Yep. Toilet schedules for every department should go through Congress, apparently. It's a deliberate design to flood an already very narrow zone, lawmaking.
My first thought when seeing this was "OH! There must be new science." That does not seem to be the case. I'm going to need to adjust my understanding of how the world works.
I suspect that the "Champion of Beautiful, Clean Coal" is just living up to his side of the contract.[0]
Wouldn't this increase US exposure to foreign intervention in the future? Although China is the worst offender, since a while now they are getting their stuff together. They suffered and later fixed some gross air pollutions in their cities.
The rest of the world is also pretty much on board with this clean air and climate change stuff as it turns out people generally like clean air, so if this sticks at some point the only logical next step would be to compel US to stop polluting the world.
If I understand correctly, this also removes EPA ability to regulate car emissions, arguing that it will allow for cheaper cars. Why would US public really wants newly made clunkers on their cities? Polluting cars are horrible city life quality downgrade that even the rich can't escape.
Also, will this allow to put the banned due to the dieselgate VW vehicles back on the roads?
China was an offender at the time yes. But even so, since 1980, when effects of climate change were first known, US has emitted 250Gt and China only 263 Gt, which in per capita terms places US at 690t/p and China at 185 t/p. This is despite China having one child policy since 1979 (which by the way has been heavily criticized by the US).
In all, the case for US being the real villain here keeps getting stronger and stronger.
I don’t know by what means foreign countries would intervene in the US. They’d just ignore whatever is requested of them.
But it will increase US dependency on foreign countries in the long term. EVs are the future and if US manufacturers aren’t working on them then they’ll continue to lose market share to foreign companies.
The means would initially be similar to those used against other mildly-rogue regimes such those of Serbia and Mali: withdrawal of cooperation, fines, and limited sanctions.
If we get to the late 2040s and the rest of the world is within touching distance of net zero but the US remains as an extreme outlier in its refusal to decarbonise, then we could well see harsher measures such as those applied to the likes of Russia and Venezuela.
US is 350M people, let's say everyone is climate change sceptic and together with Russia, Australia and Saudi Arabia it totals to about 550M people.
In the rest of the world the idea that you can just just pump as much as smoke you like and it will magically disappear isn't popular. Maybe because they all had some polluting industry around that made them miserable or maybe because they live in dirty overcrowded cities and noticed that smog isn't pleasant or maybe because they don't have much fossil energy sources, they are generally not skeptical of the idea that "not polluting is good". Just as with vaccines or abortion, climate change or simply the desire to live in a clean environment isn't a divisive topic in most of the world.
So its going to be 8B people trying to compel 0.5B people to live in clean environments and take care of the output of their industries. I think the 8B will be able to do that one way or another.
That ship sailed with the destruction of the global world order. The polluting industries probably don't have to be polluting when you take care of the pollutants.
The rest of the world is not on board. Western Europe, United States, and Australia take “breathing considered harmful“ seriously. No other country does, and nobody else is deliberately suppressing their growth. There are plenty of countries taking western money to pretend that they do.
Believe it or not, most of the people on earth don't worship growth. No one cares about growth just as no one cares about climate change, people want improvement on their lives and a future that can be good. Some policies like paper straws downgrade it and other policies like clean air upgrade it.
When you start thinking in more abstract terms, growth v.s. climate change associated risks is a false dichotomy.
Of course people at first all they care is to get out of a bad situation like poverty but once they are out of poverty they start caring for other things like the future of their children. Apart of fossil energy producing countries like USA/Russia/Australia, people don't pretend that pollution is no biggie.
Generally these things follow a Kuznets Curve where you get rich from polluting and then are eventually rich enough to care about poisoning your children.
China's bad air around the time of their Olympics is pointed to as being a turning point that could have toppled the government if not dealt with.
Slightly uniquely they seem to have discovered a way to become even richer by cleaning up their pollution, the timing for EV and renewables working out well, and presumably many other nations will try to follow that pattern going forward.
Even just buying these things from China will make both sides of the trade richer compared with dirtier alternatives.
