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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 18 2021 23:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I don't mean this disrespectfully, but I genuinely feel like your opinion on Greta Thunberg is mostly formed from watching literally one soundbite from one sentence. (That was the one I referenced as being 'her opinion'. )
It's not that climate scientists need to listen to her - she's already stating what they are stating. Others need to listen to the climate scientists. But rather than listen to the climate scientists, some people instead choose to dismiss her as a child. Something I guess they are incapable of doing towards the climate scientists, whose authority isn't as easily dismissable because people are attached to the idea that authority follows age and title.
I mean, she is a child - one who might as well be parroting the smart-sounding lines that someone else fed her. And she should be dismissed as such. Not to say that good climate policy isn't important or that we shouldn't do more than we've done, but dismissing the uninformed words of a child as the uninformed words of a child is 100% the correct thing to do. The fact that the actual content of her speech reeks of untenable naivete ("no matter the economic cost!") does not help.
In short, you should probably find a better mascot for environmental policy than her. She's not a very good one.
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Norway28678 Posts
I watched the video and I honestly don't think it's a relevant answer to anything I've posted, nor to any statement I've really seen from Thunberg - I certainly don't see how it really argues against her or against me. I have no problems with opposition to an overly alarmist and clickbaity media landscape (but I think Thunberg has been hurt by that clickbaity media landscape more than she has been aided by it. ) I also think responding to a video sucks, because I don't even know exactly what about the video it is you are referring.
But anyway, I don't think it's remotely true that every opponent of 'global warming is a real problem that desperately needs to be tackled' has even a cursory understanding of the issue. I'm sure it holds true for many people - some just don't care that future generations or people in x region or nature gets hurt. But I'm also absolutely certain that a lot of people don't believe in the possibility of 'bottom 20% of likely projections according to the IPCC' happening (or what those worst 20% would entail) and that their opinions would have been influenced had they known.
*and let me add as a disclaimer to all my posts that I don't posit to know just how bad the consequences of climate change are going to be by x period of time in x region of the world. But there is no question that our inaction for the first 40 years of knowing about it is going to have some pretty dire consequences, at the very least for a) wildlife and b) poorer regions near the equator.
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Norway28678 Posts
On January 18 2021 23:26 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2021 23:19 Liquid`Drone wrote:The goals of 0 emissions are only seemingly impossible because politicians ignored the advice from climate scientists from ~1970 until today though, because they favored short term economic gains over the long term welfare of the planet.  Almost the entire population on earth lives close to zero emissions, or at least below a level which would damage the earth. All of Africa, India and Latin America, most of East Asia. It is maybe a billion people who cause nearly all emissions.
Not sure from what year your numbers are from, but 2018 numbers have China's per capita numbers at 90% of EU's per capita numbers.
I most certainly agree that the west is to blame here - and I think we all need to reduce our emissions more than India or Africa needs to not increase theirs (we can't ask others not to do what we are doing ourselves) - and this is exacerbated further by the knowledge that the most impacted are the least responsible. But even then the 1 billion number is at least 1 billion short.
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Norway28678 Posts
On January 18 2021 23:50 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2021 23:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I don't mean this disrespectfully, but I genuinely feel like your opinion on Greta Thunberg is mostly formed from watching literally one soundbite from one sentence. (That was the one I referenced as being 'her opinion'. )
It's not that climate scientists need to listen to her - she's already stating what they are stating. Others need to listen to the climate scientists. But rather than listen to the climate scientists, some people instead choose to dismiss her as a child. Something I guess they are incapable of doing towards the climate scientists, whose authority isn't as easily dismissable because people are attached to the idea that authority follows age and title. I mean, she is a child - one who might as well be parroting the smart-sounding lines that someone else fed her. And she should be dismissed as such. Not to say that good climate policy isn't important or that we shouldn't do more than we've done, but dismissing the uninformed words of a child as the uninformed words of a child is 100% the correct thing to do. The fact that the actual content of her speech reeks of untenable naivete ("no matter the economic cost!") does not help. In short, you should probably find a better mascot for environmental policy than her. She's not a very good one.
