[nooyurrsdey]

Emphasis mine:

> The case against the EPA was brought by West Virginia on behalf of 18 other mostly Republican-led states and some of the nation's largest coal companies. > > They were challenging whether the agency has the power to regulate planet-warming emissions for state-wide power sectors or just individual power plants. > > These 19 states were worried their power sectors would be regulated and they would be forced to move away from using coal.

I'm losing hope that anything practical can be achieved because of idealistic nuance like this. We're missing the forest for the trees. Our goal should be the larger combating of climate change, but individual players like this have amazing power to put up resistance or obstruction to that goal which is a net loss for all of us.

[jimkleiber]

I'd argue that one of the main drivers of climate change is this precise behavior: trying to alter the environment to be favorable towards the thing that I own.

I see it on a micro level of people trying to kill insects that get into their gardens or moles that ruin their lawns, and a more macro level of my state/country has coal underneath it and therefore we shall fight to continue to use coal or even my state/country doesn't have a lot of arable land for agriculture because of permafrost or access to non-frozen ports for shipping so increasing global temperature may actually be good for us.

[bumby]

This is it. Values lead to attitudes when they are directed at an object. Beliefs and attitudes are emotionally biased and largely inform behavior. Unfortunately, beliefs don't have to be correct or even coherent with other beliefs to be strongly held.

A person may value a coal mine for a variety of reasons that are very emotionally hinged: economic, familial, etc. To change behavior values and attitudes have to change. That's exceptionally difficult when the competing values, like climate, are more abstract than the ones currently held. I worry that humans are not psychologically equipped to manage problems of this scale.

[jimkleiber]

Change can suck. It can also be great. I think our tendency towards loss aversion makes us focus on how much it can suck. Even if my future might be better, it will be different, and I can want to not lose the thing to which I currently feel attached.

> That's exceptionally difficult when the competing values, like climate, are more abstract than the ones currently held. I worry that humans are not psychologically equipped to manage problems of this scale.

I think we may be equipped, as we've handled problems on much larger scales than I think our ancestors would have expected, and yet I hear you, wondering what (if anything) could change to make us more equipped.

I wonder if reframing our identity could help. Instead of me only being a coal miner or Michigander, I'm also more connected with my human identity. Maybe more backwoods experiences, watching and living TV shows like Alone or Naked and Afraid...I dunno. I wonder if we don't actually have to try to connect to the planet but just more deeply to our local wildlife and to ourselves.

[toomuchtodo]

> I wonder if reframing our identity could help.

This requires a level of emotional adjustment and self awareness lacking in many people.

[jimkleiber]

I agree. I've spent the last 10 years focused on trying to help us get better at being emotionally honest with at least ourselves. I had focused mostly on tools for the masses, but lately have been refocused on making tools for leaders and then let leaders change culture by example, as so many of us learn what's ok to feel and what feelings are ok to say from our parents and other authority figures.

[kbuchanan]

This is a great example of how on an individual level commentators want to bend democratic processes to achieve their own goals, but, without fail, they get caught in a tangle of contradictions. What is the Supreme Court's mandate? To stop climate change? To feel out the majority's opinion and make a legal path for it?

This is why democracy is so hard: it consistently yields outcomes that are disappointing to a large segment of the population. There is no "solution" to that problem, and shouldn't be. There are pathways to curbing carbon emissions, but the reality is that too few people, as a body, want to pay that price.

[vintermann]

Democracy? Where did democracy ever enter into the picture here?

The Supreme Court is different from the other branch of government heads, in that they decide for themselves what their mandate is, and you don't have any recourse ... unless you're in charge of one of the other branches, and are willing to cause a constitutional crisis by ignoring them or replacing them.

[namdnay]

> What is the Supreme Court's mandate? To stop climate change?

Stopping climate change should be everyone’s mandate. When your house is on fire and a neighbor has a hose pipe, so you get into an argument with them because they’re not a fireman?

[AnimalMuppet]

No. No. Wrong. The Supreme Court's mandate is to be the Supreme Court, not to be the solve-the-current-crisis fixer. I want the planet not to fry and to still have a constitutional democracy at the end of that process.

The problem is that people want to handle this "on the cheap", by executive order, rather than by the actual existing mechanism, which is through Congress. Yes, Congress created the EPA. They didn't give them the authority to regulate CO2, though. That was an overreach when the executive order came out, and that reality finally caught up legally.