Despite this, since 1980, US, EU and Australia have been the biggest polluters since 1980 when climate change was first known to be man made. (Read my other comment)
> The rest of the world is also pretty much on board with this clean air and climate change stuff as it turns out people generally like clean air
Are you sure about that? Or you mistaking the world's opinion for that of the out-of-touch elites living in their lofty ivory towers? Because in the world, outside the media controlled by these elites, I see the exact opposite: it turns out THE WORLD generally like electricity at 2 cents per kwh (not 50 cents how elites like it), no matter how much carbon dioxide it emits.
Trump has a couple of more years left on this planet. He'll never see the effects of his policies, but he'll do everything to please his donors. That's about it.
CFCs are bad because they make the government get cancer. CO2 is fine because it'll make your grandchildren die in a heatwave or drown in a flood, that won't happen in the next few election cycles.
The joke in the refrigeration industry is that "it's not bad for the environment until DuPont's patent expires".
Now obviously they were bad for the environment all along, but I don't think it's a coincidence that nothing was done about CFCs until the 3rd world got good at making them cheap.
The joke is getting a little out of date though since the new stuff is hydrocarbons and CO2 (and you can't patent those).
Phew, you made me so afraid of EU propaganda that I almost forgot about the propaganda from major energy companies (with a combined worth of trillions of dollars).
When your comments is worse than the official BP position on climate change, you know you're on the wrong side of history.
How exactly is this not just like a global policy thing rather than EPA? Surely our emissions affect other countries' qualities of life so the decision is not just up to us.
Beyond its role in climate change, elevated concentrations of CO₂ pose a direct physiological threat to human health, ranging from inflammation to respiratory stress. The Trump presidency is trying to protect coal and oil for some reason. Money, lobbying, bribery anyone?
We need to look past the political noise and focus on the immediate data: CO₂ is a pollutant that harms human physiology. Regardless of where you stand on climate policy, we should all agree that breathing toxic air is unacceptable. We need to prioritize respiratory health and cognitive safety above partisan loyalty
This is a bad take. CO2 will not harm your personal health in the short term, in the amounts measured in current atmospheric readings. You personally have a higher percentage of CO2 in your body every time you breathe. You currently breathe about 430 ppm of CO2. Toxic levels are above 5000 ppm (40000 is regarded as immediately dangerous).
You're arguing the right side but you're using the wrong arguments. This is actually counter productive.
The protests have been consistent since the regime took office. There's been two attempts on his life. Blue states are implementing measures to basically soft secede from the federal government. Republican candidates are losing in landslides and the regimes secret police are being confronted as soon as they're identified. Idk where you get 'complacent' from.
He means it's not in his feed. "Random old woman gets kidnapped" is represented 100 times more strongly in the datastream then "1000 protestors organize immigrant protection system" or "US Citizen Mung families defend elderly Vietnam vets".
... at least "Random Old Woman" has got people looking askance at the internet connected security camera ecosystem, I guess.
Idk, man. The regime isn't asking my permission and my individual capacity to stop them is pretty limited. The best I can do is make sure my family and community are taken care of while the resistance builds momentum. There are 70 million white supremacists in this country and however this shakes out, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
> What happened to the protests? The indignation? Get rid of this guy already you complacent fucks
I'm just reminding that this is exactly what Americans voted him to do. And in their opinion, the main problem is that he does what he does not effectively enough.
~70 million Americans voted for this out of ~350 million. Trump has a current approval rating of ~38% and approximately 60% of Americans think he's gone too far.
All the research clearly shows that higher turnout would have led to an even better result for Trump.
And the American polls are little more than a reflection of the less and less popular mainstream media's position and weakly correlate with what Americans actually do. We've already seen this twice in elections won by Trump: Americans follow the media, say how they disapprove of Trump, but then go out and vote for him.
I’m only aware of one data point: unlike comparable elections, the Republican won voters who did not participate in 2020. Sounds like you’ve seen other research?
