WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance
governor.wa.gov
governor.wa.gov
>The Rhodium Group calculates that the U.S. still will come close to a 17% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as 2020, though it predicts no more significant progress in the remaining five years. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projected shortly before Mr. Obama took office that greenhouse gas emissions would rise by about 1% a year in the next several years, but they fell sharply. Very little of that had to do with Mr. Obama’s decisions.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-paris-matters-less-than-it-...
Progress is and will continue to be made regardless of backing out.
It will be interesting to see if the other countries back out. If people are attaching a lot of importance to this agreement, and other countries back out since the US did, the other countries will look awfully hypocritical.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/politics/trump-paris-agreement...
"For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years -- 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries."
"China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it: India can double their coal production. We’re supposed to get rid of ours. Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants."
"In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries."
"This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States."
"Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris Accord, it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund -- nice name -- which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments. So we’re going to be paying billions and billions and billions of dollars, and we’re already way ahead of anybody else. Many of the other countries haven’t spent anything, and many of them will never pay one dime."
"Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree -- think of that; this much -- Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount. In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America -- and this is an incredible statistic -would totally wipe out the gains from America's expected reductions in the year 2030, after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars"
FYI, I'm not into politics and I'm 100% pro environment, I do try to be open and hear every party's point of view.
2. We're paying poor countries to mitigate these effects, by subsidizing their use of cleaner energy to industrialize. And to compensate them, since the areas most negatively affected by climate change are also poor.
3. The United States is not, in fact, particularly generous about foreign aid.
4. The Paris Agreement is intended to be a start - the reductions are so small in part to win over right-wing Americans, who in turn have the audacity to turn around and blast this agreement for not being effective enough.
2. We are subsidizing them with no benefit to us at all, and in turn we are also giving them the ability to outperform us in manufacturing the capability to create clean energy, if you want to help them use clean energy mandate that it comes from local companies. No one will like someone else showing up with bags full of sovereign wealth and tipping the scales. These countries per capita might be poorer, but from a global markets level they are right on par with their American counterparts.
3. Debate? We are by far the largest foreign aid donor.
4. The Paris Agreement was signed by the President without the consent of congress, partially because it didn't win over right-wing Americans.
At some point we need to be adults about this and do something, the country is not supposed to be run as a Dictatorship by either party, all its doing is slowly killing everyone
3. The US gave $31b in foreign aid. Which sounds generous, until you do it per capita. In which case the US slips way off. The closest economic comparison would probably be the EU which gave $87b away. I, like many, consider charitable giving and aid a sign of strength, not a reason to whine about how unfair life is when you're the richest.
3. Even per capita we are 21st in the world, not bad especially when you consider that as that number gets bigger the return you get on it diminishes.
If not would you give Luxembourg the same carbon emission allowance as india?
I dont think keeping developing countries down by limiting their per capita to a much lower standard will fly in this century.
It doesn't. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere today was emitted by the western world though and it's up to them to show leadership and address the problem they created.
Your point that we could not get anything better is not an excuse for doing something bad.
A major economic and ecological policy agreed on by nearly the entire planet is no small task. It took years to create and is a compromise - we can do better and that was the plan, to iterate on it.
That (b) is what happened. That means Trump doesn't think something must be done - which means this administration does not care about climate science and it's predicted (and proven with current findings) disastrous impacts.
There is no alternative - either we begin to fix the problem with a global framework, or we suffer the tragedy of the commons on a global scale - and we're already seeing the effects of global temperature warming and ocean acidification.
Do not let perfect be the enemy of the future of this earth.
China's current emissions is at 7.7 T/capita. India's current emissions is at 1.9 T/capita. A fair and equitable solution would be to impose a hard limit at, let's say, 8 or 10 T/capita for everyone, no exceptions. This way everyone plays by the same rules.
If you offered these terms to China and India, I'm pretty sure their leaders will take it, despite the harshness of it.
It sounds to me like the effort needs to be in making green energy more affordable than non-green energy. This would benefit all nations.
Money talks. If it's cheaper to go green, even the most die-hard conservative will go green (anecdotal case in point: my die-hard conservative grandfather, who drives a Prius).
What I'd sooner advocate is to instead give that money to organizations working to make that expensive stuff actually cheap for everyone (or at least cheaper than the alternative of sticking with fossil fuels). That way, it's more economical for everyone (not just rich countries, and not just poor countries) to skip the fossil fuels stage of industrialization and jump straight to green energy everywhere.
As the 7th most polluting country in the world, the USA should take responsibility to show that their emissions per person should be lower.
This is how Trump carefully frames the debate: talking about increases in emissions without referring to current emissions.
In per-economic-output terms, MANY. The EU average is 0.47% of GNI [1], while the US gives 0.17% of GNI, and Sweden (the outstanding example) gives a whopping 1.4% of GNI. Outside of the EU, Japan gives "only" 30-ish% more than the US, at 0.22%.
Another interesting stand-out is Turkey, which despite being MUCH poorer than the developed world gives 0.54% of GNI.
The United Nations and OECD long-term target is 0.7% of GNI.
[1] GNI is a modified version of GDP which adds income earned abroad by residents and subtracts income earned locally by non-residents.
