Agree with analysis. Would love to hear your further reflections on the “we” that must act and the sequence of “acts” to get from here to effective local+national+global enactment of community purpose.
I know there’s more to it than “economic hardship” to Trumpism and the rise of worldwide right wing extremism, but those are the pitchforks. Blaming others for problems, succumbing to hate, and ignorant policies are their “solutions.”
No one ever said pitchfork carriers were bright. And moderates don’t carry pitchforks. They just unwittingly move right in order to maintain moderation.
The great breeding ground of inequity is invariably big and growing government.
The greatest growth rates in US and British history occurred during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when government was small and taxes meager.
As we can see from the high rates of inflation and your absurd pronouncements on climate, you have no idea what you are saying or doing. In effect, you are a dunce!
MMT has some insights, but your use of them is truly pathetic.
Gary, the 19th, 20th and 18th century in England, was a period with great growth due to the 'expansion' of their empires through colonization i.e., stealing the resources of as many as countries as they could including their own.
Gary your ignorance of inflation, the climate, and the role of government is... amazing.
Not to mention the astonishing ignorance of history necessary to make the claim that the back end of the 19th/front end of the 20th century didn't feature staggering inequalities of income and wealth.
The staggering inequalities of wealth never existed in Communist China, or North Korea or the Soviet Union. Well, the recess's leadership often did well while the rest ate dirt. But it was a grand dream and well worth the unbearable poverty, starvation, misery of all those fine socialist police states.
When all the socialist garbage are clamouring for and defending MMT, one knows where Kelton's and Mosler's great prescription shall lead us.
Your inability to understand the distinction between a description of fiat monetary operations on the one hand (that’s MMT) and whatever political preferences may or may not be held by MMT scholars is duly noted.
40 to 50% of GDP is government spending, which is considered socialism by most social-type definitions. WE'RE ALREADY SOCIALIST, but only a few handfuls of corps & wealthy benefit from this 40%. Whereas, we all could benefit from worker-owned enterprises especially worker co-ops. Mondragon, the largest co-op has $15 Billion Sales with 80,000 employees doing business in 120 countries. So we the people can also do large scale stuff especially since most research comes from gov't & university research centers that is freely given away to large publicly traded corps.
Let's do it ourselves in conjunction with a job/career guarantee program.
Yes, but 50% government share of GDP means most of the funds are wasted on the most worthless endeavors like pushing energy costs up. Government share of worthy production is often a very small percentage of public expenditures.
Worker owned enterprises are free to operate now. They can gather capital from their laborers, buy the land and equipment, and start producing. So if one can do the large stuff, go right ahead. You need no warrant from anyone.
A very socialist outlook on things. Care to name one socialist nation that has improved the living conditions of its people? Just one!
Give us the great model for your great society. I suppose MMT, the manufacture of money without purpose, shall figure greatly. I can't wait to see the once valued currencies of nations litter the streets!
Most of them are really more capitalist. If govt expenditure is 50% of GDP with half the money wasted, then the economy is still putting out 75% valued goods, 2/3 of them privately supplied.
Oh, so what of the US that at the time had no empire, but yet still enjoyed such growth?
Yes, the massive investments by European persons and firms in Africa and elsewhere yielded no benefit to the peoples of Africa for resources discovered, cultivated, extracted and traded for the fine goods of other nations????
No improvement in living conditions, quality of life, life expectancy, nutrition, labour conditions?
I imagine my ignorance must appear monstrous to one so learned!
MMT has come to save us all, just as it did for the people of Zimbabwe and all those inflation afflicted nations. Let's just print ourselves to prosperity!
Many of our Natural Resources, land, mining, agriculture, etc. and their/our economies were rigged so Big Money Interests benefit. Government is by Big Money, not We the People.
We don't have a democracies we have kleptocracies.
While 1/2 of inflation is due to corporate greed, it's not all supply bottlenecks as Wall Street and their Corporate Media accomplices proclaim. A primary problem is the ever-increasing, Wealth & Income Gap my POV.
The underlying problem is global capture of most economies by Liberalism.
Liberalism, as defined by Univ of Chicago's John Mearsheimer:
“Liberalism’s Bedrock Assumptions’
1.’ It is individualistic at its core. It assumes that the individual takes precedence over the social group.
[Meaning: Individual Rights are superior to Community Rights.]
2. It assumes that individuals cannot reach universal agreement over first principles. Those differences are sometimes profound and can lead to violence.
[Interpretation: The only principals they care about are their Freedom & Liberty to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth without interference from others.]
3. They admit their philosophy is self-centered yet we’re in a globally connected world.
[Meaning: They don’t care about others in any serious way, other than how they can personally benefit from others.]
If you personally had to choose between saving a few thousand people or our planet,
what would your decision be?
We already know what the ruling elite have chosen.
While Liberalism’s Individual Rights are vital and necessary, there can’t be any serious effort to reform our economies until Liberalism’s individual rights are subservient to the vital & necessary needs of the community… Especially with regards to the accumulation of wealth & income without limits. We need to reclaim this hoarded wealth & these rapacious incomes through steep taxation.
Note: These Neoliberals love to confuse voters with the term ‘liberal’. They use the term liberal in the media as an adjective meaning open minded. I think Orwell would call this doublespeak and doublethink..
Companies rely upon consumers to buy their products. If the product price of one manufacturer is too high due to this phantom of corporate greed, then consumers go elsewhere.
Producers or retailers may charge what they like, but high prices often don't translate into sales.
The only reason that the wealth and income gap increases is by government decree. The wealth gap in socialist shitholes is much greater than in free enterprise systems. The Soviet Union collapsed because of it. The middle classes of western Europe and America lived far better than those of the Soviet Union.
And what creates the other half of inflation????
For someone claiming superior knowledge, you don't know much.
There are only individuals. A community is a group of individuals or people. The government is a group of individuals. Companies and nations are just people. And yes, the rights of the individual are all that matters. Government doesn't have rights. Neither do firms and organizations. People have rights, and that's it!!!!
If you disagree, state what rights a 'community' is granted by law.
Thus, individual rights always take precedence because there are no other rights.
Do you care that free enterprise systems outperform in spreading prosperity, enriching all whilst socialist systems fail? You have an ideology at odds with the facts, that crushes the poor, that impoverishes. Yet, your self-centred beliefs are inviolable. Socialism is great, all else is bad.
I could not agree more. But politicians make inordinate amounts from such undertakings. And the more the politicians control, the worse it gets. And don't forget the big agency fees charged by government for facilitating the transfers.
Politician pawns make inordinate amounts from the Ruling Elite who make inordinate campaign contributions to obtain the result we have now, the ability to accumulate inordinate amounts of wealth.
And your prescription is to make government even larger, to create even more laws and regulations, so that the political pawns and the moneyed interests, including the public unions and their members, can better thrive??????
"Senator Manchin (D-WV) refused to vote for a package that wasn’t “fully paid for,” while Senator Sinema (D-AZ) refused to vote for the sweeping tax hikes that Biden insisted were necessary to “pay for” the spending."
