What Biden has done is to cut the issuance of drilling leases to the minimum required by law, pass the Inflation Reduction Act, enact a regulation to force vehicle electrification, and similarly force fossil fuels out of most power plants.
What Biden has not done: stop issuing drilling permits or impose export restrictions on fossil fuels. The former has some serious limits because of how the courts treat the right to drill as a property right once you hold a drilling lease, and the latter is simply untested.
Biden literally just cancelled oil and gas leases less than a week ago. I agree he hasn’t done enough, but there is some validity to the old statement that perfection is often the enemy of good.
The graph from OPs link shows a significant drop off under Obama, a steep rise under trump, and then another drop off under Biden. Kind of follows the Dem-Rep seesaw I’ve been experience for decades. It’s depressing that the Dems can’t do more, but the reality is they are also funded by the deep pockets of the fossil fuel industry, Dems can barely hold onto majorities as it is, and voters vote for these morally weak candidates over and over. I’m really at a fuck-this-place, and fuck-all-these-people stage. The only thing I really regret is bringing a kid into this world. Just very selfish and narcissistic on my behalf.
I’m really at a fuck-this-place, and fuck-all-these-people stage. The only thing I really regret is bringing a kid into this world. Just very selfish and narcissistic on my behalf.
Can’t say I’ve ever related to a statement this hard for a while. It’s all just a shitshow and we seem to be at the “fuck it, let’s ramp this up to 11” stage of self-extermination.
Why wait decades to fix something instead of fixing stuff now?
The United States is not a Command Economy and The President is not a Dictator. The US via private enterprise is dumping ever larger sums into renewable energy production and is definitely making progress. It’s not happening fast enough but it IS happening.
I think people dislike moderates because they can be more realistic. Cars are one of the biggest contributors to GHG in the US. Most people literally need to drive cars due to how our transportation infrastructure is built. It will upwards of a decade to undo because it will require a lot of large construction projects. Those take time.
Change requires support of the electorate or the current officials will get replaced. This is why people like Koch and Murdoch invest so heavily in propaganda.
Militarily, the only real threat to the US by a foreign invasion is nukes. Our naval and air power is on a whole other level. China has way too much control of manufacturing, so going after the other problem child results in a global economic catastrophe.
The BEST thing anyone can do is winning hearts and minds of US citizens to get them on board with what needs to be done. More moderate action is an easier sell. Once hedonic adaptation kicks in and people adjust to the new normal, we can move further. We are really close to being there. Look at my post history and read the nature article.
I think people dislike moderates because they can be more realistic
No, we dislike them because they don’t understand negotiation on a fundamental level, or anything about the republican party.
Republicans rush full steam towards their goals with no hesitation or thoughts for consequences.
So to stop them, compromising 50% before you get to the table doesn’t accomplish a single thing. We gave them Mitt Romenys healthcare plan after making it more conservative and Republicans called it communism. It doesn’t matter what we start out with, so we might as well start out with more than we want. It’s like walking into a car dealership and saying the most you’ll pay is 10% over asking price and negotiating from there.
Children understand this point when asking for candy.
I didn’t read the rest of your comment, because you started out with something so ridiculous I figured the rest wouldn’t be any better. And if you dont understand that first point, there’s zero reason to talk about anything else till you do.
It’s politically unpopular to do what need to be done. Moderate policies are popular policies. And moderate policies will move left the more people vote and the more old gens die.
It’s politically unpopular to do what need to be done
No, a majority of voters want action on climate change, unfortunately a majority of elected representatives don’t, because most get fossil fuels donations to their campaigns.
Moderate policies are popular policies.
Not as popular as progressive policies…
That’s kind of the whole point of American neoliberalism… alienate the left because “what are they going to do, vote R?”
Then move slightly to the right in a perpetual misguided attempt to steal the conservatives from republicans.
We’ve been trying that for 30 years now. The only result has been instead of slow progress, we take 10 steps back when republicans are in control, and moderates demand we worship them on the rare occasions we take five steps forward.
It’s not working, and that should be pretty obvious to anyone who knows recent American history.
Fighting extremism with moderation has never worked tho, that should be obvious to everyone.
Even by your linked article’s admission, that was kind of inconsequential:
The 2017 GOP tax bill opened a small part of the pristine wildlife refuge for drilling, a measure championed by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican. But it was never developed or drilled – or came close to doing so. Haaland suspended the leases in June 2021, and some major oil companies, including Chevron, canceled their leases in the area the following year.
However, the 2017 tax law mandates leasing in ANWR, meaning the Biden administration will have to launch a new leasing process and hold another lease sale by the end of 2024, albeit likely with tighter environmental provisions.
So the companies had the permits for 4 years and never did anything with them, to the point where Chevron cancelled their own leases. And the leases will be auctioned off again next year.
Meanwhile the Biden administration is granting applications for permits to drill on public and trial lands at a pace faster than the Trump administration at the same point. From the start of their administrations through March 27, Biden approved 7,118 permits and Trump 7,051, The Washington Post reported.
About the permit approvals, the Bureau of Land Management has said the bureau has taken a “balanced approach to energy development and management of our nation’s public lands.”
So yeah, while I think Biden is the most progressive president since FDR, his record on oil drilling isn’t so great.
Edit: fix the order of some quotes.
perfection is often the enemy of good.
