US quits Paris climate pact • Hacker News Board

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#291

Post by ajflkjasdf777 » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:18 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #76

scarmig wrote: post #51

This is one of those situations where you should be shaking your head, even if you're a climate change denying conservative or a fussil fuel industrial interest. The Paris pact was pretty toothless: it was a step forward, but heavily aspirational. Indeed, one of the stated complaints of conservatives was that it did nothing to enforce compliance. The Trump Administration could have just as well ignored it without for…

Yes, the Paris pact was toothless. It was never going to work, just like Kyoto didn't work. So what's wrong with pulling out of it? Consternation over the Paris accord is, in my opinion, elitist liberal virtue signaling. (Here in the DC/MD/VA area, everyone will complain about this move at Starbucks sipping on lattes while driving one hour each way to work from their McMansion in the exurbs. God forbid we do anything…

Iterative improvements versus starting over. Particularly with something like environment change.

It took years just to get the Paris language settled. But yeah, let's start over. With Trump at the wheel. The great but actually spectacularly bad negotiator.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#292

Post by throwaway-1209 » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:18 PM UTC

surveilmebro wrote: post #284

throwaway-1209 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's if _everyone_ withdraws. That's not what's happening. 0.3 degrees is if the US withdraws but everyone else proceeds as planned. But we aren't even withdrawing per se. Immediately after announcing his decision, Trump also announced his willingness to re-negotiate the accords on better terms (by which I think he means not spending $100/B a year on something that other countries aren't even legally bound by). And…

Complete nonsense on both counts. First of all, consider that the most visible public debate about this has centered on whether it is even possible to limit warming to 2C. Start by reading the two links I posted. If you would like to learn more, the IPCC reports are genuinely well written and accessible: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/ I would hope that at least on HN we could all agree on a shared objective reality…

Further clarification, my bad: 0.3 degrees _greater_ warming if the US withdraws. Not 0.3 degrees total. The climate is warming, no one is disputing that. It's not warming anywhere near as quickly as models from 10 years ago predicted, though.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#293

Post by panzagl » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:22 PM UTC

chadgeidel wrote: post #262

panzagl wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why the US has so much trouble with climate change as an issue- first it was sulfur dioxide, then lead, then CFCs, now it's CO2. The US has been doing this since the 70's. Now Europe and China want to pretend they care with words, and giving the US's money to the third world, yet every picture of a city in China looks like London in the 1890's and it turns out those oh so green Euro car makers were cheati…

I fail to see how the very real reduction in sulfur dioxide, lead, and CFCs is "rearranging the deck chairs". We had a problem, and fixed it. We now have another problem.

The Paris Treaty is rearranging the deck chairs. The others were fixed by plugging the hole in the boat. Plenty of US companies and governmental agencies are working on plugging this hole, but the country as a whole is tired of being hit up to pay the orchestra so the the rearranging can continue as before.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#294

Post by maxander » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

sverige wrote: post #282

maxander wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, the Paris accords are hugely popular in the U.S. [1]. The word is that even most corporations, oil companies among them, supported staying in the pact. Everyone was on board with this, except Trump and his far conservative base. And as long as power gets passed between groups with fundamentally different interests (or even basic notions of reality), no one will trust U.S. for basic security if they have half a ch…

"Hugely popular" is an overstatement. "Everyone" excluding "Trump and his far conservative base" lost the election. And part of Trump's message was that the U.S. shouldn't be the guarantor of the security of the rest of the world. That was a hugely popular proposition with his supporters.

Remember, Trump lost the popular vote by a couple million, in an election where about half the country voted, so his base in general could be estimated at about a fourth to a fifth of the country. But if we take the "more than 5 to 1" figure from the linked article as valid, then it implies that even a bunch of people who voted for Trump liked the accord. My impression is that people didn't like Trump for policies having to do with the environment or climate change- they liked his stance on immigration and general outsider status.

The not-being-responsible-for-other-countries bit is also a popular policy of his (arguably, its his most widely-appealing position altogether), but I'm confused that you think that that applies to the Paris accord. The accord didn't mandate us giving anyone else anything, and climate change is going to mess the U.S. up as much as anywhere else.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#295

Post by johntam » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:25 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #271

mikeash wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing about three decades of right-wing propaganda. President Trump is the logical conclusion of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Fox News, and other assorted media. These people systematically created a tribal political environment where facts don't matter, ridicule is the best argument, and Democrats are the enemy. They've been pounding this into the heads of any American who would listen since the late 1980s or so…

> Add in the electoral college, which gives a substantial advantage to candidates who can win rural voters, and here we are. Don't forget our ridiculous Congressional system that greatly over-weights the opinions of rural voters. California has 80 times the number of people as Wyoming, yet they both get two seats in the Senate and 1/53rd the number of representatives in the House.