THIS is the "deficit" myth at work!
This is how Democrats excuse themselves from doing what should be done!
One person gets to use the tax increases as an excuse to object to UNRELATED expenditures, and the other person gets to use THE ABSENCE OF the irrelevant taxes as an excuse!
When I say "person" in that sentence, I mean both legislators and regular voters or even pundits, because it naturally pits even people WITHIN the progressive-liberal coalition against each other. There are people who seem to actually think that, for example, student-debt cancelation would somehow "take money from" expanding healthcare access.
I wrote about the deadly myths about inflation here:
I believe almost every country has a one party system, the Money Party. This single party has at least 2 colors, red & blue, but both are really part of the same party, the Money Party.
You mean the "Production Party". Money is nothing without production as any former citizen of the great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics can tell you! And even a good number of Venezuelans.
Right on! Even if the Democrats sustain a majority, this will overwhelm anything that happen:
There’s a lot we can’t predict in life. But one thing is for sure. Climate change is an accelerant on inequality. Within a few decades, billions of people will be forced to migrate due to extreme weather, rising sea levels, and damaged ecosystems. Fires will continue to ravage communities, rivers will swallow more homes, heat-related deaths will mount, and food shortages will lead to mass starvation. That is not a world in which the pitchforks can be kept at bay.
The ex-middle class and those living in poverty are now the majority. It is time to finish the American revolution. Who is in charge? Professional politicians, part of the elite that Do nothings for the average citizens suffering? We the people have the power to take control. DO WE HAVE THE COURAGE? NO tRumpers allowed. We do not need violence or illegal acts.
Why the focus on taxes? Are you agreeing that the inflation we are seeing now comes from to much liquidity put into the economy from ARP creating demand push inflation (Larry Summers output gap comes to mind)? If not, let’s not focus on ‘distributional conflicts’ for the moment. Better to focus on building the infrastructure, not on who pays for the infrastructure, because as MMT/ JMK taught us, a sovereign fiat currency can always afford what ever it can do. Can we marshall those resources effectively? Can we use fiscal levers of the FederalGovernment to BBB to combat climate crises? Let’s leave the tax issue to when we must mop up excess liquidity to later. This approach might get Senator Sinema vote. Democrats since Jimmy Carter have bought into austerity politics of ‘who pays for it’, it’s the Deficit Myth trap - the truth shall set us free.
The worse thing holding back the middle class is INFLATION! Unfortunately the Biden administration and their “free” spending friends along with tardiness of the Fed to react to rising prices is why we are where we are. Oh and by the way let’s buy more dirty oil from Venezuela and Saudi’s Arabia rather than produce our own cleaner oil. Quit whining about how things are not going the liberal way. You and your Marxist economics is why we are where we are.
Since the 1980s the western economies have been enthralled by Hayek, Friedman and other Neo-Liberal economists and their small government, lower tax solutions. Where we are now can be laid at their doorstep. Oh, and there is no such thing as "cleaner oil."
I don’t think Dr Friedman could be considered a neo liberal nor do I think he would think we are in an era of small government. Quite the contrary. Just look at our yearly deficit and the exploding national debt.
Please, Friedman was at the very forefront of Neo-Liberal economics as one of Heyak's leading students at the University of Chicago. Maybe ask the people of Chile what they think of his involvement with Pinochet and the creation of the new "free market" constitution there. As for the size of government, there has been a constant hacking away at regulation since the 1980s leading to one financial crises after another. And the bludgeon of the "national debt" as a means to cut more programs and regulation has only added to the mess that exists now.
The people of Chile would have welcomed the policies of economic freedom championed by Friedman, but the tyrannical government wasn't so willing to adopt them.
In fact the "economic freedom" was baked in to a new constitution, by Pinochet with help from Friedman and George Buchanan, that crippled the county for decades.
So, Friedman advises the government on what to do, and then he must be blamed for all the advice given, but not taken, as well the actions taken, but never advised.
By that logic Trump, who advised Europe against dependence on Russian gas, is responsible for all that came of the rejected advice.
You sound like a moron. Friedman wasn't the Chilean government, nor its dictator.
He was a classical Liberal, the term Liberal having been commandeered by the left for their own sordid purposes.
He prescribed small decentralized government and low taxes, and preached freedom and individualism. The term Neo Liberal is just another confusing offering by those having corrupted the word's true meaning.
You mean the policies advocated by the free marketers triumphed, especially in the Covid era in which govt expenditure in the US climbed to 45% of GDP????
Those low tax, small, decentralized govt policies really took hold and led to Covid lockdowns!
There are different grades of oil, some classified as light sweet and others heavy. The differences come out in the refining.
You're confusing dominance with success. The Neo-Liberals held sway over economic strategy but it was a gross failure in the end. What happened during Covid was an attempt to compensate those who were the losers from 40 years of "free market" economics that worked for the wealthy 1%.
Stalinist lockdowns compensated for 40 years of free markets???? Shutting down much production and turning freer markets upside down was an attempt to remedy low gas prices and a working economy?
General statements that have no basis in fact - it's the lefty way.
Your newsletter is going to be a joke.
Government does work for moneyed interests. And bigger government ever moreso.
And your answer is - bigger government. Surprise. You have no idea what the problem is, nor the solution.
Food waste in the US occurs mostly in stores and at home—either because it spoils on the store shelf or before we can eat it. Americans throw away up to 40 percent of the food they buy. We can combat food waste by shopping for what we need, eating leftovers, composting scraps, and donating excess to food banks.
2. Eat Plant-Based
Transitioning to a vegetarian diet can cut your carbon footprint in half, and going vegan, even lower. Even shifting from high to low meat consumption can shrink your footprint by a third. If half of the world’s population reduced meat consumption and avoided the associated deforestation caused by agriculture, we could reduce carbon emissions by 66 gigatons.
3. Use Clean Energy
Ask your representatives to support the bill to make Clean Energy Victory Bonds a reality. Purchase renewable energy from installers such as Blue Pacific Solar and RGS Energy. Plug into renewable utilities with Clean Choice Energy and Arcadia Power, which don’t require you to install any new hardware in your home to get sun- and wind-power.
4. Vote for a climate activist, support comprehensive climate policies, and use your citizen voice to contact legislators when you disagree.
5. Divest
The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions come from fossil fuels. Divesting means taking your money out of institutions that fund fossil fuel expansion, which could eventually dry up funding to those projects. You can build a fossil-free portfolio with the nationwide network of socially-responsible investing financial advisors which you can find on GreenPages.org.
6. Improve Insulation
Modern insulation reduces the energy needed to heat a home, therefore reducing emissions and saving you money. If even half of existing buildings installed thicker insulation, 8.3 gigatons of emissions could be avoided.
7. Use LED Lighting
LEDs (light-emitting diodes) use 90 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs and half as much as compact fluorescents. Switching your home to LED lights will reduce cooling bills. They also last longer, so choosing them will bring long-term savings. Adoption of LEDs could prevent 7.8 gigatons of carbon emissions.
