Looks like Comey will testify that Trump pressured him to drop the investigation. Nothing will happen, no matter the outcome. Let's face facts.
What would you expect to happen? Trump will become even more unpopular, and his agenda will be even more neutered. However, Ryan & co. are getting damned good at pushing forward things while the rest of the circus carries on. At this point, the longer President Twitter Fingers keeps up this nonsense, the better the Republicans are able to shove god-awful legislation under the radar. The best thing for the country is for him to resign, just so the scandal machine shuts the fuck up and the media actually does their job of reporting on the political issues that need to be contended.
Did you really just suggest that a sitting president resign so that he would stop being a distraction to the media? Don't the media have a choice on what they report?
I'm not trying to be snarky, but isn't any action on climate change better than no action? The dismissal of something because it doesn't do enough is frustrating as hell to me.
Even if you argue that there are better deals to be had, it seems pretty clear that Trump's tack is the worst one the US could possibly take at this juncture. It makes us seem untrustworthy and unreliable, offers no plan forward for countries that want to address climate change other than hitching their wagon to China, and yet again spits in the face of our closest allies in Europe.
It's not snarky at all; it's a good question. . Its a pledge to reduce carbon emissions over the course of time and then subsidize the environmental policy of developing nations so they in turn can do the same. But its easier to think of it more of an economic agreement than an environmental one, because that's really what it is. Heres a really good summary of the agreement itself sans analysis. So what are the benefits? A net reduction in carbon emissions over time by all agreeing parties are objectively a good thing. Plus it will also boost the clean energy sector with probable tax incentives. Also, it acts as a jumping point for a green energy race. Those are good things. Plus for appearances sake, it will look better than this. So what about the bad? Well for one, constitutionally, treaties need to be ratified by the US Senate to be valid. Obama had pledged the US to the agreement without doing that. Economically, the US is footing an enormous part of the bill to the fund which other nations are essentially getting free money from with little oversight on what they do with it. They can grandstand, but the fact of the matter is they dont have to do much for more than a decade, which could have a significant impact on the global power balance. Under the agreement, China and India are considered "developing nations" and their burden is much less than the EU and US, which when all is said and done, could have a large impact on the US trade deficit. Now a counter-point is China is actually already trying to meet its goal. A counter to that counter-point is that Many environmentalists are also floating a theory that there wont actually be a meaningful reduction of carbon emissions, just the debt will be transferred to nations that aren't impacted by the treaty. This is how the US can say it reduced its carbon emissions by 12% over the last decade. We just shifted it to places like China, India, Bangladesh, etc. Lets say the preceding paragraph can be proven wrong. Great. The agreement is still not a legally binding one. Its heavy on goals, but very light on actual projected returns. Will it look bad? Maybe. Should we join a potentially hazardous agreement because other countries want us to be in it (even if they might have a conflict of interest in that perspective)? No. But if its not enforced, maybe just joining and doing nothing is a better alternative? Im all for fighting climate change aggressively, even if the retard in the White House thinks its a Chinese hoax. It should just be done in a favorable way. But thats just my $0.02. Agreed.
The problem with any action on climate change being better than none, is that "any action" needs to be pretty significant in order to make an impact. With our current level of technology you would need to make really hard choices about how you live your life in order for us to stop or slow down climate change. I live in an area that imposed a carbon tax of $20/tonne in January. By the end of year it will directly cost me $500 (there's some indirect costs as well but I don't know what those will be yet), is that enough for me to change how I live? Nope, I still have to drive to work, turn on the lights in my house, run my fridge etc. The carbon tax is slated to rise again in January to $30/tonne, and that will raise my costs to $750/year. Again is that enough for me to change my habits? Probably not. I'm not going to move closer to work, or buy a new vehicle, or unplug my fridge until I'm spending way more than that. Lower income families get rebates to cover the costs of the tax, so there is zero incentive for them to change. Replacing coal-fired power generation with solar or wind generation in developed nations is also a very expensive thing. They're too unreliable with a best case 33% utilization rate to supply a grid, and they require peak load backup generation (i.e. natural gas generation). So for every MW of solar/wind power generation that gets installed, a MW of peak load generation capacity needs to be installed in case the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. What ends up happening is the consumer ends up paying for some of the capital costs of the installation through government incentives, and they end up paying additional money through power agreements when the plants are sitting idle in their power bill. My belief is that we're riding this fossil fuel train for at least another 20 years before another form of energy is developed or refined and unnecessarily hamstringing the economy to push a green energy ideology is a mistake.
As a result of him illegally influencing an FBI investigation and as an alternative to impeachment? Yes, I think it's possible he would resign. It's not like it hasn't happened before. The effect of someone who isn't trying to run the country via Fox News and Twitter would be the media could do the job of informing us about the legislation that's getting pushed through, as opposed to the wharrgarbl surrounding Donnie T, while Ryan and the gang slip a bunch of fuckery through without public discourse. As much nonsense TODAY about Kathy Griffin and the Twitter explosion because of a Trump typo...imagine what these people would do if we A) held them accountable to do their jobs, and B) reported on the actual laws being passed. With someone like Pence in charge, at least he's not proven to be scandal-proof and wouldn't be as likely to feed the trolls. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-oil-projections/ Did part of my MBA on how the fuck a business can move off of carbon contribution. At a certain point, yes... the oil infrastructure and consumption will be 20+ years in dissipating. The counter point to this infrastructure problem is reducing the load on a centralized grid, and breaking into micro-grids that can benefit from localized solar/wind/hydro/etc. Part of this issue is oil/gas is the cheapest, most readily available power source...economically speaking, it provides the most general utility. When the average individual's consumption of that resource diminishes (and it has been: gas mileage is increasing, electric cars and hybrids, urbanization, etc.) the oil delivery infrastructure itself is more expensive, and can bridge the gap between new energy sources and "old" infrastructure. If 60% of oil is used for transportation, and in the next 15 years that number inverts to 40% the incentives will flip as well. In a weird way, your Chevy subsidizes diesel electric production because the infrastructure to fuel, maintain and lube your car must be everywhere simultaneously, and no real alternative exists except maybe water. It's a fucking incredibly massive undertaking to install a nuclear facility, and no one wants to be near one, for example. We are generally ok with a diesel or gas plant anywhere (within reason), they aren't so difficult, and you can source everything easily. The challenge to moving off oil isn't the expense: that's a sunk cost, the challenge is literally replacing an entire infrastructure to deliver resources to convert to power. There likely won't be one, and we'll use a series of local sources: hydro in Ohio, wind in Texas and solar in Florida, and so on. We will need nuclear, offshore, and a hell of a lot of engineering in storage and dispersal to make up the gap.
