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61 Mayors Commit To Adopt, Honor and Uphold Paris Climate Accord After US Pulls Out (curbed.com)
After President Trump announced his intent to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, 61 mayors across the country have pledged to adopt the historic agreement themselves. The group of mayors, who represent 36 million Americans and some of the largest U.S. cities, outlined a plan to align with the other 194 nations that adopted the accord. From a statement provided by the climate mayors: We will continue to lead. We are increasing investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. We will buy and create more demand for electric cars and trucks. We will increase our efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, create a clean energy economy, and stand for environmental justice. And if the President wants to break the promises made to our allies enshrined in the historic Paris Agreement, we'll build and strengthen relationships around the world to protect the planet from devastating climate risks. The world cannot wait -- and neither will we.
Look how he unites the American people.
What a hero.
What part of this do you think violates Article II? They're not talking about joining into a treaty, only abiding by it.
It's funny, but when the Right wants to limit black voters or take away some woman's rights to birth control, it's all about the 10th Amendment and "states' rights", but when states want to do something that Donald Trump doesn't like, they forget everything about federalism and insist on a strong centralized government.
I don't mind hypocrites, as long as they're honest about it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Some questions:
.) Does pulling out of the Paris agreement prevent us from making as good or better climate decisions?
Yes it does, because it diminishes the ability of nations to coordinate their actions. It leaves US-based corporations (a large constituency among polluters) free to continue flouting established science and driving their aging, archaic business models along, dragging the American economy with it. This is bad for voters.
No. China and the EU see a strategic opportunity here to use technological advances to do the the USA in the 21st Century what the USA did to Britain in the 19th Century—use newer industrial technology to out-compete the established corporate interests.
There is a global cost to this, but China especially is willing to suffer in order to win. Its more interventionist economic policies have already given it a strategic advantage in terms of alternative energy tech (especially solar), and if it has to accept a 1-2% mid-term drop in GDP in order to sideline the USA, it will happily pay that price.
Fuck your straw man.
Just because you can't see the wisdom of a largely voluntary commitment process, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The Obama administration managed a near-miracle in the way this was structured, so that the bulk of the commitments came into the non-binding schedule 2 portion of the agreement. This meant that countries would not be straitjacketed into onerous commitments that they had no hope in honouring. By allowing signatories the right to choose how far they want to go, and when they'll get there, they made it possible for everybody to sign the same document. And the genius of that is because it allows recalcitrant countries to be singled out and cajoled into coming along for the ride without having to deal with corrupt, backward, reactionary legislatures like the American Senate, just to take a random example out of the air. But more on that in a moment....
Redistribution of the ability to survive. Because countries don't survive climate change, species do.
... or don't.
You know what cheating is? Cheating is when simply fucking lying about climate change because you're fat and rich today and "fuck you that's why" becomes your ruling mantra. That is pretty much what the Republican party had done. Nowhere else in the world is the question of climate change a partisan platform issue.
The only other nations who didn't ratify the Accords are Nicaragua and Syria. Syria didn't attend COP21, because they were kind of distracted. Nicaragua refused to sign on because they didn't think the Accords went far enough. The USA is literally alone in this folly.
The Senate majority's willingness to put party before country (or species, for that matter) is the cheat. President Obama acted in the national and global interest, doing everything within his legal power to ensure that American came along, even if the Republican party didn't want to.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
In Colorado the left and the right supported legal weed. That is how it passed. The best arguments though for legal weed where from some of the groups on the right. The argument boiled down to locking up pot heads is a waste of money. None of them hurt anyone else, the vast majority held stable jobs and the cost of locking them up was bankrupting the state so even if the state made no money from tax revenue it would still be a huge net win. The state does actually get quite a lot in tax revenue from weed at this point.
Part of the reason I voted for legalization of weed was the conservative arguments. I have never used it in my life, I have no real intention to use it but I don't rule it out but spending money to lock up pot heads that mainly threaten bag of chips and pizzas while playing video games or considering how deep a flower is wastes a lot of money. All the money spent to arrest them, charge them, convict them, lock them up etc for someone that is not a threat to society is a gigantic waste. If we are going to spend that much money it needs to be worth it.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!