Biden's the best president of my lifetime, which began during the first summer of the Eisenhower Administration. I feel like I did when the wind was at my back as I was bicycling from Seattle to Boston the summer of '75.
Biden's the best president of my lifetime, which began during the first summer of the Eisenhower Administration. I feel like I did when the wind was at my back as I was bicycling from Seattle to Boston the summer of '75.
I was born the last few months of Truman, but I don't remember him or Ike, and little of JFK, so I wont opine on their attributes.
Biden the best? If you say so. Obviously have very, very different expectations. Admittedly, my personal Presidential ratings usually run from 0 all the way to 2 (out of 10). Maybe an occasional and random 3.
Definitely the best. If I were to give him a number out of 10, probably 7.
I strongly disagree with his immigration policy because I think the US was very overpopulated several decades ago, and its only gotten worse, and I suspect that if US borders were closed, a lot of the people coming here would be doing a great job helping their native countries improve on democracy, and much else. I also disagree with Biden's EV policy. The technology isn't ready for prime time, and I really dislike how we're getting dangerously heavy cars and "light" trucks due to the weight of batteries. And according to Amory Lovins, from 2-3 decades ago, EVs should be giving us much lighter cars. I wrote about that back then, and I don't know why it didn't happen.
If I'd been in Biden's place, I would have mandated retrofits of old buildings for energy efficiency and renewable energy, and zero fossil fuel use for new homes and buildings. But I agree with Biden in just about everything else, and I trust him to make good decisions in crises.)
I believe in (almost) open borders as I think people are generally assets and not liabilities. And frankly, IтАЩd take 100 shopkeepers and sheep herders from тАЬSh**hole countriesтАЭ than 10 graduates of the Sorbonne any day. People need to assimilate, and yes, that means English proficiency and civic education. They also need to demonstrate they wont be on the dole, but thatтАЩs not as big a problem as people think. Plus you commit violent crime? Serve your time and out you go. Bearing that in mind, someone wants to come work? Come on in! We do need to realize that while immigration increases economic growth, the benefits accrue widely, yet the costs are concentrated, school costs, suppression of wages on low skilled citizens. And to be honest I havenтАЩt figured out how to solve that part yet.
IтАЩve studied and been interested in alternative energy since grad school (wrote a very long, very boring thesis on the subject) and EVs are presently a joke. They make folks feel good, but are not тАЬgreenтАЭ, they only move the pollution away from the user. They may improve, but wont until someone invents lite weight, long lasting, inexpensive, compact, environmentally friendly battery. Hybrids are better, but still a long way to go to truly beat ICEs. Additionally, if we electrify everything weтАЩll need to vastly expand generating and grid capacity. Once you generate it, you have to move it, and most solar/wind is far from the user, so more power lines that nobody wants. Next is dispatchability. No way does solar or wind even approach that of NG, or nukes, and battery storage AT SCALE is a dream. And just wait until AI really kicks in (itтАЩs a power hog). Not to mention that with the dispersion of data thruout the web, almost every datacenter will need to be 24/7/366! This administration isn't helping by putting a very heavy and expensive finger on the scale
Politically, I do not subscribe to the Wilsonian view the Constitution is outdated, that people are incapable of leading themselves, and must be lead a group of self-appointed тАЬexpertsтАЭ. I believe in subsidiarity, and that all people have agency, and that within the frame work of the Constitution citizens are perfectly capable of making most of our own decisions. I really donтАЩt want to debate about who was best or worst President, our тАЬscoresтАЭ will no doubt be diametric, and I'd need to expand my scale to get to a score of 5 out of 10. IтАЩd rather posit that if we want to solve the problem of this тАЬthreat to democracyтАЭ or that , the place to start is to take the power away from the office. In the last century both parties have invested too much power in the Executive, Congress completely abdicated their responsibilities, as did the Court thru stupid decisions like the тАЬChevronтАЭ deference. My view is until we claw back this power, weтАЩre in a never ending spiral, downward. My old joke is "Make the President not matter anymore!" Sorry for the length. Have a good day.
