Re:Ask HN: How to motivate society to plant 1t trees?
by edgefield0 on Sunday July 07, 2019 @04:22PM
(#20377585)
I hear you on voting but we had Obama in place for eight years and we did next to nothing as a country on climate change. At best, we took some incremental steps that were totally insufficient.
Re:Ask HN: How to motivate society to plant 1t trees?
by blacksqr on Sunday July 07, 2019 @04:59PM
(#20377812)
I agree with you on Obama, but every time voting is brought up on HN, there is an immediate responsive implicit assumption that voting for president is the only kind of voting that exists.
Americans have opportunities to vote on many levels of government. All those votes have a potential effect on policy. One woke vote for president is not going to counteract all the other bad votes or non-votes.
Obama would have done a lot more if his feet had been held to the fire by a more progressive Congress. But climate action opponents took control of the House in the very next election, effectively ending Obama's chance to take significant action.
Re:Ask HN: How to motivate society to plant 1t trees?
by smt88 on Sunday July 07, 2019 @06:06PM
(#20378261)
Obama may have done more than you think, but it's true we didn't do nearly enough.
My comment was about voting for your local, state, and congressional legislators, though. A president doesn't (and shouldn't) have unilateral power to mobilize the country against climate change. Congress controls the money and the laws, and it was never that liberal under Obama.
The scope and cost of a PR campaign that would convince people to plant trees is staggering, and there's no single entity willing to pay for it. It's an issue of government taking action and extracting the money from the companies who have profited from pollution.
1. https://theconversation.com/government-action-isnt-enough-fo...