There's nothing to manipulate. The majority of the US electorate is politically and literally illiterate. That's why their voting patterns are based almost entirely on the current economic sentiment, not the media.
Biden denied a worsening economic situation for the average American, and the response was Trump winning the election.
Trump has made the economic situation even worse, and his support is tanking. Which is why republican candidates are currently losing in landslides and we're breaking protest records.
> The majority of the US electorate is politically and literally illiterate.
Are you sure about that? Because it's hard to blame illiteracy on something that brings you 20 times more money (speaking of economic sentiment) than everyone else. It sounds more like malicious intent.
> 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).
> Low levels of literacy costs the US up to 2.2 trillion per year.
It seems like you're responding just to argue and not in good faith. You keep bringing up the average income disparity as if there are no economic woes in the United States. I'm not debating the massive privilege the US holds as an economic super power due to imperialist foreign policy. Feel free to respond but I won't engage with you further.
> It seems like you're responding just to argue and not in good faith.
It's a convenient position when the FACTS and MATH completely discredit your narrative that American workers are not actively contributing to what's happening because it's VERY beneficial (more than x20 benefits) for them.
It's clear from this comment that you do not understand the complexities of US politics. If you don't have something useful to contribute, I'd recommend spending your time understanding the political system here, the generational propaganda machine, and why it isn't simply a matter of every politically conscious individual going outside and protesting. People are already protesting all over the country and he's not out of office. There have even been assassination attempts.
Maybe you weren't paying attention for the last month. The president's secret police have killed several civilians in broad daylight, in some cases specifically because these people were trying to help others who were being attacked. You have no idea what the fuck is going on here, honestly, and your comment is as ignorant as it is unwarranted.
It's also worth remembering that our economic system has intentionally or not, pacified and domesticated the working class through threat of poverty and state sanctioned violence. Resistance always requires great personal sacrifice, which is why those who do so are heroes. For the rest of the working class, they have to weigh the risks of resisting which includes, death, losing their families, their homes, jobs, etc.
> pacified and domesticated the working class through threat of poverty and state sanctioned violence.
More likely through outright bribery. What's the average hourly wage in the US? About $40? While 90% of workers worldwide earn less than $2. The difference is more than 20 times.
The American working class voted for this, the American working class is the main beneficiary of this, and, as far as I know, NO ONE in the American working class, even in solidarity with other workers, has handed over to them the money they unfairly receive at the expense of the rest of the world.
> American working class is the main beneficiary of this
This is very out of touch with the current economic situation in the United States. It was certainly true for the Boomer generation, but the economic situation and wealth gap disparity has only gotten worse for Gen X, Millenials, and Gen Z.
The primary beneficiaries are the rich. As many regime supporters in the working class are finding out the hard way, they are also just resources to be extracted from. ICE agents aren't going to be paid the blood money they were promised. Farmers and manufacturers are getting shafted by tariff policy.
Americans may make ~20x more on average than the rest of the world, but the newer generations still can't afford homes, healthcare, food, etc.
> wealth gap disparity has only gotten worse for Gen X, Millenials, and Gen Z
And how much do they make? $35 an hour? Okay, let's even go very safe and go with a large margin, say they make $30 an hour. And compare that to LESS THAN $2 an hour, which is what 90% of the rest of the world makes. That's still a difference of MORE THAN 15 times. You can't argue with math.
> The primary beneficiaries are the rich.
No, that's bs. The main beneficiaries are the American working class. They YEARLY have more income than American billionaires accumulated over generations. They elected Trump. Twice.
Meanwhile, 90% of workers worldwide earn less than $2 an hour.
And how many Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have given up most of their tens of dollars hourly salaries for the benefit of the world's workers, earning less than two dollars an hour? Zero!
Additionally, revolutionaries do it for the working class. We're all in this together. The divisive anti-US comments in this subthread are so unbelievably out of touch with what is happening in the US.
Keep telling yourself that these issues are for scholars, that you are fighting back with your little protests and videos. The whole world can see through your bullshit. Brought to you by the thoughts and prayers people!
For a country with more guns than people you certainly forget very conveniently what they are for.
