55 ms·

Pulling out of it is indication that the USA's politics is primarily driven by virtue signaling among different segments of its governing elite, not by policy o

Pulling out of it is indication that the USA's politics is primarily driven by virtue signaling among different segments of its governing elite, not by policy or objective reality. If you believe the USA should be involved at all on the international stage, this creation of new public knowledge is a big detriment to that end.

rayiner 9y ago
> If you believe the USA should be involved at all on the international stage, this creation of new public knowledge is a big detriment to that end. The belief that the U.S. needs to be involved in the international stage is based on the fallacious assumption that international cooperation can fix climate change. There is no scenario in which that happens. Without fundamental technological leaps, we'd have to decrease the standard of living in the developed world to reduce emissions while accommodating increased standard of living in the developing world. The math doesn't add up.
- threeseed 9y ago
  > fallacious assumption that international cooperation can fix climate change ITER for example is an international project which if it were successful would change the energy landscape and by extension the climate change issue dramatically. This and projects like this requires international cooperation. Also look at when the world united to outlaw HCFC refrigerant. That made a huge difference to the planet's outlook.
- scarmig 9y ago
  > The U.S. doesn't need to be involved on the international stage. I disagree in large part, though I do think the world would be stabler if the USA took much less military action and was a bit more respectful of zones of influence of other countries. But even if I strongly agreed, I'd think the USA should make an orderly retreat from its existing obligations. Instead it's creating vacuums of power and chaos based on fits of pique by a literal maniac. > The fallacy here is assuming that international cooperation is going to solve climate change. It's worked on other issues. And political environments drive technological change. But, yes, I agree it's a particularly thorny issue, and I wouldn't say I'm too optimistic of its probability of success compared to other international collaborations. But that's something to bemoan, not something to celebrate.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > There is no political fix. Only technological ones. Technological fixes will not be adopted unless climate-related externalities are internalized into transactions, because of the tragedy of the commons. A political fix is a necessary prerequisite to the adoption of any technological fix.
  - daxorid 9y ago
    There are very real physical limits to technological fixes anyway: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-ma...
    - amluto 9y ago
      That site thinks that a source that could produce less than 25% of total foreseeable global demand is worthless. I find this to be a rather strange conclusion. Two sources, each producing 24% of foreseeable global demand, could cut emissions and fuel use by 48%, which would be huge.
  - gonvaled 9y ago
    This, very much this. Another way to put this: the asteroid does not care if your financial markets have factored it in the models or not. It just hits you.
  - fvdessen 9y ago
    Energy consumption is one of the largest costs of every human activity, there is already incredible incentives for everyone to reduce consumption. Energy efficiency has increased for every country despite the lack of a common political framework. [1] [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Energy_intensity,_2003_and_2013.png http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
    - dllthomas 9y ago
      But improving efficiency reduces cost, which can sometimes actually increase overall use. If we're going to see reductions in emissions for economic reasons, we need emissions to cost something.
- mcphage 9y ago
  > The U.S. doesn't need to be involved on the international stage. Yeah, it really does. The US might be a big economy, but not-US is an even bigger economy.
  - barrkel 9y ago
    And the US is an ever-decreasing share of the global economy - it's shrinking in relative terms. China overtook the US in World GDP share at PPP in 2014.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  It is hard to implement a technological fix without political will. Politcal can reserve funding, can align businesses and academics, can make that technological windfall we haven't yet invented a little mote likely. What if there is no technological solution, or we fail to find it? Having political agreement and unity to fallback on is a good thing. Even if we do something terrible to the planet, we can mitigate that together, instead of ignoring it or making it worse.
  - harryh 9y ago
    What if there is no technological solution, or we fail to find it? Then we're going to see a dramatic transformation of the planet due to significantly rising global temperatures. That is the grim reality.
  - ra1n85 9y ago
    Trump is the antithesis of unified political will. He's a symptom of a deeply divided society. The focus on finding consensus and political will on climate change is putting the cart before the horse. There's no consensus or deal making to be had with this degree of division and anger.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      I agree. Not being able to get it doesn't change the fact that we need it.
- comicjk 9y ago
  > Without fundamental technological leaps Sounds like we'd better get working, then? Emissions controls to stimulate private innovation, plus public research grants to help longer-term innovation. We need to set up incentives wherein fundamental technological leaps are the goal.
- fusiongyro 9y ago
  Even controlling for the harm to the environment, you have to consider the harm to our foreign policy if we become unable to uphold any agreement for more than 4 years.
