The original poster-- "Speck'sbacon"-- was alleging a conspiracy. He was saying that we need to "follow the money", which will reveal that thousands of scientists, working for twenty different agencies in different countries on different continents, are all presenting corrupt results for money.
The error there is yours in assuming that making money from a fad requires a conspiracy. There are plenty of fads, from selfie stick and pet rocks to iPhones, that are self-reinforcing with no central coordination or planning. Entire startups are built on such so-called "network effects", and entire countries have gone fascist or communist not because of some carefully prepared master plan, but because a political fad took off.
Scientists gain their reputation partly by being smart, but the way they show that they are smart is by being right.
The science isn't the issue here, it's the politics. Science doesn't say we need to create large statist institutions to reduce carbon emissions; that's a political choice. In fact, if anything, science tells us the exact opposite. First, if we don't act on climate change, the costs won't be any worse (and likely be lower) than if we do act; despite all the scary language, that's what the science and economics of the IPCC report amounts to. But even that assumes that governmental action on climate change would actually be effective, and the social sciences tell us that that is actually unlikely to be the case.
(As for the science itself, although I generally believe the climate models are fairly reasonable as far as climate modeling goes, whether they are "right" on predictions for 2100 can only be determined in 2100, not today.)
And that has nothing to do with anything, as we did not have massive industrialized societies which massively depend on great swathes of land being used to keep us alive.
Why don't you read the IPCC report, you know, the conclusions of experts. It doesn't say that our survival is threatened, it treats climate change simply as a cost/benefit analysis.
I wish you'd stop spouting such nonsensical "arguments", as they are not grounded in fact and only serve to muddy the waters and make you look really, really stupid. Massively stupid. So dumb.
Really? Stating simple, objectively true facts about climate makes me "look dumb"?
And do you think I really care whether "Dave420" considers me "dumb"?
Funnily enough, climatologists know all of that, yet they still have enough evidence to show you are entirely incorrect
Really? What am I supposed to be "entirely incorrect" about?
I have no idea why you think you can debunk an entire field of science
I'm not trying to "debunk an entire field of science". I accept temperature and sea level rise as a given. The question is what, if anything, we should do about it. That's not science, it's policy and economics. Even the IPCC reports discuss this and say that action and inaction on climate change cost about the same amount under their economic assumptions, so even they don't believe utter disaster is looming. And their economic assumptions are, indeed, debatable, as are the tradeoffs and values they choose.
using your poorly-constructed posts, and a very patchy understanding of the topic at hand. The hubris is strong with this one!
You need to lay off the "420", Dave. And you need to start like an adult citizen of a democracy and think for yourself, rather than hoping that strong patriarchal leader will fix your problems for you.
Pollyanna describes you: someone who reads disaster porn and scifi in Rolling Stone Magazine and thinks it's science. From the article you link to:
And still, the waters kept rising, nearly a foot each decade. By the latter end of the 21st century, Miami became something else entirely: a popular snorkeling spot
So, Rolling Stone assumes a ten-fold faster sea level rise than is actually occurring and then spins a fairy tale around that.
More importantly, Miami had a population of 300 in 1896. That is, a little over a century, it hardly existed at all. So, it would hardly be a big problem if, in another century, it has moved inland a few miles.
In any case, even without any sea level rise, it was unwise to build such a metropolis in such a location to begin with, and it can only exist there because of massive subsidies for things like flood insurance and civil engineering. To demand that Americans elsewhere pay even more money to preserve Miami in such a place is ludicrous. It's crony capitalism at its worst. Stop subsidizing flood insurance and public civil engineering projects, and you'd be amazed how motivated people become to move out of Miami to a safer location.
During the Pliocene three million years ago, the climate was 2 to 3C warmer and the seas were 25–35 meters higher than today (Dowsett et al., 1994; Rahmstorf, 2007). I'm sure the critters of the time loved it, but our coastal cities would not.
Well, I'm glad that you accept that the critters loved it, because that removes the major scare scenario of global warming.
As for sea level rise, don't worry about it. Sea level rise is currently about 1ft/century. Think about what your coastal city was like a century ago. Compared to the massive changes and the massive rebuilding that has happened in most cities, adapting to 1ft/century is completely negligible.
