191–200 of 413 posts
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Would you company be possible without any sort of government support(federal/local/etc), financial or legal?
Would oil companies be possible without the US military defending them in the rogue states they usually extract their oil from? And that's not even considering the direct subsidies they receive.
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> If you believe the USA should be involved at all on the international stage, this creation of new public knowledge is a big detriment to that end. The belief that the U.S. needs to be involved in the international stage is based on the fallacious assumption that international cooperation can fix climate change. There is no scenario in which that happens. Without fundamental technological leaps, we'd have to decreas…
It is hard to implement a technological fix without political will. Politcal can reserve funding, can align businesses and academics, can make that technological windfall we haven't yet invented a little mote likely. What if there is no technological solution, or we fail to find it? Having political agreement and unity to fallback on is a good thing. Even if we do something terrible to the planet, we can mitigate tha…
The focus on finding consensus and political will on climate change is putting the cart before the horse. There's no consensus or deal making to be had with this degree of division and anger.
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Actually it has to do with the Republicans desire to be self-sufficient in all maters science. They want all scientific matters to be determined by their own sphere of influence. This allows them to deny reality for any matter of science whether it's global climate, abortion, education, gun control, economics and any other issue which requires science to produce evidence in order to select the proper course of action…
I agree that the dynamics you describe account for some of the reason Trump's base is primed to latch onto him. But as far as Trump himself goes, he's not really a Republican. He is solely concerned with receiving praise and feeling tough. There is no master plan; that is really all there is to it.
Yes, he is. He may not have a particular devotion to an ideology you'd like to pretend defines the Republican Party, but the US electoral system structurally produces duopoly between parties too broad to have coherent ideology.
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Well, China has more than four times as many citizens.
And therein lies the problem.
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 end, you can't argue against facts. And in their current circumstances, China, a much poorer per capita country than the US, is willing to sacrifice a bit of their profits for long term stability.
The US is basically eating its own seed corn.
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…
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That is because the previous president decided to unilaterally bind the country to the agreement rather than seek treaty ratification from Congress. It is a risk that ruling by executive decree entails.
Other countries don't care about post-facto rationalizations by partisans to demonize the other side in domestic policies. The USA cannot be trusted as an ally. That is the takeaway here. Saying that "but Obama's worse than Trump!!!" isn't changing that and is entirely besides the point. ETA: And, for what its worth, the Senate ratified NATO, and that hasn't stopped Trump and Republicans from doing their utmost to sa…
Can someone give me pros and cons of this move (serious responses only)? Thanks
Pros: the US was signing up for a _minimum_ of $100B/yr in foreign aid to help others implement the accords. When you're up to your ears in debt that's kind of stupid. Cons: estimates say that the climate will be warmer by 0.3 degrees Celsius by 2100. Assuming estimates are in fact right (which they historically haven't been) this could have devastating effects elsewhere in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P...
Edit -- not to mention that climate models are quite good at reproducing the observed changes:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Models-Show-Remarka...
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That is because the previous president decided to unilaterally bind the country to the agreement rather than seek treaty ratification from Congress. It is a risk that ruling by executive decree entails.
Other countries don't care about post-facto rationalizations by partisans to demonize the other side in domestic policies. The USA cannot be trusted as an ally. That is the takeaway here. Saying that "but Obama's worse than Trump!!!" isn't changing that and is entirely besides the point. ETA: And, for what its worth, the Senate ratified NATO, and that hasn't stopped Trump and Republicans from doing their utmost to sa…
Which is a key reason why international cooperation is so dangerous. It's insensitive to domestic politics and law.
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I watched the announcement w/o knowing much about it. He justified the decision by saying: - We're paying 100b/year when other developed countries do not have to. - Spending on that is unaccounted for. - The impact will be (only) a 2/10 Celcius reduction in temperature by 2100 - The positive impact by 2030 is the equivalent of what China pollutes in 14 days. Just stating what was said. I don't know which are facts.
According to Michael E. Mann, in 2100 it's +4.5C with no action, +3.5C with just the Paris Accord, and +1.8C with ratcheting up. ( https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBQpulkWAAE2mrc.jpg )
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I think you overstate the case when you say that the US's leadership position has been destroyed. It has certainly been damaged, but the US is still one of the largest, most populous and richest countries in the world. It will have a big seat at the world negotiating table for quite some time no matter what.
> ... and richest countries That's considering $18 trillion of its debt?