[2] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
- US, per capita, has the highest CO2 emissions of any developed country [0]
- It's a little unfair (depending on your idea of fairness) for developed countries to have benefitted from industrialization and polluting the environment only to close the gate behind them and blame other countries for trying to do the same and catch up in development.
- It's expensive to force nations barely entering industrialization to forego the easy route of using coal/oil/whatever pollutant and jump straight to what can, sometimes, be a more expensive energy source.
- Climate change is a global problem that doesn't mesh well with purely isolationist ideologies. This, primarily, is the biggest gripe with the current administration. It doesn't want to lift a single finger without seeing itself as the primary benefactor. This last part is purely opinion.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
In this context, unfairness is required. It is unfair to tell the entire planet to stop burning carbon. We have been doing it for the better part of 200 years, why do we have to stop now? It is unfair.
But faced with reality, the realities of the universe, of our planet, fairness isn't on the table, the long term survival of billions of people is.
I disagree with flat out withdrawing from the climate accords, but saying its unfair so the two most populous countries in the world can continue to build up fossil fuel infrastructure for the next decade + is absurd. It should be an international stop, with developed nations subsidizing the cost of development of not-yet-first-world-countries by providing them access to cheaper clean energy, not giving them cart blanche to keep burning carbon.
The US is second, the spirit of your point stands though.
Another surprising thing I learned from the list, US emissions have decreased significantly from 19.6 to 16.4 (tonnes per capita) during the obama administration.
You're right, that was an oversight on my part.
> Another surprising thing I learned from the list, US emissions have decreased significantly from 19.6 to 16.4 (tonnes per capita) during the obama administration.
This may actually be, in large part, due to the EPA. It would be interesting to see data for more recent years as well as end of this year (if it's not too soon) to see how it all changes.
Fracking makes cheap natural gas which drives electric generation investment towards natural gas which emits about 1/2 as much carbon per unit of energy as coal.
Low gas prices means that the investments required to meet coal regulations won't ever pay off. Plants shut down.
The only reason that this is even coming up is because climate change proponents, deep inside, believe that there will be no serious adverse consequences from climate change.
That's not the case at all. The world isn't really a black/white place. In an ideal world, we'd all stop right now and focus -- concertedly -- our efforts on reverting climate change. Unfortunately, life just doesn't work like that.
You go ahead and tell two large, thriving and growing, economies that "oops, we screwed up the planet, but at least we made a ton of money and our citizens live a nice quality of life! Wait, what? You want to improve your country, too? Well, you see, we sort of screwed up the planet and now you need to bear the responsibility on our behalf. Yes, that means stifling your economy and keeping your citizens in poverty. Yes, this also means the world will continue to view you as poor, undeveloped countries. What's that? For how long? Well, we don't really know, I mean, it could be a while..."
It also has one of the highest GDP (output) per capita. Output requires energy input.
Only Australia (another country full of climate change denialism) and Israel fare worse. Canada is rather comparable.
On the other hand, some European countries (e.g. France, UK) are nearly double gdp per emissions. Even Germany with its relatively large industrial sector has far better GDP per CO2 ton.
This was all debated for years, so none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. We went into this eyes WIDE open.
China got a good deal, yeah, because it had leverage: it's the manufacturing capitol of the world. It could very easily have walked away with no commitments at all.
As for developing countries, of course we are going to ship our coal jobs over there - they can't afford to build renewables right now and must bootstrap with cheaper in-country energy stores like coal. Meanwhile we can afford the latter and should not be using dangerous and dirty methods just to save money.
100 billion over many years spread across dozens of countries really isn't that much. This is just another way for Trump to say we should be spending money on the US. We should, but we also have responsibilities to the rest of the world that predate all this stuff. We're part of a global community and he is trying to back out of it.
I seriously suspect his numbers in that last one are off or highly misleading. We should all watch for responses from those in know.
There is also the option of staying, but reporting our carbon emissions with alternative facts. Done to an extreme, that means we get the payments.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/lng-petronas-...
There's a lot of false dichotomies in this. I haven't fact checked anything either but just addressing the points:
1) China: China is a developing nation, not on par in the US on any quality of life indicator. They still plow fields by hand or with oxen in a large area of the country. We are the most powerful nation on the planet. Obviously, there should be differences.
2) India: India has ~1B people, with about ~250M making like less than $5-10 dollars a day. They basically had no market economy until the 1980s. Again, comparing them to our responsibilities is laughable.
3) "In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries." This is an absurd comment. We aren't going to buy coal from China. Coal jobs have been dying in the US for decades and will continue to do so because we don't want to use coal. And "be allowed to" doesn't mean they will. China is also building more solar than anyone else in the world.
4) "In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries." Ok buddy.
5) "calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments" - This is a leadership item. If you think as the richest nation in the world we should help the poorer countries find green, economic ways to grow, then what's the problem? Also, it's not like we don't interact with the other parts of the world and aren't affect if they are polluted. I'd take this more to heart if his words on "fixing stuff at home" had any of that in his actual budget. 200B over 10 years? right.
