I need help understanding something. I see this argument used a lot on Twitter. Isn't the fossil fuel industry burning those emissions for... us? My understanding is those fossil fuels are then put into my car that I drive around and into airplanes, ships and trucks that bring goods to market. It's like getting mad at Tyson Foods and Chick-fil-A for slaughtering poultry. Seems like a very shallow argument unless there's something deeper I'm just not seeing.
It's the whole 'we live in a society' meme. We need structural changes to combat climate change. Yes it's nice if you individually. reduce your carbon footprint. It's also pretty insignificant when an individual or even a large group of individuals decide use an EV over gas or cuts out animal proteins because of environmental issues compared to the totality of society and industry. The pressure needs to be on the industries to innovate/change to reduce their carbon output.
One individual largely isn't a drop in the bucket. You go to the source to stop the problem. A lot of buying green products is just theatrics to sell you more shit
It’s also about the companies being able to say “we’re just meeting customer demand” instead of being forced to say “we’re spending billions on buying politicians and news coverage to prevent them from pushing green alternatives to our bullshit.”
Yeah I'm just not sure where the best places to apply pressure are. Me trading my Hyundai for a Tesla isn't going to do shit. But I'm not sure going after BP and Exxon is the right solution, either. (I'm aware they've lied and manipulated for decades to get us here. The people that did that should die in prison. I'm talking about how we move forward from this point.) Is it... pressuring trucking companies to move to an electric fleet? I'm not sure. I just think "We should get mad at the oil companies!!!" is an easy feel-good that doesn't do anything to solve a complicated problem.
Well, as a someone who is on The Left™ , I believe it's the role of government to provide the solution. Translate that 'mad at the oil companies!!!' energy into supporting politicians that will create laws, tax systems. regulatory pressure that incentives industry to lower it's carbon output and make it painful to conduct business that does the opposite. So yes, part of that would be incentivizing trucking companies to move to electronic fleets ect.
The point is getting government regulations passed that reduce carbon emissions for corporations and funding/incentivizing research and implementation to get us off of fossil fuels instead of being concerned about plastic straws or some shit. Me or you alone cant do shit. ExxonMobil alone wont do shit. Society as a whole coming together and saying we have to do this and using the powers of our governing body to forcibly enact these changes is the only way we can do anything. But our government is dysfunctional and it's too late anyway so eat arby's instead of putting on the white armor and rushing to the defense of oil corporations.
Ive either have read an article or listened to a podcast about her. Kate something. She did a lot of spy work for the union against the confederacy iirc.
This is fucking pathetic. I never read much of CA and didn't have a very negative opinion about Nathan Robinson, but I respect a lot of the writers there. This letter of course may not paint a full picture, but of all people who should understand labor and unionization (or a workers co-op according to the letter) it should have been him. I guess anyone in charge, no matter how leftist they claim they are, will rarely surrender power.
Hearing about Jesse Jackson being hospitalized for COVID got me watching his speeches from 1984..... Wonder how different this country is if he faces Reagan and not Mondale. This speech is just incredible
My grandpa was one of three people that gave a speech nominating Jesse during that convention. My grandpa was also a chief advisor on agricultural policy for him.
I mean, he would have been clubbed by Reagan just as badly as Mondale. But yeah, his appearances at the conventions in 84 and 88 were the best political speeches I ever heard in my life.
It really is maddening how much the Laffer Curve/ Reagan era Chicago School bullshit is baked into the discourse that goes unquestioned. "It's just the way things are done" attitude despite 40 years of data that says the opposite.
Dont feel like digging up the tweets but saw people ripping on Dore for pushing the horse paste. Far past time to start discussing him in the trump thread.
Speaking of economics - I mentioned it in the biden thread, but probably better fits in this one The latest episode of Macro N Cheese podcast had a really good discussion on the infrastructure. Excellent framing wrt the bipartisan and the reconciliation deal. How it's not inflationary ect.