If you hear x statement on the science of climate change from 55 year old Doctor Professor Scientist of Climate Change and an identical statement from 16 year old swedish school ditcher and you decided to dismiss the second statement because of its origin, then you ended up making an error. If you go 'I agree with her on 97% of the things she said, but that one time she said 'how dare you' I thought that was a little bit over the top and it really made me not like her, then I grant myself the liberty of thinking that's a bit silly.
I think she's been an integral part of why young people in western countries consider climate change a , if not the, top political issue. I don't think there's a single other individual who has been more impactful in spreading the message for that age group. (Anecdotal I guess - but as a teacher who has taught ~1000 different pupils for the past three years, I'm guessing my sample size is bigger than most!) Great success on her behalf, and she's a fkn hero. Myself, as a 36 year old guy with at least a slightly scientific background, I can actually read the IPCC reports and draw my own conclusions, but she's had wider reach with a really important audience than.. whomever else you may suggest.
There are older and more knowledgeable people on why education is important than Malala, too, but few stronger symbols.
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With climate change, it is even more complicated to "follow the science", as all the science can offer models and predictions with a high degree of uncertainty. But uncertainty does not sell pepers or break through in the information highway, the worst possible scenarios they can come up with do, no matter how unrealistic they are. How much we can really do about climate change is just as uncertain as how much it will change.
Was it even really that much better to be a human being on the earth 200 years ago? For example 1816, "the year without summer" suggests that is highly debatable.
Call me naive or whatever, but I refuse to worry about climate change. An incoming ice age would be a lot more to worry about than a warmer climate, and we are experts at adapting.
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Yes, we are experts at adapting, but you're asking 1billion people to grow gills.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 19 2021 00:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2021 23:50 LegalLord wrote:On January 18 2021 23:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I don't mean this disrespectfully, but I genuinely feel like your opinion on Greta Thunberg is mostly formed from watching literally one soundbite from one sentence. (That was the one I referenced as being 'her opinion'. )
It's not that climate scientists need to listen to her - she's already stating what they are stating. Others need to listen to the climate scientists. But rather than listen to the climate scientists, some people instead choose to dismiss her as a child. Something I guess they are incapable of doing towards the climate scientists, whose authority isn't as easily dismissable because people are attached to the idea that authority follows age and title. I mean, she is a child - one who might as well be parroting the smart-sounding lines that someone else fed her. And she should be dismissed as such. Not to say that good climate policy isn't important or that we shouldn't do more than we've done, but dismissing the uninformed words of a child as the uninformed words of a child is 100% the correct thing to do. The fact that the actual content of her speech reeks of untenable naivete ("no matter the economic cost!") does not help. In short, you should probably find a better mascot for environmental policy than her. She's not a very good one. If you hear x statement on the science of climate change from 55 year old Doctor Professor Scientist of Climate Change and an identical statement from 16 year old swedish school ditcher and you decided to dismiss the second statement because of its origin, then you ended up making an error. If you go 'I agree with her on 97% of the things she said, but that one time she said 'how dare you' I thought that was a little bit over the top and it really made me not like her, then I grant myself the liberty of thinking that's a bit silly. I think she's been an integral part of why young people in western countries consider climate change a , if not the, top political issue. I don't think there's a single other individual who has been more impactful in spreading the message for that age group. (Anecdotal I guess - but as a teacher who has taught ~1000 different pupils for the past three years, I'm guessing my sample size is bigger than most!) Great success on her behalf, and she's a fkn hero. Myself, as a 36 year old guy with at least a slightly scientific background, I can actually read the IPCC reports and draw my own conclusions, but she's had wider reach with a really important audience than.. whomever else you may suggest. There are older and more knowledgeable people on why education is important than Malala, too, but few stronger symbols.
I give her opinion about as much credibility as Bambi or Smokey the Bear. She's a mascot, nothing more nothing less - and honestly, one without all that much charm. Maybe there's a nice feel-good message in there behind the reductionist language that someone can appreciate, but it's certainly not my cup of tea. We could do better as far as mascots go.