It isn't new, but "this is a conspiracy by statists to grab more power" is a conspiracy theory that doesn't make a lick of sense.
I don't see anybody alleging a "conspiracy"; "conspiracy" requires secrecy and deception. I'm sure scientists and politicians promoting action on AGW truly believe what they are saying, and they aren't secret about it. But that doesn't make them right.
You can try to follow the money... but when you do, there just isn't anywhere it goes. And then, how exactly do the thousands of scientist get their instructions?
Where did all the scientists and politicians who promoted scientific racism, eugenics, and segregation get their instructions from? Nowhere. These aren't "conspiracies", they are social and political malfunctions. Scientists and politicians want power and money. A simple way of getting power and money is to identify a crisis and offer a solution to it. Many potential crises don't make it, but some take off due to simple, self-organizing, positive feedback: the more scientists and politicians believe in some crises or problem, the more people get rewarded for adopting the same beliefs.
Really? Here is a graph you should really have a look at. Ice core samples show that CO2 levels have not been at current levels in the past 650,000 years.
Yes, and now try to understand that graph. See how those CO2 levels keep spiking every 100000 years or so? That's a "warming period", just before temperatures decrease again and much of North America and Europe get covered in huge ice sheets, a glaciation event. We're currently at the end of one of those warming periods. Without AGW, we'd probably be heading for another glaciation event.
In fact, earth has been up to 10C warmer that it is right now, with much higher CO2 concentrations, and the climate was generally mild and wet across the entire globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2) We can be carbon neutral in 30 years if we create large scale subsidies in existing state of the art in nuclear power.
The reason nuclear power plants aren't successful or competitive is massive NIMBYism and a suppression of efficient and clean nuclear power technologies because they might be used to generate weapons-grade material. Neither of those can be solved with more subsidies.
Of course, that's still better than "renewables", which simply aren't cost effective at all.
Actually, we are probably at about 8C above temperatures 20000 years ago, and good thing too: if it was still that cold, most of the northern hemisphere would be covered in ice sheets. We're probably still 1-2C below the Eemian maximum temperature of about 130000 years ago.
The US Supreme Court has also ruled that all three of those are not covered by the first amendment under certain circumstances.
False.
You can still be sued for libel there.
What does that have to do with free speech?
Meanwhile the US continues to detain people for upwards of a decade in a secretive prison in Cuba without trial and using evidence they are not permitted to see.
Actually, for the average American household; that's just a fact about US household spending.
to substantially change automobile usage wouldn't require heavy taxation (most people drive in spite of high costs, not because its a minor bill),
You're merely playing word games ("high costs", "minor bill"), while effectively agreeing with me: expenses for driving a car are a small fraction of American household spending.
but rather a complete cultural transformation, the opposite of what happened in the 50s as people spread out and began leaving the cities for the 'burbs.
People left the cities for the 'burbs precisely because they wanted to get away from the kind of "cultural transformation" you want to create. Believe it or not, many people do not want to live in the kind of progressive or socialist urban utopia you imagine, least of all the architects and politicians that try to stick people into these little boxes.
efficient mass transit expanding from the city however does have the potential to again change that culture slightly
You don't need large capital investments to have mass transits outside cities; buses are the most effective form of public transportation in most areas. Yet, when we talk about public transportation, people always talk about massive investments in rail systems.
people don't like rush hour
Which is why people move to small and mid-size towns and suburbs; you know, the kind of places that have neither mass transit nor rush hours.
and it is more efficient fuel wise
Fuel savings from existing public transportation options are modest to non-existent, because a functioning public transportation system operates most vehicles far below capacity, even empty.
and cities have shown how it can be more affordable than owning a vehicle (or at least, operating one for commuting).
The only way public transportation is cheaper than a car is if you don't own a car at all. Once you pay the fixed costs for a car, it makes sense to use it for most trips. But most public transportation systems cannot cover all the needs that people have.
this isn't the first time you've tried to make this inaccurate claim.
The claim I made was about "the combined "green energy and public transportation" subsidies". You are arguing a straw man and putting words in my mouth.
when all is totaled up, the oil/gas industry receives far from financial support from government via tax dollars and tax credits than the renewable sector does.
Well, that's your claim which wouldn't contradict what I said. But feel free to back up your claim with data to show that you didn't fabricate it out of thin air.
