Did you read the article which explicitly debunked this exact short+quippy+wrong common talking point?
If so, and you still feel like his record is bad, do you wanna expand on that maybe with reference to some of the factual claims that are made in the article you're commenting on?
What about the continued oil and gas subsidies? What about continuing to subsidize EVs instead of focusing on public transit and, his personal favorite, trains.
Biden is moving us more significantly in the right direction than Trump, Obama or Bush... but, as a famous climate activate famously says, "we gotta go fast".
Way better than any president for the last 24 years but that's not enough.
Still better than Trump.
Way better than any president for the last 24 years but that's not enough.
If that's what you're actually saying, I can agree with that.
(To put quantitative numbers to it BTW, the hope is a 40% reduction in US emissions by 2030. That's way too little way too late, but blaming that aspect of it on Biden specifically, when he was able to pass the climate bill in the current we'll-fight-you-if-you-even-say-it's-real political climate, seems unfair. As does shifting the conversation away from "how much is this gonna do" and towards "does this involve giving money to oil companies.")
Pretty much - Biden is doing better than any other president but we need a much more aggressive climate action change. Every other president has gotten an F on climate change. Biden eeked out a C- that's better but not good.
Well... if the United States as a whole is hell-bent on climate destruction and in total denial that the whole thing is even a priority in the first place, and bringing Biden into the equation suddenly brought the result output up to a C-, what does that mean Biden's contribution to the average is?
I'm not trying to say to take a break on forward progress or give him any kind of undeserved credit. But it seems very weird to pick out the one guy out of the whole in-power class who produced a detectable step forward, and then try to say that because the step wasn't big enough that means he's a big problem.
You misunderstand, I'm not picking on the one guy. I protested Bush and Obama's mishandling of climate change and would have done the same for Trump and Biden if I was still in the states. Biden is the best of those four but still not good enough - and there are politicians he could tap to make more effective changes.
You misunderstand, I'm not picking on the one guy.
Just saying he sucks? Because he only made 40% progress with almost the entire rest of the system rigged against him?
I mean, if you want to walk it back to "he made some progress but it's very small in comparison to the scale of the problem and we need more," then like I say, I can definitely agree with that statement. But I'm not feeling like I misunderstood anything of what you said initially. I just think it wasn't at all the same as these more recent more reasonable statements.
Makes perfect sense. I committed a rookie mistake. Almost everything you actually said, I more or less agree with. (Although, the infrastructure bill has the largest investment in public transit in America's history; it just was in there as opposed to the climate bill.) But yeah most of my real irritation was directed at the first guy.
Sorry are you actually asking for a list or something? Trump is corrupt to the core, entangled with foreign business and government, cause a fucking insurrection attempt, hold court with Nazis and worse.
All my comment implied was that Biden sucks the situation sucks, but given the current scenario, trump is worse. There's no denying that.
Pretty sure the linked article denies the "Biden sucks" part of it, with extensive citations. Did you have some sort of reason why Biden's climate policy sucks, like I asked for?
(I actually have a pretty good idea of what specific individual fact you might cite as the reason why his whole policy sucks... but let's see.)
The thesis of the article is that Biden is objectively leaps and bounds better than Trump, and better than an average establishment candidate, as far as not killing the planet. Your point that we need to keep moving forward from there if we're going to be able to keep existing on the planet is also 100% true, yes.
Argh, freaking paywalls piss me off so goddamn much, all the important information gets hidden away and we just get propaganda
(e; I really should add - thank you for posting that other link)
That's kind of similar to what I'm talking about, but it's not the specific thing. What I'm talking about is Biden's climate legislation, which authorized all sorts of tax credits and spending, the largest single recipients of which have been oil and gas companies. Like, I know there was an article in the Washington Post in early spring of 2023 that had the factoid that BP specifically got more money out of Biden's climate bill than any single other organization, but I forgot to save the link and I haven't been able to find it since.
I agree that Biden is objectively better for the environment than Trump, but while he's addressing climate change he's making the problem of overly wealthy corporations and individuals with way too much political power worse, and that's something we really need to reckon with soon.
Argh, freaking paywalls piss me off so goddamn much, all the important information gets hidden away and we just get propaganda
Unpopular opinion: Paid-for-by-the-reader journalism is objectively about 10 times better (less propaganda) than subsidized-by-someone-else-in-order-to-produce-a-certain-type-of-story "journalism." If you don't like propaganda in your news then paywalls should be your friend and paying for the newspaper should be your solution.
What I'm talking about is Biden's climate legislation, which authorized all sorts of tax credits and spending, the largest single recipients of which have been oil and gas companies.
What on earth are you talking about? Can you give me more details on what you're claiming here? Here's a breakdown of what was in the climate bill. "It’s broken down to include $60bn for a clean energy manufacturing tax credit and $30bn for a production tax credit for wind and solar ... Democrats believe the strategy could put the country on a path to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030, and 'would represent the single biggest climate investment in US history, by far.'"
How much are you saying is going to oil and gas companies in this, under what provision(s)?
I agree that Biden is objectively better for the environment than Trump, but while he's addressing climate change
Imma stop you right there -- isn't this the opposite of what you said initially? That he was an evil shithead specifically because of the damage he did as regards the climate?
Regarding paid for journalism - I definitely agree that journalists should be compensated for the important work they do, but charging every individual reader is a bad solution to this problem that leaves people without financial means without the information they need to meaningfully participate in our society, and at the end of the day if I have to choose my allegiance is with the global poor over journalists.
However, I don't think we need to make that choice, and I think instead what we should do is look to non-profit org models that solicit donations from readers with means (e.g. ProPublica, NPR, PBS, etc.). I think that's better for readers, and it's better for journalists (like, just look at all the media layoffs and shuttered sites in the last few years for how well for profit models have ended up working out for journos).
What on earth are you talking about?
Same thing as you are, you're focusing on what the legislation summarily declares those monies are for, I'm focusing on who they're actually going to. The biggest investors in clean energy are all the same players who were big players in traditional energy (e.g. BP, Exxon, and all the hedge funds and financial institutions that stand behind them). Instead of holding these organizations and individuals accountable in any real way (say, requiring them to make investments in clean energy on their own dime), we're paying them off in a variety of ways to try to get them to behave better. If that actually moves us to a sustainable system of energy generation that will still be a really bitter pill to swallow, but, given the history of these orgs and individuals lying relentlessly about what they were doing to the climate and what they knew about what they were doing to the climate, I'm also worried that they're going to take this money and then find legal loopholes that allow them to keep doing what they're doing, and ten or so years from now all we'll have to show for this legislation are a bunch of very well written articles nobody will read on why this legislation didn't end up doing what we hoped it would.
isn't this the opposite of what you said initially? That he was an evil shithead specifically because of the damage he did as regards the climate?
No, I should have been more clear there. The heads of BP, Exxon, etc. are the evil shitheads who have done damage to the climate for decades and lied about it and really ought to face severe criminal punishment imo. Instead, Biden's trying to work with those evil shitheads and pay them off instead of holding them accountable. I think that's cowardly and shortsighted, but (for whatever it's worth) I also think at the end of the day he's trying to do the right thing, he's just going about it the entirely wrong way.
