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Obama's Climate Plans Face Long Fight
An anonymous reader writes "He hasn't even given his Tuesday speech yet but Obama's plans to tackle climate change are already raising objections in Washington. From the article: 'When President Barack Obama lays out plans to tackle climate change in a speech Tuesday, including the first effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, he will unleash a years-long battle that has little assurance of being resolved during his time in office. The president has called climate change a "legacy issue," and his speech may head off a backlash from environmentalists should his administration approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. But the address is unlikely to blunt criticism of Mr. Obama's approach from the left or the right.'"
lol, because what environmentalists want, after 4 years, is a speech... while his actions are the opposite of what he says he wants to do.
I'm voting 3rd party from now. Least of all evils isn't enough.
Shutting down all PRISM related datacenters will seriously reduce the US carbon footprint.
And that's what all of this is about... politics.
Without comprehensive, cooperative, enforceable international standards and practices, it's all just political showmanship. Given the interwoven economic, i.e. selfish capitalist, constituencies of all the nations, unilateral grand-standing and token half-measures are futile.
When global issues are at stake, global cooperation is required. It might start with a less-corrupt, more efficient United Nations with unselfish participation by the member states to give it a sense of legitimacy. That would be the ideal.
My gut feeling is that nothing, if anything, substantial will be done until the international capital oligarchs sense a real financial threat. Good intentions create politics; money creates policy.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
... about the Global Cooling that has been going on for the past 15 or so years?
A long flight ... but that's so environmentally unfriendly. We should insist that his plans are subject to a long train ride, or even better a long trek instead.
No, no, a long fight. That's also ecologically unfriendly, when you can just send in a couple drones and be done.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is he just going use the NSA to spy on the weather until it behaves?
Since everything else seems to have gone in the shitter, I come back to you with a message that seemed to sell well in both campaigns: the environment.
I look forward to again gaining your broad support with a campaign of platitudes, anthemic one-word slogans, and statements that make me appear sympathetic to your issues, while actually resulting in policies that either ossify the current corporation-based lobbyist-driven structure, or expand the pervasive control of the Federal government ostensibly for good reasons but which will in fact be used to incrementally decrease your rights vis a vis that "Constitution" thingy, which I will continue to re-interpret as really not relevant to today's realities anyway.
Signed,
Your President.
-Styopa
If you're still grumbling over Obama being a "Liberal", you're missing the point.
Might I recommend getting out of the old century illusions and face up to the reality of fascism.
We've been under the thumb of the same masters since JFK.
Start growing your beard back and stop taking showers. Then you'll be ready for another OWS event.
Do all of you guys commenting have a subscription to get past the WSJ paywall, or are you reading the article from some other method?
Oh... wait. "Reading the article". LOL.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
New York DID get flooded.
That's what happens when you live below sea level.
Just shut up and roll over.
http://news.yahoo.com/singapore-malaysia-face-economic-hit-prolonged-smog-093307319.html
Really it doesn't matter what we do in the USA if Asia and the middle east are 1000x worse with a larger population.
There are 3 major obstacles to getting anything done with the climate change issues.
1 - USA: large portion of population, especially in the red states espousing a world view that is anti-science to the bone. This is being shamelessly exploitetd and nurtured by a powerful energy lobby and "conservative" (conservativism used to include environemental conservation in Teddy Roosevelt's era) politicians. In addition, US economy is facing competitive pressure from other countries and is worried that cleaning up environment means increased cost and loss of jobs. My view on this is that nothing will happen on the US end until after the final collapse of the republican party as we know it today. That is a few years out, but it will surely happen. US voters are by nature centrists, and the red state/blue state division won't last forever. Gerrymandering and politicized supreme court will extend the suffering though.
2-China. When China sets their mind to do something, it will get done,but their environmental policies are at the same level of their human rights policies, pretty low. They are smart enough, and tend to take the longer view, though, so I am sure they realizes that they can not fuel their economy USA-style for very long without ending up in a Mad Max-scenario. By the time the US republican party collapses, China might have turned around and become a climate change believer.
