Discussion for article #230054
Too little too late but great news nonetheless.
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I am sure the President will receive no credit for this, but any agreement between major nations about such an important issue is an accomplishment.
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Emitters United, frame it like that and the real emittees may actually get on board.
This will go down in history as the Obamacare of climate agreements.
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Oh the right-wing, oiligarchists shit storm should be swift and ferocious. And Iām getting the feeling weāre about the see the best of Obama, finally.
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Your comment is what the left is all about, wial. Stay losing.
Generally Iād agreeā¦but this isnāt your typical political issue. A certain amount of fatalism is appropriate.
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It isnāt a left-right issue, that is what the politics are all about and why we are all losing.
Catastrophic climate change knows no political lean.
Wial, I do not believe, ever referred to a political Party. Your bias is showing rollotamasi.
Obamaās pledge was sure to confront tough opposition from ascendant Republicans in Congress.
āascendantā
Hmm. OK.
I can handle ascendant.
Perhaps the singular appropriate term, presently, to describe congressional Ā®s.
Every other descriptor since Tuesday last-- carries too much bravado; garishness.
The party that has f^cked everydamnthingup for the last 20 yrs.
What else could they be-- but ascendant.
Wasnāt any place left to go.
On another note:
Sneaking suspicion this agreement is the start of many forays overseas.
Bold initiatives. Dealing with those who will negotiate.
What better than finding common ground? While the jackals howl at home.
Allowing Congress to devour itself in fits of madness.
Showing the world who they really are.
A deft plan BHO.
Selah.
jw1
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For $5.
Will it be Cruz?
Or a different minion who utters the phrase first?
jw1
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I think you nailed it (especially the bit about Congress devouring itself) - and this could leave him a truly meaningful legacy.
Sneaking suspicion this agreement is the start of many forays overseas.
Bold initiatives. Dealing with those who will negotiate.
What better than finding common ground? While the jackals howl at home.
Allowing Congress to devour itself in fits of madness.
Showing the world who they really are.
A deft plan BHO.
Selah.
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Translation: China and the US flap their arms as they fall off a cliff.
Look, this is a big deal.
A hell of a lot has been going on worldwide for over a year now, not with just China, but with a number of other players as well ā some willing to do business and other basically doing their best to sabotage progress for their own interests.
When it comes to climate change, not much can seriously happen unless China, the U.S. and Europe can come to reasonable agreement. Without China, an agreement with Europe is important but difficult to make lower CO2 emissions happen on a global basis.
The progress on global warming can, of course, be undone by Republicans who are steadily losing credibility on global warming while they ignore the enormous job potential of alternative energy. To some extent, for many years, we been have doing exclusively for the fossil industries what Bush to a minor degree and Obama to a large degree had to do for the economy to keep it going: bail out corporations that keep making blunders.
Thereās a very simple and very dirty secret about fossil fuels that has been ignored since the 1970s: fossil fuels no longer power the economy of the American middle class as it once did from the 1880s to the early 1970s. Combine that with the corrupt relationship between politics and oil, which has included both Republicans and Democrats over the last 100 years but that is now largely dominated by Republicans, weāve had a problem for decades.
Republicans canāt govern and have no road map for the future. But they are capable of doing an enormous amount of damage to Americaās interests, while claiming fossil fuels are still the way forward. Fossil fuels will still be around another twenty or thirty years but we literally cannot ignore the climate issues or the economic progress of alternative energy. For the first time in decades, the cost of energy, by way of alternative energy, is rapidly falling. There is the added benefit that alternative every is scalable in rich countries as well as poor ones.
Given the election results, I have no idea what Republicans will try to do, but itās time for them to catch up to the world as it is, which has very little to do with the environmental and economic fantasies they have peddled to us for many years for now. For example, we know the Middle East is not the solution to our energy problems. We also know that Fracking is only a temporary solution.
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How will the US achieve those targets? I think the Chinese are serious, and will parlay that into regional and world dominance. But the US? EPA is not involved, no treaty - this is just hopium
(we may pull it off because the renewable cost curve goes down and to the right - but I donāt see any teeth in the US commitment).
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That crossed my mind too. Letās hope youāre right. It kind of feels like those few weeks between the first and second debate with Romney; from the āoh shit!ā to the āOh hell yeah.ā
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Start the countdown to liberal and conservative sabotageā¦ āitās not perfectā, ājobs, jobs, jobsā.
I really like this comment jw1, one of your best.
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Ebola free US and a Climate agreement with China in the same week. Hopefully the new congress will let this progress alone.
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Too little, too late, especially if measured in loss of habitat, natural services, and health impacts. These are already cooked into the outcome, whatever that is, of the Anthropocene era. Also as we see from the World Population Clock, only two of the top 10 countries by population are in decline, although Chinese population growth has slowed considerably. Still on the positive side, the shift to a low-carbon society will provide trillions in investment and plenty of work in both China and the US for decades to come and reinforce greener practices. Moreover, the 500 million or so urban Chinese, who have experienced rising wealth and education benefits most, are fed up with breathing bad air, drinking brown sludge and eating mystery meat. Sure incumbent coal producers in the US will scream āObamacare, the Sequelā or something like that, but both China and the US still have intergenerational altruism that means you try to leave something to the next generation. Also the standard for bad Christmas presents remains ālump of coal in stocking.ā