Okay, so idk what's with the left lately, but the fact that they're making me defend Hillary not once, but more than once, is concerning. We already discussed how they keep shouting down the poor woman any time she speaks at a college or something and calling her a war criminal. I didn't discuss how they went after her when she was with that Afghani human rights activist who got shot in the head as a kid, but that was apparently a thing. And now they're going after her for posting this chart on climate change.
So what's the issue with this chart? Basically, Biden isn't doing enough, Biden bad, we need to vote for the candidate to get us onto the line. Except....we kinda need to explain what these lines are and what our options were and are, and because I did study some climate change legislation on this blog and am well informed enough to develop my opinion on it, I feel like I need to explain the situation a bit.
The yellow target line is basically the IPCC's guidelines on climate change. it's the target all climate change plans are trying to comply to. Basically, to avert the worst aspects of climate change, we need to halve our CO2 emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, and we need to be carbon neutral by 2050.
Biden's line is what his legislative accomplishment, the inflation reduction act accomplishes. I discussed it on this blog, basically it reduces emissions by 40% by 2030, being 80% compliant with the 2030 deadline for halving emissions. It's...not ideal. I'll discuss how we got here a bit later, but it's better than nothing. The red line with Trump is basically what would happen if we repeal the inflation reduction act. Basically we get nothing.
Anyway, to defend Biden here, I think it's time we do a history of the past 5 years on climate plans.
Bernie 2020, the green new deal, and the climate debate
Bernie is the big one who spearheaded the call for a climate emergency. He basically sold it as we got 10 years to get our crap together, and we need a green new deal to help us reach carbon neutrality by 2030. Notice the issue with Bernie right off the bat? We only need to get half way by 2030, but Bernie wanted to go all the way. But bernie and the left's alarmist rhetoric worked. It succeeded in pulling the democratic party to the left, and virtually all democratic presidential candidates had their own plans. And I analyzed these plans on my blog. I won't link them all but you can find them back in august 2022 on this blog. I discussed Build Back Better, Bernie's plan, and several other plans of different sizes and scopes. After looking at them all, I then summarized my opinions on all of them. Mainly, I was looking at two things, cost, and compliance with IPCC guidelines. I am someone who wants to minimize costs. Unlike the left I dont romanticize the idea of the green new deal and massive government jobs programs. I see climate spending like defense spending, necessary....but unsexy and not really sparking joy. We need to get the goal, so let's do what we need to, without overspending, but also while achieving it. And in that sense, two plans stood out as the best for me. Biden's build back better, which i was originally critical of but warmed up to after seeing the alternatives, and Yang's plan.
Biden's Build Back Better plan was designed clearly with bernie's input in mind. Bernie lost the primary, but Biden actually did put the work in to appease Bernie and while his plan was around 1/5 the cost of Bernie's, it was still IPCC compliant. And I actually warmed up to it, as being one of the best plans of the bunch.
I admit I didn't know this in 2020, I kinda bought into Bernie's climate emergency rhetoric and figured Bernie wanted to solve the problem and we need to do this and UBI can wait, while moderates didn't wanna do enough and just wanted half measures, but after studying the policies, I realized Biden's "half measure" was actually a full measure and Bernie's plan was gross overkill.I mean, just for reference, going back to HRC's chart, build back better actually was that yellow line. Biden had a plan going all the way to 2050 of how to ramp down carbon emissions. Yang also had a decent plan that I liked, that I slept on in 2020, and I kinda wish I actually looked at it more as it did influence me to vote for Bernie at the time, but I digress.
What Bernie's green new deal would've done was make another, fourth line, going down to 0 by 2030. It was overly ambitious, overly expensive, and again, too extreme. But again, leftists be leftists, they basically wanted this to push their little socialist agenda of a job guarantee, and yeah that's one of the reasons I cooled on leftists. Not only does this conflict with my UBI but it's not necessary IMO. I'm fine with a plan that reaches that yellow line.
So view that yellow line as build back better. What happened then?
EDIT: here is a fixed version of the chart that explains what I'm saying.
Congress, Joe Manchin, and the ####ening
Well, to put a long story short, Joe Manchin happened. Biden wanted to pass build back better, which wouldve gotten us down 50% by 2030, and down to 0% by 2050. He wanted to put that framework in place. That's exactly what his original plan delivered on. But, he won the house by a narrow margin in 2020, and we had a 50/50 senate, with 2 democrats, Joe Manchin, and Kirsten Sinema, holding everything up. Joe Manchin himself was ranting and raving about entitlement societies and he basically forced Biden away from everything, tanking just about everything that he wanted to do. So we got nothing.
However, after tons of compromise, we got the inflation reduction act, a half measure compromise that we were able to push through with the help of Manchin and Sinema, who basically held the entire process hostage.
