Sunday, September 22, 2013
Sunday Question for Liberals
On climate: compared with election day 2008, more optimistic or more pessimistic? Do you think it's because your expectations were too high (or too low) back then, or do you think your expectations were reasonable at the time?
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I think it was definitely reasonable to think there would be some small amount of crossover support for some sort of cap and trade system. Now I think the overall climate picture is somewhat less terrifying, but the prospect of legislation to solve the problem is more remote.
ReplyDeleteI am more pessimistic, and think my expectations were reasonable at the time.
ReplyDeleteEvents since then have been much less reasonable.
But since 2010 the House has been dominated by the stupid, the cruel and the insane.
I'm more pessimistic about everything.
JzB
Pessimistic. I used to think that Republicans might not want to acknowledge climate change but they might at least be willing to address it. The current reality among conservatives seems to be that climate changes doesn't exist AND is a conspiracy to make us give up our cars and garage door openers and stuff.
ReplyDeleteBasically, maybe with a less dysfunctional GOP would have preparations to deal with climate change, like hurricane proofing New York or whatever. But because we know global warming is a lie, we can just ignore building levies etc.
Pessimistic. Obama tried valiantly but crashed on the rocky shores of political reality. Not really sure what conditions one could expect significant climate change legislation to emerge under now, even in a hypothetical future Congress with a Democratic supermajority.
ReplyDeleteGuess we'll have to put our hopes in geoengineering,international action, or the problem being much less catastrophic than feared going forward.
In 2008 the economy was in free-fall, a new Depression was imminent, US car manufacturers were going bankrupt, the housing market was tanking, jobs were being shed, and we were being eaten alive by health costs and interest rates.
ReplyDeleteThere were also some very costly wars of choice going on.
I had little hope for time, money or energy to address climate change through legislation. I'm still there.
I was intrigued by Pres. Obama's strategy of choking off coal production by making natural gas very cheap, which turned around carbon production in this country without nary a peep on the right (or acknowledgement on the left.) Given that US automotive companies owe him everything, they were happy to cooperate on better CAFE standards.
A lot more work needs to be done, of course, but the quieter it's accomplished the better. Leaves a lot of liberals squawking, but oh well.
How did Obama make natural gas cheap?
DeleteBy making domestic natural gas easier to do. They enabled fracking - yes, I know it's dangerous - and made licenses for domestic natural gas readily obtainable. The whole point was to choke off coal production and use by making it economically unfeasible in comparison to natural gas.
DeleteSee, every step of coal production and use sucks for the environment. They blast off mountain tops to get at the rock strata that they want. They truck it out of the ground, truck the rocks to a refinery, where they are ground and processed, and truck the finished coal to the power plants, where it's burnt. Natural gas has disadvantages, but it's cheaper, energy-wise, to pull out of the ground and move around, because you can pump it through a pipeline instead of having to drive it.
The Obama administration has done everything they can to make each new power plant built in the US in the last 5 years a natural gas one.
Pessimistic, bc in 2007/2008 I honestly believed cap-and-trade was on the table, and that a big climate deal would be reached in Copenhagen. Maybe the latter was unrealistic, but some prominent Republicans had spoken favorably about carbon pricing, and I maybe naively thought Obama's popularity overseas would help with a global deal.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I remember about the campaign, Obama always seemed to at least talk about the climate change threat/energy issues as a huge problem for the world in a way that convinced me he personally cared about the issue. In fact, that and foreign policy were the two big reasons I supported him over Hillary.
I don't really see anyone on the horizon who will take up the issue. Progressives seem to have moved on to work/life balance, poverty and inequality in the aftermath of the recession rather than climate change. Obama's various regulatory actions and maybe the global climate treaty being worked out before 2015 seem to be the best hope for now.
But four years is a long time, and I hope I'm proved wrong.
Obama did and is doing the best he could. Of course I'm disappointed in the irrational intransigence of the Rs.
ReplyDeleteClimate crisis was humanity's chance to show it had grown up, and it flunked. A few years ago it became apparent to close observers that severe consequences were now inevitable, due to the pollution already in the atmosphere. Our current civilization will be challenged in many ways because of climate crisis over the next decades and century. The last hope is that carbon will be controlled in time to avert an apocalyptic change beyond the near future which will mean an end to the Earth's life as we know it.
In any case the politics, economics and everything else will eventually be dominated by the effects and prospects of climate crisis, probably in the lifetime of children today. Most of what we chatter about now will look like nonsense.
Pessimistic. At the time, I thought that the center of the electorate and some in the Republican Party were coming around on climate and would support at least a weak cap-and-trade program. And that the media understood and would report accurately and fairly on the issue. I was naive and wrong.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to cgw, so I figured I'd post as a reply to his/her post.
DeleteThe only addendum I have is that I didn't realize in 2008 how much denialism had become yet another article of faith for the GOP. I don't think the GOP has really moved all that far since 2008; I misread how far they had already moved from 2005-2008.
Optimistic. I didn't think we were going to get health care reform.
ReplyDeletemuch more pessimistic. More epistemic closure than I thought possible from the right on this issue. The polarization means that 50% of the country thinks climate change is a conspiracy by liberals, and that's probably not possible to overcome, given the eager proclivities of the media to tack creationist and 'teach the controversy.'
ReplyDeleteMore pessimistic, mostly simply because of the passage of time with no serious attempts made to solve the problem, and the accelerated shrinking of the polar ice.
ReplyDeleteI am more pessimistic, because of the extent of disinformation put out by the right wing.
ReplyDeleteEvery comment here expressing pessimism has cited failure to get climate change legislation passed. That means a lot of liberals (surprise!) had unrealistic expectations about what could be done, even with a Democratic supermajority in 2009.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, in all their crushing disappointment, the pessimists don't seem to have noticed enhanced CAFE standards, new EPA coal regulations, etc. True, those things can be reversed by a future GOP administration. But what in the past 5 years could make anyone confident in the GOP's ability to win a presidential election?
That said, I personally am more pessimistic than I was in 2008 because of one thing: the 2010 mid-terms. The results of that election demonstrated that rationality plays an minuscule role in the outcome of U.S. elections. I don't know how long a republic can last with that kind of dynamic playing itself out over and over again.
Seriously? You don't think a Republican will ever win another presidential election?
DeleteNot before all the coal plants shut down ;-)
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