Paris Accords, AND WE'RE OUT !!!
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A majority of people in every single US state support the US staying in the Paris Accords.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ort-popularity-americans-states-a7765626.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ort-popularity-americans-states-a7765626.html
http://content.sierraclub.org/politics-elections
POLITICS AND ELECTIONS
The Sierra Club’s political program is dedicated to electing clean air, clean water and climate action champions at all levels of government. From state Public Utility Commissions and Governors’ offices to the U.S. Congress and the White House, the decisions that will shape the future of our communities and our planet are being made by elected officials across the country, and in our nation’s capital.
At a time when fossil fuel interests like the Koch brothers are spending over a billion dollars to elect politicians to do their bidding, the Sierra Club is uniquely positioned to fight back with a grassroots operation that draws on the resources and members of the largest, most influential environmental organization in the country.
POLITICS AND ELECTIONS
The Sierra Club’s political program is dedicated to electing clean air, clean water and climate action champions at all levels of government. From state Public Utility Commissions and Governors’ offices to the U.S. Congress and the White House, the decisions that will shape the future of our communities and our planet are being made by elected officials across the country, and in our nation’s capital.
At a time when fossil fuel interests like the Koch brothers are spending over a billion dollars to elect politicians to do their bidding, the Sierra Club is uniquely positioned to fight back with a grassroots operation that draws on the resources and members of the largest, most influential environmental organization in the country.
The Democracy Initiative: The Sierra Club and other “greens” lead an effort to fundamentally transform America
https://capitalresearch.org/article/12939/
Today’s Sierra Club is far removed from what John Muir founded. Once, members tried to convince others to voluntarily care for the environment; now the group uses government force and political activism to push its beliefs onto the public.
In the 2012 election cycle, the Sierra Club and its affiliates spent more than $2.3 million on political campaigns and $800,000 on lobbying for stricter environmental regulations and taxpayer handouts to green energy companies. As Kevin Mooney wrote in the December 2012 Green Watch, the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund—previously called the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund—had net assets of $822,000 and spent $1.8 million in 2011 on political efforts such as its anti-fracking campaign.
The Sierra Club has doubled down on its political activities in the last decade and gotten increasingly involved with electing politicians, especially under the leadership of the club’s executive director from 1992 to 2011, Carl Pope. (Pope, by the way, previously served as political director of Zero Population Group, a group that promoted the “population bomb” theory—a so-called scientific consensus of the 1970s and ’80s that now stands revealed as a hoax.)
The Washington Post painted a picture of the role of the Sierra Club and associated organizations in the 2004 election, calling then-executive director Pope one of that election’s most influential operatives: “As executive director of the Sierra Club, . . . Pope also controls the Sierra Club Voter Education Fund, a 527 [a group that promotes political causes and candidates indirectly, without expressly calling for a particular election result]. The Voter Education Fund 527 has raised $3.4 million this election cycle, with $2.4 million of that amount coming from the Sierra Club. A third group, the Sierra Club PAC, has since 1980 given $3.9 million to Democratic candidates and $173,602 to GOP candidates.”
That was only the tip of the iceberg of Pope’s political involvement, the Post reported. “In 2002-03, Pope helped found two major 527 groups: America Votes, which has raised $1.9 million to coordinate the election activities of 32 liberal groups, and America Coming Together (ACT), which has a goal of raising more than $100 million to mobilize voters to cast ballots against Bush. Finally, Pope is treasurer of a new 501(c)(3) foundation, America’s Families United, which reportedly has $15 million to distribute to voter mobilization groups.”
The Sierra Club targeted the George W. Bush administration, even putting out a “W Watch” that featured articles attacking Bush—not just in connection with the administration’s environmental record, but on every topic related to Bush’s judicial nominations, according to a 2004 report by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma).
Earthjustice (previously the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) regularly took legal action against the Bush administration—86 actions on different environmental issues, according to Inhofe. The Sierra Club even spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking the Bush administration in campaign ads during the 2000 election.
