There is plenty of political will of every kind.
We, the population, vote for the persons with specific political wills. We choose what to enact.
We, the population, vote for the persons with specific political wills. We choose what to enact.
When something is permitted, it becomes mandatory to somebody, and oil is used widely. Personally choosing to avoid products that used oil in their manufacturing would basically relegate you to having to farm your own food by hand. That is not feasible in a society with competition.
Hundreds of millions will die due to climate change if we don't act.
The problem I think, is that oil would still be mandatory because of competition between countries. Especially if there were wars.
We literally have no choice but to make small insignificant changes that does not harm the bottom line of those responsible too much.
Universally in this world people live most ecologically in parts of the world where they are too poor to act otherwise, not where they are most climate or environment conscious. Voluntary personal responsibility gets you nowhere when it comes to solving large-scale problems.
That sounds great and all until your granny can’t afford heat in the winter or there’s no food in the stores, etc. Then people will vote out the politicians making the policies or revolt.
That’s what I’m talking about personal responsibility. Not regarding individual actions per se, but accepting that most of us in the developed world are as complicit as the big oil companies.
That said, technology is improving to where the cheapest option is the ecological one for power. A fair bit of that has been due to individual actions of many folks wanting and paying for solar power and electric vehicles, etc.
Ironically to me, the individual preferences of the Green Party members also put lots of political pressure to shutdown nuclear power in Germany. That caused Germany to fallback to coal and natural gas.
Good luck clawing back the 10% of SNAP benefits spent on soda.
Yes everyone should be ethical in their consumption. If I gave you an arbitrary product and asked you to tell me if its ethically sourced, there's a high chance you can't. Even if I give you the internet and a week to research.
So, that's one problem. Another problem is that even if you could tell what is/isn't ethical you can't necessarily switch away.
Sometimes the more ethical choices aren't available, or are too expensive, or are outlandish. I'm sure everyone in the US would love to eat grass fed pasture raised beef. Meredith, who works two shifts at the town Dairy Queen, who's trying to give her son some protein, so his tiny muscles don't atrophy, doesn't have the funds for that.
Cars and oil are perhaps the most clear-cut example of this. People don't drive because they want to, they do it because they have to. It's literally life or death. A car in the US isn't just a box on wheels, it's a lifeline.
Sort of. I think it's more accurate to say that there are just enough fiscally irresponsible politicians in office to prevent a government that pays as it goes via taxes. The vast majority of those politicians are Republican, taught by Ronald Reagan that they could have massive spending AND tax cuts without political penalty (indeed, Reagan was rewarded with adulation for nearly tripling the national debt). Democrats have been fairly consistent in reducing the deficit, and if they'd had their political druthers, would've reduced it even further with additional taxes. The reality is that maintaining a modern superpower of over 300 million people requires much more in annual taxes than voters realize, at least in part because they've been misled by Republican leadership to believe that taxes (particularly progressive taxes) are unnecessary.
Except that this is far from the reality.
We elect people with specific views but they seem to vote regardless of their constituent interests, let alone their supporters’. Instances of this fact are very easily searchable online.
https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
You want me to believe that the majority of constituents represented by these 193 republican representatives are against an insulin price cap?
https://images.dailykos.com/images/1054844/story_image/FPNbI...
My newest advocacy addresses this problem.
I call it “extend the powers of justice by jury”.
The idea that these representatives can just vote without accountability is absurd, and clearly a weakness money has uncovered in the US political system. (I refuse the claim status quotitians make that “elections are accountability“)
My suggestion is elected representatives act as litigators to their side of the argument and they need to make their claim to a jury overseen by a judge. That jury determines if a bill passes.
Who you elect as your representatives still matters, but now their ability to litigate persuasively is the number one quality of consideration when choosing those representatives.
This should remove the power that money has in bills being passed, as well as completely remove the “rider compromises” where officials compromise by including unrelated clauses to encourage the passing of a bill.
I want a representative government and I think expanding the powers of justice by jury will help in further enshrining that goal in our political systems.
There's no direct election, and despite "every kind" of politician existing, the representatives of two parties with very similar polices overall, differing only in pointless stuff, keep taking turns in the presidency since forever. The choices are quite constrained.
your argument stopped having any semblance of merit at least decade ago. Now it is laughably unbelievable.
Now, ought there be more direct representation? Of course!
Should we have more than two major parties? Of course!
Guess what, a lot of people on this forum I am sure make plenty of money to be able to afford going to a few fundraising events for local politicians that they favor.
Y'all have influence here if you want to use it.
This is prohibitively expensive for anyone, even the largest corporations.
You can help get people elected into local positions that align with your interests. AND some of those people will continue to build their career in politics and may become Senator or Governor someday.
That's influence. That's buying into the system to make it how you think things will be better.
Such is life in Palo Alto.
It appears that Palo Alto has elections for city council every 4 years.
Here's an election guide:
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/City-Clerk/Munici...
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Departments/City-Clerk/Munici...