The end result of which will be, eventually, China (and Chinese citizens) owning a sizeable portion of American hard assets. We'll still work, but all the companies and corporate assets will be owned by China.
Who is this "we" you speak of? If you want to own hard assets in the US, you can do the same thing that the Chinese do: spend less and invest more. If you decide to squander your money instead, then I have more in common with a Chinese investor than with you, your passport notwithstanding.
The whole issue of warrants is that they are used in order to solve and not find crimes.
Correct. And that is by design.
The terrorism issue is relevant in that the only effective way to stop terrorists is to search email of vast numbers of persons before any crime has been committed.
That's bullshit. And even if it were true, it still wouldn't be a justification for destroying the foundations of a free society.
This debate isn't about "terrorists"; any sophisticated organization with something substantial to hide isn't going to rely on Apple's or Google's encryption, they are going to be using their own, something that is easy enough to do.
The entire debate is about day-to-day police work: police want to be able to search your phone and your E-mail with the same ease with which they can open your car's trunk. The problem with that isn't that they may or may not use it against minor offenders, the problem is that if you put that capability in the hands of a million law enforcement officers and government investigators, they will invariably abuse it for personal and political gain, blackmail, and amusement.
In addition, "multi-billion dollar subsidies to the oil industry" are a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous subsidies "green" energy and public transportation already receive in the US.
Note that I made a statement about "in the US" and the combined "green energy and public transportation" subsidies, in the context of a discussion of US energy and transportation policy vs policy in other nations.
What do you quote?
Fossil fuel subsidies reached $90 billion in the OECD and over $500 billion globally in 2011.[1] Renewable energy subsidies reached $88 billion in 2011
See how your numbers have nothing to do with my statement? In fact, most of the fossil fuel subsidies globally are outside US control and we don't pay for them.
You can argue the accounting, certainly, but you don't need to lie about what the page says.
There is nothing to "argue"; you are simply wrong. And you either have a problem with basic reading comprehension or you are a dishonest debater.
Furthermore, personal automobiles are only a small percentage of overall carbon emissions, so even if we reduced them to zero, it wouldn't have a big effect, and that is assuming that carbon emissions are even an environmental problem.
In addition, switching from driving to public transit does not actually reduce carbon emissions much.
I call bullshit on that one. 20 Seconds on Google would provide you the evidence [wikipedia.org] that your statement is wrong
What I said is correct, you are just again proving to be a sloppy reader. The Wikipedia page you point to supports my statement.
FALSE. You are correct that to reduce auto use you would have to tax fuel more and that it wouldn't be popular. But you are wrong that everybody becomes poorer. [...] Europe taxes gasoline much much more than the US does and yet their standard of living is pretty similar.
Again, you need to read what I actually said. What I said is not that "taxing gasoline makes people poorer". What I said is that the only way to decrease car usage is to tax people so much (that can be income tax, sales tax, etc.) that their overall disposable income becomes small enough that many of them can't afford cars anymore.
As for your other comparisons with Europe, they are meaningless and naive. There is no such thing as a "European standard of living", nor any kind of common European transportation policy.
Long term we have to find a way to hugely reduce our use of fossil fuels. We are literally and figuratively playing with fire by burning them for power.
You're talking like a Soviet central planner. "We" don't ever find ways. Entrepreneurs and inventors find ways. And since fossil fuels are expensive, entrepreneurs and inventors have been working for more than a century to figure out how to use fossil fuels more efficiently and replace them. These people have all the incentive they need, and there is nothing that government intervention, subsidies, or taxes can do to speed up the process.
In fact, the single best thing government could do to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels is to stop blocking the construction of efficient nuclear reactors.
One of the worst things to do is what you suggest, namely massive crony capitalism to create a public transit infrastructure that couldn't possibly result in any substantial reductions in fossil fuel usage.
The point is, rights are not about things you can't live without, rights are about those things we as a society believe everyone should have.
And who is this "we as a society"? You mean the 10-20% of society that usually votes for the winning party or candidate? Parties and candidates subject to extensive corporate lobbying and political pressures? Representatives that have approval ratings in the low teens? The idea that political decisions in a democracy represent the universal desires or preferences of "we as a society" is a delusion or an outright self-serving lie.
