This action is a huge blow to the tar sands overall, and if the other pipeline gets too many set backs the tar sands might actually fold from lack of investment.
I had literally zero hopes for Biden, and this is already a net good. Consider me surprised.
This. I am so tired of these gullible liberals cheering this shit. Wake up please. I have enough liberalism in my life, I can find it elsewhere, I don't need this /r/uplifting news tier garbage.
Dear monkey's paw, I wish that Warren Buffet were part of the #TrainGang
They’re just repurposing the piping to tunnel downwards and let the mole-people out to take over.
Don’t be fooled, and stay vigilant
"Oh God! Mole people are coming up to destroy !!!" :squidward-nochill: "...the capitalist international order." :squidward-chill:
what does "eliminate all green house gas emissions" even mean here? It's oil! What are they planning to do with it, fill up a kiddie pool and splash around in it?
It's a neoliberal marketing grift, these radlibs who think "carbon capture will save us" are really just carrying water for fascists
from a letter about one of Biden's racist EPA picks Mary Nichols:
The cap and trade program and other market mechanisms—which commodify the source of the climate crisis that most severely threatens global communities of color and low-income people— account for a modest reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and has not been successful in meeting California’s climate goals. Further, these modest cumulative reductions have not occurred uniformly. In fact, for over half of the regulated facilities in the state, localized emissions of greenhouse gases and toxic co-pollutants have actually gone up. Unsurprisingly, the increased pollution tends to be in communities with a 34 percent higher proportion of people of color, and 23 percent higher proportion of people living in poverty. Ms. Nichols and the CARB, in initially designing the carbon trading system, were fully aware of the disproportionate impacts that cap and trade would have on the health of low-income communities of color. Yet, they championed this strategy that perpetrated environmental racism
Further, under Ms. Nichols’ leadership, the CARB has designed its cap and trade program to include a significant share of carbon offsets. This further exacerbates pollution hotspots because offsets allow industries to continue to pollute fenceline communities by purchasing reductions out of state or from industries not currently regulated by the program. Carbon offsets have enabled California polluters, especially large oil refineries and dirty power plant operators, to emit an additional 200 million tons of greenhouse gases—again, disproportionately burdening communities of color with toxic co-pollutants.
I think the key part of that is the "... from operations" So these fucks will pretend to be carbon neutral while *building * he thing, omitting entirely the thing they are building moves oil from A to Z, passing through native lands and leaking along the way. And they think that honestly makes them the good guys for doing this.
Are you sure? It looks like this was an attempt to save the pipeline, but canceling of the permit is what was done yesterday is different than this.
I'm not really sure about most things generally and the source for this is "some guy on twitter" so I will freely admit that I may be missing something here.
But in my defense, assuming that things will only ever get worse has been a pretty safe bet for most of my life
Call a win a win, folks. Though let's be clear: this is the same position Obama held. He killed the pipeline in 2015 until Trump revived it.
I actually forgot about that. With the flagellations of the Alberta conservatives though it seems more important now then it did then.
Ehhhhhh it’s a wash. The project was already dead. Tar sands oil is hella expensive oil and who needs that when you got relatively cheaper oil fracked from the sweet sweet earth of Texas. Yeah tar sands is dirty oil but fracking releases shit tones of methane and poisons groundwater so I don’t see how it’s any better. Canceling it was a no brainer, except pissing off Canada a bit but who cares they are Canada you know.
The libs aren't completely stupid. They will throw you a little bit of bone, as a treat.
Remember that they can govern how they like right now, completely, since they factually control the senate and house. Then imagine what you'd do with that power vs what they are doing.
Also: wait a year and see if it's still cancelled.
:LIB: :gulag:
Shut the fuck up liberal.
Let me explain.
It would not matter if tomorrow he put in a full carbon tax regime. It literally does not matter. It is too fucking late. This is all PR so when it does come to pass, the worst kind of scenario that is, they can point to too little, too late, symbolic nonsense like this that well meaning but unfortunately under informed people see as moving the world and proclaim "we in America/Europe did our duty, it's China's fault". This is the next step of the game. Little more. And I'm not even convinced this isn't due to other economic factors.
