It's burning 3x as much coal as it did 20 years ago and doesn't seem to be dropping at all (2024 was more than 2023, 2025 will be at least as much as 2024).
Seems to be someone pretending an objective fact isn't true for reasons that escape me.
> The new analysis shows that power generation from coal fell by 1.6% in China and by 3.0% in India in 2025, as non-fossil energy sources grew quickly enough in both countries to cover electricity consumption growth.
Does a 3x increase followed by a 1.6% decrease really make the statement "burning more coal than ever before" a "blatant lie" in any but the most pedantic sense?
No, climate is perhaps my least aligned issue with this administration. I may end up voting Democrats next time, we'll have to see how bad their platform is again. I just wish I could vote to protect our climate and our borders at once.
What makes you think the Republicans are trying to protect the borders? From what I can see they're not trying to do that. They're just trying to make a permanent underclass of scare workers who they can pay poverty wages to. I only really see raids in cities and not the farms or countryside abattoirs that hire lots of illegal immigrants. If they really cared about illegal immigration then just remove the pull factor. Go after the employers of illegal immigrants. Make it a requirement for them to confirm immigration status before hiring anyone. Actual consequences for hiring illegal immigrants would rapidly remove the pull factors.
Trump's tax cuts and climate policy is identical to what he did last time. Why did you vote for him if you were going to be unhappy with those policies?
If you didn't like him doing those things, which he clearly signaled he would do and nobody had any intention of stopping him, what did you vote for him for? How did those reasons outweigh the damage he does with his tax cuts and climate policy?
> Why did you vote for him if you were going to be unhappy with those policies?
I voted for him for his other signalled policies that I did agree with, obviously. I deemed those more important than the climate policy and tax policy.
> what did you vote for him for?
Primarily cultural issues, which he delivered on beyond what I expected. Examples include the EO to change university admission processes away from DEI, which will have a huge positive effect on my Asian children, and a reduction in immigration and H1Bs.
What I've seen for the past several years is that Asian and White applicants to universities, medical schools, and various other high institutions and careers are admitted at disproportionately lower rates when adjusting for qualifications. This is racism. If the left wanted my vote, they should have stopped being constantly, concretely racist against Asian people. Not the kind of harmless racism on the right that says we're bad drivers, but the deep institutional racism that bars us from the life we've merited and gives it to someone else because their skin color matters more.
I'm not going to respond to you anymore, because you insist on commenting in a supercilious manner unbecoming.
I’m not American, so forgive my confusion, but are you really saying that you think DEI policies are not only racist, but more harmful and racist than profiling people based on the colour of the their skin or country of origin, then beating them into vans and throwing them into prison camps, including children?
And are you also saying you are Asian and yet somehow believe you and your children are going to be exempt from such profiling?
You said you care about “protecting your borders”, but if you’re Asian that means you’re neither a native American nor an original colonist. Someone in your family, at some point, had to migrate to the US. Why was it OK then but not OK now? Why exactly are you deserving of calling those your borders but other immigrants are not?
This is honestly confusing. You talked of “harmless racism” on the right, but refused to comment on ICE and seem to believe DEI is worse. Could you explain exactly which racism is harmful and which is harmless? Does it depend on the race? Why is DEI a bigger problem than ICE?
I'm a citizen of the country, they are not. In how a nation should be run, preferences of citizens are more important than the preferences of the rest of the world. I don't make a claim about my ancestors' migration being OK or not. It's kind of like asking an Italian, "Why was it okay for your Roman ancestors to take this land, but it's not okay for Turkey to take it now?" I will say that it's strange that the same people who are often so vocal about how European colonists were so bad for the native Americans, are also vocally for immigration. I want to say to them, "How did that work out for the previous inhabitants?"
DEI is worse than ICE because the latter has huge effects on tens of millions of citizens, actually all of them due to cultural drift, while the latter has huge effects on at most hundreds of citizens so far.
May I ask how you became a citizen? Was it by birth or are you first generation? For those without family who are already citizens, how are they supposed to become citizens without entering the country first and being targeted by ICE?
> I want to say to them, "How did that work out for the previous inhabitants?"
Then I take it that you are pro native American, and would agree they have more right to the land than yourself, and thus their preferences should be above yours? If not, why not?
> DEI is worse than ICE because
You skipped the most important questions there. I’ll ask again:
> Could you explain exactly which racism is harmful and which is harmless? Does it depend on the race?
> > Could you explain exactly which racism is harmful and which is harmless? Does it depend on the race?
It's a utilitarian question. Degrees of harm, and what they achieve...
> Then I take it that you are pro native American, and would agree they have more right to the land than yourself, and thus their preferences should be above yours? If not, why not?
I don't understand how you got there from my comment. Native Americans are a cautionary tale of immigration. They certainly had more right to the land at the time they lost the land. But we aren't giving it back. They lost, they got fucked, it sucks for them. It doesn't follow that I should then be willing for my own self/people to lose and get fucked. I am not voting against my family's self interest because I currently benefit from some unrelated people getting fucked hundreds of years ago. This isn't a philosophy class. It's real stakes. It could be war. Nobody's preferences are above mine in the voting booth, that's what a vote is. I'm voting to not get fucked. You can vote to get yourself fucked if you want that, out of some guilt.
As I told you at the start, I’m not American, I don’t vote in your elections. I’m merely trying to understand the people who do vote as you do, especially seeing the apparent contradictions and conflicts of interest. And I thank you for engaging.