  - twoodfin 9y ago
    I'd hope our counterparts from other nations would be sophisticated enough about our Constitutional system to understand that what one President can agree to without enshrining it in law through Congress, a later President can just as easily disregard.
    - gonvaled 9y ago
      Irrelevant. I don't care why your country is not trustworthy.
      - aanm1988 9y ago
        Exactly. Other countries have working systems of government. The US needs to get their shit together.
    - fusiongyro 9y ago
      I agree. And it's true that the Paris agreement should have gone through the treaty ratification process. But I'm not convinced our president understands that difference and I definitely do not believe that his behavior is motivated by a comprehension of those differences rather than the content of the agreement.
- electic 9y ago
  Your ignorance is breathtaking. The US and other developed countries have always taken the lead on environmental policy that has resulted in real change. The most famous is the Montreal Protocol which resulted in the banning of CFCs and saved the Ozone Layer[1]. The policy decision drove technological innovation and created entire new classes of appliances and chemicals which resulted in millions of new jobs. After the Kyoto disaster, and now this, it is going to be hard to anyone to trust The United States. Past Republican and Democratic presidents may not have fully agreed with their predecessor's foreign policy decisions but they always aimed for consistent outward message. All this does it give China and Russia what they wanted, that the United States can't be trusted as a partner. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The CFC problem was a narrow one, and the Montreal protocol was implemented a decade after development started on CFC alternatives. At the time Montreal was implemented, there was a clear picture of how to get from point A to point B. Climate change is in comparison a moon shot. We don't know what will work and how it'll work. There's not some single thing we can ban and fix the problem. It calls for structural change and changes in peoples' way of life and the political system can't achieve that.
    - epistasis 9y ago
      Citation needed. Solar, wind, EV and now even electrical storage are being jump started with tax credits.
      - zzalpha 9y ago
        Solar, wind, EV and now even electrical storage are being jump started with tax credits. Were. At least if Trump gets his way: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/18/trumps-budget-expected-to-massively-slash-research-on-renewable-energy-and-clean-coal/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...
    - 9y ago
- Joeri 9y ago
  The cost of measures to respond to climate change's consequences dwarf the costs to prevent it. Look at the 5.5 billion euro flood barrier that was built in venice. That is just to protect one city. Now multiply that over all cities on all coastlines. We can't afford to do nothing, it is simply too expensive.
- guelo 9y ago
  I agree that technology is our only hope now, but only because we cannot stop conservative's occasional grip on power and their love of oil money. If technology doesn't save us eventually war, famine and the collapse of the world order will stop carbon emissions but by then it will be too late.
- knz 9y ago
  > The belief that the U.S. needs to be involved in the international stage It's in the financial interests of the US to be involved on the international stage. I listened to Trump's speech today and heard nothing but "Boohoo, it's so hard to be America". The reality is that the US is the gorilla in every room - we have the largest economy, largest military, and American hegemony has been a massive benefit to the country. Countries bend over backwards to gain access to US markets and millions still aspire to move here looking for better opportunities. The whole situation reminds me of a quote from Interstellar - "We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt." We've giving up our global leadership for the sake of a few extra dollars in our pocket now - never mind the cost of inaction or every bit of scientific evidence that tells us something must be done. Even the Department of Defense believes that climate change is real and will have significant consequences for the US. When did American exceptionalism turn into "It's too hard so I'm going to do nothing"?
  - cirath 9y ago
    > When did American exceptionalism turn into "It's too hard so I'm going to do nothing"? That's been a painfully common refrain in the current generation of political discourse (though the generational line is difficult to pinpoint; there seem to be as many young people talking about it as 60 year old lifetime senators). Climate change? Hard to deal with, we should do nothing. Gun control? They will take all our guns, or take none, and the second amendment said I could have guns. There is no middle ground. But the root cause is polarization; rather than middle grounds, shades of gray, or compromises, everything in the current political climate seems to boil down to black or white, right or wrong, with no space between. It's... Hard to watch, some days.
- barrkel 9y ago
  Even if climate change is a figment of people's imagination, it's a shared figment, and leadership affects how the US is perceived. China is rising, and China is In. That means China will be leading where the US is off on its own.