It doesn't fundamentally change usage, only supply. Playing silly capitalist/liberal games with supply costs and shortages will not fix this. It might have if it had been done strongly (not closing one oil pipeline) say 20-25 years ago but it's too late. And again I'm not convinced if oil prices go up or even stay where they are that they just won't ship the stuff via rail (they threatened it before). Again. You've won nothing. The media has convinced you LIBERAL that you have. Again shut up.
The reason the big deal was made about keystone was not just the particularly dirty oils, but the fact it would cross sacred native lands.
Capitalism cannot solve climate change. PERIOD. End of discussion.
I cannot believe I am having to explain this.
We have already locked in devastating levels of warming. To stop things now we'd need centralized leadership without regard to profit or the precious muh jobs created by the precious free market. We'd need a war-time type effort of restructuring the economy. It is not going to happen.
This is as I said, PR management. They've extracted the wealth they need to, given the fossil fuel companies time and now will engage in meaningless puffery regarding these too little, too late actions which far too many people will fall for. Like you.
The next step (I'm not even convinced the west has an actual desire to quite fossil fuels so much as scale it down so they can blame others) will be to angrily slam developing and rival nations like Russia, China, Iran, etc as the real problem as part of a propaganda push while the west who has outsourced their carbon intensive manufacturing to China and other developing nations will proclaim all they've done. After that I don't know. I do know the petro-dollar is an essential part of US hegemony so the equation for changing that is not so simple. If the US abandons oil it creates all kind of ripple effects on allies, on geo-politics. Democrats have been pretending to want to do things about this for a long time and so he re-implemented Obama's veto of the idea because it doesn't fundamentally change anything.
Once more for those in the back. It doesn't matter if he appears to take "concrete steps" on climate change. They're all too little too late. They would have been bold in the 90s and on-time and needed in the 2000s, but now it is too late. And allowing them to do this, to get away with these inadequate measures is criminal. It is aiding and abetting. Because this is dooming hundreds of millions, a billion people to death. Accepting this is accepting the unacceptable. Cheering this is cheering a lie. Damn you.
The projections for climate change show the US is one of the better suited places to ride it out (not all parts obviously, but it has fertile farmland and soils, water, and a lot of space). The US government so long as it can control its people will be just fine. It's Africa, South America, Asia, the middle east that will bear the brunt of it so the capitalists are not exactly panicking (besides many of them have bought into the delusion of capitalist magic that the market will magic up some technological solution, and in the meantime the smart ones like Bill Gates are buying up huge amounts of farmland because it will give them money, power, control once the crisis hits).
124 people as of this posting who are desperate for a lick of Democrat boot, just a taste. And Biden obliges by tossing a tiny cumb there. Oh but to indulge the liberalism inside you that says "they're not all bad, they're better than the Republicans on climate". bonk They do the bare minimum to try and keep the US credible while the Republicans fight to do nothing to maximize profits a few points higher and maybe out of some deranged religious or capitalist rejection of the science.
You know as an aside, this post being on the front page, near the top, 125 upvotes is incredibly discouraging to me. I think, "why do I bother to come here if I'm going to see this kind of liberalism", people easily fooled by micro gestures that are meaningless and with little cost in the long term. Of all days, with the rest of the media screeching about how great Biden is, I would have loved to go a few days without this.
We are still on track for one of the worse scenarios for warming. This changes nothing. We are metaphorically in a racing car headed for a solid concrete wall on the side of a rocky mountain-face. Biden has metaphorically changed the car so it is no longer accelerating as fast but is still heading straight for the wall and will impact on it, he's bought the people inside the car about 5 seconds extra.
Fucking hell, comrade. I absolutely didn't want to hear this. But I'm really glad I did. The pipeline cancellation is the MSM version of all those harmless, goofy Biden memes. (They totally distracted me from his politics and made me laugh at Ol' Silly Biden.) All just papering over his actual ghoulish beliefs/stances and embarrassing political history. No one is immune to propaganda.
:sadness:
Hey comrade, I'm with you. Climate change is an incredibly large and complex problem that won't be solved under capitism - it requires fundamental changes in rapid times.
I also don't think that canceling a pipeline is going to solve it.
But, this is something good - its revoking a permit, not even a market solution.
My only point is that this is literally already a bigger step than any other us or Canadian head of state has taken. And that is kind of depressing.
