I had to go to the gym and run errands this morning, so haven’t even finished reading comments on my earlier post. Still, I want to make two points.
First, I can always tell folks who haven’t worked for a Congressperson or attended a MoC’s town hall because they insist that a given example of government inefficiency shouldn’t count, because it’s state or local. A lot of people, including those motivated enough to attend a town hall, consider “government” as an amorphous mass. I cannot count the number of times I’ve given, or heard given, an explanation of why the DMV or some other local/state agency has nothing to do with the US Government.
Second, government is inefficient and we should be loud and proud about our efforts to make it better. I hate to keep harping on my Obamacare, but my renewal, as usual, was handled poorly by the State of NY. First, they sent me a notice saying I needed to renew, but when I went to the website, they said I had been auto-renewed in the same plan that hasn’t paid me a fucking penny yet will now cost me $1,300 a month. Then, a few weeks later, I get an email saying I need to renew. In between, my insurance carrier notified me that they would be withdrawing over $2,000 in January because that’s what they think my monthly auto-pay is for 2025. I went on the website and renewed (for the same policy that was supposedly auto-renewed) and now we’ll see if the State of NY and the insurance company will figure things out.
I guess my gratitude about Obamacare is, shall we say, tempered by that experience. I’m a well-informed politics knower working part-time with time on my hands to mess with this bullshit. I also have plenty of money. Others with fewer resources and less time might just get a little more heated about it.
Finally, my brother sent me a story from Fox News (not linking, I’m sure you’re disappointed to hear). Headline and subhead:
Watch Trump reverse Biden’s dumpster-fire economy, and then watch Dems try to take credit for the success
When Trump brings the economy back from the brink, Biden and his Democrat allies will deserve no credit
I mention this because there are two things that need to be distinguished: people’s genuine, personal experience of government inefficiency and the economy, and their secondhand “knowledge” of these things via Fox propaganda. Our goal is to push back on the latter without invalidating the lived experience of the former. It’s a tough needle to thread.
Baud
Joke’s on Fox. Half of Dems already refuse to give Biden credit for the economy.
rikyrah
Well, DUH!
ProPublica (@propublica) posted at 6:00 PM on Tue, Dec 10, 2024:
In the Phoenix metro area, ProPublica found that the poorer the ZIP code, the fewer school vouchers are being used.
One reason?
Only 6 of the county’s 200+ private schools are in areas where families earn less than 50% of the county’s median income.
https://t.co/pgujFTFCIE
(https://x.com/propublica/status/1866634000065806753?t=3H0VPumvSuslr-7wPIRlOA&s=03)
rikyrah
Protect Kamala Harris![]()
(@DisavowTrump20) posted at 6:35 PM on Tue, Dec 10, 2024:
![]()
NEW: Vivek Ramaswamy has called for the elimination of the federal employees retirement system. This could cut retirement benefits over 2.7 million Americans, including some veterans and law enforcement officers.
RETWEET to let the American people know what they voted for! https://t.co/M0TJfwkdmW
(https://x.com/DisavowTrump20/status/1866643019778420901?t=1dqT4mKTdXIBxW-hHicT7g&s=03)
Rose Judson
My very first Bigfooting! I’ve retracted my post and will put it back up in an hour.
The Audacity of Krope
@Rose Judson: The proper way to bigfoot is to leave the post up and defy any who would criticize you for it.
Steve LaBonne
Calling bullshit (and damaging propagation of Republican framing). Most people’s “experience” of government “inefficiency” is stuff like a long line at the DMV (and my local BMV, as we call it in Ohio, is actually quite efficient). They listen to propaganda from people like developers who don’t like having to jump through hoops, but that is not their own “experience”. And in neither case, nor in yours since New York has its own exchange, does that have anything to do with the Federal government and yes it matters to make that clear. Federal agencies that people are most likely to interact with directly, like SS and Medicare and dare I say it the IRS, are quite efficient and generally offer remarkably good customer service given that they’re chronically understaffed.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
She’s turned into a proper English woman.
