361–370 of 413 posts
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> ... and richest countries That's considering $18 trillion of its debt?
Yes. Countries debt is an asset, it's not like household debt. US Treasury Bonds are a bedrock of the global financial system.
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It would be optimistic to count on it, but one of the few ways the US political system could get back on track is through the scale of crisis we may be heading for.
Just to be clear, to which crisis are you referring? Increasing polarization? The shit with Russia? All of these things? Something else?
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It would be optimistic to count on it, but one of the few ways the US political system could get back on track is through the scale of crisis we may be heading for.
I could see post Trump the POTUS having powers taken away by the slightly more grown up house and senate. Dropping the 18th century method of nominating candidates and moving to a OMOV where only paid up members vote would make sense and eliminate the "Nutter" problem and that's using Nutter in its political sense, it would reduce the waste of money involved in the electoral process.
Can someone give me pros and cons of this move (serious responses only)? Thanks
James Hansen, a former NASA climate scientist, previously described the paris accord as "a fraud". He's describing this from the perspective of knowing it's not enough to do anything significant, and incredibly expensive. [0]
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-ha...
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Per capita and cumulated are BS measures to obfuscate that China is a bigger contributor, and likely to grow for a while. The first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging- the US has, China hasn't.
Let's leave aside if per-capita and accumulated are important metrics or not. Let's accept that the Chinese are worse polluters than the US. Congratulations, you are the second worst polluter. What, did I hear India? Ok, you are just being difficult. Let's say you are the third worst polluter. What? Did I hear ...? Stop it! You are one of the worst polluters. Period. Why do you withdraw? And yes, you are the worst pe…
And this is pollution: https://qz.com/794542/air-pollution-map-by-country-fine-part...
Which makes CO2 seem particularly cherry picked.
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So you feel like your individual observations in the DC/MD/VA area validate the rejection of a global climate accord? Unless these elitist liberals choose to sit in the dark and not consume power, walk to work (likely impossible, so maybe just not work since working also probably produces a lot of CO2) then there is no reason to attack the problem at a global or national level? What happens to the power companies if…
I'm frustrated and spiteful because I'm an environmentalist. At least republicans are internally consistent: they're not willing to do anything about climate change because they don't think it'll happen. Folks here in DC/MD/VA in contrast profess to believe that this terrible thing is going to happen, but they're not willing to actually do anything that will solve it. Who exactly are the crazy ones? That are lots of…
Hard to believe.
> Folks here in DC/MD/VA in contrast profess to believe that this terrible thing is going to happen, but they're not willing to actually do anything that will solve it. Who exactly are the crazy ones?
Classic conservative argument. "I know you all are fake, despite not really knowing you all. This proposal isn't going to work, and I won't show you my alternative plan, but I know what to do. Listen to me! Don't try anything aspirational regarding the environment or civil rights. You'll fail and that will hurt me!"
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Your ignorance is breathtaking. The US and other developed countries have always taken the lead on environmental policy that has resulted in real change. The most famous is the Montreal Protocol which resulted in the banning of CFCs and saved the Ozone Layer[1]. The policy decision drove technological innovation and created entire new classes of appliances and chemicals which resulted in millions of new jobs. After t…
The CFC problem was a narrow one, and the Montreal protocol was implemented a decade after development started on CFC alternatives. At the time Montreal was implemented, there was a clear picture of how to get from point A to point B. Climate change is in comparison a moon shot. We don't know what will work and how it'll work. There's not some single thing we can ban and fix the problem. It calls for structural chang…
None of the technology required for this is magical. It's all developed and proven and deployed. It's on the market right now. It just needs to be scaled and we need to get over the adoption hurdle. Once that happens it gets exponentially cheaper. Compare the price of a flat panel display today to one 20 years ago and now look at the price history curves for solar panels and batteries.
Once we get over the adoption curve this stuff will be cheaper than fossil fuels. That's how industrial scaling works.
You might have been able to make your argument 20 years ago. The situation with fossil fuels vs. alternatives today is a lot closer to the situation with CFCs at the time of the Montreal accord. Back then conservatives cried about how we were no longer going to have refrigeration or air conditioning and today they're crying about how doing something about climate change means going back to pre-industrial times. It's total nonsense. EVs are better than internal combustion cars.
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> There is no political fix. Only technological ones. Technological fixes will not be adopted unless climate-related externalities are internalized into transactions, because of the tragedy of the commons. A political fix is a necessary prerequisite to the adoption of any technological fix.
Energy consumption is one of the largest costs of every human activity, there is already incredible incentives for everyone to reduce consumption. Energy efficiency has increased for every country despite the lack of a common political framework. [1] [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
If we're going to see reductions in emissions for economic reasons, we need emissions to cost something.
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A fellow HackerNews reader had a great quote, I don't remember the source. You're basically complaining that China has too many people and would presumably want that some of them wouldn't exist. His quote was: "If you think a certain group of people shouldn't exist, how do you select that group of people? And how do you know that you, yourself, shouldn't he a part of that group?". China's population is a fact. In the…
> would presumably want that some of them wouldn't exist. I simply don't want to pay to enable them even more. When the proper social constraints aren't in place, money = energy = more babies. It's poor policy to continually reward countries that are chronically overcrowded and polluted, it just makes the issues worse long-term. >The US is basically eating its own seed corn. It's hilarious to me that you believe this…
Have a nice day!