Embittered election postmortem (please let's just have this one thread to vent)

[traininthedistance]

-Denying climate change because it is good for the profit margins of your donors is morally depraved and reprehensible

This is the one of your charges with the least BS.  But even here you ascribe too great an emphasis on this motivation.  Sadly, there are those who actually do disbelieve that climate change is being caused by human actions.  Also there are those who quite reasonably want to deal with change in the most economic manner, and that might well be by dealing with the effects as they happen rather than trying to prevent them from happening in the first place.

There is zero chance we can do anything with this technology level to prevent the climate change from happening. Therefore, the only rational response is to deal with the effects of it.

The environmental fanatics call anybody who tries to talk that way a "climate change denier".

Who says we're stuck with our current technology level?

We aren't. But there's no logic in doing anything with this current level. We can do a lot with the technology level some 50 years from now.

Oh, FFS.  There is plenty we can do with the current level– note how solar has become cheaper than coal– and that is even before taking into account the massive and continually ignored costs associated with inaction.  We can't afford to wait- and that's even before you un-naive your analyses and take other unchecked environmental externalities into account.

Can we do more in the future?  Sure, I hope so, we're even more f**ked otherwise.  But even that requires a dedicated R&D push, which itself requires action and a shifting of resources now.  "Let's pretend like nothing is wrong because science will magically make things better!" while forgetting that making things better in the future requires investment now is short-sighted and circular reasoning of the very worst kind.

[traininthedistance]

-Denying climate change because it is good for the profit margins of your donors is morally depraved and reprehensible

This is the one of your charges with the least BS.  But even here you ascribe too great an emphasis on this motivation.  Sadly, there are those who actually do disbelieve that climate change is being caused by human actions.  Also there are those who quite reasonably want to deal with change in the most economic manner, and that might well be by dealing with the effects as they happen rather than trying to prevent them from happening in the first place.

There is zero chance we can do anything with this technology level to prevent the climate change from happening. Therefore, the only rational response is to deal with the effects of it.

The environmental fanatics call anybody who tries to talk that way a "climate change denier".

Who says we're stuck with our current technology level?

We aren't. But there's no logic in doing anything with this current level. We can do a lot with the technology level some 50 years from now.

Oh, FFS.  There is plenty we can do with the current level– note how solar has become cheaper than coal– and that is even before taking into account the massive and continually ignored costs associated with inaction.  We can't afford to wait- and that's even before you un-naive your analyses and take other unchecked environmental externalities into account.

Can we do more in the future?  Sure, I hope so, we're even more f**ked otherwise.  But even that requires a dedicated R&D push, which itself requires action and a shifting of resources now.  "Let's pretend like nothing is wrong because science will magically make things better!" while forgetting that making things better in the future requires investment now is short-sighted and circular reasoning of the very worst kind.

In other words, coal makes us sick?


OK, this is just a joke.

But, seriously, any action we do today is an infinitesimal action with huge costs compared to the action we can do with a smaller effort and much larger benefits 50 years from now.

Well, yes, coal kills.  That's just the truth.  And it kills in more mundane and immediate ways than just CO2 levels.

Anyway, your assertion ignores the fact that 50 years of inaction will deteriorate the baseline that much further, as well as the argument that future implementation of solutions requires R&D now.  Sure, we can't prevent climate change from happening at this point.  We can, though– and must! Certainly according to any honest, holistic accounting– take steps that will make it less bad.  Every little wedge counts.

Also, there are plenty of things we can do now that will even save us money, and even then by the current standards that don't properly account for externalities.  In particular, there's a whole boatload of low-hanging fruit when it comes to white roofs, insulation, and in general retrofitting existing buildings to become more energy-efficient.  That stuff would pay off even without accounting for externalities anyway, and we don't do it because of laziness, inertia, misaligned incentives, lack of capital in the right places, etc.

This is a case where relying on the "magic of the market" (or pretending to do so in the name of wanting to defend the short-term status quo/fight some sort of dumbass culture war) is inadequate due to the externality issues, and active planning and advocacy is urgently needed.

[traininthedistance]

I suppose this post over in the MD-Gov thread probably belongs here, too:

Out of all the results this Tuesday, MD-Gov is one of the two that feels like a personal gut-punch to me, not even so much because a Republican won but because of what interests he in particular stands up for (note his background as a sprawl developer) and why he won- in particular, opposition to the so-called "rain tax", which is nothing of the sort but is in fact one of the best policies that anyone has come up with anywhere in my lifetime.  The other, of course, being the gas tax referendum in Massachusetts, where science and common sense were also rejected in favor of Luntzian reaction.  (Seriously- if you're a non-blue avatar and you supported No on that, congrats on swallowing an elephantine load of transparent bullsh*t and [unwittingly, one would hope] doing the Devil's work.  Harsh words, but I need to vent, and this is one area where I do in fact have the expertise to do so.)

I'd almost be relatively okay with a dumbass #Benghazi!!!1! #OBOLA wave on other issues in other races– you win some you lose some–, but when even blue states like these are reacting violently to the tamest, best-supported, and most obviously necessary Pigouvian measures that attempt to secure a future for our infrastructure (both man-made and natural) and make people make recompense for just a tiny bit of the the externalities of their actions, I seriously weep for the future of America, and humanity as a whole.

It's almost like, WTF can I even do to make this world a better place.  How can we win while also remaining true to, well, the truth?  I guess we can't.  These results will be taken as a shot across the bow, and nothing will ever get better until it's too late, and probably not even then.  Urgh.

Go ahead, sage this, I really don't give a f**k.