I think I've been so out of the loop that I have no idea what truman has been referencing on this page Mac cheese horse paste and Reagan
When the dust settles at least she'll be able to sleep at night knowing she was 1 of like 6 people in all of Congress that at least tried to do something
These 9/11 tributes remind me of the line from one of the Rick Perlstein books about how one of Reagan's main appeals was that he had no interest in reflecting on what the Vietnam War actually was
Its almost like that should be a given, and, as a motto, has been the front and center of thousands of political campaigns for hundreds of years, to virtually no avail in the past several decades
How 'white evangelical' became a synonym for 'conservative' Spoiler White evangelicals are the most reliable supporters of the Republican Party and its presidential candidates. In 2020, around 80 percent of them gave their votes to Donald Trump. Noting specific promises to "protect Christianity," some analysts argued Trump cultivated a particularly intense bond with white evangelicals. In fact, his share of the white evangelical vote in 2020 was about the same as in 2016 — and the share won by every Republican nominee since 2004. Association with GOP leaders hasn't cost white evangelicals in public identification, either. A new study by the Pew Research Center finds that the number of whites who described themselves as evangelical actually increased during the Trump administration. The report pours cold water on hopes for a revival of so-called Mainline denominations. Some "exvangelicals" have left politically conservative churches. But the Pew study suggests that their numbers are balanced or outweighed by those who embrace the label. The characteristics of white evangelicals may be changing, though. For one thing, "evangelical" no longer has a clear meaning, if it ever did. According to scholar Ryan Burge, "the term ... has broken away from its roots as a sub-genre of Protestant theology and has now morphed into a social, cultural, and political term that stretches far beyond the boundaries of Christianity." When people describe themselves as evangelical or born-again, they're telling you more about how they see their place in American life than about what they believe. The term is also losing its association with religious practice. In a tweet, Burge presented data that the percentage of self-described evangelicals who report never or seldom attending church increased by 10 points between 2008 and 2020. The portion who report attending weekly or more declined by almost the same amount. It's hard to know exactly what's happening here. Perhaps less devout people are embracing the evangelical label, perhaps due to its political associations. Or maybe evangelicals are being more honest about their behavior, resisting the desirability bias that encourages survey respondents to say what they think researchers want to hear. Either way, recent scholarship suggests the fusion of white evangelicalism with partisanship isn't going anywhere. Republicans shouldn't worry about losing these voters, who are the rock solid basis of their coalition. And Democrats seeking new sources of support should look elsewhere. reddit comment in discussion of the about White evangelical has turned Republican Party into the first religious party in the US. A researcher published a book in 2006 (a decade before Trump) with a chapter talking about them. He predicted that they would support someone like Trump who would be extremely corrupt, amoral and dishonest. Enclosed below the summary of the chapter (1). The researcher published another book in 2020, with discussion of evangelical and Trump. Enclosed below a summary from this book (2). Spoiler (1) From The Authoritarians: This chapter has presented my main research findings on religious fundamentalists. The first thing I want to emphasize, in light of the rest of this book, is that they are highly likely to be authoritarian followers. They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority, and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason, and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times, and are often hypocrites. But they are also Teflon-coated when it comes to guilt. They are blind to themselves, ethnocentric and prejudiced, and as closed-minded as they are narrow- minded. They can be woefully uninformed about things they oppose, but they prefer ignorance and want to make others become as ignorant as they. They are also surprisingly uninformed about the things they say they believe in, and deep, deep, deep down inside many of them have secret doubts about their core belief. But they are very happy, highly giving, and quite zealous. In fact, they are about the only zealous people around nowadays in North America, which explains a lot of their success in their endless (and necessary) pursuit of converts. (2) From Authoritarian Nightmare - Trump and His Followers, Chapter 8: So why did the greater religiousness of evangelicals not keep them from embracing Donald Trump? Because for a great many of them, despite all the fuss and bother and appearances, their religion is simply not important. Their religious commitment, like the person they think they are, does not exist in significant ways. When Donald Trump came along, resplendent in moral shortcomings but promising the moon, evangelicals had little difficulty setting aside their supposed beliefs and supporting him. In fact, this was their S.O.P. They had been setting those beliefs aside 167 hours a week for most of their lives. Con men know that the easiest people to fool are the people who persistently fool themselves. This reality is an amazingly simple answer, yet when you stand back from it, it also is simply amazing.