Baud
Al Gore did government efficiently during the Clinton administration. No one cared then, and they won’t care now. Anything we do, we need to do for good government reasons, not because it will be politically salient.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: The average white person means by efficiency “less money for undeserving blah people”
@mistermix.bsky.social
@The Audacity of Krope:
This is correct. More content is better than less content. Especially when it’s free content.
Baud
Making government more inefficient.
cmorenc
The main alleged “failure” of the Biden-Harris Administration the GOP’ / Fox’s framing is built on is inflation + the messy Afghan withdrawal – everything else is extrapolated on that, with no look-back on how and who set things up in 2020 (while Trump was in office) for these things to pan out that way. Their strongest argument was the price increases people saw at the grocery store 3x per week on food shopping trips, and that was a visual and visceral experience that was hard to convincingly argue with, even when inflation was mostly tamed and economic growth was strong with rising real wages ahead of inflation, according to actual statistics. Also, we had to mount some sort of convincing argument to people wanting to buy a house and unable to affordably do so because of both interest rates and the runup in real estate prices, and that was hard to do – yeah, I know Harris’s plan to help new homebuyers out, but that plan may have sounded hollow and pie-in-the-sky to many, aggravated by the same dynamics as student debt forgiveness, whereby folks who had paid off their student loans (or never had any) resented giving current students a free ride on student debt.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
We have to discover what things are politically salient from a Democratic point of view. Good government and good policies are apparently not on the list. (He said bitterly.)
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
100%.
gene108
I’ve given up on caring what others think about the economy as being meaningful. Right-wing propaganda sets out what most people feel the economy is like.
Prices could go up 200% over the next two years and most people will say it’s better than anything a Democrat president has ever done for the economy.
I am sick of people who are so partisan, they think 4% unemployment is unbearably high because a Democrat is President, while declaring the same economy is doing great in two months. There’s no getting through to them.
My takeaway from the 2024 election is objective reality cannot win against relentless right-wing propaganda.
rikyrah
Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) posted at 1:03 PM on Wed, Dec 11, 2024:
🚨 BREAKING: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema just delivered a crushing blow to the labor agenda. By casting decisive NO votes against President Biden’s NLRB nominee, they’ve guaranteed Democrats will lose control of the national labor board until at least 2026.
Their votes effectively hand Donald Trump the keys to the board the moment he takes office again.
This is a betrayal of working families—and a gift to corporate interests, which is par for the course for these two.
😡😡😡😡
https://t.co/NTqq4PTn4K
(https://x.com/ChrisDJackson/status/1866921751457775901?t=OMNtPUtKoj6kxVjtehRn4Q&s=03)
Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) posted at 11:51 AM on Tue, Dec 10, 2024:
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema I-AZ missed every Senate vote last week and has not cast a vote again so far this week
Austin Ahlman (@austinahlman) posted at 0:29 PM on Wed, Dec 11, 2024:
Kyrsten Sinema showing up today in a cloud of black smoke to block democrats from securing a majority on the National Labor Relations Board is a little on the nose
(https://x.com/austinahlman/status/1866913126588764378?t=B1sO-dsLOPgCOVtAYvN2Bw&s=03)
suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: As someone who has successfully managed a number of projects through development , I will weigh in that there is a lot of inefficiency and uncertainty in those processes. But conservatives love that inefficiency, when it serves their interests. There’s an offshore wind farm project in development off the coast of the southern part of New Jersey, and the residents are intentionally slowing it down with environmental reviews, because they just don’t want the project.
We could make governance better, but conservatives want it to run like shit.
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: Unfortunately it seems to be 100 different things for 100 different groupuscules.
Steve LaBonne
@suzanne: Liberal NIMBYs also too.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
If it were easy, we’d have discovered it by now.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Republican voters are a column of brownshirts, Democratic voters are a herd of cats.
Betty Cracker
JFC.
