cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/1514949
I wouldn’t consider voting for any of these people in the general election, but I recognize that people often live in gerrymandered districts, and therefore vote in Republican primaries in order to have some influence over their local representatives. For people living in such a district, choosing a least-bad candidate is a way try and moderate the Republican party just a bit.
Candidates are listed by poll-based estimates of their support, which makes it rather clear that Republicans as a whole have sought to reject any kind of meaningful path to zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump: His actions as president may have caused irreversible damage to the global climate.
DeSantis: He has supported efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change, but not to prevent it.
Scott: He acknowledges climate change but rejects most efforts to stop it.
Ramaswamy: He opposes all government efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Haley: She supports carbon-capture technology but has denounced efforts to reduce emissions.)
Pence: He claims climate change is exaggerated and would prioritize domestic energy production.
Christie: He supports action on climate change with some caveats.
Hutchinson: He denounces government mandates but supports private renewable energy development.
Burgum: He has supported carbon-capture as governor, but what he would do as president is unclear.
Hurd: He acknowledges that climate change is a major threat, but what he would do is unclear.
Suarez: He has pursued significant emission reductions in Miami.
Gas stoves and vehicles are outdated, dirty technology that will die out on their own, no reason not to speed that up. Just because people are stubborn and don’t like change, isnt a good reason to keep them.
Gas stoves aren’t particularly dirty, and they make a ton of sense if you use gas for heat, which is quite efficient.
Home heating and cooking are very low on the list of carbon emissions, especially if you remove wood stoves (which should be obsolete outside of extremely remote areas).
The focus should be on the higher contributors to emissions:
Transportation
The market is already moving toward EVs, so I don’t think the government needs to do anything there. In fact, I’m in favor of removing subsidies and credits since the industry is already well established.
The focus here should be on improving mass transit so we don’t need as many cars on the road in the first place. The last people to upgrade to EVs will be the first people to switch to mass transit if it worked for them, meaning the working class. So I think we should be expanding our rail infrastructure and building out high speed rail between popular destinations (e.g. SF <-> LA, LA <-> LV, Orlando <-> Miami, etc), light rail inside of cities, and forcing cars around busy centers serviced by mass transit (e.g. like the Dutch model that makes driving less convenient than the train/bikes, but still feasible).
Electric Power
We generate ~20% from coal and ~40% from natural gas, and areas that use coal generate a very high percentage (my area is >50%). So the focus should be on expanding nuclear power, especially in the middle of the country where there’s plenty of space to dispose of nuclear waste and limited risk of natural disasters risking damaging the reactors (e.g. seismic activity, tornados are a concern, but other power plants deal with it).
We’re going to see EV demand increase, so we definitely need to be investing in infrastructure today.
Industry
We should create a carbon tax and return that as a tax credit to the American public. This increases the costs of polluting goods relative to greener goods in such a way that companies will be motivated to reduce emissions so their costs are lower. I don’t know that this looks like exactly, but I think it should approximate the cost to clean up those emissions. This should replace carbon credits.
I think each of these solutions is conservative friendly and moves us in a positive direction. The main thrust here is to nudge people toward better choices, not to ban poor choices.
Gas stoves have been proven to cause cancer. They are not clean https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-health-risks-of-gas-stoves-explained/
We’re talking about greenhouse gas emissions, not cancer risk. Here’s the relevant note from that article:
I don’t know if that has been confirmed, but even if it is, that’s a relatively small amount of emissions. This article states the there are ~275M cars registered in the US. Even if only half of them are being used regularly (probably most cars are actively used), gas stoves contribute <0.2% (ok, maybe slightly higher since EVs and plugin hybrids are ~1.5% or so of total vehicles).
So it’s a minor part of the total emissions, yet it’s a huge part of many people’s lifestyle. I think people should be free to choose whether to accept the higher cancer risks due to benzene leaks (which can be mitigated with proper ventilation). That’s their call, the government should merely inform them of the risks and only place restrictions if there are tangible risks to children in the household (there are still studies on that).
I refuse to believe that someone’s stove fuel is part of their personality.
I said nothing about personality, I said lifestyle. Cooking with gas is nice.
Petrol vehicles arent outdated, LOL. They are very necessary for a multitude of reasons. Recently, even the CEO of Ford struggled mightily on a recent trip with an EV pickup. EVs are fine for quick errands, for driving to work/school, etc. They suck as recreational vehicles, sports cars, larger volume transport and various other things. Evs can co-exist with ICE vehicles. Thats the best were gonna do. Oh and BTW - we can NOT supply the electricity needed to charge a full fleet of EVs anyways. Just forget it.
Gas stoves are still preferred by many people and thats their right. They are not outdated either. While I own an electric stove, I dont have any problem with people choosing gas. What happens when the power goes out and we all have electric furnaces & stoves? Oops. That sucks.
I didn’t follow that, but the typical problems are issues with the charging network (which can be solved by making them more like gas stations – which is the natural evolution) and improvements to battery technology for faster charge times (which are on their way).
Eh… I’d say the jury is still out. This is a space that hasn’t seen much investment, but I could see EVs with solar panels that you can just drive from campsite to campsite in the future, and never pay for power.
I’m struggling with this one. I mean have you seen the acceleration on EVs? Electric motors are hands down superior in every way to an ICE.
For now. This just needs a better breakthrough https://news.yahoo.com/nasa-incredible-solid-state-battery-130000645.html
Though really, it doesn’t even need that. Just hand off trailers at rest stops while a truck is charging. It would be a change to the trucking industry, but I fail to see why that wouldn’t be doable.
Oh hogwash. Says who? Show me your calculations that the grid can’t be scaled and that nuclear, wind, tidal, solar, and geothermal can’t capture more power.
I’m not going to argue with this; gas is an efficient means of producing heat and I’m not that dogmatic. Though I have seen some links to gas stoves and asthma… But I think over time things will run their course, people don’t use wood burning stoves anymore after all (because things naturally evolved).
Well a more distributed grid based on renewables would be harder to “take down” to start with. There are tons of advantages to more localized power production in that sense (and to be fair dangers to utility workers that need worked through). … this says nothing of the advantage to not needing to go to war over oil or the more stable electric generation prices vs barrels of oil/dependence on oil.
Ignoring that, your car is a giant battery, you could cook with it: https://www.engadget.com/gm-will-enable-vehicle-to-home-charging-on-all-ultium-based-evs-164248583.html
My personal opinion is that things need to be different, some things can lag (we don’t need to force people to buy new stoves, furnaces, etc – these things are really good at their jobs and efficient) and we shouldn’t completely shut down production of those things, but it should be scaled back. We should generally focus on minimizing pain as we find new ways to do old things that don’t depend on foreign energy, don’t pollute the environment, and don’t increase carbon.
Personally, I expect advances in EV technology to come at an increasingly rapid rate as economies of scale kick in. We’re in an era of innovation again, there are going to be new designs, weird designs, etc. That will happen regardless of who’s the president, unless someone actively gets in the way of it and uses political power to hinder renewables (Trump worries me the most in this regard).
In general, this isn’t a “we can just keep doing the old thing” option though, we WILL run out of domestic oil, and we WILL make the very real climate crisis worse.
From what I’ve seen so far Christie would be the least bad option in the Republican field… Pretty good chance I’ll still be voting Biden, but Christie is at least not a “hell no” from me.
Edit: This isn’t just a war against climate change, it’s a war for energy independence, and FINALLY having stable prices on transport costs.