First you indignantly ask why we're not protesting and then denigrate them as "little protests". Then you assert that personal firearms might solve the problem against the most technologically advanced armed forces in the world. Maybe you can share what country you live in and how you've so successfully fought against the state.
The No Kings protest was the largest in US history BTW.
> Keep telling yourself that these issues are for scholars
What a straw man. I said no such thing.
> The whole world can see through your bullshit. Brought to you by the thoughts and prayers people!
Quite frankly, your caricature of the US only serves to highlight your own extreme ignorance and bias.
> For a country with more guns than people you certainly forget very conveniently what they are for.
I am well aware of the motivation behind the 2nd amendment. Stop acting like a pretentious clown and hit a textbook. You don't know a damn thing about the US and it shows.
> It's clear from this comment that you do not understand the complexities of US politics.
Overall, it doesn't seem like a very complex problem. The US simply does not have a vote of no confidence nor the tradition of using it when unfit people like Trump and his traveling circus reach the highest levels of government and need to be stopped. Instead, people pacify themselves with fairy tales about "checks and balances", which are nothing more than gentleman's agreements in a world with very few gentlemen, and no substitute for actual legal procedures for removing inept leaders. To pick an example from this week - where I live, Pam Bondi would have faced a vote of no confidence and loss of her position the very next day after her House hearing during which she made hysterical deflections and personally attacked members of parliament.
The "complex" part seems to be that Americans appear unable to even imagine holding public officials accountable like that. Instead of the American public's expectations of their leaders rising over time, they are rapidly declining before our eyes as governance inches closer to trash entertainment like reality TV and pro wrestling.
It is sad that climate change has become a political issue and has grown so polarized that there is no middle ground anymore. One faction protests to ban everything related to fossil fuels and even goes so far as to disrupt public life and impose its ideology on others (e.g., Klima Klebers in Germany), while the other faction ignores the devastating effects of climate change on humans and future generations and pushes for increased greenhouse gas emissions. We need to meet in the middle and work together to ensure human well being without deindustrializing. In this respect, every political party and side has failed miserably over the last 30 years or so.
You’re comparing an extreme minority on one side to the mainstream view on the other.
Democrats are not banning everything related to fossil fuels, nor do they disrupt public life. They have simply applied subsidies to encourage environmental friendly choices. Which is exactly the middle ground you are asking for.
> and impose its ideology on others (e.g., Klima Klebers in Germany)
what does "impose its ideology" mean?
they were protesting for the government to uphold their own promises and use low hanging fruits which are even beneficial beyond reducing green house gases.
Are you sure it's not just media magnifying the extremes? In my own bubble and honestly most of what I see online most people seem to believe in a middle ground.
The problem is that there isn't really a middle ground. The damage is done and no actions taken now will have a quick, politically measurable effect. The people arguing against action are relying on the delay between action and effect. If you can't see it now (despite actual measurable data being available for at least the last 2 decades) then it must be a lie.
I'm still not sure what the climate change denialists see as the goal of "big climate". All of the money and profit is on the side of continuing to fuck the climate. All of the projects to alleviate the problem are expensive and have very little profit to be gained, but apparently it's a conspiracy of academics on minimum wage in various university research centers who are determined to take the money from our wonderful oil and mining benefactors (who have nothing but our best interests at heart). What's worse is they want to push technology that gives us energy for free! Must be a bunch of communists or something!
If only it wasn't being cherry picked to neuter the EPA while Border Patrol and ICE take it upon themselves to act as police forces on domestic soil.
EDIT: and it's gone. From #1 on the front page to page 14 or so in about 35 minutes. To be honest, that took a lot longer than I expected.
I suspect that the "Champion of Beautiful, Clean Coal" is just living up to his side of the contract.[0]
[0] https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/budget...
The rest of the world is also pretty much on board with this clean air and climate change stuff as it turns out people generally like clean air, so if this sticks at some point the only logical next step would be to compel US to stop polluting the world.