3-The developing countries. Energy is essential to increase the living standard, and it would be hypocritical by western nations to continue our high energy consumption, while these countries have a desperate need too increase their energy use. A country like Norway, who is a major oil producer, while being a poster boy for environment and climate change policies, spending a large portion of their GDP on rain forest projects, foreign aid and other environmental projects, needs to realize that until their privileged population does something about their massive energy usage, they will remain hypocrites. We need to budget for a dramatic increase in energy use by developing countries, which means we need to dramatically reduce our energy consumption in the west. I see soem good signs in that there are more and more small cars on US roads, but the SUVS,compact SUVS, and trucks, as well as assholes riding heavy BMWs, Audis, etc. are still dominating the landscape.
I think all rational persons have a pretty good idea what needs to be done. Obama needs to try, to make sure it gets put out there in the public, so that we know what direction to turn when the rest of the world is ready to advance from the middle ages. And by those, I include the republicans that espouse a pre-Copernicus world view.
Obama is a bigger corporatist than Clinton was, and Clinton was more than Bush Sr.
Only Bush Jr. was a bigger corporatist.
We need to leave the left/right bullshit behind for a while while we make our country safe for democracy (democracy within a republic that is) again. The word of corporate entities mean a million times that of a constituent and that indicates a broken system.
Five minutes of reading about volcanic gas emisions and sun spots should convince you that your claims are false....
Because there are so few of those. Most people on assistance collect it only for a very short time. The rich using tax loopholes cost us far more each year.
one, no one said anything about romney but you, therefore that is irrelevant.
second, OWS is a joke, nothing more nothing less.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
im not so sure, obama has given more money to corporations than bush jr did
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The system is fraudulent and corrupt by design. It is not 'broken' by any means. It proves the old adage of nature itself: Might makes right.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Great article in Rolling Stone the other day - laying out how our decades of not doing anything (fossil fuel companies love it) has already cost us Miami and southern Florida, its just a matter of time at this point:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-city-of-miami-is-doomed-to-drown-20130620#ixzz2X0NGzxLY
The President will be talking about 17% CO2 emissions reductions from 2003 levels (if memory serves, but it should be 1990 levels) by 2020 which is a joke - and totally inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. He'll probably be doing this talk while approving the XL expansion (he approved the 1st two tar sands pipelines, Keystone 1 and Alberta Clipper in 2009).
No, because he'll end up reading about gas emissions on an editorializing website that supports his preconceived notions. Doing something like pulling up raw data, selecting a date range before looking at the data, and then examining that would be enough to shatter that notion.
Sunspots are trickier, because as far as popular culture is concerned, sunspots are magic.
Agreed. However we need to address the rich AND the poor who are abusing the system in order to do that. That is what OWS was truly about for those of us who do have a clue. Those with money who abuse their power are a far larger force for damage then the 4% who "rather sit in their trailer and collect money from the government than work". Minimum wage jobs like working at Walmart are my go to example for this. They pay people so low that huge groups of people have to go on welfare in order to survive. Quite honestly if I looked around and saw that as my only job option you bet I would rather sit around then work. What would be the point?
from http://www.ilsr.org/new-study-finds-walmarts-miserly-wages-cost-taxpayers/
http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/corporate-subsidy-watch/hidden-taxpayer-costs This link contains over 20 states that have companies like Walmart as the biggest contributer to "lower-income workers are turning to taxpayer-funded healthcare programs such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)."
And if you think "that's just the cost of low prices!" well
By Ed Smith's math, the CEO of Walmart earns more in an hour than his employees will earn in a year.
So I seriously think they can afford to pay much better or at least give decent benefits.
1. That is not the same 4.2% each year. Most folks are on it for a short time.
2. Most of those folks are employed. Wage stagnation does that.
3. the Fair tax is just a method to shift the tax burdon onto the middle class even more. It is a give away to the rich.
I don't want to punish anyone. I want to see people pay their taxes though. Investment income should not be taxed at a lower rate than the money I make.
The government has the fix for everything. Just let them confiscate more of our wealth and give them more power to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. That's the solution to this problem and apparently every other problem.
So was the salary I am paid. Income should be taxed as income no matter the source.
Fair share is Fair. Pay X% of income, above some minimal limit.
Just because you are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire does not mean the rest of us are as dumb.
The halving of coal-powered electricity was due to a combination of expensive coal metal-pollution laws the availability of cheap, clean alternative- fracked natural gas. This cut US CO2 emissions 20% since the early 2000s. But that is only a band-aid. If leveraged right that will buy us a decade or two to R&D even cleaner energy. The world is about to imitate the USA in this changeover, mainly for economic reasons.