Good post! Quick question:
“we in America/Europe did our duty, it’s China’s fault”.
Isn't this predicated on China doing fuck all about climate change? I know propaganda doesn't really align with reality, but showing a way forward seems a lot more compelling than pointing the finger.
China's coming up on the plurality of industrial capacity globally, atm. They're also bringing their 1.4B person strong population into the first-world standard of living. It really will be in their hands going forward.
Capitalism cannot solve climate change. PERIOD. End of discussion.
and socialism is really just a rationalized, managed version of bourgeois production
petro-dollar is an essential part of US hegemony
Isn't most oil manufactured in refineries in the US?
You know as an aside, this post being on the front page, near the top, 125 upvotes is incredibly discouraging to me
also upvoted this pure ideology at the same time: "American Socialism is the strongest it has ever been in your lifetime" https://hexbear.net/post/75299
We did it! We won the progress! It's change we can believe in!
Doesn't actually matter though. Don't treat climate change like a sport, it is not about keeping a score of the little bit of inconsequential actions every individual important actor/government does and check the scores at the end. Nobody is going to give a fuck when it turns out we failed and this changes nothing in that regard.
If every government was frozen and did nothing for the next 20 years we are still fucked. It takes more than just "not doing things". We need large scale direct action.
The pipeline is bad, but it is step on the accelerator as the car already went off the edge of the cliff bad.
Well then by my calculations, the Chinese army tree planting campaign is running up the score on us
Biden has already done more to mitigate climate change than any other American or Canadian head of state.
It's a single pipeline that had already failed, Nixon created the EPA, you really want to play around with this logic?
It’s a single pipeline that had already failed
It's been profitable for developers to date. And the Alberta line would connect the west coast of Canada to the lucrative Gulf Coast refinery/shipping network.
Cancellation is pissing a lot of O&G guys in the Mid/Southwest off.
"Both sides equally bad" has always been a bad take, and we shouldn't lazily repeat it just because Democrats suck. Democrats occasionally do legitimately good things, and sneering at anything short of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism will only drive away persuadable folks who acknowledge the reality of those things.
The response to "Here's something good Democrats did!" should be "You're right, that's a step in the right direction, but here's what's necessary to actually solve the problem. Are Democrats willing to do that, too?"
Okay, I'll roleplay as a Democrat and respond to your question: "no, and the fact that you would even ask that shows how little you understand about anything. go vote for Trump if you can't show a little gratitude."
the left wing of capital is my enemy. i don't wish to see it strengthened; i wish to see the whole beast dismembered.
Two ideas:
- "You believe in science, right? You're not some unwashed Trump supporter hooting about climate change being a Chinese hoax, right? Then you understand that we can't afford to half ass this, because boiling the planet is catastrophic."
- "Gratitude? This is America; we don't grovel before our betters here. Politicians get should get credit where credit is due, but if they're delivering a fraction of the bare minimum you should hold them accountable."
the left wing of capital is my enemy. i don’t wish to see it strengthened
Telling libs "a little climate change action is nice, but a lot more is needed" does nothing to strengthen the Democratic Party. And if you want to dismantle the left wing of capital, you're going to need to convince tens of millions of libs to become leftists -- conversations like this are a start to that.
i don't think i am going to convince anyone of my beliefs by hiding those beliefs. if i want to convince someone that the Democratic party is structurally incapable of preventing the incineration of the entire earth, i ought to tell them the truth about the party, which is that its seemingly progressive moves are never as radical as the press portrays, nor as bold as is necessary, and are generally meant to reduce political pressure and criticism from the activist left.
None of that is incompatible with what I'm suggesting. All I'm saying is to acknowledge small good things as small good things that need to be followed by much more, because writing off every positive development with "that's effectively worthless" will make anyone not on your side think you're unreasonable, or just an ass.
Imagine you wanted to run a marathon but were terribly out of shape. You tell Frank about this goal, and that you've started eating better. "Lol that's nowhere near what you need to be doing," he says. So you go out the next day and run, but all you do is half a mile. When you tell him, again it's "Yeah that's basically worthless if that's all you've got." You're sore, so you rest for two days and run a full mile on the third. Frank says, "You think you can just casually run whenever you feel perfect? You think a fucking mile is going to get you through this marathon? Christ, it took you 12 minutes? It's not even worth talking about."
