Paris Summit Finds New Money, Tech To Fight Climate Change (apnews.com) 203
An anonymous reader shares an Associated Press report: World leaders, investment funds and energy magnates promised Tuesday to devote new money and technology to slow global warming at a summit in Paris that President Emmanuel Macron hopes will rev up the Paris climate accord that U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected. Trump wasn't invited to the event but his name was everywhere. One by one, top world diplomats, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, business leaders like Michael Bloomberg and even former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that the world will shift to cleaner fuels and reduce emissions regardless of whether the Trump administration pitches in or not. Central to Tuesday's summit was countering Trump's main argument that the 2015 Paris accord on reducing global emissions would hurt U.S. business. Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker, argues that the big businesses and successful economies of the future will be making and using renewable energy instead of pumping oil. Macron's office announced a dozen international projects emerging from the summit that will inject hundreds of millions of dollars in efforts to curb climate change. "The United States did not drop out of the Paris agreement. Donald Trump got Donald Trump out of the Paris agreement," Schwarzenegger said. The projects also aim to speed up the end of the combustion engine to reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming. With that aim, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced that his agency would stop financing oil and gas projects in two years, except in special circumstances for very poor nations.
Money to be made. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always said that even if you don't buy into climate change that simply ignoring it is stupid because it's a huge economic opportunity. I think it's simply been that politicians have been paid enough to turn a blind eye and keep the status quo for as long as possible. The reality is that renewable energy sources are not limited to locations that a small collective of companies own which means that there can be lots of competition that will drive the price of energy way down. Energy companies want to bleed the all the money they can out of people and some idiots think that's a good thing.
The age of hydrocarbons is coming to an end... and now we have to clean it all up.
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Well, the US pulling out of the agreement does NOTHING to negate the ability of private US industries from participating and acting upon that "huge economic opportunity".
Business WILL go towards areas that make money.
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Mod Parent Up. This is exactly right.
Ambient energy is a huge wild west free market right now. And you only get MORE freedom by doing a year long environment study, choosing the technologies that fit your climate, and building/harvesting energy from that climate.
They why have government involved? (Score:1)
I've always said that even if you don't buy into climate change that simply ignoring it is stupid because it's a huge economic opportunity.
I totally agree, which is why I see no need for giant government programs costing billions of dollars. The economic benefit of moving to renewable sources is eventually so cost effective it is inevitable; so we do we need to try to force people into something we know is eventually inherently compelling?
There's no way the larger warming predictions are accurate because th
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I totally agree, which is why I see no need for giant government programs costing billions of dollars.
Then why haven't you been screaming about them subsidizing coal and oil for the past century?
The economic benefit of moving to renewable sources is eventually so cost effective it is inevitable; so we do we need to try to force people into something we know is eventually inherently compelling?
It will cost more to clean up the longer we pump CO2 into the atmosphere so it's actually saving money in the long run.
There's no way the larger warming predictions are accurate because they are all predicated on CO2 levels staying where they are. That's simply not going to happen as people everywhere switch to cheaper non-carbon energy.
Of course not because there are going to be industries that continue to put out CO2 and methane and trees are not going to be able to "suck it all up" because that's not how trees function. Other feedback mechanisms we don't know or haven't fully considered are going to make the planet even hotter.
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The entire Earth is nothing but a giant CO2 recycler, given time.
If we had millions of years, sure. However, if we put out 0 CO2 emissions starting today, the trees wouldn't be able to cope with it giving the next 1000 years.
You do realize that historically the Earth has had different levels of CO2, right, including some higher?
The Earth hasn't had higher levels of CO2 than we have now for millions of years. If you are talking about the cycle of the ice-ages, well, you need an ice-age for that to happen.
If it's not possible for the Earth to re-absorb it, what happened in your mind, hmm?? Aliens, obv.
Apparently you are unaware of the evolution that occurred. Microbes learned a trick (via mutation) and thus become able to consume dead trees, producing CO2 in the proces
Re: Money to be made. (Score:2)
The institutionalised bribery system of the worlds largest economy, otherwise known as lobbying, has been staggering the world for some time.
Isnâ(TM)t it time to change to an actual democracy that represent its people?
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Isn't it time to change to an actual democracy that represent its people?
Yes but change will not come fast. It's a slow road that will need a concerted effort in all the states that don't have independent groups to do non-political redistricting. That's just the first step too. :/
Also emitted another 30k tons of CO2 (Score:1, Insightful)
The conference was more political posturing to little effect, otherwise they would have all done a large group video chat instead of expelling 30K tons of CO2 [theguardian.com] in air travel alone.
