3 ms·

The #1 most important one is "whatever politicians and ideologies are holding us back or even slowing us down". Pragmatically speaking in America today that me

The #1 most important one is "whatever politicians and ideologies are holding us back or even slowing us down". Pragmatically speaking in America today that means anyone to the right of Bernie, and the ideological/zealous-religious-belief that the govt can't solve problems, that they must be solved via individual consumer choices in a market. This also includes the ideology of "centrism", which is simply the american word for conservatism. If nothing can be done until it is bipartisan, then that simply gives the side that doesn't want to do anything a veto over everything. I could keep going with 2, 3, 4, etc but its incredibly rare for anyone to get past #1. In 2016 you could point to Bernie's climate plan and Hillary's and they were off by nearly a full order of magnitude. "Centrist" and "moderate" dems chose Hillary instead. In 2020 we had a very similar choice between Bernie's plan and Biden's. The "centrist/moderate" crew chose the guy with the weaker plan, and then a year later destroyed that too. So it really is this simple. If we're ever going to truly address the problem, we need to elect the people proposing to actually do it. We consistently do not because everyone has their <pet political issues> that they will prioritize over a collapsing biosphere.

commandlinefan 5y ago
Aaaaand there it is. “The only way to solve climate change is to vote 3xtreme left”. I’ll continue to be skeptical.
- cagenut 5y ago
  "aaand there it is" skepticism in the face of blatant reality as a defense mechanism from admitting wrongness. Has anyone from the center or the right even campaigned on the issue? no. You can wish things were different, I do, but they're not. I mean even just campaigning on an issue isn't enough, we need to drive enough of the people who campaign on it into office so that they collectively wind up having to actually do it, not just talk about it. So really when I say "Bernie" I mean "Bernie and 61 senators and 218 congress people". Thats the system we live in. Those are the votes you need to enact meaningful policy, and climate change is so massive a challenge that it requires meaningful policy backing to be addressed at the requisite scale. To put this in context, the US Military budget is around 700B a year, and the estimates of what it would have cost if we started ini 2016 to do the necessary domestic transition to do our part in avoiding 1.5C was about 1.6T/year for 10 years. Obviously that ship has completely sailed, but it doesn't meaningfully change the cost, it just means we have to spend around the same amount now to try and hold the line at 2.0C. There are no other budgets or policy proposals that even come close. By all means link me to one if you think i'm wrong.

commandlinefan 5y ago

Aaaaand there it is. “The only way to solve climate change is to vote 3xtreme left”. I’ll continue to be skeptical.

cagenut 5y ago
"aaand there it is" skepticism in the face of blatant reality as a defense mechanism from admitting wrongness. Has anyone from the center or the right even campaigned on the issue? no. You can wish things were different, I do, but they're not. I mean even just campaigning on an issue isn't enough, we need to drive enough of the people who campaign on it into office so that they collectively wind up having to actually do it, not just talk about it. So really when I say "Bernie" I mean "Bernie and 61 senators and 218 congress people". Thats the system we live in. Those are the votes you need to enact meaningful policy, and climate change is so massive a challenge that it requires meaningful policy backing to be addressed at the requisite scale. To put this in context, the US Military budget is around 700B a year, and the estimates of what it would have cost if we started ini 2016 to do the necessary domestic transition to do our part in avoiding 1.5C was about 1.6T/year for 10 years. Obviously that ship has completely sailed, but it doesn't meaningfully change the cost, it just means we have to spend around the same amount now to try and hold the line at 2.0C. There are no other budgets or policy proposals that even come close. By all means link me to one if you think i'm wrong.