6) "two-tenths of one degree" - This is because we should have started this shit in the 70s. His fears are correct. This is a first step to more and more restrictions because we are altering the planet in ways that probably already can't be taken back. "14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America" - so we should just not have any of our gains at all?
It's just so much "What do I get out of helping? What's in it for me?" rather than, "Hey, let's be leaders and lead by example and show the world that we, the USA, live up to our myths as the 'Good Guys'."
What is that specific thing or infrastructure that china and other developing countries are missing, that makes them unable to do this (stop polluting)?
Are you saying poor countries should NOT industrialize to help save the world after the industrialized nations have had 100 years to pollute all they want and generate enormous sums of wealth in the process? Why would any developing nation sign on to that?
So the real reason is not that china is a developing nation, but it has little oil and natural gas? That is not going to change, right? So you are saying that China can burn coal forever?
And what happens when a country run out of oil and gas. Can it start burning coal if it is available? Doesn't this mean that the source of pollution will keep shifting perpetually, without a net reduction in emissions?
Why not help these countries with setting up renewables, as much as it is possible.
>Are you saying poor countries should NOT industrialize to help save the world after the industrialized nations have had 100 years to pollute all they want and generate enormous sums of wealth...
No one is saying anything about stopping industrialization. But it does not make sense to exclude some countries on matters like this. The US had 100 years to pollute does not make much sense. Other countries also had 100 years to develop. That they weren't able to do so is no fault of US or other developed countries....
Just that fact almost entirely undermines whatever Trump said.
In addition, however, new coal is already more expensive than renewables, which are getting cheaper at a rapid pace. However, more importantly, it's significantly more expensive than natural gas. The odds that the US would build a coal plant are minuscule (and even if someone did, assuming that somehow coal got cheaper than natural gas, the amount of money saved over building a natural gas plant instead would be meaningless).
I would have thought a master dealmaker like Trump would know that giving up something you weren't gonna do anyways in exchange for anything is a good deal.
But finally, none of this matters, because Donald Trump could have continued to do whatever he wanted (build coal plants, increase US emissions, etc.) without the Paris accords imposing any sort of mechanism to stop him from doing it.
What this shows is that the US cannot be trusted to stick to even a promise as toothless as the Paris accords. Combined with the lack of reaffirmation of Article 5 in NATO, the only real effect this will have is diminish the US's standing among its allies.
The Paris Accords were largely symbolism but important nonetheless in bringing everyone to the table, and showing a way forward and showing that climate change is something all countries need to handle and worry about. Donald Trump's act is also symbolism showing that the US doesn't care about agreements and pacts and that Climate change is not something they really believe in.
Btw, both Chinese and Indian governments have targets that are much more stringent than what they agreed upon through these accords, and both are well ahead of even those more stringent targets.
It is scary how people, even on HN, go on a hating spree with out actually looking into these details. If you go on reddit, you see the same thing, but multiplied 10x.
It is a sickening display of how even "smart" communities, like HIN can harbour stupid behaviors and beliefs as long as the majority shares it....
> Trump: "India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it. India can double their coal production. We're supposed to get rid of ours."
> India does have plans to nearly double its coal production, and the agreement does not prevent that. But the Paris Agreement does not even mention the word coal, nor does it do anything to put a global moratorium on coal.
Oh the Paris Agreement doesn't mention coal so what he's saying isn't correct? The point Trump was making is that the Paris Agreement isn't stopping India (and China) from polluting. It stops _us_, but it doesn't stop _them_.
"It" doesn't stop us, we negotiated this as part of a global agreement to reduce emissions. Because we're the world's biggest source of emissions and also the richest, our responsibility is greater than that of a developing country like India that can't afford new nuclear plants and whose citizens can't afford solar roofs.
What was Trump supposed to say? "The Paris Agreement doesn't have the word 'coal'"?
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Don't forget: Being technically correct is the best kind of correct.
If you think some of the facts that they provide -- such as the fact that the accord doesn't mention the word "coal" -- are irrelevant, that's cool. PolitiFact does not draw a conclusion from this fact, and suggesting it does and then blasting it for having done so is pretty frustrating.
I also feel that by cherry-picking this one instance, one misses the larger thrust of TFA. You seem to be frustrated that PolitiFact is saying "yes, but" a lot, but what's wrong with that? If the additional context is not useful to you, that's cool. You're entitled not to care. But to me, it's quite useful, and speaks pretty directly to many of the top-level poster's points.
Trump: The Paris Agreement would result in "lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories and vastly diminished economic production."
PolitiFact: "Take these statistics with a grain of salt." Followed by an explanation of where Trump's claim comes from and why it is weak.
Trump: "China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can't build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement."
PolitiFact: "China has cut its use of coal three years in a row," with a citation.
Trump: "Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree -- think of that; this much -- Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount."
PolitiFact: "[The Paris Agreement] shaves 0.2 C of warming if [it's] maintained through 2100, compared with what we assessed would have been the case by extending existing measures (due to expire in 2020) based on earlier international agreements."
IOW Paris gets us 0.2C under the previous agreement, but by pulling out of Paris, we get no agreement, not the previous agreement, which expires. "Needs context."