If I understand correctly, this also removes EPA ability to regulate car emissions, arguing that it will allow for cheaper cars. Why would US public really wants newly made clunkers on their cities? Polluting cars are horrible city life quality downgrade that even the rich can't escape.
Also, will this allow to put the banned due to the dieselgate VW vehicles back on the roads?
In all, the case for US being the real villain here keeps getting stronger and stronger.
But it will increase US dependency on foreign countries in the long term. EVs are the future and if US manufacturers aren’t working on them then they’ll continue to lose market share to foreign companies.
If we get to the late 2040s and the rest of the world is within touching distance of net zero but the US remains as an extreme outlier in its refusal to decarbonise, then we could well see harsher measures such as those applied to the likes of Russia and Venezuela.
In the rest of the world the idea that you can just just pump as much as smoke you like and it will magically disappear isn't popular. Maybe because they all had some polluting industry around that made them miserable or maybe because they live in dirty overcrowded cities and noticed that smog isn't pleasant or maybe because they don't have much fossil energy sources, they are generally not skeptical of the idea that "not polluting is good". Just as with vaccines or abortion, climate change or simply the desire to live in a clean environment isn't a divisive topic in most of the world.
So its going to be 8B people trying to compel 0.5B people to live in clean environments and take care of the output of their industries. I think the 8B will be able to do that one way or another.
When you start thinking in more abstract terms, growth v.s. climate change associated risks is a false dichotomy.
Of course people at first all they care is to get out of a bad situation like poverty but once they are out of poverty they start caring for other things like the future of their children. Apart of fossil energy producing countries like USA/Russia/Australia, people don't pretend that pollution is no biggie.
China's bad air around the time of their Olympics is pointed to as being a turning point that could have toppled the government if not dealt with.
Slightly uniquely they seem to have discovered a way to become even richer by cleaning up their pollution, the timing for EV and renewables working out well, and presumably many other nations will try to follow that pattern going forward.
Even just buying these things from China will make both sides of the trade richer compared with dirtier alternatives.
Are you sure about that? Or you mistaking the world's opinion for that of the out-of-touch elites living in their lofty ivory towers? Because in the world, outside the media controlled by these elites, I see the exact opposite: it turns out THE WORLD generally like electricity at 2 cents per kwh (not 50 cents how elites like it), no matter how much carbon dioxide it emits.
Now obviously they were bad for the environment all along, but I don't think it's a coincidence that nothing was done about CFCs until the 3rd world got good at making them cheap.
The joke is getting a little out of date though since the new stuff is hydrocarbons and CO2 (and you can't patent those).
(Because the other side of the argument has thousands of measurable, verifiable scientific studies)
When your comments is worse than the official BP position on climate change, you know you're on the wrong side of history.
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c...
We need to look past the political noise and focus on the immediate data: CO₂ is a pollutant that harms human physiology. Regardless of where you stand on climate policy, we should all agree that breathing toxic air is unacceptable. We need to prioritize respiratory health and cognitive safety above partisan loyalty
https://open.substack.com/pub/minimallysustained/p/beyond-th...
You're arguing the right side but you're using the wrong arguments. This is actually counter productive.
... at least "Random Old Woman" has got people looking askance at the internet connected security camera ecosystem, I guess.
I'm just reminding that this is exactly what Americans voted him to do. And in their opinion, the main problem is that he does what he does not effectively enough.
All the research clearly shows that higher turnout would have led to an even better result for Trump.
And the American polls are little more than a reflection of the less and less popular mainstream media's position and weakly correlate with what Americans actually do. We've already seen this twice in elections won by Trump: Americans follow the media, say how they disapprove of Trump, but then go out and vote for him.
Biden denied a worsening economic situation for the average American, and the response was Trump winning the election.
Trump has made the economic situation even worse, and his support is tanking. Which is why republican candidates are currently losing in landslides and we're breaking protest records.
Are you sure about that? Because it's hard to blame illiteracy on something that brings you 20 times more money (speaking of economic sentiment) than everyone else. It sounds more like malicious intent.
Yes: https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-liter...
> 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.
