Venture investors blast US decision to withdraw from Paris Climate Accord
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Leadership in fighting climate change? Cmon' every EU-country is better at fighting climate change than the US. Denmark has at least 50% of their energy coming from their huge wind farms. Norway has a huge network of chargers for electrical cars, tax cuts for electrical cars and Sweden is huge in all sorts of environmental savings.
In Sweden you can't even order a fucking burger without seeing how much CO2 that produces and ads for vegetarian burgers that are better for the environment.
If you really think US is good at all at fighting climate change, you should really come to the EU and watch us recycle. Even during the recent terror attack in Stockholm there were people recycling.
Proof:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio-content/archive/undertheinfluence/ma...
http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2012/1204/360_intl_healthy...
https://www.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/64199h/two_swedes_r...
Whether we talk about a union of 320M as the US or a union of 510M as the EU, or whether we talk about a state like Michigan with 9M inhabitants or a nation like Sweden with 10M hardly matters. There are roads, electrical grids and similar infrastructure everywhere in the modern world.
It's not the distribution that's the problem. It's political will.
Your president and a lot of US citizens don't even acknowledge that there is a climate change. You are far from any kind of leadership in that regard.
I think EU takes the initiative and is king in making the world follow. Either because they want to or simply because they have to.
Southeast Asia contains most of the world's people and a huge fraction of the world's GDP. Apart from China, however, it's uncoördinated. A small action by the United States means more than many large actions by smaller European states. This makes sense from game theoretic as well as simple sociopolitical perspectives. This is part of the package one takes when choosing the confederated structure the EU has opted for.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/28/only-swe...
People can claim a lot about other countries and there is a lot of things we do shittier than others. But in fighting climate change, there is no better country than Sweden.
Since we can, you can as well. Taking leadership is possible as a little country. We can show you all that it is possible and that you can gain economical benefits from it. In Sweden, fighting climate change is a cultural thing like it should be in the entire world.
Even if we're fewer, I think we're actually pushing really hard.
An angry and selfish man with power can easily destroy the careful work of decades (or centuries). That doesn't make him smart or right.
I've never believed it.
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The biggest problem in the US is that currently neither party has a convincing majority. During the Depression, Democrats held something like 75% of the Senate. When FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court, the Republicans had no ability to stop it and had to rely on Democratic senators to decide it looked bad.
Today all politicians know that government control can change drastically in the next election, which gives a lot of hope to the guys out of power that if they slow things down just a little longer they'll achieve their wildest dreams, and a lot of fear for the guys in power that if they don't get what they want today they may not get another chance tomorrow.
There are brutish, stupid, and venal wreckers at both ends of the political spectrum. There are intelligent, careful, and thoughtful conservatives and socialists. Donald Trump and his followers are not among them. It's only the deeply fucked up political situation in the US that lead to conservatives (those interested in conserving the good that has been achieved) to support a person like Trump.
Political effectiveness divorced from thoughtfulness and respect is not desirable.
[0] http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics
The front page itself though? I don't know how others use it, but my frontpage is populated by my favourite subreddits, which are luckily mostly free of politics.
TBH I have no idea how the majority use Reddit, but don't confuse the front page with all of Reddit.
(As a side note, yesterday I went on /r/The_Donald out of morbid curiosity. I'm not sure what I expected, but it was rather shocking).
The main point here is that an effort to combat an idiot with sleazy advisors and good instincts looks quite different to the effort that you'd go to if you were trying to counter a secret mastermind who is just playing dumb. I'm amazed at the number of Random Know-it-all Lefty Bros out there who seem to think that overestimating Trump's intelligence and painting everything as a sophisticated plot marks them as somehow more sophisticated and right-on. I suspect you are one of them, with your raving about how I'm "easily duped" by Trump's typo. Jeez.
I'm not so sure how it helps him with Europe and China. What are your thoughts there?
IMO his foreign relations have been a disaster. I think the only country he has good relations with is Russia. Everyone else is laughing at him.
This also continues the polarization of the nation, which, I guess can be good for him but that's still TBD. And only someone with a gold fish's memory would let this distract them from the Russian thing.
I tend to cringe whenever intelligence is assigned to the man, but I know that's wrong and I should be more open minded.
What percentage of people have a clue of WTF the Paris Agreement is? What effects it will HONESTLY have? The difference between this "Accord" and an actual Treaty?
Right now, 99% of what's on the news is My Team vs Your Team. Republicans Defending. Democrats Attacking. No knowledge of what's actually going on.
