JCC People's Climate March

I will allow "they are both terrible but Jeter's was far less terrible than the alternative."

1) No, but I would support another Gas/Fuel/Fossil Tax applied on tax income larger than X amount to keep subsidized gas prices lower (though the subsidy needs to be eased not removed -- so low-income people pay more, but are not disproportionately affected).

2) Sommmmmmmewhat? I'd be interested to see how that would be constructed before firmly answering.

3) No. I'd be more interested in a phase transportation tax for ALL food (i.e. local tomatoes from NJ are better for the environment conceptually for a NYC dweller than organic tomatoes from Ecuador). So companies would compete by supply chain; this helps McDonald's and grossly helps In 'n' Out, but would be a more fundamental proper tax on food distrubution.

4) Yes, if studies showed it would be even marginally successful. EDIT: Wait, zero? No, I don't want genocide.

5) Yes.

 

Too many poor people making too many more poor people is ONE of the drivers of climate change. I've already listed some of the others.

 

Point #4 is about population growth rate, not population in general. *facepalm*

But that would still be very hard to achieve.

 

Even a tiny reduction in a global meat production would help a lot, but I suspect that's probably one thing we can't accuse the typical marcher of being hypocritical about.

 

Which is why us leftists are trying to promote policies which improve the standards of living for poor people, rather than just saying that only rich people deserve to propagate the species.

 

A lot of rich countries, particular in Europe, already have stopped propagating the species. I promote bringing U.S. population growth to zero growth as well.

Improving the standard of living of poor people also increases global warming. See China. Of course, for every one American you reduce to absolute poverty, you can improve the lives of 370 Ethiopians and keep emissions at net zero gain.

For every person we add to the planet, we have to reduce our per capita emissions by x amount to keep emissions steady year over year. This is the reality.

 

It's good to know that my personal "no ******* way I'm ever having children" policy will have an impact beyond my own well-being.

 

I'd be 100% on board with Mrs Inty and me receiving a tax break for choosing to not reproduce. Or a stimulus check.

 

It will. You're freeing up enough carbon emissions for 370 people to be born into absolute poverty. That's the net global population increase that will occur over the next two minutes.


The U.S. has the potential to do more than almost any other nation to reduce carbon emissions. If all Americans could agree to have only 1-2 children per family, eliminate all immigration, and reduce our standard of living by about 50%, there would almost be no need for an international climate treaty...well, except for China and India. In absolute numbers, China is the world's energy heavyweight now. For now at least that's partly because they're producing for us to consume. If we decreased our consumption by half...

 

But I need that new smart phone every 1 to 2 years!

 

You'll need to give up a lot more than that.

 

Yeah, we will have to dial the clock back to 700 and submit Africans to ebola or we'll all fry. There's just nothing else

 

all you have to do is come up with a plan to reduce your carbon footprint by 50% and then implement it soon. Like tomorrow.

Remember, the longer we wait to start mitigating global warming, the harder it will be to improve the situation. A minute from now, we have to worry not just about our own footprint, but also about the carbon footprint of ~150 net additional humans living on the planet with us.

 

Well it's a good thing I use a horse and buggy to get everywhere these days.

 

The horse is a luxury you can't afford. Kill the horse, eat it, then turn vegetarian and pull the buggy yourself.

 

As a vegetarian, he can also eat the buggy and then walk everywhere.

 

"You'd think he would be for icebergs melting." - Stephen Colbert

 

So, Vivec, back to my point from yesterday -- now that I'm home and I get to see the inane ads to get people to show up, it's exactly sort of what I thought:

"What gets hipsters and bankers to march together."

And this is somewhat the issue: again, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to protest man-made climate change. But the above is making it look like simply saying "I am against climate change and I am here" is enough, let alone that everyone agrees with each other. I'd wager good money that if you sat those people down in a room, they'd agree on one thing -- and one thing only -- climate change is probably bad. And disagree on nearly everything else. But yet, all of the groups can claim victory when -- in reality -- Obama was already showing up today to get me stuck in traffic on the way home to make this very same point (to, I might add, a group of people who aren't Chinese, Russian, Indian and Canadian) and the Mayor of NYC already planned on announcing his own initiatives prior to Obama's speech.

It's like this:



(h/t heels1785)

The world's problems are more complicated than a ten-word answer and it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty of "There's definitely a problem, now what are the solutions going to be?"

Especially considering here was the detritus of the Climate March in microcosm:

 

Jabba is clearly not denying climate change. His first paragraph makes that clear.

