Democrats in California seem to be finally waking up to the fact that green energy disproportionately hurts poor people.
According to the Wall Street Journal;
The environmental lobby has tried to turn climate change into a social justice issue even though its anticarbon policies disproportionately harm the poor. Honest Democrats are starting to admit this, as we saw in this week’s stunning revolt in the California legislature.
Jerry Brown doesn’t have much to show for his second turn in Sacramento, and of late he has focused his legacy attention on reducing carbon emissions. The Governor hailed California as a model of green virtue at the Vatican this summer and had hoped to flaunt sweeping new anticarbon regulations at the U.N’s climate-change summit in Paris this year.
But now his party has mutinied. Democrats hold near supermajorities in both legislative chambers with 52 of 80 seats in the Assembly. Yet this week 21 Democratic Assembly members representing middle- and low-income communities—including 11 blacks and Latinos—joined Republicans to kill a bill mandating a cut in state greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.
Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-climate-change-revolt-1442014369
All I can say is its about time. The evidence that green energy is hideously expensive and hurts poor people is irrefutable. Claims of alleged benefits are all based on broken climate models, which have no demonstrable predictive skill.
Anyone who supports absurd green energy policies is the enemy of the world’s poor people.
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The argument was made earlier in this thread that: “saying green energy disproportionately hurts poor people is pure BS. First of all, green energy would create jobs for lots of trades, and second it would make the energy supply industry much more decentralized”.
By a similar argument, I would like to propose that we lobby for our political masters to mandate that henceforth all construction work is conducted using “no tool larger than a tablespoon”.
The justification for this scheme of mine, would be phrased in a similar manner to those given by the commentator above who expects such miraculous benefits to accrue from preferentially favouring small-scale, piecemeal, unreliable and inordinately expensive energy production.
It is true that my tablespoon scheme will vastly increase the number of people employed in construction work. It will also “empower” people who are currently denied access to construction work that is granted only to those providers who have access to industrial scale equipment.
Also mandating that all buildings should be constructed only using “straw and mud” would add to the effectiveness of this scheme.
Since building would then be limited to two or three floors and a basement, this policy would create a de-centralization of urban working and living areas.
We could pay for this scheme of mine by charging additional fees to property buyers and renters in the form of a tax.
We could make this tax sound attractive and generous by calling it a “subsidy”.
This money could then be decanted into the pockets of those early adopters who – believing correctly that the “tablespoon” and “straw and mud” economy offered a remarkable investment opportunity – had stepped in and carved up the market for this “disruptive technology”.
Of course, the same people will have access to politicians and will doubtless lobby for strict controls on who can or can not become involved in the practice of spoon, straw and mud construction projects.
A certification scheme for professional “experts” would need to be introduced, and “ordinary” people should be banned from access to the subsidies if they attempt to carry out this work for themselves.
All of this should be an easy sell for left-leaning politicians.
If the scheme is rolled out before 2017 in the U.S. then perhaps we could call it Obamabuild.
I look forward to seeing my ideas adopted.
(P.S. for the benefit of real card carrying leftist idiots – this is a thing called a parody).
indefatigablefrog
September 13, 2015 at 1:23 pm
Actually you accurately described construction I have seen in many third world countries.
In Ethiopia, some of the projects we worked on specifically prohibited the use of large mechanical equipment. Excavations were done by hand both for large water and sewer mains and the plant works. I have photos of remarkable works constructed of planks and struts with men digging in the bottom of pits loading platforms of boards and long branches that were then carried by women, two on each end of the branches, with crossed branches and boards supporting the dirt, up out of the excavation on spindly, shaky scaffolding to the spoil pile. Water and sewerage work that would have taken perhaps 3 to 6 months in North America took 3 to 4 years to complete. The goal was to provide employment to locals, not to line the pockets of equipment suppliers. It was hard to watch from a North American engineering stand point, and getting waterproof concrete was a chore, but it was a great learning experience in patience and understanding that western goals and ideals must be adjusted to local customs and goals. The jobs got done …. on Ethiopian Time. Not a whole lot different than some places I have worked in rural Canada actually. Used to call it “Northern Time”.
Everyone marches to a different drum I reckon.
Paul Coppin
September 13, 2015 at 9:22 am
[…]” Could just as easily rewritten: “The New York Times is the propaganda arm for unbridled Socialism and Climate Change.”
The New York Times seems to be the propaganda arm for many interests. Consider that there’s never been a war that the NYT didn’t like. Does the name Judith Miller ring a bell?
In addition to all its other malefactions, the entire CAGW kerfuffle has the further distinction of distracting public attention from the more militant manefestations of other federal departments, incuding that one misnamed Defense. The anti-war movement in the US is virtually moribund, but I guess that’s OK, what with war being good for business, and all.