> 1/53rd the number of representatives in the House.

I assume you meant 53 representatives?

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#296

Post by rhcom2 » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:26 PM UTC

sverige wrote: post #282

maxander wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, the Paris accords are hugely popular in the U.S. [1]. The word is that even most corporations, oil companies among them, supported staying in the pact. Everyone was on board with this, except Trump and his far conservative base. And as long as power gets passed between groups with fundamentally different interests (or even basic notions of reality), no one will trust U.S. for basic security if they have half a ch…

"Hugely popular" is an overstatement. "Everyone" excluding "Trump and his far conservative base" lost the election. And part of Trump's message was that the U.S. shouldn't be the guarantor of the security of the rest of the world. That was a hugely popular proposition with his supporters.

I don't think "hugely popular" is an overstatement if the number is really nearly 70% in favor.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics...

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#297

Post by graeme » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:26 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #258

scarmig wrote: post #51

This is one of those situations where you should be shaking your head, even if you're a climate change denying conservative or a fussil fuel industrial interest. The Paris pact was pretty toothless: it was a step forward, but heavily aspirational. Indeed, one of the stated complaints of conservatives was that it did nothing to enforce compliance. The Trump Administration could have just as well ignored it without for…

If the US was able to survive the loss of the Vietnam war and the Bay of Pigs where many people who bet their lives on the US died after being abandoned by them, the US will survive this as well and American credibility will be just fine in the long term. Basically, the rest of the world will have to learn that getting the US to agree to something that is opposed by a significant group of Americans is a losing propos…

The US didn't exactly abandon its allied in South Vietnam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Frequent_Wind#Result...

It lost the war, but that's not the same thing as just walking away frivolously, on whim.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#298

Post by scarmig » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:26 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #195

rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Paris pact was toothless. It was never going to work, just like Kyoto didn't work. So what's wrong with pulling out of it? Consternation over the Paris accord is, in my opinion, elitist liberal virtue signaling. (Here in the DC/MD/VA area, everyone will complain about this move at Starbucks sipping on lattes while driving one hour each way to work from their McMansion in the exurbs. God forbid we do anything…

Complaining about people at Starbucks sipping on lattes is conservative virtue signaling.

Complaining about virtue signaling is conservative virtue signaling.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#299

Post by labster » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:26 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #214

walshemj wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw one serving senior officer on twitter comment "this must be what suez felt like to the brits"

To be fair, it's not that hard to make bad historical analogies. "This is what Dwight Clark's catch in the 1982 championship game must have felt like to Ringo Starr." Yeah?

As an online discussion continues, the probability of it all being blamed on Yoko Ono approaches one.

Re: US quits Paris climate pact

#300

Post by entee » Thu, Jun 01, 2017, 10:27 PM UTC

pvnick wrote: post #275

GVIrish wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the parent poster was trying to say 'but Obama was worse', he was just pointing at the fact that an Executive Order can be undone by a successor. Kind of a moot point IMO, given the current state of the GOP. Had Obama gone to Congress they probably would've reflexively voted it down anyway. The current GOP is willing to damage America's trustworthiness on the world stage and this is more proof to the po…

If the Congress is unwilling to pass your agenda, then you usually just have to deal with not having your thing. That's the point of separation of powers. Going the extra-constituional route as a matter of course fed the GOP's reflexive opposition.

I don't think that's what "balance" of power means. If you have one branch that for all the things says "NO!", then I think it's natural for the other branch to say, "I'll try it a different way instead of trying to compromise, because there's no point in even trying." That's the implicit threat that makes the legislative and executive branches negotiate and get stuff done.

The difference in the climate today is that one party was essentially saying no to anything Obama might do. Even if they privately agreed or could find some ways to agree with him, they knew that if they so much as smiled in his direction they'd get primaried and kicked out. That climate poisons the relationship between the branches, and gets you to non-standard processes which we can all agree are sub-optimal.

For a balance of powers system to work you need to actually have a working relationship between the branches. It's not going to work if one says, "NO!" then expects the other branch to take their toys and go home. In the real world, we all have to accept compromise toward our objectives, and if we don't we'll get disaster for all our objectives down the line.