There are forms of government that guarantee the rights that "we as a society believe everyone should have": fascism and socialism. A free society, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with curbing the excesses and abuses of power by government, while leaving the people free to pursue their own dreams.
...instead of making up regulations and playing "Gotcha!", why not just beef up and extend public transport infrastructure, make it more affordable, while at the same time reduce the multi-billion dollar subsidies to the oil industry, thereby making private car use more expensive and encouraging more people to use public transport.
Cars and gasoline are not a big part of an American household's budget; you can increase the cost of driving substantially and people will still drive just as much and instead cut down on something else. To substantially change automobile usage in the US, you'd have to tax people so much that everybody becomes a lot poorer. That would work, but it probably wouldn't be popular. And what would be the point?
In many comparisons with Europe, people are also comparing apples and oranges. For example, the US has much less passenger rail usage, but much bigger freight rail usage, than Europe. Overall, that makes our use of our (vast) rail system more efficient than Europe's.
In addition, "multi-billion dollar subsidies to the oil industry" are a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous subsidies "green" energy and public transportation already receive in the US.
This should result in higher productivity through fewer missed work days and greater availability of workers for jobs.
Commuting by bus or train is slow and fraught with delays. Believe me on that one, I commuted like that for years.
Also, spending less on getting to work means more purchasing power for those people and therefore more economic activity/growth. Everybody wins.
When you tax people to subsidize public transportation, people end up with less overall disposable income, not more, even if fares for public transportation nominally are lower. So, even that argument doesn't work.
Individuals do have those rights in the EU. The European Convention on Human Rights is just as legally binding as the American Bill of Rights.
Just because a document lists those rights doesn't mean people actually have them. The ECHR lists numerous exceptions to free speech; a few of them are protection of morality, protecting the reputation and rights of others, prevention of disorder. That isn't "free speech", it's a self-glorifying legal facade. Socialist East Germany had stronger guarantees of "free speech" than that. Even Russia falls under the ECHR. And even if the ECHR wasn't mostly puffery, it can't simultaneously guarantee all the rights it claims to guarantee because they are in mutual conflict.
It's just as annoying for the governments too - here in the UK the government has spent over a decade dragging their feet over giving voting rights to prisoners, something required under European law but strongly opposed by most in the UK.
So let me get this straight: the UK government does what UK voters want it to do, but that contradicts the ECHR, yet the EU cannot actually force them to comply with the ECHR, and that is why Europe has free speech and freedom of association! Well, I'm convinced now!
In any case, all of this is besides the original point, which is that legislation as described in TFA originates with powerful corporate lobbyists in Europe because the dying buggy whip industries in Europe want protectionist legislation from their governments, and they frequently get it. And they also get it because they can manipulate the dopey chauvinistic European masses into supporting them.
His basic thesis is that the open source development process is not particularly compatible with for-profit corporations, and having them involved frequently makes progress more difficult
Probably most open source software is developed either by corporations or by consortia of corporations. His situation, where he develops open source software independently that is then used by big corporations, is probably unusual. In particular, I suspect most of those corporations asking for quick turnaround on fixes, would probably be willing to pay for that kind of support if only someone would offer it.
The uninformed choices fellow people make. We don't let children make some choices because they don't make good choices.
"We"? Who is this "we" you are talking about? Look at the government nutrition information that has been around for decades: it was written by industry lobbyists.
Again, no. No one wants ginko balboa. Everyone wants better mental performance.
And you want to leave the determination of whether ginkgo bilboa works or not to a government that is in the pocket of large pharmaceutical companies, who have a strong interest in pushing their own proprietary and patented drugs?
It's why after Obamacare, the insurance companies are doing better,
Insurance companies are doing better under Obamacare because Obamacare was crony capitalism; that is what crony capitalism does: funnel more money to government-favored corporations.
why "Snakeoil salesman" is now apocryphal and not a valid career choice
Oh, it has been replaced by pharmaceutical salesman and pharmaceutical company lobbyist.
and why single-payer healthcare systems get better care than the US's.
Take it from someone who has lived many years in Europe: that's bullshit.
In addition, we have a huge single payer health care system in the US: Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA system. Do you like those systems? Do you want to be covered by them? In fact, our public health care system spends more per capita on Americans than the European systems spend on single payer, and our public system is so poor that it doesn't even manage to cover all Americans with that huge amount of money.
