Drum: The Green New Deal Is a Joke; We Need Big Climate Ideas; How About Massive R&D
This is close to what I think...except I think I'm more skeptical of climate catastrophism than Drum is--not that my opinion on the topic should matter to anybody. Because it absolutely shouldn't. But even when I uncritically accepted the orthodoxy, my view was basically:
If our survival can only be effected by either (a) most of us accepting small burdens / hits to our "life-style"s, or (b) scientists and engineers pulling off some miraculous technological wizardry...then godspeed to the scientists and engineers, because hey're our only hope.
I'm not so much in favor of massive R&D--but I don't how the numbers come out if they're honestly assessed. I'd go with big, though. Undoubtedly somebody has numbers about how much R&D money the system can use effectively at a given time. I don't buy the tipping-point in a decade story... And my guess is that in a decade it'll still be a decade. My guess is that the tipping-point always has to be just far enough out that progressive policies have to be passed and implemented right now--no time to explain! The tipping-point can't be passed, nor so near in the future that action is hopeless...but it can't be so far out that there's time to calmly assess progressive preferences. 5-10 years seems pretty optimal to the ear of a layperson--that out to produce frantic but not panic.
Or maybe we're just all gonna die.
If our survival can only be effected by either (a) most of us accepting small burdens / hits to our "life-style"s, or (b) scientists and engineers pulling off some miraculous technological wizardry...then godspeed to the scientists and engineers, because hey're our only hope.
I'm not so much in favor of massive R&D--but I don't how the numbers come out if they're honestly assessed. I'd go with big, though. Undoubtedly somebody has numbers about how much R&D money the system can use effectively at a given time. I don't buy the tipping-point in a decade story... And my guess is that in a decade it'll still be a decade. My guess is that the tipping-point always has to be just far enough out that progressive policies have to be passed and implemented right now--no time to explain! The tipping-point can't be passed, nor so near in the future that action is hopeless...but it can't be so far out that there's time to calmly assess progressive preferences. 5-10 years seems pretty optimal to the ear of a layperson--that out to produce frantic but not panic.
Or maybe we're just all gonna die.
posted by Winston Smith at
11:31 AM
3 Comments:
Are we not already devoting a ton of capital, public and private, to climate related R&D? I mean, just a simple example, Tesla's worth like 70 billion plus debt. They've probably raised a smaller amount of actual cash than that, but for just a single EV car brand, that's a lot.
What you fail to take into account is that I don't know what I'm talking about.
I wouldn't necessarily say that, but more importantly presumably Drum does if he's demanding more of it.
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