Konstantin Kisin's take down of woke culture...

[Gondwanaland]

The guy seems a good debate speaker - able to sound incisive without really saying anything much.

To the extent that what he said had any content, it was that getting India and China on board with regard to climate action is going to be hard, and it has to be done in such a way that their quality of life isn't lowered... which kinda ranks under "duh, that's obvious and we all already knew". ~shrug~

Just admit you're too dimwitted to understand what he said.

[Starlight]

Just admit you're too dimwitted to understand what he said.

Sure.

[Gondwanaland]

Sure.

[Starlight]

If you take the test and post your result then we can probably communicate better because I'll know how far I have to simplify things down for you.

[One Bad Pig]

Are you? I keep hearing crying from the right-wing about all these imaginary climate change sacrifices that leftists are supposedly forcing you to make. But I personally haven't see any such sacrifices, and I've never heard any major leftists seriously advocating any sacrifices. So I've got it filed under "right wingers are a bunch of cowardly paranoid crybabies". It's like with the "they're forcing us to eat insects"... they're not doing so.

The sacrifices generally aren't so obvious, because many people would balk at obvious sacrifices. Generally, the impact is felt in the wallet, because climate change policies make everything more expensive. They also have the effect of driving manufacturing jobs to where regulations are less onerous (China), making us less capable of manufacturing our own products and more dependent on foreign regimes. California, where climate change proposals have been implemented the most, is both a more expensive place to live and impacted by rolling blackouts because the state can't produce sufficient energy to meet its needs. The WEF may dream of forcing people to eat insects, but the power to enforce such an edict is not yet there.

I know you're pretty smart, but I'm not seeing much pressure exerted at all on China and India to enact climate change policies, while the effect of enacting climate change policies everywhere else is going to push manufacturing to where it is cheaper, i.o.w. where such policies are not in effect. There really needs to be more focus on the major producers of pollution, and less on everyone else.

[rogue06]

The sacrifices generally aren't so obvious, because many people would balk at obvious sacrifices. Generally, the impact is felt in the wallet, because climate change policies make everything more expensive. They also have the effect of driving manufacturing jobs to where regulations are less onerous (China), making us less capable of manufacturing our own products and more dependent on foreign regimes. California, where climate change proposals have been implemented the most, is both a more expensive place to live and impacted by rolling blackouts because the state can't produce sufficient energy to meet its needs. The WEF may dream of forcing people to eat insects, but the power to enforce such an edict is not yet there.

I know you're pretty smart, but I'm not seeing much pressure exerted at all on China and India to enact climate change policies, while the effect of enacting climate change policies everywhere else is going to push manufacturing to where it is cheaper, i.o.w. where such policies are not in effect. There really needs to be more focus on the major producers of pollution, and less on everyone else.

China now produces more greenhouse gasses than does the U.S. ... and the E.U. ... AND India combined while they accelerate plans to continue to build more coal-powered plants.

[Starlight]

The sacrifices generally aren't so obvious, because many people would balk at obvious sacrifices.

Riiiiiggghhhtttt. So I just don't understand those huge, huge, totally massive... totally non-obvious, hard-to-see, almost invisible... sacrifices that Rogue has had to make because of climate change. You're making me think I'm right to be skeptical that there are any sacrifices Rogue has been forced to make for climate change.

Generally, the impact is felt in the wallet, because climate change policies make everything more expensive.

Generally I would say that's not true, e.g. my country's government has put a pretty good subsidy on electric vehicles. Climate change policies can incentivise good things by making them cheaper just as much as they can disincentivise bad things by making them more expensive. A lot of the proposed policies around emissions trading schemes etc are financially neutral - i.e. the subsidies equal the increased costs, and climate-friendly things get cheaper by the same amount that climate-hurting things get more expensive by.

They also have the effect of driving manufacturing jobs to where regulations are less onerous (China), making us less capable of manufacturing our own products and more dependent on foreign regimes.

Manufacturing jobs have increased in the US reasonably steadily over the past decade (with a brief dip during covid) and are now at the highest levels they've been in a decade. Neither the Paris Agreement, signed half way through that decade, nor Biden's recommitment of the US to it, appear to have affected that.

California, where climate change proposals have been implemented the most, is both a more expensive place to live and impacted by rolling blackouts because the state can't produce sufficient energy to meet its needs.