Via Aaron Rupar’s bsky feed.
Blumenthal rightly dragged Musk for amplifying antisemitic content around the time I quit Twitter for good, so I know he knows better. WTF is wrong with these people?
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
A little insulting to cats IMHO.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Google says he’s trying to get the House to pass the Kids Online Safety Act and Musk just endorsed the bill.
Rusty
FBI director Wray to step down before Trump takes office. The news just keeps getting worse today.
@mistermix.bsky.social
Just in case you didn’t hate them enough already:
The Audacity of Krope
@@mistermix.bsky.social: We always knew Sinema and Manchin were against anything to improve the lot of working people, even if we’re still leaving the heavy lifting to the workers, themselves.
I guess that support for nominees doesn’t count if there are workers to squish underfoot.
John S.
@Rusty:
What happened to our precious norms?
Seriously, I wish that elected Democrats would keep track of this shit so the next time they have an FBI director who they have no confidence in they can stop pretending like they have no other choice than to be stuck with them.
John S.
@Betty Cracker:
Don’t worry, we have scrappy Sen. Fetterman on the case!
So much for that.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: If Blumenthal felt obligated to curry favor for an endorsement of that bill, maybe he should have lied about the size of Musk’s dick instead? I mean, JFC, Musk only turned a social media platform into a fucking Nazi bar. Blumenthal should have retired ages ago, imo. He’s a fucking squish who is clearly unsuited to the moment.
@John S.: Yeah, he’s been disappointing as fuck lately too. Fuck anyone who makes nice with those motherfuckers.
The Audacity of Krope
@John S.: Fuck Fetterman. He was on the bandwagon of villifying student protestors, putting not just the protestors but entire student bodies in danger.
Chris
@gene108:
The biggest tell that it’s propaganda was that poll I saw a week or two ago showing that the same people who said the U.S. economy was doing very badly, when polled about the economy of their particular state, said that it was doing just fine.
Which is arguably even more blatant than those polls saying “I personally am doing just fine, but I think the economy overall is bad.”
No, it isn’t gas prices. No, it isn’t the cost of eggs. No, it isn’t even the affordability of housing. Yes, it really is as simple as “the media spent four years running a scorched earth campaign telling everyone that the White House had driven the nation into recession, and it turns out that when that’s the only thing most people hear for four years straight with absolutely no pushback, they might just end up thinking it’s true.” I agree that it’s incredibly depressing, if only because it makes it very hard to see what Democrats can do differently, but there it is.
John S.
@The Audacity of Krope:
I’ll also point out the awful irony of Rep. Clyburn speaking approvingly of Manchin and his notion of pardoning Trump and Manchin turning around to stick the shiv into labor yesterday.
Politics really does make strange bedfellows.
suzanne
@John S.: John Fetterman sucks. Pissed that I voted for him.
ETA: I also voted — and volunteered — for Sinema. Silkwood shower time.
Soprano2
OMG this. There was a letter in our local paper saying that the local government utility company should give their surplus to the school system because they needed the money!!!!
The Audacity of Krope
@John S.: When Manchin starts his next life and this planet is little but a barren hellscape with few remnants of human civilization, he will suffer the sins of this life with the rest of us.
frosty
@rikyrah: Hi rikyrah! FYI I stopped clicking your X links because you quote the whole thing and without an account there’s nothing else there to read. Not complaining … the opposite in fact. I can read your comment and move on.
frosty
@Baud: Direct File doesn’t cover everything I need. Funny, because my finances aren’t very complicated. I’ll still pony up $85 for TurboTax. My son can do his taxes with it too.
ETA Maybe they expanded the capabilities this year. I’ll check it out first.
gene108
On a side note, I have a very different opinion of Obamacare than @mistermix. I got laid off in January 2021. COVID cut my employer’s revenue by 80%. I was also underperforming on my job.
I’ve found qualifying for subsidies on GetCoveredNJ (the NJ ACA marketplace) to be confusing, especially with erratic income. Even when I couldn’t get subsidies, I’m okay with $625/month full payment for a single person.
