The US is a huge exporter of food. We grow far more food than we need. Efficiency of the process is a non-issue. Methane as a greenhouse gas has a half-life of 7 years, which means it doesn't build up like CO2. It'll increase, then plateau, creating a limited effect. The costs of the process is paid by meat eaters themselves, as part of the price. This includes water, land, antibiotics etc., all of which are paid for by the rancher, who in turn, gets paid by the consumers.
If you have problems with a particular aspect of it, then push for changes in those. Are they using too much water? Then charge them the cost of producing the extra water. Unnecessary use of antibiotics causing resistance? Regulate antibiotic use. Methane causing global warming? Implement a tax on greenhouse gasses.
Those are all great things to do, and they have far wider consequences than meat production. But if you bring up banning meat, you will immediately find a tremendous amount of resistance and nothing will ever get done.
New runs of supercars come out pretty frequently, even if those production runs are themselves limited. A lot of dealerships also have the cars in stock long after the run is over. So it's not that difficult to get your hands on a new one if you have the money.
If you just want regular driving, you have much better options than a Tesla... like a Honda Civic. Which, by the way, has a top speed of 130 mph. That $60k saved by the car can go towards a house closer to work, saving on your commute and your emissions. A Tesla is nothing more than a status symbol right now.
You also need to improve primary education as well, or else the American students won't be able to compete when they get to the workplace. Shutting foreign students out of colleges only limits competition in college. There are still H1B's and straight up outsourcing to compete against once they graduate.
Even if you somehow manage to block those too, the outcome might not be any better. Perhaps you'll end up with more white CEO's, but you'll also end up with fewer businesses in the US. The businesses started by those Asian founders probably wouldn't have existed at all without them.
The correct solution is to bring in as much foreign talent as possible and keep them here. And I don't mean H1B's. I mean straight up green card. H1B depresses wages and prevents them from starting their own businesses, so it's straight up bad for American workers. The more foreign talent you have, the more businesses gets started here. It becomes easier to hire people, find jobs and collect tax revenue. Outsourcing gets harder too. Anyone you'd outsource it to in China or India would want to come to the US. The most talented ones end up here, leaving the incompetent ones. So businesses that outsource would be hard pressed to hire good people in those countries.
As long as that country is smaller than the range of the planes on the carrier, and the country has no air defense, and then only for certain interpretations of the word "destroy". There's not enough bombs on a single carrier to destroy even just the critical military infrastructure of a country like Russia. They are also incredibly expensive for what they are (a floating airfield). For the purpose of destroying countries, you're much better off putting your money in nuclear subs.
If you have physical access and the computer is on, you can already read the contents of RAM with some specialized hardware. That gives you access to pretty much everything.
Aircraft contribution to global warming is basically non-existent. Go protest a coal plant if you really want to make a difference. Or better yet, go kill 100 people. Each one contributes 16 tons of CO2 per year. Not to mention all their offspring./sarcasm
Fuel efficiency isn't the final goal. If it was, everyone would be traveling on blimps and following the trade winds.
A 10 hour flight on a 747 might cost $100,000 in fuel. This is about $200 per passenger. Even if the supersonic plane triples that, the final round trip price should only be $400 more. Now would you pay $1000 more for extra leg room or $400 more to reduce it to a 5 hour flight?
The $X00 billion high-speed rail line in CA has nothing to do with willingness to pay taxes and everything to do with inefficiency and corruption in government projects. The majority of money will be spent on acquiring property rights and dealing with lawsuits. The project can't go ahead until it makes everyone happy. And I mean everyone, because even you can file lawsuits on behalf of the environment saying this endangered nematode or whatever will lose its habitat.
Meanwhile in China, you either accept what the government is paying you for your property, or you get nothing. Environmental regulations? Ok, does this project kill pandas? No? Go away.
I guess you either live in Somalia or hangs out with perpetual man-babys. Most of the civilized world condemns violence and very few people get away with bullying adults, mainly because at some point they start throwing lawyers at you. You can try taking away those lawyers, but then they'll just switch over to bullets.
Education doesn't have to be expensive. Once you get past the elementary school, 90% of education is sitting in a room listening to someone talk. You can replace that with a video or a live stream. It's free, comes with better graphics, and can reach millions of students at once. Plus, you can have the best teacher instead of an average one.
It's really only when you get to the PhD level that you'd want direct, in-person interactions again, though in this case you're interacting with the best of the best and it's more about an exchange of ideas rather than solely being on the receiving end. If you need to limit the number of people who can do this, do it based on academic performance.
