Although over the last week the issue of Climate Change has been reduced to a ridiculous tit-for-tat argument between SHuckabee and AOC over what is or isn’t “God’s province”….
Look, I don’t think we’re gonna listen to her [Ocasio-Cortez] on much of anything, particularly not on matters that we’re going to leave into the hands of a much, much higher authority, and certainly not listen to the freshman congresswoman on when the world might end.
To which AOC responded:
… the larger point is that Ocasio-Cortez statements during an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates was absolutely correct when she said the “World Will end in 12 years”, because that exactly what the Scientists are saying, and they back Ocasio-Cortez all the way.
Via ThinkProgress.
“I think the part of it that is generational,” Ocasio-Cortez explained, “is that Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us, are looking up and we’re like: The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?”
She added, “This is the war — this is our World War II.”
The right has scoffed at this idea, they’ve discounted and discredit it and tried to discredit her as a “Loony Lefty” for this statement. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has used claims such as these as an excuse for his spoiler Independent bid for 2020.
“Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire a**h***!” an unidentified man screamed.
Schultz seems unfazed. And in fact, he’s doubling down, not only refusing to exit a race he has yet to officially enter, but blasting one of the most popular Democrats to come along in years by slamming one of her signature policies.
“Schultz says he can’t run for president as a Democrat because he doesn’t like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to slap a 70-percent marginal tax rate on income above $10 million,” The Daily Beast reports.
“I respect the Democratic Party,” Schultz, formerly a life-long Democrat, said Monday. “I no longer feel affiliated because I don’t know their views represent the majority of Americans. I don’t think we want a 70 percent income tax in America,” he explained.
Schultz may be surprised to learn that in fact, the Democratic Party’s views in large part do represent the majority of Americans.
For example, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to tax earnings over $10 million at 70 percent is supported by nearly six in ten Americans.
A 70 percent top marginal tax rate happens to be pretty much what we had before Reagan, except for when it was 90 percent under Dwight Eisenhower who was the last Republican President with a balanced budget.
In order to pay for making college tuition-free for Americans, Sanders said that Wall Street owed the middle class for bailing it out during the recent financial crisis. He said he would demand "that the wealthiest people and the largest corporations, who have gotten away with murder for years, start paying their fair share."
"Well, let’s get specific, how high would you go?" CBS News moderator Nancy Cordes asked. "You’ve said before you’d go above 50 percent. How high?"
"We haven’t come up with an exact number yet, but it will not be as high as the number under Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was 90 percent," Sanders answered.
Was the top income tax rate under Eisenhower an astronomical 90 percent? We decided to check the ledgers on that figure.
We turned to the Tax Foundation’s federal income tax rates history, which documents figures going all the way back to 1913, when the income tax began with the ratification of the 16th Amendment.
During the eight years of the Eisenhower presidency, from 1953 to 1961, the top marginal rate was 91 percent. (It was 92 percent the year he came into office.)
Fox News is actually very upset that Americans seem to agree with Ocasio-Cortez, which is because she’s right.
The conservative, pro-Trump propaganda network sent reporter Lawrence Jones (who has a historyof embarrassing himself on air) to New York’s 14th Congressional District, apparently hoping to find voters who would bash the freshman Democrat.
They were disappointed.
Asked by Jones about Ocasio-Cortez’s
proposal to tax earnings over $10 million at a rate of 70 percent, one woman said she agreed: “I am all for it.”
“Absolutely, they make so much money, tax them!” another woman emphatically said.
One man said he thought 70 percent was actually “too low,” and that a 90 percent marginal tax rate on income above $10 million would be a better idea.
“The people believe in her,” Jones said incredulously. “People should be afraid.”
“I don’t know what’s scarier: her policies or the fact that so many people will agree with her,” fretted Fox and Friends co-host and consummate Trump booster Brian Kilmeade.
Jones and Kilmeade seem terrified that a popular member of Congress might actually represent the views of her constituents.
The constituents Jones interviewed were also receptive to Ocasio-Cortez’s push to abolish ICE because of the agency’s repeated abuses of immigrants.
“Yes,” one woman replied when asked if she thought the agency should be dissolved. Another man interviewed said he wasn’t sure if ICE needed to be fully abolished, but that he did think “major changes, radical changes” need to be made.
Yeah, we wouldn’t want a congressional representative who actually represents the perspective and views of the people who elected them would we? I mean, sometimes that results in Steve — Cantaloupe Calves — King, but this time it gave us AOC.
Scientist quizzed by Thinkprogress fully support Ocasio-Cortez.
“Projected impacts look especially bad beyond 2°C or so of planetary warming,” leading climate expert Michael Mann told ThinkProgress. “And there is no scenario for stabilizing warming below 2°C that doesn’t require rapid reductions in carbon emissions over the next decade.”