You want to regulate CO2? Then do it the right way - by having Congress pass a bill that grants that power to the EPA. That's the difference between rule of law and rule of the president.

You say those states have too much power? No they don't. There's only 18 of them. That's only 36 senators. They don't have a majority of the House, either. So go do it the way it should have been done from the beginning, instead of trying to get away with using a lazy back door.

[Edit: Reading other posts here, the issue may not have been CO2 emission, but rather management of the electrical grid. I still think that CO2 was a massive over-reach when the EPA started regulating that. It was almost certainly beyond the scope that Congress conceived of when they created the EPA.]

[alex_sf]

Stopping hackers should be everyone's mandate. When your network is under attack and the FBI have stingrays, do you get into an argument with them because they don't have warrants?

[jimbob45]

Do you feel that Korematsu v US and Trump v Hawaii were correctly decided then?

[asah]

Easy for us to say, it's not our jobs being lost.

If we really cared about getting this done, we'd simply pay ~$30B/year (0.14%) to enter a contract to buyout 100% of US coal production, and avoid it getting burned.

The problem is that China would simply replace that production, netting zero for the environment.

[zionic]

Well the fix here is for Congress to pass a specific law empowering the EPA with explicit authority.

If something like that can't make it through congress then it isn't democratic, and the task then becomes one of convincing the other side. I've the had the anti-coal conversation with plenty of conservatives and they were all open to my point of view.

Ultimately this court's decision is a win for democracy, even if it is a (temporary) step back for fighting climate change.

[dsr_]

You've almost got it, but you need to go one step further.

Congress isn't democratic. Congress is overly concentrated.

To begin with, the Senate is absurdly anti-democratic. The 710K residents of Washington, DC don't get a vote there at all. The 600K residents of Wyoming get the same 2 votes as Vermont (620K) and California (39 million). Anything that says that Texas and West Virginia are equal to each other in some mystical sense of having equal weight in decisions that affect the whole country is an ideology not compatible with democracy.

Then, the House of Representatives is (a) absurdly gerrymandered and (b) absurdly undersized. One rep per 750,000 people on average, up from one rep per 210,000 people in 1909 and up from one per 34,000 in 1800.

Any Constitutional "originalist" who thinks that the House of Representatives is just fine at 435 reps is a hypocrite. At one per 34,000, we need about ten thousand reps to meet the standards of representation that the founders thought was reasonable.

Oddly, that would solve the other major problem with the House of Representatives: the 2 year term is fine if the rep only has to persuade the majority of 34,000 people or so. A small campaign can win. A simple requirement that all districts must be compact, convex and allocated according to a geographic/population algorithm would cure the gerrymandering, too.

[alex_sf]

> Anything that says that Texas and West Virginia are equal to each other in some mystical sense of having equal weight in decisions that affect the whole country is an ideology not compatible with democracy.

It's completely compatible with democracy, and makes perfect sense under federalism. The federal government was not meant to have the expansive powers it does; the problem is that via things like the commerce clause it's massively overstepped the boundaries that were supposed to contain it.

[dsr_]

If you want to argue "meant to", you must reference that to a time when the USA was about 17 states, all of roughly equal power, economy and population. 1803, just before the Louisiana Purchase. There were 12 Constitutional amendments.

"supposed to" is in the same light. The system that worked pretty well for about 5 million people in the pre-industrial age (and assumed that everyone not male, white, and a land-owner was distinctly second-class) does not work so well 200 years later in a world power of 330 million people.

[alex_sf]

> If you want to argue "meant to", you must reference that to a time when the USA was about 17 states, all of roughly equal power, economy and population. 1803, just before the Louisiana Purchase.

This is blatantly false. The 1800 Census has Virginia with a population of 676k persons (~340k free), with Delaware and Rhode Island having only 64k and 69k respectively. Their economies and 'power' (state militias?) were also nowhere near equal.

The senate was setup specifically because of that disparity, and was designed to prevent larger states from imposing their will on smaller states.

Every individual state is _supposed_ to be sovereign. They hold equal legal status to each other. That's why they are explicitly granted equal suffrage in the Senate.

The fundamental disconnect here is that people from your perspective view the federal government as 'the government', when it was never intended or designed to be that. The federal government was supposed to operate in a much smaller capacity than it has for the past hundred years, with the vast majority of its current responsibilities handled by the states.