My problem with immigration is that our country is seriously overpopulated, and getting worse. More people means more of every type of environmental problem. It's not only bad for the US, immigration to the US is bad for the planet. The average immigrant's GH emissions rise threefold after arrival, which shouldn't be surprising, since they come largelyfrom third world countries with low per capita emissions to the major industrialzed nation with the greatest per capita resource use and GH emissions--the worst place on the planet to put more people.
As for a few other specifics, Propublica projects tht within several decades, MILLIONS of Americans will be climate refugees.
We're using up groundwater, putting our agricultural productivity at risk, this soon after learning from COVID that it's important to keep critical supply chains in house.
The Ogallala aquifer, which underlies the Great Plains, from the Canadian border region on down to Texas, is also being used up, and our plains have no other substantial water source. California's Central Valley--same thing.
We're killing off nature. Insects have declined by at least a third since the 1960s. They form a substantial part of the bottom rung of the food chain, which is contributing to similar losses among birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.
We depend on nature for ecosystem services. One of these is disease prevention. Intact ecosystems prevent new diseases from emerging, such as the tick-borne diseases that emerged since the 1960s--lyme and others. HIV is almost certainly a disease that emerged for similar reasons, though on a different continent, and same with COVID. A group of scientists wwarned in Nature, one of the premier scientific journals, that if the human population didn't stop exploding there'd be a lot more of this sort of stuff.
Clean water, clean air, and pollination are further ecosystem services--pollination having been badly damaged in the US, over the last 60 years necessitating commercial bee operations to keep it happening. . .
PS: my original teacher on this stuff was John Holdren, in a 1975 class at Berkeley, where I also learned about CO2 emissions. Holdren later became Pres O's Science Advisor, but I don't think he had nearly as much influence as I would have liked to see.
And I first read Stegner's "Beyond the 100th Meridian" years ago, and since. Agricultural methods and water misuse are separate albeit important issues. But the US is not overpopulated, in fact our birth rate is less than replacement. A laser focus ACC (and here we disagree no doubt as well) and on certain aspects of the environment and blaming those on "population" ignores the implications and sounds awfully Malthusian to me. The world is NOT better off with less people and the world is NOT better off with stunted economies.
Don't assume people know your acronyms. I don't know what you mean with ACC. Acronyms do to the flow of prose what a dead cow does to the flow of a stream.
The birth rate is actually slightly more than replacement. The census bureau projects an additional 7 million from native increase, over the next 40 years. It also projects another 68 million (3.4 NY State population equivalents) over the same period.
Finally, a country is overpopulated if it can't maintain its population over time. To dramatize this, it would take 5 earths to support the world at the US lifestyle.
The notion that we need to keep growing to have decent lives is a Ponzi scheme. Much of the wealth of the US does nothing to make people happier. We'd be better off if people devoted half the time they spend working to social life, and helping each other.
No,David, the birth rate as reported is seriously below replacement. This will lead to multiple problems supporting an aging population. The country only seems overpopulated if you live in a major city.
I don't know where you're getting that. The figures I got are from the Census Bureau within the last nine months or so.
But an ever growing population will simply kill nature, and as nature starts to die, we will feel it, and it won't feel good. More pandemics, for starters. There was an article several years ago in NATURE warning that we will face that if we don't stabilize the population.
Also, Flowering plants dying out because of lack of pollination. Dirty water where once it was clean. Less biodiversity as species go extinct. I could go on.
I don't know where you get problems supporting an aging population. Labor productivity keeps rising. There have been articles both in the NYer and I think the NYT within the last five years warning that a lot of people are going to be unemployed because of this.
Seriously, we have 8 billion now, and earth's not nearly as nice a place as it was when we were kids, and there were 2 billion and change. We're in the midst of, I think it's the 7th massive extinction in Earth's history. Were you aware of that?