To counter an anecdote with an anecdote: the most common opinions I see about Thunberg are, "who?", followed by "a naive little pawn parroting the lines that adults fed her" - a far cry from being deeply inspired by her message. Maybe it's different in Norway, or in your specific student cohort which does seem to be rather unique.
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On January 19 2021 00:19 Slydie wrote:
With climate change, it is even more complicated to "follow the science", as all the science can offer models and predictions with a high degree of uncertainty. But uncertainty does not sell pepers or break through in the information highway, the worst possible scenarios they can come up with do, no matter how unrealistic they are. How much we can really do about climate change is just as uncertain as how much it will change.
Was it even really that much better to be a human being on the earth 200 years ago? For example 1816, "the year without summer" suggests that is highly debatable.
Call me naive or whatever, but I refuse to worry about climate change. An incoming ice age would be a lot more to worry about than a warmer climate, and we are experts at adapting.
We might be experts at adapting to survive, but adapting doesn't always make your life better. It is simply surviving. When it comes to Spain (which I believe is where you live these days right?) that means most likely desertification and living with average degrees of 4 to 8 higher than current. For people in wetlands of the south and south east India, that means moving, since there will probably occur humid heatwaves where you simply can't sweat off the heat, meaning no matter how fit you are, you will die within an hour or two if you are not cooled down externally. Not a lot of poor people can afford that. Now luckily as a resident residing in Norway, it mostly means reduced drinking water quality, yearly 200-year floods and more land slides, but not absolutely terrible things and easy to adapt to if you have the resources. However not everyone globally have that luxury.
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United States42866 Posts
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.
Thunberg is essentially noting that at present the old men are doing the opposite of this. They're taking the shade now and leaving it to their children to do the work. Fossil fuels present a great temptation, near limitless cheap energy today in exchange for environmental catastrophe in the future, and the ruling generations for the past five or so decades have been unable and unwilling to say no. They are stealing from their children and grandchildren. "How dare you?" is an apt summation of the issue.
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Norway28678 Posts
On January 19 2021 00:38 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2021 00:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 18 2021 23:50 LegalLord wrote:On January 18 2021 23:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I don't mean this disrespectfully, but I genuinely feel like your opinion on Greta Thunberg is mostly formed from watching literally one soundbite from one sentence. (That was the one I referenced as being 'her opinion'. )
It's not that climate scientists need to listen to her - she's already stating what they are stating. Others need to listen to the climate scientists. But rather than listen to the climate scientists, some people instead choose to dismiss her as a child. Something I guess they are incapable of doing towards the climate scientists, whose authority isn't as easily dismissable because people are attached to the idea that authority follows age and title. I mean, she is a child - one who might as well be parroting the smart-sounding lines that someone else fed her. And she should be dismissed as such. Not to say that good climate policy isn't important or that we shouldn't do more than we've done, but dismissing the uninformed words of a child as the uninformed words of a child is 100% the correct thing to do. The fact that the actual content of her speech reeks of untenable naivete ("no matter the economic cost!") does not help. In short, you should probably find a better mascot for environmental policy than her. She's not a very good one. If you hear x statement on the science of climate change from 55 year old Doctor Professor Scientist of Climate Change and an identical statement from 16 year old swedish school ditcher and you decided to dismiss the second statement because of its origin, then you ended up making an error. If you go 'I agree with her on 97% of the things she said, but that one time she said 'how dare you' I thought that was a little bit over the top and it really made me not like her, then I grant myself the liberty of thinking that's a bit silly. I think she's been an integral part of why young people in western countries consider climate change a , if not the, top political issue. I don't think there's a single other individual who has been more impactful in spreading the message for that age group. (Anecdotal I guess - but as a teacher who has taught ~1000 different pupils for the past three years, I'm guessing my sample size is bigger than most!) Great success on her behalf, and she's a fkn hero. Myself, as a 36 year old guy with at least a slightly scientific background, I can actually read the IPCC reports and draw my own conclusions, but she's had wider reach with a really important audience than.. whomever else you may suggest. There are older and more knowledgeable people on why education is important than Malala, too, but few stronger symbols. I give her opinion about as much credibility as Bambi or Smokey the Bear. She's a mascot, nothing more nothing less - and honestly, one without all that much charm. Maybe there's a nice feel-good message in there behind the reductionist language that someone can appreciate, but it's certainly not my cup of tea. We could do better as far as mascots go. To counter an anecdote with an anecdote: the most common opinions I see about Thunberg are, "who?", followed by "a naive little pawn parroting the lines that adults fed her" - a far cry from being deeply inspired by her message. Maybe it's different in Norway, or in your specific student cohort which does seem to be rather unique.
