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Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

I am very left, and despise Biden's refusal to address climate change where it counts, like fraking. But honestly, the new boss is not the same as the old boss, even with climate change. The new boss does in fact acknowledge it exists, rather than insisting that all climate change is a hoax and it is invented by China to hurt the US. Biden is not making the progress I'd like to see, but he is in no way as bad as the last guy.

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This is nonsense. Whether someone virtue signals or not, actions are what's important, not words.

The CO2 emissions output has been coming down since the high in 2006. With the old boss and the new boss.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide...

If anything, fracking helped the environment, since it offset resources being mined by the traditional, more wasteful methods.

> This is nonsense. Whether someone virtue signals or not, actions are what's important, not words.

Arguably the most powerful tool the POTUS has is words. So they are not unimportant.

The atmosphere is shared between all countries. Looking at the output of a single country is useless for everything except petty politics discussions. When a country moves its industry abroad without changing its demand, net CO2 output is unchanged, and these figures are worse than useless.

> atmosphere is shared between all countries

True, but since we are talking the old boss vs new boss... Neither can exactly tell China or Europe to stop increasing their CO2 output.

They can. Largest economy on earth. Just put your money where your mouth is.

It seems you are stating that the loudly-spoken and widely-distributed words of the US president are "not important". I completely disagree with that. What the US President says is definitely important. I have already expressed anger in this thread that Biden has not taken the right actions. His words aren't even right. But there IS a difference - it DOES matter what he says.

Denial is not the same as acceptance. Saying that it doesn't matter if the president is a climate denier or not is pretty far out there - I haven't heard this take before.

Is it okay for the president to spread messages of pro-genocide and hatred? That doesn't matter right? The president's words literally don't matter, so whatever, he can go on about yelling that he's gonna nuke someone, doesn't matter. "Words [of leaders] don't matter" is a terrible take.

Wow, "fracking helped the environment" is certainly a take I haven't seen before.

I think it's ridiculous to say Biden and Trump are the same on climate. Biden is pushing through a bunch of climate stuff on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and hopefully will get even more in the reconciliation bill.

Words _do_ matter, because the threat of serious climate legislation makes companies shift in a direction where said legislation won't completely destroy them. Read this piece to see more: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/climate-...

> This is nonsense.

Deleting this sentence from your comment really improves not only your argument, but the tone of discussion. It just makes things needlessly adversarial to lead with fighting words, and for sure it triggers defensive mental antibodies before you've even started.

Normally I'd agree with you, but the rest of the response is such a whiff I imagine it'd be hard to be insulted by it.

Good point!

> This is nonsense. Whether someone virtue signals or not, actions are what's important, not words.

That's not fair. When you're the chief of a fire station, saying "Yep that's a blazing fire right there, let's do something" is not virtual signaling, it's called not being a fucking idiot.

A better metaphor for the behavior of politicians is: saying "Yep that's a blazing fire right there, let's do something...in twenty years".

> If anything, fracking helped the environment

Maybe fracking helped reduce emissions for now, but it remains to be seen whether it helped the environment. It could take decades to learn about all the negative impacts it has.

You are right. That's what I meant to say.

I can't say I care very deeply about whether or not he's sympathetic and useless, or antagonistic and useless. The end result is the same.

Maybe the EU will one day get it's agenda together, and apply crippling tariffs to all goods and services imported from countries that don't have carbon taxes.

Actions matter. Narratives are often used as palliatives. Demand real change.

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