General Thread

I think you misunderstood me. Trump has only accelerated the shift away from traditional institutions by publicly highlighting their biases and inspiring even more extreme backlash in “journalism” and academia.

The media and academia have been opposed to the beliefs and ideas of a portion of the population for years. Trump was the first figure in a position of credibility to call that out and people appreciate that about him. Even if they disagree with a lot of what he does and represents, the fact that he is (or was) opposed to the same people that they’ve been marginalized by for years made them want to rally around him.

With a cool 10 trillion bucks, you could spend on infrastructure AND send out stimulus checks :)

“Meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”

There’s a LOT lurking in that one nice sentence. You’re deciding which businesses survive and which ones don’t. It’s essentially government destruction of a major industry and the livelihood of millions of people. Not to mention the knock-on effect on industries like the chemical industry and anything in basic materials that remains competitive due to cheap NG. We’re still going to need those things, but they won’t be made here if cheap feedstocks go away (or they’ll just be more expensive and inflation will hit who it always hits the hardest: the lower class).

I’m not saying the government doesn’t currently pick winners and losers, but I don’t hear much talk about the massive economic destruction the GND is going to cause as a result of the transition. Now, if you think all that is justified for the sake of reducing emissions, that’s fine. But hiding it behind the veneer of “creating jobs” when you’re also destroying jobs is evil.

Also, as a reminder: the materials for the FF-free infrastructure are largely produced elsewhere and with a pretty sizeable carbon footprint of their own. Under the GND, you’re replacing FF’s produced in the middle of a desert no one cares about with fair wages, etc. in the US with copper, lithium, cobalt, and other minerals that aren’t necessarily “ethically” sourced and are definitely causing more environmental damage in other countries. But that’s their problem, right?

That hasn’t happened by any stretch of the imagination to this point in history. It’s hard to believe it’s going to happen in the next decade. The governments in many prolific mineral-producing countries aren’t terribly effective and, shockingly, their politicians are often corrupt.

And, it’s not just about what laws are or aren’t in place. It’s the fact that all of those materials have to be mined. Mining is a really messy business that the US has all but eliminated and few Americans appreciate that and the environmental “changes” that happen as a result. These changes are going to be happening in someone else’s country. For a significant period of time, FF production will be replaced by mineral production in other countries using processes that make O&G processes look minimally invasive.

It’s also about the fact that you’re exporting jobs that won’t be recouped by effectively replacing O&G production with mineral production.