And don't you think we're smart enough to live well with a slowly shrinking population? Or if that bothers you too much, how about a stable population? We can't keep growing, because we'll kill nature if we do.
Sorry and point well taken. In this context ACC stands for "anthropomorphic" climate change. And its a $10 word for "man-made" to make the user sound learned and serious.
The world and we humans provide many surprises. Increasing efficiency along with economic growth is one of them. Our planet has a far greater "carrying capacity" than you think. We just waste alot. So, the answer is don't waste so much. The clearest way to do that is develop the economy. Telling poor people in undeveloped countries to not to develop their economies is simply wrong on an number of accounts.
Those betting against growth have been wrong before and are wrong now. How long have we been talking about "peak oil" for instance? I remember Jimmy Carter guiding policy based on the (1972) Club of Rome report, and oh, how wrong he and they were.
As for your last comment, I agree, but its government that's the biggest ponzi scheme, and that's also to my earlier post.
My parents were political, on the left. I actually had my first political arguments in second grade, with my best friend of that single year in Seattle, Ralphie.
Both parents were trained economists, although my mother switched to psych when she was all but dissertation.
Ralphie's grandfather was a cofounder of Nordstrom's (which got its start in Seattle) and his mother was interior decorator to the Hoi Polloi of Seattle, including one John Ehrlichman, but I didn't know any of that back then.
During his Senate race against Helen Gahagan Douglas, in 1946, Nixon had called her an epithet that GOPers frequently applied to Democrats back then, and occasionally still do.
Anyway, Ralphie and I were in the car, my mother driving. I said to Ralphie, "you know, Ralphie, you really shoiuldn't vote for Nixon, because he called that lady in California something like an economist."
I know I'm quoting myself accurately, because my mother, who did not find much funny, thought what I'd said was absolutely hilarious, and told the story numerous times! She was a great mother, and I'm glad to have given her that enjoyment.
Biden's the best president of my lifetime, which began during the first summer of the Eisenhower Administration. I feel like I did when the wind was at my back as I was bicycling from Seattle to Boston the summer of '75.
I was born the last few months of Truman, but I don't remember him or Ike, and little of JFK, so I wont opine on their attributes.
Biden the best? If you say so. Obviously have very, very different expectations. Admittedly, my personal Presidential ratings usually run from 0 all the way to 2 (out of 10). Maybe an occasional and random 3.
Definitely the best. If I were to give him a number out of 10, probably 7.
I strongly disagree with his immigration policy because I think the US was very overpopulated several decades ago, and its only gotten worse, and I suspect that if US borders were closed, a lot of the people coming here would be doing a great job helping their native countries improve on democracy, and much else. I also disagree with Biden's EV policy. The technology isn't ready for prime time, and I really dislike how we're getting dangerously heavy cars and "light" trucks due to the weight of batteries. And according to Amory Lovins, from 2-3 decades ago, EVs should be giving us much lighter cars. I wrote about that back then, and I don't know why it didn't happen.
If I'd been in Biden's place, I would have mandated retrofits of old buildings for energy efficiency and renewable energy, and zero fossil fuel use for new homes and buildings. But I agree with Biden in just about everything else, and I trust him to make good decisions in crises.)
I owe you a longer response than the rather flippant one I just deleted. IтАЩll try tomorrow. Have a good evening.
Thank you. You too.
I believe in (almost) open borders as I think people are generally assets and not liabilities. And frankly, IтАЩd take 100 shopkeepers and sheep herders from тАЬSh**hole countriesтАЭ than 10 graduates of the Sorbonne any day. People need to assimilate, and yes, that means English proficiency and civic education. They also need to demonstrate they wont be on the dole, but thatтАЩs not as big a problem as people think. Plus you commit violent crime? Serve your time and out you go. Bearing that in mind, someone wants to come work? Come on in! We do need to realize that while immigration increases economic growth, the benefits accrue widely, yet the costs are concentrated, school costs, suppression of wages on low skilled citizens. And to be honest I havenтАЩt figured out how to solve that part yet.