> "supposed to" is in the same light. The system that worked pretty well for about 5 million people in the pre-industrial age (and assumed that everyone not male, white, and a land-owner was distinctly second-class) does not work so well 200 years later in a world power of 330 million people.

Says who? There is plenty to criticize about the US government at all levels, but, as someone who no doubt regards American Exceptionalism as an outrageous trope, how else do you explain the success and dominance of the US worldwide? It is, without question, the most powerful, wealthy, and successful country to have ever existed in history.

The US is not exceptional or unique in its history of slavery, natural resources, population, or landmass. As one of the few things unique to the US, it's entirely reasonable to attribute at least part of that success to our form of government.

edit: And, by the way: slave-owning states favored proportional representation in Congress. They were growing at a much faster pace than the northern states.

[dsr_]

> This is blatantly false. The 1800 Census has Virginia with a population of 676k persons (~340k free), with Delaware and Rhode Island having only 64k and 69k respectively. Their economies and 'power' (state militias?) were also nowhere near equal.

That's a single order of magnitude from top to bottom.

The smallest states are now the population of VA in 1800, and the largest are now two orders of magnitude larger than that.

> how else do you explain the success and dominance of the US worldwide? It is, without question, the most powerful, wealthy, and successful country to have ever existed in history.

It is:

* Exceptionally large. Russia is twice as large. China, Canada and the US are all approximately the same size. Next is Brazil and Australia, and then there's another factor of 2 drop.

* Exceptionally gifted in natural resources. Between ocean ports and navigable waterways, transportation was easy to exploit. During the agriculture-first age, huge herds of bison roamed free. Oil and gas and coal are available. Most metals and minerals are here. The climatic zones available for year-round habitation are huge, and the deserts are not.

* Exceptionally un-invadable by the powers in the world at its birth. The native Americans were devastated by disease and weapons. Every other human threat needed to lug their troops over an ocean before starting to invade. The War of 1812 was an expensive fizzle for the British.

* Compound effects from the above produced a robust economy.

* Being across an ocean meant that the US could pick and choose when to enter the World Wars. Even after Pearl Harbor, FDR could delay entry until industrial processes were engaged to a wartime footing.

But the American domination really started at the end of WWII, with all the European countries and Russia and China and Japan facing major rebuilding efforts, while the US was largely unaffected.

None of that requires the Constitution to be exactly the way it is. Would it have worked better as a multi-party parliament? I think so. Would it be less effective as a theocratic fascism? I hope we're not about to find out.

[josephcsible]

Isn't the way the US was meant to work basically the way the EU does work today?

[josephcsible]

> Any Constitutional "originalist" who thinks that the House of Representatives is just fine at 435 reps is a hypocrite. At one per 34,000, we need about ten thousand reps to meet the standards of representation that the founders thought was reasonable.

How is that hypocritical? The Constitution says "The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative". The fact that we're not near the upper bound doesn't make it unreasonable. If they thought a reasonable representation would have required some lower bound other than 1 per state, they would have written that.

[jimkleiber]

I agree. So therefore I want us to fix the gridlock in the legislative branch so they can actually legislate. I think the members of Congress have mostly been captured by the political parties, almost automatically voting with their party line, representing their party more than their actual constituencies. If someone represents my state of Michigan, I believe they don't just represent the Democrats or Republicans who voted for them, but that they're supposed to represent all of the people in the state. When they vote along party lines, it says to me they prioritize their party affiliation over their regional one.

[throwaway0a5e]

They vote for the money.

The elimination of earmarks has made politicians more dependent on the party and good grace of industry for their elections so they have to tow the party line harder and cater to the lobby more whereas back in the day people could vote against their party if they were bringing home something else to make it worthwhile.

[jimkleiber]

I agree. A friend of mine does a lot of research on Congress and says that getting rid of closed-door committees and committee votes has really increased the power of the parties for reasons you mention: it's hard to negotiate in good faith when people (e.g. lobbyists and party officials) are constantly looking over their shoulders. Earmarks and other things can give them ways to work things out when in private, compromising here and there, and coming up with a bill that will be balanced in the end.

I strongly suggest his research[0].

EDIT: Oh, and my friend[1] who does a lot of the research is a ex-NASA scientist, which is one of the reasons I also got excited about his research, as I studied electrical and computer engineering in college and was excited to see an engineering mindset applied to political dynamics.