Interestingly, the Club was the target of an insurgent campaign in the mid-1980s that would have had the group come out in opposition to illegal immigration. Why? Because of the wasteful lifestyle associated, in leftists’ minds, with living in the United States. The publication Politico noted “some members claiming it [an end to illegal immigration] was needed to overcome the effects of more people living more consumptive American life styles.” However, “The effort fell apart after a pitched battle. Other environmental groups have historically helped financially support immigration reform opponents like Numbers USA and Federation for American Immigration Reform.” (Today, entrenched on the Left, the Sierra Club is a proponent of the sort of immigration “reform” that, activists believe, would add to the rolls millions of voters who would dutifully support left-wing candidates.)
During the 2004 election, the Sierra Club reportedly spent at least $350,000 on anti-Bush campaign ads. The group’s political activity wasn’t solely aimed at bashing Bush. In fact, the Daily Caller reported, the group spent more than $1 million during the 2010 election cycle. The Caller said environmentalist groups on the whole pumped more than $125 million into “political causes, advertising campaigns and lobbying” in 2009-2010.
The Club’s movement toward the Left, which pulled it away from opposing illegal immigration, has also affected its relationship with unions that support the Keystone XL pipeline. As the newspaper The Hill noted in April, “The Sierra Club has long worked with organized labor. Its years-long collaboration with the United Steelworkers grew in 2006 into the broader BlueGreen Alliance, which includes a number of environmental groups and unions. But the debate over the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline has largely split labor and environmentalists, as well as led the Laborers’ International Union of North America to quit the BlueGreen Alliance last year.”
The conflict between jobs and environmental extremism is also apparent in regard to the Left’s claims of “environmental racism.” Recently, the Club—which has long been seen correctly as an organization that represents the most privileged people in society—issued a report focusing on industrial facilities in Detroit that suggested that “minorities” in the city are the victims of environmental racism. Former Detroit News columnist Ben Johnson wrote “This attempt to link pollution with alleged civil rights violations puts Detroit in peril.” Based on allegations that are “neither justified nor scientific,” Johnson wrote, “The Sierra Club’s minority-race-based analyses of sites limiting new permits threatens to forever kill new investment in depressed urban industrial areas.”
Whatever its position on particular issues, the Sierra Club and its affiliates are strongly tied to the Democratic Party and donate overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. According to Influence Explorer, the group has given $9.2 million to political campaigns since 1990. Of that, 58 percent has gone to Democrats, compared to two percent that has gone to Republicans (The other 40 percent has gone to the “other” category, efforts without an official party affiliation.) Of course, the Club’s influence comes not from its direct contributions but from its ability to set the political agenda, to paint its friends as heroes and its adversaries as villains, and to organize grassroots activists in the name of saving the planet.
“As a political force, it’s easily a billion-dollar-a-year enterprise,” said Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute.
https://capitalresearch.org/article/12939/
Today’s Sierra Club is far removed from what John Muir founded. Once, members tried to convince others to voluntarily care for the environment; now the group uses government force and political activism to push its beliefs onto the public.
In the 2012 election cycle, the Sierra Club and its affiliates spent more than $2.3 million on political campaigns and $800,000 on lobbying for stricter environmental regulations and taxpayer handouts to green energy companies. As Kevin Mooney wrote in the December 2012 Green Watch, the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund—previously called the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund—had net assets of $822,000 and spent $1.8 million in 2011 on political efforts such as its anti-fracking campaign.
The Sierra Club has doubled down on its political activities in the last decade and gotten increasingly involved with electing politicians, especially under the leadership of the club’s executive director from 1992 to 2011, Carl Pope. (Pope, by the way, previously served as political director of Zero Population Group, a group that promoted the “population bomb” theory—a so-called scientific consensus of the 1970s and ’80s that now stands revealed as a hoax.)
