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As far as the United States taking action on climate, note that Republicans do not have a majority in either house of Congress. If the Senate would do away with the filibuster rule like many of them keep saying should happen then Democrats in Congress could pass whatever climate legislation they pleased and the Senate could ratify the Paris Accords as an actual treaty (even before the previous Administration withdrew from it the Paris Accords was not a treaty and therefore had no ability to be enforced)...if it *wanted* to. Apparently even they don't see it is an actual priority or they would do something about it.

edit/add: note that this is neither a condemnation of nor a commendation of any policy for or against climate change, merely noting that if Congress wanted to do something about it then it would do so. Many of them say they want to and the party currently in the minority cannot stop them so why are they hesitating?

Mathsorcerer wrote: »

If the Senate would do away with the filibuster rule like many of them keep saying should happen then Democrats in Congress could pass whatever climate legislation they pleased...

The current legislative fight is over a bill that is structured to bypass the filibuster. And the climate provisions didn't survive the negotiations because the Democrats in the Senate don't support them unanimously. One objection from the guy who owns a big stake in coal, and they don't have the votes.

That's what legislating with a minimal majority is like, especially since the Republicans are united in lockstep opposition to anything the Democrats try to do. So no, they couldn't just pass whatever they please even with no filibuster to worry about.

The current push to weaken or remove the filibuster is focused on voting rights. And I have to agree with that; the filibuster has a history of being used to protect discrimination, and its current implementation in the rules makes it way too easy to stop anything from getting done. Having two legislative chambers and a president that all have to agree on legislation is already inefficient as designed; we don't need to make it worse by requiring a supermajority in one of those chambers.

DinoDin wrote: »

Mathsorcerer wrote: »

China, India, and Russia did not even bother attending the recent climate summit. If you are concerned about making progress on that topic then I wish you good luck--without them on board progress will not be made.

Worth noting that any reduction in greenhouse gases over what they otherwise would have been is progress. I just can't agree with this doom and gloom view. A somewhat hot future is still preferable over an extremely hot future.

Yes, people in places like the US and Europe only have so much influence over the rest of the world. That's not an excuse to do nothing.

This. All of this.

Climate change is a world wide problem. Its effects are unequal (it will hit the "Global South" worse than than elsewhere). It's contributors are unequal as well. It is an objective moral and ethical good to reduce the effects of climate change on the environment, even if that reduction comes more from one place (the USA) than another place (India).

I have sympathies for the fact that climate change policies will harm sectors of the economy (and therefore, people in those sectors) - and strongly feel that society should do what it can to ameliorate that harm.