Google "embarrassed millionaire", that will cure this ignorance of yours. It does not indiciate your net worth.
You also need an econ 101 lesson. They cannot raise costs due to competition, they cannot lower wages for the same reason. Tax shelters would be abolished with the correct tax code.
It has nothing to do with Bill Gates having more money. You are showing your ignorane again.
Also fun fact, somethings are zero sum. Land for instance and oil. Both of these resources are at this point zero sum. Every bit of it I buy you cannot.
What do you think wealth is for?
You need an econ 101 class. If prices could be raised they already would be. Price has not a whole lot to do with cost.
Fair tax is not fair. Most people above some income simply do not spend any real percentage of their income on purchases. Not only do they just not need to but often what they do need is provided by someone else. Like company jets and the like.
Taxing sales is regressive. You have been had.
Do you have any evidence to share that most (all? any?) of the flooded areas were actually below sea level? I've just done a little Googling and I am able to find none.
caritj.org
Here is what I've learned about politics in America:
1. The right hates the left.
2. The left hates the right.
3. Everybody hates the center.
Compromise is evil. If you didn't get everything that you want, then you've lost. When people say that they're hoping for a "moderate", they mean somebody who agrees with them on everything meaningful and gives up only trivial things that you don't care about at all.
This sarcasm isn't really about trying to defend the plan, or pick out the parts I think are good from the parts I think are bad. It's just that I can't think of any plan, on any topic, that won't be declared "dead on arrival" by both sides. I can't be bothered to see whether this plan is good, bad, or indifferent because it doesn't matter: everybody objects to it even before it's written down. It will be scrutinized only for the things to object to, and they will be found. Politics, as the "art of the possible", no longer exists because there is no longer any "possible", and nobody wants there to be any.
Candidate Obama debates President Obama on Government Surveillance
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8&feature=youtu.be
Me naive?
Prices are determined by what the market will bear. That is it.
You are a useful idiot for the 1%.
Climate Change has little direct relationship to carbon emissions from human industry. It's not within our control.
Let's see that's the glib throw-off comment and lay opinion one anonymous non-scientist on slashdot vs. the collective opinions of the world's PhDs who have spent their lives studying this problem.
Whom to believe ... whom to believe ....
I can prove what you're saying in a fucking test tube filled with CO2, as stopper and little sunshine. We've known this since the 19th century at least. Greenhouse gases is the reason Venus is hotter than Mercury, despite Mercury being close to the Sun by far.
Here's how to not get tired of repeating the same facts over and over again.
Someone reading what you're saying to rebut some asshole denier is encountering these facts for the very first time. To them, they're new and significant. Arguing with denier trolls is therefore just a platform, another great opportunity to get new, thinking people headed towards the facts after which they'll take over the controls.
Semper Fiidelis.
If there really was a "party of no" I'd vote for it.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Yes
Yes
Yes
It is a port town. That means it is next to (both vertically and horizontally) the ocean. It would be a pretty crappy port if it was not next to the ocean. When you live within a couple feet of the normal high tide position and you are looking at a storm surge of a couple feet, the results are pretty predictable.
They then went and dug these handy tunnels all over the city that are... below the city.
Uhh...ok. Obviously the subway is, at least in some places, below sea level. I'm happy to agree with you on that much. But I don't see where your other links say that any particular area is below sea level. Yes, of course, much of it is CLOSE to sea level, but close != below. And what do storm surges have to do with whether something is below sea level?
caritj.org
The funny thing is. Even if it isn't human related, it's happening that means we are going to be having some serious problems especially as it comes to food production. When things are going on that will affect food production and climate you better take things seriously. At least you should be planning for a disaster. This whole denier thing is really fucking stupid. If you're a capitalist, you would still be making sure that you have plans in place in case something happens. Because this is a situation where the market is not going to help you.
I accidentally forgot to put in quotes the person I was quoting. You might want read my post again. I understand that global warming is a real emergency. The poster I was replying to doesn't.
Obama announces plan to fight entropy
which will be just as effective.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
150k is not rich, dummy.
Also look at how much they save.
Oh, I know that. I was just adding my two cents as part of your defense of global warming. :)
Only on Slashdot is the truth modded 'troll'.