama Admin's support for the nascent battery and PV industries.
Ditto Biden Admin's support for our transition to renewables (IIJA, IRA). Unprecedented. The type of Keynesian investment in the USA (industrial policy, pro-labor) unseen since FDR's New Deal.
> don't forget that Joe Manchin
No one on the left ever will.
That said, it's important to note that the Democratic (center-left) coalition is wicked hard to hold together.
Have you read Caro's (epic) biographies of LBJ? It's amazing how much skill, subterfuge, and manipulation was required to pass progressive legislation over the objections of the die-hard reactionaries.
Everything about politics sucks. Chaos, apathy, nihilism, grifting are the default. It's absolutely amazing that anything gets done at all. So we should celebrate, and learn from, the occasional success.
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> but the politicians are absolutely trying to roll back the clock, push dirty tech, eliminate all environmental protections and regulations
Yes, in one country who seems hellbent on destroying itself.
But looking globally, more and more countries seems to get it at this point, and at least move in the right direction, compared to others. The others will make themselves irrelevant faster than the others can reach a future without fossil fuels.
> Yes, in one country who seems hellbent on destroying itself.
One of the largest countries in the world, measured by size, population, economy, and military. If you hadn't noticed, the US can do a lot of damage to the rest of the world all by itself. And pollution does not respect borders. Global warming does not respect borders.
Right, but again, it'll matter less and less as the US hegemony is dying and other countries will pick up the torch, and the ones who are taking over seem to be a bit more willing to both commit and execute on plans to reduce pollution and global warming in general.
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