What's the age of the people you are referring to? I know she fares poorly with cynical and jaded men (I don't intend this as an insult - I genuinely believe you happily self-identify in this manner, my apologies if you do not) aged 30+. But my impression is that she's done exceptionally well reaching out to girls in school age (who like her message, who like her, and who like what she stands for) and boys in school age (who wanted a day or half day off school but who had to read up on climate change to convince their parents that they should permit them to be part of some school strike. I've seen 10 year old boys study with more diligence than I saw in a full year of teaching for just this reason - and I've seen children who have 'picking garbage from the street' as a hobby because they care so much about the climate because they read about Thunberg and accept her message.
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I actually kinda agree with LL. The rise of Greta Thunberg reminds me the most of Noble Peace prize for Obama. Mindless bandwagoning. Some people on the left thinks she is somehow great herald for ecology but in my opinion she is convincing only to people already convinced (and not even to everyone!), to all other she is just poster child some even call her "spoiled brat".
I mean, I myself have very strong pro-eco bias and she makes me angry.
PS. On slightly related note i think it is much better to talk about "climate change" than "global warming". Most people have hard time grasping "world average temperature" and what that exactly entails, clime change is much harder to deny as You can just point to some observable phenomenon which is new and unusual.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 19 2021 00:55 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2021 00:38 LegalLord wrote:On January 19 2021 00:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 18 2021 23:50 LegalLord wrote:On January 18 2021 23:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I don't mean this disrespectfully, but I genuinely feel like your opinion on Greta Thunberg is mostly formed from watching literally one soundbite from one sentence. (That was the one I referenced as being 'her opinion'. )
It's not that climate scientists need to listen to her - she's already stating what they are stating. Others need to listen to the climate scientists. But rather than listen to the climate scientists, some people instead choose to dismiss her as a child. Something I guess they are incapable of doing towards the climate scientists, whose authority isn't as easily dismissable because people are attached to the idea that authority follows age and title. I mean, she is a child - one who might as well be parroting the smart-sounding lines that someone else fed her. And she should be dismissed as such. Not to say that good climate policy isn't important or that we shouldn't do more than we've done, but dismissing the uninformed words of a child as the uninformed words of a child is 100% the correct thing to do. The fact that the actual content of her speech reeks of untenable naivete ("no matter the economic cost!") does not help. In short, you should probably find a better mascot for environmental policy than her. She's not a very good one. If you hear x statement on the science of climate change from 55 year old Doctor Professor Scientist of Climate Change and an identical statement from 16 year old swedish school ditcher and you decided to dismiss the second statement because of its origin, then you ended up making an error. If you go 'I agree with her on 97% of the things she said, but that one time she said 'how dare you' I thought that was a little bit over the top and it really made me not like her, then I grant myself the liberty of thinking that's a bit silly. I think she's been an integral part of why young people in western countries consider climate change a , if not the, top political issue. I don't think there's a single other individual who has been more impactful in spreading the message for that age group. (Anecdotal I guess - but as a teacher who has taught ~1000 different pupils for the past three years, I'm guessing my sample size is bigger than most!) Great success on her behalf, and she's a fkn hero. Myself, as a 36 year old guy with at least a slightly scientific background, I can actually read the IPCC reports and draw my own conclusions, but she's had wider reach with a really important audience than.. whomever else you may suggest. There are older and more knowledgeable people on why education is important than Malala, too, but few stronger symbols. I give her opinion about as much credibility as Bambi or Smokey the Bear. She's a mascot, nothing more nothing less - and honestly, one without all that much charm. Maybe there's a nice feel-good message in there behind the reductionist language that someone can appreciate, but it's certainly not my cup of tea. We could do better as far as mascots go. To counter an anecdote with an anecdote: the most common opinions I see about Thunberg are, "who?", followed by "a naive little pawn parroting the lines that adults fed her" - a far cry from being deeply inspired by her message. Maybe it's different in Norway, or in your specific student cohort which does seem to be rather unique. What's the age of the people you are referring to? I know she fares poorly with cynical and jaded men (I don't intend this as an insult - I genuinely believe you happily self-identify in this manner, my apologies if you do not) aged 30+. But my impression is that she's done exceptionally well reaching out to girls in school age (who like her message, who like her, and who like what she stands for) and boys in school age (who wanted a day or half day off school but who had to read up on climate change to convince their parents that they should permit them to be part of some school strike. I've seen 10 year old boys study with more diligence than I saw in a full year of teaching for just this reason - and I've seen children who have 'picking garbage from the street' as a hobby because they care so much about the climate because they read about Thunberg and accept her message.