IтАЩve studied and been interested in alternative energy since grad school (wrote a very long, very boring thesis on the subject) and EVs are presently a joke. They make folks feel good, but are not тАЬgreenтАЭ, they only move the pollution away from the user. They may improve, but wont until someone invents lite weight, long lasting, inexpensive, compact, environmentally friendly battery. Hybrids are better, but still a long way to go to truly beat ICEs. Additionally, if we electrify everything weтАЩll need to vastly expand generating and grid capacity. Once you generate it, you have to move it, and most solar/wind is far from the user, so more power lines that nobody wants. Next is dispatchability. No way does solar or wind even approach that of NG, or nukes, and battery storage AT SCALE is a dream. And just wait until AI really kicks in (itтАЩs a power hog). Not to mention that with the dispersion of data thruout the web, almost every datacenter will need to be 24/7/366! This administration isn't helping by putting a very heavy and expensive finger on the scale
Politically, I do not subscribe to the Wilsonian view the Constitution is outdated, that people are incapable of leading themselves, and must be lead a group of self-appointed тАЬexpertsтАЭ. I believe in subsidiarity, and that all people have agency, and that within the frame work of the Constitution citizens are perfectly capable of making most of our own decisions. I really donтАЩt want to debate about who was best or worst President, our тАЬscoresтАЭ will no doubt be diametric, and I'd need to expand my scale to get to a score of 5 out of 10. IтАЩd rather posit that if we want to solve the problem of this тАЬthreat to democracyтАЭ or that , the place to start is to take the power away from the office. In the last century both parties have invested too much power in the Executive, Congress completely abdicated their responsibilities, as did the Court thru stupid decisions like the тАЬChevronтАЭ deference. My view is until we claw back this power, weтАЩre in a never ending spiral, downward. My old joke is "Make the President not matter anymore!" Sorry for the length. Have a good day.
Good points here.
Thank you, sir.
My problem with immigration is that our country is seriously overpopulated, and getting worse. More people means more of every type of environmental problem. It's not only bad for the US, immigration to the US is bad for the planet. The average immigrant's GH emissions rise threefold after arrival, which shouldn't be surprising, since they come largelyfrom third world countries with low per capita emissions to the major industrialzed nation with the greatest per capita resource use and GH emissions--the worst place on the planet to put more people.
As for a few other specifics, Propublica projects tht within several decades, MILLIONS of Americans will be climate refugees.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html
We're using up groundwater, putting our agricultural productivity at risk, this soon after learning from COVID that it's important to keep critical supply chains in house.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groundwater-drying-climate-change.html
The Ogallala aquifer, which underlies the Great Plains, from the Canadian border region on down to Texas, is also being used up, and our plains have no other substantial water source. California's Central Valley--same thing.
We're killing off nature. Insects have declined by at least a third since the 1960s. They form a substantial part of the bottom rung of the food chain, which is contributing to similar losses among birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.
We depend on nature for ecosystem services. One of these is disease prevention. Intact ecosystems prevent new diseases from emerging, such as the tick-borne diseases that emerged since the 1960s--lyme and others. HIV is almost certainly a disease that emerged for similar reasons, though on a different continent, and same with COVID. A group of scientists wwarned in Nature, one of the premier scientific journals, that if the human population didn't stop exploding there'd be a lot more of this sort of stuff.
Clean water, clean air, and pollination are further ecosystem services--pollination having been badly damaged in the US, over the last 60 years necessitating commercial bee operations to keep it happening. . .
PS: my original teacher on this stuff was John Holdren, in a 1975 class at Berkeley, where I also learned about CO2 emissions. Holdren later became Pres O's Science Advisor, but I don't think he had nearly as much influence as I would have liked to see.
And I first read Stegner's "Beyond the 100th Meridian" years ago, and since. Agricultural methods and water misuse are separate albeit important issues. But the US is not overpopulated, in fact our birth rate is less than replacement. A laser focus ACC (and here we disagree no doubt as well) and on certain aspects of the environment and blaming those on "population" ignores the implications and sounds awfully Malthusian to me. The world is NOT better off with less people and the world is NOT better off with stunted economies.