[0]: congressionalresearch.org

[1]: https://congressionalresearch.org/JamesDangelo.html

[gsibble]

Agreed. This isn't about climate change, it's about proper procedure as the Constitution sets it up. The EPA went past its mandated purposes as set up by law. Congress needs to pass a new law to give it this power. If it can't, that's their problem. This was a good decision as far too much power has been given to the administrative state to basically make up laws.

[kadoban]

The current court is starting with an outcome they like and then writing the decision from there. There is no law that will survive a sufficiently motivated cherry-picking of case facts and legal history.

[the_gastropod]

> If something like that can't make it through congress then it isn't democratic

Ah, yes. The institution where 41 Senators, representing a mere 22% of the US population can block legislation is the zenith of democracy. Especially when considering the legislation we're talking about is as a response to a court case ruled by 6 judges, 5 of which were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, approved by senators representing fewer citizens than the senators who voted against their approval. Real nice system of democracy.

[enragedcacti]

> Ultimately this court's decision is a win for democracy

We've now learned that the supreme court will take up a case concerning the "Independent legislature theory" which, if affirmed, would allow state legislatures to unilaterally overrule their constituent's votes in both state and federal elections.

I can't wait to see the majority maintain its staunch pro-democracy stance that it takes in this case in the terms to come.

[Drunk_Engineer]

Congress already has the option of overriding/veto any EPA adopted regulation. It has never used that power to remove regulation of CO2. This is not a win for democracy -- quite the opposite.

[DangitBobby]

The way I see it, we've found the great filter.

[moistrobot]

if that's your goal, then we should be investing in nuclear energy

and putting more pressure on countries like China and India

[hackerlight]

Nuclear and solar and wind and hydro.

But that whole business of singling out India and China is BS. If China was split up into 10 smaller countries that together emitted the same amount in aggregate, those 10 smaller countries would fly under the radar. It's only because China happens to be a single country that people point the finger. Per-capita emissions is the thing to be focusing on.

[mrpopo]

People are only using the metrics that make them/their country look best. The USA is topping the chart in cumulative GHG emissions, which is objectively the cause of climate change (carbon stays in the atmosphere).

[mwint]

It’s valid to focus on China, because China is where lobbying efforts are best spent. A single huge government making a small change will “do” more than a small government making a small change.

[tzs]

India?

India's greenhouse gas emissions are 50% of those of the US. Per capita they are at 12% of the US.

BTW, per capita is the correct comparison because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary boundaries. To illustrate imaging a world with just 2 countries, one emitting X per year and one emitting 2X per year. The population of first county is P and the population of the second country is 2P. In this example we'll assume little trade between the two countries.

That world needs to get down to a total of 2X per year. If we do thing per country that means each country gets to emit X per year. So the first country is fine where they are and the second country needs to cut emissions in half.

To the people of the first country they just continue their normal lifestyle, which generates X/P emissions per capita. The second country has to go from X/P per capita to 1/2 X/P. They will need to make big changes that will likely greatly reduce their standard of living.

But then separatist parties, upset with such a big blow to the standard of living, come to power in the second country, and it splits into 9 separate countries, each with population 2P/9.

In this new 10 country world, each country's share of the global 2X emission budget is 2/10 X. To meet this the first country has to cut per capita emissions to 20% of what they were before, requiring drastic changes in their economy and lifestyles.

The 9 new countries on the other hand only have to each cut per capita emissions to 90% of what they were before. Their standards of living don't have to change much.

...and now there are strong incentives in the first country to split!

This only ends when you reach a configuration where every country has the same per capita allowance.

Trade complicates it, because now emissions in one country might be going toward doing things for the other country and so should be counted toward the other country's emission budget. That can be dealt with by something like a cap and trade system so countries can trade some of their emissions budget to cover emissions done for them in other countries.

[timeon]

Unfortunately most pro-nuclear talk I see is in form of excuse 'my way or highway'. Like the one you did. As bonus you are trying to shift focus to other actors (which true, are also relevant but still...)

[gsibble]

Agreed. China and India put out significantly more and dirtier pollution than the US and nuclear is the only realistic pathway forward for base emissions-free power.

Furthermore, this was the right decision. You can't just have the executive branch make up law. If Congress wants this, they can pass a law. That's how the US works.

[thepasswordis]

Then tell the EPA to start lobbying the NRC to allow new nuclear plants and start allowing innovation in the space.

