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

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

South Korea and Japan literally have no oil, lol.

If you actually care about the environment more than you care about politics, you would embrace high gas prices.

During a pandemic? No. People need help right now.

The pandemic is over and paying an extra $40 a week or whatever at the pump is not a grave social ill.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

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.

Climate change is neither of those things. It's a mathematical equation. We don't need to be at net zero in ten years or whatever nonsense. Climate change won't be a first order cause of anyone dying. That doesn't mean we don't have a very finite carbon budget.

It is simply an inconvenient truth that every ton of CO2 we emit now is a ton we can't emit later, lest the world warm by more than two degrees Celsius. If we exceed that benchmark, bad things will happen. Sea levels will rise six feet. Miami is five feet above sea level, and mitigating that would be very expensive. Large parts of the Desert Southwest will no longer be in the zone of human habitability--let alone usable for agriculture. Mitigating this would be very expensive, and leave a lot of people worse off. Hurricanes and wildfires will intensify, destroying millions of homes each year. Even if we approach two degrees Celsius, these problems will occur, albeit to an extent we can compensate for. As things stand, the world is on track for three degrees of warming, a genuine improvement over a decade ago.

To get below two degrees, the world cannot emit more than 1.07 trillion metric tons of carbon from today forward. The United States, then, can anticipate emitting up to 96 billion metric tons of CO2 to stay below the two degrees threshold. If we fail at this, it's not going to be *literally doomsday*, but it will very much not be worth the cost. As things stand, we are due to use up that carbon budget in 2036 at current rates of consumption. That's soon, and we can't go from 100% to 0% instantly. If we decrease annual emissions by 5% each year, zeroing out around 2055, we will use up our carbon budget with no margin for error. To accomplish this, then, the average American is going to have to emit less. And they're going to have to emit less every single year over and over again. And you do that by having them buy less gas.

Deal with the political consequences as you will, but those are the unchangeable natural constraints we live in. There's no way around them. The solution may be political but the consequences of any trajectory are known and final. So what's the move?

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

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.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

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.

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.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

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.

I don't really care whether other people understand this reality or not. There are not "multiple valid interpretations of reality." I am correct that a certain amount of CO2 emissions will have disastrous medium term consequences and people who disagree are just wrong. Because I do not represent the Democratic Party in any official capacity and have no illusions of affecting how people vote, I don't need to pretend to have patience for those who can't understand simple carbon accounting. I don't "lean or support conservatives who would literally set this Earth on fire" and I remain a strong Biden supporter, even though I disagree with this specific position. Ironically, I am a committed, principled liberal and pointing out that fellow "liberals" are often hypocritical only reinforces that. It's frustrating, because I know we--as a group of people--can be better. I have no time for partisan dogma.

My points that 1. no substantive accomplishments on climate can be made without consumers purchasing less gas and 2. higher gas prices achieve that are just falsifiably true. It is also true that this action, though intended to reduce the price of gas (a bad thing), will not actually achieve that goal in the long term--which still makes it basically a stupid thing to do. It is, in fact, possible to point out that the Biden administration would be better suited to achieve it's goals by not doing one minor action on an obscure politics forum without causing the Republicans to win every election in perpetuity and roll back all climate action. Besides, most political actions have no consequences because voters are ridiculous so nothing we do actually matters.

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?

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

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.

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.