Trump: "At 1 percent growth, renewable sources of energy can meet some of our domestic demand. But at 3 or 4 percent growth, which I expect, we need all forms of available American energy, or our country will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts."
PolitiFact: Nobody seriously expects us to get 3-4% growth.
Coal isn't really relevant. What's most relevant is the way you do housing and living: Poorly isolated homes spread across the countr, far from work and cultural centers, with its inhabitants insiting on having 20C in summer and 23C in winter and driving huge trucks to work alone.
I live in California and have been to China, and I know which air I'd rather breathe, even despite California's terrain & wind patterns being very conducive to catching air pollution in a bowl. Let them fuck up their own atmosphere...it'd be better if they didn't fuck up ours too, but if somebody's gonna pollute, I'd rather it be them.
It's a bit like the Muslim ban that "wasn't" a Muslim ban. If you've been calling it a Muslim ban for a year, retroactively coming back and saying "nah, nah, it's a not a Muslim ban" isn't convincing to the courts. In much the same way, the President cherry-picking bits he doesn't like about the bill sounds hollow.
I guess that's a difficult pill to swallow if you espouse nationalist economic policies, but this isn't about Us vs. Them; we're talking about preventing massive devastation on a global scale. And the Paris accord was just the first step. We'll need to spend much more than Trump is already unwilling to pay if we want to avert disaster.
United States $57,436
China $8,113
India $1,723
It's easy to say that everyone should be held to the same standard when you're already the richest. The US uses 7032 kg of oil equivalent/capita, China 2029 kg/capita, India 614 kg/capita [1]. If you really want to hold everyone to the same standard you could cut your energy use by an order of magnitude and still use more than India. It's ridiculous to hear an american president try to paint developing countries as energy thirsty when the three most sold vehicles in the US are pickup trucks while most people in China and India can't afford any kind of car [2].
Like you said, it's a global problem. It won't be solved by whining about "unfair" economic terms and bragging about opening more coal mines.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/best-selling-cars-trucks-vehi...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/21/countrie... [2] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agre...
Sure, but guess what: China is right behind us. History means squat. They're a major polluter _right now_. Why are they not held to the same standard we are?
China's GDP was 10.87 trillion USD in 2015 vs 17.95 trillion USD for the US. GDP per capita was 7,926 in 2015 vs 55,836 in the US. China is still a poor country.
When China reaches a comparable GDP per capita, then we can expect comparable cuts to be on the table.
Until then expecting sharp cuts from developing countries will not be a viable alternative.
Things I've learned in life(mostly the hard way) include that fair is not a thing and does not exist.
[1]https://www.c2es.org/international/key-country-policies/chin...
That said, Trump has a history of not being honest. He campaigned on increasing coal usage. That alone might have been enough for him to spike the deal.
Not meant as an attack on you, but but choosing not to be into politics basically means you occupy a secure enough position in society not to have to deal with personal anxiety about how political developments might impact you personally. Put more simply, you can afford to ignore politics but others cannot.
It's worth trying to imagine yourself yourself in the position of others on a regular basis so as to get a better understanding of why or how political issues might seem more urgent to them, not least people whose outlook you disagree with. I can readily see why economically disadvantaged coal miners in West virginia would support Trump, for example, since they don't see how the shift to carbon-free technology is going to benefit them economically. Of course I also think they're going to be severely disappointed, but I don't regret the effort invested in trying to understand their political alignment.
> The fact that the agreement only commits governments to keeping warming below an increase of 2 degrees, rather than a much safer firm target of 1.5 degrees, was lobbied for and won by the United States.
> The fact that the agreement left it to individual nations to determine how much they were willing to do to reach that temperature target, allowing them to come to Paris with commitments that collectively put us on a disastrous course towards more than 3 degrees of warming, was lobbied for and won by the United States.
> The fact that the agreement treats even these inadequate commitments as non-binding, which means governments apparently do not have anything to fear if they ignore their commitments, is something else that was lobbied for and won by the United States.
> The fact that the agreement specifically prohibits poor countries from seeking damages for the costs of climate disasters was lobbied for and won by the United States.
> The fact that it is an “agreement” or an “accord” and not a treaty — the very thing that makes it possible for Trump to stage his action-movie slow-mo walk away, world in flames behind him — was lobbied for and won by the United States.
This accord already is a massive insult to developing countries, who give up the right to hold those responsible who caused climate effects on their country. India can't sue the West for the costs that climate change, and the refugee crisis in Bangladesh will cost. India can't use any of the quick industrialization concepts that the West used, at massive cost to the environment. All committments are voluntary.
The west has spent centuries polluting the planet, and gaining an economic advantage. And now China and India are asking for a few years — not even a decade — in an entirely voluntary agremeent.
And yet, it's somehow unfair to the US? This is laughable. And I say that as a German willing to pay my 0.40€/kWh electricity.
Perhaps those goods shouldn't be made in China, an ocean or two away from where they are needed, under lax emissions laws. If we held China to the same standard as the US and EU, some of that problem would go away. It wouldn't just make fly-over country happy. Huge container ships do not run on solar power. They burn huge amounts of heavy fuel oil, which is nearly tar and not too far from being coal.