California's electricity market has been a bad joke since 2000, when Enron was manipulating it. Red-state Texas seems to have its own electricity market problems shown by recent cold snaps. The answer to why California's electricity price is high, actually appears to be capitalism. States that have deregulated their electricity markets have higher electricity prices, because the private companies can make higher profits by charging more money. We saw a similar effect in my own country when American style deregulation of electricity providers was introduced here... executive salaries in electricity companies went way up as did their profits, as did consumer electricity prices. Meanwhile the cost of solar electricity production continues to tumble.

I'm not seeing much pressure exerted at all on China and India to enact climate change policies

Not much pressure is yet being exerted anywhere to enact climate change policies because the Paris Agreement hasn't fully kicked in yet. Under the Paris Agreement every country decides their own goals and reports their goals to the UN. Every country gets to decide what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. Every 5 years these goals are examined and discussed in an international forum, the first of which is to take place this year. If a country's submitted goals are decided to be unacceptably low-effort, or if it's decided that the country's not actually making a good faith effort to achieve those submitted goals, then there can be discussions about what international pressure ought to be brought to bear on the country to actually get serious about meeting the goals. I expect it to be quite an interesting, controversial, and high-profile forum.

There really needs to be more focus on the major producers of pollution, and less on everyone else.

Per person, the US is the highest emitter.

[One Bad Pig]

The sacrifices generally aren't so obvious, because many people would balk at obvious sacrifices.

Riiiiiggghhhtttt. So I just don't understand those huge, huge, totally massive... totally non-obvious, hard-to-see, almost invisible... sacrifices that Rogue has had to make because of climate change. You're making me think I'm right to be skeptical that there are any sacrifices Rogue has been forced to make for climate change.

They're deliberately hard to see. The regulatory burden gets added well upstream of the consumer - but the financial consequences are nonetheless very real.

Generally, the impact is felt in the wallet, because climate change policies make everything more expensive.

Generally I would say that's not true, e.g. my country's government has put a pretty good subsidy on electric vehicles. Climate change policies can incentivise good things by making them cheaper just as much as they can disincentivise bad things by making them more expensive. A lot of the proposed policies around emissions trading schemes etc are financially neutral - i.e. the subsidies equal the increased costs, and climate-friendly things get cheaper by the same amount that climate-hurting things get more expensive by.

Government intervention almost always makes things more expensive. You're paying for that subsidy via taxes; you just don't realize it.

They also have the effect of driving manufacturing jobs to where regulations are less onerous (China), making us less capable of manufacturing our own products and more dependent on foreign regimes.

Manufacturing jobs have increased in the US reasonably steadily over the past decade (with a brief dip during covid) and are now at the highest levels they've been in a decade. Neither the Paris Agreement, signed half way through that decade, nor Biden's recommitment of the US to it, appear to have affected that.

It takes time for Biden's recommitment to take effect; the US has been declining in emissions since 2005, while China continues to markedly increase its emissions.

California, where climate change proposals have been implemented the most, is both a more expensive place to live and impacted by rolling blackouts because the state can't produce sufficient energy to meet its needs.

California's electricity market has been a bad joke since 2000, when Enron was manipulating it. Red-state Texas seems to have its own electricity market problems shown by recent cold snaps. The answer to why California's electricity price is high, actually appears to be capitalism. States that have deregulated their electricity markets have higher electricity prices, because the private companies can make higher profits by charging more money. We saw a similar effect in my own country when American style deregulation of electricity providers was introduced here... executive salaries in electricity companies went way up as did their profits, as did consumer electricity prices. Meanwhile the cost of solar electricity production continues to tumble.

You're entirely ignoring California's over-reliance on unreliable renewable energy sources; Texas' problems are entirely attributable to its dependence on wind turbines.

I'm not seeing much pressure exerted at all on China and India to enact climate change policies

Not much pressure is yet being exerted anywhere to enact climate change policies because the Paris Agreement hasn't fully kicked in yet. Under the Paris Agreement every country decides their own goals and reports their goals to the UN. Every country gets to decide what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. Every 5 years these goals are examined and discussed in an international forum, the first of which is to take place this year. If a country's submitted goals are decided to be unacceptably low-effort, or if it's decided that the country's not actually making a good faith effort to achieve those submitted goals, then there can be discussions about what international pressure ought to be brought to bear on the country to actually get serious about meeting the goals. I expect it to be quite an interesting, controversial, and high-profile forum.

China promised to consider slowing down its rate of increase in 2030. I don't know how much lower effort you can put forth.

There really needs to be more focus on the major producers of pollution, and less on everyone else.

Per person, the US is the highest emitter.

Not true.