I found APTC can get sorted out at tax time and a big refund issued.
Despite this, I’m happy to have health insurance. Without Obamacare, I would uninsurable and without continued medical care I will be dead.
Bill Arnold
@rikyrah:
Parody, of the “kidding on the square” sort:
Ex-Army sniper prepares for potential VA healthcare cuts – “Look, I get it. Balancing the budget is hard,” he said, gesturing toward a stack of unopened medical bills. (Duffleblog, Clay Beyersdorfer, Dec 09, 2024)
frosty
@John S.: WTF happened to Fetterman?? Fuck him, I need to call again.
frosty
@suzanne: I voted for, volunteered for, and donated to Fetterman. I feel betrayed. Can I take a number for the Silkwood Shower?
Martin
@suzanne: Yeah, I wouldn’t assume those folks are conservatives. May I introduce you to San Francisco who can teach New Jersey a thing or two about blocking development projects.
Chris
@frosty:
With the caveat that I’m not from Pennsylvania and am therefore missing much of the context for him…
People seem to love Fetterman because he’s a Democrat who can speak WWC Trump-Bro language without being a Trump-Bro himself. Fine so far as it goes. But I can’t be too surprised when the Trump-Bro Whisperer turns out to have a few Trump-Bro tendencies himself.
Baud
@frosty:
It’s early. It was supposed to expand. But now it’ll be killed, probably.
Bill Arnold
@Steve LaBonne:
Yes, there are plenty (too many) liberal NIMBYs, but the southern New Jersey shore is almost entirely red,
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
The intent of that deceptively named bill is to enable government censorship.
Martin
As feared, Democrats seem to be learning all the wrong lessons.
Steve LaBonne
@Bill Arnold: All of south Jersey indeed (my wife grew up in Pitman in Gloucester County).
The Audacity of Krope
“Feared” is an awfully strange way to spell “expected.”
Democrats will have all their worst traits on display when they reascend, not because of those traits but because they’re the opposition to Republicans who will be in charge.
That won’t stop the worst Democrats from telling themselves those awful traits were why voters came back to them.
See the U.K. if you want a preview.
Steve LaBonne
@Chris: Happens every time. Maybe Trump bros are not actually a promising Democratic constituency, heresy I know.
gene108
@Bill Arnold:
The Jersey shore isn’t occupied year round. A lot of property owners live elsewhere. I’m not sure their politics.
Also, wind farms will cause a disruption to the surrounding marine environment during construction and long term impact during operation has not been studied due to relative newness of technology.
There’s a trade off between renewables and secondary environmental issues large scale adoption can cause. It’s worth adopting renewables to solve the current problem of global warming. There will be side effects, as is the case with pretty much any human development.
Bill Arnold
@gene108:
I also have a different experience, and mine is New York State. My NYS exchange renewal was handled well, same as last year. The links in the emails all worked, and the website was fine. The only confusion was that I had to understand why I had to pre-pay the first month (Jan 2025) in advance rather than with autopay. Oh, and the prepay link didn’t work in one of my browsers (larded up with a bunch of privacy/security/anti-tracking plugins; not the normal experience.)
The policy is about what I got with a full-time job with a large multinational employer several years ago and cost about the same as the COBRA (insurance continuation) after being laid off from that job. (i.e. pricey.)
Gretchen
@cmorenc: The Washington Post ran an interview with a roofer last week, headlined his « smart » ideas about lowering the cost of housing. He thinks Trump should build Trump Towers in every city. He’s somehow unaware of local zoning laws, or that Trump doesn’t pay contractors like roofers. Some developers in my suburb tried to rezone to let them build apartments in a single-family area, that set off a firestorm, angry city council meetings, half the council getting voted out, and 9 recall attempts for the mayor who’d been voted in with 94% of the vote 2 years earlier. The property is still undeveloped.