That's what people sound like when they write off anything that doesn't by itself solve a huge part of the problem. That's what libs -- who are far too willing to believe Democrats are doing the best they can -- hear when Democrats do something decent and it's dismissed as nothing. You can be right -- Frank is right when he said you need to do a lot more to run a marathon -- but it's going to turn most people off.
"This is an acceptable amount of progress" would do that. "This is a fraction of the bare minimum and we must do better" does not.
Liberals do not learn. They do not care about your opinions. Reinforcing a LIE which is what "this is an acceptable amount of progress" would not be a good thing. We do not reinforce delusions and lies created and perpetuated for the benefit of the Amerikkkan empire and the profits of its bourgeoisie. The Democratic party is not run based on what you or the base wants. It is run based on what capital wants as it is part of a dictatorship of that capital. It shapes and decides what its voters will think and until they are broken out of this paradigm it is hopeless.
Most people here used to be libs. They absolutely can learn, and we have to figure out how to get them to learn en masse if we want to get anything done.
More than commentary, I think it is important to have active left projects which people are engaged with on a daily basis and which make their lives better/more interesting. That’s how you draw people in, not by talking about the democratic party. but, i think you would probably agree with that.
Totally agreed, yes. If you can get people involved in left projects, that's huge.
But libs love to talk politics, and it's easier to indulge that than it is to get them to show up at some project. So while working on getting them to help with a project, it's good to have conversation strategies to pull them left.
Telling libs “a little climate change action is nice, but a lot more is needed” does nothing to strengthen the Democratic Party.
Fuck the Democratic party. If you want to strengthen or keep it you're an enemy of mine and an enemy of every person in the global south who doesn't have a six figure net worth.
It is an unacceptable amount of progress. It is not progress at all. It's like stepping off the throttle on an airplane whose course is unrepairably locked on a cliff-face and announcing you've done something. And this isn't even that kind of an action. This is like Biden leaning out the window and spitting or blowing really hard against the front to generate a tiny, insignificant amount of force against the forward momentum.
Understand liberal. Climate change is time sensitive. We don't have a century to wait for capitalists to accidentally stumble into doing it right. These are solutions that were market friendly. They were proposed in the 80s and 90s. The capitalists rejected them. THAT MEANS THEY FUCKING LOSE. DEAL WITH IT FUCKERS. They had their chance, now they should get nothing less than green revolution.
Besides my personally feelings however. We do not have time for this "gradual change" BULLSHIT. Excuse me if I seem a little angry but people with your view are going to contribute to the deaths of a billion people and the intense suffering of a billion more. It is not an opinion, it is not my preference. It is a cold, hard scientific fact that these solutions will not work in time (what solutions indeed, closing one oil pipelines so it can be shipped by rail?), that full carbon taxation and 'innovation' credits will not solve anything although they might make Elon a little richer. There is no runner up trophy in climate mitigation above a certain point, if we hit the 4C target we have not done a lot for the poorest people globally as compared to 5C.
You are quite simply saying "surely a genocide of only xxx,xxx,xxx people is better than a genocide of x,xxx,xxx,xxx people" while I am here to tell you that any is unacceptable. Even by capitalist standards this doesn't reach bare minimum.
Facts do not care about your feelings or your preference for economic systems that are barbarity incarnate.
Fuck the Democratic party. If you want to strengthen or keep it
What part of "this does nothing to strengthen the Democratic Party" was not clear?
The only way to do anything significant about climate change is to convince tens of millions of more people -- at minimum -- to take it as seriously as we do. However angry you get, every solution involves starting with this. So the number one most relevant question is "will this convince people to listen to me, or will it cause them to tune out?" Telling people whatever they've done is meaningless and that they're barbarians with the blood of billions on their hands will, on balance, cause them to tune you out.
How serious are you about climate change? Are you serious enough to do stuff that will actually move people in the right direction on the issue, even if in your heart of hearts you want to scream in their faces that they aren't moving fast enough? Or are you content to fail so long as you get to yell whatever you want?
persuadable folks who acknowledge the reality of those things.
CC has sympathy for Lizard Warren Folks because its a website for middle class neoliberals