If you're worried about identity theft, then take it up to the banks and credit card agencies. They shouldn't allow people to open accounts without verifying your identity. If you want to force them to do that, just absolve individuals of any liability for those accounts. They have no proof you opened the account? Then you don't need to pay it back.
Given we're talking about democratically elected representatives, I certainly hope that nobody in the California legislature has unpopular opinions, or at least having none that are unpopular in their own district.
Nothing wrong with a carbon tax, but $5-6/gal price of gas is too high. 1 gallon of gasoline produces about 20 lb of CO2. A $3 carbon tax on it is a $300 per ton tax. Given the current blend of energy sources (39% coal, 27% natural gas), that carbon tax would mean the average American home (900kwh consumption) would have to pay $53.22 more per month in electricity. This is a 67% increase in electricity costs. Since a lot of industrial production depends on cheap energy too, all goods would rise in price by about the same amount.
On the plus side, since the US produces 5 billion tons of CO2 a year, this translates to $1.6 trillion in carbon tax revenue.
You can do as much as you like by yourself, but there is nothing more effective than raising awareness. Even if you got a quarter of the population to all do what you do, all that will do is make coal and gas cheaper for the other 75%, pushing them to use more of it. Heck, they might even use it to produce the things you buy... like solar panels for example.
The real solution is to vote and advocate for a carbon tax. Take carbon out of the ground? You'll need to pay the cost of putting it back in. The damage CO2 does is an externality for the users of fossil fuel. That's why they can ignore it. The moment you include that damage in the price, they will fix the problem themselves.
By the way, planting trees doesn't really help either. When the tree dies, it will decompose and release all of its stored carbon back into the atmosphere. The net CO2 impact is zero.
Slashdot Mirror
The US is a huge exporter of food. We grow far more food than we need. Efficiency of the process is a non-issue. Methane as a greenhouse gas has a half-life of 7 years, which means it doesn't build up like CO2. It'll increase, then plateau, creating a limited effect. The costs of the process is paid by meat eaters themselves, as part of the price. This includes water, land, antibiotics etc., all of which are paid for by the rancher, who in turn, gets paid by the consumers.
If you have problems with a particular aspect of it, then push for changes in those. Are they using too much water? Then charge them the cost of producing the extra water. Unnecessary use of antibiotics causing resistance? Regulate antibiotic use. Methane causing global warming? Implement a tax on greenhouse gasses.
Those are all great things to do, and they have far wider consequences than meat production. But if you bring up banning meat, you will immediately find a tremendous amount of resistance and nothing will ever get done.
New runs of supercars come out pretty frequently, even if those production runs are themselves limited. A lot of dealerships also have the cars in stock long after the run is over. So it's not that difficult to get your hands on a new one if you have the money.
Reminder: free speech is more than the 1st amendment.
Doesn't matter. Their actions should be condemned, even if they are in your political party and vote for your favorite lizard.
If you just want regular driving, you have much better options than a Tesla... like a Honda Civic. Which, by the way, has a top speed of 130 mph. That $60k saved by the car can go towards a house closer to work, saving on your commute and your emissions. A Tesla is nothing more than a status symbol right now.
Technically correct. The best kind of correct.
So aircraft producing 12% of global transport CO2 emissions
They produce 100% of global air transport CO2 emissions too.
You also need to improve primary education as well, or else the American students won't be able to compete when they get to the workplace. Shutting foreign students out of colleges only limits competition in college. There are still H1B's and straight up outsourcing to compete against once they graduate.
Even if you somehow manage to block those too, the outcome might not be any better. Perhaps you'll end up with more white CEO's, but you'll also end up with fewer businesses in the US. The businesses started by those Asian founders probably wouldn't have existed at all without them.
The correct solution is to bring in as much foreign talent as possible and keep them here. And I don't mean H1B's. I mean straight up green card. H1B depresses wages and prevents them from starting their own businesses, so it's straight up bad for American workers. The more foreign talent you have, the more businesses gets started here. It becomes easier to hire people, find jobs and collect tax revenue. Outsourcing gets harder too. Anyone you'd outsource it to in China or India would want to come to the US. The most talented ones end up here, leaving the incompetent ones. So businesses that outsource would be hard pressed to hire good people in those countries.
