I have a different different take. It's not the electorate's pocketbook that matters, it's the political donors pocketbook that matters.
"Drill baby drill" will be echoed so long as petroleum companies and petroleum rich nations dump billions into propaganda outlets, politician campaigns, and in the US, PAC groups to support "drill baby drill" friendly politicians.
So long as that dynamic exists, it doesn't matter if 80% of the electorate screams for change. So long as the incumbent advantage exists forcing people to vote mostly on social issues, these sorts of economic and world affecting issues will simply be ignored.
There's a reason, to this day, you'll find Democrats talk about the wonders of fracking, clean coal, and carbon capture.
IDK how to change this other than first identifying the issue. Our politicians are mostly captured by their donors. That's the only will they really care about enacting.
Not sharing your take of the electorate's powerlessness at all. It's not an overwhelming majority (only 57% of voters in the US: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54124-nearly-half-american...) which thinks they need to do more about climate change. I think most politicians are in tune with their voters - you need to change the people's minds if you want stricter policies. Refine the question a bit more and ask people if they still want to do more against climate change if some basic necessities in their life will get more expensive and you will likely even drop below 50%.
Well part of that 43% I think have their opinions primarily because of propaganda from the same donors who are buying off the politicians.
But also, I'd point out that even in the Democrat party where this is more of an 80:20 issue with their constituents, the democrats are still far too friendly to fossil fuels (Biden, for example, specifically campaigned on how much he loves natural gas, fracking, and carbon capture).
This isn't the only 80:20 issue where democrat politicians are out of alignment with their base. That's also what informs my pessimism.
Solar power is cheaper than oil, but it doesn't work 24/7. If you can find a way to work with that, switching to solar is already financially incentivised. Even if you can't, we're already seeing whole countries and regions saturating at 100% solar electricity during daylight hours, significantly reducing oil usage. It doesn't matter what the oil sellers want, because it's a buyer's market for energy when the sun is out, and they're not going to throw extra money at oil companies just because.
> It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries.
I think the flaw in this thinking is thinking that burning things is the cheapest way to get energy.
Oil processing and extraction is a complex industry which requires a huge continued investment. Coal requires massive mining operations. Natural gas is probably the least intensive of the burny things, and it still requires a pretty advanced pipeline to be competitive.
Renewables are relatively cheap one time purchases. Save energy storage, the economy that is most competitive at this point is one powered by renewables.
That transition is already happening in the US without a massive government regulation/mandate. In china, it's happening a whole lot faster because the government is pushing it. And the chinese economy is at no risk of being outbid by smaller economies burning fuel.
The main reason burning remains a major source of fuel is that for most nations, the infrastructure to consume it has already been built. It's not because it's cheap.
The one thing the US could do to combat global warming is dropping the tariffs on chinese renewables. That's something that could possibly go through a regular spending bill.
Power companies in the US are already deploying renewables pretty quickly without incentive. If the tariffs are dropped that'd further incentivize build out.
What should be done is carbon taxes and subsidies, but that's not likely to be done. And since that's not going to happen, economics is what will drive transition.
They are direct AC bulbs, no inverter needed. They do have smoothing capacitors so they don't flicker, and I think a slight redesign of the drive circuitry could add ~10% more efficiency...
Yup. It's why even in fairly red states like my own (Idaho) solar, wind, and battery are going up everywhere. Even without significant subsidies the economics are really good for renewables.
They'd be even better if we didn't have extreme tariffs on China.
That's actually what's convinced me that renewables are a better choice than nuclear. I still like nuclear, but renewables are just so much easier and faster to deploy while being a lot cheaper. To make nuclear competitive requires regulatory changes along with a government that's simply willing to tell it's NIMBY citizens YIMBY.
Government literally has to get in the way of renewable deployments at this point to stop them.
IMO, this screams the need for both tort reforms and something like a nationalized representation system.
Perhaps something like a standard set of filings for a given case. Maybe automated rulings on less consequential motions. Maybe some sort of hard limits on the amount of billable hours a law-firm can work on a case. Anti-slapp laws for sure.
Like, for example, maybe we allow a total of 100 billable hours worked, with an additional 10 billable hours allowed per appeal. The goal there being that you force lawyers and lawfirms to actually focus on the most important aspects of a case and not waste everyone's time and money filling motions for stuff you are allowed to get, but ultimately has 1% impact on the case. Perhaps you could even carve out a "if both sides agree, then you can extend the billable hours". You could also have penalties for a side that doesn't respond. For example, if you depose them and they fail to follow the orders then they lose billable hours while you get them credited back.
