What the next First Turning won't be like

[David Horn]

(01-16-2021, 04:26 PM)mamabug Wrote:

(01-16-2021, 09:54 AM)David Horn Wrote: It doesn't change the facts on the ground, though.  Global Warming is real, and the cost to fix it will be borne by those people who benefitted from creating the problem.  If you're a coal miner, you're not going to be doing that much longer.  

But did the coal miner, who worked for long, back breaking hours at minimal pay and suffer long term health consequences because of it *really* benefit from creating the problem of global warming?  The coal mine owner isn't going to pay for global warming, he's going to pocket any compensation for closing the mine and go invest it in mining for components for solar panels.  

No, it wasn't the coalminer who created the problem, anymore than the tobacco farmer created smoking. Yet both are and have been the focus of the GOP, because that delivers votes in regions focused on those industries. The faux-sensitivity to their suffering has always been a smokescreen for their baking of the industries that are responsible, none moreso than the oil industry. The money uses the poor and directly affected as shields to slow-walk changes that benefit them. It's cynical but typical. Capital always wants it all.

mamabug Wrote:As I see it, the solutions for solving Global Warming remind me a lot of the solutions for solving COVID - they are based on models often using unvalidated assumptions and speculative data that, magically, results in recommendations that require centralizing government power and enriching corporations.  It's not that I disagree AGW is real or that it is an issue, it's that the more I'm told by the people who will benefit that the *only* solution is to give them what they want, the more I think they are using fear to gain power not to actually solve the problem. 

Sorry, but we've tried the decentralized market-driven responses, and gotten almost nowhere. Note: even the most market-=centric option (carbon credits) got shot down by the PTB in the industries that simply didn't want to have to pay anything ever. So yes, a powerful public response is the only option left, as Winston Churchill noted on other matters of similar import.

mamabug Wrote:I do blame Republicans in a lot of this because they often spend too much time denying the problem rather than saying, yes this is a problem but your 'solutions' will just make everything worse.  Possibly, this is because almost all national level politicians are part of the elite that will benefit from the solution so their objections are weak.   

Deny and delay are not solutions. They are the problem. The GOP is and has always been the party of big business. Why be surprised?

mamabug Wrote:Ah, well, such is the way of the world.  Politicians are corrupt and self serving and big business uses that to their advantage.  The best most of us can hope for is they'll manage to give us the bread and circuses we need to stay happy.

Political corruption tends to be a two sided issue, one that is much less prevalent in other advanced countries. Why is that the case, do yo think? Even our close neighbor to the north is vastly better at this than we are. Maybe we need to do less of what we do and more of what they do.