Honestly, pretty universally - young or old, male or female - folks in my social circles seem to be of the same mind on this one. Notably leans conservative and based in either the US or Russia, in case it's one of those "only left-leaning Europeans would be of this mind" views. Very few younger people know or care who she is around these parts; probably has to do with that she isn't culturally popular in the US to start with. Older folks tend more towards knowing and having an opinion, but I've not really seen that women are any more sympathetic than men on this front.
To be honest, you're one of the very few people I've seen who still cares about what she has to say in any capacity. She seems about as relevant to me as Rebecca Black's "Friday" at this point. Her particular brand of alarmist naivete went out of style a long time ago.
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On January 18 2021 16:13 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2021 15:13 RvB wrote:On January 18 2021 06:36 KwarK wrote:On January 18 2021 06:32 Introvert wrote:On January 18 2021 05:17 KwarK wrote:On January 18 2021 05:09 Shingi11 wrote:On January 18 2021 04:21 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I think they won't even notice most of it. Just like when trump undid stuff. lets take environmental regs Trump and republicans spent 4 years destroying any type of oversight and environmental protections. Hell a lot of republicans still thing climate change is some fairy tail myth. So now biden comes along and spends his 4 to 8 years putting all that back in place. Then say a hypothetical president Pence spends his 4-8 years braking it all back down. Then a hypothetical president AOC spends her 4 to 8 years putting it all back. I think we might eventually start to feel that no? This isn’t new. Look up Carter’s solar panels. When they were installed on the White House roof he gave a speech saying that they could either be a milestone marking the start of an era of clean energy and the development of new scientific breakthroughs or a sad reminder of the road not taken. Reagan had them taken off after inauguration purely out of spite. The panels were removed in 1986, over a year into his second term after a roof renovation. Hardly "out of spite." My bad. I repeated without fact checking. Thank you for fact checking me. The overall issue remains though. The United States was technologically and industrially best positioned to become the leader in clean energy tech for the world and by placing them on the roof of the White House Carter was symbolically marking the goal of the US to become a global leader in the field. 30 years later and China, not the US, dominates the industry due to state industrial planning and investment while the US spends trillions securing fossil fuels. The failure of US policy is apparent either way. Whether or not Reagan was spiteful, successive US administrations have squandered the US lead and failed to invest and innovate. I doubt it would've changed much. Germany subsidised their clean energy sector a lot but it didn't matter due to China's comparative advantage with their low labour costs. Production would've always been outsourced. Subsidising without a comparative advantage is a waste of money. This doesn’t properly understand the issue. Low labour costs aren’t worth much without the associated industries and human capital. Supply chains form an interconnected ecosystem with dependencies built in. A simple example is that heavy industry can only get their goods to the market with access to a modern port and a modern port can only justify the cost of existing if it gets a lot of use from heavy industry. If you lose one part of the ecosystem then the others start to fail in a knock on cascade. We’re now at the point that most of the industries that have gone to China can’t actually be returned because the ecosystem has broken down. There aren’t skilled labourers to work those industries anymore, nor trade schools producing graduates to go into them. There aren’t companies importing the necessary raw materials etc. But it didn’t have to be this way and it certainly wasn’t inevitable. China did not have much of a competitive advantage for a long time, US raw materials had higher labour costs but could take advantage of the best modern machinery which was also US made back then. It could go straight to the factories, also in the US, on the railways that existed for that purpose. And then the goods could be exported across the world in ports that existed for that purpose. The US economic ecosystem was the most developed and efficient, China could only compete with small parts of it but it is the whole that makes it efficient. Cheaper labour doesn’t count for much if it’s not where it’s needed. The loss of industry to China is a policy failure. Germany, as part of the EU with its high external tariffs, has actually done a better job than most at retaining domestic industry with associated competitive advantages.