The Washington Post painted a picture of the role of the Sierra Club and associated organizations in the 2004 election, calling then-executive director Pope one of that election’s most influential operatives: “As executive director of the Sierra Club, . . . Pope also controls the Sierra Club Voter Education Fund, a 527 [a group that promotes political causes and candidates indirectly, without expressly calling for a particular election result]. The Voter Education Fund 527 has raised $3.4 million this election cycle, with $2.4 million of that amount coming from the Sierra Club. A third group, the Sierra Club PAC, has since 1980 given $3.9 million to Democratic candidates and $173,602 to GOP candidates.”
That was only the tip of the iceberg of Pope’s political involvement, the Post reported. “In 2002-03, Pope helped found two major 527 groups: America Votes, which has raised $1.9 million to coordinate the election activities of 32 liberal groups, and America Coming Together (ACT), which has a goal of raising more than $100 million to mobilize voters to cast ballots against Bush. Finally, Pope is treasurer of a new 501(c)(3) foundation, America’s Families United, which reportedly has $15 million to distribute to voter mobilization groups.”
The Sierra Club targeted the George W. Bush administration, even putting out a “W Watch” that featured articles attacking Bush—not just in connection with the administration’s environmental record, but on every topic related to Bush’s judicial nominations, according to a 2004 report by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma).
Earthjustice (previously the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) regularly took legal action against the Bush administration—86 actions on different environmental issues, according to Inhofe. The Sierra Club even spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking the Bush administration in campaign ads during the 2000 election.
Interestingly, the Club was the target of an insurgent campaign in the mid-1980s that would have had the group come out in opposition to illegal immigration. Why? Because of the wasteful lifestyle associated, in leftists’ minds, with living in the United States. The publication Politico noted “some members claiming it [an end to illegal immigration] was needed to overcome the effects of more people living more consumptive American life styles.” However, “The effort fell apart after a pitched battle. Other environmental groups have historically helped financially support immigration reform opponents like Numbers USA and Federation for American Immigration Reform.” (Today, entrenched on the Left, the Sierra Club is a proponent of the sort of immigration “reform” that, activists believe, would add to the rolls millions of voters who would dutifully support left-wing candidates.)
During the 2004 election, the Sierra Club reportedly spent at least $350,000 on anti-Bush campaign ads. The group’s political activity wasn’t solely aimed at bashing Bush. In fact, the Daily Caller reported, the group spent more than $1 million during the 2010 election cycle. The Caller said environmentalist groups on the whole pumped more than $125 million into “political causes, advertising campaigns and lobbying” in 2009-2010.
The Club’s movement toward the Left, which pulled it away from opposing illegal immigration, has also affected its relationship with unions that support the Keystone XL pipeline. As the newspaper The Hill noted in April, “The Sierra Club has long worked with organized labor. Its years-long collaboration with the United Steelworkers grew in 2006 into the broader BlueGreen Alliance, which includes a number of environmental groups and unions. But the debate over the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline has largely split labor and environmentalists, as well as led the Laborers’ International Union of North America to quit the BlueGreen Alliance last year.”
The conflict between jobs and environmental extremism is also apparent in regard to the Left’s claims of “environmental racism.” Recently, the Club—which has long been seen correctly as an organization that represents the most privileged people in society—issued a report focusing on industrial facilities in Detroit that suggested that “minorities” in the city are the victims of environmental racism. Former Detroit News columnist Ben Johnson wrote “This attempt to link pollution with alleged civil rights violations puts Detroit in peril.” Based on allegations that are “neither justified nor scientific,” Johnson wrote, “The Sierra Club’s minority-race-based analyses of sites limiting new permits threatens to forever kill new investment in depressed urban industrial areas.”
Whatever its position on particular issues, the Sierra Club and its affiliates are strongly tied to the Democratic Party and donate overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. According to Influence Explorer, the group has given $9.2 million to political campaigns since 1990. Of that, 58 percent has gone to Democrats, compared to two percent that has gone to Republicans (The other 40 percent has gone to the “other” category, efforts without an official party affiliation.) Of course, the Club’s influence comes not from its direct contributions but from its ability to set the political agenda, to paint its friends as heroes and its adversaries as villains, and to organize grassroots activists in the name of saving the planet.