The EPA is not a legislative body. If you want to make it illegal to run a coal plant because you feel like it’s your duty to force some pain on the citizenry for what you perceive as a higher calling: pass a law.

[kennywinker]

> If you want to make it illegal to run a coal plant because you feel like it’s your duty to force some pain on the citizenry for what you perceive as a higher calling: pass a law.

Nobody wants what you described. Global warming is literally killing people by the thousands every year now. Wars are coming, mass migrations and climate refugees. This is a crisis, it’s just not a localized one. And it doesn’t have to be painful. Building + running windmills, solar, even nuclear, those are all good jobs.

You might just as well frame it “if 19 states want to make the world suffer so a few corporations can profit and people don’t have to re-train”.

[throwaway0a5e]

>>If you want to make it illegal to run a coal plant because you feel like it’s your duty to force some pain on the citizenry for what you perceive as a higher calling

>Nobody wants what you described

Do you think everyone hear has the memory of a goldfish or are you just lying to us without a care in the world?

We can literally go into any HN thread on the subject of coal and see tons of comments to the tune of "this will cause people a bunch of pain but outlawing X, Y and Z or taxing them to create the same effect is necessary in order to get off of fossil fuels therefore it is necessary for the greater good". I don't disagree with the premise that it's gonna hurt but just turning around and saying "nobody's saying that" when it suits you is beyond bad faith behavior.

People like you are just as bad for progress as the coal lobby is because you undermine the people telling it like it is.

[kennywinker]

Op’s message was that people think it’s their duty to force pain on people for some higher calling.

As I said, nobody wants that. Emphasis on “wants”, emphasis on “that”. The same people calling for climate action are the ones calling for a just transitions - UBI, green new deals, etc. so if they were to get their way it wouldn’t actually be painful. That’s the “wants” part.

But even if we don’t get those things, it actually has to happen - it’s not some random desire. It’s an existential threat to human life. So, it has to be done at whatever cost. Not because they “believe in some higher calling” - because the facts are that this is going to hurt everyone if we don’t deal with it at great scale asap. And that’s the “that” part.

[KingOfCoders]

If you want airspace to be regulated, pass a law (cancel the FAA). If you want frequencies to be regulated, pass a law (cancel the FCC). If you want individual food and drugs to be regulated, pass a law (cancel the FDA). If you want cars to be regulated, ...

[Sporktacular]

"duty to force some pain on the citizenry"

You do know that coal power kills more people than any other power source right? That makes health care a hidden cost, paid by the citizenry, to subsidise an irresponsible energy industry.

Think much?

[thepasswordis]

Why is this so confusing?

Then pass a law.

I hope every coal plant on earth goes away forever. I hate coal plants. Get rid of them and PASS A LAW restricting their use.

[Sporktacular]

Have you seen how hard it is to pass a contentious law these days? Most people can agree about its merits but it's naive to act as if special interests haven't manufactured the contention and captured the regulatory and legislative processes.

We don't have the luxury of proceduralism any more.

[thepasswordis]

Think about what you’re saying. Democracy is hard so let’s throw it all away? Do you realize where that leads?

[Sporktacular]

Don't be hyperbolic. We had democracy before Coney-Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were appointed.

Hamstringing the EPA over a contrived technicality in the wording of its charter is a travesty of justice. It's public utility is obvious. It's in the name.

[phaistra]

> Have you seen how hard it is to pass a contentious law these days?

So what? Not the SC's problem.

> Most people can agree about its merits but it's naive to act as if special interests haven't manufactured the contention and captured the regulatory and legislative processes.

So if special interests have captured the regulatory body, how is letting them keep (or gain) their unelected power any better?

> We don't have the luxury of proceduralism any more.

I can use the same argument about any topic we disagree about. Do you not see the problem with this line of thinking?

[Sporktacular]

"Not the SC's problem."

Indeed, it's precisely to the contrary and actually to the new SC's advantage. Republican obstructionism is precisely why conservative judges have adopted this new commitment to originalism. But on the other hand, isn't a clean environment a problem for us all?

"So if special interests have captured the regulatory body, how is letting them keep (or gain) their unelected power any better?"

