Obama's Climate Plans Face Long Fight 229
An anonymous reader writes "He hasn't even given his Tuesday speech yet but Obama's plans to tackle climate change are already raising objections in Washington. From the article: 'When President Barack Obama lays out plans to tackle climate change in a speech Tuesday, including the first effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, he will unleash a years-long battle that has little assurance of being resolved during his time in office. The president has called climate change a "legacy issue," and his speech may head off a backlash from environmentalists should his administration approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. But the address is unlikely to blunt criticism of Mr. Obama's approach from the left or the right.'"
"may head off backlash" (Score:4, Interesting)
lol, because what environmentalists want, after 4 years, is a speech... while his actions are the opposite of what he says he wants to do.
I'm voting 3rd party from now. Least of all evils isn't enough.
Ice Age (Score:0, Interesting)
When New York starts getting flooded, then we'll see action.
New York DID get flooded.
The problem is that there isn't any action which can be taken. Right now, all this talk is simply to soothe the masses so they don't stampede before shit gets real.
Climate Change has little direct relationship to carbon emissions from human industry. It's not within our control.
The planet is changing. The sharp increase in volcanic and geologic activity, the weirdness with Sun spots and all these comet incursions are not the result of our automotive fuel of choice. Things are getting weird for entirely different reasons, and part of that is our unstoppable slide into the next ice age.
China isn't building empty cities in Africa for no reason.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Interesting)
The Average American (of which I am one) might be more productive, but all that productive work is putting money into the pockets of corporate masters. So not only are polluting, we're not even seeing the economic benefit of the pollution. So we aren't only killing ourselves, we've not even seeing the economic benefits we constant whine that we'll lose if simply do common sense measures.
It's high time the US population wake up and realizing everything being done is going to feed the corporate pig and that 99.999999% of us aren't millionaires in waiting. Our thinking is so screwed up that it's hard to pay attention to ANY political news and not get a headache from the cogitative dissonance we're forced to put up with day in and day out.
Re:Dogs and Ponies, Center Stage (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree in spirit but not in practice. (Prohibition laws tend to do more harm than good.) But forcing ethanol to compete with methanol would have the same effect, since ethanol could never compete without government subsidies. Just remove the subsidies and mandate fully flex-fuel cars, and let the market take care of the ethanol problem.
In fact, I would go further and eliminate all subsidies from all industries. Let petroleum compete against the alternatives on a level playing field. I'm confident the market would take care of our oil problem too. (This is also advocated by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. His talks are well worth a look.) [youtube.com]
Re:This is not Slashdot material... (Score:3, Interesting)
The system is fraudulent and corrupt by design. It is not 'broken' by any means. It proves the old adage of nature itself: Might makes right.
Re:Paywall (Score:5, Interesting)
To get around the WSJ paywall, search for the article title in Google. Open the link that comes up in Incognito and you should be fine.