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2020 Democratic Presidential Nominees

Believing market-based solutions will solve climate change is a form of climate denial. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
 
TownieDeac said:
Can you say more about that citing anything from her book? Have you read it? I do find the climate justice argument compelling; my guess is you just favor market-based solutions?
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No i haven't read it. I have a pretty mentally taxing job. I get the gist of her arguments however.
 
ChrisL68 said:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/10/must-we-choose-between-capitalism-and-climate.html

Chait does a good job here deconstructing Klein's idealogue arguments.
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Oh man, that you're a Chait fan makes so much sense.

Remember when he championed the Iraq war for 15 years and argued Democrats should support Trump because he'd be easiest to beat and said Trump would never win Michigan? He has made mid six figures for a couple decades now being wrong about everything, I see why you like him.

Also I'm talking about On Fire, her latest book, not this one.
 
MHBDemon said:
Believing market-based solutions will solve climate change is a form of climate denial. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
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Strong disagree. And I think you can make a compelling argument that harnessing markets is the only way we can solve this. If it was as simple as getting rid of capitalism, an easy test case would be Bolivia. I think many on the left look at Bolivia as an economically successful socialist country (and they are right!). And the socialist regime there did a pretty inspiring job of raising living standards across the country, especially for the lower class. And they've been generally good on environmental issues as well, as far as I know (far from an expert). But if your theory is right, their carbon emissions should put capitalist economies to shame. The problem is, the opposite is true. Carbon emissions per capita have risen sharply in Bolvia (at they same time they were falling in the capitalist hellhole that is the US).

The reasons are complicated, and I'm not going to do them justice. But generally, to raise living standards, people need stuff. They need infrastructure, food, shelter, energy. And for a long time, if you want to accomplish those things, the cheapest and most efficient way to do that has been burning carbon. So if you are looking at a trade off between helping your people and burning carbon, the answer has been pretty simple. The good news is, this is changing. And it's changing because of markets. The single biggest driver has been Germany's early subsidies of solar and wind. These used to be expensive tech. But those subsidies allowed them to compete early and take advantage of economies of scale/Wright's law. Because of those early investments ramped up production, we got *way* better at wind and solar. Now new wind and solar tech is *cheaper* than new fossil fuel plants in much of the world. This is huge! Because if we are really going to solve this problem going forward, it's not about curbing emissions in the US (though of course we should do that too), it's creating solutions to help decarbonize the whole world.

In my mind, the best way to do that is huge investments in R&D. We are doing pretty well with power generation and transportation, and storage/grid optimization seems not far behind. But we need to invest massively in decarbonizing agriculture, and infrastructure (cement/steel are massive carbon sucks), and hopefully carbon capture tech as well. We need targeted tax breaks/subsidies to help early markets for all clean tech to flourish and take advantage of the economics of scale/market power that has brought us cheap wind and solar (unfortunately, most of these subsides look like they are being left out of the latest iteration of the budget deal, because of course they are).

In the mean time we need to not do dumb stuff, like outlawing nuclear existing nuclear, which will certainly increase our emissions with the tech in place to replace that clean power with something better.

TL/DR: Capitalism is not killing the planet. I think using government power to push markets in the right direction in the only realistic approach to decarbonizing the world.
 
Tom Steyer's new commercial has RW Holy Grail as a cornerstone policy. Steyer makes term limits key. You can't get any more Republican than that. Let's look at a few of the problems:

Takes away your right to vote for whom you wish.

Gives more power to rich candidates

Gives more power to corporations as they will be needed to fund new candidates

With less experience, Members of Congress will rely more on lobbyists for information and funding

With less experience, Members are more susceptible to pressure and know less about many issues

Knowing your time is limited, many Members will be trying to create lives after Congress which is likely to make corruption even more prevalent

These are just a few of the reasons that term limits harm our nation. This should disqualify Steyer like being for tax cuts for the rich and corporations would be.
 
tiltdeac said:
Strong disagree. And I think you can make a compelling argument that harnessing markets is the only way we can solve this. If it was as simple as getting rid of capitalism, an easy test case would be Bolivia. I think many on the left look at Bolivia as an economically successful socialist country (and they are right!). And the socialist regime there did a pretty inspiring job of raising living standards across the country, especially for the lower class. And they've been generally good on environmental issues as well, as far as I know (far from an expert). But if your theory is right, their carbon emissions should put capitalist economies to shame. The problem is, the opposite is true. Carbon emissions per capita have risen sharply in Bolvia (at they same time they were falling in the capitalist hellhole that is the US).

The reasons are complicated, and I'm not going to do them justice. But generally, to raise living standards, people need stuff. They need infrastructure, food, shelter, energy. And for a long time, if you want to accomplish those things, the cheapest and most efficient way to do that has been burning carbon. So if you are looking at a trade off between helping your people and burning carbon, the answer has been pretty simple. The good news is, this is changing. And it's changing because of markets. The single biggest driver has been Germany's early subsidies of solar and wind. These used to be expensive tech. But those subsidies allowed them to compete early and take advantage of economies of scale/Wright's law. Because of those early investments ramped up production, we got *way* better at wind and solar. Now new wind and solar tech is *cheaper* than new fossil fuel plants in much of the world. This is huge! Because if we are really going to solve this problem going forward, it's not about curbing emissions in the US (though of course we should do that too), it's creating solutions to help decarbonize the whole world.

In my mind, the best way to do that is huge investments in R&D. We are doing pretty well with power generation and transportation, and storage/grid optimization seems not far behind. But we need to invest massively in decarbonizing agriculture, and infrastructure (cement/steel are massive carbon sucks), and hopefully carbon capture tech as well. We need targeted tax breaks/subsidies to help early markets for all clean tech to flourish and take advantage of the economics of scale/market power that has brought us cheap wind and solar (unfortunately, most of these subsides look like they are being left out of the latest iteration of the budget deal, because of course they are).

