Atheistic morality: Is harm to animals on a continuum with harm to humans?

[Starlight]

Pretty much, yeah, but if somebody could actually say "if we do X, we can reasonably expect Y to happen, and here's the data...."

Well some numbers are pretty easy to calculate - e.g. power generation.

If we are considering installing new power plants or turning off old ones, we can select from a variety of options. Obviously we won't know the exact future retail price of electricity or the exact future price of raw materials so we won't be able to do perfectly exact return-on-investment calculations, but we can come pretty close. So we can work out pretty close to exactly how much it would cost to replace all current greenhouse gas emitting power plants in the country (or world) with non-greenhouse gas emitting ones - in that instance we can come up with $X spent now would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by Y per year. And that varies for different countries, e.g. my country has long been ~80% renewables, the US is installing lots of new solar plants and natural gas plants (natural gas is not totally greenhouse emission free, but is better than coal) and gradually decommissioning old coal plants (though Trump has reversed some Obama policy on this out of his general hatred for Obama and the environment). Overall, in the world, the choices on power generation and greenhouse gases amount pretty directly to a will (or lack of it) to spend $$$ to reduce the problem and a detailed cost-benefit analysis for each and every country could be drawn up. Basically, this sector of emissions (constituting about 25% of global greenhouse emissions) is 100% solvable right now with current technology and it is simply a matter of choosing to spend money.

Other sectors are so varied as to be impossible to do an overall analysis - e.g. "Industry" (constituting about 21% of global emissions). It would have to have a case-by-case factory-by-factory analysis of what was being emitted and why. That is why a carbon tax is generally viewed as the best solution for this sector of global emissions: Pass the externality (global environmental damage due to emissions) back to the emitters as an additional cost of them doing business, and then they themselves can decide whether it's better for them to emit and pay for it or do design their business to emit less. The free market can thus solve the problem, as each individual makes rational business choices for themselves.

Two further sectors of global emissions, transportation (14% of greenhouse emissions) and agriculture (24%), look like they might be easy wins in future given technological improvements that look to be coming down the pipeline. i.e. electric cars, and artificially produced milk and meat. While it can be a bad idea to rely on the hope of unproven future technology (e.g. "fusion power is just around the corner #1960") electric & hybrid cars are at the point where they're proven to work well and it's a matter of major manufacturers scaling up their production and governments supporting their production and supporting recharging networks throughout their countries. In the agriculture sector, a huge proportion of the emissions come from milk and red meat, so if people became vegetarian that would largely fix it, but since that seems unlikely to happen, the more likely fix is the eventual success of lab grown meat and vat-generated milk, though these products are in their infancy compared to electric cars.

So, in sum, the major things the government could do:
1. Move swiftly to replace current emitting power plants with ones that don't emit. This would cost a fixed sum of $$$.
2. Institute a carbon tax on industrial emissions to pass the costs back to emitters to allow them to correctly price their market decisions about whether to emit or not.
3. Have policies that foster the development and use of electric cars and the building or recharging networks, and discourage the use of petrol cars. And/or have better public transport systems so people aren't using their own cars as much.
4. Have policies that discourage consumption of high-emitting milk and red meat and favor low-emitting alternatives - vegetarian options, chicken etc.
5. Have policies that encourage research into artificial generation of milk in vats and meat in labs.
6. Support 3rd world countries in creating non-emitting power plants rather than emitting ones, with $$$.

[Starlight]

We actually probably wouldn't be in as bad a mess if the liberals hadn't went on a campaign to give nuclear power a bad reputation.

Yeah, I'll agree that being anti-nuclear power has been the one (and only) legitimately bad policy that liberals have backed.

[Cow Poke]

Yeah, I'll agree that being anti-nuclear power has been the one (and only) legitimately bad policy that liberals have backed.

That's a start!

[Starlight]

That's a start!

My list of bad policies that conservatives have backed is probably 100 pages long. By contrast the number of good conservative policies in history could be easily counted on the fingers of one hand.

And, it's worth noting, today's liberals aren't anti-nuclear on the whole. Nuclear power today suffers from the "Not In My Backyard!" phenomena far more than it does from particular parts of the political spectrum being against it.

[Cow Poke]

My list of bad policies that conservatives have backed is probably 100 pages long.

That's ALL?

By contrast the number of good conservative policies in history could be easily counted on the fingers of one hand.

That MANY?!?!?

And, it's worth noting, today's liberals aren't anti-nuclear on the whole. Nuclear power today suffers from the "Not In My Backyard!" phenomena far more than it does from particular parts of the political spectrum being against it.

The Greenies still oppose it.

As for the NIMBY claim, got a source on that? I know that's true of the nuclear waste disposal, but...

[carpedm9587]

So, you shopped it to the choir, eh? I understand what it was "meant" to convey - it just fell so freakin' short it wasn't worth, in my opinion, considering!