Because this executive has been trying to fix it (https://grist.org/politics/epa-joe-biden-environmental-law-e...) and congress has been trying to keep it broken (eg. https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/589767-gop-sen...). This ruling takes power away from the executive and hands it to an even more captured, paralysed congress. Whether the EPA derives its mandate from the executive or the legislature makes no difference since BOTH are elected bodies. Why mindlessly repeat that red herring? Obviously the real issue is whether it's effective and working for the public interest or for special interests.

"I can use the same argument about any topic we disagree about. Do you not see the problem with this line of thinking?"

No you can't, except in cases where the importance of the procedures themselves are outweighed by the importance of what they are preventing. For a decade the SC was okay with the EPA using the clean air act to limit carbon, and then it wasn't. The only thing that changed is the political constitution of the court which has exploited technicalities and procedural hurdles to prevent the addressing of an urgent, existential threat. Or is it just a coincidence that the sudden desire for more carefully crafted legislation comes from conservatives who have always opposed stronger environmental regulation?

It's a pretty narrow, justified case I'm making against excessive proceduralism. Do you not see a problem with checking tickets for lifeboats?

[mrpopo]

> Then tell the EPA to start lobbying the NRC to start building new nuclear plants

No, stopping the coal plants is the end goal. Whether it's by saving energy or building alternative sources like solar/hydro/nuclear is irrelevant to the EPA's goal (protecting the environment/mitigating climate change).

Innovation will not save us, the tools have been here for decades.

I agree this should be passed as a law.

[toomuchtodo]

Can’t pass a law, too many climate change deniers in political positions.

We’ll have to find other mechanisms to force coal plants offline. Lots of tools available besides the EPA.

[codefreeordie]

"can't pass a law because I can't get enough voters to want it"

Sounds like maybe you don't believe in democracy

[enragedcacti]

> "can't pass a law because I can't get enough voters to want it"

Voters overwhelmingly want regulation on climate change. 41 senators representing roughly 22% of voters don't.

> Sounds like maybe you don't believe in democracy

if you're going to make snide remarks you better be accurate in your claims.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/09/americans-l...

[InitialLastName]

What the US has is (intentionally and explicitly) not a democracy. It has a wide array of structures intended to undermine the will of the majority.

[codefreeordie]

This is true. We have a democratic republic rather than a plain democracy, because the founders were (rightly) concerned that plain democracy produces a tyrannical majority, and wanted to create a free society which would only impose government authority when there was broad-based and widespread agreement.

Indeed, the founders cared so much about this that they wrote into the Constitution a guarantee not of a democratic form of government for the States, but a republican one

U.S. const. Art 4 Sec 4:

> The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

In theory, this guarantee could be satisfied by entirely nondemocratic governments, so long as they were republics. Courts have not really tackled too many of the details of this clause over the years, primarily on the grounds that the courts largely feel that they are unable to offer remedies. (https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte...)

[throwaway0a5e]

The purpose of those structures is to prevent a razor thin majority from going off half cocked and doing something there isn't sufficient support for.

I think you need to take a look at federal controlled substances policy. Even with resounding majorities in favor of various degrees of changing things in a particular direction the small steps that everyone can agree on still don't get done. The incentive structure for implementing popular change is broken and the difference between 50.0001% and 60% doesn't change that.

[InitialLastName]

I'm not at all arguing that those structures are delivering value in their present formulation, just that they are present, they are non-democratic, and that was intentional (so arguments predicated on raw democracy are either disingenuous or misguided).

I think I would argue that the simplest first cuts to untying the current knot are to rethink the whole "legal bribery of elected officials" thing and find a reasonable way to enable multiple parties so that coalitions can align along a more complex set of needs than two sets of (absolutist) wedge issues.

[toomuchtodo]

Sometimes I don’t. The climate doesn’t care about your vote or belief system. So, you have to work around democracy. Play to win, the stakes are too high not to.

[codefreeordie]

You probably won't like it when your opponents start playing to win democracy be damned

[toomuchtodo]

They already are. What do you think this is? They spent decades to enable this, they’ve said so publicly. Mitch McConnell’s book is even called “The Long Game.” They are knowingly, actively subverting democracy for their own ends.

So, here we are.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mitch-mcconnell-dark-lord-s... (the Fox News article slug even refers to him as the dark lord)

[politician]

100%. We need to stop treating the judiciary as if it were royalty, and instead operate the government using the established rules for change.

That means forcing Congress to accept its role and do its job instead of being a place where the members spend most of their time fundraising and trying to keep their seats.