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Comment by AlphaCharlie | Hacker News Reader

Corporation are really the ones responsible for what you mention as they lobbied for all of these not to happen for profit’s sake.

And they won at that game.

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Yes corporations lobbied for them, as it is in their interest to do so. The government is meant to represent the interests of the people. It has and had the option to:

a) rewrite the laws governing corporations so that they have purposes other than maximising shareholder profits

b) ignore the lobbying, not take the bribes and act in the long term interest of their constituents

It's easier to take money and 'advice' from a few lobbyists, most of whom you know, than a mass of people with conflicting opinions whom you've never met. Especially when those lobbyists are buying you dinner and paying for trips all the time.

Then there's the indoctrination about how big companies represent the people too, create jobs, and deserve to have their own voice, their own tax breaks, etc.

Let's not pretend that our supposedly angelic civil servants & institutions don't happily take money in one form or the other.

Here in America, we've had the option to vote for more sustainable and green options since Jimmy Carter, but "oh no my economy" is cited as the reason why it has been categorically rejected time after time. How can you blame the government for doing what people asked of it? People voted to not do the right things, for a multitude of reasons, often including "someone (or some news show) told me it would hurt me"

So then government should make tougher laws surrounding the media. Break up empires such as Murdoch’s. Make it mandatory for media organisations to be co-operatives or some other such structure that disallows ownership by billionaires or corporations who can use them to push their own agenda. I’m not saying these are the solutions, but there are solutions out there to the problems that aren’t just the status quo. We just have to find them and be brave enough to try them. And yes I agree with you that citizens must also take responsibility for continually electing corrupt leaders.

People vote for energy that doesn't impoverish them. That's fine in my book. Jimmy Carter was a disaster and the idea that solar just needed more investment was and still is a sick joke.

At the end of the day, "being green" is tantamount to depriving people of cheap, reliable energy and thus destroying living standards. I don't blame them for choosing against impoverishment.

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