As long as that country is smaller than the range of the planes on the carrier, and the country has no air defense, and then only for certain interpretations of the word "destroy". There's not enough bombs on a single carrier to destroy even just the critical military infrastructure of a country like Russia. They are also incredibly expensive for what they are (a floating airfield). For the purpose of destroying countries, you're much better off putting your money in nuclear subs.
It's not like they got rid of everything. They still have fighter jets... and nukes.
If you have physical access and the computer is on, you can already read the contents of RAM with some specialized hardware. That gives you access to pretty much everything.
Aircraft contribution to global warming is basically non-existent. Go protest a coal plant if you really want to make a difference. Or better yet, go kill 100 people. Each one contributes 16 tons of CO2 per year. Not to mention all their offspring. /sarcasm
Fuel efficiency isn't the final goal. If it was, everyone would be traveling on blimps and following the trade winds.
A 10 hour flight on a 747 might cost $100,000 in fuel. This is about $200 per passenger. Even if the supersonic plane triples that, the final round trip price should only be $400 more. Now would you pay $1000 more for extra leg room or $400 more to reduce it to a 5 hour flight?
Don't we have anti-satellite weapons now? You don't have to be faster than something to get in its path and explode.
The $X00 billion high-speed rail line in CA has nothing to do with willingness to pay taxes and everything to do with inefficiency and corruption in government projects. The majority of money will be spent on acquiring property rights and dealing with lawsuits. The project can't go ahead until it makes everyone happy. And I mean everyone, because even you can file lawsuits on behalf of the environment saying this endangered nematode or whatever will lose its habitat.
Meanwhile in China, you either accept what the government is paying you for your property, or you get nothing. Environmental regulations? Ok, does this project kill pandas? No? Go away.
I guess you either live in Somalia or hangs out with perpetual man-babys. Most of the civilized world condemns violence and very few people get away with bullying adults, mainly because at some point they start throwing lawyers at you. You can try taking away those lawyers, but then they'll just switch over to bullets.
How many people needs to do 3D modeling in a submarine?
Granted, this sounds like a great life to some basement dwellers, but the lack of internet access is going to be a blocker.
On the plus side, they'll probably only share it with Chinese government, which can't screw me over as much as the American one.
Sounds great for people who aren't me.
- Most of America
Education doesn't have to be expensive. Once you get past the elementary school, 90% of education is sitting in a room listening to someone talk. You can replace that with a video or a live stream. It's free, comes with better graphics, and can reach millions of students at once. Plus, you can have the best teacher instead of an average one.
It's really only when you get to the PhD level that you'd want direct, in-person interactions again, though in this case you're interacting with the best of the best and it's more about an exchange of ideas rather than solely being on the receiving end. If you need to limit the number of people who can do this, do it based on academic performance.
If you're worried about identity theft, then take it up to the banks and credit card agencies. They shouldn't allow people to open accounts without verifying your identity. If you want to force them to do that, just absolve individuals of any liability for those accounts. They have no proof you opened the account? Then you don't need to pay it back.
Given we're talking about democratically elected representatives, I certainly hope that nobody in the California legislature has unpopular opinions, or at least having none that are unpopular in their own district.
Nothing wrong with a carbon tax, but $5-6/gal price of gas is too high. 1 gallon of gasoline produces about 20 lb of CO2. A $3 carbon tax on it is a $300 per ton tax. Given the current blend of energy sources (39% coal, 27% natural gas), that carbon tax would mean the average American home (900kwh consumption) would have to pay $53.22 more per month in electricity. This is a 67% increase in electricity costs. Since a lot of industrial production depends on cheap energy too, all goods would rise in price by about the same amount.
On the plus side, since the US produces 5 billion tons of CO2 a year, this translates to $1.6 trillion in carbon tax revenue.
I know what you're trying to say, but a horse will sink deeper into the mud than the car. It's supporting its weight on 4 very small feet.
You can do as much as you like by yourself, but there is nothing more effective than raising awareness. Even if you got a quarter of the population to all do what you do, all that will do is make coal and gas cheaper for the other 75%, pushing them to use more of it. Heck, they might even use it to produce the things you buy... like solar panels for example.
The real solution is to vote and advocate for a carbon tax. Take carbon out of the ground? You'll need to pay the cost of putting it back in. The damage CO2 does is an externality for the users of fossil fuel. That's why they can ignore it. The moment you include that damage in the price, they will fix the problem themselves.
By the way, planting trees doesn't really help either. When the tree dies, it will decompose and release all of its stored carbon back into the atmosphere. The net CO2 impact is zero.