Of course then you can end up where the people decide you aren’t the leader they want. An example from the linked article:
“Last month’s by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip created a major roadblock for the green agenda…Voters in this outer-London constituency were incensed about the upcoming expansion of London mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emission Zone – a daily charge on driving older cars and vans. By revolting against the ULEZ, voters deprived Labour, the presumptive next party of government, of what should have been an easily winnable seat.”
So, the larger the proposed changes by a government the stronger the mandate from the electorate should be.
Such are the risks of being in a Republic. The leaders are supposed to do the right thing for the Republic first, and put what their constituents want second. If all the leaders do is what the people ask for, they’re really putting their own re-election ahead of both the Republic and their constituents.
Good parents do what is right for their kids even when the kids don’t like it or don’t understand why it’s good for them. Failure to do that leads to spoiled children who grow up into selfish adults.
Good leaders do what is right for their constituents even when the constituents don’t like it or don’t understand why it’s good for them. Failure do to that leads to failure of the enterprise.
Remember, the goal here should be running the country well, not giving the people everything they ask for.
To get to my point, they are elected to represent ALL of their constituents, not just the people that voted for them.
Are you sure about that? Yes, they are all legally adults. But we seem to have an epidemic of adults acting like children - like spoiled little brats.
I see it everywhere I go. In the store, on the road, among my customers, right here on these boards, and in the supposedly hallowed halls of government, from city halls all the way to the US Capitol.
Certainly. There is an excess of cynicism on this board but I, for one, am an optimist. (Besides, on a practical note, if an elected official isn’t in tune with the voters he is soon out of a job – ask the former MPs from Uxbridge and South Ruislip.)
Ultimately politics must have a bedrock in Politics as the highest form of ethics and morality or it fails everyone but those who betray the polity, whether out of malice and greed or willful ignorance and incompetence.
You would never imagine it from the garbage spewed in most political discussions, but a politics that does not conscientiously listen to the virtuous amongst our antecedents and the promise of our descendants is simply malevolent and ultimately unstable.
Seriously, my comments on the behavior of elected representatives are about as idealistic as you can get.
But back to climate change before we get this thread banned.
I am optimistic that humanity will survive the results of human caused climate change. But I don’t believe that world will be as good as it could have been had we addressed climate change sooner.
It doesn’t matter that voters seem to be apathetic. Those elected to office should be serving the greater good even if that good is not going to be realized during their term in office. The facts are there. The science is well known (yes, captain, I’m annoying you with this statement, but it’s true despite your complaints about “settled science”). The science is complicated, but the consequences and needed actions are pretty straightforward.
And yet we do little, and that little which is done is met with weeping and gnashing of teeth because it costs something in the here and now.
–Peter
PS - Were you saying something about adults not acting like children? In spite of your optimism, I see precious little evidence of it.
Yes, we will muddle through. At the same time, because there is so little temperature difference down the road as a result of our present efforts I am in favor of spending more money on R&D to get more bang for the buck down the road. For example, to get anywhere by the end of the century massive amounts of carbon storage and sequestration will be needed (industrial levels on approximately the level of the current size of the petroleum industry). That sort of technology just doesn’t exist yet.
…as well as to Hobbes’ Leviathan and Locke’s Two Treatises, both written with careful looks over their shoulders back to The Prince, the mighty book that ended theological mumbling nonsense on governance (dim echoes of the brilliant but basically magical thinking of St. Augustine), recovering the crux dialog begun by Herodotus, continued by Plato and Aristotle, and finding a final flowering in Cicero and Seneca.
Our current idiot (in the original technical Greek sense) polity elevates individualist desire mediated by market and electoral mechanisms in modes most of our own political and moral wisdom vehemently warns against and condemns.
A good highly condensed summary and concluding words here:
On a continuum of political rule stretching from the sheer domination of some over others on one extreme, to a vision of collaborative deliberation among equals for the sake of the good life on the other, many ancient Greek and Roman political philosophers clearly staked out the latter ground. The very idea of the city and the civic bond as rooted in justice was common ground across much of the spectrum of ancient political philosophy. Even the Epicureans saw society as rooted in justice, although understanding justice in turn as rooted in utility.[17] Philosophers adhering to this approach were not however ignorant of possible objections to it. The diagnosis of politics as domination has never been more powerfully advanced than by Plato’s character Thrasymachus, nor has the attack on justice as a good life for the individual ever been as powerfully made as by Plato’s character Callicles or the skeptic Carneades. The nostalgic view of ancient political philosophy as predicated on widely shared conceptions of human nature and the human good, before the splintering and fracturing of modernity, is an oversimplification.