> 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).
> Low levels of literacy costs the US up to 2.2 trillion per year.
It seems like you're responding just to argue and not in good faith. You keep bringing up the average income disparity as if there are no economic woes in the United States. I'm not debating the massive privilege the US holds as an economic super power due to imperialist foreign policy. Feel free to respond but I won't engage with you further.
It's a convenient position when the FACTS and MATH completely discredit your narrative that American workers are not actively contributing to what's happening because it's VERY beneficial (more than x20 benefits) for them.
Maybe you weren't paying attention for the last month. The president's secret police have killed several civilians in broad daylight, in some cases specifically because these people were trying to help others who were being attacked. You have no idea what the fuck is going on here, honestly, and your comment is as ignorant as it is unwarranted.
More likely through outright bribery. What's the average hourly wage in the US? About $40? While 90% of workers worldwide earn less than $2. The difference is more than 20 times.
The American working class voted for this, the American working class is the main beneficiary of this, and, as far as I know, NO ONE in the American working class, even in solidarity with other workers, has handed over to them the money they unfairly receive at the expense of the rest of the world.
70 million out of ~350 million voted for it.
> American working class is the main beneficiary of this
This is very out of touch with the current economic situation in the United States. It was certainly true for the Boomer generation, but the economic situation and wealth gap disparity has only gotten worse for Gen X, Millenials, and Gen Z.
The primary beneficiaries are the rich. As many regime supporters in the working class are finding out the hard way, they are also just resources to be extracted from. ICE agents aren't going to be paid the blood money they were promised. Farmers and manufacturers are getting shafted by tariff policy.
Americans may make ~20x more on average than the rest of the world, but the newer generations still can't afford homes, healthcare, food, etc.
And how much do they make? $35 an hour? Okay, let's even go very safe and go with a large margin, say they make $30 an hour. And compare that to LESS THAN $2 an hour, which is what 90% of the rest of the world makes. That's still a difference of MORE THAN 15 times. You can't argue with math.
> The primary beneficiaries are the rich.
No, that's bs. The main beneficiaries are the American working class. They YEARLY have more income than American billionaires accumulated over generations. They elected Trump. Twice.
Meanwhile, 90% of workers worldwide earn less than $2 an hour.
And how many Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have given up most of their tens of dollars hourly salaries for the benefit of the world's workers, earning less than two dollars an hour? Zero!
https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/#household-we...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-wealth-gap-widest-in-three-d...
For a country with more guns than people you certainly forget very conveniently what they are for.
The No Kings protest was the largest in US history BTW.
You're not supposed to stop until you get what you want.
What a straw man. I said no such thing.
> The whole world can see through your bullshit. Brought to you by the thoughts and prayers people!
Quite frankly, your caricature of the US only serves to highlight your own extreme ignorance and bias.
> For a country with more guns than people you certainly forget very conveniently what they are for.
I am well aware of the motivation behind the 2nd amendment. Stop acting like a pretentious clown and hit a textbook. You don't know a damn thing about the US and it shows.
The "complex" part seems to be that Americans appear unable to even imagine holding public officials accountable like that. Instead of the American public's expectations of their leaders rising over time, they are rapidly declining before our eyes as governance inches closer to trash entertainment like reality TV and pro wrestling.
Democrats are not banning everything related to fossil fuels, nor do they disrupt public life. They have simply applied subsidies to encourage environmental friendly choices. Which is exactly the middle ground you are asking for.
what does "impose its ideology" mean?
they were protesting for the government to uphold their own promises and use low hanging fruits which are even beneficial beyond reducing green house gases.
I'm still not sure what the climate change denialists see as the goal of "big climate". All of the money and profit is on the side of continuing to fuck the climate. All of the projects to alleviate the problem are expensive and have very little profit to be gained, but apparently it's a conspiracy of academics on minimum wage in various university research centers who are determined to take the money from our wonderful oil and mining benefactors (who have nothing but our best interests at heart). What's worse is they want to push technology that gives us energy for free! Must be a bunch of communists or something!