People hate hypocrisy, Vivec. When the conservative wing of liberal democracies is broadly skeptical of the full extent of climate change, they will absolutely use any opportunity to shift the narrative onto the carbon-emitting behavior of people like Leo because if they can make the debate about celebs being hypocrites and not about the issues, they win.
Moreover, "do as I say, not as I do" is a remarkably compelling argument, said nobody ever.

But then that also has to suppose that the Kony2012 movement was valuable and not an exercise in the collective stupidity of the politically naive and ignorant.
Firstly; yes, they must have solutions. If you're not part of the solution, you're simply pointing out problems and is anyone going to be swayed by their arguments if they're going "we're ****ed?" No. Of course not.
Secondly, they are advocating for a shift in human consumption habits which are so far reaching they almost dwarf our capacity to conceive of it. I just got back from Singapore, which is an incredibly wealthy place on a per capita basis. It's also equatorial, meaning it's usually 85% humidity plus and 30C on average every day and every night. Air conditioning runs everywhere. And on Sunday the Straights Times, the newspaper of Singapore, published an article noting how a massive jump in earnings and spendings was recorded in Singapore over the last 5 years, with the bottom 20% of earners making the most significant gains. The average Singaporean family spends SG$5000 a month; $1700 on servicing a mortgage and the rest on consuming, and if you ever get there you'll see that Orchard Rd has maybe 2-3 multi-story malls per block. It's a very long road.
If this tiny city-state's behavior is replicated broadly in a fraction of the population of Shanghai (24m people) or Beijing, it means an enormous carbon footprint. Singapore has always been prosperous; China hasn't. So basically we're saying that despite coming late to the riches and consumption party, actually, China has to bypass the enjoyment phase of their hardwork and consume less and more greenly.
You wonder then why people may switch off to a message of problems with no solution? Sigh. You really are a lot smarter than this Vivec.
People have faith in our ability to invent solutions at the last minute. People put off acting now because they think it'll be resolved later. People want changes but without sacrifice. How is a protest saying "we want change, there's problems! We just don't know what those changes are or how they'll occur!" going to get traction anywhere?
Jabbadabbado I think the market, not the State, will make the most significant contributions to cutting carbon emissions and turning back global warming. Green-tech is infant, but the green effectiveness of some products is seen as a marketable selling point. Giant billboards on the East Coast Parkway (ECP) - the main freeway out to Changi Airport - promote cars, whitegoods etc from Mitsubishi as being the most efficient and green products of their class. The government of Singapore has embarked on massive campaigns to promote recycling in conjunction with private sponsors and designers; and hotels all ask that you reduce your footprint by having linen etc changed every second day. These are small but crucial steps in one case study that underline my thinking.
What are your thoughts?

You mean like neoliberalism, which has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in China alone?
Jabba, in his typically gloomy fashion, is suggesting a population explosion in Africa (extrapolated from current birth rates) which is deaf to race or human emotion. You must understand; this Jabba just sees scenarios in which we all die. He doesn't care about rich, poor, white black. A 90% reduction in the population of earth would, in his view, be a beautiful thing.
But his point is this: feeding them is prohibitively difficult. It takes 9kg of grains to produce 1kg of beef. Meat is the staple diet, I guess you could say, of richer economies, so he's factoring in increased consumption in China here. Grains are also being used to produce ethanol; and are at risk of climate-induced phenomenon (Thailand is a significant rice exporter and flooding is impacting the crop yields there). To produce more grain, to farm and process and distribute it, is to increase the carbon footprint.
Don't be so hyper-mega-over sensitive to race that it impedes your ability to think critically and see the world through Jabba's eyes.

Believe me, we're all benefiting from that one.
And dp4m, good points.

 

Ender, thank you!

Though, I will admit to feeling a bit like this:

 

I don't really see how it's hypocrisy. The argument isn't really for personal responsibility. It's for broad scale structural changes in our society (eg less meat consumption) and economy (curtail fossil fuel energy production) in order to affect a meaningful impact on the climate. It's no more "hypocritical" to forget to throw away your napkin while doing that than it is to get into a shoving match while protesting against a war. Scale matters. Proportion is a thing. Especially on debates of public policy instead of personal belief, I don't see why one would begin to challenge the other.

 

Do you understand what the point of a march/protest is? Do you think everyone marching in the Civil Rights protests had legislative solutions to propose? Should they have? Do you not see why it's unreasonable to expect the average person to have a solution for everything? Because it's extremely unreasonable. The point of a protest is to show there is broad public support for, in this case, addressing climate change. It's not the responsibility of the individual protester to do the math in front of you.