His other brilliant idea was to limit the number of floor plans to lower costs. He’s obviously never been to a suburb. My street was built in 1955 and has 4 floor plans.
And he obviously had no idea that Harris had housing proposals and Trump didn’t. He just knew Trump as a « builder ».
That’s what WaPo publishes as smart.
tam1MI
The Tonya Harding Democrats forced Biden out because he governed too far to the left for their tastes. Now they are trying to force the party back to the right.
In both cases, done whether the actual voters want it or not.
Bill Arnold
@gene108:
One reasonable estimate is that 1000 tons of carbon (coal is mostly carbon) is a human life lost due to global heating and causally downstream effects, in the fullness of time. (I suspect that it’s more like 250 or 500 tons per human life.)
Multiply carbon mass by 3.67 to convert to CO2 mass.
Also, the environment impacts of unmitigated global heating are severe. E.g. mass extinction.
Which is basically saying that the environment tradeoffs are very lopsided. Decarbonization of the energy supply is very very important.
The Audacity of Krope
I legitimately don’t know whether the path forward continues through the Democrats or whether Republicans are tired enough of getting 28 percent in Congressional races in my state to consider some new ideas.
Miss Bianca
@cmorenc: You know, I really don’t understand the whole student loan forgiveness butt-hurt. Hell, I had student loans and repaid them – and, in what was perhaps one of the least well-thought-out financial moves I’ve ever made, I ended up paying off my ex-husband’s as well – and yet, somehow, it’s never occurred to me that I ought to be mad that someone else didn’t have to do that.
I mean, did people who suffered polio get mad that a polio vaccine had been developed and other people wouldn’t have to get it? Well, scratch that analogy – nowadays they probably would.
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
I mean, this is kind of the problem we’re having with every single constituency we have – as soon as we move to help one group, any group, half the people who aren’t part of it will immediately jump down our throats because [the exact excuses vary, but it always comes down to “someone who’s not me is getting support and it’s not fair because everything should always be about me”]. College students with debt are a popular punching bag, but every group has something like this.
I have no idea what to do about it. It may well be unsolvable; we’ve spent the last seventy years turning into a society of hyper-atomized consumers with zero concept of solidarity and a media landscape that’s slowly making us more and more obsessed with scandals like “did you hear that woman got millions of dollars from McDonalds because her coffee was too hot? What’s happening to our nation, man?”
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
My experience with the DMV in CA is actually quite good. Sure it’s often crowded but if you have a good record, you take a test and get renewed. If you drive like a drunk or are one or have a current record of tickets it becomes just a tad more difficult. And there are just shy of 39 million people living in CA, and a majority of them drive. Usually on the same roads I travel on, at the same time…… For the last few years I’ve taken transit for trips longer than going to the grocery store. We have electric commuter trains, several routes, that run every few minutes and cover a lot of the county. And they work well. Is it perfect? Well no, but it works rather well and more than good enough. And anything made by humans – perfect?
Kayla Rudbek
@rikyrah: I wonder who paid her off to vote this way
Baud
@Chris:
Word.
Martin
@Ruckus: One of the broad problems with ‘efficiency’ is that in the US the time of the citizenry has no value, and generally isn’t a variable to optimize. So standing in line at the DMV for 3 hours doesn’t contribute to an inefficient org so long as everyone gets out the door at the end of the day.
But from the view of the public, that time does have value and does contribute to a sense of inefficiency because it becomes inefficient for them. See UK NHS, see cheap road construction that creates traffic for a year because the contractor is juggling projects, etc.
And LA has done pretty well with Metro overall. There are valid complaints about the time/cost it takes to build, and valid complaints about the inability to shut trolls down in the public feedback process, like the Ticketmaster founder that is spending significant money to make sure a transit line doesn’t go near his house.
Martin
@Chris: And the coffee suit was a great example of the problem in that there had been hundreds of cases prior to hers, and ample evidence that McDonalds had been told to not serve coffee at 180F, and they refused to learn – so the jury sent a large enough message that it would get through.