No you just don't understand the concept of comparative advantage. The loss of industry isn't policy failure it's the whole point of free trade. Countries produce what they're best (or least bad) at. The US and EU have their comparative advantage in a highly educated workforce and services while China has a cheap workforce. So complex, high margin manufacturing is done in the US and EU while low margin standardardized production gets outsourced to China, Vietnam etc. There's a reason why China has been trying to create a competitor for ASML for years but they keep failing and Germany wasn't able to compete in production of solar panels. It's not where their comparative advantage lies.
Your example of Europe makes no sense to me. Europe has had slower growth than the US for more than a decade, our economies are generally less dynamic and in the most important sector (tech) we're very far behind. Instead of protecting old politically well connected industries behind tariffs we should give more opportunity to new companies in growth sectors.
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Norway28678 Posts
The mention of her made this thread discuss climate change for two pages. Seems like she's pretty universally understood as a symbol of climate change, regardless of whether you agree with her messaging or not.  I also expect more alarmism in the future (once covid and the storming of the capitol stops dominating the media picture), not less. 2020 pre-covid started out being dominated by news about climate change, but then we got a let's force everybody to stay inside-pandemic.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 19 2021 01:46 Liquid`Drone wrote:The mention of her made this thread discuss climate change for two pages. Seems like she's pretty universally understood as a symbol of climate change, regardless of whether you agree with her messaging or not.
Seems more like the mention of Greta Thunberg sparked a two-page discussion about Greta Thunberg with some tangential meta-points about climate change.
I mean, we know who she is because we have enough memory to remember a passing fad of a couple years back, but that doesn't make her a meaningful symbol of anything in and of itself.
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On January 19 2021 00:55 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Thunberg is essentially noting that at present the old men are doing the opposite of this. They're taking the shade now and leaving it to their children to do the work. Fossil fuels present a great temptation, near limitless cheap energy today in exchange for environmental catastrophe in the future, and the ruling generations for the past five or so decades have been unable and unwilling to say no. They are stealing from their children and grandchildren. "How dare you?" is an apt summation of the issue.
The bolded part is not really true and is actually a very common misconception. It only seems 'cheap' because of the cumulative trillions (in today's dollars) invested in its acquisition, processing and distribution ecosystem. If the infrastructure wasn't already there, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more expensive form of energy.
