Republicans have made climate denial part of their identity. The US isn't capable of doing anything federally until the nation is reunified.

Look up Democrats' views on nuclear energy.

Nuclear is too slow and expensive to make any change. Just embrace wind and solar and everything will be fine.

Don't be absurd. There is a ginormous difference between a party whose position is that climate change is a problem that we have to deal with but doesn't support all possible ways to deal with it, and a party whose position until recently was that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by China or socialists or others to destroy the US, and whose current position is that maybe it is happening but we should not take any action and in fact should increase our fossil fuel use.

This is a good point, but is much being done while a democrat is in charge? Seems like Joe has squandered the best part of another term.

President Biden can’t create legislation. That has to come from Congress. McCarthy (R) is speaker of the house.

“Can’t the President issue executive orders?”

Yes but the Supreme Court has been striking down and limiting the EPA from executing on executive orders or other mandates that the agency has. For example last year [1]

  > By a vote of 6 to 3, the court said that any time an agency does something big and new – in this case addressing climate change – the regulation is presumptively invalid, unless Congress has specifically authorized regulating in this sphere.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1103595898/supreme-court-epa-...

-Edit in response to OP edit-

Biden actually has addressed the UN at least once [2] and discussed climate change. He wouldn’t address NATO on this topic because NATO is a defensive military alliance and most NATO members are well aware of climate change risks.

He doesn’t need to explain to other political leaders that his “hands are tied” because they already know and understand how the U.S. political landscape works.

[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-challenges-act-pandemi...

Democratic states can't create legislation for their own states?

I was responding to the person above who specifically called out the president, ergo federal level.

Second I want to mention there aren’t “Democratic” states or “Republican” states. Just states. Each state is full of Americans. Sometimes they vote for one party and sometimes they vote for another. For example I used to vote Republican and then the party has diverged from what I value. I live in the same state and that hasn’t changed.

To answer your question though which is why can’t states with supposed Democrat leadership or control create legislation for their own states - they can and often do. For example [1].

It’s important to note that Congress can take action at the federal level, and state legislatures can also take action at the state level and they’ll probably be able to do some very precise legislation that the federal government would have trouble with, but then the federal government can use its much greater power (and budget) to do things that any single state or group of states cannot.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/06/business/california-emissions...

CA and NY are passing tons of legislation to fight climate change. They are 100% leading the charge.

What's the point? Any progress will require massive amounts of funding to solve these issues and states can't print money.

they can and do.

> He wouldn’t address NATO on this topic because NATO is a defensive military alliance and most NATO members are well aware of climate change risks.

The US military labelled climate change as a natsecurity threat [1], unfortunately NATO is only concerned with other countries invading or waging a war against the member states and thus such problems can't be addressed even though they are directly related to national security.

[1] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/27...

Sure but as such there isn’t anything for President Biden to do here in terms of an address or speech which was the point.

I also don’t think invasion of member states is the only thing NATO is concerned with. For instance, NATO allies are coordinating and providing direct military support to Ukraine which isn’t a member state.

Use you’re imagination I guess, we can’t do the same things and expect different results.

I don’t follow. What good would addressing NATO members who are trying to take action on climate change do when the problem for President Biden is a Congress (House in particular) that doesn’t even think that rapid climate change is a real thing, let alone a threat?

For the US climate change policy completely falls at the feet of one group of people, and that’s Republicans. Period. End of story. No possible narrative otherwise exists.

This shows an enormous amount of ignorance over how the US works.

Because of gerrymandering, republicans own the House of Representatives, no legislation can pass from the legislative branch if the Congress and the House don’t agree.

The executive branch can not “just” make new legislation. It’s not part of its power or job.

You can’t blame Joe because Marjorie Taylor Greene and every so and so lunatic has decided to screw everyone else and shove their head into the ground.

This shows an enormous amount of ignorance of how federalism works. Nothing is stopping Californians from banning fossil fuels.

The chain is specifically about federal level. Nobody denies that things can be done at the state level.

> The US isn't capable of doing anything federally until the nation is reunified.

California's Governor Gavin Newsom has banned the sale of new gasoline cars after 2035.

Man I would love to see us go 100% nuclear. Just slap 50 power plants down and we'd be done, 10 years, in-and-out. It'd only cost like 100 billion or so, basically free.

Not just the House. The Senate is de facto gerrymandered as well. Two senators for 700k in Wyoming vs 40M in California.

The worse the situation becomes, the less will be done.

We could have taken action even 10, 20, or 40 years ago, but so far, we have done nothing significant to prevent it from happening.

The longer we wait, the more expensive and complicated the solutions will become. Politicians are often reluctant to make unpopular moves that might anger their base, so they tend to focus on short-term goals rather than long-term sustainability (though Bernie might have been an exception, imho). We are searching for solutions that maintain the status quo.

One of the most significant issues is the exponential growth of the human population driven by our financial system's need for constant growth. Yet, we have not even begun to start discussing that.

> If we don't, who will?

Those few who'll somehow manage to stay alive.

> the exponential growth of the human population driven by our financial system's need for constant growth. Yet, we have not even begun to start discussing that

Probably a good place to begin that discussion would be with some sort of demonstration that this is actually a thing that's happening. It seems like a difficult [1] argument to construct, so you should probably get on that.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-populat...

Thanks ... you're right, I was thinking ahead, that should not be there.

"the exponential growth driven by our financial system's need for constant growth"

I've updated the original comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration

"In tracking the effects of human activity upon the Earth, a number of socioeconomic and earth system parameters are utilized including population, economics, water usage, food production, transportation, technology, greenhouse gases, surface temperature, and natural resource usage"

https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_acc...

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Human overpopulation per se hasn't been a matter of plausible concern since the 70s; what is concerning is that the "green revolution" in agriculture is dependent on roughly our current level of technological development, and that's what has produced yields capable of supporting the human population at its current level.

> that's what has produced yields capable of supporting the human population at its current level

Those yields are fully dependent on fossil fuels, agree. But the methods used are extremely destructive (soils, biodiversity, pollution, energy ...).

That's too why the reform of agriculture (and switch to plant-based diets) is so desperately needed, and pronto.

>> We've so far done nothing to stop it from happening.

That is completely untrue. We’ve certainly not done enough but the world of 40, 20 and even 10 years ago was much worse. Unfortunately most of the changes have been ones forced on individuals while businesses and governments continue to pollute and cause damage.

You're right that the system is set up in such a way, that it often prevents meaningful changes on the individual level. However, the individuals are still consumers of those businesses, and our habits are driving their profits and further destruction.

The change has to come on both levels.

Let's not use it as an excuse to do nothing.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

Human population growth has stopped everywhere except some African countries.

Thankfully, China has already been making large investments in solar power and batteries. Might not be enough to save us, but it's enough to note.

I think it wouldn't even require so much as a WW2 mobilization. It needs 3-6% of GDP (globally) to replace fossils fuels and get to net Zero.

The intellectual energy in the US is entirely beholden to economics at the present. There are plenty of intelligent individuals who could be mobilized on this issue but by and large they are subjugated by the language of economics into chasing teh dollarz.

Like you mentioned, mobilization is possible, look at WW2, intellectuals were entirely captured to serve military efforts during that period. Then w/ the neolib period it shifted to being captured by the language of economics which is where we are currently.

It really is on the precarious cognitariat to break the shackles of the current burden of working inside of the stagnant linguistic framework of economics. Economics is anti-science.