Increased enforcement cost isn’t always permanent. The longterm result might be lower costs to the enforcing party.
After all, the whole discussion is about the long term. But initially, there is financial pain. OTOH, it is far less financial pain and waste than being forced to replace vehicles. Reducing speeds driven is probably the least expensive way to cut down on one form of environmental damage.
Only ten years ago, we were being told to replace incandescent fixtures and bulbs with CFL. Those horrible things had a short period of “green badgism” before LED became popular. What a waste…the rush to jump out incandescents could have skipped that sorry CFL chapter in technology “improvements.”
US society has long been the realm (actual or not) of The Rugged Individual, The Self-Made Man (no Woman?), The Lone Eagle, The Cowboy Culture, blahblahblah.
Ironically, cowboys and many self-mades sometimes work heavily with peers, or else the job won’t get done. (I live in an area of
working cowboys.)
No, what the US culture has been incrementally eding towards more and more is blatant selfishness, which is not the same as individualism. Being proudly selfish has become normalized. “I can afford it and I don’t care what it does to anything or anybody else.”
First off we in the USA do not live under a democracy our government is a representative democracy. There is a huge difference in the two and there are quite a few presidential election where in a democracy the winner of the popular vote would have been the winner instead of the winner of the electoral collage vote. We elect representatives and senators and then we trust them to do our running of the government for us.
Science and industry are in no way run as a democracy. Both are strongly biased bending to the will of a couple people at the top steering the ship.
International collective bodies are in no way democracies and can as easily be biased or outright controlled.
The moon landing is a great example of what mankind can do working together. Not just scientists but folks of every trade and profession, all working to a common goal. It allowed government to present a problem and provide funding and then get out of the way of those doing it. The true benefits of the space program all happened here on earth with the spin off of tech in a million other directions.
Yesterday Biden took a hard hitting interview by the weather channel where he told them he has announced a national climate change emergency. The USA has passed a $368B climate change facility. And that climate change is the existential threat to humanity. I guess we will have to wait to see how well the climate change facility will work.
This guy is no JFK IMO.
One would think a speech of this impact by the UN would have the room packed with reporters. We are past the point of global warming and in the age of global boiling. Some people had said they hadn’t seen this speech so I will post the UN link. July is the hottest month in mankind’s existence and that proves without any doubt action has to start right now. I would have thought the 24-7 news would be talking about nothing but this story. You said when things get bad enough we will work together. Well the top guy in the USA just told us that climate change is the existential threat to humanity and the head of the UN just told us we are past warming and officially in the boiling point.
Not interested in debating. You kept trying to (apparently) understand what my views were. I gave them to you. Now you have some understanding of my views.
In my experience, debates are poor methods for gaining understanding. Good entertainment, perhaps, if you like that sort of thing. Have fun trying to draw other people into the debates you want to have.
If you ever want to actually try and understand the science of climate warming, I may be interested in volunteering my time. I am not sure I can help, but I am willing to try. My requirement will be that we first seek to understand the best compilation of climate change science that I know of, the IPCC work. Until then, hope you take some time to paddle.
You mentioned light bulbs and the evolution. I happen to know a little about that as my company had a lamp business In Ohio making incandescent bulbs going back to Edison. When the CFL craze hit and later the LED. The workers of that plant were 100% in favor of moving to the new technologies. The company used CFL as the ideal time to make the move out of the rust belt and start up in China. If you know much about these kinds of products they are so highly automated labor cost is insignificant.
Light bulbs just one more thing no longer made here and now made in communist China.
I decided in my early 20’s that the most significant thing I could do for the planet was not reproduce. It’s not popular to state the obvious, but there are too many of us. And an urban-based child in the developed nations has 400 times the environmental footprint over their life than one in a third world rural family. Now that we have the advanced technologies of contraception, childbearing is essentially a selfish and self-indulgent choice.
Does not matter who founded it, the current New York Post is graded by all media surveys as straddling the horizontal bias axis of “skews conservative” and “hyper-partisan conservative”. And on the more critical vertical axis of journalistic integrity, it is right beside Fox News on the cusp of “unfair interpretations of the news” and “nonsense damaging to public discourse”, down there with Infowars, NewsMax, Breitbart and the Enquirer. Note that this chart (typical of many such media analysis surveys) also categorizes just as many ultra liberal media outlets for poor and even dangerously inaccurate journalism.
There won’t be mutuallly assured destruction! The US no longer has the industrial base for anything. Electronics are mostly supplied by Taiwan. 90% of our medicine is manufactured by a country with interests that conflict with the US. We sold over 2/3 of our oil reserves; our solar and wind power depends on the same country. Our military has been preoccupied since the mid 1990s with converting to berets (made in a suprising place) and different uniforms, while the hardware has been depleted from sending our surplus stockpile to another country. We owe Taiwan 18 billion in military equipment that they paid for, but we can’t furnish for at least another five years. Our strategic defense sites have recently been mapped.
Two years ago, we were given a lesson about supply chain (which nobody even knew about or how to spell). Yet the government contracted an overstock and recommends six of The Covids Shots every year, while a foreign contry has a secret, illegal, unauthorized, research or biological or germ warfare lab in California, but we dont know the origins of this last virus go around and don’t seem interested in the source, but it’s believed to be from someplace that is back in business.