8. Rethink Transportation
Overhauling the world’s transportation systems, both commercial and personal, would save as much CO2 as one billion acres of regenerative agriculture. While individuals can’t revolutionize the shipping, flight, and automobile industries overnight, we can demand they change by voting with our dollars for public transit, using electric or hybrid vehicles, and reducing our total trips taken.
9. Recycle
10. Buy Less
Add “refuse” to the three Rs you’ve already heard of: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. When you don’t buy, you cut down on the amount that you contribute to landfills. Footprintcalculator.org can help you determine your current ecological footprint and offer actionable solutions for change, including buying less.
1. The climate has been changing for as long as the earth has existed. Hence the reason you can find ocean fossils in Montana. The continents shift all the time. Plate Tectonics do not care about carbon levels. We are in and have always been in a state of climate change.
2. The carbon levels in the air were almost 5 times what they are today when life first crawled out of the seas.
3. At some point, the whole thing is going to come to an end, the sun will implode and life on earth will be gone long before it enters its final phase. Every species, every form of plant life, will all be gone and that includes us unless we learn to move to other solar systems by the time it happens.
4. Species die off and are replaced all the time and that process has been going on long before mankind came around. Lot of different reasons for that. Disease. Inability to adapt. Meteor strikes. Yes, climate change too. Mammoths and sabre tooth tigers were not hunted to extinction, they could not adapt to a changing climate while humans could and did. Heck, cheetahs are so specialized that they can only hunt gazelle. Their mouths are too small for bigger game. A virus wipes out the gazelle and there go any cheetahs not in a zoo.
5. Carbon based fuels are already nearing the end of their potential usefulness. They aint making more oil or coal or natural gas. Getting any of these is increasingly expensive and difficult but they are all still gonna run out and may already be running out. Some form of a switch to electric vehicles and a conversion to electric production that does not involve fossil fuels is going to have to occur anyway.
6. Our current power grid cannot support a complete conversion. CA is already having issues with trying to power cars and everything else. Until the power grids are massively updated and hardened an electric based economy unsupported by fossil fuels is not possible.
7. Solar and wind are unreliable and have their own environmental issues, not least of which is what to do with them when they wear out. As an example, we currently just bury the carbon fiber blades from solar. Solar cells are dirty and potentially toxic when dumped.
8. Plastics are derived from petroleum. How much plastic is going into all of these electric cars, solar panels etc?
9. Battery technology will require major advances. Lithium is a nasty and dangerous element that when disposed of or even mined is environmentally devastating. We are not there yet.
10. Nuclear is viable but not politically possible and will not be until we develop commercial size fusion reactors. The Chinese are in the process of building one now as a pilot. The Europeans are also making progress. We are probably 15 to 20 yrs away from having viable nuclear fusion reactors generating power for commercial use, but we are getting there.
Bottom line? Calm down. The world is not going to end tomorrow or in 10 yrs or even in 30 yrs. It WILL end but we, our children and great grandchildren will be long long gone by the time it does. The climate is gonna keep evolving and we are going to have to adapt and try our best to conserve what we can in the process and THAT is never going to end either. We WILL get off of fossil fuels eventually if for no other reason than that they are gonna run out but we have time to develop alternatives. Is this going to be easy? Nope. But survival as a species, of any species, going back as long as their has been life, has never been easy. We are always one comet strike, one super volcano, one virus away from extinction.
It's difficult to remain calm when your whole town is on fire or your home is floating down a raging river with you in it.
Yes, Earth will survive, but humans may not last another century. We've put off remedial action until it's very late in the day: We humans are causing a lot of the damage. We must change our ways and do everything possible to stop it -- for future generations; they deserve a decent planet to live on, not a hellscape.
BTW, sabre-toothed "tigers" are not tigers; they are cats, sabre-toothed cats. Doesn't sound as menacing, kinda like climate change over climate devastation. Thus, we need a book, perhaps I'll write it, entitled: "Mother Nature Is Trying To Kill You: And you're helping her!"
Mother nature has been killing people and all kinds of other things forever and will continue to.
AND...I am not suggesting that there are not things we should be doing to preserve the environment.
There are lots and lots of things we could and should be doing, ridding ourselves of forever chemicals, single use plastics, all kinds of things.
But, at the end of the day, freaking out over global warming does no good. Rushing to try and eliminate fossil fuels too quickly will create conditions that will simply create a public backlash that will prevent any movement forward at all.
The world is not going to end, it is going to change. It has always changed and will always change. Ice ages come and go. Warming periods come and go. Continents drift. Is this disruptive and threatening? Sure. We have to adapt and adjust and we will.
But freaking out over it and acting rashly will do not good whatsoever.
We want to act logically and immediately. We've been sitting on our hands with this knowledge for decades. Our window of opportunity is closing.
You may designate vast wildfires and epic flooding as simply change, but it's killing people, and is going to kill a lot more unnecessarily unless we act. Now it the time for all good Earth stewards to come to the aid of their planet, which excludes watching passively from the grandstands at the grandeur of it all. Nonchalance is not a live option.
Is your town on fire? You have some strange priorities! Get a bucket.
Things were so much better in the past when the streets were unpaved, filthy sewers filled with horse dung, coal dust choked the sky, and malodorous airs nauseated all.
It really is so much worse these days in cities now filled with millions rather than tens of thousands!
The world needs a few misfits, I guess, to show us all how truly better conditions are today.
Actually, my town and state are flooding: I live in Florida, where it won't stop raining while the American West burns. My relatives live in Texas and Arizona, and they are suffering mightily, told to stay indoors as much as possible: some wonderful life, eh?
City life is more dangerous, too, with incessant pandemic virus variants attacking. New York City had to have many refrigerated truck vans to store the dead temporarily while the morgues processed and processed and processed. One wonders, too, if the stress of large cities is causing the increase in homicides.
And about enjoying the improved conditions of modernity:
100,000 Americans Die from Air Pollution, Study Finds
Apr 8, 2019 — More than 100,000 Americans each year die of heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses caused by air pollution spewed from factories, motor vehicles ...
1. We are always, constantly, moving toward some form of climate disaster. The climate is now and always has been DYNAMIC. As much as we might like it to be, it is not static but shifts dramatically over time. A living planet cares nothing for our desires.
2. The degree to which humans contribute to the planet changing is a complicated matter but there is a certain level of hubris involved to think that we alone or that we are even capable of substantially contributing to altering something as powerful as planetary climate. We barely understand WEATHER and we are as toddlers when it comes to understanding how climate actually works. Just one example. New studies show that warming oceans actually release carbon and we are not sure how much that is contributing to CO2 in the atmosphere. The magnetic poles are shifting and altering the magnetic field of the planet. We are not really sure how much additional radiation is hitting the planet as the poles go through their flip and how that is impacting climate. So let us not assume that we actually have a grip on the science. Is the planet warming? Yes, compared to previous times in human history, but human history is the tinniest fraction of the history of earth. Has the planet done this before? Yes it has. At least according to the science. Just as it has cooled before. We have actually had whole centuries of time, while humans have been around, where the planet cooled substantially to a point we would not recognize today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age (3 centuries). I might suggest that you read "Unsettled". Its written by Obama's chief climate scientist so not some right winger.
