Can someone give me pros and cons of this move (serious responses only)?
Thanks
Thanks
I think Trump himself doesn't care.
The number of American voters in those companies probably totals out to 2-3M tops, in a country of 350M.
Exxon Mobil's current and previous CEO were in favor of the Paris Accords. The previous CEO is also Trump's secretary of state.
> Or is it just pure ignorance?
There are vague claims that this will bring back manufacturing jobs, bring back oil coal jobs, etc. I don't know what the real reasons are, if any.
Then you have to account for the fact that as pollution (and therefore, CO2) is reduced, air quality improves, cancer rates decrease and all of the other health benefits related to airborn pollutants.
We are looking at an America without those things, or at least with renewables being adopted slower and with more resistance from the federal government than before.
I'm ashamed really, I'm especially ashamed by all the poor/middle class people who are actually proud of this just because it makes liberals and europeans unhappy.
- We're paying 100b/year when other developed countries do not have to. - Spending on that is unaccounted for. - The impact will be (only) a 2/10 Celcius reduction in temperature by 2100 - The positive impact by 2030 is the equivalent of what China pollutes in 14 days.
Just stating what was said. I don't know which are facts.
"Climategate" was reviewed extensively by numerous organizations and no wrongdoing was found. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_c...
By the way, Mann was forced to stop calling himself a 'Nobel Prize recipient', after it was found out that he wasn't directly awarded the prize; it was awarded to the IPCC.[2]
[1] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/29/reflections-on-mark-s...
[2] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331738/michael-manns-fa...
TLDR; the only positive argument you can make about it is that with the current administration, the pact wouldn't have been respected anyway so it opens the avenue for others things.
Most nations are implementing various carbon taxes in an attempt to reduce emissions, the obvious is that no carbon tax means no additional tax on businesses and transportation. This could be considered an upside.
Downside? Who knows, the US never really implemented anything anyway, so practically nothing will change. Ultimately, potential issues will be global warming on a catastrophic level. Then again, that may happen with or without the US attempting to reduce emissions.
Cons: estimates say that the climate will be warmer by 0.3 degrees Celsius by 2100. Assuming estimates are in fact right (which they historically haven't been) this could have devastating effects elsewhere in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P...
Edit -- not to mention that climate models are quite good at reproducing the observed changes:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Models-Show-Remarka...
And climate models predict things just fine as long as you pick the ones that are somewhat accurate in retrospect. That's not what prediction is. Prediction is when, like Al Gore, you say that in 15 years we'll all be underwater, and it doesn't happen. If you bet your money on the accuracy of the current models you will lose.
I would hope that at least on HN we could all agree on a shared objective reality and the validity of the scientific method. Your claims sound like something straight out of a Heartland brochure.
Given the relative wealth of the nation's involved I think the deal was fair. But that is a debatable point. The USA doesn't need this deal in place to limit its own emissions although its unlikely Trump would put much effort into it.
Not per capita, which is what is relevant when it comes to setting a country's policies.
They also have a lower quality of life and poor GDP. Not exactly a positive goal to shoot for.
So you want the US, richest nation in the world, to be held to the same standards as developing countries. Even though, in our economy, pushing for green energy actually generates more jobs than trying to bring back polluting industries. What, exactly, is there to gain from that?
Ideally, I'd want the free market to manage the standards via private certification, rather than some monolithic, global, unenforceable treaty that is little more than virtue signaling via giving developing countries lots of free money for no (or negligible) return.
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
Carbon per capita aside, do you realize how much pollution China and India produce? Do you realize what the rivers and lakes are like in those countries?
Yet you want to pay them Billions of dollars from US taxpayers to enable them to do even more of the same? How does that make sense?
You're basically complaining that China has too many people and would presumably want that some of them wouldn't exist.
His quote was: "If you think a certain group of people shouldn't exist, how do you select that group of people? And how do you know that you, yourself, shouldn't he a part of that group?".
China's population is a fact. In the end, you can't argue against facts. And in their current circumstances, China, a much poorer per capita country than the US, is willing to sacrifice a bit of their profits for long term stability.
The US is basically eating its own seed corn.
I simply don't want to pay to enable them even more.
When the proper social constraints aren't in place, money = energy = more babies.
It's poor policy to continually reward countries that are chronically overcrowded and polluted, it just makes the issues worse long-term.
>The US is basically eating its own seed corn.
It's hilarious to me that you believe this when ~85% of the rivers in China are qualified as "very polluted" or "extremely polluted."
Funny, it is actually money = better healthcare = less infant mortality + higher cost of raising child = less fertility rate = less babies.
Rich countries don't have more babies than poor ones, its the opposite.
Rich countries are market democracies. They have the proper social constraints.
In a market democracy it's more like you described, but not entirely, there are plenty of people who abuse the welfare systems to have as many children as possible for the tax credits and other benefits.
I am from India. And the main sentiments for people having more children were - high infant mortality (not knowing who will live to be old, which is still high for India but falling fast), more hands mean more money in home (less people to hire in the farm).
The "more hands mean more money" is exactly what market economy gets you, not a centrally planned communist economy. But with rising standard of living and cost of raising a child, people are moving away from the old mentality.
Have a nice day!
China doesn't have a properly functioning government, therefore they have to resort to crazy policies like that.
And I don't think we should be enabling through trade either, ideally we would jack up tariffs massively on countries with poor human rights, excessive pollution, etc.
James Hansen, a former NASA climate scientist, previously described the paris accord as "a fraud". He's describing this from the perspective of knowing it's not enough to do anything significant, and incredibly expensive. [0]
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-ha...
Cons: - US losing leadership position on everything related to climate change - US opening itself to tariffs from other countries that are in the Paris agreement - US looking like a regressive regime that does stupid shit just to get headlines
My guess is the third one will have the biggest impact.
Con: People who support the pact symbolically, not necessarily having any of the expertise or knowledge required to consider it, will go into a blind rage over it; actual climate scientists will be considerably more calm.