It is true that those ancient visions of politics which rooted themselves in a commitment to ethical cultivation and the common good did not have to contend with the absolutist claims of rival versions of monotheistic religions. But the ancients did have to answer various forms of relativism, immoralism, and skepticism, contending with rival philosophical schools which disagreed profoundly with one another. If some of them chose to see politics as a domain of common benefit and a space for the cultivation of virtue, this was not because it had not occurred to them that it could be thought of otherwise, but in part because they had developed powerful philosophical systems to support this view. The experience and practices of the Greek poleis (the plural of polis) and the Roman res publica played important roles in shaping these approaches.
Fast forward to the 20th century. Joseph Schumpeter in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, “Social democracy is not about governing but about winning elections.”
Who is closer to reality, the philosophers or the pragmatist?
I do not know why you believe the fossil fuel industry propaganda that carbon storage and sequestration will be needed at industrial levels on approximately the level of the current size of the petroleum industry. Eliminating the fossil fuel source is much more cost effective and we have the technology to eliminate 90% of fossil fuels burning.
Why do I believe that CCS will be needed? Well, to quote the IPCC (WG3, Mitigation of Climate Change SPM):
“Currently, global rates of CCS deployment are far below those in modelled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C.”
Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is essential to meet the Paris Agreement’s looming climate targets, according to a major report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s all but impossible to achieve net-zero carbon emissions—the key to halting global warming—without sucking massive amounts of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere…
WGIII made clear that carbon capture and storage is a critical decarbonization strategy in most mitigation pathways. Among the 97 assessed pathways that keep global warming to below 1.5ºC with ‘no or limited overshoot’ (meaning a reduced chance of exceeding 1.5ºC in the near term), there is a broad range of possible deployment levels for the technology, with a median average of 665 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide cumulatively captured and stored between now and 2100.
Fossil fuel companies’ favorite climate solution has scored tens of billions of dollars in support from the Biden administration and Congress, but many environmentalists and scientists say it is a dangerous boondoggle.
Carbon capture and storage refers to a suite of technologies that remove carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions and then compress the climate-warming gas for injection underground. The idea is not new, but has gotten lots of attention and tens of billions of dollars in funding in recent years as governments look to accelerate efforts to cut climate pollution.
The technologies could, theoretically, help reduce emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants and industrial operations like cement and steel manufacturing, and it could also be used to make low-carbon hydrogen fuel from natural gas. The problem is that building and running carbon capture operations is expensive, involves complex engineering challenges and presents environmental risks. One CO2 pipeline ruptured in Mississippi in 2020, sending dozens who were exposed to the gas to the hospital. Carbon dioxide that is injected underground can also leak into groundwater or the atmosphere if storage sites are not properly screened or maintained.
Despite decades of research and billions in public and private investment, there were only a few dozen CCS plants operating worldwide as of March 2023, with the ability to remove only about 46 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s equal to about 0.1 percent of global CO2 emissions. Most of the existing capacity is attached to gas processing plants, where oil companies separate naturally-occuring carbon dioxide from methane, also known as natural gas. Capturing CO2 from these gas processing plants is generally far cheaper than doing so at power plants or industrial sites.
Some of the biggest supporters of CCS have been fossil fuel producers. Oil companies lobbied hard to secure billions in federal loans, grants and tax incentives that were included in the 2021 infrastructure bill and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Many environmental groups have said this money would be better spent on efforts to phase out fossil fuels and have criticized CCS as little more than “greenwashing” for oil companies looking to burnish their image.
New rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would require the nation’s largest coal and gas power plants to install carbon capture equipment if they plan to continue operating beyond 2040. At the time the rules were proposed, there were no commercial-scale power plants with CCS running in the United States. So far, utilities looking to reduce their climate pollution have generally said carbon capture remains too expensive to use at their existing coal plants and have opted instead to replace them with wind and solar energy generation.
The next twenty years will tell a story. Most people can not understand a story twenty years in advance regardless of their Ph.D.
The story we are now just beginning to harness alternatives importantly as a larger and larger part of our electric and heat production. The change over from fossil fuels will take over 15 years. In that time we have no where to go but to capture as much carbon as possible.
The environmentalists do not trust a single thing. That is a necessary pressure on DC. The tailpipes and smokestacks wont disappear conveniently. It is practical to do carbon capture. The pressure here in this article is on industry not fouling it up. I fully agree with the environmentalists but the capture has to happen.
The ending of the story is an alternative energy deflationary era. Fossil fuels wont be able to compete.
