silence7@slrpnk.netM to Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.@slrpnk.netEnglish · 4 months ago
silence7@slrpnk.netM to Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.@slrpnk.netEnglish · 4 months ago
Archived copy of the article: archive.today
They each served one term. Let’s compare their progress.
Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, revoked the Keystone Pipeline permit, created a 13 million acre federal petroleum reserve for Alaskan wildlife, greatly increased oil site lease cost, signed $7B in solar subsidies, invested $66B in passenger rail, enacted the Inflation Reduction act to support clean energy, increased the electric car consumer tax credit, increased energy efficiency standards on cars, appliances, and industry, and created new permitting rules to streamline transmission lines.
Trump repealed 112 climate regulations and left the Paris Climate Agreement.
You are 100% correct but even this understates the impact of what Biden did by a certain amount.
He spent roughly HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS on climate change. Experts have estimated that the impact of the climate bill, all other things being equal (har har), will be to put us at a 40% reduction from our peak emissions by the year 2030.
The last big expenditure on climate change was $80 billion, and that was in 2009.
Is 40% enough? Fuck no, and it’s coming way too late. But I still have NO idea how he got the current crop of idiots and crooks in Washington, who are almost unanimously on team “let’s fuck up the climate even more, we’re in a position to REALLY squeeze some dollars now that prices are going up, let’s see what this bad boy can do”, to agree to that. It honestly is a little mind boggling.
Even if he does literally nothing with a second term, he’s already more than 5 times better than any other US president on climate change. Even if Trump wasn’t explicitly planning to reverse all of that and do his best to set new records for how much worse it can get, and he were running against some normal non apocalypse opponent, it would still be a good idea to give him a second term and see if he can do more with it.
The fact that people understand what a crisis the climate is, but still don’t see a reason to support Biden because after all he is a known old person, is a testament to the absolutely cataclysmic (literally) level of failure by the media to do their fucking jobs.
In data. Most people still don’t understand how fucked we are (meaning us humans, globally, not just Americans), especially if Trump wins again. Very grim outlook honestly, but I guess we, as a specis, deserve what is coming for us. Just sad for the potential we had, and all the other life we take down with us.