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United States42866 Posts
On January 19 2021 01:45 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2021 16:13 KwarK wrote:On January 18 2021 15:13 RvB wrote:On January 18 2021 06:36 KwarK wrote:On January 18 2021 06:32 Introvert wrote:On January 18 2021 05:17 KwarK wrote:On January 18 2021 05:09 Shingi11 wrote:On January 18 2021 04:21 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I think they won't even notice most of it. Just like when trump undid stuff. lets take environmental regs Trump and republicans spent 4 years destroying any type of oversight and environmental protections. Hell a lot of republicans still thing climate change is some fairy tail myth. So now biden comes along and spends his 4 to 8 years putting all that back in place. Then say a hypothetical president Pence spends his 4-8 years braking it all back down. Then a hypothetical president AOC spends her 4 to 8 years putting it all back. I think we might eventually start to feel that no? This isn’t new. Look up Carter’s solar panels. When they were installed on the White House roof he gave a speech saying that they could either be a milestone marking the start of an era of clean energy and the development of new scientific breakthroughs or a sad reminder of the road not taken. Reagan had them taken off after inauguration purely out of spite. The panels were removed in 1986, over a year into his second term after a roof renovation. Hardly "out of spite." My bad. I repeated without fact checking. Thank you for fact checking me. The overall issue remains though. The United States was technologically and industrially best positioned to become the leader in clean energy tech for the world and by placing them on the roof of the White House Carter was symbolically marking the goal of the US to become a global leader in the field. 30 years later and China, not the US, dominates the industry due to state industrial planning and investment while the US spends trillions securing fossil fuels. The failure of US policy is apparent either way. Whether or not Reagan was spiteful, successive US administrations have squandered the US lead and failed to invest and innovate. I doubt it would've changed much. Germany subsidised their clean energy sector a lot but it didn't matter due to China's comparative advantage with their low labour costs. Production would've always been outsourced. Subsidising without a comparative advantage is a waste of money. This doesn’t properly understand the issue. Low labour costs aren’t worth much without the associated industries and human capital. Supply chains form an interconnected ecosystem with dependencies built in. A simple example is that heavy industry can only get their goods to the market with access to a modern port and a modern port can only justify the cost of existing if it gets a lot of use from heavy industry. If you lose one part of the ecosystem then the others start to fail in a knock on cascade. We’re now at the point that most of the industries that have gone to China can’t actually be returned because the ecosystem has broken down. There aren’t skilled labourers to work those industries anymore, nor trade schools producing graduates to go into them. There aren’t companies importing the necessary raw materials etc. But it didn’t have to be this way and it certainly wasn’t inevitable. China did not have much of a competitive advantage for a long time, US raw materials had higher labour costs but could take advantage of the best modern machinery which was also US made back then. It could go straight to the factories, also in the US, on the railways that existed for that purpose. And then the goods could be exported across the world in ports that existed for that purpose. The US economic ecosystem was the most developed and efficient, China could only compete with small parts of it but it is the whole that makes it efficient. Cheaper labour doesn’t count for much if it’s not where it’s needed. The loss of industry to China is a policy failure. Germany, as part of the EU with its high external tariffs, has actually done a better job than most at retaining domestic industry with associated competitive advantages. No you just don't understand the concept of comparative advantage. The loss of industry isn't policy failure it's the whole point of free trade. Countries produce what they're best (or least bad) at. The US and EU have their comparative advantage in a highly educated workforce and services while China has a cheap workforce. So complex, high margin manufacturing is done in the US and EU while low margin standardardized production gets outsourced to China, Vietnam etc. There's a reason why China has been trying to create a competitor for ASML for years but they keep failing and Germany wasn't able to compete in production of solar panels. It's not where their comparative advantage lies. Your example of Europe makes no sense to me. Europe has had slower growth than the US for more than a decade, our economies are generally less dynamic and in the most important sector (tech) we're very far behind. Instead of protecting old politically well connected industries behind tariffs we should give more opportunity to new companies in growth sectors.
You're treating this as if China were a vending machine where we could input services and get out manufactured goods. In terms of optimizing then sure, Europe producing services and using the vending machine results in more manufactured goods than making them themselves. But China isn't a vending machine, it's a geopolitical rival with a hostile expansionist intention and their economic policy is designed to displace key industries in the west.
And it's not just low margin standardized production, that's the whole point. The more you move, the less rational what you're keeping is to keep, and what you move isn't ever coming back.
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Today is Martin Luther King day in the US, and it's absolutely mind boggling to watch conservatives who are for capitalism white wash MLK as if MLK will be on their side because racists are being censored.
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Northern Ireland25533 Posts
On January 19 2021 02:54 ShoCkeyy wrote:
Today is Martin Luther King day in the US, and it's absolutely mind boggling to watch conservatives who are for capitalism white wash MLK as if MLK will be on their side because racists are being censored.
Quel surprise.
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On January 19 2021 03:57 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2021 02:54 ShoCkeyy wrote:
Today is Martin Luther King day in the US, and it's absolutely mind boggling to watch conservatives who are for capitalism white wash MLK as if MLK will be on their side because racists are being censored. Quel surprise.
“MLK was against people being mistreated, similar to what is happening with conservatives being censored against their constitutional rights. So MLK would be against Democrats and support Trump”
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EPT
