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.
"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:
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.
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"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.
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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.
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.
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?
CC has sympathy for Lizard Warren Folks because its a website for middle class neoliberals