This would appear to be an argument for more aggressive action (possibly to the point of truly radical action), not an argument for no action at all.
That is wonderful news. A new assembly line. Any new jobs are usually a good thing. Unfortunately from the wiki: Coupled with: https://www.washingtonpost.com/grap.../congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/ https://www.ft.com/content/427b8cb0-71d7-11e7-aca6-c6bd07df1a3c Don't take this the wrong way as I know you are all smart people but there is a huge environmental cost to everything we do. The mining techniques used to acquire the minerals, the refining process, the upstream electrical source used to charge EV cars are all huge impacts to the environment too. I am completely agnostic when it comes to this topic but I highly doubt Tesla can scale up battery production in America without continued Federal funding while still meeting EPA guidelines. Believe me, I wish them well, I want to see more Americans at work with higher paying manufacturing jobs (it is EXACTLY what this country desperately needs) but I have a hard time forming the mental picture of this occurring without some changes to the way we view environmental controls.
The answer is not to drop the environmental controls, it's in raising them elsewhere, or, you know, not buying shit that was made where there are no environmental controls.
Well, I guess to answer both Nett and Aetius at once..... Of course the answer is to do more. That isn't the world we live in though and that isn't our reality. Russia, India and China aren't going to change anything. Shareholders of every industrial and commercial company around the world aren't going to go for it either. You aren't going to pay $10k for an ipad or $200k for an EV car either. This Globalized market is set up to take advantage of low wages, low prices and destroying the environment. I can't picture how the world will work where the environment comes first? How are pharmaceuticals, plastics, batteries and steel made, how are groceries transported to the market, how everything?
I beg to differ. Russia is facing a declining population and is the geographically largest country on Earth. They don't have to do anything, and they are actually better off if we do nothing. India and China are making very interesting inroads into carbon neutrality. China is investing in clean energy at a rate that embarasses us (and they are pioneering the usage of thorium reactors). Green investment beats the industry average, by a lot. Some studies post an average return of 13%. That's huge in investment cycles. Joe Six Pack might not pay more for a car because it's eco friendly, but he will pay more for a car that's better designed, cheaper to own long-term, is safer and doesn't require as much maintenance. That's how this works: it's not making things green for the sake of green, but making them green because they are objectively higher quality than their counterparts. Sustainability isn't a switch, it's a process. It's very much the same as CQI: small, constant improvements. Much of it is biomimicry being moved from design to production. Your examples: Pharmaceuticals: manufactured in a setting that's sustainable, meaning the natural inputs required are farmed, not acquired from the wild. Horseshoe crabs produce a few chemicals that are very sought after by the pharma industry and have pioneered large-scale farming of these creatures. Plastics: maybe we don't need plastics on everything? Or we can bio-engineer plastics with built-in bacteria to decompose them? Or we can improve our ability to recycle them? All of these are very much in play in the plastics industry. Batteries: this is the scientific lottery, the next innovation in energy storage will cement your place in history. There is no end to this search, and the further we get with quantum computing the more exciting this field gets. Steel: we are constantly looking for replacement materials for steel. Spider silk is one that gets a ton of attention from biomimicry circles, or ceramics. Transportation: better logistics, better fuel efficiency, and urban gardening. I forget the name of the start up, but there was a $200m investment in essentially vertical farms inside a vacant warehouse. Bezos was an angel investor, I think. In short, the bleeding edge is building around sustainability issues. How much of that filters down is anyone's guess, but these are problems with increasingly more answers than people realize. The issue is like in Florida where people are legally forbidden from using solar panels: the actors with vested interests in the status quo are using the system to slow things down, or people just assume they are unsolvable problems and refuse to try. To add to this, this is the core argument against regulation: we can do it better, but we have to adhere to X,Y & Z standards, pointlessly. Think about Tesla adhering to emissions standards: it's completely irrelevant. So, no sustainability isn't a waste of time/money/energy by a long shot: it's worth more, it's higher quality products, and it's safer investments. I'd say were about 5-10 years away from the environment in China being an absolutely crippling issue, and it very much is now in India (the world capital of street shitting). We simply have the luxury of millions of acres of land that we can ignore. And no, there's not a lot of debate on whether climate change is anthropomorphic. We burn shit to eat, drive, stay warm, for funsies and sometimes without even doing it on purpose. We've lived like this for 100 years now, at least, to the tune of trillions of tons of carbon released into our atmosphere, and the re-absorption rate slowing down. At a minimum, if we cut our emissions, climate change slows down. Also, at an ELI5 level, who the fuck cares if we're to blame or not. If we stop burning carbon-based fuels it slows climate change down (scientific consensus here), so even if climate change is blamed on koala syphilis, we can still change it.
Oh, but that was awesome! Did you wait to the end? See, he totally flipped your expectations because the woman's nickname was Maverick, not his. Brilliant!