I whole heartedly agree. Things don’t change overnight. We can’t rebuild hundreds of cities to eliminate car dependency by next Wednesday.
What we can change rapidly is behavior. It isn’t hard to convince someone to eat less beef when alternatives are cheaper. It isn’t hard to convince people that buying one nice 30 dollar shirt that looks better, feels better, and lasts for many years is cheaper than 2 20 dollar shirts that fade and unravel at the seems in a year.
We can’t expect everyone to junk their canyoneros tomorrow. We can convince them to harass city officials into put bollards up on the bike lanes because more bikes is less traffic that they have to sit in.
Seriously he couldn’t pass the Build Back Better plan but then the Inflation Reduction Act provides a potentially unlimited amount of incentives/subsidies for green energy.
Painting him as “just a moderate” on this issue is some centrist level bullshit, OP. He’s clearly giving oil, gas, and military convenient wins so they don’t ruin the world before the next US election. Yes, the oil barons have more political power than a sifnificant amount of voters.
I don’t think that’s ever been in serious doubt; the same simulation mechanisms used to produce climate modeling were used to figure out that nuclear winter is an issue in the first place. It’s just that most people would prefer to address global warming without mass murder.
So just nuke Antarctica. No one dies except some penguins, global warming ended. And they said it was hard /s
That doesn’t actually work. Nuclear winter is caused by the stuff which gets mixed up with the blast. Hit Antarctica and all you get is water.
On top of that, it’s where air descends from the stratosphere, so whatever particulates you do generate probably won’t achive worldwide distribution at significant concentrations
There is, of course, the possibility of geoengineering with sulfur dioxide. Sort of a nuclear winter without the nuclear. It’s the same mechanism by which nuclear would and volcanoes do cause climate cooling. Not very safe but it may be in our emergency bag of tricks.
Wasn’t there a proposal to do something similar by using ships to blast saltwater into the air? All the cloud coverage and reflected sunlight, none of the acid rain.
I think that’s actually relatively low-risk to do as well (as far as experimental geoengineering goes). A significant portion of the warming in the North Atlantic has been attributed to lack of sulfur emissions due to changes in requirements for container ship fuels. Should be able to get a similar effect with just water with the effects being understood well in advance.
Climate change is scary, but scarier than nuclear war? I dunno, man.
IMHO this mostly tells us that Biden is talking about climate policy with the people around him. That’s enough to be a big deal.
Yeah, when all the Republicans in the last debate said it wasn’t real, or whatever words were used, this is a clear difference on what’s likely the most important issue for most voters.
Nuclear war is quick.
Climate change is slow.
Gimme the quick flash over the boiling frog deal Everytime.
If you’re lucky enough to be one of the minimal handful who actually die in the quick flash. More likely you’ll be one of the multitudes poisoned by radioactive fallout or starved by nuclear winter.
It’s not better.
Relaaaax. We’re not going to die. Most likely anyways. Our children tho… hoo boy they might have a bit of a problem on their hands
Hey so as someone who is 35 and has survived massive flooding and a heat dome, the “its not something we’ll have to worry about” line doesn’t really make sense when I think about getting old and experiencing things like dementia or limited mobility in a world at 1.75 degrees warming
I don’t know, I’m 25 and we’re starting to feel the effect very obviously now. What makes you think it won’t be seriously affecting me in my life?
I used to believe it would be a problem for our children. But it’s happening right now. Wildfires, cyclones, heat waves, lack of water, pandemics… It’s happening right now.
We’re fucked already. The question now is about how much we will be fucked and if we can survive this. See what happened in Hawaï. It happened in Europe too. Cyclones will be a lot more common too. Heat waves are already hitting several times per year in what were temperate places. Agriculture is already suffering, and with it will come famine.
It’s important to act now, because things will only get worse and it’s bad enough already.
I like how no one here mentioned the obvious fact that climate change disasters will only make world powers more willing to start a nuclear war. Just look at North Korea, what will happen when they have a huge famine or flood or fire or whatever and even the Kims can’t fill their bellies, what then?
Let’s burn some more fossil fuels!! Whoo hoo,!! I doubt developing countries will stop it as their reasoning is absolutely correct. Developed countries already polluted the environment during the industrial stage and now they are in better position so they shouldn’t be the one lecturing about climate change. Only way to overcome this is by supporting each other financially but as we know human beings are greedy AF so let it burrrrnnnnnn!!
The technological landscape that developing countries have today is very different from what it was a century ago. Wind and solar power are cheap in a way that they weren’t then, so there’s the possibility of a green industrialization, where they don’t have to go down the road the US and Europe and China did.
Yeah naa…there’s a reason coal is being used and i’ll let you do your research before spilling BS.
The issue is mostly availability and infrastructure. Wind and solar only produce energy when there’s wind and solar. However new renewable energy is cheaper to produce but is inconsistent and not as reliable as a coal burning plant.
You can do something like Australia did with their huge Tesla battery to store the renewables but that’s not very economically feasible for developing nations, but they should still be building out new renewables for energy and filling the gaps with fossil fuels instead of just sticking with fossil fuels entirely.
In the vast majority of developing nations coal is far more expensive than solar - even when factoring in batteries.
Care to share your baseless nonsense? There’s enough of it out there that I won’t make assumptions about your personal flavor of dumb.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source