5 ms·

This would be like a rule that prevents trade with Iran Energy Sector. Except on insurance companies who do business with fossil fuel companies.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
If you consider climate change an emergency, and/or the fact that fossil fuel externalities are rarely internalized (vs dumped on the collective commons), this is a reasonable policy position. If we can’t pass a carbon tax due to lack of political will, find other points of leverage and exert force.
- kcplate 3y ago
  > If we can’t pass a carbon tax due to lack of political will, find other points of leverage and exert force. It’s remarkable to me how fast people are willing to resort to authoritarianism when they can’t get their way via a democratic process. Jesus, you people scare the fuck out of me.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Interestingly, living within our carbon budget scares you, but not climate change. This is an extremely concerning position to someone like myself who believes in climate change (based on all available evidence). If you’re in your 50s, you won’t even be around when the worst of this hits. You’re ordering dinner for a table you won’t be at when it arrives. Democracy is great when everyone is an educated, engaged, rational voter. It is not so great when significant cohorts are uneducated, ignorant, and/or vote their feelings, or worse, gerrymandering, the electoral college, and other political systems giving overweighted control to political minorities who would otherwise not have the power they have. Citizens should be entitled to representation, but not over representation (which is what holds us back currently).
    - kcplate 3y ago
      > Interestingly, living within our carbon budget scares you, but not climate change No. What’s scares me is a bunch of people willing to resort to authoritarianism to impose their will and moralities on other people to get their way who ought to know better from literally the whole of human history. Your argument is the same tired shit I have heard for decades from various groups with an eye and agenda for control and power (evangelicals, fascists, elitists, now these leftist authoritarians) and its always the same lame excuse—“They are not educated and cannot be trusted”.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Saving the rest of us from climate deniers is authoritarianism? It sounds like self preservation to me. We’re just insisting on folks stop ruining the ecosystem the rest of us must survive in. There’s nowhere else for us to go once this one is ruined. ~1.8M voters over the age of 55 age out every year in the US, so while the argument may be tired, older folks won’t have to hear it for long (and change, while constant and inevitable, can be hard to accept).
        sandspar 3y ago
        Note: Keep this guy in mind.
        kcplate 3y ago
        You know, nearly every generation that proceeded you made some form of the “preserve the earth and society for when we are your age” argument. Your generation seems to be the only one that I can think of that wants to make it happen via authoritarian means. Once upon a time, us liberals argued against that sort of thing. Probably because we saw first hand what it does to a society. Good luck, like you said, you will need to live under the fist in that world you create, I’ll be thankfully gone.
        acdha 3y ago
        > Your generation seems to be the only one that I can think of that wants to make it happen via authoritarian means. This is hard to support if you study much history. Every environmental law has been criticized as authoritarian. In the middle of the previous century, Los Angeles had smog so bad it was common not to be able to see across the street and some conservatives argued that doing anything about it was tyranny and would devastate the economy; California’s air quality laws were so effective that they were widely copied and it devastated the economy into 5th place globally. Very few of the critics ever admitted being completely wrong about that, even if they will admit that it’s easier to breathe now. That pattern repeats for water quality, bans on all kinds of pollutants, anti littering campaigns, etc. because there are a lot of industries which have a financial incentive in preserving the status quo. Often those pushes cut across industry lines, too: for example, a decade ago there was an astroturf campaign arguing that DDT restrictions were responsible for malaria deaths (based on people not knowing that evolved resistance was already a major problem in the 1950s), and that appeared to be funded not by the chemical industry but by the tobacco companies who were looking for attacks on public health agencies in Africa in response to successful anti smoking campaigns.
  - neon5077 3y ago
    We've been trying the democratic process for almost a century. This is not fast or sudden at all.
    - kcplate 3y ago
      And if you are not able to get what you want from it, then perhaps what you want is not appropriate or desired by the people around you.
      - wizzwizz4 3y ago
        Therefore, if something is not currently a law, we should not ever try to make it a law! Georg Hegel was right: we have reached the absolute ideal free society. https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/348 https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/348
        kcplate 3y ago
        That’s not what I said nor what I was arguing. I quoted the parent commenter in my original comment.
  - kadoban 3y ago
    In what way is this not the democratic process? It's a law under consideration in a state. Is Connecticut not a democracy?
    - mortify 3y ago
      It is the democratic process and this is why the country was founded as a republic because they saw democracy as a kind of tyranny by the majority. Even if everyone in CT voted to kill Bob in Granby, it would be illegal although it would be democratic to kill him.
      - kadoban 3y ago
        Is your point that this action is some sort of direct democratic process and thus problematic? I'm having trouble finding any other reading of what you're saying. But it isn't, this is a bill working its way through the state senate. That _is_ the republic part. It's not a ballot initiative.
    - kcplate 3y ago
      I was referring to the comment above me.
mc32 3y ago
What this might accomplish is the acceleration of Insurers moving out of CT. If CT had an otherwise well diversified economy, it might not be a biggie. If they have a lot of insurers there, then it might not be such a good move. In addition, if there is less resource extraction in the US which has higher regulation, this will move extraction overseas where there is lighter regulation, but the local politicians feel good about doing something.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- acdha 3y ago
  The bill is scoped to projects in Connecticut. Nobody is relocating their headquarters over that because they’d either pay the same fee anyway or pass on those projects.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

