Politics Climate change - What to do?

Discussion in 'Blazers OT Forum' started by Stevenson, Jun 30, 2022.

  1. Stevenson

    Stevenson Old School

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    Today the Supreme Court essentially said the EPA couldn't regulate power plants, thereby gutting a significant enforcement mechanism and tool in the toolbox.

    Joe Mancion thwarted Biden's ambitious climate agenda.

    The problem is getting worse, not better. Time is running out. This planet's physically dying.

    One wants to help, but not using plastic straws sure ain't the answer.

    What to do??
     
  2. Phatguysrule

    Phatguysrule Well-Known Member

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    Carbon tax and progressive dividend.
     
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  3. EL PRESIDENTE

    EL PRESIDENTE Username Retired in Honor of Lanny.

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    Population control. Probably will have the greatest impact on climate change.
     
  4. Phatguysrule

    Phatguysrule Well-Known Member

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    Population control happens naturally with good social policies. The US already has a below replacement birth rate. As does nearly any other country with a high standard of living.
     
  5. tlongII

    tlongII Legendary Poster

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    The planet’s not dying. Humans might but not the planet.
     
  6. Stevenson

    Stevenson Old School

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    Nice pablum but not true. Maybe that makes you feel better?

    Coral reefs are dead. Fish infested with micro plastics . Polar ice caps melting. 6th great extinction. Forests aflame the planet over.

    Yet humans continue to proliferate. We’re not doing the dying, we’re doing the murdering.
     
  7. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Really hard as an individual. As you said, just using reusables is pretty small.
    I would say find an organization devoted to climate justice and volunteer. Demand your elected tepresentatives act.
     
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  8. tlongII

    tlongII Legendary Poster

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    None of those things mean the planet is dying. Earth will continue to exist no matter how bad we fuck it up.
     
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  9. crandc

    crandc Well-Known Member

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    Sure, earth will exist. Mass extinctions, mass famine, huge areas uninhabitable. But planet itself still here. Great future.

    Seemingly unrelated but not, promote education for girls. In every culture, every religion, when women are educated they have fewer children. Unchecked population growth is a major driver of climate change.
     
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  10. jonnyboy

    jonnyboy Well-Known Member

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    Start in your own backyard, ie start local. It’s the only way things get done. Throwing money to the top to federal bureaucrats just doesn’t work, period. Many of these climate agenda groups are funded by big oil partnerships which is a huge red flag for me. I just don’t buy the line that they simply feel bad about pollution and suddenly want to help. They are more interested in tax cuts and creating false scarcity.
     
  11. Phatguysrule

    Phatguysrule Well-Known Member

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    I, for one, am looking forward to a dense venus like atmosphere with temperatures akin to that of an oven...
     
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  12. Phatguysrule

    Phatguysrule Well-Known Member

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    Nothing local can help soon enough. That's a fools errand. This needs to be tackled on the national level (actually, a world level, but the US has had the power to influence change at the world level for the last 75 years).
     
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  13. tlongII

    tlongII Legendary Poster

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    I agree this needs to be addressed on the global level, but I'm not sure how much influence the US has. Especially when considering China pollutes almost twice as much as the US (at least in CO2 emissions anyway.).
    1. China, with more than 10,065 million tons of CO2 released.
    2. United States, with 5,416 million tons of CO2
    3. India, with 2,654 million tons of CO2
    4. Russia, with 1,711 million tons of CO2
    5. Japan, 1,162 million tons of CO2
    6. Germany, 759 million tons of CO2
    7. Iran, 720 million tons of CO2
    8. South Korea, 659 million tons of CO2
    9. Saudi Arabia, 621 million tons of CO2
    10. Indonesia, 615 million tons of CO2
     
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  14. RR7

    RR7 Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, it's not a local or individual issue by any means. And it was a great trick the corporations pulled to push recycling and make it look like it was an individual problem. Recycle the harmful plastics that we pump out. If not, we're all screwed. Stop pumping out the plastics, fucker! But they won't. They just shift the blame to consumers.
     
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  15. Phatguysrule

    Phatguysrule Well-Known Member

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    My preference would be to institute a carbon tax (or pollution tax, really) and dividend. We have a board who audits manufacturing all over the world and institutes a tax on items which are not manufactured responsibly. For other countries this would probably be on a country wide level rather than at the item level. So items from China would get a 10% additional tax, for example. Or maybe 40%. Whatever it works out to.

    The tax is then handed out to the people of the country the item is manufactured in via a progressive dividend.

    The environmental board can handle audits and distributing of the funds. Raise the tax until it's no longer cost effective to manufacture those items irresponsibility.

    The dividend would be progressive in nature, so anybody making under $250k would make more money on the dividend than the additional tax would cost them.

    It would then be more profitable for manufacturers to make products in a sustainable way.

    I would agree with you that we may not have the influence to pull this off for long.

    Our politics over the last 30 years or so have been so isolationist that we may be losing the leverage to pull this off if we don't get shit in order soon.
     
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2022
  16. Shaboid

    Shaboid Well-Known Member

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  17. barfo

    barfo triggered obsessive commie pinko Staff Member Global Moderator

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    How much carbon would be released into the atmosphere if six people wearing robes caught fire?

    barfo
     
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  18. Stevenson

    Stevenson Old School

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    But the great news is, it will still exist, so it's not really dead according to @tlongII!!
     
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  19. Stevenson

    Stevenson Old School

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    The only and best answer I see is some sort of carbon capture technology that becomes affordable and works.
     
  20. Shaboid

    Shaboid Well-Known Member

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    If we all just went cold turkey on carbon fuels, the earth would bounce back and find equilibrium. We will never be able to go back to the way it was before industrialization though.

    Edit: That's just my non-scientific opinion and why I think fusion is our best bet. Not that it could ever happen.
     
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