Slashdot Mirror
The error there is yours in assuming that making money from a fad requires a conspiracy. There are plenty of fads, from selfie stick and pet rocks to iPhones, that are self-reinforcing with no central coordination or planning. Entire startups are built on such so-called "network effects", and entire countries have gone fascist or communist not because of some carefully prepared master plan, but because a political fad took off.
The science isn't the issue here, it's the politics. Science doesn't say we need to create large statist institutions to reduce carbon emissions; that's a political choice. In fact, if anything, science tells us the exact opposite. First, if we don't act on climate change, the costs won't be any worse (and likely be lower) than if we do act; despite all the scary language, that's what the science and economics of the IPCC report amounts to. But even that assumes that governmental action on climate change would actually be effective, and the social sciences tell us that that is actually unlikely to be the case.
(As for the science itself, although I generally believe the climate models are fairly reasonable as far as climate modeling goes, whether they are "right" on predictions for 2100 can only be determined in 2100, not today.)
Grant review committees usually don't have much at stake when making their decisions.
Why don't you read the IPCC report, you know, the conclusions of experts. It doesn't say that our survival is threatened, it treats climate change simply as a cost/benefit analysis.
Really? Stating simple, objectively true facts about climate makes me "look dumb"?
And do you think I really care whether "Dave420" considers me "dumb"?
Really? What am I supposed to be "entirely incorrect" about?
I'm not trying to "debunk an entire field of science". I accept temperature and sea level rise as a given. The question is what, if anything, we should do about it. That's not science, it's policy and economics. Even the IPCC reports discuss this and say that action and inaction on climate change cost about the same amount under their economic assumptions, so even they don't believe utter disaster is looming. And their economic assumptions are, indeed, debatable, as are the tradeoffs and values they choose.
You need to lay off the "420", Dave. And you need to start like an adult citizen of a democracy and think for yourself, rather than hoping that strong patriarchal leader will fix your problems for you.
Pollyanna describes you: someone who reads disaster porn and scifi in Rolling Stone Magazine and thinks it's science. From the article you link to:
So, Rolling Stone assumes a ten-fold faster sea level rise than is actually occurring and then spins a fairy tale around that.
More importantly, Miami had a population of 300 in 1896. That is, a little over a century, it hardly existed at all. So, it would hardly be a big problem if, in another century, it has moved inland a few miles.
In any case, even without any sea level rise, it was unwise to build such a metropolis in such a location to begin with, and it can only exist there because of massive subsidies for things like flood insurance and civil engineering. To demand that Americans elsewhere pay even more money to preserve Miami in such a place is ludicrous. It's crony capitalism at its worst. Stop subsidizing flood insurance and public civil engineering projects, and you'd be amazed how motivated people become to move out of Miami to a safer location.
I have read about it. What point are you trying to get at?
Well, I'm glad that you accept that the critters loved it, because that removes the major scare scenario of global warming.
As for sea level rise, don't worry about it. Sea level rise is currently about 1ft/century. Think about what your coastal city was like a century ago. Compared to the massive changes and the massive rebuilding that has happened in most cities, adapting to 1ft/century is completely negligible.
I don't see anybody alleging a "conspiracy"; "conspiracy" requires secrecy and deception. I'm sure scientists and politicians promoting action on AGW truly believe what they are saying, and they aren't secret about it. But that doesn't make them right.
Where did all the scientists and politicians who promoted scientific racism, eugenics, and segregation get their instructions from? Nowhere. These aren't "conspiracies", they are social and political malfunctions. Scientists and politicians want power and money. A simple way of getting power and money is to identify a crisis and offer a solution to it. Many potential crises don't make it, but some take off due to simple, self-organizing, positive feedback: the more scientists and politicians believe in some crises or problem, the more people get rewarded for adopting the same beliefs.
Now have a look at a longer time period:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Notice how it's 8C warmer now than it was 20000 years ago? Notice how we're better off because of it?
Notice how it is still 10C colder than it was 50 million years ago? A time when every landmass was covered in lush forests and land animals thrived?