Andrew Jones, co-director of Climate Interactive, a U.S. think tank that generated some of the scenarios the IPCC used in its report, said he “definitely” agreed with Mann’s assessment. Rapid reductions means a 30-50 percent decrease in global emissions by 2030, rather than the 10 percent increase we are currently looking at.
It is not possible to overstate the urgency of the matter. As Debra Roberts, a co-chair of the report’s working group on climate impacts, told The Guardian back in October, “This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilizes people and dents the mood of complacency.”
The Guardian in it’s report noted that we only have 12 years left to deal with this problem.
The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.
The half-degree difference could also prevent corals from being completely eradicated and ease pressure on the Arctic, according to the 1.5C study, which was launched after approval at a final plenary of all 195 countries in Incheon in South Korea that saw delegates hugging one another, with some in tears.
The UN’s IPCC recently reported that yes, we do only have 12 years until 2030 to get Climate Change under control.
B.4.4. Impacts of climate change in the ocean are increasing risks to fisheries and aquaculture via impacts on the physiology, survivorship, habitat, reproduction, disease incidence, and risk of invasive species (medium confidence) but are projected to be less at 1.5ºC of global warming than at 2ºC. One global fishery model, for example, projected a decrease in global annual catch for marine fisheries of about 1.5 million tonnes for 1.5°C of global warming compared to a loss of more than 3 million tonnes for 2°C of global warming (medium confidence). {3.4.4, Box 3.4}
B.5. Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth are projected to increase with global warming of 1.5°C and increase further with 2°C. (Figure SPM.2) {3.4, 3.5, 5.2, Box 3.2, Box 3.3, Box 3.5, Box 3.6, Cross-Chapter Box 6 in Chapter 3, Cross-Chapter Box 9 in Chapter 4, Cross-Chapter Box 12 in Chapter 5, 5.2}
B.5.1. Populations at disproportionately higher risk of adverse consequences with global warming of 1.5°C and beyond include disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, some indigenous peoples, and local communities dependent on agricultural or coastal livelihoods (high confidence). Regions at disproportionately higher risk include Arctic ecosystems, dryland regions, small island developing states, and Least Developed Countries (high confidence). Poverty and disadvantage are expected to increase in some populations as global warming increases; limiting global warming to 1.5°C, compared with 2°C, could reduce the number of people both exposed to climate-related risks and susceptible to poverty by up to several hundred million by 2050 (medium confidence). {3.4.10, 3.4.11, Box 3.5, Cross-Chapter Box 6 in Chapter 3, Cross-Chapter Box 9 in Chapter 4, Cross-Chapter Box 12 in Chapter 5, 4.2.2.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 5.2.3, 5.6.3}
B.5.2. Any increase in global warming is projected to affect human health, with primarily negative consequences (high confidence). Lower risks are projected at 1.5°C than at 2°C for heat-related morbidity and mortality (very high confidence) and for ozone-related mortality if emissions needed for ozone formation remain high (high confidence). Urban heat islands often amplify the impacts of heatwaves in cities (high confidence). Risks from some vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever, are projected to increase with warming from 1.5°C to 2°C, including potential shifts in their geographic range (high confidence). {3.4.7, 3.4.8, 3.5.5.8}
Dr. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri is the Chairman of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has argued that Climate Change presents a significant National Security threat.
If the impact of climate change is going to make regions of violence poorer, then they really provide a level of fertility for inciting disaffection, resentment against the prosperous world. That’s an indirect effect that can create the conditions for terrorism. There is also domestic reasons. If higher-intensity hurricanes create a lot of damage, that does in some sense have security-implications as well. There is a whole range of factors. Water scarcity is another one. I’m not saying all this translates into direct threats to the U.S., but conflict anywhere has some implication for security in the U.S. As the most powerful and most prosperous nation on Earth, it is for the U.S. to take a global view of what strategically might minimize the possibility of threats to national security.
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Climate change is not something in the future. It’s already here. And every part of the globe is going to be affected. We will have an increase in extreme events. We’re likely to have problems with respect to water supplies in the U.S. We have to tell the people of the U.S. that this is something intimately connected with their present and their future. The cost of inaction is going to be far higher than action. And the cost of action is really not all that high. The U.S. has made all kinds of sacrifices in the past and has always come out on top.
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The U.S. is really going to lose its place in the world of automobile production and sales if they don’t wake up and start producing more efficient vehicles. GM and Ford Motor Company are already in pretty poor shape. We also need much better investment in public transport. I find it unthinkable that Ireland and France are testing high-speed trains which run at 574 km/hour. It takes three hours to go from New York to Washington DC. It really should not take more than 1 hour and 15 minutes. On public transportation, I think the U.S. is several years behind Europe. I think you could make these changes without any loss of jobs, comfort, or convenience.
No matter how you slice it, Ocasio-Cortez is correct and Climate Change is an issue that needs serious attention, no matter what Howard Schultz or Fox and Friends might say about it.