And I think there’s two ways to look at this:
It seems to me that we’ve internalized the problem that the market should not be regulated therefore we powerless souls must forever shake our fists at the media. Why not, you know, just fix it directly.
catclub
@Baud: Yep!
Medicare’s administration expense is FAR lower than administration expense for private insurers.
Pay to upgrade IRS computer systems and it would become MORE efficient – which rich folks don’t actually want.
catclub
Which government – federal, state or local?
I do not know which part of the Federal government regulates restaurants. EEOC for employees?
My guess is the key regulator is local health inspector.
That might even be city rather than state.
Jacel
@John S.: We might even select a Democrat as the FBI Director, something that has never been done before in that Bureau’s history.
Steve LaBonne
@Chris: Right now we have the ruckus about Biden “publishing” the ERA, which is not a thing and there is zero chance this Supreme Court would rule that the ratification time limit doesn’t apply. We punish our own politicians for not doing stupid performative shit, and each of the 100 factions has its own pet item of performative shit. Is it any wonder that Democratic politicians are as un-herdable as our voters? A left without the capacity for collective action might as well not exist.
catclub
I have lots of questions about this.
1. how many lives does that equate to relative to a population of 5-6-7Billion people? Or do we actually have to relate it to the number of people who have lived since we started burning fossil fuels?
How full is that fullness of time? Economists will apply an interest rate that suggests the far future has no measureable value. Given the lack of effort people put into flossing their teeth, the economists are onto something.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Word.
Miss Bianca
@Steve LaBonne:
Shout it louder for the cheap seats!
Fake Irishman
@Steve LaBonne:
amen sir.
Fake Irishman
Because we’ve been bummed a lot today, some one should note for the record that the senate has confirmed 11 district court judges in the last week and a half for the good guys.
I know we love to shit all over our politicians, but they have doing a considerable amount of good work recently.
Martin
@catclub: And that’s the problem. It doesn’t fit nicely into how the US does things.
It could be a state crime as assault is a state crime. Health inspections are preventative, this is not preventative, it’s accountable. But there’s a federal component to the health inspector. If you are storing your products wrong in a restaurant and might cause illness, that’s local. If you are a national manufacturer (interstate commerce triggers this) then you get a federal recall out of the appropriate agency, and it can trigger a wrongful death suit, but there’s no criminal ‘you sold tainted products into the national food chain’ and I would think that should be a thing that the feds could do.
There’s been various efforts to nail down whether McDonalds is liable for their franchisees, particularly when McDonalds corporate is instrumental in the thing being probed. When they sell the franchisee the coffee warmer that can operate at too high a temperature and has requirements of franchisees that they serve at that temperature, that should be a thing that the feds could hold accountable. USSC may not agree, but we could at least try it.
Martin
@catclub: The Paris global emissions target is 4T per capita. The US is currently at 13T (down from 20T) and the global number is 5T per capita and climbing (developed nations are not falling as fast as less developed are climbing).
So, with a surplus of 1T per capita globally, that’s a 0.1% fatality rate – so about 8 million people. The US would be responsible for about 3 million of those.
The flossing of teeth example doesn’t apply because it has a presumed recovery process (either going in for a cleaning or tooth loss). Climate change doesn’t. It’s cumulative. It only gets worse until we get the numbers low enough we can start drawing down CO2. In theory it does – kill 25% of the global population and you’ll start drawing down, at least temporarily. That’s not an option we’re going to pursue.
Martin
@Bill Arnold: The more important thing for people to understand is that there are a number of tipping point environmental states, that once you get started, you can’t stop, and these mean that whatever maximum emission you had before and failed to meet, the new target is even lower and even harder to meet. These happen way before mass extinction and once tipped, our ability to avoid that conclusion gets much harder.
These adverse feedback loops are what get you. You get a collapse of Thwaits glacier or a reversal of AMOC and shit gets real fast.
Ruckus
@suzanne:
We could make governance better, but conservatives want it to run like shit.
