US Politics, September 2024 -- “I’m Not Going to Apologize For Posting a Joke”

wow calm down bitch

even the fracking thing is a stupid red herring. The point of fracking is that it's replacing coal (which is horrible in terms of emissions, local environmental impacts etc.) with natural gas, but even there it's primarily a transitional fuel because renewables + batteries are loading up on the grid and are becoming cheaper and cheaper every day. 80% of the grid generation capacity waiting to come on-line at the moment is renewables + batteries. That is an asbsolutely insane figure compared to just a few years ago, and that is all down to market shifts and smart policy from the Biden/Harris admin.

so is it going to stop global warming or not

I'm not voting for Harris unless she vows to invade every country on Earth and forces them to stop all their carbon emissions

I didn't know this was your line of work, Shakes. Cool stuff.

not giving a shit is in some way a rational response to a huge problem that no in power is trying to solve xp

there are powers trying to solve it, stop saying this crap

it helps no one

who are the powers trying to solve it

pretty much every country that isn't Russia or Saudi Arabia? Private industry with trillions of dollars in backing?

anyway this is (one of many reasons) why I hate this thread, I'll go back to idly following Steve Shasta posts bye

happy trails bitch

It's probably beyond the grasp of most voters that you aren't going to address climate change legislatively until a whole bunch of conditions change to allow that to happen, and those conditions will only change with decades of Democratic majorities and control of the White House. You need to get the right-wing ideologues out of the Supreme Court (and out of tons of other federal and state courts), you need statehood for DC to get you a couple more reliable Democratic senators, you need to abolish the filibuster, and you need to be able to limit corporate campaign financing. That's what is required and most Americans are going to react with "why can't you just fix it NOW?"

Campaigning on DC statehood and expanding the Court are popular positions, though!

i dont think anyone would disagree that green energy is good but the problem with these market based reforms is that the human appetite for energy is basically bottomless, america is the perfect example of this we consume the most energy per person, so what happens if these green energy projects are successful in lowering our use of carbon energy, which theres no guarantee of fwiw, well a lot of that cheap oil etc will just be consumed by poorer countries who are looking to get the nice stuff we have that comes with using more energy cars refrigerators ac etc, now thats not a total wash cause not all of it is cheap like tar sands and fracking are expensive ways to get energy that might just get priced out, long term the idea im sure is that clean energy just gets so cheap that it beats oil everywhere, could def happen but obvs theres a ton of work that needs to be done that will take time and were already very much behind the eight ball with global warming

all of that can be described as the supply side youre bringing a bunch of new clean supply online, but what of the demand are we doing anything to reduce the demand for dirty energy, i think the answer is a pretty clear no, besides the glib suggestion of invading countries who wont play along what can be done, well america does have some non military power in the world too, is it being put towards reaching any sort of meaningful binding agreements about limiting carbon outputs, doesnt seem like it

the increasing speed of solar roll out and batteries means that the US should be able to hit climate goals in the next few years. Is it enough or too little too late? Dunno, but pretending no one is doing anything about this is really annoying.

if its too little too late then does it qualify as doing something about it

youre trying to solve a very crucial problem here theres no A for effort

lag∞n, you know I love you, but you need to chill (and especially with the bitch).

Chilling with the Bitch: discarded Eric Clapton album titles

that was purely in response to shakey being a bitch take it up with him xp

the inability to tell people they don't need to buy all this plastic crap without flipping them into a primal rage is basically going to be the doom of human civilization

but what of the demand are we doing anything to reduce the demand for dirty energy

I know I said I would go away but you really don't know when to shut up, you have no idea what you are talking about

and those conditions will only change with decades of Democratic majorities and control of the White House

The Democrats have had the White House for 20 of the last 32 years, control of the Senate for half of that time and, granted, control of the House for only a bit more than a third. 'To accomplish anything we just need super-majorities and constant control of the White House for 40 years' is a ridiculous argument.

you know if you just shared you vast knowledge instead of jumping into the thread with condescension on 10 im sure we would all recognize you for the genius you are xp

jumping into the thread with condescension on 10

This coming from your fuckin' ass made me laugh really hard so thanks for that.

did you really laugh

srsly xp

if its too little too late then does it qualify as doing something about it

it depends on whether you look at addressing climate change by shifting energy consumption to non-carbon sources as a binary or a continuum. we've already triggered feedback effects that will be self-reinforcing for decades to come, so halting climate change is no longer an option. but failure to migrate to non-carbon energy robs future people (including you 40 years from now) without the kind of tools necessary to adapt to climate change. if we fail them, they might feel betrayed by the present time, just as we feel betrayed by the climate denial of the 1990s oil companies.

thread verging on self-parody

also lagoon otm i gotta say, think harris’ platform should meaningfully address things i care about, in many ways it doesn’t or does the opposite, there is nothing wrong with expressing this bc it actually doesn’t hurt harris’ electoral chances for me to be really cynical about a democratic agenda, given history, furthermore none of you are exempt from dropping into this thread with condescension that goes up to 11 at least

lag∞n you know I love you but you are not in a position to tone-police in this conversation, I mean you get that right

It’s not that lagoon is wrong that we probably need to do something on the demand side, but I never hear a single realistic proposal for something we could do on the demand side that wouldn’t mean drastically reducing everyone's standard of living to a degree that I don’t think most people are prepared to accept. Like “buy less plastic crap” ain’t gonna cut it. So I tend to give more credit to the people who are doing *something* (bringing green energy online) vs the people who are complaining this is insufficient while doing basically nothing.

i have so much power to enact energy policy

Assuming you did have power to enact it, what is the demand side solution? There are certainly some things we could do that would be both demand reduction and QOL benefit like increased public transit and high speed rail, but ultimately you are going to have to lower people’s standard of living and take things from them that they like, or at least make them much more expensive.

