Yeah, I'd love to cancel my subscription to the administration too.

The means would initially be similar to those used against other mildly-rogue regimes such those of Serbia and Mali: withdrawal of cooperation, fines, and limited sanctions.

If we get to the late 2040s and the rest of the world is within touching distance of net zero but the US remains as an extreme outlier in its refusal to decarbonise, then we could well see harsher measures such as those applied to the likes of Russia and Venezuela.

US is 350M people, let's say everyone is climate change sceptic and together with Russia, Australia and Saudi Arabia it totals to about 550M people.

In the rest of the world the idea that you can just just pump as much as smoke you like and it will magically disappear isn't popular. Maybe because they all had some polluting industry around that made them miserable or maybe because they live in dirty overcrowded cities and noticed that smog isn't pleasant or maybe because they don't have much fossil energy sources, they are generally not skeptical of the idea that "not polluting is good". Just as with vaccines or abortion, climate change or simply the desire to live in a clean environment isn't a divisive topic in most of the world.

So its going to be 8B people trying to compel 0.5B people to live in clean environments and take care of the output of their industries. I think the 8B will be able to do that one way or another.

That ship sailed with the destruction of the global world order. The polluting industries probably don't have to be polluting when you take care of the pollutants.

Believe it or not, most of the people on earth don't worship growth. No one cares about growth just as no one cares about climate change, people want improvement on their lives and a future that can be good. Some policies like paper straws downgrade it and other policies like clean air upgrade it.

When you start thinking in more abstract terms, growth v.s. climate change associated risks is a false dichotomy.

Of course people at first all they care is to get out of a bad situation like poverty but once they are out of poverty they start caring for other things like the future of their children. Apart of fossil energy producing countries like USA/Russia/Australia, people don't pretend that pollution is no biggie.

Generally these things follow a Kuznets Curve where you get rich from polluting and then are eventually rich enough to care about poisoning your children.

China's bad air around the time of their Olympics is pointed to as being a turning point that could have toppled the government if not dealt with.

Slightly uniquely they seem to have discovered a way to become even richer by cleaning up their pollution, the timing for EV and renewables working out well, and presumably many other nations will try to follow that pattern going forward.

Even just buying these things from China will make both sides of the trade richer compared with dirtier alternatives.

Despite this, since 1980, US, EU and Australia have been the biggest polluters since 1980 when climate change was first known to be man made. (Read my other comment)

AFAICT the only 2c/kwh electricity is solar or hydro.

I'm pretty sure. Once I sniffed air as a non-elite and I like it clean.

The joke in the refrigeration industry is that "it's not bad for the environment until DuPont's patent expires".

Now obviously they were bad for the environment all along, but I don't think it's a coincidence that nothing was done about CFCs until the 3rd world got good at making them cheap.

The joke is getting a little out of date though since the new stuff is hydrocarbons and CO2 (and you can't patent those).

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He means it's not in his feed. "Random old woman gets kidnapped" is represented 100 times more strongly in the datastream then "1000 protestors organize immigrant protection system" or "US Citizen Mung families defend elderly Vietnam vets".

... at least "Random Old Woman" has got people looking askance at the internet connected security camera ecosystem, I guess.

How long as it been? How long will it last? How easily will those plans be foiled? How much damage will you allow?

~70 million Americans voted for this out of ~350 million. Trump has a current approval rating of ~38% and approximately 60% of Americans think he's gone too far.

It's also worth remembering that our economic system has intentionally or not, pacified and domesticated the working class through threat of poverty and state sanctioned violence. Resistance always requires great personal sacrifice, which is why those who do so are heroes. For the rest of the working class, they have to weigh the risks of resisting which includes, death, losing their families, their homes, jobs, etc.

Keep telling yourself that these issues are for scholars, that you are fighting back with your little protests and videos. The whole world can see through your bullshit. Brought to you by the thoughts and prayers people!

For a country with more guns than people you certainly forget very conveniently what they are for.

  > It's clear from this comment that you do not understand the complexities of US politics.

Overall, it doesn't seem like a very complex problem. The US simply does not have a vote of no confidence nor the tradition of using it when unfit people like Trump and his traveling circus reach the highest levels of government and need to be stopped. Instead, people pacify themselves with fairy tales about "checks and balances", which are nothing more than gentleman's agreements in a world with very few gentlemen, and no substitute for actual legal procedures for removing inept leaders. To pick an example from this week - where I live, Pam Bondi would have faced a vote of no confidence and loss of her position the very next day after her House hearing during which she made hysterical deflections and personally attacked members of parliament.

The "complex" part seems to be that Americans appear unable to even imagine holding public officials accountable like that. Instead of the American public's expectations of their leaders rising over time, they are rapidly declining before our eyes as governance inches closer to trash entertainment like reality TV and pro wrestling.

I think the days of playing softball are over. Whatever administration comes after this one, the gloves will still be off, and the hand heavy.