Is there warming? Yes. Is there a crisis? It would seem not since the people that claim there is a crisis are not acting like there is a crisis. They act like used car salesmen telling you how very much they want you to do something, which they themselves will not do.
I'm sure it did make a lot of climate posers feel better abou
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This. When the rich elite abandon air travel, that's when we will know there is a crisis, not before.
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That'll never happen, because they have the money to insulate themselves from the cost of their own actions, and value their own convenience.
Re:Also emitted another 30k tons of CO2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't speak to the burgers. Teslas are a good thing -- the tech will trickle down to cheaper cars until electric cars will be cheaper than gassers, and cheaper to run and maintain (electric motors and 1-speed gearboxes don't need much maintenance, and regen braking means you have to change the pads once every 150,000 miles). Can you imagine owning a car that costs 5 cents per mile to run and does 0-60 in 4 seconds? Awesome!
Range is an issue, but that's improving too. And it would be great if global warming pressure would force the railroads to electrify. Take a fast electric train from NYC to Chicago -- 5.5 hours at 150mph -- then rent an electric car (possibly self-driving) on the other end. Far better than the airport delays, lines, etc involved in flying.
The future doesn't have to be bad if the people doing the planning think of other people versus only their own dollar.
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--and for the record, Montecito California has an elevation of 180 feet above sea level. It's not likely to flood any time this century. I'm no fan of Al Gore, but looks like he's smart enough to not buy property that's only a few feet above sea lev
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I actually looked up the address of Al Gore's home in Montecito on Google Maps and it's right around the 400 foot contour line, well above any possible sea level rise.
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>The conference was more political posturing to little effect, otherwise they would have all done a large group video chat instead of expelling 30K tons of CO2 [theguardian.com] in air travel alone.
I'm going to a little 'Hollywood' here, but I really liked the conferencing system in 'Captain America - Winter Soldier'. Sure, it takes up a lot of office space, but the idea of having every delegate projected into a physical space is very appealing.
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Think Local (Score:1)
Yes! They should have all backpacked to the summit!
V I D E O C O N F E R E N C E
Also, it goes without saying RTFA which covers exactly what is meant.
A few people's actions don't make a measurable difference.
To the contrary 30,000 tons of anything is a very measurable amount.
We need a global solution
Translation: *I* don't have to change anything, everyone else does.
Good luck with that!
Real change starts with local changes across many areas, not idealistic and unrealistic global change. Real change is made
Trump.... (Score:3)
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One of Trump's revolutionary ideas is that America doesn't need to hog the spotlight and make every event about itself. It also doesn't need to pay for everything. These ideas have been front and center in our administrative and elected states for decades. They are beyond convinced that if America does not do it, it either will not get done or is not worth doing. They love pouring wood for the fire that will never heat us.
Trump is showing that they are wrong and always were wrong. The world can get a
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Ignore it? I would be happy if he just ignored it. His administration is actively trying to destroy it.
Remember kids, Scott Pruitt says our air is too clean! We must remove the catalytic converters from our cars so we can Make America Gag Again!
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Yeah, maybe he'll convince the rest of the world that if they really want to do something about climate change, then they're going to have to do it on their own money, and not expect to bleed America dry.
The problem with all these accords and protocols is that they're fake. None of them REQUIRE the REAL polluters, China and India, do do a damned thing.
You do know that China and India are both partners to the accord, and are both in fact doing things to reduce their carbon output, right? https://electrek.co/2017/11/17... [electrek.co]
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Large countries doing many things. (Score:2)
Your point is?
My point is that both India and China are enormous countries with large economies doing many many different things that can't really be summarized in two sentences totaling twelve words. Both of them, in fact, are doing a lot of work-- and putting in a lot of their own money-- on reducing their carbon intensity.
And they're also building coal plants. Your point is?
If we did want them to increase their focus on implementing low-carbon technologies, and reduce their focus on increasing their populations st
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The debate ended last decade (Score:1)
It's all been about the capital to switch to more efficient, cheaper renewables.
That problem has been solved, and as a bonus, every dollar spent on renewables cuts Russia and Saudi fossil fuel revenue by four dollars.
Commence the industry-paid whining about how the world is changing and we must protect buggy whips and whale oil and baleen corsets.
Climate Change is here, and we ran out of time for discussions.
Eliminate farming subsidies (Score:1)
... and use that money to invest in clean energy.
Re:Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
I will be the devil's advocate here. The money will be coming out of the US Treasury sometime, a "pay me now, or pay me later" item.
