Trump Paris Meta-Decision

[Final-Fan]

robzo100 said:

1. The "guess" was not a reasonable one. The US is capable of 100 Billion so there's no unreasonable logic there. And it happens to be one of the bigger points in the article/agreement in general, so journalistically it's not okay to be reasonable imperfect on that. I'm not gonna bash journalists on the small stuff, but this detail is not a small one.

3. We'll have agree to disagree on this. A floor/cieling on an unmandatory and loose agreement doesn't jive with me. Also, it is in fact guesswork that countries will decide to meet their ramp-up goals only till the last "minute"/year. Proportionally the expectations of the post-2020 payments grossly exceed it's pre-2020 payments. And we are not making good work on pre-2020 even before dropping out.

4. There is of course a cost/benefit to his firm stance on issues. In this case it doesn't have to be win/lose though. In regards to my previous talk of individual efforts overlapping collective ones, dropping out of the agreement puts pressure and responsibility on smaller actors and agents; state level politicians like Bill DeBlasio have vowed to take on the responsibility as have powerful individuals like Michael Bloomberg. The dropping out of this agreement is starting to show where individual loyalities lie - something I, and I hope others now too, will be watching closely.

5. Individuals, especially ones with families, still have individual care for people of the future. Individualism doesn't have to mean self-interest, it's merely the level(the most basic unit of society) at which incentive starts. Many individuals still have external cares about the environment, animals/pets, family, etc. Since you didn't disagree with my point about individuals becoming smarter and more aware of things like the TC with each passing generation, there's no reason they can't avoid specific iterations of the TC when they know it will destroy future loved ones by only caring about themselves. Imo as we get smart and more capable, not all issues need a collective authority pointing a gun at our head to tell us what is right, we can figure it out for ourselves.

6. When you decide to delve into the details yourself you will realize what a holy un-uniform mess it is. To actually be able to tell what processes(transportation energy, methane/cattle, CFCs, litering, etc.) contribute less/greater pollution to a reaosnable certainty, combined with somehow discriminating those process between countries, while taking into account larger planetary climate systems already in place...and then to figure out what solutions to implement, of which Paris-Agreement supporters recognize don't do enough. You said science is evolving on the matter - it better because it's somehwat of a Pandora's Box right now which is why I actually made a serious comment about planetary migration.

Imo it will take more than governments to fix this. We need individual actors, organizations, and smaller levels of government(that aren't bound by the shackles of a ~400million-participant democracy) to step up and look at problems in innovative ways(reversing/slowing climate change is a very straight-forward inside-the-box idea). I veiw it as a child-parent relationship in all seriousness. I want Trump to get rid of the decades of conditioning that have lulled people into the feeling that governments will take care of everything, or that they can take care of everything.

Collective Power is not the answer to everything, hopefully that was felt behind most of my assertions. I think we've been able to bear eachother ;)

1.  Your argument relies on the assumption that the grammar of the article allowed the interpretation that the $100B/yr figure applied only to the USA.  I've already explained that this is not the case and provided my evidence.  ("The grammar of the passage does not support the interpretation that it could be a US-only goal and that other countries have other individual goals.  ("richer countries, like the US, are supposed to send $100 billion a year in aid by 2020"))  But I will go into more detail. 

Consider the statement "richer countries, like the US, are supposed to send $100 billion a year".  "like the US" is a parenthetical phrase, which modifies, clarifies, or otherwise concerns itself with the preceding phrase "richer countries".  In this context, the US is one of these richer countries.  This statement logically allows the possibility that richer countries like the US are supposed to collectively send $100B/yr., and it also allows the possibility that richer countries like the US are supposed to individually send $100B/yr. each.   It does not logically allow the possibility that the US and no one else is supposed to individually send $100B/yr.  This interpretation directly conflicts with the plural "countries" and is not compatible with the way the statement was written. 

This being the case, and since you already said that the idea of many many countries each individually sending $100B/yr. is crazy, that eliminates one of the two logical possibilities, leaving only the other one, which in fact is the correct information.  Also, supposing for the sake of argument that they were wrong not to specify between these two possibilities, they are still not at all at fault for not excluding the possiblity you are mentioning (that the US alone is supposed to individually send $100B/yr.), because in actuality they did not ever introduce that as a possibility. 

3.  OK.  As for the guesswork, I did say those were just my personal speculations.  I agree to calling it guesswork, especially since I was not building on any particular evidence better than "gut feeling". 

4.  True, but it's less than would get done with all the states participating. 

5.  I acknowledge what you said, but nothing you said convinces me away from the position that "I very strongly disagree that [what you mention] has succeeded [i.e., permeated the culture in sufficient numbers and degree] to such a great extent that individual action alone will suffice to meet the challenges we face as a global society regarding those issues without action at the state level."  Fishermen in the Grand Banks destroyed their own livelihood.  I should note that the article does mention that local fishermen warned about the problem but bigger trawlers kept overfishing.  In that sense this is an example of where the individual level was unable to overcome the negative impulses of sub-state-level groups above the level of the individual due to lack of state-level intervention in response to the warning of the individuals.  In other words, large fishing companies overfished it, not locals, while the locals were not able to get the government to respond in time.  However, this caveat in no way makes the situation a worse comparison to what we are talking about; if anything, it makes it even closer. 

6.  You're mistaken if you think I have not already done quite a bit of looking.  I also disagree that removing national level action will be a net positive, though you do raise a good point that states, cities, private groups, and yes individuals will fill some of the vacuum. 

I would certainly agree that collective power isn't the answer to everything, but I do think it is the answer to some things.  Individual level action didn't get us to the moon and I don't think it ever realistically could have.  And it won't IMO be a substitute in the coming two to four decades for national and international cooperation on the issue of climate change.  How familiar are you with the problem humanity faced concerning the ozone layer a few decades ago, and how we dealt with it? 

I will admit that the attitude of some people, "let the government do everything, and I will do nothing about the issue that I am not literally forced to do by the government", is certainly a problem, but I really don't think "government doing nothing, so the people will have to do everything individually without support" is going to be better able to solve the problem in the short term future. 

I would like to take a moment to examine the aside "(reversing/slowing climate change is a very straight-forward inside-the-box idea)".  I do not really see how that is an idea that is either inside or outside the box.  There aren't really many possibilities for the climate other than "go down, stop changing, go up slower, go up faster".  If you're referring to ideas like "how to live better with the climate change", I assure you that is within the scope of what is being envisioned, but it is seen as better if it changes less.  Can you give an example of what you meant by "out of the box"?  I assume you didn't mean "we don't have to worry about climate change if we all move to space stations".