houseofleft

Yup, this 100%!

If anyones in doubt, I was pretty horrified to learn meat reared chickens are sometimes slaughtered as early as 35 days old.

https://www.rspca.org.uk/webContent/staticImages/BroilerCampaign/EatSitSufferRepeat.pdf

This is a genuinely interesting article about global politics, but I sorta get the impression there's this underlying "Does Europe pick US or China as a trade partner?" question at the heart of it.

Seems like this pulls into very 1 dimensional view, and surely the answer is just, Europe should be sceptical of China and USA's motives, trade wherever it's beneficial, and push for the things it values (positive take would be workers rights, renewable energy etc).

Trump is trying push a whole pick sides narative on the world, that seems pretty ignorant to actual reality, and just ends up with everyone more fractured and weak.

Yeah I can't help but think this. I'm in the UK and 5 years-ish ago I bought an ICE, I couldn't really afford an EV at the rime, but a big part of my thinking was that I didn't expect the conservative government to do much to support the transition.

EVs require new infrastructure, and people need to trust that's gonna be built.

Based on me reading wikipedia, in Hoover's fairness, Smoot-Hawley was mainly a congress led thing and he mainly rubber stamped it. He also introduced stimulus to help industries that he wanted to up their output.

Trump isn't doing anything stimulus-wise (if anything the opposite by introducing huge government cuts) to aid the new manufacturing processes he's assuming will spring up overnight, and he also seems to be the mastermind behind rebranding the US as tariff-land.

I don't know what my point is, that Trump's policies are a lot worse than Hoover's? I doubt anyone needed me to reach that conclusion to be fair.

Trump crashes the US economy and deters consimer goods, especially oil. Alternative conspiracy that he's really an environmentalist? /s

They have pretty high tariff rates in the EU tbf[0], obviously not anything like 104%, but still very high compared to normal rates.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly20n4d0g9o

Many observers see the law as the last hope for preventing climate change

I get what this is saying, but I really dislike so much about this kind of framing, which makes up the whole article.

There is no "preventing climate change" - the climate has already changed. Whenever we talk of it in win/lose terms it quickly becomes a "we're fucked, give up" narrative that only benefits polluters. Like almost everyone, I value human life, and the life of and in the ecosytem we inhabit. Anything that progresses that is a win for me, even if it's the small win of "thanks to x, less deforestation happened that would have otherwise happened".

Which is a long way of saying, climate change is a scale, and we should be trying to minimise it as much as possible.

I also really don't like the idea of thinking of law as "the last hope" because other options haven't been a silver bullet. No one thing achieved abolition, or civil right, or the woman's lib movement, just a whole bunch of motivated people doing what they could, when they saw opportunity too.

If there is a silver bullet, it's just this: value the climate. Do whatever you can to protect it wheb you get a chance. Maybe that's law, maybe that's protest. Every person who does something moves the needle further towards what they value.

As a rule of thumb, I feel like replacing things as I normally would, but making sure I replace them with the most environmentally friendly option is the only thing that's financially sustainable.

Change needs to happen at scale, not from one person suddenly buying a new car, cooker, heater, fireplace all in one go. That said, if your replacing a cooker, choosing an induction hob is an absolute no brainer.

As an aside:

If your dryer runs on gas, consider air-drying your clothes.

What? I'm in the UK and a gas fuel clothes dryer sounds absolutely mental. Have I missed something?

Yes!

1. You can obviously get rid of it and board it up, but even with no fire, you can make a feature of it if you tile it nicely.

2. Other fireplaces exist such as artificial electric ones, log fires and biofuel ones. Those all have their own emissions and benefits.

I live in the UK and did 1 a while back, we have candles in the space and a nice wooden mantelpiece. One thing I didn't expect is how much warmer the house now is. We obviously can't turn a fire on for heat, but when it's not on, not having heat pouring out the chimney makes a big difference.

I think a nuclear future is definitely greener than our gas, oil and coal based present. But wouldn't a renewable energy future be much, much better than either?

I've heard the argument that nuclear can provide a consistent base, which I suppose is true. But you need a way to flex the remaining renewables you have still, since nuclear can't turn up and down as easily as fossil fuels. Which to me says, nuclear + renewables requires the energy-flexing mechanisms that would also make pure renewable possible.

So my take is, I think it might help reduce warming somewhat, but really we should be aiming for 100% renewables.

Yeah, you're right. Sorry! Although US have definitely been one of the highest GDP per capita for that time (but like you pointed out, not the top which is what I original said)

Go Grey Socks!

Seriously though, this probably won't affect billionaires because companies like Nike can move most of their operations overseas and avoid paying tariffs during their manufacturing process, and then just pass the cost of to US consumers when they sell to that market.

Even worse, when Trump put tariffs on washing machines (which Biden kept in place) one effect was that US made washing machines (not paying tariffs) jacked up their prices for US consumers simply because there was less competition.

It truly is a sucky world for non-billinaires.