4 ms·

Obama takes credit for U.S. oil-and-gas boom: ‘That was me, people’ https://apnews.com/article/business-5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caad0bfefb2 https://apnews.com/arti

by lapcat 7mo ago

Obama takes credit for U.S. oil-and-gas boom: ‘That was me, people’ https://apnews.com/article/business-5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caad0bfefb2 https://apnews.com/article/business-5dfbc1aa17701ae219239caa... You have to be born yesterday to believe that Democratic leaders haven't merely hand-waved and virtue-signaled about global warming for decades. I realized this back in the 1990s. Democrats have superior rhetoric, and they are less openly hostile, but their long record of doing nothing to help is unsurpassed. They will fiddle while Republicans burn Rome. And don't forget that Joe Manchin for example was a Democrat, one who dominated Democratic policy during the Biden administration.

M3L0NM4N 7mo ago
We need to push for clean tech obviously. I disagree with Republicans blocking wind farm construction and rolling back regulations, but American energy independence is important for national security, which is a shorter term issue than climate change. And developing more domestic clean energy helps with that as well.
HoldOnAMinute 7mo ago
Exactly. As a Democrat my eyes were opened when I saw the senior leadership do absolutely nothing to impede Trump other than form a strongly worded tweet.
knowaveragejoe 7mo ago
You do the people causing this problem a great service with false equivocations like this. It is clear one group would prefer us to ignore the problem and do nothing at all - in fact encourage the problematic behavior - and the other would very much like to take action on the issue if they had the political power.
- lapcat 7mo ago
  > the other would very much like to take action on the issue if they had the political power. They had political power! During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, during the Clinton administration. Al Gore is a famous environmentalist... for making a movie after he was out of power. What the hell did he do for the environment when he was literally in the Oval Office, at the side of the President?
  - ceejayoz 7mo ago
    > What the hell did he do for the environment when he was literally in the Oval Office, at the side of the President? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_activism_of_Al_Gore#Vice_presidency:_1993%E2%80%932001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_activism_of_Al_G... Guy tried.
    - lapcat 7mo ago
      > Guy tried. Give him a sticker.
      - ceejayoz 7mo ago
        That's more perks than the job Constitutionally awards. It was created as a powerless placeholder role.
        lapcat 7mo ago
        You're missing the point, which is that by all accounts, Al Gore was a close advisor to Bill Clinton.
        ceejayoz 7mo ago
        And by all accounts, he pushed for action on climate change. As it turns out, close advisors still don't get to set policy.
        lapcat 7mo ago
        Another interpretation is that Gore engaged primarily in symbolism. The Kyoto Protocol itself was primarily symbolic, with little or no enforcement mechanism.
  - mrguyorama 7mo ago
    >During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, during the Clinton administration The president doesn't actually control much in the USA, despite the nonsensical shit republican congresses let them get away with. Obama, Biden, and Clinton could not do anything that wasn't approved by congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat... Democrats have not really held enough power to do anything at all in like 40 years. A 1 or 2 vote "majority" in a chamber is not really meant to allow you to do anything. Hell, that very first graph makes it pretty clear why shit is so bad in the US, we used to actually fire congress and replace them with different people.
analognoise 7mo ago
You’re talking badly about the people who actually crafted real industrial policy for clean energy. It was dismantled by Trump and Republicans - even when the output was going to be a factory making batteries on US soil, wind and solar farms, etc. Like the Republicans are absolutely embarrassing on this issue, the idea that they’re “two wings of the same bird” is nuts.
specialist 7mo ago
I'm old enough to remember the Obama Admin's support for the nascent battery and PV industries. Ditto Biden Admin's support for our transition to renewables (IIJA, IRA). Unprecedented. The type of Keynesian investment in the USA (industrial policy, pro-labor) unseen since FDR's New Deal. > don't forget that Joe Manchin No one on the left ever will. That said, it's important to note that the Democratic (center-left) coalition is wicked hard to hold together. Have you read Caro's (epic) biographies of LBJ? It's amazing how much skill, subterfuge, and manipulation was required to pass progressive legislation over the objections of the die-hard reactionaries. Everything about politics sucks. Chaos, apathy, nihilism, grifting are the default. It's absolutely amazing that anything gets done at all. So we should celebrate, and learn from, the occasional success.
- lapcat 7mo ago
  > So we should celebrate, and learn from, the occasional success. What success? It's too late. The time for decisive action was decades ago. The worst case scenario is occurring now. Humanity totally failed to avert a disaster. We've already blown past the global temperature thresholds that scientists warned about. Now we're going to have to deal with the consequences. There's no going back in time to prevent it. This was never a problem that we could wait on for "the occasional success."
  - specialist 7mo ago
    Methinks our current path has been determined since ~1980, with ~2000 probably being the last chance we had to stay under 1.5C. So, well, whaddya gonna do? The trick is deluding oneself that we can somehow muddle thru this. (Humanity has in fact survived worse.) Otherwise I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Is that reasonable? If not, then I might as well soldier on.
    - lapcat 7mo ago
      > Methinks our current path has been determined since ~1980, with ~2000 probably being the last chance we had to stay under 1.5C. That's why I said "I realized this back in the 1990s" and was later complaining about Al Gore. > Otherwise I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Is that reasonable? This is not like nuclear war—which could still happen, because we still have the weapons, and the madmen to use them—where we're all going to die tomorrow. We're already seeing the effects—as the submitted article shows—but the worst is yet to come. We're cursing our descendants with a world much more hostile than the one we were born into, for no other reason than greed and selfishness. It's the ultimate betrayal of the future. (By the way, I'm a human and deliberately chose to use em dashes, because I felt like it.) The best thing to happen for global warming in recent years was not the Biden administration but actually the pandemic, because it significantly cut industrial output for an extended time.

by lapcat 7mo ago

M3L0NM4N 7mo ago

We need to push for clean tech obviously. I disagree with Republicans blocking wind farm construction and rolling back regulations, but American energy independence is important for national security, which is a shorter term issue than climate change. And developing more domestic clean energy helps with that as well.