Pay me now means working ways to reduce the carbon footprint, redoing arrangements for corporate responsibility so nuclear power (like thorium reactors) can be widely used, allowing trees to grow and work on better carbon sequestering, and food research.
Pay me later means spending money to have troops ready to shoot starving people protesting in the streets in a food riot, dealing with revolutionaries storming the borders because their place of living is underwater, constant unrest in cities, all the while having to deal with constant warfare world-wide, between people whose land has turned into desert or gone underwater versus people with food/land.
The "pay me later" is a far greater cost, and may cost us our country. However, the idea of looking at consequences or long term thinking is not a Randian ideal, so maybe it should get thrown out. Five Year Plans are socialist, and all that jazz...
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The "pay me later" is a far greater cost, and may cost us our country. However, the idea of looking at consequences or long term thinking is not a Randian ideal, so maybe it should get thrown out. Five Year Plans are socialist, and all that jazz...
Hopefully that's gonna be postponed 'til I'm dead. As the Germans say, "hinter mir die Sintflut" (it loses a bit in translation, basically it means "for all I care, the deluge may follow when I'm gone"). Literally.
I tried to talk sense into you, I tried to leave your kids a world that they can live in. I honestly don't care anymore. I just really, really hope that all these assholes and idiots that prefer to believe what corporations with a vested interest in pumping pollution out instead of having to pay f
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Après moi [Re:Fine] (Score:3)
Hopefully that's gonna be postponed 'til I'm dead. As the Germans say, "hinter mir die Sintflut" (it loses a bit in translation, basically it means "for all I care, the deluge may follow when I'm gone"). Literally.
You do know that this is just the German translation of the well-known Louis XV quote "Après moi, le déluge", right?
(Wikipedia tells me that is probably better attributed to Madame de Pompadou: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki... [wiktionary.org] )
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I spend more time speaking German than French, if I have to speak either, so I knew that phrase from German, but thank you for providing the original source.
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You needn't choose a country. This is America, you get them delivered right to your doorstep. For free.
Well, technically it's going to be more like your ISP. You cannot choose. The choice will be made for you, and you can like it or go to hell.
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The rest of the world will make America pay for it now, by setting standards and tariffs that account for emissions and pollution. The US will have to choose between that and isolationism.
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When you say "not a Randian ideal", do you mean Ayn Rand thought it was a lousy idea or do you mean Ayn Rand failed to focus on it, like shitloads of fucktons of other people?
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The value of the fishery is much greater than the value of the lost farm output. It's about Salmon, not delta smelt.
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That's not what your cite says. Liar.
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The 2015 commercial fishery harvested a total of 110,507 salmon, with total landings of 1.3 million pounds and revenues of $8.1 million (NMFS 2017, PFMC 2016).
Now, if you want to talk about all the ESTIMATED add-on, they try to say it was $244 million. But the facts are the commercial fishery received $8.1 million for the salmon. Flat out. My quote for the AG sector was also for the direct income from sales of AG products, not "add-ons" that would inflate the number even higher.
Re: Fine (Score:1)
Those few small islands include Manhattan, not to mention Miami and most of Florida.
Re:Stupid doomsday scenarios are stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Doubling down on the crazy "predictions" doesn't fly anymore. Sky didn't fall in two decades, and now no one but the terminally gullible will believe it's ever going to.
But nobody ever predicted the sky would fall in two decades in the first place. People did predict about two degrees of warming by 2100, though, if that's what you mean.
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Doubling down on the crazy "predictions" doesn't fly anymore. Sky didn't fall in two decades, and now no one but the terminally gullible will believe it's ever going to.
Ah you youngsters with your short attention spans. As XXongo said no one expected it to happen in two decades, just that we're setting it up to happen in the future. I wonder what you'll be saying in another two decades.
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Don't you understand that when the USA gives foreign aid it's often with strings attached that require the money to be spent on American products. Yes, some of it gets skimmed off by the elites but not most of it.
Regarding food riots you might be surprised. If food gets expensive enough that people can't afford it there will be riots. That was one of the factors in the revolution in Egypt. The cost of wheat and bread rose so much because of the heatwave/drought in Russia that people couldn't afford it.
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So what are amendments for then? Your amazing founding fathers, brilliant as they might have been, never saw this one coming.
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:1, Insightful)
The Paris Accords are entirely and solely about extracting money from the US Taxpayer - and we are going to meet and exceed the emissions goals even without it.
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Err...just because the US govt. isn't obligated by treaty to participate, there is nothing stopping our private industries from participating, which they will if they do indeed see a profit in all this as Macro
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I happen to agree pulling out...no reason to obligate $$$ from the US treasury that is already quite stretched with domestic needs.