3. Assuming you are correct, what is the US gonna do about it? We are just one country. China and India, both much much larger countries, are building new coal plants even now and are planning to build more. Those plants are going to more than offset anything we do. First, that tells me that either they do not believe in climate change OR that they do not care. In either case, short of going to war and shutting them down, I do not see how we stop them. Africa, the only continent with a growing population, is right behind them.
4. It makes good sense to question scientists who make grand pronouncements. Their incomes and their careers are dependent on several things that can and very likely do impact their assessments. Scientists make money from grants. Grants go where the politics leads. Think I am wrong? Look at all the top scientists leaving CDC over the politics trumping the science on the COVID vaccines for children. ( I work with CDC so I heard about this early ). They are also under social pressure from their peers to conform and whether they do or not can impact not just their careers, think tenure, but their social circle. Nobody wants to be on the outside or mocked.
I said it before, there are a lot of good reasons to get off of fossil fuels. Polluting the air is not good for our health. Energy is critical to national security and fossil fuels make us dependent on unstable powers like Russia and Saudi Arabia just to name two. Extracting fossil fuels does awful things to the environment. Fossil fuels are going to run out, they just are. You do not need to believe that carbon based fuels are cooking the planet to believe that getting off of them makes good sense.
So, I would suggest to you that we DO need to get off of fossil fuels but we do not need to panic about it. We need to take our time, do it deliberately, and plan properly. Just two quick examples of how not acting deliberately and planning properly has actually made the conversion harder. CA pushed EVs but failed to plan for either the electric generation capacity it would need OR for the transmission capability that it would need. So, now they are struggling to keep the lights on while charging all those EVs. Never mind that it takes TWICE as much carbon to produce an EV as it does a regular car, which is why you have to drive it 190k miles to break even on the carbon footprint. Most cars die at 110k miles. They also pushed solar way ahead of everyone else and now all those solar panels are reaching the end of their useful life and have to be disposed of. Problem is, they contain a lot of toxic materials that are hard to extract and renew and nobody knows where all these panels are ending up but it is assumed it is in landfills where they will contaminate groundwater. Wind turbines are proving to be disruptive to wildlife, the blades have to be replaced regularly and nobody knows what to do with them, they require a huge carbon investment upfront. The point is, rushing has caused us to create NEW environmental problems in an attempt to solve a previous one that we may not actually be able to control in the first place.
What we need is....
1. Better, cleaner, batterly technology that is not dependent on poisonous and environmentally destructive elements like lithium. Lot of work going on with graphine based batteries that is promising.
2. Some version of cleaner, safer, nuclear power. Whether that is fusion, which seems to be making serious headway or some version of fission using elements like Thorium makes little difference, that is what we need. We also need to explore the use of hydrogen based power for specific types of applications.
3. A massively upgraded and improved transmission system for electricity. It needs to be more efficient, more robust and smarter.
And we need to do these things without being in a panic. We need to think through carefully what we are gonna do, how we are gonna do it, how we are going to build and dispose of these new technologies in a way that will not simply destroy the environment in a whole new way.
You are already in the game. You just do not know it or refuse to acknowledge it.
We are not in control. We are not driving a propeller driven ship, we are sailing and are subject to the winds and currents.
All we can do is respond and react to the hand we are dealt.
We are just not that powerful.
AND still nobody can give me an answer as to what we do if the largest countries in the world refuse to play along. Cuz China and India appear to not give a damn or they just have different priorities.
How does a sprinkling of molecules of CO2, a trace gas, way up in the Stratosphere warm up the vast land masses and oceans below????
If true, then where are all the CO2 heat generators? If a small number of CO2 molecules can heat up the earth, think of how many fewer would heat one's home!
Feb 25, 2021 — Overall, increasing CO2 and other greenhouse gasses reduces the earth's ability to “cool itself off” by radiating energy into space. In other ...
Your link is again busted. You have to find the story, copy and then post the entire link for it to work.
The trace gas way up in the stratosphere does some amazing things, like warming up the vast earth and ocean masses far below. I have never had anyone explain how this works; For if it did work, we would be using it to heat up our homes. But none is, which is really a strange thing. All this limitless energy that none will use, but they will burn so much fossil fuel to get the same effect.
Excellent, and necessary.
We shall see. November should be revealing.
Agree with analysis. Would love to hear your further reflections on the “we” that must act and the sequence of “acts” to get from here to effective local+national+global enactment of community purpose.
I know there’s more to it than “economic hardship” to Trumpism and the rise of worldwide right wing extremism, but those are the pitchforks. Blaming others for problems, succumbing to hate, and ignorant policies are their “solutions.”
No one ever said pitchfork carriers were bright. And moderates don’t carry pitchforks. They just unwittingly move right in order to maintain moderation.
The great breeding ground of inequity is invariably big and growing government.
The greatest growth rates in US and British history occurred during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when government was small and taxes meager.
As we can see from the high rates of inflation and your absurd pronouncements on climate, you have no idea what you are saying or doing. In effect, you are a dunce!
MMT has some insights, but your use of them is truly pathetic.
Gary, the 19th, 20th and 18th century in England, was a period with great growth due to the 'expansion' of their empires through colonization i.e., stealing the resources of as many as countries as they could including their own.
Gary your ignorance of inflation, the climate, and the role of government is... amazing.
Not to mention the astonishing ignorance of history necessary to make the claim that the back end of the 19th/front end of the 20th century didn't feature staggering inequalities of income and wealth.
The staggering inequalities of wealth never existed in Communist China, or North Korea or the Soviet Union. Well, the recess's leadership often did well while the rest ate dirt. But it was a grand dream and well worth the unbearable poverty, starvation, misery of all those fine socialist police states.
When all the socialist garbage are clamouring for and defending MMT, one knows where Kelton's and Mosler's great prescription shall lead us.
Your inability to understand the distinction between a description of fiat monetary operations on the one hand (that’s MMT) and whatever political preferences may or may not be held by MMT scholars is duly noted.
Is that like the 'We haven't done Communism right yet' defense?
No.
It's like, we are all brother & sisters. how about we try to help each other?
40 to 50% of GDP is government spending, which is considered socialism by most social-type definitions. WE'RE ALREADY SOCIALIST, but only a few handfuls of corps & wealthy benefit from this 40%. Whereas, we all could benefit from worker-owned enterprises especially worker co-ops. Mondragon, the largest co-op has $15 Billion Sales with 80,000 employees doing business in 120 countries. So we the people can also do large scale stuff especially since most research comes from gov't & university research centers that is freely given away to large publicly traded corps.
Let's do it ourselves in conjunction with a job/career guarantee program.