What, generating pollution when its effects on the planet weren't understood? Now we know better, right?
To give a more concrete analogy - suppose there are two countries, A and B. People in both countries like eating tuna. A has far fewer people than B, but the average person in A eats 10x more tuna than the average person in B. As tuna supplies dwindle, would it be reasonable for A to ask B to reduce their consumption of tuna?
Should we also exclude the half of the US population that uses the least carbon emissions?
I'm not saying that we shouldn't exclude them - these aren't rhetorical questions. I'm just trying to understand your reasoning.
They completely drag down the per capita numbers. You're basically lumping people producing near-US levels of emissions with half the population producing basically nothing.
> Should we also exclude the half of the US population that uses the least carbon emissions?
Not anywhere close in terms of magnitude.
What exactly is Trump's estimate for the economic cost of climate change by 2100 if the Paris Agreement is not implemented?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jun/01/...
China and India need to industrialize and modernize in order for them to transition to cleaner energy sources. Per capita, they produce only a fraction of what we do.
It's unrealistic to expect developing nations to shoulder the same burden as developed ones. The deal is weighted to put more on the countries that have modern economies able to make the transition. Idea being that western developed nations can transition into renewables far faster and make up for the developing world's inability to do so, and at least somewhat mitigating temperature rise.
If that incident had no great impact on Cali's overall ability to lead, why does this event say anything about TX's?
Also, after Proposition 8 in California, California did not doubled down on hate against gay/lesbians with more measures. Texas had an equivalent vote for equal rights in Houston, it got lots of attention, and it went from winning to losing. The tide turned so much that the state of Texas double down on moves against gay/lesbian rights, the lege moved to not permit cities to have equal rights ordinances and keeps throwing bathroom bills against the wall spaghetti style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gross_S...
"Texas buys 48 million textbooks every year. No other state, except California, wields that sort of market clout."[1]
Textbooks are written by publishers and reviewed by boards appointed by the state. However, this is a costly process and most small states do not bother with it. Due to the size of Texas, it makes sense for them to review and direct the writing of their own textbooks.
Thus, small states will often use textbooks originally published and directed by Texas(or another large state) for their school curriculum. This is why it's such a huge deal when <x huge state> removes <x important topic> from their curriculum.
Shocking that Trump would go against the current head of Exxon, the ex-head of Exxon who is also his Sec. of State, and another very conservative oil-state politician in Rick Perry.
http://time.com/4754578/rick-perry-paris-agreement-trum-clim...
Maybe Abbott will surprise us though
Given the amount of oil related industries there, it's not in the state's interest to regulate carbon, which is mostly a proxy for taxing oil and gas.
Additionally, it is a state with a large hard conservative population. They hate climate change.
Also, white/anglos are predicted to lose the plurality in Texas in 2020.
Don't get me wrong: I live in CA and would be happy never to set foot in Texas again, but this responds to your specific statement.
But for clean power generation, they're not the leader, Vermont is [1]. California is ranked #8 (Texas is ranked #22). This is based on a ratio of the power consumed, not raw power generation total.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...
Surprise!
http://electricitymatch.com/blog/customer-choice/texas-elect...
https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=TX#tabs-4
Of course the real problem is their oil industry. They export a shit ton of oil, and they are extremely well connected to every aspect of state politics.
It's one of the cleaner states.
Regardless, we got a lot of work to do as a nation :-/
Source: https://energy.gov/maps/renewable-energy-production-state
When the political right in Australia cut climate research funding, and private industry and the community stepped up to try to fund it instead, those politicians pointed to this as an ideal response.
2) Weird - the governors appear to be taking action unilaterally by executive decree, which is how the Paris accord was originally agreed to (Obama) and reversed (Trump)
This might be the best of all worlds. Blue states can join the alliance, and red states can stay out. Everyone's happy and the economic effects can play out as they will.
http://www.azfamily.com/story/35561955/phoenix-mayor-vows-to...
But most big city governments are going to be run by liberal Democrats because...they are big cities. Not that they are wrong, just pointing that out.
Global warming might be a bad deal for the globe.
> But most big city governments are going to be run by liberal Democrats because...they are big cities. Not that they are wrong, just pointing that out.
You are pointing this out why? Obviously the lead in to "just pointing that out" was circular logic that means nothing, and I feel there is a deeper message you wanted to convey but then it's just so easy to type dot dot dot... instead.
Canada and Russia might benefit from it in a perverse way, but I otherwise agree.
> You are pointing this out why? Obviously the lead in to "just pointing that out" was circular logic that means nothing, and I feel there is a deeper message you wanted to convey but then it's just so easy to type dot dot dot... instead.
Most big city executives are not going to like pulling out of the Paris agreement, so you might as well talk about the mayor of Atlanta, Houston, Salt Lake City...they are going to express support for it. So why not mention them all? It doesn't matter if the big city is in a red state or not.
I have a feeling the OP on this comment thread is probably from Phoenix, and was most likely promoting local action as opposed to what may happen in big cities across the country. But it will be very interesting to see how this plays out over time.
My guess has always been that the difference comes about because smaller communities can organize to solve problems without government help, so they lean towards 'limited government'. Larger communities have a naturally harder time organizing, and so they lean towards government programs.
