And will that collateral damage be inside the borders of the USA or outside the borders of the USA?
Leftists are well aware of this, but by some weird coincidence when democrats in office always seem end up being further right than their campaign. Am I supposed to believe that Joe Bidenâs positions while in the senate, which aligned with his positions in the primary, have all been a multi-decade ploy to get to the white house and suddenly swerve left?
And will that collateral damage be inside the borders of the USA or outside the borders of the USA?
Inside. If we could ban fracking globally, we would like to do that also, but we donât exactly have sovereignty everywhere.
Banning fracking just means the same fossil fuel consumption but the supply comes from outside the US.
Putting in place carbon limits and carbon taxes incentivizes reduction in all fossil fuel demand.
Guess which one Biden has proposed. Also guess which one is way less catchy than âban frackingâ.
People who want to ban fracking are not against carbon limits. These are not mutually exclusive policies.
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A smarter person than me made an interesting point when it comes to presidents. Once theyâre in theyâre in and theyâre people. You canât just magically predict what theyâre going to do once they get in based on their background.
Obama is a decent case study, based on his background you may (and I did) make assumptions about what heâd do for certain demographics. He didnât do those things. The presidency is a different ball game, Iâm not even certain I know what Iâd do with the power of that office.
Far be it from me to claim I know what someone else will do with it.
Maybe if it were something I scraped from the campaign website, rather than a point she made repeatedly at the debate and then again on Twitter.
The point is that âbanning frackingâ is itself a disingenuous talking point. Itâs not the level of discussion we need. Itâs a minor gotcha issue thatâs tied to a specific swing state.
The specific issue of fracking is not material to the Green New Deal or to the broader climate change discourse.
You are using it just like the Republicans are. To low-key attack the Democrats for no good reason.
You do this in almost every thread you participate in. If I were not the administrator of this site, I would have muted you.
You could just delete more of my comments. Same effect.
The point is that âbanning frackingâ is itself a disingenuous talking point. Itâs not the level of discussion we need. Itâs a minor gotcha issue thatâs tied to a specific swing state.
Itâs also one that shows a pretty poorly thought out plan, a bumbling and naive grasp of politics, and frankly, a lack of concern for the working class.
Thereâs no realistic proposal from them right now for what happens when peopleâs power bills in Pennsylvania go through the roof, because suddenly half the power in the state costs five times more to run, if it runs at all. In fact, Iâm year to hear someone even consider the idea. Itâs pretty obvious that will disproportionately affect the working and middle class, and they(The working and middle class) know it, you say ban fracking, they hear hike the cost of living by a large amount.
So basically, the complaint is âWhy wonât you run on jacking peopleâs bills sky high so that you lose?â
Because thatâs the core of it really - Running on banning fracking isnât smart or remotely wise right now, but it is the correct aesthetic.
And thatâs exactly how deep the politics of these âWhy wonât you run on this politically poisonous sloganâ demands run - aesthetics. Winning doesnât matter. Because if you never manage to get enough power to really make a difference, you never actually have to risk failing your stated goals and having to take responsibility for that.
Better to be the Noble, principled, and most importantly, aesthetically correct loser who never has to actually do shit, than the winner who actually has to attempt to make good on their goals.
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Evidence please. Oil prices are way down. Also, itâs been true for a few years that solar and other renewable energy sources have been cheaper than natural gas.
Iâll have to talk you through it instead, since the evidence of something that hasnât happened yet doesnât exist yet. Iâll keep it short and simple because itâs pretty basic and obvious to begin with.
Close to 50% of Pennsylvaniaâs power comes from fracked natural gas. Right now, they do not have the generation capacity to replace it, and would not within the next eight years(to give the benefit of two terms to ease it in and prepare) meaning that either they go to rolling brownouts to cover losing half their generation capacity - which they outright wonât do, that would be kind of insane - or prices go through the roof as gas prices increase due to the cost of local extraction going way up, and extraction yields going down.
I take it youâre not going to argue that the power companies are just going to eat the massively increased cost of the fuel theyâre using without passing that on to the consumers and then some, because that would just be insulting.
Other renewable ARE cheaper than natural gas, but itâs a moot point, because they also donât exist where they need to to solve the problem, and getting sufficient renewable generation in place and creating that support infrastructure isnât going to be a short process. Nobodyâs gonna just whip 20k megawatts of turbines out of their back pocket and problem solvered. As it stands, they already have six large and two medium sized wind farms, which generate less than 3% of the stateâs power.