Then the Congress passes "tax reform" that will add another $1.5 trillion the the debt.
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It's all good...if they follow up with lots of federal budget cuts. Slash programs, slash federal agencies....
One thing at a time, and starting with taxes isn't a bad thing.
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And you will live long and prosper because you are deserving.
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If they start slashing Social Security and Medicare they'll start losing their seats in Congress. There's not enough money anywhere else except the DOD to make that much difference.
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That trick has never worked. Never. The taxes get cut, tax revenues don't go up as predicted, spending cuts don't happen. That's how the Republicans have run huge deficits since about 1980.
Re:Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
>Spend all the money you want. As long as it doesn't come out of the US Treasury we're all good.
Yep, you wouldn't want to do anything to better your world with that money, it's more important to give tax breaks to the ultra-rich.
Better cut back on health care, too, just to be sure.
Re:Fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Bettering my world means spending money on roads, schools, and children, not on killing people.
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There are a group of terrorists coming from the Middle East to blow up your kid's school. Now, would you like the US Army to kill them before they do that or not?
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You mean the ones that the United States Taxpayer is currently paying to bring in as refugees at a rate of 50,000 people a year?
I don't see any reason to do that either.
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And the United States has killed 60 million people since 1973, just on the Sexual Revolution alone.
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If you're considering the Holocaust as only the killing of Jews, 6M is a good estimate. The Germans murdered many more people than that, at least double, and that's only the people they killed more or less deliberately.
Also, 5.5M for Japan is ridiculously low. They killed many more in China alone.
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I believe that letting the people that earn the money should be able to keep as much of it as possible.
Taxation should be to fund the Federal, State and local governments so they can function and carry on their limited, enumerated roles and responsibilities.
Taxation should not be used to manipulate the peoples' behavior, that's not what it is for....and that leads to abuse and loss of individual freedom.
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Yeah, because driving up the price of gas and electricity and food only hurts the ultra-rich and never hurts anyone outside of the 1% at all.
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Nowhere near. We didn't overthrow the fascist governments of Spain and Portugal. We've overthrown democracies to install at least quasi-fascist despots.
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Fascist, incompetent, and unpopular are not mutually exclusive traits... I don't know of many that would call our current president competent for the job. I'm sure there are a few, but any large group has it's share of nutters.
Re:Fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe give the money back to people who grow the economy. The ultra-rich did not get that way by stealing money from everybody else despite what the SJWs want to believe.
With interest rates so low and investment money searching for things to invest in how do you expect the ultra-rich to grow the economy? If you want to grow the economy give money at the bottom end and it will filter up to the ones on top. Giving it to people already at the top just increases their rent seeking investments. If people down the economic scale can't afford to buy it why would they invest in something productive? Supply side/trickle down economics is a joke that's never worked.
Re:Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
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So we rebuild inland and with better technology to withstand the storms. It's called Adapting, and I completely understand why the privileged rich people don't want to do it.
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So remove the industrial infrastructure from the coasts. Turn it into reefs, then fish the reefs.....
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Cleanup means you stop evolution. Let the species who can adapt do the cleanup.
Also, most sandy beaches were once former forest and swampland. Or did you think the Earth never changed?
Heck, I know of a beach within 200 miles of my house that was a part of the Columbia River in 1820.
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Climate change is climate change.
Tautology detected in an attempt to beg the question. Opinion discarded.
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You think the past 10 years have been bad?
Um, no, not really actually. The previous 10 years were worse (Katrina, Indian ocean tsunami, etc).
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It's OK.
We who know which way the wind blows also know that the opportunity to intervene has Went With The Wind.
It's been too late.
Enough is enough and more that enough is too late. ~ © 2017 CaptainDork
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a. secession
b. situation now: catastrophe happens, state emergency services are overwhelmed, state calls Federal government for help. FEMA comes in and may or may not fuck up.
situation after secession: catastrophe happens, state emergency services are overwhelmed, ???
This is a prime example of a situation where a state is better off as part of a union.
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90% of what the US Federal Government does is unconstitutional. That hasn't stopped them yet, why do you think it will now?
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The problem with your Tides and Currents link is they just give a linear trend line. They don't show any curve for changes in the rate of rise. Most scientists studying this expect at least a meter (3 feet) of rise by 2100 and it won't stop there. It will take centuries for the big ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica to catch up with the current forcing. Over 10 feet of rise by 2200 isn't out of the question. I just wish I could live long enough to say I told you so.