Trump could hire Hillary to replace Comey, create peace in the middle east and give everyone a new car... and the Left would demonize him for all of it.
Maybe not here on this forum, but throughout the country, then absolutely yes.
Can you offer one piece of evidence to support your claim?
That is not an anecdote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/10/ho...
Anyway, what you're saying is wrong - my parents are extremely conservative, voted trump, and are very upset about this.
Why? They live in a sinking state where you can actually see climate change(LA).
Many things have become factionalized - but climate and healthcare are much less than people think.
I think the real problem right now is the right is engaging in identity politics and victimhood - ironically the same things they accuse others of. "Trump can never do anything right in the eyes of others" and "I like this ebcause the other side doesn't" reak of it.
What does the Paris Accord do? Nothing. What lawful enforcement is there to it? None. What forces countries to be accurate and honest? Nadda. How much will it actually affect "Climate Change"? Marginally.
Climate and Healthcare haven't become factionalized and politicized? No offense, but what reality are you in? It sure as shit ain't the one I live in...
The same Healthcare that was changed by a party line vote via the ACA? Pushed through with no bipartisan work or support?
Climate change isn't either? When more than a few studies can be pinged as affected by money from one side or the other? When denying "Climate Change" gets you branded a Heretic at the same level as denying Mother Church?
Name one thing the Democrats have done to work Trump since he got elected?
BOTH sides are engaging in "identity politics". Neither side is willing to work together for the common good. Both sides have victimization - although I would argue that the parts on the Right are much less pronounced and "Central" to their message and platform...
With these sort of one dimensional political questions its mostly about how you ask.
If it had said "Do you support the presidents effort to renegotiate the Paris treaty to get a better deal for the US?" you would have gotten 70% in the other direction.
Most of these sort of 'studies' are just marketing.
What "better deal"? The Paris climate agreement is entirely voluntary; each country determines its own contribution to reducing global warming and there is no enforcement mechanism. It's aspirational and America gains nothing by pulling out of it.
We know that generally the majority people support some action in flavor of climate. So any question that is phrases in that light will reflect that and have almost nothing to do with Paris specifically.
> It's aspirational and America gains nothing by pulling out of it.
Who cares about America? How is that relevant to politicians? Some climat change that might happen at some point in the future when they will not be in office anymore. What even is America? The people now living in America? The future people in America that don't vote? The country itself?
Non binding international agreements are about signalling and internal politics.
If Trump actually believed that 70% of the people would vote against him if he pulled out of Paris he would never have done it, but that is not relevant because they want, so he doesn't care.
Trump's decision (assuming it's a rational one and not fed by ignorance) is signaling the reverse: he's telling his supporters that climate change is a myth. And this is why he's getting pushback from other countries.
Polling shows that the Russian story is basically resonating with Democrats, but not doing much on the other side of the aisle (granted, Republicans stayed with Nixon up until almost-impeachment...)
Paris has broad bi-partisan support. "Let's distract from the Russia issue by something that people actually care about" is not the best strategy is it?
Think about the absolutely massive bad press AHCA has generated, combine that with the fact that Paris is only symbolism, and you have a political move with bad optics and no effect on reality. A global minimum if I've seen one (if you have enough cognitive dissonance to think AHCA isn't a massive mess).
The problem with "Trump is a political savant" is that it's indistinguishable from the "Trump has severe ADD and just does whatever comes up" narrative.
EDIT: check weather.com (at least the US site). When your political move make a meteorological site go full-monty on you, maybe you've generated a couple problems.
Trump is in for a rough time next time he tries to negotiate anything internationally, now when he has shown that he backs out of what many regard as a very important international agreement just 2 years after it was reached.
And on yet another issue, Trump shows the world that America is no longer taking the lead. Positioning yourself with Syria and Nicaragua is not taking the lead. He has put America last.
And I doubt it will be without repercussions from other nations. In the coming weeks we will see how there will be calls in Europe for blocking America in all kind of other international cooperation, including trade deals.
Yeah because China, India and everybody else are totally willing to sacrifices other deals because they are unhappy about this climate deal.
I think you vastly overestimate the importance of this deal to the governments around the world.
> And on yet another issue, Trump shows the world that America is no longer taking the lead.
He was the first to leave. So he is taking the lead at something.
It's not a case of unhappiness over this deal. It's a matter of trust. The US pushes for this deal for years, then abruptly abandons it. So, next time the US pushes for a deal, who's going to believe it?