Actually, my "choir" includes a deeply fundamentalist redneck in Seattle (the friend I mentioned to you before), a fundamentalist up the road from me (who keeps telling me she's praying for me), the local baptist preacher (friend of mine), my Christian wife, and a married (yes gay) couple I've known for years. When I bounce things off people, I do try to get out of my bubble...

Knew what as well?

What the analogy was intended to convey.

I don't know how I can be any more clear - let me type REALLY slowly (being facetious, you know)....

Type as slow as you wish... I know you're really old...

Never mind. I give up. Use whatever analogy you think makes whatever point you wish to make! I don't even care anymore.

Of that I am fairly sure....

[Sparko]

Jim never made a point...which was my point...

He made several, using analogies and you refused to engage the point of the analogy and instead spent pages on trying to pick the analogies apart. Like his analogy about he baker and a white supremacist. He had that one down to a freaking equation and you still refused to give an inch. It was painful to watch. Yet here you are complaining about CP doing that to you. And your analogy was pretty weak.

[Sparko]

Yeah, I'll agree that being anti-nuclear power has been the one (and only) legitimately bad policy that liberals have backed.

I just hope they don't do it again when we get fusion power to be economically sound and workable.

[carpedm9587]

He made several, using analogies and you refused to engage the point of the analogy and instead spent pages on trying to pick the analogies apart. Like his analogy about he baker and a white supremacist. He had that one down to a freaking equation and you still refused to give an inch. It was painful to watch. Yet here you are complaining about CP doing that to you. And your analogy was pretty weak.

Then we will have to agree to disagree. Jim began by making statistical claims he did not support and wanted me to agree with them. When I did not (and your claim that he provided an equation is simply false, unless there is a post I missed somewhere. If so, I invite you to point me to it. Equations is what I was asking for. He repeatedly told me he would not provide them because it was a "tangent." Then we began the cycle of accusations that I was dodging and statements that the discussion "was not possible to have." To this moment, I have no clue what his argument or point was. If you can provide that information, that would be helpful. I have basically given up that Jim is going to do so.

As for the analogy I used, your opinion is duly noted. It seems to align with CP's. I've determined that there is essentially no analogy that would have been satisfactory, so I'll stop using them. They are powerful in a classroom, but that assumes someone that wants to understand the point.

[Starlight]

I just hope they don't do it again when we get fusion power to be economically sound and workable.

Nuclear fission power has a direct connection with both nuclear weapons and long-lived radioactive waste. Those were the reasons that hippies opposed it. Those reasons don't apply to fusion power.

[Doug Shaver]

There will always be doomsayers.

That does not justify an assumption that they are never right.

[Sparko]

Then we will have to agree to disagree. Jim began by making statistical claims he did not support and wanted me to agree with them. When I did not (and your claim that he provided an equation is simply false, unless there is a post I missed somewhere. If so, I invite you to point me to it. Equations is what I was asking for. He repeatedly told me he would not provide them because it was a "tangent." Then we began the cycle of accusations that I was dodging and statements that the discussion "was not possible to have." To this moment, I have no clue what his argument or point was. If you can provide that information, that would be helpful. I have basically given up that Jim is going to do so.

As for the analogy I used, your opinion is duly noted. It seems to align with CP's. I've determined that there is essentially no analogy that would have been satisfactory, so I'll stop using them. They are powerful in a classroom, but that assumes someone that wants to understand the point.

Your lack of awareness of your double standard is duly noted.

[carpedm9587]

Your lack of awareness of your double standard is duly noted.

I note that you are not attempting to provide the missing points Jim made, or the links to the posts where "equations" were offered.

I also have no clue how this relates to anything that's been said thus far.

[Sparko]

I note that you are not attempting to provide the missing points Jim made, or the links to the posts where "equations" were offered.

I also have no clue how this relates to anything that's been said thus far.

Your memory is that short? You don't recall the posts where oxmix laid out his analogy in painstaking detail comparing a homosexual couple asking for a gay wedding cake and a white guy asking a black baker for a White supremacy rally cake? He had point by point equivalencies laid out like a formula.

And it relates to your hypocrisy complaining about CP picking apart your analogy instead of just accepting the point you were trying to make when you did far worse to Oxmix in the other thread. Pages of it.

[carpedm9587]

Your memory is that short? You don't recall the posts where oxmix laid out his analogy in painstaking detail comparing a homosexual couple asking for a gay wedding cake and a white guy asking a black baker for a White supremacy rally cake? He had point by point equivalencies laid out like a formula.

You appear to be conflating two discussions. One was about the baker/cake (the one you refer to here). I pointed out exactly where that formula failed and why, but it took a while for Jim to see it (if he did).

The equation/point discussion I was referring to was the one about his 90% homosexuality and 5,000 people left within X years. That was the claim he was making for which I was looking for an equation and he provided none. Nor did he ever really get to the point of the argument, and it appears he is not going to.