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You're about halfway to realization. If sea level goes up a foot, that by itself isn't going to be a big problem. What will be a big problem is hurricane storm surges, which will be a foot higher. Land tends to rise gradually, meaning that in many places a foot extra flooding is going to cover a lot of additional area.
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There was no massive hurricane drought. They just didn't happen to hit the United States which for most Americans means they didn't happen.
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Yep, that is exactly right. Spend all the money you want, withhold money from oil projects, and as long as it doesn't come from the American taxpayer, we're fine with it.
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That's the really beautiful part of Trump pulling us out of the Paris scam agreement. Everyone involved immediately got angry and went to prove that they didn't need the US federal government to accomplish their goals. They did it!
Just goes to show you, America is not indispensable and the world can do quite well without us. Moreover Merkel took up the burden of world leadership and has been world leader since then. Good riddance to it, I say. We Americans have been absolutely horrid world leaders, sta
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Just wait for carbon taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
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And what are they going to do when we enact retaliatory tariffs, and suddenly they can't dump their goods on our market any more? They'll be screwed. You know the world relies on the US markets for a big chunk of its prosperity, right?
Besides, what does America even make any more? Investment products? Entertainment? They sure won't be cutting themselves off from the flow of those sweet, sweet American weapons.
Re:Just wait for carbon taxes (Score:4, Informative)
US actually exports quite a lot of stuff ( https://2016.export.gov/ [export.gov] ). So yep, it'll hurt.
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These countries will just harm themselves by cutting themselves off from the benefits of free trade.
They would absolutely not be cutting themselves off from the benefits of free trade. They would be cutting the USA off from its benefits.
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A trade war hurts a lone initiator, no argument from me there.
But if there are hundreds of initiators against one country, surely that turns the tables and effectively forces that country into a lone initiator's shoes.
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And what are they going to do when we enact retaliatory tariffs, and suddenly they can't dump their goods on our market any more? They'll be screwed.
You vastly over-estimate your market and importance. Just like Trump does, and just like the British did before they tried to exercise that power at a negotiation table which even the most pro-brexiters realise has turned into a trainwreak.
What are we going to do when you impose tariffs on us? Nothing. You'll reverse them when you own constituents start complaining about the rising cost and inflation due the government putting a price on the trade deficit you've slowly built up over the years.
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No. As said you vastly overestimate your importance. As a global buying power your total number may seem significant, but the vast majority of your buying power ends up being a dumping ground for a small segment of goods: cheap shit which effects only a few S-E Asian countries.
But really all of that is quite irrelevant and doesn't at all change my original post. If you consider yourself such a huge buying power, just imagine what the country will think when their own government decides to raise the cost of
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As long as it doesn't come out of the US Treasury we're all good.
Money also will not come *into* US Treasury when US manufacturers like GE get obsoleted by the technological changes in the world around them and will have to fire workers when foreign companies get the contracts to supply the world with the elements of the new infrastructure.
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Then take away the 40 BILLION in tax credits Oil magnates get for "Oil Depreciation"
THEN take away the 70 BILLION in healthcare costs from oil-coal pollution
THEN take away the 8 billion in direct subsidies to the Nuclear Power industry
THEN....stop whining about your share of the burden of undoing 130 years of "energy" company corruption of government
Re: Fine (Score:3)
Spending money now has been evaluated as being drastically cheaper than trying to fix things up later.
If the glacier dams give way, and we get a fairly sudden sea level rise, flooding most coastal cities, eg nyc, can you imagine the costs, the loss of life, the mad dash of millions to escape?
It sounds expensive. And of course there are humanitarian issues, but these seem to be ignored by the current USA government.
Itâ(TM)ll be way cheaper to dive in now, and get some real reductions, and possibly reduc
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There is no money in the US Treasury. Why do you think we have such an enormous amount of debt? We're at $20+trillion and the "fiscal conservatives" have just thrown on at least another $1.5 trillion on top of that. Over $65,000 for every man, woman, and child in the US. That's $13,000 more than the median family income in the US.
Until we get a balanced budget the US has no money. We have a credit card that we keep piling enormous amounts of debt on.
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French is the most clumsy of all latin languages. 25% of the words in a French sentence have no reason to exist.
If we're going to replace English, let's do it with a modern, verbally economical, unambiguous language. Don't ask me what it is though.
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That depends on the time scale of "quickly".
As for developing CO2 clean up technology, I just happen to know one that already exists. Will it make me rich?
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This is a solvable problem.
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Economics is what's putting coal miners out of work. Coal can't compete with natural gas and wind and barely with solar. If coal had to pay the economic costs of it's pollution it probably couldn't even compete with nuclear power.