At this point, it feels like it's too late to be worrying about what's favorable to the US. We could have been that leader in climate change, but we elected dipshits who hold snowballs on the Congressional floor.
Honestly, I think that our last, best chance at seriously avoiding any major repercussions regarding climate change was Kyoto in 1991. Instead we collectively punted. That's why I can't get too overworked when people scream that Trump will be worse for the environment than Obama.* I mean, probably yes, I agree, but we are so incredibly fucked in the next 2-4 decades that anything Trump will/will not do is incremental in comparison. *Incidentally, one of the few things Obama did that I liked was the strict regulation of fracking around 2013 or so.
I'm not sure those things aren't in opposition. The President and Congress serve and took oaths to protect the United States / defend the Constitution, etc. They aren't required to make the earth a better place or be leaders in environmental goodness. Unless there is a US industry that's harming US citizens, what sort of global climate action is consistent with what they were elected to do? In what way?
On my phone, so can't site sources at the moment, but generally: the polar ice caps melting, the ozone layer already disappearing in some places in India/Middle East, rendering those places unlivable(and the mass migrations that will result when those little holes become big holes, if you think refugees are bad now...), etc. I'm just very pessimistic about us (the human race) being able to solve this problem before it's too late, because unless we stopped all mass pollution today Instead of promising to "address" the problem in the future(what 99% of those conferences do) then it already is too late. I think Bill Gates actually wrote an article about this a few years back that, while not as cynical as I'm being, basically outlined the same problem. If I remember correctly, the talking heads ripped him over it.
This is a weird, but prevalent attitude: giving up, essentially? We are on the verge of flipping that 60% figure within the next few years. Electric cars that will never use a drop of oil, urbanization that means we travel fewer miles, and better data/technology to reduce wasted fuel/miles (think airplanes and ships, not Civics). Also, the quickest ways to absorb carbon and start to undo some of the damage are simple: plant fucking trees, eat less cow, and burn less. The absence of leadership on this is what's dooming us now...our leaders are simply incapable of acting against the financial interests of a few companies they used to run. Funny how that works, isn't it? Weirdly, the Chinese will likely lead the way on renewable energy because they already doomed a chunk of their population to live in pollution, they don't have the natural resources to tide them over, and they have the manufacturing capacity to do it on a large scale cheaply (for now). It's also a prevalent attitude that the Apocalypse is coming, so why bother....which I can't even address seriously.
It's not really giving up(at least it isn't for me) so much as getting sick of people pretending this was all fixable until Big Bad Trump got sworn in and now we're all doomed(not that you're saying that, but several people I know have been acting like that). This is kind of the definition of "simple but not easy" isn't it? If it were really that instantly doable it would have been done decades ago.
To be fair, we've had a lack of leadership regarding the environment since...Carter? No one has really stood up to the industries burning oil and it's no surprise that progress hasn't happened yet. The doom and gloom is bad, because what recourse do we have to motivate people? Especially people that view the EPA as (somewhat fairly) meddling gubmint hippies that fuck with me over my truck emissions, but don't even bother with the plant down the street belching out 100 tons of CO2/day. My point is we have laws and policies that can address this: they go unenforced and the agencies responsible for implementing them are starved for resources, or handicapped in their enforcement measures. We have ready, handy solutions (and in the case of the car industry, we have for 25+ years...some of the FIRST fucking cars were battery powered), and entrenched industries have stifled it, sat on it, or ignored it. We have simple, grassroots solutions that everyone can get behind, that have no real recognition, true means of getting off the ground or becoming a widespread practice. The situation is far from hopeless, it's not really even that difficult, it just requires a few massive industries changing, and not much is going to spur that to happen without some wild innovation or legislation that acts contrary to their status quo. Thus, the premise is we need leadership.
This has been thrown out a lot on here in one form or another and I'll believe this when I actually see it. I'm sorry, but the country whose air pollution in their cities is so bad that it gets dark at midday despite there not being a cloud in the sky is suddenly going to immediately become the model for the world on clean air and renewable energy? Yeah, it's one thing to say you're going to do it, it's another entirely to actually do it, especially when you have arguably the worst track record on planet(which you kind of pointed out in your post) over the last twenty years.
I think that's part of why it will be China that does it. Combine their authoritarianism with a population that sees the negative effects of pollution up close and personal every single day and there are basically no roadblocks to implementing sweeping change. Compare that to the US where we can't even ban "rolling coal" without some jagoff in a sleeveless confederate flag T-shirt calling it fascism.
My guess is they are in it for manufacturing contracts more than they actually care about the level of pollution they pump out. They aren't really the autruistic type.