HoldOnAMinute 7mo ago

Exactly. As a Democrat my eyes were opened when I saw the senior leadership do absolutely nothing to impede Trump other than form a strongly worded tweet.

knowaveragejoe 7mo ago

You do the people causing this problem a great service with false equivocations like this. It is clear one group would prefer us to ignore the problem and do nothing at all - in fact encourage the problematic behavior - and the other would very much like to take action on the issue if they had the political power.

lapcat 7mo ago
> the other would very much like to take action on the issue if they had the political power. They had political power! During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, during the Clinton administration. Al Gore is a famous environmentalist... for making a movie after he was out of power. What the hell did he do for the environment when he was literally in the Oval Office, at the side of the President?
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  > What the hell did he do for the environment when he was literally in the Oval Office, at the side of the President? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_activism_of_Al_Gore#Vice_presidency:_1993%E2%80%932001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_activism_of_Al_G... Guy tried.
  - lapcat 7mo ago
    > Guy tried. Give him a sticker.
    - ceejayoz 7mo ago
      That's more perks than the job Constitutionally awards. It was created as a powerless placeholder role.
      - lapcat 7mo ago
        You're missing the point, which is that by all accounts, Al Gore was a close advisor to Bill Clinton.
        ceejayoz 7mo ago
        And by all accounts, he pushed for action on climate change. As it turns out, close advisors still don't get to set policy.
        lapcat 7mo ago
        Another interpretation is that Gore engaged primarily in symbolism. The Kyoto Protocol itself was primarily symbolic, with little or no enforcement mechanism.
- mrguyorama 7mo ago
  >During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, during the Clinton administration The president doesn't actually control much in the USA, despite the nonsensical shit republican congresses let them get away with. Obama, Biden, and Clinton could not do anything that wasn't approved by congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat... Democrats have not really held enough power to do anything at all in like 40 years. A 1 or 2 vote "majority" in a chamber is not really meant to allow you to do anything. Hell, that very first graph makes it pretty clear why shit is so bad in the US, we used to actually fire congress and replace them with different people.

analognoise 7mo ago

You’re talking badly about the people who actually crafted real industrial policy for clean energy. It was dismantled by Trump and Republicans - even when the output was going to be a factory making batteries on US soil, wind and solar farms, etc. Like the Republicans are absolutely embarrassing on this issue, the idea that they’re “two wings of the same bird” is nuts.

specialist 7mo ago

I'm old enough to remember the Obama Admin's support for the nascent battery and PV industries. Ditto Biden Admin's support for our transition to renewables (IIJA, IRA). Unprecedented. The type of Keynesian investment in the USA (industrial policy, pro-labor) unseen since FDR's New Deal. > don't forget that Joe Manchin No one on the left ever will. That said, it's important to note that the Democratic (center-left) coalition is wicked hard to hold together. Have you read Caro's (epic) biographies of LBJ? It's amazing how much skill, subterfuge, and manipulation was required to pass progressive legislation over the objections of the die-hard reactionaries. Everything about politics sucks. Chaos, apathy, nihilism, grifting are the default. It's absolutely amazing that anything gets done at all. So we should celebrate, and learn from, the occasional success.

lapcat 7mo ago
> So we should celebrate, and learn from, the occasional success. What success? It's too late. The time for decisive action was decades ago. The worst case scenario is occurring now. Humanity totally failed to avert a disaster. We've already blown past the global temperature thresholds that scientists warned about. Now we're going to have to deal with the consequences. There's no going back in time to prevent it. This was never a problem that we could wait on for "the occasional success."
- specialist 7mo ago
  Methinks our current path has been determined since ~1980, with ~2000 probably being the last chance we had to stay under 1.5C. So, well, whaddya gonna do? The trick is deluding oneself that we can somehow muddle thru this. (Humanity has in fact survived worse.) Otherwise I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Is that reasonable? If not, then I might as well soldier on.
  - lapcat 7mo ago
    > Methinks our current path has been determined since ~1980, with ~2000 probably being the last chance we had to stay under 1.5C. That's why I said "I realized this back in the 1990s" and was later complaining about Al Gore. > Otherwise I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Is that reasonable? This is not like nuclear war—which could still happen, because we still have the weapons, and the madmen to use them—where we're all going to die tomorrow. We're already seeing the effects—as the submitted article shows—but the worst is yet to come. We're cursing our descendants with a world much more hostile than the one we were born into, for no other reason than greed and selfishness. It's the ultimate betrayal of the future. (By the way, I'm a human and deliberately chose to use em dashes, because I felt like it.) The best thing to happen for global warming in recent years was not the Biden administration but actually the pandemic, because it significantly cut industrial output for an extended time.