Yes, but 50% government share of GDP means most of the funds are wasted on the most worthless endeavors like pushing energy costs up. Government share of worthy production is often a very small percentage of public expenditures.
Worker owned enterprises are free to operate now. They can gather capital from their laborers, buy the land and equipment, and start producing. So if one can do the large stuff, go right ahead. You need no warrant from anyone.
This country's westward expansion would have been impossible without the US government, starting with the Louisiana Purchase.
Exactly why 'We the People, need to reclaim ownership of ALL our natural resources and anything that is commoditized, whether it's a Good or Service.
40% of US GDP is government spending that primarily benefits corporations, asset managers, hedgefunds, corp upper management & wealthy individuals.
Most government spending should go to NFP gov't owned entities or worker-owned enterprises via ESOP's or Co-op's using the Job Guarantee Program.
Lets use the Job Guarantee Program that hopefully evolves into a Career Guarantee Program.
along with Worker-owned enterprises.
All this could easily be funded with Publicly-owned banks. Checkout https://publicbankinginstitute.org/
It certainly worked in the Soviet Union and more recently Venezuela and North Korea. Why not elsewhere?
The "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" society. What a blessing!
How about we really work for ourselves & the greater good and enjoy life.
A very socialist outlook on things. Care to name one socialist nation that has improved the living conditions of its people? Just one!
Give us the great model for your great society. I suppose MMT, the manufacture of money without purpose, shall figure greatly. I can't wait to see the once valued currencies of nations litter the streets!
The social democracies in Northern Europe.
Most of them are really more capitalist. If govt expenditure is 50% of GDP with half the money wasted, then the economy is still putting out 75% valued goods, 2/3 of them privately supplied.
Oh, so what of the US that at the time had no empire, but yet still enjoyed such growth?
Yes, the massive investments by European persons and firms in Africa and elsewhere yielded no benefit to the peoples of Africa for resources discovered, cultivated, extracted and traded for the fine goods of other nations????
No improvement in living conditions, quality of life, life expectancy, nutrition, labour conditions?
I imagine my ignorance must appear monstrous to one so learned!
MMT has come to save us all, just as it did for the people of Zimbabwe and all those inflation afflicted nations. Let's just print ourselves to prosperity!
We stole vast land & other natural resources from Native Americans.
The rest of your stuff is trickle-down bs
Zimbabwe... Really?
Which resources were 'stolen'?
Yes! Zimbabwe! Really!
Many of our Natural Resources, land, mining, agriculture, etc. and their/our economies were rigged so Big Money Interests benefit. Government is by Big Money, not We the People.
We don't have a democracies we have kleptocracies.
The only way such kleptocracies come about is through the regulatory and legislative powers of government.
That's obvious to even me, ignorant as I purportedly may be.
Otherwise, the consumer decides what goods are purchased and what are not.
The only one forcing the consumer to buy some worthless good like green energy is legislative or regulatory edict.
The answer to corruption laden government is to make it smaller, not larger. There's something seriously wrong with your reasoning.
While 1/2 of inflation is due to corporate greed, it's not all supply bottlenecks as Wall Street and their Corporate Media accomplices proclaim. A primary problem is the ever-increasing, Wealth & Income Gap my POV.
The underlying problem is global capture of most economies by Liberalism.
Liberalism, as defined by Univ of Chicago's John Mearsheimer:
“Liberalism’s Bedrock Assumptions’
1.’ It is individualistic at its core. It assumes that the individual takes precedence over the social group.
[Meaning: Individual Rights are superior to Community Rights.]
2. It assumes that individuals cannot reach universal agreement over first principles. Those differences are sometimes profound and can lead to violence.
[Interpretation: The only principals they care about are their Freedom & Liberty to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth without interference from others.]
3. They admit their philosophy is self-centered yet we’re in a globally connected world.
[Meaning: They don’t care about others in any serious way, other than how they can personally benefit from others.]
If you personally had to choose between saving a few thousand people or our planet,
what would your decision be?
We already know what the ruling elite have chosen.
While Liberalism’s Individual Rights are vital and necessary, there can’t be any serious effort to reform our economies until Liberalism’s individual rights are subservient to the vital & necessary needs of the community… Especially with regards to the accumulation of wealth & income without limits. We need to reclaim this hoarded wealth & these rapacious incomes through steep taxation.
Note: These Neoliberals love to confuse voters with the term ‘liberal’. They use the term liberal in the media as an adjective meaning open minded. I think Orwell would call this doublespeak and doublethink..
The wealth and income inequality is most acute in government dominated societies, effectively police states.
You should be advocating for less government, not more.
How is 1/2 of inflation due to corporate greed?
Companies rely upon consumers to buy their products. If the product price of one manufacturer is too high due to this phantom of corporate greed, then consumers go elsewhere.
Producers or retailers may charge what they like, but high prices often don't translate into sales.
The only reason that the wealth and income gap increases is by government decree. The wealth gap in socialist shitholes is much greater than in free enterprise systems. The Soviet Union collapsed because of it. The middle classes of western Europe and America lived far better than those of the Soviet Union.
And what creates the other half of inflation????
For someone claiming superior knowledge, you don't know much.
There are only individuals. A community is a group of individuals or people. The government is a group of individuals. Companies and nations are just people. And yes, the rights of the individual are all that matters. Government doesn't have rights. Neither do firms and organizations. People have rights, and that's it!!!!
If you disagree, state what rights a 'community' is granted by law.
Thus, individual rights always take precedence because there are no other rights.
Do you care that free enterprise systems outperform in spreading prosperity, enriching all whilst socialist systems fail? You have an ideology at odds with the facts, that crushes the poor, that impoverishes. Yet, your self-centred beliefs are inviolable. Socialism is great, all else is bad.
Open you eyes!
You really need to do more research on Zimbabwe if you think MMT-guided policies were the culprit there.
So it wasn't money printing, the cornerstone of MMT, in Zimbabwe?
Well then, what was it?
More trickle-down nonsense. What we need is trickle-up economics with less socialism/grants/subsidies/tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.
70% or so of our economy is consumer spending.
I could not agree more. But politicians make inordinate amounts from such undertakings. And the more the politicians control, the worse it gets. And don't forget the big agency fees charged by government for facilitating the transfers.
I don't think you know what you're up against.
Politician pawns make inordinate amounts from the Ruling Elite who make inordinate campaign contributions to obtain the result we have now, the ability to accumulate inordinate amounts of wealth.
I should have said inordinate & unlimited
And your prescription is to make government even larger, to create even more laws and regulations, so that the political pawns and the moneyed interests, including the public unions and their members, can better thrive??????
THIS PASSAGE RIGHT HERE!:
"Senator Manchin (D-WV) refused to vote for a package that wasn’t “fully paid for,” while Senator Sinema (D-AZ) refused to vote for the sweeping tax hikes that Biden insisted were necessary to “pay for” the spending."
THIS is the "deficit" myth at work!
This is how Democrats excuse themselves from doing what should be done!