And hereâs the thing with your average voter - they care a lot more about the immediate increases to their bills than they care about the state being carbon-neutral.
And to cover all the bases, Nuclear would take even longer, and you COULD convert the existing gas plants to coal, which would be cheaper, easier, and faster, but is also even more polluting than gas power generation, and coal extraction is even worse for the environment than fracking.
Unless of course, what you were looking for was evidence of how voter sentiment works, Iâm afraid thatâs outside the scope of the thread and the discussion, and honestly at that point, just read a book, you really donât need me to be giving you lectures on the basics of political science.
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Seems like problem is taking care of itself.
They can also, you know, get natural gas the old fashioned non-fracked way. Fracking is relatively new and somehow they powered the state before they started fracking.
Very relatively, since it dates back to the 1860s, with modern hydraulic fracturing being invented in the late 40s. And getting it another way is the point - Fracking is awful in a number of ways, but the reason itâs so popular with industry is because itâs efficient(effort-wise, not in the environmental sense), cheap to operate, and high-volume. Sure, theyâll get gas in other ways - itâll just cost at least five times as much.
On the long scale, it inevitably will, one way or the other.
I always thought fracking was a scam.
As in, itâs not even profitable in the best case.
The upside of fracking is that you have a local source, at least in this part of the world. Youâve decided to stick with fossil fuels. Youâve decided you donât care about destroying your local environment. So instead of shipping barrels from far-off places, you can mine and refine right near your home. This should theoretically create jobs and boost the economy locally. Also, if youâre burning fuel anyway, at least now you arenât wasting energy to ship it or push it through a pipeline.
This is because the only way to actually accomplish things in this country is by compromising with the other people who comprise the government and the country.
Actual leftists in this country are in the minority. You can build a coalition to push for change, but the majority of the country is to your right politically, so unless you are actually willing to put your fellow citizens in the dirt (and youâre not, and if you are I donât want you to be a part of any political movement), you will have to compromise to the right, always. You can move a country to the left over time this way, as pretty much every European nation has done - you just cannot swing as far left as youâd like in one go, and that means learning to live with being disappointed in the state of your country.
And before someone says shit about Ratchet Theory, this country has in fact moved objectively left over time - itâs just that our starting point was substantially farther to the right than public discourse admits. There are a lot of problems to address that a gerrymandered racist minority are primarily causing, but those issues primarily have to be solved at the state level.
I donât know what else to say. You think if Sanders was in office that he could magically have pushed through a leftist agenda? No, because thereâs still an entire swath of people who do not agree with that ideology whose support you need. You really fundamentally do not seem to grasp that a majority of Americans simply do not agree with your politics wholesale, and you have to figure out how to get them on board with your ideas.
Politics is about making the change that you can, not getting everything you want.
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I know itâs not without problems, but this stuff still has me wishing we could get back on the nuclear path.
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If this is the case then Rym should have just said that. A forum that constantly talks about âgood faith argumentsâ and âpolitical realityâ has no business pretending Joe Biden might move left after getting elected.
Why is it that every time democrats push a center or right policy, itâs automatically assumed that it will help them get elected or pass legislation? No one here has actually given any evidence that vocally opposing a fracking ban will be popular. Polling shows that a majority of people oppose fracking, even in Pennsylvania, so why am I supposed to believe this is effective politics?
On top of that, thereâs little to no attempt on the part of democratic establishment to sway people. Nancy Pelosi talking about the âGreen New Dreamâ doesnât seem like someone who would pass effective climate legislation if she could but canât due to public pressure.
I think he could have tried, which would have been better than the standard democratic play of starting from the center (at best) and negotiating to the right from there. Democrats donât accomplish nearly enough for me to see them as practical, effective legislators.
EDIT lol Iâm not even the one who pulled the thread off-topic.
Please stop, the irony is reaching dangerous levels, youâll kill us all.
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Third parties are working against two major parties actively trying to stop them. Democrats are only working against one. Whatâs their excuse?
Oh? I thought yâall were democrats, and thus deserving of all the time and resources from the party that entails. Everyone you like has certainly been running as democrats. Tell me, whatâs this third party youâre supporting, then, the Greens? The Libertarian party, maybe?
Why would they need an excuse for something that exists pretty much only in your slash dirtbag twitterâs head?