When shit is all you know……
They do not want governance, they want to be able to screw everyone else out of money. They want control. Governance makes everyone equal, like that piece of paper states. Making everyone equal makes them have to behave and not have an advantage over quite possibly over half of the population. And their leaders give less than one shit about their constituents, they care about their bank accounts. Even if they don’t have six figure bank statements. Or even 5 figure. They want it all, even if they have to take it. They don’t want anyone to hate less than they do and who hate different segments of the population than they do. They don’t want “those people” to have anything whatsoever. Segments of the population want better for all. They aren’t in any of those segments. Or even approve of them. I believe that the word SELFISH fits.
Martin
@suzanne: There aren’t a lot of people who like efficiency exercises – liberal or conservative. It’s a pretty thankless task, often involves laying people off, moving people around, forcing people to learn new things, etc. It’s why it doesn’t usually happen until circumstances force it.
I don’t know how you force that exercise from the voters. Some was done inside the Obama admin after the healthcare.gov debacle. Pete speaks about it in his agency a bit, but I don’t think anything comprehensive has happened there.
Bill Arnold
@catclub:
One such paper is by an economist: The mortality cost of carbon (29 July 2021, R. Daniel Bressler)
It discusses discount rates, but the paper “provides a measure of the mortality damage from marginal emissions without discounting or valuing lives.”
It only covers temperature-related mortality, because there aren’t yet respectable (by scholars) predictive models for other mortality consequences of global heating.
These potentially, and probably, will cause huge numbers of deaths, making the mortality cost of carbon more like 1 death per 1000 tons of carbon burned. I personally estimate it’s more like one death (reduction in global population, properly) per 250 tons of carbon burned, on our current trajectory midway between RCP 4.5 and RCP 6.0. (Coal is around 85 percent carbon, depending on grade) That’s a pessimistic estimate that global heating will end up reducing the human population from the current 8 billion to 4 billion, mostly through increased death rates. If one poke around in eviler intellectual places (mostly RW or racist, but not all), one can find discussions of reduction of the human population by 7 billion of 8, or even 90 percent, and as this being desirable.
Also, while global heating is baked in by physics (with variations depending on the accumulated GHG emissions), barring large scale geoengineering of some sort, there will be major technological changes, societal changes, and even existential threats over the next 75 years. Global heating will be part of the backdrop.
Chris
@Steve LaBonne:
See, this wouldn’t even matter, except that every time our politicians dare to do stupid performative shit for any one of those 100 factions, the other 99 factions jump up and start screaming that they’re being personally insulted, because they’ve just been made aware that there are moments when the president’s attention is directed at somebody who’s not them.
I’m perfectly happy with politicians doing stupid performative shit; it’s always been part of the job! If, for example, some Democrats stand up tomorrow and decide to introduce a bill to make Von Steuben Day a national holiday because some focus group’s shown them the numbers and it turns out that polls really well with all those Germans in the Midwest? I’d say “knock yourselves out!” I’m not a German and I’m not a Midwesterner, but they’re Americans too and there’s no reason they shouldn’t have their backs scratched. But the way our culture works, as soon as we’d announced that, a whole bunch of Irishmen will crawl out of the woodwork to say that it’s a personal insult to them that Saint Patrick Day wasn’t made a national holiday first. And then a whole bunch of Poles will crawl out of the woodwork to say that it’s an even more personal insult to them that we didn’t make Thaddeus Koscziusko Day a national holiday first, probably with a bunch of hand-wringing about World War Two thrown into the mix. And then a whole bunch of Italians are going to crawl out of the woodwork and just lose their shit, because how dare we honor another ethnic group’s favorite holiday when Columbus Day is literally fighting for its life from the Woke Agenda? I mean, it’s like Italians aren’t even white anymore!
(And then of course there’ll be some Mayflower Americans somewhere stewing angrily over their apple pie as they harumph that, ugh, when do we get our own national holiday?)