One person gets to use the tax increases as an excuse to object to UNRELATED expenditures, and the other person gets to use THE ABSENCE OF the irrelevant taxes as an excuse!
When I say "person" in that sentence, I mean both legislators and regular voters or even pundits, because it naturally pits even people WITHIN the progressive-liberal coalition against each other. There are people who seem to actually think that, for example, student-debt cancelation would somehow "take money from" expanding healthcare access.
I wrote about the deadly myths about inflation here:
https://jamesarobichaux.substack.com/p/the-deadly-duality-of-the-definitions
I believe almost every country has a one party system, the Money Party. This single party has at least 2 colors, red & blue, but both are really part of the same party, the Money Party.
You mean the "Production Party". Money is nothing without production as any former citizen of the great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics can tell you! And even a good number of Venezuelans.
The Production Party of vast wealth/income inequality with immense global pain & suffering. Congrats
There is much inequality in socialist nations, but far less poverty in capitalist, free nations.
Gee, which is better?
Right on! Even if the Democrats sustain a majority, this will overwhelm anything that happen:
There’s a lot we can’t predict in life. But one thing is for sure. Climate change is an accelerant on inequality. Within a few decades, billions of people will be forced to migrate due to extreme weather, rising sea levels, and damaged ecosystems. Fires will continue to ravage communities, rivers will swallow more homes, heat-related deaths will mount, and food shortages will lead to mass starvation. That is not a world in which the pitchforks can be kept at bay.
We need to act now!
EQUALITY FOUNDATION !!
1-MEDICARE FOR ALL
2-GOVERNMENT GUARANTEED JOB PROGRAM
Your police state shall require lots of well police, I imagine.
The ex-middle class and those living in poverty are now the majority. It is time to finish the American revolution. Who is in charge? Professional politicians, part of the elite that Do nothings for the average citizens suffering? We the people have the power to take control. DO WE HAVE THE COURAGE? NO tRumpers allowed. We do not need violence or illegal acts.
WE ARE THE MAJORITY!. THE TOMATO REVOLUTION...
Will anything convince politicians that axon is necessary? I doubt it. America is a failed state.
Why the focus on taxes? Are you agreeing that the inflation we are seeing now comes from to much liquidity put into the economy from ARP creating demand push inflation (Larry Summers output gap comes to mind)? If not, let’s not focus on ‘distributional conflicts’ for the moment. Better to focus on building the infrastructure, not on who pays for the infrastructure, because as MMT/ JMK taught us, a sovereign fiat currency can always afford what ever it can do. Can we marshall those resources effectively? Can we use fiscal levers of the FederalGovernment to BBB to combat climate crises? Let’s leave the tax issue to when we must mop up excess liquidity to later. This approach might get Senator Sinema vote. Democrats since Jimmy Carter have bought into austerity politics of ‘who pays for it’, it’s the Deficit Myth trap - the truth shall set us free.
Stephanie gets it right one more time. It’s too bad the Democrats can’t organize a two car funeral.
The worse thing holding back the middle class is INFLATION! Unfortunately the Biden administration and their “free” spending friends along with tardiness of the Fed to react to rising prices is why we are where we are. Oh and by the way let’s buy more dirty oil from Venezuela and Saudi’s Arabia rather than produce our own cleaner oil. Quit whining about how things are not going the liberal way. You and your Marxist economics is why we are where we are.
Since the 1980s the western economies have been enthralled by Hayek, Friedman and other Neo-Liberal economists and their small government, lower tax solutions. Where we are now can be laid at their doorstep. Oh, and there is no such thing as "cleaner oil."
I don’t think Dr Friedman could be considered a neo liberal nor do I think he would think we are in an era of small government. Quite the contrary. Just look at our yearly deficit and the exploding national debt.
Please, Friedman was at the very forefront of Neo-Liberal economics as one of Heyak's leading students at the University of Chicago. Maybe ask the people of Chile what they think of his involvement with Pinochet and the creation of the new "free market" constitution there. As for the size of government, there has been a constant hacking away at regulation since the 1980s leading to one financial crises after another. And the bludgeon of the "national debt" as a means to cut more programs and regulation has only added to the mess that exists now.
The people of Chile would have welcomed the policies of economic freedom championed by Friedman, but the tyrannical government wasn't so willing to adopt them.
In fact the "economic freedom" was baked in to a new constitution, by Pinochet with help from Friedman and George Buchanan, that crippled the county for decades.
So, Friedman advises the government on what to do, and then he must be blamed for all the advice given, but not taken, as well the actions taken, but never advised.
By that logic Trump, who advised Europe against dependence on Russian gas, is responsible for all that came of the rejected advice.
You sound like a moron. Friedman wasn't the Chilean government, nor its dictator.
I know how the words 'economic freedom' can really set a nation back.
Geoffrey, I don't know what universe you live in, but Milton is one of the original Neoliberal Champions.
He was a classical Liberal, the term Liberal having been commandeered by the left for their own sordid purposes.
He prescribed small decentralized government and low taxes, and preached freedom and individualism. The term Neo Liberal is just another confusing offering by those having corrupted the word's true meaning.
You mean the policies advocated by the free marketers triumphed, especially in the Covid era in which govt expenditure in the US climbed to 45% of GDP????
Those low tax, small, decentralized govt policies really took hold and led to Covid lockdowns!
There are different grades of oil, some classified as light sweet and others heavy. The differences come out in the refining.
You're confusing dominance with success. The Neo-Liberals held sway over economic strategy but it was a gross failure in the end. What happened during Covid was an attempt to compensate those who were the losers from 40 years of "free market" economics that worked for the wealthy 1%.
What free market economics are you speaking of?
Stalinist lockdowns compensated for 40 years of free markets???? Shutting down much production and turning freer markets upside down was an attempt to remedy low gas prices and a working economy?
General statements that have no basis in fact - it's the lefty way.
Your newsletter is going to be a joke.
Government does work for moneyed interests. And bigger government ever moreso.
And your answer is - bigger government. Surprise. You have no idea what the problem is, nor the solution.
Clean Oil? Really???
More's the pity ...
What You Can Do About Climate Change:
1. Eliminate Food Waste
Food waste in the US occurs mostly in stores and at home—either because it spoils on the store shelf or before we can eat it. Americans throw away up to 40 percent of the food they buy. We can combat food waste by shopping for what we need, eating leftovers, composting scraps, and donating excess to food banks.
2. Eat Plant-Based
Transitioning to a vegetarian diet can cut your carbon footprint in half, and going vegan, even lower. Even shifting from high to low meat consumption can shrink your footprint by a third. If half of the world’s population reduced meat consumption and avoided the associated deforestation caused by agriculture, we could reduce carbon emissions by 66 gigatons.
3. Use Clean Energy
Ask your representatives to support the bill to make Clean Energy Victory Bonds a reality. Purchase renewable energy from installers such as Blue Pacific Solar and RGS Energy. Plug into renewable utilities with Clean Choice Energy and Arcadia Power, which don’t require you to install any new hardware in your home to get sun- and wind-power.