Don't assume people know your acronyms. I don't know what you mean with ACC. Acronyms do to the flow of prose what a dead cow does to the flow of a stream.
The birth rate is actually slightly more than replacement. The census bureau projects an additional 7 million from native increase, over the next 40 years. It also projects another 68 million (3.4 NY State population equivalents) over the same period.
Finally, a country is overpopulated if it can't maintain its population over time. To dramatize this, it would take 5 earths to support the world at the US lifestyle.
The notion that we need to keep growing to have decent lives is a Ponzi scheme. Much of the wealth of the US does nothing to make people happier. We'd be better off if people devoted half the time they spend working to social life, and helping each other.
No,David, the birth rate as reported is seriously below replacement. This will lead to multiple problems supporting an aging population. The country only seems overpopulated if you live in a major city.
I don't know where you're getting that. The figures I got are from the Census Bureau within the last nine months or so.
But an ever growing population will simply kill nature, and as nature starts to die, we will feel it, and it won't feel good. More pandemics, for starters. There was an article several years ago in NATURE warning that we will face that if we don't stabilize the population.
Also, Flowering plants dying out because of lack of pollination. Dirty water where once it was clean. Less biodiversity as species go extinct. I could go on.
I don't know where you get problems supporting an aging population. Labor productivity keeps rising. There have been articles both in the NYer and I think the NYT within the last five years warning that a lot of people are going to be unemployed because of this.
Seriously, we have 8 billion now, and earth's not nearly as nice a place as it was when we were kids, and there were 2 billion and change. We're in the midst of, I think it's the 7th massive extinction in Earth's history. Were you aware of that?
And don't you think we're smart enough to live well with a slowly shrinking population? Or if that bothers you too much, how about a stable population? We can't keep growing, because we'll kill nature if we do.
Sorry and point well taken. In this context ACC stands for "anthropomorphic" climate change. And its a $10 word for "man-made" to make the user sound learned and serious.
The world and we humans provide many surprises. Increasing efficiency along with economic growth is one of them. Our planet has a far greater "carrying capacity" than you think. We just waste alot. So, the answer is don't waste so much. The clearest way to do that is develop the economy. Telling poor people in undeveloped countries to not to develop their economies is simply wrong on an number of accounts.
Those betting against growth have been wrong before and are wrong now. How long have we been talking about "peak oil" for instance? I remember Jimmy Carter guiding policy based on the (1972) Club of Rome report, and oh, how wrong he and they were.
As for your last comment, I agree, but its government that's the biggest ponzi scheme, and that's also to my earlier post.
Efficiency for what? I think that we'd be better off without most of the stuff we produce.
Do you know what ecosystem services are? Do you know what they do for us? And what their relationship is to carrying capacity?
I was educated in this stuff in a class I took from John Holdren, at UC Berkeley in 1975. (Google Holdren.)
My parents were political, on the left. I actually had my first political arguments in second grade, with my best friend of that single year in Seattle, Ralphie.
Both parents were trained economists, although my mother switched to psych when she was all but dissertation.
Ralphie's grandfather was a cofounder of Nordstrom's (which got its start in Seattle) and his mother was interior decorator to the Hoi Polloi of Seattle, including one John Ehrlichman, but I didn't know any of that back then.
During his Senate race against Helen Gahagan Douglas, in 1946, Nixon had called her an epithet that GOPers frequently applied to Democrats back then, and occasionally still do.
Anyway, Ralphie and I were in the car, my mother driving. I said to Ralphie, "you know, Ralphie, you really shoiuldn't vote for Nixon, because he called that lady in California something like an economist."
I know I'm quoting myself accurately, because my mother, who did not find much funny, thought what I'd said was absolutely hilarious, and told the story numerous times! She was a great mother, and I'm glad to have given her that enjoyment.