Obama Proposes 'Meaningful Progress' On Climate Change 583
astroengine writes "President Barack Obama called for 'meaningful progress' on tackling climate change in his State of the Union speech in Washington, DC on Tuesday night. While acknowledging that 'no single event makes a trend,' the President noted that the United States had been buffeted by extreme weather events that in many cases encapsulated the predictions of climate scientists. 'But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods — all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it's too late,' Obama added."
Other significant statements from Obama's speech: 34,000 troops coming back from Afghanistan over the next year; new gun regulations "deserve a vote"; rewards for schools that focus on STEM education; increases in tech research; a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9.00/hr and tie it to inflation; and a proposal to use oil and gas revenues to fund a move away from oil and gas,
Democrat proposes more spending, what a surprize (Score:1, Insightful)
Our Dear Leader has spoken: spend spend spend and don't argue about how to pay for it. Just keep spending and everything will work out ok.
Excellent. (Score:2, Insightful)
Best set of policies I've ever seen from an American President. Hope he manages to get some of them through.
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if he was a Republican... he'd do the same, then lower taxes. Maybe a hair different on what exactly he'd spend it on, but otherwise, very little difference.
There's so little actual difference left between the two parties' stances that the strife and "you people"-ing has long since ceased to make sense. Why then even do it? Clearly it's not about any actual issue, and hasn't been for a long, long time.
Get on with it! (Score:5, Insightful)
It strikes me that if you just let this man run the country for the remainder of his term without obstruction America could be the country that most people in the world have been told it is. And the whole world would be a better place.
Alternatively you can obstruct him at every turn and show that you are hypocrites that talk democracy and freedom, but are nothing more than corporate shrills doing the bidding of lobbyists, none of which are working for the American people, let alone the world.
And if you won't, for fuck sake let him run another country. Australia would love to have Obama as the leader. People of his mien come once a generation FFS.
He had plenty of time to do that if he wanted to (Score:5, Insightful)
Giving a nice speech doesn't really convince me of his intentions after sabotaging Kyoto.
I didn't watch the speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk is cheap, and the State of the Union address is about pageantry and blowing hot air, not anything that will actually happen. Come back to me when you have a serious effort, which will probably involve legislation, a budget, an actual agency, probably some grant programs, and other tangible steps. Come back to me when thanks to some serious efforts and funding, we have solar or geothermal or hydro power that could handle the entire energy needs of the US. Come back to me when you have serious conservation efforts that make Americans not the most wasteful people on the planet.
You know, people made fun of Jimmy Carter suggesting things like turning down the thermostat and wearing a sweater, and for installing solar panels on the White House, but he was basically right about the necessary course of action.
Circular Reference (Score:4, Insightful)
Horrible Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a certain King Canute who went to the beach one day and ordered the tide to stop flowing. I can imagine Obama's ideas and efforts will have exactly the same effect.
Your analogy is terrible. History and other countries have shown that industry and consumers don't give a shit about the environment. And that goes for both capitalistic and socialistic societies. We've shown in the past that government regulation can fix things like CFCs and the pollution of drinking water so what's so batshit insane about proposing we fix this with regulations?
Your analogy would work if King Canute had previously ordered a lake to split in two and it had worked.
While he's at it he should make tornadoes, earthquakes and hurricanes illegal.
I don't know what this is? Some throwback to that bullshit logic about gun control? I guess people are still being murdered so we should revoke all the laws outlawing murders? I mean, when murdering is outlawed then only murderers will have the ability to murder people!
... is this some new parroted right-wing narrative you're getting from Facebook or something?
It's not about controlling the weather. The weather is a symptom of the problem of spewing tons and tons of carbon and greenhouse gases into the air and environment. So he's tackling the root cause of the problem, not making a symptom illegal
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:more math and science won't bring jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
If we don't need hundreds and thousands of workers as cheap labor, then we don't need to outsource of jobs.
So what are you going to do with the people who can't hold down a high-tech/creative job? They don't magically vanish, and putting them all in prison would be horribly expensive.
Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
I like Victor Davis Hanson's take: [realclearpolitics.com]
He wrote that about the inaugural address, but frankly it also applies to the State of the Union, and pretty much every other public utterance by this President.
