DL Open Thread Monday, Oct. 30, 2023
Israel’s assault on Gaza has entered the there’s-no-excuse-for-this stage. One indication of how bad it is: Desperate Gazans broke into UN aid centers and looted their already insufficient food supplies. Calls for a cease-fire continue to come from everywhere but the Biden administration.
And it’s not just in Gaza. As Lucian Truscott IV notes, armed conflicts are ongoing in Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen and Myanmar, and Niger recently underwent a coup. Americans, on the other hand, shoot each other without an open civil war.
The best backgrounder on Christofascist creep Mike Johnson comes from the Rude Pundit, who traces the new Speaker’s culture-war moralizing back to its roots 20 years ago, when he led a campaign to keep a Louisiana parish dry.
Looming behind all this world unrest is the existential threat we mostly ignore. Dr. James Hansen, the climate scientist who first sounded the klaxon about global warming, warns that the climate is heating faster than we thought. Which reminds me, we have a hard freeze forecast for Tuesday night into Wednesday, so bring those tender plants inside.
Also in climate news, research has found that warming waters are behind the collapse of the snow crab population in the Gulf of Alaska, where officials have canceled a second consecutive snow crab harvest.
Digby’s column on Republican denialism about their cult leader’s attempted coup contained this interesting tidbit about GOP enthusiasm, or lack thereof:
In 2016, 57% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican said they followed the news all or most of the time. In the 2022 survey, 37% said the same, a decrease of 20 points. By comparison, the share saying this among Democrats and Democratic leaners dropped by only 7 points, from 49% to 42%.
Another sign of waning Republican enthusiasm: Trump rallies are fewer and further between, and people are getting bored with his rants and leaving early.
A second auto company appears ready to settle with the UAW. There’s so much going on in the world nobody has had time to explain why this is bad news for Biden.
The floor’s yours.
Four people shot, two dead in two Sussex County shootings.
https://www.wboc.com/news/breaking-1-dead-2-injured-in-laurel-shooting/article_0af04d6a-7691-11ee-995c-8f4355efc3fe.html
https://www.wboc.com/news/selbyville-halloween-party-shooting-leaves-1-dead-another-injured/article_4fa4062c-768c-11ee-875f-337c1e45ef3c.html
When “Keepin’ it real” goes
wrong
Quickest way to addressing the climate crisis is a population cull. If we could knock global population down to about a billion we could continue to consume at our current rate while
healing the climate. Otherwise we all have to accept a far lower standard of living to make it all work.
Thanos has entered the chat
HItting the nonexistent “like” button for James D.
Are you volunteering to be among the first to be culled?
Didn’t think so.
What was the name of that Colorado governor back in the day who said that old people had the obligation to die? Richard Lamm? Governor Gloom.
Not a political winner.
The standard of living wouldn’t be that much lower for those living in poverty.
Such arguments are predicated on a set of unchallenged assumptions about our so-called standard of living. For one example, the average American household spends something like 16% of its income on transportation; before WW2 it was 4%. We don’t have to live the way we do.
If you consider contraction of America’s far-flung suburban lifestyle a “far lower standard of living,” you might be right. Likewise current levels of various things: vehicle fuel economy standards, frequency of beef consumption… it’s a long list, and if you think curtailing these unsustainable current practices translates to “a far lower standard of living,” then yes, the shrinking number of middle-class Americans will have to accept one.
“The standard of living wouldn’t be that much lower for those living in poverty”
On the contrary, party of the reason for the post-WWII global population boom was the spread of energy intensive (read: petrochemical based) agricultural practices. The poorest people in the world, who are surviving on grain-based diets, will go hungry if we had to revert to traditional methods.
For all the moralizing from the urban western elite, their lifestyles are not as green as one would think. The same people that gloat about not owning a car are the same jet-set who rack up airline miles (You might be surprised to learn the amount of per-capita carbon emissions from a few flights a year can quickly exceed the emissions from an average suburban commuter).
Climate change is real and is an existential threat. The conversation that isn’t being had, is how much people are willing to alter their own lifestyle to achieve these goals. If you think that buying a Tesla, eating lab meat and living in an apartment will cut it, you are sorely mistaken.
Like aviation, fertilizer makes up about 2% of the global total of greenhouse gas emissions. Fuel of various types takes up about 75% of global oil production.
A good deal of energy use is for heating, and it’s hard to cut back on that. So the cuts have to come from elsewhere, and while replacing air travel with rail would help, you could eliminate all air travel and fertilizer production and it wouldn’t get you near your goal.
You’d have to take more than what I’d call “a few” flights to equal the fuel consumption of a commuter, and you seem to overlook the point that there are thousands of air travelers per day but millions of commuters. The scale of fuel usage per person might be similar, but far fewer people take “a few” flights per year.
Of course, we could build a high-speed rail network to replace a lot of domestic air travel, just like we could take lots of steps that would reduce petroleum usage. You don’t seem interested in any of that. You seem most interested in continuing to consume at your current rate; if you weren’t you wouldn’t be so blase about efforts to curtail current rates.
What’s your vision of what the future holds, then? Eliminating 7 billion people so you don’t have to trade in your F-150?
