Biden to tap oil reserves in coordination with China, South Korea, Japan, India, and the UK

[GP270watch]

If you care about the environment and want cheap gas prices, you're an asshole.

 There is virtually no politcal appetite for taxing carbon emissions and fossil fuels to reflect the true cost of their environmental damage. Also wanting a President or his party to remain in power who actually wants to address climate change vs one who thinks Climate Change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, is a very important part of the politcal discussion within caring about the environment.

[GP270watch]

If you care about the environment and want cheap gas prices, you're an asshole.

 There is virtually no politcal appetite for taxing carbon emissions and fossil fuels to reflect the true cost of their environmental damage. Also wanting a President or his party to remain in power who actually wants to address climate change vs one who thinks Climate Change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, is a very important part of the politcal discussion within caring about the environment.

indeed, climate change is a political discussion, not an emergency.  I wish you'd tell yourself that next time you idiots want to ban straws.

 That's not at all what I said. If you can't figure out that policy and politics intertwine and that short term goals and long term goals have to be balanced and reconciled I don't know what to tell you.

[GP270watch]

If you care about the environment and want cheap gas prices, you're an asshole.

 There is virtually no politcal appetite for taxing carbon emissions and fossil fuels to reflect the true cost of their environmental damage. Also wanting a President or his party to remain in power who actually wants to address climate change vs one who thinks Climate Change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, is a very important part of the politcal discussion within caring about the environment.

indeed, climate change is a political discussion, not an emergency.  I wish you'd tell yourself that next time you idiots want to ban straws.

 That's not at all what I said. If you can't figure out that policy and politics intertwine and that short term goals and long term goals have to be balanced and reconciled I don't know what to tell you.

if you want gasoline to stay cheap you don't really care about the environment (or you're a moron), it doesn't matter what excuses you make for the position.  Just know that some of us will remember this next time one of the half wits want to ban some tiny piece of plastic used in places with successful garbage collection systems.

If you want less plastic in the ocean, convince Asia, Africa and S.America to do something with their garbage other than throw it in the river.  If you want less crap getting pumped into the air, pump less crap into the air.  An easy way to do that is let gasoline become slightly more expensive.  No laws need to be passed, no one has to be forced to do something by the authorities*.





*I understand that this is some people's favorite part of the laws they want to pass

I want the world to move on from gasoline. Republican politicians who support drill baby drill with no regulations are not going to get us there. It takes long term planning and welding political power, only a moron doesn't understand this. It's really not a difficult concept to understand.

[GP270watch]

If you care about the environment and want cheap gas prices, you're an asshole.

 There is virtually no politcal appetite for taxing carbon emissions and fossil fuels to reflect the true cost of their environmental damage. Also wanting a President or his party to remain in power who actually wants to address climate change vs one who thinks Climate Change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, is a very important part of the politcal discussion within caring about the environment.

indeed, climate change is a political discussion, not an emergency.  I wish you'd tell yourself that next time you idiots want to ban straws.

 That's not at all what I said. If you can't figure out that policy and politics intertwine and that short term goals and long term goals have to be balanced and reconciled I don't know what to tell you.

if you want gasoline to stay cheap you don't really care about the environment (or you're a moron), it doesn't matter what excuses you make for the position.  Just know that some of us will remember this next time one of the half wits want to ban some tiny piece of plastic used in places with successful garbage collection systems.

If you want less plastic in the ocean, convince Asia, Africa and S.America to do something with their garbage other than throw it in the river.  If you want less crap getting pumped into the air, pump less crap into the air.  An easy way to do that is let gasoline become slightly more expensive.  No laws need to be passed, no one has to be forced to do something by the authorities*.





*I understand that this is some people's favorite part of the laws they want to pass

I want the world to move on from gasoline. Republican politicians who support drill baby drill with no regulations are not going to get us there. It takes long term planning and welding political power, only a moron doesn't understand this. It's really not a difficult concept to understand.

That's true, but it's mathematically impossible to generate a successful long-term plan without demanding behavior change from working and middle class Americans--starting now. How do you think we can fix climate change if we don't coerce people into consuming less gasoline? Ultimately, you have to move from the politicking phase to the implementing phase or it's all kind of pointless. In 2021, simply being anti drill-baby-drill won't get us that far.

 This is currently not realistic and counter productive, if you lose elections and political power to rivals who are going to move us many steps back. It really is that simple. Look at Trump blowing up CAFE standards that Obama passed. How does that help us reduce gasoline usage?

 When the alternative is so defiantly ignorant and uncaring about the environment trying to bash Biden or look for silly "hypocrisies" is not only dishonest, it's worthy of contempt.

[GP270watch]

That's cute rhetoric. Unfortunately, it's also totally devoid of policy substance. Show me the cold, hard math on how we can keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius without reducing the amount of gasoline Americans buy. If you can't do that, the consequences of your plans are unacceptable. The thing about climate change is that it's a pass/fail binary with a hard deadline. Moving ahead insufficiently, maintaining the status quo, or even slipping under Republican rule all essentially lead to the same place.

 It's not rhetoric because you are starting with the presumption that the reality you understand is accepted by everybody and it's not. Climate predictions can always be worse, with worse policy. Saying Biden's policies are not good enough is a fair enough point but not when you are trying to say liberals are hypocrites and you lean or support conservatives who would literally set this Earth on fire with no regard at all because they don't care. This distinction is important, if you don't think it is, good luck with that.

[GP270watch]

So will you please actually figure out how we're going to completely solve climate change without inconveniencing the American driver? Or do you just not care about the tangible, unavoidable consequences of public policy and care only about inane point scoring for 2022?

 You are being disingenuous. I already gave you an example look at Obama CAFE standards vs Trump, how much less gasoline would be used in this scenario? Electrification of vehicles is a policy Biden is aggressively pursuing with his build back better bill, a bill that not a single Republican will vote for. Cars are problematic to begin with but where is the political will to reduce cars and promote public transportation in the United States of America, it doesn't really exist. Politicians have to work within what the public will accept. If Biden and Democrats lose because of high gas prices, The United States and therefore the world will be in a worse position on the climate front. The temporary difference in gas prices won't produce a large enough benefit(if any at all) versus green lighting more drilling, reducing emissions standards, drilling environmentally protected areas, and letting fossil fuel companies totally make our energy policy.  If you can not not understand this, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[GP270watch]

If you can't understand that I'm criticizing this as a bad idea on principle, I don't know what to tell you. I'm interested in having a normative conversation of what we should do on a policy front, detached from electoral short-termism. My point, and Dead0's is about the principle of high gas prices being an absolute prerequisite to meaningful CO2 emissions. I don't give a crap about this specific (dumb) action that will have no political consequences. Also, Biden is not losing 2024 because of so-called high gas prices in 2021. That's just dumb.


Also, CAFE has always been bullsh*t.

 Wrong, and Obama's CAFE standards were very ambitious.

Researchers cite that CAFE standards saved $5 trillion in fuel costs and prevented 14 billion metric tons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere

 If you are interested in what you claim start a thread about that. Reconcile how what needs to be done can be achieved in our political environment. Instead you're talking nonsense in a thread about several countries tapping oil reserves(i.e. oil that is already mostly extracted to give temporary relief to consumers). Which doesn't really make any sense when there are much bigger threats to our environment like people using these temporary high gasoline prices to say we should re-start Keystone which would be environmentally disastrous. There is literally a thread on the front page about Manchin suggesting this. Everything has to be viewed in context or you have nothing and you make no sense.