If your community is 1,000 people and 1% of your population is homeless, you probably know the names of all 10 people and figure out a solution case by case. If your community is 10,000,000... that's 100,000 homeless people, which is a wholly different problem.
If you find crowds of strangers exciting in a good way, you move to the city. If they excite you in a bad way, you move away from the city.
This is why Paris Agreement is almost completely worthless. China is the largest contributor of green house gasses in the world and emits about a third of all the green house gasses. (if not drastically more given the shady reporting). And they want to give China a free pass to keep polluting the world for another 13 years while every other country gets their emissions under control?
I'm very pro environment and any serious agreement must have China curbing their emissions now. They emit twice the green house gasses as the US (which is the number 2 contributor). That cannot be allowed to continue.
Which one of these alternatives is better for the environment?
Continuing to insanely pollute the environment in the name of "fairness" is a great way to destroy the world.
As pollution increases so does quality of life.
Uh, what if we plow 100B into battery production and photovoltaic cell system integration? We could build the 5-6 gigafactories to recycle and manufacture batteries...That use solar free energy...To reduce pollution...And cost...To increase quality of life...To cheap to meter
This position is so seemingly unrelated to the facts that it really feels like you're looking for evidence to justify a pre-existing stance rather than examining the evidence dispassionately and arriving at a conclusion through reason. Are you sure there's not a little bit of that going on here?
All that matters is getting the biggest reduction as possible in global emissions. We enter into these agreements as entire countries. Any agreement that gives the world's biggest polluter a free pass to keep polluting is useless. If China cuts their pollution in half, the world wins more than if the next 3 top polluters cut their pollution in half.
Try some dispassionate analysis of your own and you will arrive at the same conclusions as me.
I think the future of government is voting through selective funding of programs by each individual.
It struck me how plausible it sounded when I read it. Now with the commander in shit-the-bed Donald Trump and the rising tide self-destructive behaviour, it’s looking like a good option to me.
I am not implying causation and there are other interesting facts (lower cost of living relative to wages in red states) but as it stands now if blue and red split it doesn't seem like it's all that controversial to imply red would suffer.
A little bit of googling turns up many interesting articles and interpretations of this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/timworstal...
> The red states aren't in fact poorer than the blue states. They're richer: that's why they vote more conservative and more right wing.
The article argues that people who make less move to areas with lower costs of living, because they have more purchasing power in those areas:
> Because those lower income places have even lower prices, making consumption standards higher.
That is, red states aren't poor because of red policies, they're poor because they're cheaper to live in.
Further, the article claims that blue policies hurt the poor!
> What we now need to go on and explain is why those nominally left policies, those blue ones, are so to the disadvantage of the poor they're supposedly helping....
I believe that the red states are going to languish for the following reasons:
1) Brain drain as young ambitious people leave
2) Public services (education, roads, etc) decrease in quality, increase in expense
3) Older folks increasingly capture all of the economic gains allowed in small towns through consolidation of local political power
It was once possible to be young and ambitious and moderately wealthy in middle America by starting and expanding a small business like a franchise or a car dealership, but if you try to do that now, you'll get crushed in city hall pretty much every step of the way.
I am very open to discussion/debate on this topic if anyone has differing views or questions.
> 1) Brain drain as young ambitious people leave
Tons of smart folks I know are leaving CA for TX or east coast.
> 2) Public services (education, roads, etc) decrease in quality, increase in expense
omg, this is CA. Have you driven a freeway lately?
> 3) Older folks increasingly capture all of the economic gains allowed in small towns through consolidation of local political power
CA to the letter.
I don't think you're wrong, just that what you're saying applies to us, too.
Also, red counties are where most of the food comes from. The farmers who have made it this far (through extreme competition in the food market) are quite innovative, clever, and ambitious. I wouldn't count them out. They don't want big business in their towns, but they also depend on basic services like filtered water, police, a fire department, and hospitals, and they'll make sure those continue to survive.
blue states tend to be such only because of dense city populations in super cities; discounting California. Get outside those big metropolis with their outsides voting power and it shifts.
I am a decidedly red state and not one of the claims is valid so I seriously doubt its valid all places. thousands of successful small businesses are started each year. Where you will get crushed in big city blue states where regulation protects incumbent businsses even more than in rural areas (let alone taxes)
i've been to all of these places in the last 10 years and they're all doing more than fine.
it seems to me only a handful of states over-whelmingly tied to particularly depressed sectors of the economy are the ones losing their people and tax revenue. and a lot of those were blue states just 5 years ago!
California is by no means a utopia, but if you're using the standard metrics of a healthy economy, blue states like it are doing things right, and red states like Kansas simply are not.
EDIT: Yes, I'm aware of distortions in the electoral college. My point is that some people seem to think that California is this massive blue block and that rural population you know, doesn't matter. The divide is not "red state" vs "blue state" it's cities vs. the rural. Yes the cities have more population. But the rural population exists and if you go for separation they would have to come along too, and maybe they would have something to say about it (such as breaking their rural portions off from your state and rejoining the rest of the USA, for one).
http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/01/california-gov-jerry-brown...