It’s not that lagoon is wrong that we probably need to do something on the demand side, but I never hear a single realistic proposal for something we could do on the demand side that wouldn’t mean drastically reducing everyone's standard of living to a degree that I don’t think most people are prepared to accept. Like “buy less plastic crap” ain’t gonna cut it. So I tend to give more credit to the people who are doing *something* (bringing green energy online) vs the people who are complaining this is insufficient while doing basically nothing.

isn't it the case that reducing personal use isn't really it -- that it's giant corporations who eat up the energy? addressing that chain of reliance, that'd take some immense vision. which: a failure to build that vision is for sure a failure of the imagination with catastrophic consequences. trying to reimagine how we live, that'd the ticket, but it's super fair to say "well, good luck with that," the people we could be and the people we are have a whole, whole lotta air between them.

People always say “it’s giant corporations who eat up the energy” but they eat it up making things that they sell to people. It’s still personal consumption, it’s just one step removed. If you make things more expensive to produce you will also make them more expensive to consume.

And any politician who makes things more expensive to consume is not going to have the power to make policy pretty quickly

“the only solution is to punish consumers with no power” is exactly the kind of galaxy brain thinking that i really try not to do, sorry, no solutions here, in addition to not being able to enact energy policy, i am not a politician

really i think we should be focusing on “fracking is a red herring,” astonished that was typed out and posted

lag∞n you know I love you but you are not in a position to tone-police in this conversation, I mean you get that right

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Thursday, September 12, 2024 12:02 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

its was merely a suggestion that condescension combined with not explaining yourself is not going to win a lot of hearts and minds, you can read shakey and my interactions and tell me if thats a fair take

people can say that im an arrogant jerk and no doubt theres truth there but im not just jumping in with the shut up moron, i try to be substantial

end the u.s military

US military would be a top 50 polluter is it was a country or something like that iirc

truly having a cursed day if i'm posting my actual thoughts multiple times itt so just leaning into it now i guess

isn't it the case that reducing personal use isn't really it -- that it's giant corporations who eat up the energy?

The one argument I've heard against this is that it is true but that the giant corporation's eating up of energy is done...mostly to service personal consumer goods, so personal use would still have to go down. Anything to this?

lol xposts

I will say Shakey combining "this is very complicated stuff that's difficult to put into soundbytes" with "ppl wrong about this are saying the absolute dumbest shit" did not strike me as the best way to engage, one or the other surely?

one thing that the USA could do to reduce the demand for dirty energy is to reach agreements with foreign governments on capping emissions and in exchange subsidize building out their clean energy infrastructure

well capitalism is the problem. naomi klein has an entire book about it.

klein:

Late capitalism teaches us to create ourselves through our consumer choices: shopping is how we form our identities, find community and express ourselves. Thus, telling people that they can't shop as much as they want to because the planet's support systems are overburdened can be understood as a kind of attack, akin to telling them that they cannot truly be themselves. This is likely why, of the original "three Rs" – reduce, reuse, recycle – only the third has ever gotten any traction, since it allows us to keep on shopping as long as we put the refuse in the right box.

capitalism-consumerism does have some downsides its true

Shakey Mo is right, the pro-environment legislation had massive provisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While they primarily consist of incentives on new construction and financial assistance for green energy, rather than rules on consumption choices, they are still going to prove highly consequential in slowing global warming. The trends in renewable energy production and storage are really good (from January to mid-July of this year, zero-carbon, renewable energy exceeded demand in California for 945 hours during 146 days — equivalent to a month-and-a-half of 100% fossil-fuel-free electricity). Have we totally solved the problem, not yet, but the US is far closer on energy emissions than we were 5 years ago.

I find it ironic that people who insist on everybody changing their behavior by making more environmentally-conscious choices aren't willing to change theirs by actually reading about the legislation that is proposed and passed, instead insisting it be spoonfed to them in televised TV events. You want people to make the effort? Start by doing so yourself!

here let me employ an internet search engine for lagoon about a couple things (will this shut you up? I predict the answer is no)

https://www.wri.org/insights/asia-clean-energy-transition-examples-5-countries
https://www.weforum.org/publications/transforming-energy-demand/
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/building-decarbonization-how-electric-heat-pumps-could-help-reduce-emissions-today-and-going-forward - (there are currently utilities running programs where they are installing heat pumps - for free - to customers)

many xposts