Yes, and now try to understand that graph. See how those CO2 levels keep spiking every 100000 years or so? That's a "warming period", just before temperatures decrease again and much of North America and Europe get covered in huge ice sheets, a glaciation event. We're currently at the end of one of those warming periods. Without AGW, we'd probably be heading for another glaciation event.
In fact, earth has been up to 10C warmer that it is right now, with much higher CO2 concentrations, and the climate was generally mild and wet across the entire globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The reason nuclear power plants aren't successful or competitive is massive NIMBYism and a suppression of efficient and clean nuclear power technologies because they might be used to generate weapons-grade material. Neither of those can be solved with more subsidies.
Of course, that's still better than "renewables", which simply aren't cost effective at all.
Actually, we are probably at about 8C above temperatures 20000 years ago, and good thing too: if it was still that cold, most of the northern hemisphere would be covered in ice sheets. We're probably still 1-2C below the Eemian maximum temperature of about 130000 years ago.
We're still about 10C below the Eocene maximum.
False.
What does that have to do with free speech?
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...
Actually, for the average American household; that's just a fact about US household spending.
You're merely playing word games ("high costs", "minor bill"), while effectively agreeing with me: expenses for driving a car are a small fraction of American household spending.
People left the cities for the 'burbs precisely because they wanted to get away from the kind of "cultural transformation" you want to create. Believe it or not, many people do not want to live in the kind of progressive or socialist urban utopia you imagine, least of all the architects and politicians that try to stick people into these little boxes.
You don't need large capital investments to have mass transits outside cities; buses are the most effective form of public transportation in most areas. Yet, when we talk about public transportation, people always talk about massive investments in rail systems.
Which is why people move to small and mid-size towns and suburbs; you know, the kind of places that have neither mass transit nor rush hours.
Fuel savings from existing public transportation options are modest to non-existent, because a functioning public transportation system operates most vehicles far below capacity, even empty.
The only way public transportation is cheaper than a car is if you don't own a car at all. Once you pay the fixed costs for a car, it makes sense to use it for most trips. But most public transportation systems cannot cover all the needs that people have.
The claim I made was about "the combined "green energy and public transportation" subsidies". You are arguing a straw man and putting words in my mouth.
Well, that's your claim which wouldn't contradict what I said. But feel free to back up your claim with data to show that you didn't fabricate it out of thin air.
Who is this "we" you speak of? If you want to own hard assets in the US, you can do the same thing that the Chinese do: spend less and invest more. If you decide to squander your money instead, then I have more in common with a Chinese investor than with you, your passport notwithstanding.
"No" what?
Correct. And that is by design.
That's bullshit. And even if it were true, it still wouldn't be a justification for destroying the foundations of a free society.
This debate isn't about "terrorists"; any sophisticated organization with something substantial to hide isn't going to rely on Apple's or Google's encryption, they are going to be using their own, something that is easy enough to do.
The entire debate is about day-to-day police work: police want to be able to search your phone and your E-mail with the same ease with which they can open your car's trunk. The problem with that isn't that they may or may not use it against minor offenders, the problem is that if you put that capability in the hands of a million law enforcement officers and government investigators, they will invariably abuse it for personal and political gain, blackmail, and amusement.
This is what I said:
Note that I made a statement about "in the US" and the combined "green energy and public transportation" subsidies, in the context of a discussion of US energy and transportation policy vs policy in other nations.
What do you quote?
See how your numbers have nothing to do with my statement? In fact, most of the fossil fuel subsidies globally are outside US control and we don't pay for them.
There is nothing to "argue"; you are simply wrong. And you either have a problem with basic reading comprehension or you are a dishonest debater.
Higher gas prices have almost no effect on gas usage: http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...
Furthermore, personal automobiles are only a small percentage of overall carbon emissions, so even if we reduced them to zero, it wouldn't have a big effect, and that is assuming that carbon emissions are even an environmental problem.
In addition, switching from driving to public transit does not actually reduce carbon emissions much.
What I said is correct, you are just again proving to be a sloppy reader. The Wikipedia page you point to supports my statement.
Again, you need to read what I actually said. What I said is not that "taxing gasoline makes people poorer". What I said is that the only way to decrease car usage is to tax people so much (that can be income tax, sales tax, etc.) that their overall disposable income becomes small enough that many of them can't afford cars anymore.