- nikdaheratik 9y ago
  That's flat out untrue. The first set of targets from the Paris accords will probably be met without any action by Trump simply due to the fact that we are switching from Coal to Natural Gas and Wind/Solar power. The next set of targets would require either alot more Solar, or a commitment to replacing the rest of the coal plants with Nuclear. None of these are either a huge technological leap or a major reduction in our standard of living.

rayiner 9y ago

> If you believe the USA should be involved at all on the international stage, this creation of new public knowledge is a big detriment to that end. The belief that the U.S. needs to be involved in the international stage is based on the fallacious assumption that international cooperation can fix climate change. There is no scenario in which that happens. Without fundamental technological leaps, we'd have to decrease the standard of living in the developed world to reduce emissions while accommodating increased standard of living in the developing world. The math doesn't add up.

threeseed 9y ago
> fallacious assumption that international cooperation can fix climate change ITER for example is an international project which if it were successful would change the energy landscape and by extension the climate change issue dramatically. This and projects like this requires international cooperation. Also look at when the world united to outlaw HCFC refrigerant. That made a huge difference to the planet's outlook.
scarmig 9y ago
> The U.S. doesn't need to be involved on the international stage. I disagree in large part, though I do think the world would be stabler if the USA took much less military action and was a bit more respectful of zones of influence of other countries. But even if I strongly agreed, I'd think the USA should make an orderly retreat from its existing obligations. Instead it's creating vacuums of power and chaos based on fits of pique by a literal maniac. > The fallacy here is assuming that international cooperation is going to solve climate change. It's worked on other issues. And political environments drive technological change. But, yes, I agree it's a particularly thorny issue, and I wouldn't say I'm too optimistic of its probability of success compared to other international collaborations. But that's something to bemoan, not something to celebrate.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> There is no political fix. Only technological ones. Technological fixes will not be adopted unless climate-related externalities are internalized into transactions, because of the tragedy of the commons. A political fix is a necessary prerequisite to the adoption of any technological fix.
- daxorid 9y ago
  There are very real physical limits to technological fixes anyway: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-ma...
  - amluto 9y ago
    That site thinks that a source that could produce less than 25% of total foreseeable global demand is worthless. I find this to be a rather strange conclusion. Two sources, each producing 24% of foreseeable global demand, could cut emissions and fuel use by 48%, which would be huge.
- gonvaled 9y ago
  This, very much this. Another way to put this: the asteroid does not care if your financial markets have factored it in the models or not. It just hits you.
- fvdessen 9y ago
  Energy consumption is one of the largest costs of every human activity, there is already incredible incentives for everyone to reduce consumption. Energy efficiency has increased for every country despite the lack of a common political framework. [1] [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Energy_intensity,_2003_and_2013.png http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
  - dllthomas 9y ago
    But improving efficiency reduces cost, which can sometimes actually increase overall use. If we're going to see reductions in emissions for economic reasons, we need emissions to cost something.
mcphage 9y ago
> The U.S. doesn't need to be involved on the international stage. Yeah, it really does. The US might be a big economy, but not-US is an even bigger economy.
- barrkel 9y ago
  And the US is an ever-decreasing share of the global economy - it's shrinking in relative terms. China overtook the US in World GDP share at PPP in 2014.
sqeaky 9y ago
It is hard to implement a technological fix without political will. Politcal can reserve funding, can align businesses and academics, can make that technological windfall we haven't yet invented a little mote likely. What if there is no technological solution, or we fail to find it? Having political agreement and unity to fallback on is a good thing. Even if we do something terrible to the planet, we can mitigate that together, instead of ignoring it or making it worse.
- harryh 9y ago
  What if there is no technological solution, or we fail to find it? Then we're going to see a dramatic transformation of the planet due to significantly rising global temperatures. That is the grim reality.
- ra1n85 9y ago
  Trump is the antithesis of unified political will. He's a symptom of a deeply divided society. The focus on finding consensus and political will on climate change is putting the cart before the horse. There's no consensus or deal making to be had with this degree of division and anger.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I agree. Not being able to get it doesn't change the fact that we need it.
comicjk 9y ago
> Without fundamental technological leaps Sounds like we'd better get working, then? Emissions controls to stimulate private innovation, plus public research grants to help longer-term innovation. We need to set up incentives wherein fundamental technological leaps are the goal.
fusiongyro 9y ago
Even controlling for the harm to the environment, you have to consider the harm to our foreign policy if we become unable to uphold any agreement for more than 4 years.
