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This is pretty fucking fascinating stuff about a scheduled "debate" between John Kerry and New Gingrich about global warming.





I gotta know how all the "deniers" in the right wing media machine feel about this. I GOTTA KNOW.

This is pretty amazing. And very encouraging. But, seeing as how it's Newt, I still gotta wonder how sincere it is.

I think that the Right's eventual embracing of the environmental movement will be to invoke Teddy Roosevelt and figure out how to give some tax cuts to company's who play ball on reducing emissions and cleaning things up a bit.

That would get me thinking about voting Republican again. And, if they could give tax cuts meaningful enough to encourage companies to keep manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.

wait what

I started my voting career as a left-leaning moderate. But yes, I have voted Republican before. I am not Tim.

But the companies that affect this the most barely pay taxes. I'm sure that the Mom n' Pop porno shop down the street is psyched, but they're gonna have to make a pretty fucking large cut to get ExxonMobil's ear, no?

Yeah, my comment was most definitely cynical; the strategy that I was suggesting that they will likely use is to wrap this issue with the flag and then only help out the Big Boys.

I saw a show on PBS the other night on Antarctica, and I got the impression unless we (meaning the whole fricking planet) do something drastic NOW, it's too late.

And with China polluting nilly-willy, it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

We're fucked.

I know you're not Tim, but since about 1984 or so the right has been getting more and more conservative, so I'm trying to figure out who you possibly could've voted for in there.

My guess is Bob Dole 1996.

I couldn't tell you how many times I've said "I sure am glad I won't be around in 50 years."

Never in a presidential election.
I did vote for George Ryan for IL gov., the first time.
And there may have been a couple of other state offices where I voted Republican, when I felt they were the better candidate.

The free market approach to emissions reductions has always been freely tradable emissions/pollutions rights whereby overall emissions reductions limits are placed but the rights to pollute up to those levels are freely tradable so that overall levels can be reduced in the cheapest, most efficient, least burdensome manner.

Coupla thoughts:

1. For the rest of the world (china, india), the idea of us telling them not to pollute is laughable. Their take on it (if I may grossly paraphrase) is "YOU did it, and it's what got you to economic prosperity. Now we're trying to grow, and suddenly you have an attack of conscience. How convenient." This comes from my chinese/indian friends here in my program. They understand the whole issue and its urgency, and are merely telling me anecdotally what a large portion of their home countrymen feel.

2. Manufacturing jobs are not gonna stay here in any large way, Todd. People don't need most of those products to have tiny lead times (6 weeks is fine if the price gets cut in half), the skill needed to produce those things is not beyond what poor foreign laborers can learn in a year, and they desperately want the work. Companies who don't find cheaper labor somewhere are faced with a cost structure that puts them out of business, as all their peers have offshored. It can be done very ethically (but often isn't), and it can have a very positive impact on those countries. Not every company is making shoes for Nike. There are a lot of very carefully managed, sustainable, mutually beneficial arrangements out there that don't make the news. We just have to get good at something else.

Its not so much that polluting is the path to prosperity as that a clean environment is a "luxury good" for the lack of a better word. You care a lot more about it once you've solved the getting food on your table, a roof over your head, and healthcare to cure your ills.

Bingo.

It's much, much easier for the US, Europe, and Japan to create high standards (and for Bush to ignore them) than it is for people without paved roads. Doesn't make the problem any less serious, just adds complexity to the discussion.

I'd be surprised if any of y'all voted for Carol Mosely-Braun in her re-elect campaign