Of course there are some exception (Switzerland comes to mind) and large inland cities tend to be at least a lot wealthier than the surrounding country side but as a rule it is a pretty good one.
Yes, it is sad. But people in the developed countries are relatively free to move around and it can be a conscious choice to live in a place that is a bit slower paced and has a different landscape.
The barely concealed contempt against those ignorant working class people who didn't vote the right way is fascinating - especially since the left consistently takes the moral high ground on the working class.
* Top 25 states 213 D / 52 R
* Bottom 25 states 11 D / 252 R
so it might seem like there's believable evidence that red states are behind and it correlates with political affinity.
According to this comparison, after accounting for cost of living the average Arkansas resident has more disposable income than the average Californian. Having lived in both states, I agree with this (but my friends in California can't fathom this).
From what I recall, many of the "red" (majority Republican) states receive significantly more federal aid than they contribute in taxes, and many "blue" (majority Democrat) states contribute much more than they receive. I can't find the exact analysis I'm thinking of, but here are some articles with similar data:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-s...
> The reddest states on that map at the top—Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico, Maine—have exceptionally high poverty rates and thus receive disproportionately large shares of federal dollars. Through a variety of social programs, the federal government disburses hundreds of billions of dollars each year [...]
http://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-are-welfare-queens...
> As it turns out, it is red states that are overwhelmingly the Welfare Queen States. Yes, that's right. Red States — the ones governed by folks who think government is too big and spending needs to be cut — are a net drain on the economy, taking in more federal spending than they pay out in federal taxes.
> Take a look at the difference between federal spending on any given state and the federal taxes received from that state. We measure the difference as a dollar amount: Federal Spending per Dollar of Federal Taxes. [...] Of the twenty worst states, 16 are either Republican dominated or conservative states.
That Business Insider link directly contradicts the Tax Foundation numbers. Business Insider puts North Dakota and Virginia near the top, but the Tax Foundation puts them at the bottom.
Don't forget that we are all subsidising the states with high state and local taxes via the federal tax deduction. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-does-deduct...
It's a way to build bridges, and when we're talking about states separating, that's especially important.
Suppose, for examples, that the allegations swirling around DC these days are well-founded and the administration has been lured or willingly entered into being co-opted by a hostile foreign foreign power. For all the jokes over glowing orbs and handshakes, there's a strong argument that the post WW2 international political consensus is under deliberate attack designed to create strategic instability.
If you're a student of history, this is deeply worrying, and there's a small but realistic chance of the US sliding into autocracy and a similar chance of a third world war breaking out in the coming years. Not every conflict can be solved by polite engagement and mutual understanding. If you are dealing with a bad actor who does not subscribe to your moral calculus, then putting civility above all else can mean putting yourself at a significant strategic disadvantage.
surely you are aware of the increase in racially and politically motivated violence across the country. I can readily direct you to prominent political figures with significant public followings who are openly advocating ethnic genocide within the US; nazis, to put it bluntly. IT is facile and dangerous to sugarcoat things for the sake of preserving a superficial tranquility.
I'm not defending the crude comment above, but asking you to take a little time out to evaluate your political norms and mores while you have the space in which to do so, lest you find yourself taken by surprise by future events.
Eventually "our person" will once again hold the office of POTUS and we'll need it to be a respectable position of power.
Our medicaid costs are below the national average. Per-capita education costs are also some of the lowest (at the state level - IL depends heavily on local property taxes)
Our Republican governor has been unable to cut any state-level waste for that very reason: The entire state government is already runs lean.
We're in a budget mess because of pension obligations, not because we're a bunch of hippie spendthrifts.
Let me guess, that's also the fault of the Republicans.
Now, I don't expect the western states to secede any time soon, but by 'soon' I mean within the next 5 years. A breakup of the US is fairly unlikely, but large-scale civil unrest is a significant and real possibility.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted.
From a purely pragmatic perspective we should probably break up the US anyway. Our political divisions have gridlocked progress basically to the point of no return. We're basically legislating and repealing the same damn things every couple of years.
Californians in Redding have about as much in common with Californians in San Francisco as Californians in Crescent City have in common with Californians in San Diego as... oh wait. I suggest you spend a little more time traveling around CA before you form such an absurd opinion about these mythical "Californians."
It has been tried before, but the results weren't great.
The inverse of Atlas Shrugged, as it were.
The coal industry is the last holdout of the climate change skeptics. Everyone in oil and gas has seen the future and have started to push research and investments into renewables to limit their risk exposure.
Obama pledged $3B by 2020.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/why-trump-seeing...
Quote: "To help developing countries switch from fossil fuels to greener sources of energy and adapt to the effects of climate change, the developed world will provide $100 billion a year". And further: "Developed countries won inclusion of language that would up the ante in subsequent years," Chris explains, "so that financial aid will keep ramping up over time."
Or straight from the agreement: "Agreement shall set a new collective quantified goal from a floor of USD 100 billion per year, taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries"
While that's $100B/yr from the "developed world" as a whole, we all know by the example of NATO what that _really_ means.
NATO members absolutely should spend what they agreed to spend, but we aren't forced to spend 3.6% of our budget on defense because they don't. That's something we choose to do, and we could stop if we wanted to.