The main goal here being avoiding both wasting a bunch of court time on a case but also stopping a rich person that can afford an army of lawyers from using that advantage to drive their opponent bankrupt with a sea of minor motions.
That $100k is also on the cheap side. If the other side has a lawyer and a lot of money to burn, they can easily hike that way up. Filing a billion motions that your lawyer has to respond to, deposing everyone you've ever met, going after every document you've ever looked at. The more money someone has, the easier it is to make you spend more money, even if you are right.
Right. My case was a very simple contract dispute with very little discovery and only a couple of people to depose, so I was lucky there. And the other side did have more money than me, but not so much that they could burn several hundred K on it without feeling it.
$50k is going to be on the cheap side for any case that ultimately involves the court. Anytime a case goes to trial, you can easily be looking at $1M+.
There's a reason companies keep lawyers on staff. It's a whole lot cheaper to give a lawyer an annual salary than it is to hire out a lawfirm as the standard rates for law-firms are insanely high. On the low end, $150/hour. On the high end, $400. With things like 15 minute minimums (so that one draft response ends up costing $100).
Take a deposition for 3 hours, with 2 lawyers, that'll be $2400.
Doubt that. There's no point of bringing in a litigator on day 1 of a trial save for the fact they are probably a better public speaker. Whatever needed to get done needed to be done well before trial started.
Sure there is, if you can send back a strong response to a challenge, a potential litigant may back down ultimately saving money.
On staff legal council is there to be able to make the call when a more expensive firm should be hired and brought in. There's a lot of BS lawsuits, however, that flow through. For example, every software company that gets big enough will likely get sued for some BS patent infringement. Having on staff legal will be able to make the call of "yeah, you should just give them $10k to go away". That's a lot cheaper than hiring a firm to come in and then tell you "Yeah, you should give them $10k to go away".
Particularly for a business, it takes years before any case gets close to going to trial. Plenty of time for your council to make the determination on when bigger guns should be brought in.
>Sure there is, if you can send back a strong response to a challenge, a potential litigant may back down ultimately saving money.
Do you litigate? Hiring a new attorney to show up day of trial only communicates to the other side that it's clown-city.
>On staff legal council is there to be able to make the call when a more expensive firm should be hired and brought in. There's a lot of BS lawsuits, however, that flow through. For example, every software company that gets big enough will likely get sued for some BS patent infringement. Having on staff legal will be able to make the call of "yeah, you should just give them $10k to go away". That's a lot cheaper than hiring a firm to come in and then tell you "Yeah, you should give them $10k to go away".
Do you litigate? Do you know what's involved to actually get to a trial? Let alone the day of trial? In house is going to take depositions and brief summary judgment? In house is going to prepare the pre trial order? Get proposed jury instructions? Again, do you litigate?
>Particularly for a business, it takes years before any case gets close to going to trial. Plenty of time for your council to make the determination on when bigger guns should be brought in.
You said, in particular, "up until the point where you start a trial."
> You said, in particular, "up until the point where you start a trial."
That was wrong of me to say.
My intent was more to communicate that there's a lot of legal work before a case gets close to going to trial or even discovery which an in-house attorney can and will handle. Including evaluating if a case needs the big guns called in.
For what it's worth (to you), I've only ever dealt with one in-house litigation team and they were monsters. Typically, once a suit is filed, you get someone serious on it. It'd be pretty crazy to have a non-litigator draft responsive pleadings like an answer or a motion to dismiss.
"Drill baby drill" will be echoed so long as petroleum companies and petroleum rich nations dump billions into propaganda outlets, politician campaigns, and in the US, PAC groups to support "drill baby drill" friendly politicians.
So long as that dynamic exists, it doesn't matter if 80% of the electorate screams for change. So long as the incumbent advantage exists forcing people to vote mostly on social issues, these sorts of economic and world affecting issues will simply be ignored.
There's a reason, to this day, you'll find Democrats talk about the wonders of fracking, clean coal, and carbon capture.
IDK how to change this other than first identifying the issue. Our politicians are mostly captured by their donors. That's the only will they really care about enacting.
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