In the mean time we need to not do dumb stuff, like outlawing nuclear existing nuclear, which will certainly increase our emissions with the tech in place to replace that clean power with something better.

TL/DR: Capitalism is not killing the planet. I think using government power to push markets in the right direction in the only realistic approach to decarbonizing the world.
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I agree with a great deal of this, but to be clear you're not suggesting market-driven solutions. You're suggesting heavy govt intervention into markets to drive change.
 
TownieDeac said:
I agree with a great deal of this, but to be clear you're not suggesting market-driven solutions. You're suggesting heavy govt intervention into markets to drive change.
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Absolutely. I'm definitely not saying markets alone. Markets alone are bad. I think they are a necessary component though.
 
In the same way that for brad, tintin, and the others, the answer is never racism, for mhb, the answer is always socialism.

We don't live in a purely capitalist country. We do live in a country where the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of under-regulation. that can be fixed by getting enough people to the ballot box consistently over a 10-20 year period. But suggesting that pure socialism is going to somehow solve the ills of our country/the world at large is just asinine. And that is a purely theoretical discussion, because our country would have to collapse, like, completely collapse into something like Somalia, for there to be any chance of a socialist government taking hold.

Its why the rock-throwing about democratic candidates for President is such a stupid waste of time. From a policy perspective, the difference between a Biden presidency and a Sanders presidency would only be on the margins.
 
The main difference between Biden and Bernie is that barring the Dems manning up and running a really tough campaign against Trump, Bernie can't win. The GOP will spend well over $1Billion hyping one word against Bernie- socialism. This will scare people in many battleground states.

Even if the Dems do try to destroy Trump with the truth, the horrific nature of such a campaign with Bernie will lower turnout in battleground states with people tiring of the mud.

Bernie is a dream opponent for Trump regardless of the truth.
 
tiltdeac said:
Here's a paper on the decrease in cost of solar.

https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...of+cost+reduction+in+photovoltaic+modules.pdf
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Market-stimulating policies have played a central role in driving downthe costs of PV modules, with private R&D, economies of scale, andl earning-by-doing together contributing an estimated 60% of the cost decline in PV modules between 1980 and 2012. This finding contributes to an ongoing debate on the effectiveness of market-expansion policies, as complements to publicly-funded R&D (Hoppmann et al., 2013). In the case ofPV, our analysis shows that private sector activity, which was incentivized by government policies in various nations (Trancik et al., 2015), was critically important for driving down costs. Additionally, our findings support the importance of public R&D to complement private sector activity, which may focus more on refinements to technology and manufacturing rather than the more major innovations needed as the limits to incremental improvements are reached (Hoppmann et al., 2013; Zheng and Kammen,2014). These results add insight to earlier findings from correlational analyses on the importance of market expansion in driving energy patenting (asa proxy for innovative activity) in recent years (Bettencourt et al., 2013), with public R&D having played the dominant role in the 70s and 80s
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DeaconSig said:
In the same way that for brad, tintin, and the others, the answer is never racism, for mhb, the answer is always socialism.

We don't live in a purely capitalist country. We do live in a country where the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of under-regulation. that can be fixed by getting enough people to the ballot box consistently over a 10-20 year period. But suggesting that pure socialism is going to somehow solve the ills of our country/the world at large is just asinine. And that is a purely theoretical discussion, because our country would have to collapse, like, completely collapse into something like Somalia, for there to be any chance of a socialist government taking hold.

Its why the rock-throwing about democratic candidates for President is such a stupid waste of time. From a policy perspective, the difference between a Biden presidency and a Sanders presidency would only be on the margins.
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he's coming for you now. you're the same as trump.
 
DeaconSig said:
From a policy perspective, the difference between a Biden presidency and a Sanders presidency would only be on the margins.
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Was with you up until here. I left DSA a few years ago. But I think you're making a lot of assumptions. Clinton and Obama had the kinds of approaches tilt is talking about as president. Welfare reform, financial deregulation, and Obamacare were all technocratic, market friendly solutions popular with the party because of where the profits went. I think there'd be marginal differences between a Biden and Buttigieg presidency. But Sanders and Warren are actively campaigning on financial regulation and cleaning up the gaps on market-driven inequality. I frankly don't trust a Biden or Buttigieg presidency to do enough to force the issue on climate. There has been a tendency in the party since the 80s to not upset the apple cart that is share prices.
 
I'll add that much like tilt I'm reluctant to claim any of these ideas as my own, and would suggest the Kwak "Take Back Our Party" read I posted another thread about.
 
tiltdeac said:
Absolutely. I'm definitely not saying markets alone. Markets alone are bad. I think they are a necessary component though.
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Ok so the only component I see missing from this analysis is that I think this model still contributes to growing inequality. So long as tax breaks subsidize markets to change, we're privatizing profits and socializing losses. There has to be a jobs, housing, immigration and social welfare guarantee on top of this or else we're just saving the planet for the few rich enough to live on it.
 
The difference between Biden/Pete and a Bernie/Warren administration is that the only way Bernie/Warren get anything done at all is to win the Senate as well which is less likely.

However, if Bernie and Warren are in a Dem Senate under a Dem POTUS, the issues want to be taken seriously have a real shot. They could have more power in the Senate than being POTUS without a Dem Senate.

A key to the whole election could be all Dems putting on a full court press to get Steve Bullock to run for Senate. He would win. Winning an otherwise unwinnable seat could be what changes the tide.
 
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