USA was already extremely, laughably, backward on renewable energy. At least with Trump, there is no more pretending. It's gas, gas, gas and pollution.
* gas, gas, coal, clean beautiful coal, and oil, don't forget about oil, drill, baby drill.
Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
281–290 of 446 posts
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is largely why presidencies do not mess with the order they inherit too much (subjective statement I know). Most institutions and projects are not stressed and the government branches just keep doing what they always did. The current administration is an outlier, but we all know that.
That could be a problem in itself. It certainly is here in the UK. If you have two parties that have much the same policies you do not get necessary change and voting becomes meaningless.
This applies to the UK particularly as a result of privatisation. Utilities, pensions and transport are completely dependant on previous government agreements that commit the public to long term expenses that sit outside tax. It takes debt of the government books, but also defuses responsibility. And becomes a necessary evil for getting anything done.
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
That could be a problem in itself. It certainly is here in the UK. If you have two parties that have much the same policies you do not get necessary change and voting becomes meaningless.
This applies to the UK particularly as a result of privatisation. Utilities, pensions and transport are completely dependant on previous government agreements that commit the public to long term expenses that sit outside tax. It takes debt of the government books, but also defuses responsibility. And becomes a necessary evil for getting anything done.
The US occasionally has mayors & governors who spitefully or corruptly trap their successors contractually in long-term commitments with private parties which are obviously bad financial decisions.
I argue that we have a reasonableness standard we can apply here - "Lack of consideration" is what might void a contract indenturing a 20 year old idiot in an unpaid MLM scheme.
Consideration of the public is a factor.
> "Chicago's 2008 parking meter deal, a 75-year, $1.16 billion lease to private investors, is widely criticized as a lopsided, "worst practice" agreement. The deal, pushed through in 72 hours under Mayor Daley, forces the city to pay "true-up" fees for lost revenue, resulting in over $2 billion in revenue for investors [so far] while the city continues to settle costly disputes."
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can have a functional democracy and still do long term planning, the problem is the current US government. Its not a fundamental flaw in democracy.
>You can have a functional democracy and still do long term planning Sure, but that's contingent on 1) the voters being well educated and not easily brainwashed by various types of propaganda pushing them to vote against their own interests (see the Germans being anti-nuclear and pro-Russian gas since the 80s) and > 2) the voters being trusted and having an actual ownership in the country so that their votes affect t…
Populism is always a danger, but the current US administration is all about spite, no matter the cost. It is uniquely, outstandingly bad. Lots of places have working democracies that have managed to do long term planning.
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is largely why presidencies do not mess with the order they inherit too much (subjective statement I know). Most institutions and projects are not stressed and the government branches just keep doing what they always did. The current administration is an outlier, but we all know that.
> The current administration is an outlier Is it? What stops the next one being an outlier, or the one after that? Its going to take decades to recover from the whims of the US population (the plurarity of whom voted for this)
>Its going to take decades to recover from the whims of the US population (the plurarity of whom voted for this)
What does "recover" even mean?
Are we supposed to back to the good ol' days when the could hold a press conference announcing some grand new plan with key person and standing in the background smiling because they know their people ghost wrote it to their benefit and the press would unanimously gush about how good it is if not copypasta the press release entirely?
Institutions are basically bankrupt of trust in the eyes of the public. Between that and the modern information distribution landscape the status quo circa like 1930something-2010something where the administrative parts of the state could "just do things" without organized resistance by the parts of the public that were on the losing end is likely never coming back.
Whatever you, and everyone else, wants to use state power to accomplish will likely have to dial back their ambitions and prioritize in accordance with the new reality of how much you need to fight for each thing, basically realign policy targets to be closer to the fat part of the "what everyone wants" bell curve. Maybe from there there will be a decades long re-accumulation of trust, but we don't know what the world will look like in the future and that may bring us to a very different status quo than the one we're exiting.
I know we all like to whine and screech about billionares and moneyed interests, but I think the new status quo is probably a bigger problem for them and other "string pullers" than the median member of the public who's getting shafted by it. Remember, the "status quo" of the last 100yr is what created the problems we have to clean up today and in the future.
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is largely why presidencies do not mess with the order they inherit too much (subjective statement I know). Most institutions and projects are not stressed and the government branches just keep doing what they always did. The current administration is an outlier, but we all know that.
That could be a problem in itself. It certainly is here in the UK. If you have two parties that have much the same policies you do not get necessary change and voting becomes meaningless.
A healthy state is an oil tanker - slow to steer, predictable in its direction, and it's broadly steered by public opinion rather than voting. With a large mandate you get to push a few polices through. Ideally if you get a leader pushing through a policy against his party's natural proclivities it's more likely to stick.
If you have a jetski which changes direction every 5-10 years that's terrible for long term investment, and terrible from a personal point of view too. Legalise gay marriage, then 5 years later it's oh no, lets make that illegal again.
Best to move to a stable country which isn't run by the whims of a dementia-laden madman.
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of people on "both sides" who choose their positions on the issues to fit their political party as opposed to choose the party that fits their positions. Particularly for an issue like offshore wind or Keystone XL that is basically "out of sight and out of mind" there are millions of people who would change their position if the right people told them to.
99% of every person's beliefs are driven by what "the right people told them," of course. That's not really the point nor the problem, because some people choose to listen to very stupid or malicious people and others are (by chance or by skill) more susceptible to being steered by more credible people. Half the country is in thrall with a uniquely malicious and moronic force, and the other half is vaguely in alignme…
>half is vaguely in alignment with the vague directional gestures of expert consensus
Their beliefs are driven by a different set of oligarchs and imperial mandarins who have their own set of self serving reality distortion fields.
The companies which donate to both sides and the countries which collect enough komptomat are often able to set up bipartisan reality distortion fields.
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's how parties work, of necessity. They are all uneasy alliances of people who can barely tolerate each other. People find the one that supports their most important issues and hopefully few things they really detest. Then they have to pay at least lip service to all of it. By getting everyone else's support, at least one or two of your favorite issues get worked on. In doing so you need to find a way to live wit…
> That's how two party systems work Fixed that for you. There are democracies with proportional representation out there. Those have their own problems in forming coalitions, but the parties themselves are much closer aligned with their base.
It comes at the cost of locality, but that's far less important today than it had been in the past. Nobody knows their congressman anyway.
I'd really like to give PR systems a try, if for no other reason than to do a reset on the current coalitions. I fear that they will eventually settle down into a pair of coalitions very similar to the current parties, but that leaves us no worse off.
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The current administration is an outlier Is it? What stops the next one being an outlier, or the one after that? Its going to take decades to recover from the whims of the US population (the plurarity of whom voted for this)
>Its going to take decades to recover from the whims of the US population (the plurarity of whom voted for this) What does "recover" even mean? Are we supposed to back to the good ol' days when the could hold a press conference announcing some grand new plan with key person and standing in the background smiling because they know their people ghost wrote it to their benefit and the press would unanimously gush about…
> What does "recover" even mean?
Get back to the rule of law.
Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
99% of every person's beliefs are driven by what "the right people told them," of course. That's not really the point nor the problem, because some people choose to listen to very stupid or malicious people and others are (by chance or by skill) more susceptible to being steered by more credible people. Half the country is in thrall with a uniquely malicious and moronic force, and the other half is vaguely in alignme…
>half is vaguely in alignment with the vague directional gestures of expert consensus Their beliefs are driven by a different set of oligarchs and imperial mandarins who have their own set of self serving reality distortion fields. The companies which donate to both sides and the countries which collect enough komptomat are often able to set up bipartisan reality distortion fields.
See prior comment