“As a political force, it’s easily a billion-dollar-a-year enterprise,” said Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute.
I don't think money is driving Elon Musk. He already had oodles of money from Zip2 and PayPal and he could have kept doing businesses like that the rest of his career and gotten richer and richer. But instead he risked his fortune on (a) a company that makes space rockets, which is extremely expensive and risky and (b) a car company even though up until then there had been exactly one car company in the history of the country that had not gone bankrupt.
Elon Musk is a self-made wealthy person that succeed by being very smart and by working very hard (his long work hours are legendary). And after becoming wealthy, instead of spending the rest his life on a yacht with solid gold toilets he risked his own fortune in an effort to do even bigger and better things.
And he comes from another country and constantly harps on how great it is in America and how people from the US don't appreciate it enough and don't realize how good we have it here. How is such a person an enemy to the GOP instead of their poster child?
I don't mean just on this issue. The Right always bashes him. He commits the sin of trying to develop renewable energy in the year of 2017. And plus his car company got some help so he's the bad guy. Never mind that his car company got way less help than the big car companies have been getting for decades. Let's not mention that. And let's not mention the fact that although Lockheed Martin and Boeing have been doing rockets for decades and China and Russia have been doing rockets for along time (Russia for about 60 years now) Musk created a company that can beat them all.
And BTW, you're misusing the word "snowflake" in this context. It doesn't mean "anyone that disagrees with something." You're devaluing the word by using it where it doesn't apply.
I'm not bashing him at all. I hope to one day purchase one of his wall packs and put solar shingles on my roof.
But let's be real here. People that stood to profit from the Paris Agreement are upset with the US not signing onto the Paris Agreement? Well....
Again, ignoring the big fish and focusing on the little fish. How much has the fossil fuel industry profited over the last several decades? How much have you focused on them profiting?
Musk already had made a tremendous amount of money before he started the twin risky ventures of a rocket company and a car company (which he invested all his money in and very nearly went broke at one point). He could have continued doing Internet companies (which is how he got rich in the first place) and spent his time doing that and gotten nothing but richer and richer and richer.
He obviously isn't in it for the money. Do some research on him. His big things are starting a civilization on Mars (and that one still seems far fetched) and promoting renewable energies (which is going okay) and making sure electric vehicles become common even if it's not his company that's providing them (which by now is pretty clearly going to happen in the coming decades). Seriously, he's an interesting and brilliant guy, do some reading on him.
And on top of all the other reasons we should want to move to electric cars how about the one that using oil enriches religious fundamentalists that are trying to kill us. Osama bin Laden did 9/11 using the money the developed world used to buy oil from Saudi Arabia. Considering that, I don't understand why there wasn't a drive beginning on 9/12 for the US to get off of oil.
I got zero problems moving people to electric cars. If they were so damn expensive I'd own one right now.
But this notion that we have to stay in a the Paris Agreement because individuals who have a financial stake in the Agreement want us to is idiotic. We have to do what's right for the US as a whole. Not what's right for the world, not what's right for a few, but overall, and the Paris Agreement was not right for the US as whole.
We can still work towards improving emissions, being more energy efficient, but we don't need an international treaty to do so.
I got zero problems moving people to electric cars. If they were so damn expensive I'd own one right now.
But this notion that we have to stay in a the Paris Agreement because individuals who have a financial stake in the Agreement want us to is idiotic. We have to do what's right for the US as a whole. Not what's right for the world, not what's right for a few, but overall, and the Paris Agreement was not right for the US as whole.
We can still work towards improving emissions, being more energy efficient, but we don't need an international treaty to do so.
Electric cars aren't so damn expensive. The two versions of Tesla out so far are expensive but not because they're electric but rather because they're luxury cars. There are regular priced electric cars out there and this year or next Tesla is going to release their version of a regular priced electric car.
I don't know, but these will when they come out.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/tesla-building-pickup-semi-truck-n746611