This seems pretty inline with our leadership tho. This country has always put profits above people.

browningstreet 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Go research the green house gas emission projections for the end of Biden's term and the projections for Trump's administration.

Hand-waving dismissiveness doesn't serve when there were, in fact, significant (and yet not sufficient) efforts written into law.

We can have better things, but we as a people certainly need to do better. There are Mamdanis and there are Trumps. There's a difference.

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BarnabyQJones 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The difference being the target audience of the respective showman? Seems like a bit of a difference by degrees.

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shimman 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Okay? That has nothing to do with what I said, what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide? Was that not a case of putting profits, the military industrial complex, above people?

What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?

I mean this country's founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.

Sorry but it's not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.

I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.

There was only a small period of time in our country's history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Compression

We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation's history that every American had the legal right to vote.

I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you're trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?

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ceejayoz 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Whataboutism works a lot better if you don't literally start sentences with "what about..."

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shimman 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I didn't know it's whataboutism when you list things to support an argument, good to know.

	▲	ceejayoz 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"what about the Biden admin helping run cover for the Gaza genocide?" in a thread about the Trump EPA is pretty much the textbook example of whataboutism.

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lanstin 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Allowing more carbon dioxide sources is going to be distinctly harmful to profits in the mid-term. As with racial bias, strict gender roles, anti-vaxxing, and being anti-science, being pro-carbon burn is ultimately a foolish anti-truth stance as silly and ill-outcomed as any three year old insisting that they can stay up all night.

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sailfast 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything? Do they yearn for the mines and coal dust of early industrial England?

Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.

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autoexec 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s and the lack of emissions controls on everything

No because they were extremely rich and lived in massive houses set far back from the city streets filled with polluting cars and well away from factories spewing poison into the air. They've lived perfectly comfortable lives in climate controlled and filtered spaces and traveled around to beautiful remote areas where poor people can never go and the pollution had barely touched. They know that they and their families can buy a comfortable and safe life no matter how miserable and sick they make the rest of us. They will always have healthy food and clean water no matter how many of us don't.

Our government works best when it's "of the people" but instead the octogenarians in power have almost nothing in common with us (even most of us here, in a forum filled with very wealthy people) and so their interests are not our interests and our concerns are not shared by them.

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triceratops 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas

Lead causes brain damage and memory impairment...

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bayindirh 6 hours ago | parent [-]

...and lead was standardized only because it was patentable. Otherwise ethanol was enough to achieve the same thing.

Brought you proudly by Thomas Midgley, Jr., who solved science problems by making bigger ones.

- https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/thomas-midgley-and-t...

- https://www.ehn.org/thomas-midgley-jr-lead-poisoning

	▲	triceratops 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> and lead was standardized only because it was patentable That doesn't make much sense to me. It would be more profitable to sell gasoline without lead tetraethyl because you wouldn't be forced to buy a patented product. Just pour a shot of pure grain spirit in your tank on every refill (or however much is needed). It's more plausible that engine technology today has improved to the point that ethanol alone can eliminate knocking. The link you provided gives more context. > One already-known remedy was replacing a substantial proportion of the gasoline fuel with ethanol – though ethanol’s lower energy content made the engines less efficient...[General Motors and Standard Oil] claimed that ethanol – often used in automobile fuels before the war – was an unsatisfactory alternative. and > Unless the fuel producers themselves get into this work of investigating the properties of their fuels, there is a good chance that they may have to pay tribute to others Translation: anti-knock compounds was a good business for Standard Oil to be in themselves. Instead of paying another company for a patented product.

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aetch 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They’ll be dead by the time it gets worse again

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throwway120385 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most of those octogenarians weren't responsible for any of that. Their parents did it for them. If you're 80 you came of age in the 60's, and you wouldn't have been eligible for the Senate or the Presidency until 1970 or 1975. The decline of the US started pretty much when the baby boomers came to power and the people who fought WWII were all retiring.

	▲	throwawaysoxjje 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s not even what the post you’re replying to said

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cooggog 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Do the octogenarians in power not remember when they couldn’t breathe because of the lead in the gas in the 60s

No, lead poisoning makes you a brain damaged retard. They can probably hardly remember shit.

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Muromec 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just wait for the new generation of grifters to get their chance to be at the wheel. Current timid bullshit will be billed under nostalgia then.

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metalliqaz 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

no, they don't

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bayindirh 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> This country has always put profits above people.

Please, the correct word is "value". Using the word p-word makes people understand and get irritated.

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shimman 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The easiest way to radicalize workers is to simply tell them what profit is.

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Muromec 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You are not radicalized enough.

	▲	shimman 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm at the stage where I still believe in elections + resistance.