I support research in nanotechnology. I couldn't tell you the first thing, okay maybe I can tell you the first thing, but not the third thing about what needs to be researched next. I supported my mother undergoing a risky and dangerous surgery a few months ago to get rid of an aneurysm. I didn't know how the surgery worked exactly, but that didn't stop me from making a full case for her to go through with it.

I shouldn't dignify the picture with serious response. "Some protesters left garbage behind checkmate climate theists." This is something I'd have expected J-rod or JediSmuggler to post, not you.

 

Ah, dig deeper VivecsLaMent, that'll help.

During the civil rights, they absolutely did have solutions. THey weren't just saying "we need change!" They had an idea of how and what that change should be and protested the resistance to that change.

Similarly, the Vietnam war protests had a focus and an end-goal that they wanted achieved.

A better point of comparison would be Occupy, which was similarly unfocused despite also having worthy goals.

Sorry was this in response to the point I made about people looking for any excuse to shift the focus from topics they're uncomfortable discussing to easy win matters for them? Because it sounds like it is.

 

Really, the point of the picture of the garbage isn't anything other than "do these people know what things are made of?" Let alone the extra consumption for the cleanup (for vehicles, not people, we have plenty of parades here in NYC where the same detritus is left behind). It's primarily around the mass quantities of Styrofoam and plastic lids in that one pic, both of which are vast consumers of fossil fuels to create, rather than the detritus itself.

And, back to the other point, I don't say that everyone should know everything. But yes, I'm pretty sure those people who marched in protests for Civil Rights, ERA, Vietnam, etc. had very clear and explicit goals. To wit:

1) We want the US government to have black men, women and children to be treated the same as white men, women and children. (Civil Rights)
2) We want the US government to withdraw from Vietnam as immediately as possible. (Vietnam)
3) We want the US government to enact legislation that allows women to be treated the same as men with the same earning capability. (ERA / Womens' Rights)

Are there fringe, crackpot versions of the above (especially in the ERA and Vietnam protests/marches)? Of course! But as a general, overarching thing -- those goals are pretty clear. Conversely, I find it impossible to pull out any singular goal of anything in this march other than "climate change is bad," which -- as we've previously discussed -- any rational, sane person should think and doesn't actually necessarily help without solutions. Because this is aimed at a worldwide audience as it's being timed to a UN summit on climate change, rather than the clearly articulated goals for the US government above.

Here are some of the signs I've found posted online:



What, may I ask, are the plans beyond eliminating those four? That's 87% of our electricity production in the United States. (That said, as an aside, I absolutely love the poster design -- it's extremely clever!)



An actual solution! All for discussing it. A carbon tax, provided it's not passed on to all consumers, is worthwhile to at least discuss (at minimum, providing the government to not only pay for carbon offsets but possibly double or triple the cost, and requiring all politician campaigns to repay carbon offsets from travel, junkets, etc. would be a good place to start).



And the most common sentiment: "no carbon, no nukes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources (it's Wiki, so grain of salt)

Here's a seemingly-good (I'll let you determine as you're way more science-knowledgeable than I) research paper on the theoretical EROI of varying forms of electricity.

Based on those two sources, the above sign is contradictory -- and the most common sign / slogan at the march.

I guess, realistically, the best thing is to put this another way:

Would we be okay with a march to end autism (a good thing) with the majority of signs being to not vaccinate your child?
Would we even be okay with a march with clearly stated goals (say "We want the US to spend $100mm on an NIH study for the causes and solutions to autism") if, again, the majority of placards were anti-vaccination?

PS - if it helps, I was imagining the above two in a Carrie Bradshaw Sex and the City voiceover type of thing.

 

It's a bit harsh to criticise people who aren't scientists for not knowing about the complexities of climate science. Global Warming is bad for the human race & countless other species, protesting the lack of government action to combat it is a good thing even if you yourself don't have a viable alternative. It's not up to the regular Joe in the street to come up with answers, it's the government's job. They can look at current data & have scientists advise them on the best course of action.

I'm all for combating climate change, but I agree some protesters are being unrealistic.
The most effective way currently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to use renewable energy in tandem with nuclear fission. Even in the UK we have people protesting the construction of new nuclear power plants, it's just fear of what happened in Japan. But we aren't on a fault line here, we don't get major earthquakes or tsunamis or hurricanes that could cause reactor damage. So besides burying the waste there is no issue with nuclear power here. Some places in the US are harder to build reactors in, but fission & renewable power has to be the way forward until we get Fusion (if we ever do) & wireless electricity.