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Mayors of 7,400 Cities Vow To Meet Obama's Climate Commitments (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Mayors of more than 7,400 cities across the world have vowed that Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris accord will spur greater local efforts to combat climate change. At the first meeting of a "global covenant of mayors," city leaders from across the US, Europe and elsewhere pledged to work together to keep to the commitments made by Barack Obama two years ago. Cities will devise a standard measurement of emission reductions to help them monitor their progress. They will also share ideas for delivering carbon-free transport and housing. Kassim Reed, the mayor of Atlanta, told reporters he had travelled to Europe to "send a signal" that US states and cities would execute the policies Obama committed to, whether the current White House occupants agreed or not. Reed, whose administration has promised that the city of Atlanta will use 100% renewable energy by 2035, said 75% of the US population and GDP lay in urban areas, where local leaders were committed to fighting climate change. "We have the ability to still achieve between 35% and 45% CO2 emission reductions without the involvement of the national government and it is why I chose to be here at this time to send a signal to 7,400 cities around the world that now should be a time of optimism, passion and action," he said.
Cities and states are the ones that are meant to participate under the Constitution.. not the feds. And this method goes on without the US sending billions more that we don't have to other countries.
Almost all of the carbon emission targets will naturally be met anyway by natural decline in carbon emission. Greater uptake in natural gas use, much greater increase in Solar use (since prices for solar have been falling over the past few years), greater uptake in electric cars - it all means most cities will not actually have to to anything at all to meet the specious goals set forth. Paris was always meaningless from a carbon output perspective. We'll vastly exceed the goals set forth by 2028...
I wonder if these cities ALSO plan to funnel billions of dollars to third world slush funds, which was the real goal of the Paris accords. If so, I imagine the taxpayers may have something to say about that...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If only a fraction of the country addresses global warming, the response won't be as effective. That can't be too hard to understand.
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The percentage (75%) does not mean much by itself until you figure out the breakdown of how many people are actually with you in any significant way.
We know from the last election where both sides were portrayed as elemental roots of all evil, that only 59% of eligible voters even voted. That means there's something like 40% of the people in the cities who do not give a whit for the agendas of either side, and frankly think people like you are a loon.
Then of the people who DID vote, only about half of those were for Hillary (a bit more, or a bit less depending on the area). Even more damning for your assertion though. is that just 88 percent of black voters went for Clinton, and around 64 percent of hispanic voters - both of those groups make up large elements of the bigger cities, so that further erodes the original 75%.
In the end the people of the large cities are maybe with your ideas about 40-50% or so. What happens when you adopt policies that has locals actually feeling pain, in terms of jobs lost or a shattered economy? They will boot out people who share your ideals and pu in power people who present alternatives... and that is exactly how the Republican party came to enjoy such a widespread lead in local political positions across the country.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That was FDR and Ted's father that took that racist action.
The very rural population that you despise is the same rural population that feeds you and transports your goods.
If anything can be said about them, they surround and outmatch you.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When your two kids turn 18 and are trying to get jobs, there is also one immigrant competing for those same jobs.
The other side of this is without immigration the US population would be shrinking. If we stopped immigration completely, then "Who will your two kids be working for when there is 10-20% fewer consumers than now?" Our economy is still heavily dependent on the idea of forever growing demand.
I find it interesting you think so little of your own military that you think most, if not all service members would put their party affiliation before their oaths to their country.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I have heard this argument so many times, but it is flawed. You are looking at jobs as if they are static fixed things like physical goods. That is simply not the case. Many immigrants move to a new country and START a business. Are they stealing your children's jobs too?
What happens to your 'they are stealing the jobs' argument in the next 50 years as the Earth's median population gets older and older? In 1950 the average age of a human being on earth was under 30. Right now the average age worldwide is around 33 years old. In the USA it is 38 years and that 5 year difference represents a vast population of aging baby-boomers born after WWII that require ever increasing care. (Well at least for the next 25 or 30 years) Demographically at some point you are going to have to choose whether you want your parents to be taken care of by immigrants or robots. There simply won't be enough working age 'americans' to do the work. In case you think I'm lying or making things up, just visit any assisted living facility anywhere in the US. It's already happening. There is and always will be a place in America for immigrants. If there were no jobs here for them they would not come here legally or otherwise. My grandparents came here from eastern europe fleeing tyrany, war and starvation in the early 20th century. Who am I to turn down someone coming here today for the exact same reason?! What kind of hypocrite would I be?
This kind of Nationalist, Populist, B.S. will be the death of us all. I for one want the Star Trek future promised to me by Gene Roddenberry and Bill Hicks. The one where we quit being greedy selfish beasts and become civilized. After all, it's just a ride
States, cities, and the people themselves are indeed supposed to take on anything they choose to that is not specifically allocated to the federal government by the Constitution. International relations (including war,diplomacy,international treaties and agreements, etc) are however among the things specifically allocated to the feds.