This will absolutely increase the caution with which countries reach deals with the US. As it should.
Politicians understand that internal politics dominates (at least for big strong countries).
If they wanted to figure out that US goes back on its deal they did need Paris. They could ask Cuba about the Platt Amendment.
Very few countries in the world are a direct democracy where this would be a concern.
In contrast, representative democracies like the US are very resistant to sudden shifts in populist sentiment. Specifically for the US, the entire government is structured to prevent drastic changes in policy based on the whims and daily desires of the populace. For example, it is part of the reason why Congress is split into two houses.
In contrast, a dictatorship is unreliable, because all decisions are made by one person, whose mood swings can result in lots of unpredictability.
Representative democracies are notoriously prone to populist shifts; the US, though, has a system with many different and conceptually independent levers of power checking each other which is generally thought to make it resistant to populist shifts, and this was probably quite true in practice before the era of modern mass communication and nationalization of most politics and political movements when those levers really were largely independent in practice as well as in theory. But it's not the late 18th Century any more.
Yes, they are resistant to swings based on mood changes in the population. However, this does not hold for changes of mind or strategy by elected people themselves. They might promise something at some point and then not do it. US history is full of broken promises.
A counterpoint is that Trump and Obama are elected directly and specially on foreign relations they have a huge power to do whatever they like. Obama promised some stuff, Trump retracted it.
> In contrast, a dictatorship is unreliable, because all decisions are made by one person, whose mood swings can result in lots of unpredictability.
That is true in theory but in practice many dictatorships are remarkably stable. A dictator has to please his cronies, he can't do whatever he likes. He can do what he likes as long as it does not touch the interest of the cronies.
Check "Selectorate theory" in political science. Or this nice little video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
Thousands of treaties, conventions, agreements, and other arrangements are negotiated all the time. The Paris accord is just one, but a major one. The belief that the American government can be trusted to stick to a good cause, let alone stick to deals it has made before, has been eroded. American diplomats will find it harder to persuade other governments to do anything. They will also find that they have fewer favours to call.
Everybody understand that a treaty like Paris is just a big PR thing. Its is unenforced and the waste majority of people working on it will not be around when the results of it are in.
This is all about signalling. Trump wants to signal that he doesn't give a fuck and he is tough (or something).
If they wanted to know that American diplomacy is not consistent they could have looked at literally any point in US history. The could call Cuba what happened with the Platt Amendment.
To Europe and China the US looks like it can't be argued with. For many the US has become a pariah state.
Bargain with your credibility? I don't think that will work, though. One of Trump's strategy is put something that has been agreed upon on the table again, in the name of renegotiation. For other countries, it might be same thing as, blackmailing. How do you know Trump or his successor will play the same trick again and again?
Credibility is simply something you cannot game. This will cast a long term shadow on US's reputation if a contract can last no longer than 4 years.
Trump's America will still, be treated seriously, not as revered leader, but a unpredictable danger.
Yeah good luck with that. Maybe I'm living in a parallel Europe but that is not what I'm reading in the European newspapers this morning. Trump is loathed here and the notion of always cooperating with (our "friend") the US is sinking extremely fast, politically and also in the mind of the general people. I can't comment for all EU countries, but the view of the US is rather negatively here.
And honestly why would we? While a lot of EU leaders are publicly outraged, the fact that the US is more and more turning back into the dark ages gives a lot of possibilities for other countries. That void needs and will be filled in by others.
For me there is a silver lining here.
Maybe this will garner some points with his most fervent backers, but that set's growing smaller by the day.
The most charitable spin I can think to put on this is that he made an enormously risky bet on a) the rise of populism in Europe and b) the ability of America to cash in on its supposed position of leadership. Turns out a) failed and b) is worth less than we imagined.
The developing countries that (collectively) expect to receive $100 billion per year under the agreement would stick with it under any conditions.
How will that work now? Will Europe be paying that on their own?
In other words, any politician claiming that he's made a dent in the climate change problem is pretty hard to refute while any politician claiming her opponent has failed to make real climate change progress is similarly hard to debunk.
Meanwhile, a growing number of career bureaucrats get to keep on "working" for environmental improvements with almost no accountability. Compared to the war on terror, which does demand more tangible results, this is a much more politically pliable issue. For the political class, this is a win/win in perpetuity.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/trump-threatens-the-failing-e...
Yawn
Not really. There's nothing that he acquires by leaving a non-binding, aspirational agreement other than burning goodwill in effigy. What this means to the rest of the world is that the US cannot even be assumed to abide by voluntary agreements where it can unilaterally declare how much it actually wishes to contribute.