‘Good thing there are other whipping boys, and easy dogs to kick like Brown and the EPA around, to keep everyone busy composing quips, and aiming kicks.
Whatever else one may say about Gov. Jerry ‘Moonbeam’ Brown, he has managed to put some dents in Golden State debt. Who has paid for that result is not clear to me, nor am I certain that the accounting is accurate. I can’t find a good number for Cal’s current debt, but I do note – accurately I hope – that Brown’s predecessor, the muscle-bound celebrity Arnold Schwarzenegger, ran it up from $34 billion to $91 billion during his terms of office, but he did look heroic and awesome, while promising to shred the credit cards.
Before Schwarzenegger, Gov. Gray Davis was saddled with loopholes for criminals gaming the energy system, which were set up by energy deregulation in California under Gov. Pete Wilson in 1996. So. Cal. Edison and PG&E were forced to sell their power plants to private companies, and to buy power on the “open market,” which would be rigged.
VP Dick Cheney blocked probes into probable criminal activity surrounding manipulation of energy prices in California during Gray’s tenure by Williams, Reliant, Dynergy, Enron, and probably others. See Jason Leopold’s article at Truthout: Cheney Suppressed Evidence in California Energy Crisis.
Now back to bashing Moonbeam, who really does seem way too smart to have fallen for all the hysteria and alarm of The Great CAGW Panic, and who must be able to see that rising prices brought about by underproducing, inefficient, counterproductive wind turbines and solar arrays will hurt most those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder of success. The rich can afford to pay for idiotic ideas, the poor and middle classes cannot. Brown’s motives are murky, but not capital murky. ‘For that, we have to look elsewhere.
I guess it’s probably time for another smooth-talking movie star to step up, and lead the state back to Hollywood.
A kerfuffle is a commotion, or a fuss.
To refer to CAGW thusly is to downplay the entire thing to a triviality.
It is hardly that.
It is a threat to modern civilization, nothing less.
And if the world is due for a substantial cooling, rather than a continuation of the pause or a resumption of warming, it may be that CAGW and the misdirection of resources and misallocation of attention that is has engendered may contribute and lead to the largest loss of life in human history.
Kerfuffle?
Right. And WWII was a bit of a row.
the NYT is pro-war?
I’m guessing you are one of those geniuses who thinks that war never solved anything and the world would be a better place if the US would just disband it’s military.
Idiots like this guy are incapable of learning.
Wow, is there any lame brained conspiracy theory that he doesn’t believe in?
Sigh… Where is the American politician with the cahones to make their legacy gun control instead? That will save far more lives in the long run than any measures for climate change…
I think that is the political “third rail”. There is that bit in the US Constitution, you know. Bill Clinton thought he had ‘um. Zap! Don’t go there. Climate isn’t there yet but when people can’t afford to drive, or heat, or pay for anything else because of artificial costs benefiting a select few, the resistance will be felt.
I suggest that instead of shilling for Criminals and Totalitarians via gun “control”, a process from which historically springs quite a lot of death, gun controllists should instead turn their attention to “control” of automobiles for a much greater saving of lives over gun “control” as well as “right to keep and bear arms” arrangements, i.e., no auto for thee but at least one for me.
Sorry dude, it has been proven that gun control kills by the millions.
You don’t make the criminal safe by making the law abiding helpless.
BTW, climate control measures have killed thousands, and if fully implemented will kill millions more.
Thank you Mike, Steve P and rogerknights for your thoughtful comments, in the case of Mike I would thank him for his very long reply. My reply to Steve P, who says my thinking is flawed. Of coarse it is, that’s the point that I’m trying to make. There’s not a person in the universe that can say their thinking is without error. This particular blog among many others, is an example of believing that you all know the right way. Doesn’t that make you smile? Mike, you call me names, to what purpose? Why don’t you address the problem of your anger and then maybe we could have a sane conversation. Rogerknights, I think you get the idea. Because we have two different ideas about what’s going on doesn’t mean that the ideas can’t be discussed. When one looks at the total picture, reducing CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t such a bad idea for health reasons and to stop the acidification of the oceans. And maybe as you say there is some kind of nuclear reactor that will be safe. That’s also a way to save the planet’s ecology.
Again thanks for the comments. We’ll be in touch.
CO2 added by humans currently feeds close to one billion people with no additional land or water required. CO2 is good.
“bobthebear September 13, 2015 at 10:16 pm”
bob, Catastrophic CO2-Climate Change has a prediction failure record =100%, which means it is Scientifically Falsified. It’s as simple as that. “Mainstream” Climate Scientists should have changed their hypotheses to try to reflect empirical reality, but instead they stick to their “science”, in effect as [profitable] Dogma. As to your idea that Atmospheric CO2=400 ppm ->10,000+++ppm is a “toxin” and thus dangerous to your health, your own body carries a normal CO2 concentration of ~56,000 ppm. You exhale air at ~40,000 ppm.CO2.
