Enviromentalistic Politics

[onlinebiker]

Bernie Sanders came out with an aggressive "plan" to battle climate change.

From what I gather - a big part of it is to " go to all renewable energy in 10 years."

Really?

Are you falling for that? Why not just click your heels together three times and say "There's no change at home".... It's as realistic. It' s an outrageous campaign promise that doesn't come due til after a second term.


Do you REALLY want to see change?

How about $3 a gallon tax on gasoline. How about a luxury tax on any vehicle over 1200 kg?

But noooooooo.... That might actually make people use less, drive less, and lower demand and put less of a strain on the enviroment.

They want the big   SUVs, cheap gas - and somebody else to make changes....

Nimbytarian cretins.

[Fake Messiah]

Yeah, solution could be cheaper. They could devise plan to develop clean nuclear energy and then, after that, just create giant machine that eats plastic garbage, machine that creates oxygen and sucks carbon (or making a forest out of Sahara), artificial ethanol for cars and we are done.





And then of course artificially grown meat.

[BryanS]

Bernie Sanders came out with an aggressive "plan" to battle climate change.

From what I gather - a big part of it is to " go to all renewable energy in 10 years."

Really?

Are you falling for that? Why not just click your heels together three times and say "There's no change at home".... It's as realistic. It' s an outrageous campaign promise that doesn't come due til after a second term.


Do you REALLY want to see change?

How about $3 a gallon tax on gasoline. How about a luxury tax on any vehicle over 1200 kg?

But noooooooo.... That might actually make people use less, drive less, and lower demand and put less of a strain on the enviroment.

They want the big   SUVs, cheap gas - and somebody else to make changes....

Nimbytarian cretins.

And the chicken little screams about the sky falling coming from climate change alarmists does more harm than good in my view. The idea that we are headed towards a catastrophe is not established. I'm not a climate change denier, but I also understand that current predictions of climate change have a large margin of error to them, and to date there is no model that accurately predicts the amount of warming we are to experience. That ability to predict should be the gold standard, but we don't have it yet. Anyone who claims to know of pending catastrophe unless we enact extreme political policies within 10 years is just as ignorant as people who claim there is nothing to climate change. 

I wish journalists would do their job and cover this topic honestly, but journalist by and large are intellectually incurious and incompetent hacks.

[Amarok]

So all we have here is cynicism and denialism pretending that it's not denialism

[onlinebiker]

Bernie Sanders came out with an aggressive "plan" to battle climate change.

From what I gather - a big part of it is to " go to all renewable energy in 10 years."

Really?

Are you falling for that? Why not just click your heels together three times and say "There's no change at home".... It's as realistic. It' s an outrageous campaign promise that doesn't come due til after a second term.


Do you REALLY want to see change?

How about $3 a gallon tax on gasoline. How about a luxury tax on any vehicle over 1200 kg?

But noooooooo.... That might actually make people use less, drive less, and lower demand and put less of a strain on the enviroment.

They want the big   SUVs, cheap gas - and somebody else to make changes....

Nimbytarian cretins.

And the chicken little screams about the sky falling coming from climate change alarmists does more harm than good in my view. The idea that we are headed towards a catastrophe is not established. I'm not a climate change denier, but I also understand that current predictions of climate change have a large margin of error to them, and to date there is no model that accurately predicts the amount of warming we are to experience. That ability to predict should be the gold standard, but we don't have it yet. Anyone who claims to know of pending catastrophe unless we enact extreme political policies within 10 years is just as ignorant as people who claim there is nothing to climate change. 

I wish journalists would do their job and cover this topic honestly, but journalist by and large are intellectually incurious and incompetent hacks.

Let's just assume for a minute that there is no climate change. (I don't buy that - stasis is innherently unnatural. Change is a universal constant)

Would it hurt to use less?

Maybe leave a little for future generations?

I don't have kids - so it doesn' t affect me directly.

But - I really don't want future generations seeing us as a bunch of gluttonous fucks.

Those SUV's are monuments to greedheaded bastards.

[Divinity]

Gee, unrealistic campaign promises?  Only Republicans are allowed to do that!

[Belacqua]

From what I gather - a big part of it is to " go to all renewable energy in 10 years."

[...]

But noooooooo.... That might actually make people use less, drive less, and lower demand and put less of a strain on the enviroment.

They want the big   SUVs, cheap gas - and somebody else to make changes....

Nimbytarian cretins.

The part about renewable energy is the first in a long list of plans. 

Later in the same list he says he wants to make people use less, too.

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/...pdf#page=1

[BryanS]

Let's just assume for a minute that there is no climate change. (I don't buy that - stasis is innherently unnatural. Change is a universal constant)

Would it hurt to use less?

Maybe leave a little for future generations?

I don't have kids - so it doesn' t affect me directly.

But - I really don't want future generations seeing us as a bunch of gluttonous fucks.

Those SUV's are monuments to greedheaded bastards.

The scale and cost of the intervention needs to take into account the weight of the evidence. Some plans like Bernie Sanders's come in at costs that would require us to really believe the end of the world is nigh.  

And political policy meant to advance the cause of fighting global warming has not had a good history.  Corn ethanol policy is an example where the claimed environmental benefits are of dubious value, not the least of which being that farming and ethanol production and distribution is very carbon energy intensive. An awful lot of environmental damage happens in the course of making the batteries for hybrid and electric cars which receive their charges from an electric grid powered by fossil fuels. 

If global warming alarmists were serious, they would be pushing a lot more nuclear energy--something I favor--to ensure a reliable base load of power generation. Wind and solar on their own are just not reliable enough, but they are a useful supplement. If the salvation of mankind is literally in the balance, we have a solution already at hand. But no, we cannot invest in nuclear power, instead we have to reinvent the economy in order to "save the environment".

[GrandizerII]

Yes, let's disregard everything that climate scientists have been telling us and denigrate it as alarmism from the left.

[BryanS]

Yes, let's disregard everything that climate scientists have been telling us and denigrate it as alarmism from the left.

Yes, and while we are at it, let's construct a straw man and tear it down.