The message that the EU/China are getting is either that they're being given the middle finger for purposes of jingoistic posturing or that Trump doesn't actually understand how the Paris agreement works.
My memory is that the US withdrew from Kyoto as well. They withdrew but were still one of the few countries that actually reached the goal outlined there.
The reason was not political action but rather market adoption.
I don't know much beyond that but it is possible that much the same could happen, if coal is continualy replaced with gas or solar. Cars will be replaced with EV soon enough, even outside of any government action or gloabl agreement.
Again if have not studied the magnitude of all these changes and compared them to what exactly the parameters of Paris are so I am not arguing that trump did the right thing. In fact, if you expact the outcome anyway signing might be "free".
I just think some people mistake the signing of a international agreement with results. Kyoto did show that that was not really always the case. Not signing some agreement will not automatically mean we are heading for Mad Max.
The actual outcome and compliance will be mostly detrmained by internal politics of each country.
Corporations have long shown that they are not interested in truth, or sustainable profits, or people's health, or the environment. In fact, due to lack of government intervention, corporations like Exxon spread harmful propaganda that decreases the public's awareness about critical issues like climate change.
Collective action is important because this is otherwise a failure of humanity to recognize a tragedy of the commons. We need to collectively agree to solve the problem, through governments, because otherwise individual actors like states and corporations will increase their own wealth through greed at the expense of others.
Besides all the jobs and other economic factors that would disadvantage the US on a global scale if they agreed to the accord, we just have to look to Germany - a country that is following the standards put in place by the accord - to see what the consequences would be. They pay more than 3x per kWh for electricity than the US. This might be something that the middle class and up could afford, but this would unfairly target the poor and in poorer countries would cause death and suffering. This alone is reason enough to look for better solutions.
It isn't. Please read the latest IPCC Summary for Policymakers. It's a relatively quick and easy summary of the current scientific (yes, scientific, not opinion) understanding of the state of climate change, where the climate is heading, and what will be required to prevent or mitigate bad outcomes. Yes, scientific understanding changes and improves over time, but the best thing to base your decision making on is the scientific understanding we have now, not hopeful guesses about the future.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_...
We need to move past the 'climate denying' insults and work together to find actual feasible solutions. Downvoting/insulting/bashing anyone who doesn't agree with a solution will get us nowhere. This in itself is a serious problem and disagrees with the scientific method in every way.
I'd love to see more companies and private businesses help solve the climate problems.
However (and this is all just my experience and opinion so YMMV), on an economic level private corporations and businesses are focused on maximizing profit and minimizing costs, whereas public and government projects focus on maximizing benefit and minimizing costs. Not saying corporations are unethical but there could be times when solutions and research interests could conflict with profits or income generation. A public research institute is supposed to provide a "disconnect" between the need for income generation and research so that your results are really focusing on maximizing public benefit.
Someone I respect pointed out that greenhouse gas alarmism started on March 29th, 1979.
Companies often invite regulation when they want to do something for moral reasons that would out them at a disadvantage in the market. It's a common mistake to assume that industries object to all regulation: think of the small construction business where the owner still works himself, or cares for his people: he'll be among those profiting most from increased safety requirements.
Oh no ! US withdraws from the climate accords. What impact will it have ? Well here's what happened when the US and the world agreed to "binding" climate accords:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/images/g...
Can you see it ? Me neither ... There are no words ...
Binding climate accords were signed in 1992, 2005 (sort of) and 2012. Look at those points on the graph ... Let's face facts here: climate accords make NO difference, no matter how binding.
Can everybody who makes claims that worldwide accords, climate action, earth hour, ... everything that's been done in the last 40 years makes one iota of difference please explain why anybody would put in any amount of effort here ?
The problem with CO_2 concentration is that it's a lagging indicator, and that any attempts to lower emissions has to fight against the increased use of energy as economies in Asia and Africa are catching up.
Politics is slow, and there are few mechanisms in international law to enforce treaties. But an international agreement can work, for example by giving politicians arguments ("We're required to do it, because we promised it", "We're not going to lose competitiveness, because everyone is doing it").
Thanks to subsidies, solar and wind power have become cheaper by several orders of magnitude and are now getting close to being competitive with fossil fuels, at least in some regions. Crossing that threshold would obviously be an inflection point.
And the only slight drop on that graph "just happens", I'm sure, to coincide near-perfectly with the 2008-2009 crisis.