- twoodfin 9y ago
  I'd hope our counterparts from other nations would be sophisticated enough about our Constitutional system to understand that what one President can agree to without enshrining it in law through Congress, a later President can just as easily disregard.
  - gonvaled 9y ago
    Irrelevant. I don't care why your country is not trustworthy.
    - aanm1988 9y ago
      Exactly. Other countries have working systems of government. The US needs to get their shit together.
  - fusiongyro 9y ago
    I agree. And it's true that the Paris agreement should have gone through the treaty ratification process. But I'm not convinced our president understands that difference and I definitely do not believe that his behavior is motivated by a comprehension of those differences rather than the content of the agreement.
electic 9y ago
Your ignorance is breathtaking. The US and other developed countries have always taken the lead on environmental policy that has resulted in real change. The most famous is the Montreal Protocol which resulted in the banning of CFCs and saved the Ozone Layer[1]. The policy decision drove technological innovation and created entire new classes of appliances and chemicals which resulted in millions of new jobs. After the Kyoto disaster, and now this, it is going to be hard to anyone to trust The United States. Past Republican and Democratic presidents may not have fully agreed with their predecessor's foreign policy decisions but they always aimed for consistent outward message. All this does it give China and Russia what they wanted, that the United States can't be trusted as a partner. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
- rayiner 9y ago
  The CFC problem was a narrow one, and the Montreal protocol was implemented a decade after development started on CFC alternatives. At the time Montreal was implemented, there was a clear picture of how to get from point A to point B. Climate change is in comparison a moon shot. We don't know what will work and how it'll work. There's not some single thing we can ban and fix the problem. It calls for structural change and changes in peoples' way of life and the political system can't achieve that.
  - epistasis 9y ago
    Citation needed. Solar, wind, EV and now even electrical storage are being jump started with tax credits.
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      Solar, wind, EV and now even electrical storage are being jump started with tax credits. Were. At least if Trump gets his way: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/18/trumps-budget-expected-to-massively-slash-research-on-renewable-energy-and-clean-coal/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...
  - 9y ago
Joeri 9y ago
The cost of measures to respond to climate change's consequences dwarf the costs to prevent it. Look at the 5.5 billion euro flood barrier that was built in venice. That is just to protect one city. Now multiply that over all cities on all coastlines. We can't afford to do nothing, it is simply too expensive.
guelo 9y ago
I agree that technology is our only hope now, but only because we cannot stop conservative's occasional grip on power and their love of oil money. If technology doesn't save us eventually war, famine and the collapse of the world order will stop carbon emissions but by then it will be too late.
knz 9y ago
> The belief that the U.S. needs to be involved in the international stage It's in the financial interests of the US to be involved on the international stage. I listened to Trump's speech today and heard nothing but "Boohoo, it's so hard to be America". The reality is that the US is the gorilla in every room - we have the largest economy, largest military, and American hegemony has been a massive benefit to the country. Countries bend over backwards to gain access to US markets and millions still aspire to move here looking for better opportunities. The whole situation reminds me of a quote from Interstellar - "We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt." We've giving up our global leadership for the sake of a few extra dollars in our pocket now - never mind the cost of inaction or every bit of scientific evidence that tells us something must be done. Even the Department of Defense believes that climate change is real and will have significant consequences for the US. When did American exceptionalism turn into "It's too hard so I'm going to do nothing"?
- cirath 9y ago
  > When did American exceptionalism turn into "It's too hard so I'm going to do nothing"? That's been a painfully common refrain in the current generation of political discourse (though the generational line is difficult to pinpoint; there seem to be as many young people talking about it as 60 year old lifetime senators). Climate change? Hard to deal with, we should do nothing. Gun control? They will take all our guns, or take none, and the second amendment said I could have guns. There is no middle ground. But the root cause is polarization; rather than middle grounds, shades of gray, or compromises, everything in the current political climate seems to boil down to black or white, right or wrong, with no space between. It's... Hard to watch, some days.
barrkel 9y ago
Even if climate change is a figment of people's imagination, it's a shared figment, and leadership affects how the US is perceived. China is rising, and China is In. That means China will be leading where the US is off on its own.
nikdaheratik 9y ago
That's flat out untrue. The first set of targets from the Paris accords will probably be met without any action by Trump simply due to the fact that we are switching from Coal to Natural Gas and Wind/Solar power. The next set of targets would require either alot more Solar, or a commitment to replacing the rest of the coal plants with Nuclear. None of these are either a huge technological leap or a major reduction in our standard of living.