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Democrats vow to make climate change priority in new Congress


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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/26/house-democrats-climate-change-epa/2067831002/

 

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Party leaders vowed to hold hearings on President Donald Trump's aggressive efforts to undo Obama-era climate rules and demanded internal documents on administration decisions to scale back restrictions on fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.

 

Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who is vying to regain her role as House speaker, said she planned to revive a special congressional panel designed to examine climate change. The Select Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming was shelved after Republicans took over the House in 2010.

 

That urgency grew after the release Friday of a dire government report that climate change poses an increasing risk to the planet in the form of extreme weather, worsening health conditions, the spread of new diseases, increasing drought and famine and economic decline.

 

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I actually think they might be able to make some small progress on this. Certainly Trump doesn't believe in science, but I think most Americans are ok with a lot of measures to combat climate change. The Democrats won't be able to get big changes through, but some incremental things might happen. At the very least they might be able to stall out or reverse some of the crazy stuff Trump is trying to do.

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Just now, marioandsonic said:

Too bad nothing will happen as long as the GOP controls the Senate and the WH.

 

 

I suspect nothing will happen even if the Dems have a great 2020 and take back the Senate and presidency.

 

And this is not to knock Dems too much for the likely inaction. The Obama and Trump admins have shown us that with near complete partisan gridlock a new president, even a very successful one, now gets one big bill. Obama got Obamacare, and Trump got his tax cuts.

 

If you wanted to invent a problem to fuck humanity up, you would be hard pressed to design one better than climate change. It is the proverbial lobster in a pot. Because the effects are almost always going to be a slow rolling process, there is likely to always be a problem that is more urgent to take care of.

 

For instance, if the new Congress takes control in 2021 and they have the choice of one big problem to tackle should they go after climate change, or maybe find a solution to Medicare drying up starting in 2026? Or maybe healthcare for all. Or any of the other problems that used to sound like a problem for future Homer, but look a lot more urgent now that we're long past the heady days of 2015 and hover boards.

 

Even if you think climate change is more important than those subjects(personally, I would say it's more important but even harder to do something about) imagine trying to sell that the average American voter. 

 

That all said, maybe Dems could nibble at the edges with various spending bills and other such procedural minutiae, but until we see widespread, catastrophic effects I don't think either party will see it as the issue to stake their agenda on. And, as I originally said, the real bitch of climate change is that by the time that happens what we now describe as the worst case scenario will probably be the favorable outcome to hope for in terms of temp and sea rise.

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5 minutes ago, Chairslinger said:

For instance, if the new Congress takes control in 2021 and they have the choice of one big problem to tackle should they go after climate change, or maybe find a solution to Medicare drying up starting in 2026? Or maybe healthcare for all. Or any of the other problems that used to sound like a problem for future Homer, but look a lot more urgent now that we're long past the heady days of 2015 and hover boards.


And there lays the problem. Politicians in this country (and others) general see the dates as being years away and generally think "Well we will tackle that when it happens." Not, that we need to take preventive measures to ensure that just doesn't happen. I remember in the 90's the republicans would bang on the "We can't mortgage our future for the now" line when it came to our debt. The reality was they didn't care about mortgaging our future as long as they were the ones spending the cash. 

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