As for your other comparisons with Europe, they are meaningless and naive. There is no such thing as a "European standard of living", nor any kind of common European transportation policy.
You're talking like a Soviet central planner. "We" don't ever find ways. Entrepreneurs and inventors find ways. And since fossil fuels are expensive, entrepreneurs and inventors have been working for more than a century to figure out how to use fossil fuels more efficiently and replace them. These people have all the incentive they need, and there is nothing that government intervention, subsidies, or taxes can do to speed up the process.
In fact, the single best thing government could do to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels is to stop blocking the construction of efficient nuclear reactors.
One of the worst things to do is what you suggest, namely massive crony capitalism to create a public transit infrastructure that couldn't possibly result in any substantial reductions in fossil fuel usage.
And who is this "we as a society"? You mean the 10-20% of society that usually votes for the winning party or candidate? Parties and candidates subject to extensive corporate lobbying and political pressures? Representatives that have approval ratings in the low teens? The idea that political decisions in a democracy represent the universal desires or preferences of "we as a society" is a delusion or an outright self-serving lie.
There are forms of government that guarantee the rights that "we as a society believe everyone should have": fascism and socialism. A free society, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with curbing the excesses and abuses of power by government, while leaving the people free to pursue their own dreams.
Cars and gasoline are not a big part of an American household's budget; you can increase the cost of driving substantially and people will still drive just as much and instead cut down on something else. To substantially change automobile usage in the US, you'd have to tax people so much that everybody becomes a lot poorer. That would work, but it probably wouldn't be popular. And what would be the point?
In many comparisons with Europe, people are also comparing apples and oranges. For example, the US has much less passenger rail usage, but much bigger freight rail usage, than Europe. Overall, that makes our use of our (vast) rail system more efficient than Europe's.
In addition, "multi-billion dollar subsidies to the oil industry" are a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous subsidies "green" energy and public transportation already receive in the US.
Commuting by bus or train is slow and fraught with delays. Believe me on that one, I commuted like that for years.
When you tax people to subsidize public transportation, people end up with less overall disposable income, not more, even if fares for public transportation nominally are lower. So, even that argument doesn't work.
Just because a document lists those rights doesn't mean people actually have them. The ECHR lists numerous exceptions to free speech; a few of them are protection of morality, protecting the reputation and rights of others, prevention of disorder. That isn't "free speech", it's a self-glorifying legal facade. Socialist East Germany had stronger guarantees of "free speech" than that. Even Russia falls under the ECHR. And even if the ECHR wasn't mostly puffery, it can't simultaneously guarantee all the rights it claims to guarantee because they are in mutual conflict.
So let me get this straight: the UK government does what UK voters want it to do, but that contradicts the ECHR, yet the EU cannot actually force them to comply with the ECHR, and that is why Europe has free speech and freedom of association! Well, I'm convinced now!
In any case, all of this is besides the original point, which is that legislation as described in TFA originates with powerful corporate lobbyists in Europe because the dying buggy whip industries in Europe want protectionist legislation from their governments, and they frequently get it. And they also get it because they can manipulate the dopey chauvinistic European masses into supporting them.
Probably most open source software is developed either by corporations or by consortia of corporations. His situation, where he develops open source software independently that is then used by big corporations, is probably unusual. In particular, I suspect most of those corporations asking for quick turnaround on fixes, would probably be willing to pay for that kind of support if only someone would offer it.
"We"? Who is this "we" you are talking about? Look at the government nutrition information that has been around for decades: it was written by industry lobbyists.
And you want to leave the determination of whether ginkgo bilboa works or not to a government that is in the pocket of large pharmaceutical companies, who have a strong interest in pushing their own proprietary and patented drugs?
Insurance companies are doing better under Obamacare because Obamacare was crony capitalism; that is what crony capitalism does: funnel more money to government-favored corporations.
Oh, it has been replaced by pharmaceutical salesman and pharmaceutical company lobbyist.
Take it from someone who has lived many years in Europe: that's bullshit.
In addition, we have a huge single payer health care system in the US: Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA system. Do you like those systems? Do you want to be covered by them? In fact, our public health care system spends more per capita on Americans than the European systems spend on single payer, and our public system is so poor that it doesn't even manage to cover all Americans with that huge amount of money.