What Biden has done is to cut the issuance of drilling leases to the minimum required by law, pass the Inflation Reduction Act, enact a regulation to force vehicle electrification, and similarly force fossil fuels out of most power plants.
What Biden has not done: stop issuing drilling permits or impose export restrictions on fossil fuels. The former has some serious limits because of how the courts treat the right to drill as a property right once you hold a drilling lease, and the latter is simply untested.
That’s stopping something trump tried to do from happening…
It’s good, but we need to do a hell of a lot more than just sometimes stop things from getting worse.
That’s pretty much the entire reason people don’t like moderates. Why wait decades to fix something instead of fixing stuff now?
The graph from OPs link shows a significant drop off under Obama, a steep rise under trump, and then another drop off under Biden. Kind of follows the Dem-Rep seesaw I’ve been experience for decades. It’s depressing that the Dems can’t do more, but the reality is they are also funded by the deep pockets of the fossil fuel industry, Dems can barely hold onto majorities as it is, and voters vote for these morally weak candidates over and over. I’m really at a fuck-this-place, and fuck-all-these-people stage. The only thing I really regret is bringing a kid into this world. Just very selfish and narcissistic on my behalf.
The United States is not a Command Economy and The President is not a Dictator. The US via private enterprise is dumping ever larger sums into renewable energy production and is definitely making progress. It’s not happening fast enough but it IS happening.
Moderates when something happens:
Moderates when nothing happens:
No one is demanding he succeed, we’re just asking that they fucking try.
Bring stuff up for a vote and let people who see how their reps represent them.
The Republicans control the House of Representatives. Nothing can happen right now in the direction that we need as a result because zero of them will vote for it.
The Inflation Reduction Act barely passed with Vice President Kamala Harris as a tiebreaking vote in the Senate because it was structured to fit within the budget reconciliation rules and therefore not subject to filibuster.
It’s going to take a lot more Democrats in both the House and Senate before a moderate President can pass climate legislation. Even then, it’ll need to survive a court that’s hostile to the idea.
That’s really the fundamental issue, isn’t it? There is absolutely no democratic processes on the federal level. We get to pull a lever once every two years, and that is supposed to be a meaningful democratic participatory process.
There’s a lot you can do besides voting.
Candidates need volunteers and money. There is organizing to do. Papers which need letters to the editor, and state and federal officials who need to hear from you.
I don’t think that organizing within a private corporate party apparatus counts as participating in the democratic process more generally. Especially one that has admitted it has no obligation to follow its own rules. There needs to be a direct democratic process on a federal level. The majority of the population, regardless of party affiliation, support measures such as universal healthcare, but our process doesn’t empower collective change, rather it empowers minority interests over the majority, as evidenced by the legislation pushed and policy positions held by the federal government. Even good representatives can’t do anything because they’re hamstrung by an inherently partisan political process. Let the people speak. Where they are allowed to speak, we have seen big changes, (legalization of cannabis, ending of qualified immunity, bail reform, etc), but where the only avenue for change is through elected office, we have stagnated for decades behind the rest of the developed world.
Organizing within the system is exactly how we’ve gotten as much as we have.
The alternative is to roll the dice with revolution, and that’s about as likely to end up in a much worse place than we’d otherwise get. That’s really only a rational choice when you don’t have other avenues to change policy.
I suppose that depends on what era you’re referring to. It wasn’t working within the system that won the right to unionize, it was work outside the system that provided the necessary pressure to coerce concessions out of the government.
Nope, they could force it to a floor vote then contrast the dem’s votes to the rethuglican vote then compare the lobbying $ that goes to each.
Put it to a vote then shame them. THE WORLD IS COOKING.
They can’t actually force a floor vote in the House because the Speaker there controls the schedule.
It’s politically unpopular to do what need to be done. Moderate policies are popular policies. And moderate policies will move left the more people vote and the more old gens die.
No, a majority of voters want action on climate change, unfortunately a majority of elected representatives don’t, because most get fossil fuels donations to their campaigns.
Not as popular as progressive policies…
That’s kind of the whole point of American neoliberalism… alienate the left because “what are they going to do, vote R?”
Then move slightly to the right in a perpetual misguided attempt to steal the conservatives from republicans.
We’ve been trying that for 30 years now. The only result has been instead of slow progress, we take 10 steps back when republicans are in control, and moderates demand we worship them on the rare occasions we take five steps forward.
It’s not working, and that should be pretty obvious to anyone who knows recent American history.
Fighting extremism with moderation has never worked tho, that should be obvious to everyone.
They want action without any downside. Not taxes. No economic hardship. Just like everyone wants $2 worth of governance for $.50. When polled on individual policies most people are very progressive. When it comes time to pay for all of it they get very picky, and vote for candidates that will do nothing. And that’s the popular outcome currently. It’s the mean of opinion. We aren’t as progressive as we would like to be.
Trump facilitated those particular leases.
I think people dislike moderates because they can be more realistic. Cars are one of the biggest contributors to GHG in the US. Most people literally need to drive cars due to how our transportation infrastructure is built. It will upwards of a decade to undo because it will require a lot of large construction projects. Those take time.
Change requires support of the electorate or the current officials will get replaced. This is why people like Koch and Murdoch invest so heavily in propaganda.
Militarily, the only real threat to the US by a foreign invasion is nukes. Our naval and air power is on a whole other level. China has way too much control of manufacturing, so going after the other problem child results in a global economic catastrophe.
The BEST thing anyone can do is winning hearts and minds of US citizens to get them on board with what needs to be done. More moderate action is an easier sell. Once hedonic adaptation kicks in and people adjust to the new normal, we can move further. We are really close to being there. Look at my post history and read the nature article.
No, we dislike them because they don’t understand negotiation on a fundamental level, or anything about the republican party.
Republicans rush full steam towards their goals with no hesitation or thoughts for consequences.
So to stop them, compromising 50% before you get to the table doesn’t accomplish a single thing. We gave them Mitt Romenys healthcare plan after making it more conservative and Republicans called it communism. It doesn’t matter what we start out with, so we might as well start out with more than we want. It’s like walking into a car dealership and saying the most you’ll pay is 10% over asking price and negotiating from there.
Children understand this point when asking for candy.
I didn’t read the rest of your comment, because you started out with something so ridiculous I figured the rest wouldn’t be any better. And if you dont understand that first point, there’s zero reason to talk about anything else till you do.
I didn’t say anything about negotiating with Republicans. I’m not talking about negotiating at all. I’m talking more about selling ideas and change to the population.
I don’t want to interact with you if you have that kind of attitude. Bye!