Subsidies have helped some to create more demand but the idea that they become better by orders of magnitude because of subsidies is absurd and totally against all economic logic.
Those things that had the best development are those things that are already useful anyway.
There are tons of things that got subsidies that never went anywhere.
More often they invite regulation when they can get some gain for themselves. Its very common to pull in the state to enforce oligopolies because they would be stable for example, history of US railroads is basically that.
Government working against climate is basically bushiness competing to capture the rain of subsidies that will be flowing down the pipe. The businesses that are part of the status quo, work against this because they don't want their privileges and subsidies eroded.
Venture capitalist of course love climate subsidies because that means lots of startups and new tech. They don't make a dime on coal.
The agreement was weak and not a treaty because the Republicans in the Senate would not have ratified a treaty, just as they failed to ratify Kyoto. If any Republicans thought this was a swell idea but just wasn't binding enough they could enter into a second, more aggressive binding agreement with whatever parties they like. Nobody thought this was a great agreement, it was too weak and timid, but it was the strongest agreement we could make without the Senate.
Healthy debate is healthy.
Immigrants have no say or voting rights. They can be used as a drum to do the pow wow ing. Earth wont talk back. Two perfect candidates.
Well... Not yet anyways.
“Most of the folks working around energy and climate no longer seem to require policy support,” said Shaun Abrahamson, a managing partner at Urban Us.}}}
Now I'm confused.. this contradicts the central thrust of the arricle
Exactly. More faux outrage.
Paris agreement is non-binding.
China has no obligation for 20 years.
It's not ratified by Congress.
Nothing from agreeing to this was going to affect your descendants other than draining American coffers of billions.
The actual wording of the accords has little to do with science and more to do with massive welfare obligations and handicapping the US economy with no requirements from China for decades.
*edited autocorrect typo
Science is anything that follows the scientific method.
One important step of the scientific method is "make testable predictions." Another step is "refine, alter, expand, or reject" hypotheses. Science rests on the possibility of falsifiability. If it can be tested, and found false, it is science. If there is no way to falsify it, it is not science.
For instance, evolution is falsifiable. We can expect that if we put certain organisms with rapid life cycles in a harsher environment, over a certain number of generations the population in the harsher environment will evolve to better suit that environment. If, say, 10,000 generations pass and the organisms in that environment are no better suited to it than a control population, we might conclude evolution has been falsified. Fortunately, we've done lots of tests like this, and evolution does indeed occur.
So I may better understand how this is science, can you tell me how the theory of manmade global warming can be disproved?
Lab tests that show CO2 is not a greenhouse gas?
Isotope concentrations that show increasing CO2 is not coming from anthropomorphic causes?
Evidence that the glaciers are melting because of some other reason than it's hot?
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_...
Who cares? What matters is if it's working or not. Of course it's hard to untangle if it's due to accords, scientific/engineering breakthroughs, government investment, etc. but India and China are far ahead of their Paris targets: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15052017/china-india-pari...
China has no obligation for 20 years.
This statement is wrong in multiple ways. As you noted above, Paris is non-binding, so there are no "obligations" beyond developing a plan and reporting on progress. Next, China's goals begin in 2030, which is 13 years away, not 20. Finally, according to the link above, China is on pace to meet its goals almost a decade (!) in advance, i.e. early in the 2020s. So even a charitable interpretation of your statement looks to be wrong by about 4x.
It's not ratified by Congress.
This is as far as I can tell, just a negative thrown in that has nothing to do with the thesis. Is agreeing to the accords bad for the U.S. (cost billions!) or does it not matter, because it's not ratified. Which is it?
Nothing from agreeing to this was going to affect your descendants other than draining American coffers of billions.
So basically every other country is willing to drain their coffers. Why is that?
Which was essentially the result of lobbying by the US. Most other countries wanted a real, binding treaty.
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/01/will-trumps-slow-mo-walk...
Very soon the people will demand to have police back (or roll their own temporarily), will demand roads fixed, and garbage taken out — or look for a garbage truck company to pay to.
The effects of this are very quick and visible. Unlike that, climate change, or e.g. effects of using lead paint and asbestos in building practice, is a slow, hard-to-notice thing. "Too late" happens decades later that the time of a preventive action; very few people have a planning horizon as distant.
"The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country Parties of their commitments under the Convention related to financial resources and transfer of technology and will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties."
Congress has already agreed that developed countries will initially take more of the burden, and might participate in something like the Green Climate Fund.