If some state, or county, or city wants to enforce some super-strict environmental policies of their own, that's perfectly fine - as long as they do not interfere in interstate commerce as they do it and as long as they do not do it in a manner that runs afoul of the Constitutional rights of their citizens. Signing on to some international agreement is a different critter and is a violation of the Constitution.
The people doing this present save-the-planet crap are NOT principled people; they are nearly all doing it out of spite over the loss of the 2016 election and I doubt a single one of them supports the 10th Amendment on ANY other subject. I doubt ANY of them are for the feds no longer funding planned parenthood, or social security, or Obamacare, or foodstamps, or the feds keeping out of all the sex-and-gender politics, or dropping all federal regulations of what people do on their own land, or letting states decide on their own education funding or their own transportation funding and policies, etc. Nope. I'd bet none of these jerks support ANY degree of the 10th amendment at all; they're just pretending this is a sorta 10th amendment "thingy".
Again, if they do thiis as a stand-alone thing they're probably hypocritical but legally fine (though on the modern leftist-judge idea that what you SAY can be used to block your perfectly legal actions, perhaps not) but if they sign international agreements they coulf be in trouble.
What percentage of the heavy industry in the US is under the jurisdiction of state and local governments that have signed up to these carbon reduction plans?
So, what I don't get is the political angle on this. I don't think there are very many people who deny that the climate is changing any more. Sure, there's a question of whether or not it's being substantially caused by human activity. Sure, I (along with 98% scientists) believe that there is a correlation. But regardless of human activity, are there really people out there who deny the correlation between CO2 and CC, regardless of human involvement?
Maybe they should go and spend some time on Venus.
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Come on, you never photoshopped yourself standing on the moon? Or anything else? The rest of us have which is why we think complaining about it makes you look like a stick-in-the-mud arse.
1. I have never photoshopped myself standing on the moon, or anything similar, and neither has anyone I know.
2. I have also never faked a Time magazine with myself on the cover and put it on the wall at work, and neither has anyone I know
3. These two things are not the same. Work is different from home, for a start
4. But, if anyone I knew had done either #1 or #2, they would be the subject of unending ridicule and in the case of #2, they'd be likely to be fired
5. If you genuinely have done this. If you really honestly have faked a picture of yourself to big yourself up, and not for shits'n'giggles, then holy shit you live in a different world from me.
"Reed, whose administration has promised that the city of Atlanta will use 100% renewable energy by 2035"
What is that commitment here is nothing, other than the administration who committed to it will long gone by then and will be liable for nothing. In 2035 you can ask, hey, why isn't Atlanta 100% on renewables, and the answer will be "what are you talking about, we didn't commit to anything, go talk to the retired politicians who made you this promise".
Commitments backed by nothing are meaningless publicity stunts. It's like taking an unsecured loan with zero payments until well after your death. In this case what they are borrowing is popular votes.
Watch how quickly 'illegal immigrant' morphs into 'immigrant' in this 'discussion', as if the two were interchangeable.
Every year the United States invites and hosts over one million legal immigrants, be they temporary H-1B visa workers, student visa holders, economic refugees,political refugees, etc. No one has any real issue with those immigrants, it's the ones that illegally cross the border, work off the books or engage in identity theft to secure work, and put increased burdens on our social, medical, and community services far in excess of any contribution to they make to the local tax base.
Ken
The saddest part of your post is you probably aren't even intentionally trolling. You think you are being insightful.
To put this simply: When your two kids turn 18 and are trying to get jobs, there is also one immigrant competing for those same jobs.
No, to put this simply: When your two kids turn 18 and are trying to get jobs, there are more jobs available because we have utilized immigration to improve our economy by them either starting their own companies or enhancing our overall workforce so more businesses are started and operated here.
The economy is not a zero sum game. If 100,000 people entered the US, it wouldn't make 100,000 more people unemployed. There would be more jobs to feed, clothe, house, educate, entertain, and protect those people, to name a few. Our companies would be better able to compete with foreign companies because of this increased local access to labor. If these immigrants are on average harder working and more entrepreneurial than native citizens, which is certainly true, then they are a very welcome addition to our economy.
As long as immigrants have limited access to generous welfare programs targeted at native citizens (which is already true in the US), excessive immigration is a self correcting problem since they wouldn't immigrate without available jobs. While there are certainly sectors of the economy where immigrant labor hurts native citizens, the answer is to provide assistance to those citizens not to stop the benefits of immigration.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Country music is racist? Not that I've noticed...indeed, it doesn't talk about race at all. Especially the modern stuff, but even the old stuff. Oh, but wait, it was mostly poor white folks who sang it long ago, so according to your playbook they're all racists. Grow up.