BTW, the three of you claim to “know” things about the future. Nobody “knows” anything about tomorrow. I personally am only talking probabilities. What are the chances that Mars will settled by human in 2065? I don’t “know”, but the probability is probably one in twelve, and my calculation could be of by factor of 10.
bobthebear – remember all those dinosaurs 73 million years ago that died in a mud flow around Grand Prairie, Alberta, Canada? What do you suppose the CO2 level was then? Will it be warmer with more CO2? Probably. Will it matter? Probably not. Adapt or die like our ancestors. And the dinosaurs – perhaps from lack of CO2 that gave them the plant life needed to sustain them.
Maybe we should be increasing CO2 for health reasons.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/quirks-quarks-for-sep-12-2015-1.3224539/homo-naledi-new-species-of-human-relative-1.3224551
http://www.theresilientearth.com/files/images/carbon_over_time.jpg
Isn’t science great?
Maybe? I don’t ‘know’.
Bob
Btw, your ancestors lived in a world with less than a billion people. Things are a bit different now, don’t you think?
The odds of Mars being settled in 50 years?
In the past 35 years we could barely get a shuttle off of the ground to go into a low orbit for a week or two!
And now we do not even have that ability.
Your estimate of the odds are off by a factor of infinity, because there is exactly zero chance of a Mars colony in that timeframe.
You really must be a koolaid drinker pal.
I will bet anyone that a mission to Mars will be the most expensive and highly publicized suicide in history.
Short if some incredible breakthrough on propulsion technology.
Space elevator? Can anyone spell ISIS?
We cannot stop these msniacs from destroying civilization in their neck of the woods, and our leaders are dismantling and regulating industry and energy infrastructure out of existence so fast everyone sane should have their head spinning.
Even in low Earth orbit, astronauts are practically crippled by a single year in space. Mars will take longer than that. And guess what chance a person has of surviving such a trip once outside of the Earth’s protective magnetic field?
No one was more excited about space travel in their youth than me, and more disappointed to learn some hard facts.
You should try it BTB
What goes on here? One after another comes up with the phrase ‘zero chance’ of something happening. In the early 60’s President Kennedy gave us a decade to get a man on the moon. The general feeling was that it was impossible and that we had a crazy president. Need I go any further? Get excited again, man is probably going to Mars.
If I let go of a ball, it will drop.
The future is knowable, in some circumstances.
The science has shown that there is absolutely zero chance of catastrophic warming due to CO2.
No matter how much you might wish it to be otherwise.
MarkW, When you say something like “science has shown that there is absolutely zero chance” of something happening, you lose credibility with me. That may not be of importance, but try the same phrase on other people and see what their reaction is. Try it with your old physics teacher. BTW, I don’t wish it to be any particular way. However if I were making a wish, I would wish that you were right. With all my heart I would wish that you and the crew on board this blog were right.
A measured foot is always 12 inches. This is always true, no matter where you are. If you let go of a ball, it will drop. This statement depends on where you are. If on the Space Station, it will float. ;-])
Dragged kicking and screaming to the facts. For shame. Anyone would think this is the 15th century and pig-ignorance is in high-fashion once more.
Meanwhile, at the [dis]United Nations, the a fanatical Pope of Immaculate climate [mis]conception puts the other foot even deeper its mouth in an attempt to force a redistribution of global Yin-Yang symmetry.
Hey, don’t mock, we’re supposed to be brainless martyrs to the imaginary!
You were going pretty good until you descended into brainless bigotry at the end.
Either that or Jerry was playing both sides of the issue while making sure it would not pass in private discussions.
Also, was Jerry the point-man Jesuit who instructed/negotiated with the Pope on what to do and say on climate fraud and science fail? Was this the outcome in the talks over trip and security costs for the Pope’s U.S. visit? A few key statements could be worth millions of dollars.
Everything that happens in congress these days hurts the poor. Why pick on environmentalist? Some things are less egregious than others. Helping with food, water and shelter are for the good. the rest is up for discussion.
Why stop at 80% below 1990 levels? If huge reductions are so good just eliminate C02 emissions altogether. Oh wait, allowing the 20% will let them keep smoking whatever it is they were smoking when they came up with this plan. Ahhhh, smaaaaart.
People have to understand that when the left wing decries the plight of poor people, they are not talking about first world poor people, they are talking about the third world. First world poor are just not poor enough I guess.
People have to understand when the left wing decries the plight of poor people, they are not talking about anyone they know.