I'm certainly not going to argue about your personal opinion based on "we all know" versus what the US has actually pledged to give.
So now the only avenue available to address the issue is re-negotiation of the agreement. Assuming the world leaders do actually want to save the climate, and not just bilk the US out of $100B/yr, they have no choice but to negotiate.
Trump can posture as much as he wants, he's against a huge tidal wave of change and on the wrong side of history.
But it's hard for me to see how failing to tax externalities of fossil fuels are not making it that much harder for renewables and nuclear to win. I actually find you a bit optimistic; natural gas is extremely cheap these days (in part because the externalities aren't taxed); while it is much better than coal (in many dimensions), switching all fossil fuels to a "less bad" fossil fuel aren't enough to hit necessary emissions targets.
Let's say we managed to cease our CO2 production, even reverse the current man-made warming trend (save me the "impossible hypothetical scenario" talk, substitute in whatever values of "cease" we would have accomplished with the Paris Agreement, whatever).
Eventually, the earth is going to warm significantly without the aid of mankind. What are we supposed to do about that? Global warming is an eventuality, and no amount of carbon taxes that apply to a certain set of countries and not to others is going to change that. So someone enlighten me, what's the long, long-term view plan for global warming?
What exactly are you referring to here? The sun expanding and becoming hotter as it ages? If so we're talking about the timeline of a few billion years. Climate change is something that has already begun to affect us and will continue to worsen over the course of the next few decades, which makes this issue far more pressing than whatever "natural warming" you're referring to.
Frankly, if we're going to die out because of "natural cycles" so be it. I just don't want our species to die out because of something we could have prevented by being less selfish/exploitative.
Are you talking about Milankovitch cycles? We're about 10,000 years past the warmest point of the last cycle so, absent anthropogenic warming, we should be cooling for a few more thousand years. Then an ice age would last for around 80-90 thousand years, followed by another 10-20 thousand year warm period.
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/...
So you're basically asking about the next warming period expected roughly 100,000 years from now? What are we supposed to do about that?
The problem with climate change is that it might overwhelm our ability to solve it in the "short term" where "short term" is defined as on the scale of a few generations to a century.
In the long term humanity will, if trends continue, be so incredibly wealthy and technologically advanced that we'll be able to tackle problems like CO2 in the atmosphere a lot easier. We'll be able to seriously consider remediation efforts (deciding what the ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere we want is and then making that happen). We'll be more able to respond to climate change by moving our cities, changing our food production strategies, and so forth. That's pretty much guaranteed as long as humanity continues advancing technologically.
But we're not there yet. Much of the world is still impoverished and developing. And there's a great potential for vast human misery. The point of these efforts is to give ourselves enough time to not get completely screwed by climate change before we have the power to deal with it more easily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Vari...
By the time global warming is unstoppable hopefully we'll have the technology to mitigate its effects on humans.
By my understanding the natural cycles in climate that you refer to occur in hundreds of thousands of years time scales, and we know a reasonable amount about them with regards to Milankovitch cycles, but there are other factors like solar cycles that can influence climate that still add some uncertainty. How we might go about cooling the earth or whether we even need to in response to a natural warming cycle may be entirely different to our response now, because of this difference in time scales.
Over hundreds of thousands of years, populated areas that would be affected by rising sea levels are likely to be rebuilt many times. Any increase in sea levels is likely to be accounted for in this naturally, and such issues may never arise in large enough cities. Other places that cannot be built up will likely be abandoned and eroded by the sea over time, with abandonment not unusual for localities that are deemed no longer habitable or economically feasible.
As far as cooling the earth if it is necessary, I expect that we will be looking toward space exploration to help us here. Any science toward terraforming other planets will help, so colonizing Mars may be a useful near-term goal. I assume technologies to control the heat retained by the planet would be important, either by reflecting solar radiation before it reaches our atmosphere, or by controlling the levels of greenhouse gases. If we had the technology now, we could essentially do the same thing, however we don't, and won't.
The difference in time scale involved here is the main point. Man-made climate change is occuring on a time scale that our current technology has no ability to counter directly, and this has huge ramifications on short time scales economically, and for the quality of life for coming generations. Natural climate change occurs on a much longer time scale, so any economic impacts are likely to be amortized across the duration of the change and will probably end up in the noise, with technology likely to be able to keep up if we are intelligent about managing our own contributions.
Not sure how well we'll deal with that.
[0] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/mini-ice-age-earth-sunspots
Bjorn Lomborg explains that The Paris Climate Agreement will cost at least $1 trillion per year, and climate activists say it will save the planet. The truth? It won't do anything for the planet, but it will make everyone poorer - except politicians and environmentalists.
What is the solution? Copenhagen Consensus has consistently argued for a R&D-driven approach. Fortunately, more people are recognizing that this approach is cheaper and much more likely to succeed –including the Global Apollo Program which includes Sir David King, Lord Nicholas Stern, Lord Adair Turner and Lord John Browne. [1]
NOTE: Please do not down-vote if you disagree with my post. If you disagree, please explain yourself in a relevant comment. Thank you.
[1] http://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-neglig...