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

governor.wa.gov

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

#391

Post by xaa »

alpha_squared wrote: post #372
vivekd wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See it's stuff like this that makes me suspect that the climate change debate is more about virtue signaling than any actual threat. Because really if we honestly believed that the earth was warming because of carbon and that this presented a serious threat to the planet, we wouldn't be like "oh well fairness dictates that we let some countries keep emitting high levels of carbon." That consideration wouldn't even co…

> The only reason that this is even coming up is because climate change proponents, deep inside, believe that there will be no serious adverse consequences from climate change. That's not the case at all. The world isn't really a black/white place. In an ideal world, we'd all stop right now and focus -- concertedly -- our efforts on reverting climate change. Unfortunately, life just doesn't work like that. You go ahe…

But it's not as if China, India, etc haven't benefited from the West's carbon-fueled economic growth. It was that economic growth that led to all the various technologies that they've imported. The West has also borne, and is bearing, the costs of R&D on green energy.

If we are talking about "inequities", I would say these countries took an "unfair" leap in technological development because of us, so it is not entirely unreasonable to say the disadvantage of less carbon use has been more than offset by tech transfer. Especially since China and India are both notorious for not respecting IP rights.

If not for the West, neither of these countries would even be in a position to want higher carbon emissions.

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

#392

Post by sanderjd »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #382
sanderjd wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they seem like decent replies to me, there is no reason to think that you'd get the best replies to a complicated policy question from a random commenter in a forum for technology entrepreneurs.

Which is why I said "if these are the best replies".

My reading of that idiom is that it implies an assumption that they are the best replies. My comment was to point out that there's no reason to think that would be the case.

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

#393

Post by jza00425 »

enknamel wrote: post #133

There is a massive difference between caring about the environment and following the Paris Climate Agreement. We as a country can do a ton to reduce our damage to the environment. However it is going to be a drop in the bucket to what some third world and massively developing countries will contribute. Follow Amdahl's Law. The biggest emitters should get the biggest spanking. This is why Paris Agreement is almost com…

Probably China should emit more so that the earth can be totally screwed and you will not worry about it anymore. Problem solved

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

#394

Post by jza00425 »

enknamel wrote: post #319
burkaman wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does leaving the agreement help to pressure China?

I never suggested it does or doesn't. It's just a bad agreement for the world compared to one that gets China to actually curb their emissions.

Now it is even worse

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

#395

Post by iamacynic »

kenhwang wrote: post #221
iamacynic wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you think your analysis applies to states like texas, virginia, arizona, north carolina, georgia, utah, etc? even the in-between states such as colorado and florida were doing fine before the blue takeover of 2005+. i've been to all of these places in the last 10 years and they're all doing more than fine. it seems to me only a handful of states over-whelmingly tied to particularly depressed sectors of the economy…

Interesting you picked those states, of those states, all but North Carolina have been becoming bluer. Using 2012 vs 2016 presidential margin of victory, with blueness being positive, Texas went −15.78% to -9.00%, Virginia went 3.87% to 5.32%, Arizona went −9.06% to -3.55%, North Carolina went −2.04% to -3.66%, Georgia went −7.82% to -5.13%, Utah went −48.04% to -18.08%. I think you can interpret that as, prosperity…

haha, except you left out all the states that don't adhere to your hypothesis, like the ones that won the presidential election in 2016. kind of a big oversight.

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

#396

Post by yellowapple »

azernik wrote: post #390
yellowapple wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"requiring then to lower emissions would basically be telling then they're not allowed to become developed countries" It sounds to me like the effort needs to be in making green energy more affordable than non-green energy. This would benefit all nations. Money talks. If it's cheaper to go green, even the most die-hard conservative will go green (anecdotal case in point: my die-hard conservative grandfather, who driv…

And that's exactly what that big chunk of cash is supposed to be for - to help developing nations start out with cleaner power generation.

Right, but it does so by giving them money to spend on expensive stuff, which treats one of the symptoms instead of the root cause.

What I'd sooner advocate is to instead give that money to organizations working to make that expensive stuff actually cheap for everyone (or at least cheaper than the alternative of sticking with fossil fuels). That way, it's more economical for everyone (not just rich countries, and not just poor countries) to skip the fossil fuels stage of industrialization and jump straight to green energy everywhere.

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

#397

Post by paulddraper »

devindotcom wrote: post #214
xienze wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might want to take a look at that, it supports what he's saying but as is typical of these fact checking sites, couches it in lots of "well yes but" or "broadly correct, but 'needs context'". I mean look at his statement on India: > Trump: "India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it. India can double their coal production. We're supposed to get rid of ours." > India does have…

Seems pretty straightforward as far as fact checks go. The Paris Accord says nothing about coal, it's all about emissions. We could increase coal use too if we wanted to, as long as our emissions go down. So really, the statement from Trump is true but misleading. "It" doesn't stop us, we negotiated this as part of a global agreement to reduce emissions. Because we're the world's biggest source of emissions and also…

Okay..."India can double their emissions but the US can't. In fact, the US has to decrease theirs."?

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

#398

Post by swampthing »

rtx wrote: post #378
swampthing wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand why the fact that they drag down the per-capita numbers is a rationale for excluding them. Why is it that the people producing no emissions should not be allowed to raise their standard of living to that of people in the US?

Because we will destroy the planet. We can't have everyone living at that level.

Agreed - so is it more fair to have everyone living at the same sustainable level, or is it more fair to restrict people with a low carbon footprint from increasing their footprint, so that the people with a large carbon footprint can sustain their way of living?

Obviously, as a country, you want to get away with whatever you can. I'm just saying it's difficult to get people to agree to something that they think is unfair to them.

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

#399

Post by r00fus »

ahh wrote: post #180
azernik wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Poor countries are allowed to increase their carbon emissions because their current emissions are already low per person, and requiring then to lower emissions would basically be telling then they're not allowed to become developed countries. They will not sign on. 2. We're paying poor countries to mitigate these effects, by subsidizing their use of cleaner energy to industrialize. And to compensate them, since th…

You are just echoing the politician's syllogism: we must do something, this is something, we must do this. Your point that we could not get anything better is not an excuse for doing something bad .

There is a difference between a) not going along with something is considered "doing something" and b) rejecting an existing "doing something" Treaty that only 2 other countries did not sign, that has minuscule economic impact ... without having a replacement.

That (b) is what happened. That means Trump doesn't think something must be done - which means this administration does not care about climate science and it's predicted (and proven with current findings) disastrous impacts.

There is no alternative - either we begin to fix the problem with a global framework, or we suffer the tragedy of the commons on a global scale - and we're already seeing the effects of global temperature warming and ocean acidification.

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

#400

Post by anigbrowl »

muninn_ wrote: post #325
anigbrowl wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to be responding to my comment so much as random phrases from it, without making any substantive argument of your own.

I responded to individual points that needed to be refuted. The rest was just filler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
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