4. Vote for a climate activist, support comprehensive climate policies, and use your citizen voice to contact legislators when you disagree.
5. Divest
The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions come from fossil fuels. Divesting means taking your money out of institutions that fund fossil fuel expansion, which could eventually dry up funding to those projects. You can build a fossil-free portfolio with the nationwide network of socially-responsible investing financial advisors which you can find on GreenPages.org.
6. Improve Insulation
Modern insulation reduces the energy needed to heat a home, therefore reducing emissions and saving you money. If even half of existing buildings installed thicker insulation, 8.3 gigatons of emissions could be avoided.
7. Use LED Lighting
LEDs (light-emitting diodes) use 90 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs and half as much as compact fluorescents. Switching your home to LED lights will reduce cooling bills. They also last longer, so choosing them will bring long-term savings. Adoption of LEDs could prevent 7.8 gigatons of carbon emissions.
8. Rethink Transportation
Overhauling the world’s transportation systems, both commercial and personal, would save as much CO2 as one billion acres of regenerative agriculture. While individuals can’t revolutionize the shipping, flight, and automobile industries overnight, we can demand they change by voting with our dollars for public transit, using electric or hybrid vehicles, and reducing our total trips taken.
9. Recycle
10. Buy Less
Add “refuse” to the three Rs you’ve already heard of: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. When you don’t buy, you cut down on the amount that you contribute to landfills. Footprintcalculator.org can help you determine your current ecological footprint and offer actionable solutions for change, including buying less.
How about a little perspective....
1. The climate has been changing for as long as the earth has existed. Hence the reason you can find ocean fossils in Montana. The continents shift all the time. Plate Tectonics do not care about carbon levels. We are in and have always been in a state of climate change.
2. The carbon levels in the air were almost 5 times what they are today when life first crawled out of the seas.
3. At some point, the whole thing is going to come to an end, the sun will implode and life on earth will be gone long before it enters its final phase. Every species, every form of plant life, will all be gone and that includes us unless we learn to move to other solar systems by the time it happens.
4. Species die off and are replaced all the time and that process has been going on long before mankind came around. Lot of different reasons for that. Disease. Inability to adapt. Meteor strikes. Yes, climate change too. Mammoths and sabre tooth tigers were not hunted to extinction, they could not adapt to a changing climate while humans could and did. Heck, cheetahs are so specialized that they can only hunt gazelle. Their mouths are too small for bigger game. A virus wipes out the gazelle and there go any cheetahs not in a zoo.
5. Carbon based fuels are already nearing the end of their potential usefulness. They aint making more oil or coal or natural gas. Getting any of these is increasingly expensive and difficult but they are all still gonna run out and may already be running out. Some form of a switch to electric vehicles and a conversion to electric production that does not involve fossil fuels is going to have to occur anyway.
6. Our current power grid cannot support a complete conversion. CA is already having issues with trying to power cars and everything else. Until the power grids are massively updated and hardened an electric based economy unsupported by fossil fuels is not possible.
7. Solar and wind are unreliable and have their own environmental issues, not least of which is what to do with them when they wear out. As an example, we currently just bury the carbon fiber blades from solar. Solar cells are dirty and potentially toxic when dumped.
8. Plastics are derived from petroleum. How much plastic is going into all of these electric cars, solar panels etc?
9. Battery technology will require major advances. Lithium is a nasty and dangerous element that when disposed of or even mined is environmentally devastating. We are not there yet.
10. Nuclear is viable but not politically possible and will not be until we develop commercial size fusion reactors. The Chinese are in the process of building one now as a pilot. The Europeans are also making progress. We are probably 15 to 20 yrs away from having viable nuclear fusion reactors generating power for commercial use, but we are getting there.
Bottom line? Calm down. The world is not going to end tomorrow or in 10 yrs or even in 30 yrs. It WILL end but we, our children and great grandchildren will be long long gone by the time it does. The climate is gonna keep evolving and we are going to have to adapt and try our best to conserve what we can in the process and THAT is never going to end either. We WILL get off of fossil fuels eventually if for no other reason than that they are gonna run out but we have time to develop alternatives. Is this going to be easy? Nope. But survival as a species, of any species, going back as long as their has been life, has never been easy. We are always one comet strike, one super volcano, one virus away from extinction.
It's difficult to remain calm when your whole town is on fire or your home is floating down a raging river with you in it.
Yes, Earth will survive, but humans may not last another century. We've put off remedial action until it's very late in the day: We humans are causing a lot of the damage. We must change our ways and do everything possible to stop it -- for future generations; they deserve a decent planet to live on, not a hellscape.
BTW, sabre-toothed "tigers" are not tigers; they are cats, sabre-toothed cats. Doesn't sound as menacing, kinda like climate change over climate devastation. Thus, we need a book, perhaps I'll write it, entitled: "Mother Nature Is Trying To Kill You: And you're helping her!"
Mother nature has been killing people and all kinds of other things forever and will continue to.
AND...I am not suggesting that there are not things we should be doing to preserve the environment.
There are lots and lots of things we could and should be doing, ridding ourselves of forever chemicals, single use plastics, all kinds of things.
But, at the end of the day, freaking out over global warming does no good. Rushing to try and eliminate fossil fuels too quickly will create conditions that will simply create a public backlash that will prevent any movement forward at all.
The world is not going to end, it is going to change. It has always changed and will always change. Ice ages come and go. Warming periods come and go. Continents drift. Is this disruptive and threatening? Sure. We have to adapt and adjust and we will.
But freaking out over it and acting rashly will do not good whatsoever.
We want to act logically and immediately. We've been sitting on our hands with this knowledge for decades. Our window of opportunity is closing.
You may designate vast wildfires and epic flooding as simply change, but it's killing people, and is going to kill a lot more unnecessarily unless we act. Now it the time for all good Earth stewards to come to the aid of their planet, which excludes watching passively from the grandstands at the grandeur of it all. Nonchalance is not a live option.
Some people just don't get it & never will
Is your town on fire? You have some strange priorities! Get a bucket.
Things were so much better in the past when the streets were unpaved, filthy sewers filled with horse dung, coal dust choked the sky, and malodorous airs nauseated all.
It really is so much worse these days in cities now filled with millions rather than tens of thousands!
The world needs a few misfits, I guess, to show us all how truly better conditions are today.
Actually, my town and state are flooding: I live in Florida, where it won't stop raining while the American West burns. My relatives live in Texas and Arizona, and they are suffering mightily, told to stay indoors as much as possible: some wonderful life, eh?
City life is more dangerous, too, with incessant pandemic virus variants attacking. New York City had to have many refrigerated truck vans to store the dead temporarily while the morgues processed and processed and processed. One wonders, too, if the stress of large cities is causing the increase in homicides.
And about enjoying the improved conditions of modernity:
100,000 Americans Die from Air Pollution, Study Finds
https://www.usnews.com › News › National News
Apr 8, 2019 — More than 100,000 Americans each year die of heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses caused by air pollution spewed from factories, motor vehicles ...