And with that, we got 40% by 2030, and no framework for further reduction.
Hence the blue line.
Dont blame the mediocrity of the blue line on Biden, that was fricking Joe Manchin's fault. Biden's original plan WAS the yellow line. Bernie's original line would've gotten us to 0 by 2030, an insanely ambitious goal.
So what now?
Well unless we can fix congress and get enough seats to pass build back better, this is what we're stuck with until 2028. BUT IT'S SOMETHING. And right now our choices are to reelect Biden, who will keep the framework in place getting us at least 80% of where we need to be by the end of his term, elect Trump who will basically repeal the stuff because he and republicans are dangerous idiots who seem to wanna see the world burn, both figuratively or literally, or protest vote for greens whose plans are so extreme they exceed the yellow line. And I admit, if youre into protest voting, that might be a good thing to do in principle. I'm not opposed to that, I can kinda respect that, but i honestly think staying the course with Biden is the better strategic move.
Even if we elected Jill Stein or Howie Hawkins or Cornel west or whoever the fudge, they still gotta deal with congress. The house will likely be republican, the senate, if i had to guess, will lean democrat, but I really don't know, I dont wanna even begin predicting that until we're out of the primary phase of the election cycle (so basically June/July). I mean early numbers im seeing seem relatively favorable for democrats, like for as bad as Biden is doing electorally right now, the down ballot dems seem to be doing MUCH better, but we really don't know what the outcome is gonna be. But it's gonna be close, if dems win their margins will be narrow, and we'll only need a couple random turncoats to tank everything.
Basically, if BIDEN can't pass his agenda through congress, good luck getting the green party candidate to do so. Their agenda is gonna be DOA. We literally dont have the support or wherewithal to pass anything. The buck doesnt stop with Biden, it's primarily a congressional issue. The whole reason why the blue line that represents Biden is so milquetoast instead of that yellow line isnt even Biden in the first place, Biden's original plan, which was based on Bernie's overly ambitious and aggressive plan, WAS that yellow line. Leftist plans are so aggressive they're off the charts, they wanna hit 0 by 2030, or maybe by this point 2035.
So....the plan? Elect as many democrats as we can to congress, reelected Biden, and then in 2028 and later, we reorient, maybe getting another candidate in the future, with another congress in the future, to pass a more aggressive plan to get us to the finish line. Biden just bought us some time. It's not the best plan, it's not gonna accomplish everything on our own, but he passed what he could, and we at least are getting somewhere. This ins't to say that we don't have more to do. We're gonna need to revisit this issue in 2028, and 2032, and 2036, etc. All the way to 2050. And then we'll have to keep defending against republican idiots and their stupid "drill baby drill" mentality and "god wouldnt make a world we could destroy" and other nonsense like that.
So yeah. I'm gonna once again endorse Biden. I'm gonna support democrats down ballot. If we want to hit that yellow line, we need more dems in office. We need them to keep the presidency, and we need them to expand their lead in congress. We need more blue seats, period.
So, that said, i'm going to actually agree with Hillary. I dont think we can afford to protest vote. it's a meaningless circlejerk this election cycle. Even if by some remote chance jill stein got elected, she still needs congress to pass her plans. And we couldnt even get biden's passed. Again, BIDEN'S ORIGINAL PLAN WAS THE YELLOW LINE. The blue line is what we got instead, the inflation reduction act. I keep repeating myself because people NEED to understand that. You NEED to get that to understand what HRC posted.
So let's stop circlejerking, we all know Biden didnt do enough. It wasn't his fault, though, it was congress's, and yes, we need to do better. But let's just focus on reelecting Biden now. We can still take further action after 2028 and get us closer to that yellow line. Although admittedly, the more we delay, the more aggressive we will end up needing to be long term in order to make the 2050 deadline. With biden's plan we were talking $200-300 billion a year. Bernie's 10 year plan was $1.5 trillion a year. See the problem? THe more we delay and mess up now, but more aggressive the action we will need to take in the future. And unlike some leftists im not a fan of accelerationism here. I just wanna get it done and would PREFER the moderate action, because i dont like the idea of spending trillions and trillions on this if we can spend hundreds of billions instead.
Conclusion
So yeah, TLDR, vote for Biden, Hillary is right here.
PS, leftists, stop getting so far off base you make me defend HILLARY. You're doing that a lot lately, and it's like, wtf, how much do you have to screw up if you're making me defend Hillary of all people. But you guys keep doing it all the time lately. It's maddening. It makes me feel like I'm becoming a centrist when Im actually not. Well, I guess on THIS issue I am if "the left" represents bernie sanders overkill level of action. But keep in mind, I just wanna get this solved and spend the rest of the money on UBI.I dont wanna spend a metric crapton of money on climate as it comes at the cost of not being able to afford UBI, and clearly, I have my priorities in order.
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