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WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

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Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#331

Post by greglindahl »

dkhenry wrote: post #295
ryanobjc wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. I'm pretty sure not having oceanic level rise, and drowning out the most expensive real state in the world is a benefit to us! The notion that somehow the developed world gives $100b (over what time frame? That matters a lot) and gets nothing in return is ridiculous. Manufacturing clean energy stuff is not within grasp of most developing countries. So they have to import tools, expertise and goods... from where? 3…

2. They are not importing tools and expertise, they are have the tools and expertise and they are not only deploying it locally they are exporting it to America. If you want to see some a benefit then write the mandate that American companies must be used to provide the clean energy capabilities to the developing countries. Not only would that be rejected it would be a bad idea for many reasons, but the opposite is d…

3. Yeah, why on earth would a super-rich country be expected to be near the top? We agreed to a 0.7% target for aid, and we've been failing to meet it.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#332

Post by tclancy »

dkhenry wrote: post #295
ryanobjc wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. I'm pretty sure not having oceanic level rise, and drowning out the most expensive real state in the world is a benefit to us! The notion that somehow the developed world gives $100b (over what time frame? That matters a lot) and gets nothing in return is ridiculous. Manufacturing clean energy stuff is not within grasp of most developing countries. So they have to import tools, expertise and goods... from where? 3…

2. They are not importing tools and expertise, they are have the tools and expertise and they are not only deploying it locally they are exporting it to America. If you want to see some a benefit then write the mandate that American companies must be used to provide the clean energy capabilities to the developing countries. Not only would that be rejected it would be a bad idea for many reasons, but the opposite is d…

>Even per capita we are 21st in the world, not bad

But not exceptional. Certainly not worth complaining about either.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#333

Post by rbritton »

swampthing wrote: post #188
xienze wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is the historically the largest contributor of greenhouse gases by a wide margin Sure, but guess what: China is right behind us. History means squat. They're a major polluter _right now_. Why are they not held to the same standard we are?

They could ask the same question - why is the US allowed to have higher per-capita emissions?

Why are per-capita emissions a more important number than net emissions? With the former, China is behind us (roughly half) whereas with the latter, they're roughly double based on the current Wikipedia numbers.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#334

Post by _jal »

dkhenry wrote: post #321
_jal wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These other countries who you are saying need to "Develop" are not behind the "Developed" countries in any metric other then quality of life statistics That little figure happens to be kinda important. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and state that most people consider their quality of life to be somewhat more important than abstract ideas about global economic policy. "Fairness" had nothing to do with how we got he…

So is this a policy to redistribute wealth or to deal with climate change? Because it is advertised as something to deal with climate change, but all I see in it is a way to redistribute wealth. If we are serious about climate change then write a policy that deals with it. Everyone makes steps to reduce pollution, not half of us makes steps to reduce pollution and give lots of money to countries who do nothing so the…

I think you're attempting to drive a false distinction. At this scale, doing anything about anything involves "redistributing wealth". And if that's all you see, well, I'd suggest that has more to do with what you're looking at than what's there.

If you approach this sort of global negotiation with a precondition that it not alter the existing economic order, that is the same as refusing to negotiate. If that's your view, then fine; there's clearly no point in discussing further.

But if the goal is to deal honestly with climate change, the reality is that there will be winners and losers. Just like happened in the run-up to where we are now. Guess what: we won the run up. Now we have to decide if we're willing to give up some of the "unfair" share we've had for almost a century in return for our grandkids having something vaguely like the quality of life our parents had.

Some days I really think the U.S. is just doomed by our culture. Thankfully, I'm more chipper other days.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#335

Post by djschnei »

kibwen wrote: post #7

Are they open to more states joining, I hope? I'd like to petition my own state government to get on board. If the federal government's going to keep shitting the bed, this is the last hope I have left.

Originally, this is much more in the purview of state government than it would be in federal government, anyway. It's easier for us to affect change, as well as easier for us to shield ourselves from shitty governance, when decisions like this are made closer to home. If this buffoon is accomplishing one thing, it's illustrating the importance of state supremacy - Broken glass half full... while it's plummeting off a cliff... kinda deal.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#336

Post by tropo »

devindotcom wrote: post #137
toisanji wrote: post #90

I would read the full speech from Trump, he makes some good points, although im sure some of it is false and not sure how it compares to other factors. http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/politics/trump-paris-agreement... "For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years -- 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us. India makes its participation…

Worth noting that we can't even really leave the Accord until 2020, so there's a lot of political posturing involved here. This was all debated for years, so none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. We went into this eyes WIDE open. China got a good deal, yeah, because it had leverage: it's the manufacturing capitol of the world. It could very easily have walked away with no commitments at all. As for develo…

We supposedly can't leave until 2020, but who would enforce that?

There is also the option of staying, but reporting our carbon emissions with alternative facts. Done to an extreme, that means we get the payments.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#337

Post by swampthing »

rbritton wrote: post #333
swampthing wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could ask the same question - why is the US allowed to have higher per-capita emissions?

Why are per-capita emissions a more important number than net emissions? With the former, China is behind us (roughly half) whereas with the latter, they're roughly double based on the current Wikipedia numbers.

I'm not saying they're more important.

But as for why they are important, I think that there is some relationship between how people live and per-capita emissions. So if you ignore the population size and only look at net emissions, the people in larger countries would be held to a higher standard than the people in the smaller countries.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#338

Post by thesmallestcat »

SaintGhurka wrote: post #255
thesmallestcat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm just plain confused -- how could somebody who grew up in the Central Valley and regularly saw trucks with confederate flags feel that Californians are some bloc that are so dissimilar from Alabamans? I'd argue that San Franciscans are way, way closer to Sydneysiders than Alabamans, but that's besides the point and misunderstands what sets the US apart from other commonwealth nations culturally. While in some…

You're right about your overall point of the common vein, but your statement about Stockton seems a bit uncharitable. I lived in Stockton for 3 years and never noticed all the trucks with confederate flags. Sure, it was 20 years ago but I can't recall even one such truck.

Not in the urban centers at the bottom of the valley, but in the Sierra Nevada and its foothills. You're way less likely to encounter people like that in the Bay Area or around LA.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#339

Post by atonse »

tropo wrote: post #326
azernik wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where you and I disagree. The different requirements laid on developing vs. developed countries are in my opinion a feature, not a bug. Demanding from India and and Sub-Saharan Africa to remain pre-industrial nations while we get to keep polluting at a much higher per-capita rate is not in any sense a "level playing field" - it's grandfathering in the advantage we currently gain by polluting more.

Yes, it would be "grandfathering in the advantage we currently gain". You don't want that advantage? Are you tired of winning? Trump said: "We gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning and you'll say please, please Mr. president, It's too much winning! We can't take it anymore!" Look, it was a joke. You're expected to like winning. I suppose you could move elsewhere on the non-level playing field if you act…

Except in this case you aren't winning. We're all losing. The climate isn't just going to be nice on developed nations 20 years from now. It's going to be bad for all nations because we didn't act.

We're all losing. Already.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#340

Post by [deleted] »

dkhenry wrote: post #229
devindotcom wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the Paris Accord "bad"? A major economic and ecological policy agreed on by nearly the entire planet is no small task. It took years to create and is a compromise - we can do better and that was the plan, to iterate on it.

Its bad because its not a level playing field. Its tips the global economy away from Americans because they are too "Developed". Turns out there are lots of Americans in fly over country who disagree.

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