There will probably be less than a billion humans remaining, mainly near both poles.
Risk Assessment:
Over 90% of climatoligists say we're headed for disasterl
Let's say there's only a 10% chance of them being right.
Do you want to play russian roullette with a 1 of 10 chance of mass death & relocation?
John,
1. We are always, constantly, moving toward some form of climate disaster. The climate is now and always has been DYNAMIC. As much as we might like it to be, it is not static but shifts dramatically over time. A living planet cares nothing for our desires.
2. The degree to which humans contribute to the planet changing is a complicated matter but there is a certain level of hubris involved to think that we alone or that we are even capable of substantially contributing to altering something as powerful as planetary climate. We barely understand WEATHER and we are as toddlers when it comes to understanding how climate actually works. Just one example. New studies show that warming oceans actually release carbon and we are not sure how much that is contributing to CO2 in the atmosphere. The magnetic poles are shifting and altering the magnetic field of the planet. We are not really sure how much additional radiation is hitting the planet as the poles go through their flip and how that is impacting climate. So let us not assume that we actually have a grip on the science. Is the planet warming? Yes, compared to previous times in human history, but human history is the tinniest fraction of the history of earth. Has the planet done this before? Yes it has. At least according to the science. Just as it has cooled before. We have actually had whole centuries of time, while humans have been around, where the planet cooled substantially to a point we would not recognize today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age (3 centuries). I might suggest that you read "Unsettled". Its written by Obama's chief climate scientist so not some right winger.
https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/1950665798/ref=asc_df_1950665798/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475772153738&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6761373365170134565&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007591&hvtargid=pla-1003364073268&psc=1
I would also point you to this. https://www.desmog.com/richard-lindzen/
3. Assuming you are correct, what is the US gonna do about it? We are just one country. China and India, both much much larger countries, are building new coal plants even now and are planning to build more. Those plants are going to more than offset anything we do. First, that tells me that either they do not believe in climate change OR that they do not care. In either case, short of going to war and shutting them down, I do not see how we stop them. Africa, the only continent with a growing population, is right behind them.
4. It makes good sense to question scientists who make grand pronouncements. Their incomes and their careers are dependent on several things that can and very likely do impact their assessments. Scientists make money from grants. Grants go where the politics leads. Think I am wrong? Look at all the top scientists leaving CDC over the politics trumping the science on the COVID vaccines for children. ( I work with CDC so I heard about this early ). They are also under social pressure from their peers to conform and whether they do or not can impact not just their careers, think tenure, but their social circle. Nobody wants to be on the outside or mocked.
I said it before, there are a lot of good reasons to get off of fossil fuels. Polluting the air is not good for our health. Energy is critical to national security and fossil fuels make us dependent on unstable powers like Russia and Saudi Arabia just to name two. Extracting fossil fuels does awful things to the environment. Fossil fuels are going to run out, they just are. You do not need to believe that carbon based fuels are cooking the planet to believe that getting off of them makes good sense.
So, I would suggest to you that we DO need to get off of fossil fuels but we do not need to panic about it. We need to take our time, do it deliberately, and plan properly. Just two quick examples of how not acting deliberately and planning properly has actually made the conversion harder. CA pushed EVs but failed to plan for either the electric generation capacity it would need OR for the transmission capability that it would need. So, now they are struggling to keep the lights on while charging all those EVs. Never mind that it takes TWICE as much carbon to produce an EV as it does a regular car, which is why you have to drive it 190k miles to break even on the carbon footprint. Most cars die at 110k miles. They also pushed solar way ahead of everyone else and now all those solar panels are reaching the end of their useful life and have to be disposed of. Problem is, they contain a lot of toxic materials that are hard to extract and renew and nobody knows where all these panels are ending up but it is assumed it is in landfills where they will contaminate groundwater. Wind turbines are proving to be disruptive to wildlife, the blades have to be replaced regularly and nobody knows what to do with them, they require a huge carbon investment upfront. The point is, rushing has caused us to create NEW environmental problems in an attempt to solve a previous one that we may not actually be able to control in the first place.
What we need is....
1. Better, cleaner, batterly technology that is not dependent on poisonous and environmentally destructive elements like lithium. Lot of work going on with graphine based batteries that is promising.
2. Some version of cleaner, safer, nuclear power. Whether that is fusion, which seems to be making serious headway or some version of fission using elements like Thorium makes little difference, that is what we need. We also need to explore the use of hydrogen based power for specific types of applications.
3. A massively upgraded and improved transmission system for electricity. It needs to be more efficient, more robust and smarter.
And we need to do these things without being in a panic. We need to think through carefully what we are gonna do, how we are gonna do it, how we are going to build and dispose of these new technologies in a way that will not simply destroy the environment in a whole new way.
I don't want to play Russian Roulette.
You are already in the game. You just do not know it or refuse to acknowledge it.
We are not in control. We are not driving a propeller driven ship, we are sailing and are subject to the winds and currents.
All we can do is respond and react to the hand we are dealt.
We are just not that powerful.
AND still nobody can give me an answer as to what we do if the largest countries in the world refuse to play along. Cuz China and India appear to not give a damn or they just have different priorities.
How does a sprinkling of molecules of CO2, a trace gas, way up in the Stratosphere warm up the vast land masses and oceans below????
If true, then where are all the CO2 heat generators? If a small number of CO2 molecules can heat up the earth, think of how many fewer would heat one's home!
"a sprinkling of molecules of CO2"?
You might learn from this:
How Exactly Does Carbon Dioxide Cause Global Warming?
https://news.climate.columbia.edu › 2021/02/25 › carbo...
Feb 25, 2021 — Overall, increasing CO2 and other greenhouse gasses reduces the earth's ability to “cool itself off” by radiating energy into space. In other ...
Your link is again busted. You have to find the story, copy and then post the entire link for it to work.
The trace gas way up in the stratosphere does some amazing things, like warming up the vast earth and ocean masses far below. I have never had anyone explain how this works; For if it did work, we would be using it to heat up our homes. But none is, which is really a strange thing. All this limitless energy that none will use, but they will burn so much fossil fuel to get the same effect.
Humans really are inexplicably wasteful!
Highlight the two lines of copy below and do a Search:
How Exactly Does Carbon Dioxide Cause Global Warming?
https://news.climate.columbia.edu › 2021/02/25 › carbo...
CO2 doesn't and can never cause global warming. It's a fraud.
If it were true, then we would all he using this near limitless energy to heat our homes. But none is, because it has no such property.
And I'm not here to do.your searches. It's a very easy thing to post a link. So do it.
When I see questions like this, it is very discouraging.
Sadly, i think we may be beyond the tipping point.
Meaning, there may be a billion folks left with immense pain & suffering enroute.
Hopefully there is some ocean life near the coasts with some arrable land
So your response consists of an emotional appeal. Such a display of a lack scientific knowledge can never persuade!
He won't llearn
Never vote for a Republican. If that doesn’t work we can look to building a strong 3rd Party.