BTW, I wouldn’t eat lab-grown meat for money. You might try vegetarian fare sometime.
Nuclear?
What about it? It’s expensive, risky and water-dependent. Not a bet worth making IMO.
Kids: ‘Lefty hate America loons’ gets you banned 100 out of 100 times.
Aviation is almost entirely discretionary, so the attached GHG is weighted more heavily. As for ag, fertilizer is only the start. The number is closer to 10% when you compare to traditional localized production.
Your vision of high speed rail is colored by those rosey French glasses. It works in European and Japanese cities because those cities are close together. Even the fastest bullet train would take a full day to cross the US, plus whatever security the TSA would impose. I’d love to see a bullet train in the northeast, but that would require building a whole new rail infrastructure. Can you imagine all the environmental permitting and the pushback from communities who might be affected? Those people wouldn’t be able to afford the ticket anyway, even with generous federal subsidies
Fwiw, I drive a a little Toyota Corolla that gets pretty good mileage. I still think the planet is way overpopulated as a result of artificially cheap energy. I’m not being blasé, I am asking for a realistic vision of how the average person will have to live to meet the kinds of climate goals we have set. No one is willing to give a clear answer, and I suspect we both know why
New York to Chicago by high-speed rail would challenge the time it takes to fly once you add in time in the TSA line. Europe, which has more terrorists than the US unless you count the right-wingers as terrorists, manages to let people take trains without taking their shoes off.
And I guess you’re right, if something is challenging, fuck it, just write it off as a solution. Getting rid of 7 billion people, though, that’s more doable than building a high-speed rail line? C’mon.
The reason you can’t get a vision of how the average person will live is that nobody knows. My guess is that what evolves will evolve by crisis, not by choice, so there’s no way to make valid predictions.
BTW, I would argue that antibiotics have done more than cheap energy to fuel the population boom.
BHL update:
Questions asked, answers not forthcoming:
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/10/30/bethany-hall-long-delaware-governor-race-campaign-audit/71344143007/
Not to mention, the ‘audit’ wasn’t an audit. The so-called Summit DE LLC is a one-person operation, and the one person has no experience conducting anything like the audit BHL claims was done.
I think Al’s right–we’re looking at ‘commingling’ of funds. For what purpose?
I hope that Amanda Fries tries to contact the ‘finance compliance expert’ who left the campaign. As it stands, only Delaware’s most unethical public officials are standing with her.
Does that include John Carney? Has he rescheduled that fundraiser? Has it dawned on him that going all-in with her might damage whatever interest he has in being Mayor? Note I said ‘being Mayor’, not running for Mayor.
If it’s not Carney, the business interests (and it’s not Buccini-Pollin so much as the banks) will have to scare up someone like him. They were able to strongarm Purzycki into giving up his RDC sinecure but they don’t have similar leverage over Carney.
Kind of ironic that if Eugene Young ran for mayor this cycle he’d be the odds-on favorite.
Wish he still lived in Wilmington.
There’s a certain Councilwoman I’m rooting for…
Will she be effective? Mike’s accomplishments were largely based on his business ties and ability to carrot-and-stick individual council people. I think she will run up against a hostile chamber of commerce, hostile council, and hostile police department. It’s not a receipe for success
She’ll only have grassroots residents of Wilmington behind her.
It’s about time we tried that, IMO.
I WANT to believe. If there is a progressive takeover of council she has a fighting chance
City Council, like the General Assembly, has tended to be subservient to the Mayor (or Governor).
I think a progressive mayor, be it Darby or someone else, could make some progress. But, you’re right–some more progressive voices on Council would streamline the process
Hamas: “Send humanitarian supplies! Preferably packed inside high-quality 122mm steel tubing!”
So you’re against humanitarian supplies?
He is. For Palestinians. Jee-zus.
Jee-zus he needs.
As each neighborhood is cleared of Hamas, truckloads of humanitarian supplies should follow. Soon the Gazans will help clear their towns of Hamas.
you have 30 days to file amended reports once you find mistakes. so shes in violation of more laws. kathy jennings are you reading this?
https://casetext.com/regulation/delaware-administrative-code/title-15-elections/office-of-the-commissioner-of-elections-for-the-state-of-delaware/campaign-finance-regulations/section-100-100-late-reports
Aww she’s doing ‘rolling” amendments per the article:) and election enforcement has as much teeth as Moms Mabley;).
She’ll roll out the ‘smoking gun’ amendments right after the primary.
This is so phony. Her actions bespeak her corruption.
Another good article from Salon, from their best writer who I know has some fans here, Amanda Marcotte:
“Sexual anarchy”: New House Speaker Mike Johnson showcases the incel-ization of the modern GOP — The Louisiana congressman’s career has been centered around his bitter obsession with other people’s sex lives
https://www.salon.com/2023/10/30/sexual-anarchy-new-speaker-mike-johnson-showcases-the-incel-ization-of-the-modern/
Something I’ve noticed about fundamentalists of every religion: When they’re not obsessing over hair and headgear they’re policing other people’s sex lives.
Vaya con dios to our Mexican readers. Their six page views top our foreign contingent for today.
Feliz el Dia de los Muertos!
Only the full-size candy bars for our local goblins.