Watching that made me clinically depressed. What is that fuckery? This is what he should see when he watches TV:
I'm not going to write a really long post on it at the moment, and I'm not an expert anyway, but I honestly don't think the sacrifices are as horrific as some people make them out to be. Some of the things we're doing are just pointless. It's completely possible to have electricity without going through hoards of coal, yet many locations do it anyway, and it's worth noting the areas that don't use coal do just fine. Maybe we could at least start in such simple areas. I just don't see it as an option of scorching the planet or going back to the mule and donkey days. There will be some sacrifice entailed, but is it really not worth it when the cost could be utterly destroying the environment?
The issues most commonly present: 1. Some Koch-sucker lobbies to prevent updating the infrastructure, because it would threaten their investment (see: Florida/solar, WV/coal, etc). 2. Regulation that dramatically slows down or obstructs new developments (see: Trump's complaint about wind farms ruining the view, and said complaint requiring legal review, Tesla, etc.) 3. Poorly understood or ill-sighted deployments (see: solar panels in Boston, or proposals putting energy farms off the coasts of port cities like Charleston & Baltimore) 4. Falsely interpreted competitive pressures (see: we can't manufacture here, because it's easier to create it in some fucked up country, ship it across the world and have it be transported 4,000 miles) 5. A failure to incorporate it into the value chain. We don't care, because we don't see it being a better product. (See: Causemetics, organic vs. GMO, etc.) I grant you some of this is bullshit, and there's no proof that GMO's are innately harmful (processed food that glows in the dark on the other hand...), but it does have the ability to spur real change. For example, how many supermarkets had organic sections 10 years ago? 5? I'm amazed at the ability to find soy and coconut milk in places like Aldi or Food Lion. 6. Short-sighted corporate bullshit. The difference between Patagonia and Zara. One company intends on having it's products (ever how hideous) be fully honored for the next hundred years, the other can't make the shit fall apart fast enough. Planned obsolescence is real, kids and it's a fucking problem. Also known as the fact that every candy wrapper, used condom, Halloween mask, milk jug, sandwich bag, packaging tape, dvd case and piece of tupperware you have tossed out in your ENTIRE life still exists, and will continue to exist for hundreds of years. Less than .01% of this stuff has been recycled in the past 40 years in the US. Trillions of tons of stuff designed for a single usage of a few hours tops, that will functionally never decay or go away. I am baffled by the corporate (Shrug). We can collectively put a man on the moon, engineer the power for human extinction, fly enormous fucking robots into other planets and comets so precisely we picked a landing spot 30 fucking years ago, can land skyscraper size rockets like a hummingbird on a twig, clone things so well it's like sending a fucking fax now (sure you can, but why would you need to?) but can't figure out how to not generate trash that lasts forever, harness the power of the wind, water, sun and earth, or stop relying on a finite source of energy like we haven't known it's dangerous since the 1940's.
Lordy... I do believe that Manafort is fucked: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/paul-manafort-government-wiretapped-fisa-russians/index.html Turns out he was being wiretapped since 2014 with respect to his dealings with Russia. Apparently Meuller has said he can expect to be indicted.
So, Trump was right all along? Obama was wiretapping his campaign? So, if there was fire here, why didn't they pull down Trump's house of cards? Democrats and Republicans wanted him out of the way.
Maybe, but I'm going to remain hesitant because this is about the 8000th time the media has claimed this or that is going to blow the whole thing wide open, and it keeps not happening. Also - Manafort and Trump himself might be guiltier than sin, but I'm going to wait until we see what the end result of Mueller's investigation actually looks like.
Trump is not correct, because he said they were wiretapping him, which they weren't. They were wiretapping Manafort, then stopped, then started again.
It does make his assertion a lot less ridiculous than it was initially treated though. Not that they're wrong to wire tap people if there's good reason to believe they're colluding unlawfully with foreign governments.
They weren't wiretapping him for his campaign info, like he has been stating... they were wiretapping a guy who ended up working on his campaign for his business dealings. I'd be really interested to see what the FISA warrant had to say.
More than likely Manafort must have told Trump something early on. Manafort probably suspected he was being looked at for some time and told Trump that they probably have him on tape incidentally. At that point, Trump, being the complete retard that he is, tweeted about Obama wire tapping him which was technically incorrect. They probably had Manafort talking to Trump or something and it was caught incidentally.
I don't know, it's not the craziest assertion I've heard of to think there was something suspicious when you found out political opponents were wire tapping people on your campaign. Not that I think it was ever used in the manner he suggested. My biggest question with all this is wasn't this information Comey would have looked into and been well aware of? If it had some sort of smoking gun wouldn't he have said something, especially after he was fired? There's reasons he might not have, but it seems odd. We'll see where it goes.
Also Trump Jr. and Kellyanne Conway both cancelled their secret service protection. I'm not sure if that is somehow related or not, but it's weird.
Allegedly for "privacy" concerns. Not a lawyer, but I would imagine the Secret Service could provide evidence of what they witnessed, if they were subpoena'ed, but a private security firm wouldn't.