[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.

[ceejayoz]

That's more perks than the job Constitutionally awards. It was created as a powerless placeholder role.

[lapcat]

You're missing the point, which is that by all accounts, Al Gore was a close advisor to Bill Clinton.

[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]

There really wasn't. The person you replied to covered as much. They had the opportunity for a few big bills, which they did - much of it ultimately stemming from concerns around climate change.

[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.

[specialist]

I concur. On (most) all points you've made in this thread.

Two things.

#1

What if you're wrong? What if one day you wake up and the world (as we know it) hasn't ended?

I totally understand nihilism, despair, despondency, hopelessness, etc. Under Reagan and living near Boeing, I was convinced we'd get nuked. I embraced the punk/goth lifestyle. Then I was diagnosed at 19yo with a terminal disease (aplastic anemia).

Then the weirdest thing happened.

We didn't get nuked. And I somehow beat the odds, surviving an experimental treatment (and its aftermath).

"Well shit" I said to myself. "Now what?"

And make no mistake; It was monumentally hard to pivot. To plan further ahead then "what's for breakfast?"

Fortunately, I had role models and mentors. Like the two science and policy people I worked (volunteered) for at Audubon. They knew the score. And yet they continued to fight. Marveling, I asked how they did it. Saving the salmon (in this case) was their day job. Living their lives, as best as they could, during their own time. It wasn't denial or compartmentalizing. It was choosing to embrace life, to give them the energy and purpose to continue the fight.

#2

What else are you gonna do?

During the 2000s, I was so filled with anger and disgust. I somehow fell into direct activism (leading vs just volunteering). I met so many other angry people. Most of them stuck in a doom loop. (Therefore useless, detrimental even, to activism.)

Learning activism as I went, I eventually decided a key factor to change was somehow transmuting that outrage into action. So we leaders stopped just opposing bad policy and decisions. We advocated for a better way, as best able.

So, ya, the world's going to hell. What are you going to do about it? Check out? (Which, IMHO, is a perfectly rational and valid decision for most people.) Will you fight for what's yours? Defending the future, and our planet, and a more just society.

The hardest part, for me, to becoming an activist was how to get started. There are few resources and even fewer mentors. Most people who try bounce off the wall of policy and politics and gatekeepers. So I know that individuals converting their outrage into action is wicked hard.

My Big Idea, as a recovering activist myself, for maybe mitigating that hurdle was starting an activism book study / support group. The goal was get something rolling, then document it, then spawn off new cells. (Something I learned how to do with design pattern study groups, back in the day.)

Members picked a topic, the smallest possible change, the lowest hanging fruit, they wanted to see happen. So participants could learn and experience the whole process and skill building needed for success. (Something I learned from Luke Hohmann, wrt teams delivering products, back in the day.)

And then we supported each other's efforts. We were off to a good start; 7 members, meeting twice monthly.

Alas, I had some health and family crises, and that study group didn't survive my departure. (Another wicked hard problem.)

In conclusion...

I think I understand where you're at. I feel like I was in a similar place, more than once.

All I want to convey is that you might be able to find a way thru by finding some positives to focus on.

Recovering from radiation, I used kitten and puppy pictures to cheer myself up. To prove I'm also not a bot, here's my corpus: https://imgur.com/user/zappini/favorites

Now I binge on podcasts like David Roberts' Volts. He's a natural born pessimist, like me. Yet he chooses to find and signal boost the people doing the hard work of implementing our glorious all electric future. He's also been (for me) a gateway to finding more sources of joy and optimism.

Holler if you wanna talk. [e-mail]

[lapcat]

> What if you're wrong? What if one day you wake up and the world (as we know it) hasn't ended?

It appears that you misunderstood. I said, "This is not [emphasis added] like nuclear war" and "We're cursing our descendants with a world much more hostile than the one we were born into". Much more hostile does not imply the end of the world, and indeed the existence of our descendants implies that everyone is not dead.

> I think I understand where you're at.

I don't think you do, and I wasn't in need of therapy.