If you consider climate change an emergency, and/or the fact that fossil fuel externalities are rarely internalized (vs dumped on the collective commons), this is a reasonable policy position. If we can’t pass a carbon tax due to lack of political will, find other points of leverage and exert force.

kcplate 3y ago
> If we can’t pass a carbon tax due to lack of political will, find other points of leverage and exert force. It’s remarkable to me how fast people are willing to resort to authoritarianism when they can’t get their way via a democratic process. Jesus, you people scare the fuck out of me.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Interestingly, living within our carbon budget scares you, but not climate change. This is an extremely concerning position to someone like myself who believes in climate change (based on all available evidence). If you’re in your 50s, you won’t even be around when the worst of this hits. You’re ordering dinner for a table you won’t be at when it arrives. Democracy is great when everyone is an educated, engaged, rational voter. It is not so great when significant cohorts are uneducated, ignorant, and/or vote their feelings, or worse, gerrymandering, the electoral college, and other political systems giving overweighted control to political minorities who would otherwise not have the power they have. Citizens should be entitled to representation, but not over representation (which is what holds us back currently).
  - kcplate 3y ago
    > Interestingly, living within our carbon budget scares you, but not climate change No. What’s scares me is a bunch of people willing to resort to authoritarianism to impose their will and moralities on other people to get their way who ought to know better from literally the whole of human history. Your argument is the same tired shit I have heard for decades from various groups with an eye and agenda for control and power (evangelicals, fascists, elitists, now these leftist authoritarians) and its always the same lame excuse—“They are not educated and cannot be trusted”.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Saving the rest of us from climate deniers is authoritarianism? It sounds like self preservation to me. We’re just insisting on folks stop ruining the ecosystem the rest of us must survive in. There’s nowhere else for us to go once this one is ruined. ~1.8M voters over the age of 55 age out every year in the US, so while the argument may be tired, older folks won’t have to hear it for long (and change, while constant and inevitable, can be hard to accept).
      - sandspar 3y ago
        Note: Keep this guy in mind.
      - kcplate 3y ago
        You know, nearly every generation that proceeded you made some form of the “preserve the earth and society for when we are your age” argument. Your generation seems to be the only one that I can think of that wants to make it happen via authoritarian means. Once upon a time, us liberals argued against that sort of thing. Probably because we saw first hand what it does to a society. Good luck, like you said, you will need to live under the fist in that world you create, I’ll be thankfully gone.
        acdha 3y ago
        > Your generation seems to be the only one that I can think of that wants to make it happen via authoritarian means. This is hard to support if you study much history. Every environmental law has been criticized as authoritarian. In the middle of the previous century, Los Angeles had smog so bad it was common not to be able to see across the street and some conservatives argued that doing anything about it was tyranny and would devastate the economy; California’s air quality laws were so effective that they were widely copied and it devastated the economy into 5th place globally. Very few of the critics ever admitted being completely wrong about that, even if they will admit that it’s easier to breathe now. That pattern repeats for water quality, bans on all kinds of pollutants, anti littering campaigns, etc. because there are a lot of industries which have a financial incentive in preserving the status quo. Often those pushes cut across industry lines, too: for example, a decade ago there was an astroturf campaign arguing that DDT restrictions were responsible for malaria deaths (based on people not knowing that evolved resistance was already a major problem in the 1950s), and that appeared to be funded not by the chemical industry but by the tobacco companies who were looking for attacks on public health agencies in Africa in response to successful anti smoking campaigns.
- neon5077 3y ago
  We've been trying the democratic process for almost a century. This is not fast or sudden at all.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    And if you are not able to get what you want from it, then perhaps what you want is not appropriate or desired by the people around you.
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      Therefore, if something is not currently a law, we should not ever try to make it a law! Georg Hegel was right: we have reached the absolute ideal free society. https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/348 https://www.existentialcomics.com/comic/348
      - kcplate 3y ago
        That’s not what I said nor what I was arguing. I quoted the parent commenter in my original comment.
- kadoban 3y ago
  In what way is this not the democratic process? It's a law under consideration in a state. Is Connecticut not a democracy?
  - mortify 3y ago
    It is the democratic process and this is why the country was founded as a republic because they saw democracy as a kind of tyranny by the majority. Even if everyone in CT voted to kill Bob in Granby, it would be illegal although it would be democratic to kill him.
    - kadoban 3y ago
      Is your point that this action is some sort of direct democratic process and thus problematic? I'm having trouble finding any other reading of what you're saying. But it isn't, this is a bill working its way through the state senate. That _is_ the republic part. It's not a ballot initiative.
  - kcplate 3y ago
    I was referring to the comment above me.

mc32 3y ago

What this might accomplish is the acceleration of Insurers moving out of CT. If CT had an otherwise well diversified economy, it might not be a biggie. If they have a lot of insurers there, then it might not be such a good move. In addition, if there is less resource extraction in the US which has higher regulation, this will move extraction overseas where there is lighter regulation, but the local politicians feel good about doing something.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
acdha 3y ago
The bill is scoped to projects in Connecticut. Nobody is relocating their headquarters over that because they’d either pay the same fee anyway or pass on those projects.