Wouldn’t it be funny if any if that were true? If so, there would be no need for war! Thats the value in making China a capitalist country and economic leader. They can’t afford to stop selling things to the US. 30 million Chinese could starve to death. Ain’t it grand being global? Looks like world stability, eh?
It’s not a debate. You yourself said there will come a time when people will come together for the good of mankind. The progression of information may start with science and scientists and then should be taken up by the leaders of the world and presented to the population along with the best plan. People are willing to accept change when they understand the need and that the need is real. Who better to communicate these facts than the president of the USA and the leader of the free world and the head of the UN. I’m simply showing what they are saying and who is listening.
It seems to me when JFK was telling us of the aggressions of the USSR into Cuba with nuclear weapons or when FDR was telling the country of the day that will live in infamy. These were big deal speeches and put out to every media there was at those times. 100% of the population was aware of what was happening and no one doubted the message.
Now we get some mumbo jumbo soft interview played at 6:00 AM on the weather channel and the first interview in many months. Or a UN speech to a couple of reporters that bypassed the science and tells us one record hot month and some forest fires of unknown origin are the science, and we need to react now before it is too late.
When my sister or brother in law tell me this winter when we ether get a warm winter or a blizzard that it is global manmade warming I can accept it coming from the source. When the head of the UN or the president does the same it makes me question what is going on. It also makes 100 of million people question it and convinces another 100 million they are correct. That then leaves another 100 million to tune it out.
Haw! And Oppenheimer was worried about a nuclear reaction consuming the world. They ran the numbers. It turned out to be ok! Im sure they’ll run the numbers so they know how much sun needs to be blocked. In Gulliver’s Travels, they levitated loadstone to block sunlight over villages, and if that didnt work, they cut the levitation and crushed the village, so the villages made church steeples to prevent that. I’m amazed at how smart engineers and scientists can be in solving problems without fixing them.
I have no idea what the Post’s marketing strategies are but you are assuming that similar marketing strategies suggest guilt by association. Well if this is true the New York Times sells at news stands where Playboy magazine is sold so should we assume that the Times is pornography?
I toured the Blueridge Highlands yesterday and posted some pictures. When I was a hiker traversing Pennsyvania and Maryland, I came across sites where they extracted iron ore and made charcoal from locally harvested timber for the iron making process. The logs were stacked, covered with earth, then a controlled fire set and carefully tended by coaliers. The result was charcoal for iron furnaces. Cities were unhealth, polluted, festering sewers; much like today! Thing change - sometimes good, sometimes bad.
A literature teacher knew I appreciated cleverness, so she gave me a copy of Jonathan Swift’s short work called “A Modest Proposal”, which was a solution to controlling overpopulation.
The best solution I can think of is for everyone to take ownership and do what is within hisbor her own power. The Big Guy and Barack had their chance, and must figure they have it under control, otherwise they wouldn’t have invested in such lavish beachfront property. Don’t know what to think anymore. At least they prevented another ice age. I’m sure Steve is happy to hear that.
I have only been spending my time posting the data and the need, because I don’t think we will change in time to prevent significant damage to the web of life on this planet. Believe me I have considered not engaging in this discussion, but every time I do I feel guilty for not trying to be part of the needed change. I am fairly sure a number of people on this site would rather I quit posting so much about this. Do I hear an Amen! I really would like too. Actually it’s depressing.
My perspective of what is happening is focused through a biological lens. I can’t predict the timing, but I know what it means when a species population growth enters the exponential part of the curve. The resources become limiting. The resulting waste products reach toxic levels. What follows isn’t pretty! I believe it is called a crash. We may crawl out alive, but we will have caused considerable collateral damage to life on this planet.
It often seems like we view ourselves as independent of what happens to other life forms. Sure, we are smart and might adapt to the short-term changes, but at the rate we are going those will become a pleasant memory. Global CO2 pollution is increasing not falling. I assure you; you don’t want to kill off the phytoplankton in the oceans or cut down old growth forest to raise cattle. The two groups of organisms that consume the most CO2 and produce the most O2. What dollar value do economists but on that?
I think it was Rex who mentioned “cognitive dissonance” and used the example of knowing smoking will shorten your life, but you keep doing it anyways. Well, that is where the majority of us are on this issue. Unfortunately, the rest of nonsmoking life on this planet will suffer too.
The kayak/canoe is sinking, and someone needs to start bailing.
I “read” that US emissions were reduced by converting to natural gas, but there are other ecogical concerns with that. Yet natural gas was previously burned off as undesirable or allowed to escape into the atmosphere. While everyone goes to the poorhouse, except those with a plan, we’re eliminating dependence on natural gas. Apparently, China and India convinced the US that they should have a crack at industrial supremacy. All the US industrialist have to do is diversify their portfolios (buy sell, buy sell).
Help isn’t coming! Do what you can do and let the chips fall. It is what it is! It’s been warming for thousands of years. If you own waterfront, yry a little harder. If you own a boat . . . maybe don’t worry so much.
Oh, is that what I was assuming? I had no idea. I thought my assumption was that Alexander Hamilton would be rolling over in his grave if he knew his federalism had fallen victim to Rupert Murdoch’s sensationalism.