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:3, Insightful)
Coming up on this last election, I made the mistake of thinking the appropriate question was really, "why vote for either of them". For this reason, among others.
But now I'm left wondering if I screwed up. Not that my vote matters more than anyone else, but I was listening to the Address and thinking, as much as I disliked Romney, would his Address have been, "spend billions, raise taxes, ban guns, spend billions more"? I don't think it would have been. His platform, for all the things I disagreed with, was more like, "curb spending, close tax loopholes, that's all." I mean, he wasn't going to get to shut down PBS, or any of the other hyperbole we ate up.
Honestly, I feel like a sucker.
Re:More drone deaths (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be noted that it was his Democrat buddies that put the kibosh on closing Gitmo.
Re:Get on with it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believed the math on his tax plan worked, you damn well should feel like a sucker.
Re:Get on with it! (Score:2, Insightful)
Politicians shouldn't suggest 'grand plans' for any country.
That's what a Monarch does. Politicians in a democratic republic should realize they have no fucking business proclaiming anything.
Re:I didn't watch the speech (Score:4, Insightful)
The possibility of a new ice age was definitely out there in popular media. Big cover story in Newsweek, for example. It was the kind of story that sells. And I'm old enough to have been there at the time too.
It was NEVER taken very seriously in the scientific press, though. Go do any searches through the serious scientific magazines and you'll find that even in the 60s and 70s the vast majority of articles in serious scientific journals focused on the possibility of future warming caused by greenhouse gases, not future cooling because an ice age was overdue.
The climate change story is fairly consistent. The changes to climate cause weird weather. Weather that's out of place and unusual for where it's occurring. 80% of the weird weather involves too much heat, but some places will locally see cooler than normal weather at times.
Regardless of weather Fox takes it seriously, it's difficult to find more than a handful of climate scientists who don't accept the science behind climate change and global warming.
Re:More drone deaths (Score:3, Insightful)
Do people actually believe that nonsense? Obama is left, not left center, not center, left. The majority of what he does is extremely partisan, which is why many believe he may officially be the most divisive president in history.
Unfortunately, people to believe this. It scares me on how extreme that means a lot of our people are.
Re:Circular Reference (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:5, Insightful)
There is never a good reason to vote Democrat - OR Republican.
My vote, this time and last, happened to be for the Democrat. But, I wasn't voting "for" the democrat, so much as I was voting "against" the other guy.
Give us some mainstream, centrist choices, who aren't bought and paid for by corporate interests, then I might vote for that choice. Until then, there is no difference between the parties. The single most important issue in America today, is that idiot "War on Terra". Has Obama attempted to have the Patriot Act repealed? Nope. Has he attempted to reign in Homeland Security? Nope. Has he renounced any of the special powers that the Bush administration pushed for? Nope. Has he fought for internet freedom? Well - sorta. Internet freedom was a great thing when the Arab Spring was blooming, but it's no longer a good political tool, so Obama follows Bush's lead now, pushing for more and more control.
The same corporations own both parties, so there is no reason to vote "for" either one.
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Get on with it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Including folks in the USA. The president is who we chose. Putting him in office then telling him "No" every time he tries to do something is just ridiculous. We elected him, why and how is it possible to elect someone to our top-most leadership position and at the same time elect people who intentionally block him from doing *anything* at all? Something is seriously fucked up here.
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but that doesn't prove we're spending too much. In fact, we may still be spending too little. The optimal amount is the amount where spending an additional dollar brings less than a dollar in economic benefits. Only when you can prove we're past that point will you be able to truthfully claim that we have a spending problem.
Re:Democrat proposes more spending, what a surpriz (Score:5, Insightful)
The optimal amount is the amount where spending an additional dollar brings less than a dollar in economic benefits. Only when you can prove we're past that point will you be able to truthfully claim that we have a spending problem.
Your standard of evidence is backward. It's always safer to assume that spending is just consumption, not investment, unless there is evidence to support the position that it produces more in economic benefits (net present value, of course) than it costs. Those who claim that additional spending will result in a positive ROI are the ones with something to prove.
This is an impossible task, of course, as economic benefit is not something you can aggregate and measure across individuals in a non-voluntary system. Voluntary trade may not result in an ideal allocation of resource, but no non-voluntary system can objectively be said to produce a better allocation—just one more in line with the preferences of the few specific individuals in charge.