I don’t understand why you believe that being a citizen protects you, seeing as ICE has already proven that it doesn’t by arresting and killing US citizens.
Why are you not afraid of that? Is the colour of your skin lighter than the one that is typically profiled? What do you think of ICE capturing and killing citizens? And how does capturing citizens “protect your borders”?
I mean this with good intentions: the news you're reading about our country is sensationalist propaganda. This sort of thing almost never happens, and every account you read of is lacking context or information that makes it a lot less bad than the news wants it to sound. For example "ICE detains 5 year old" is always something like, the only parent was illegal, with the kid, and detained, so they obviously couldn't leave a 5 year old alone at home and had to take him somewhere. Every headline and every sentence you read is crafted to sound as bad as possible and omit any normalizing context.
I'm not afraid of ICE because 1. They are not targeting people who look like me as far as I know, 2. If I did look Mexican, I'm still extremely unlikely to encounter them, much more likely to die in a car crash etc.
What I think of ICE... Obviously the situation isn't good and I don't like the bad things happening. As far as I know the only deaths were caused by situations I'd never be in, like intentionally obstructing them with my car, refusing to move, then suddenly trying to run them over. Or physically obstructing an ongoing arrest in a big mob. Is it good those people died, no, but I'm not afraid of it because I wouldn't be doing those things.
I consider the current situation with ICE to be an overcorrection to decades of anger about unchecked immigration. The right has been begging to reduce immigration for so long, especially illegal immigration, and it never happens. The left vocally supports illegal immigrants most of the time, with sanctuary cities etc, refusing to enforce the law let alone strengthen the law. Finally the right gets a win largely on immigration sentiment, and this is the result. In my opinion if the left hadn't been so gleeful about protecting illegals all these years, the right would have much less of a taste for this situation. I think it's sort of like, well we tried the easy way and you wouldn't even follow the law, now we're doing it the hard way.
Despite not being American myself, I do have family who is. I don’t recall the exact date they became citizens, but some time before Trump’s first term. I also have friends who are American, born and raised, living in different parts of the country. Some I have met in person, others I haven’t. When I see some crazy news I usually talk to them. They do provide context but never once referred to this ICE situation as lies or propaganda. My family members have expressed concern for their own safety and are considering fleeing the country despite being citizens.
In other words, I’m not simply relying on the news for information about what is going on.
> They are not targeting people who look like me as far as I know
But if they were, wouldn’t you want people who didn’t look like you to fight for your rights too?
> If I did look Mexican, I'm still extremely unlikely to encounter them, much more likely to die in a car crash etc.
Not sure that’s true, but it would be an interesting statistic to figure out. For a fair comparison, we can’t simply take the general likelihood of dying in a car crash VS being targeted by ICE, we’d have to do something like “in period X when ICE was in county Y, how many Mexican-looking people were targeted VS were in car accidents”.
I’ll reiterate I appreciate you answering my questions. I hope it is clear I am genuinely trying to understand your positions.
"Would you tolerate" is kind of interesting phrasing.
It feels like there's no "one-size-fits-all" ideal level of intervention in a dysfunctional/repressive government. Sometimes if you just leave them alone, they "inevitably" liberalize, reaping the benefits. Sometimes if you just leave them alone they calcify, form coalitions, and actively interfere in Western democracies. Sometimes if you intervene a little, you can help support the people oust their rulers. Sometimes if you intervene a little, you just harm innocent civilians, and entrench the power of the regime. And so on and so forth for every possible level of intervention.
Sure, some of it is going to inherently depend on the actual level of the power disparity, on any counteracting support the regime is getting from your adversaries, on the particular details of your intentions and your intervention, on the timing, etc. But sometimes it really feels like nobody knows what they're doing with foreign policy, and sometimes you get lucky and the country where you literally nuke two major cities just sort of shrugs, shakes your hand, and becomes one of your closest allies with a great deal of goodwill between citizens, and on the other hand sometimes you put boots on the ground an funnel enormous sums of money and (at least hypothetically) try to maintain positive relationships with the locals in a huge nation-building project and after decades you end up with...nothing.
So, to go back to what you said, sometimes it feels like tolerating the fascist country in your backyard might be the best way to turn it into a non-fascist country. And, on the other hand, sometimes it might be the worst way. These things seem difficult.
Your comment implies that my post was my own opinion, where I was merely sharing what the USA position on Cuba has been.
If your definition of fascism includes the merger of corporate power with gov power, then the USA has met that definition for at least 30 years. So yes, I guess I've tolerated it in my backyard, as every American has.
The US could not care less about Cuba being communist.
They care a lot about Cuba being "open door communist bros" with the USSR, and now with China.
If China moves on Taiwan, and the US moves to defend, and then a bunch of Chinese missiles hit the East Coast, people will wonder what the government was doing letting China set up camp right on our door step.
It's about as ironic as defending your goal while also trying to get the ball in the opponents goal. I suppose in some way it's ironic, but it's also the only beneficial way to play the game.
It's crazy that this still works for the companies. Anyone with any experience here knows whats happening. But the reporters can still just parrot whatever these companies say. Who cares if it's more lies, right?
Correct. Trump set the precedent by claiming that pardons made with "autopen" are invalid, based on nothing. Accordingly, pardons made by a senile president who just blindly signs whatever's placed in front of him¹ are also invalid.
I'd wager the majority of the visitors of this site are smart enough to not fall for this. What are you doing?