[lapcat]

> 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.

[tw04]

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.

[embedding-shape]

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.

[tw04]

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

[lapcat]

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.

[M3L0NM4N]

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.

[HoldOnAMinute]

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.

[knowaveragejoe]

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.

[lapcat]

> the other would very much like to take action on the issue if they had the political power.

They had political power! During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, during the Clinton administration.

Al Gore is a famous environmentalist... for making a movie after he was out of power. What the hell did he do for the environment when he was literally in the Oval Office, at the side of the President?

[ceejayoz]

> What the hell did he do for the environment when he was literally in the Oval Office, at the side of the President?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_activism_of_Al_G...

Guy tried.

[lapcat]

> Guy tried.

Give him a sticker.

[specialist]

Are you familiar with the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics?

https://gwern.net/doc/philosophy/ethics/2015-06-24-jai-theco...

And Murc's Law?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law

[volkl48]

The Biden admin did try to make large-scale investments in renewables and policy changes to encourage the energy transition in the US. The situation at the end of the admin was far better than when it started.

Why are you using a tone that implies that's not the case?

[mrguyorama]

>During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, during the Clinton administration

The president doesn't actually control much in the USA, despite the nonsensical shit republican congresses let them get away with. Obama, Biden, and Clinton could not do anything that wasn't approved by congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

Democrats have not really held enough power to do anything at all in like 40 years. A 1 or 2 vote "majority" in a chamber is not really meant to allow you to do anything.

Hell, that very first graph makes it pretty clear why shit is so bad in the US, we used to actually fire congress and replace them with different people.

[lapcat]

> A 1 or 2 vote "majority" in a chamber is not really meant to allow you to do anything.

1) Democrats had a filibuster-proof super-majority during Obama's first term.

2) The filibuster is not in the Constitution. It can be abolished at any time by a simple majority vote.

The Democrats don't do anything because they don't want to do anything. There's always a convenient excuse. You can blame Manchin or Sinema or whomever, but they're Democrats too.

[specialist]

Correct. We're in a vetocracy. h/t Francis Fukuyama

Both our Senate and SCOTUS are anti-democratic. I daresay they've proven reactionary, with a few notable exceptions.

[chucksta]

There was democratic control of the presidency and congress during Biden's term

[knowaveragejoe]

I'm sorry but if you are trying to both-sides this issue then you are either woefully uninformed or just being contrarian for the sake of it.

[analognoise]

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.

[specialist]

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.

[lapcat]

> So we should celebrate, and learn from, the occasional success.

What success? It's too late. The time for decisive action was decades ago. The worst case scenario is occurring now. Humanity totally failed to avert a disaster. We've already blown past the global temperature thresholds that scientists warned about. Now we're going to have to deal with the consequences. There's no going back in time to prevent it. This was never a problem that we could wait on for "the occasional success."

[specialist]

Methinks our current path has been determined since ~1980, with ~2000 probably being the last chance we had to stay under 1.5C.

So, well, whaddya gonna do?

The trick is deluding oneself that we can somehow muddle thru this. (Humanity has in fact survived worse.) Otherwise I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Is that reasonable? If not, then I might as well soldier on.

[lapcat]

> Methinks our current path has been determined since ~1980, with ~2000 probably being the last chance we had to stay under 1.5C.

That's why I said "I realized this back in the 1990s" and was later complaining about Al Gore.

> Otherwise I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Is that reasonable?

This is not like nuclear war—which could still happen, because we still have the weapons, and the madmen to use them—where we're all going to die tomorrow. We're already seeing the effects—as the submitted article shows—but the worst is yet to come. We're cursing our descendants with a world much more hostile than the one we were born into, for no other reason than greed and selfishness. It's the ultimate betrayal of the future. (By the way, I'm a human and deliberately chose to use em dashes, because I felt like it.)

The best thing to happen for global warming in recent years was not the Biden administration but actually the pandemic, because it significantly cut industrial output for an extended time.

[embedding-shape]

> 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.

[lapcat]

> 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.

[embedding-shape]

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.

[lapcat]

> the US hegemony is dying

The US just deposed the leaders of two countries, Venezuela and Iran, but ok.

[embedding-shape]

> The US just deposed the leaders of two countries, Venezuela and Iran, but ok.

If that's how you judge what "empires" will be left in a decade, good for you, ignorance is a bliss sometimes I suppose. Don't look at how the average person live and survives, if you want to continue that way...

[lapcat]

> If that's how you judge what "empires" will be left in a decade, good for you

I don't make such predictions. I'm not Nostradamus, and neither are you. I don't think anyone can predict what will happen exactly in a decade. After all, who predicted this a decade ago?

> ignorance is a bliss

This insult doesn't even make sense. I'm not experiencing bliss over the situation.