“The only thing that can.” I hope Peter means water-use efficiency for all users. The graphic he includes with this tweet suggests he’s focused on household toilet usage in California. I’ll round the numbers used in the graphic: 1980 usage was 800,000 acre-feet per year; current use (no efficiency) is 1,200,000 acre-feet per year. Current savings from efficiency improvements: 640,000 acre-feet per year. Additional potential savings: 290,000 acre-feet per year.
The 640,000 AFY is laudable. That’s a lot of water that Californians don’t have to use and thankfully aren’t. That is a real accomplishment. An additional 290,000 AFY is a good goal to work on – why waste a resource when you don’t have to.
But toilet water usage isn’t the primary usage of California water – and it’s that small point that troubled me when I saw the tweet. Total water usage in California is 40,00,000 AFY. That 640,000 efficiency represents just 1.6% of the total usage. It also represents >50% reduction from what water usage could be without any efficiency measures. What I want to know is what efficiencies water-thirsty California agriculture implements. Agriculture is by far the dominant user of water – if we achieved just 1% sector efficiency, how much more water could California save because of the scale of industry usage compared to residential usage?
Agriculture is a sizable part of the California economy – $43 billion industry that generates $100 billion in overall economic activity. Because of that, agriculture wields political clout in Sacramento. This means that while physical scientists can inform policymakers on the ongoing drought, we need the social sciences to inform policymakers how to deal with it. I would also like to see quantitative results of efficiency gains by sector.
EIA released its 2015 reference case for electricity generation between 2000 and 2040. The upshot: while they expect natural gas and renewables to continue their growth in the U.S.’s overall energy portfolio, coal is still very much in the mix in 2040. From a climate perspective, if their reference projection becomes reality, we easily pass 2C warming by 2100.
Their reference projection “reflects current laws and regulations—but not pending rules, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan“. So it is no surprise that current laws and regulations result in passing the 2C threshold (or the GHG emissions which would actually lead to passing the 2C threshold). The EPA’s Clean Power Plan isn’t in effect yet – and it will take time to analyze changes to actual generation once its final form does take effect.
Figure 1. EIA’s Reference Case analysis and projection of U.S. electricity generation (2000-2040).
The good news is renewables’ share grows during the next 25 years. Again, there’s no surprise there. Nor is it surprising to see natural gas’ share also grow. If you look at the left y-axis, the absolute share of renewables exceeds that of natural gas. The bad news (from a 20th-century climate perspective) is that coal remains 34% of the electricity generation in this scenario. That news is tempered by the fact that in both absolute and percentage terms, coal use is lower during the next 25 years than the last 15 years. The absolute numbers are most frustrating from a climate perspective. In 2040, this scenario projects >1.5 trillion kilowatt hours of coal generation. Absent additional policy measures, that value remains largely unchanged during the next 25 years. How do we address that? Well, beating people over the head with scientific consensus claims hasn’t worked (and won’t in the future either): the American public know what causes global warming, once you get past self-identity question framing. Once you interact with Americans on familiar terms, they’re much more willing to support global warming-related policies than many climate activists want you to believe.
Figure 2. EIA’s renewable generation by type.
The EIA projects wind penetration to continue as it has for the last decade – almost doubling in absolute terms in the next 25 years. We need that deployment and more to make a serious dent in GHG emissions.
Figure 3. EIA’s six cases in their 2015 annual report.
You can see how different assumptions impacts EIA’s 2040 projections of electricity generation in 2040 compared to the 2013 historical case. Don’t hope for high oil prices: renewables constitute more than 1 trillion kilowatt hours in that case, but coal also grows to nearly 2 trillion kWh! Putting dreams aside, I don’t think those coal plants will all be running highly efficient carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
We still need RD&D for multiple technologies. To do that, we need policies that prioritize innovative – and yes, risky – programs and projects. The government is the only institution that can reliably assume that level of risk. If we want to avoid 4C or 6C, we can; we need innovative policies and technologies today to stay below those thresholds.
The US-China climate deal announced in December 2014 generated big news. It was yet another diplomatic success for the Obama administration and John Kerry’s State Department. Nothing I say below takes away from that success. In terms of climate action success, the deal ranks pretty low to me. I’ll quickly summarize what I understand of the deal and then share why I think it isn’t a significant climate deal.
China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, pledged in the far-reaching agreement to cap its rapidly growing carbon emissions by 2030, or earlier if possible. It also set an ambitious goal of increasing the share of non-fossil fuels to 20 percent of its energy mix by 2030.
Obama announced a target to cut U.S. emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 – eight years after he leaves office — the first time the president has set a goal beyond the existing 17 percent target by 2020.
The bolded portions highlight the agreement’s big news. China agreed to a carbon emissions cap and the U.S. pushed its emissions reduction target out 5 years and increased the target by ~11% below 2005 levels.
Those are good goals. Are they sufficient goals? It depends on what you consider sufficient. I consider goals that will actually achieve the stated climate target of <2C warming by 2100 as sufficient. These goals won’t achieve that target. But then, as I’ve written for some time now, I don’t think we can set goals that achieve the <2C by 2100 target. There are technical and political hurdles that we chose not to surmount during the past 30+ years. Why won’t this agreement achieve that target? Let’s take a quick look from the same International Business Times article:
China completes a new coal plant every eight to 10 days, and while its economic growth has slowed, it is still expanding at a brisk rate exceeding 7 percent.
The scale of construction for China to meet its goals is huge even by Chinese standards. It must add 800 to 1,000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission generation capacity by 2030 — more than all the coal-fired power plants that exist in China today and close to the total electricity generation capacity in the United States.
And to meet its target, the United States will need to double the pace of carbon pollution reduction from 1.2 percent per year on average from 2005 to 2020 to 2.3 to 2.8 percent per year between 2020 and 2025.
Who out there truly believes that China can deploy 800 GW of zero-emission generation capacity in less than 15 years? Remember before you answer in the affirmative that China’s deployment of coal-fired plants exceeded anything in history and that coal remains an extremely cheap energy resource. All the other technologies currently cost more in terms of deployment. What incentives does China, as a developing nation, have to spend more money for intermittent power sources? They’re more interested in growing their economy, as the U.S. is. Speaking of the U.S. – I emphasized part of that quote quite purposefully to highlight the scale of the issue. China must, in 15 years, deploy as much generation infrastructure as exists in the entire U.S. today. Our infrastructure took decades and decades to build out. China needs to do the same thing, with more expensive infrastructure, in 15 short years!? I will be among the first to congratulate China if they accomplish this daunting task and I don’t think China should shy away from working towards it. I just don’t think they have a realistic chance of actually accomplishing it.
What about the U.S.? We need to more than double the decarbonization rate of our economy to achieve our emissions goals. Remember that most of the decarbonization achieved since 2005 was due first to the Great Recession and second to the natural gas boom. The Great Recession is finally behind us, though effects linger. The natural gas boom? It’s currently experiencing strong headwinds as OPEC pushes the cost of oil down to the $50 range from the $100-110 range last year. It’s economically unfeasible to frack for natural gas with $50 per barrel of oil. While the natural gas industry won’t collapse (at least I hope it doesn’t), it won’t support additional decarbonization for the foreseeable future either.
I believe we are well on our way toward 3-4C warming by 2100 and must plan and act accordingly. This deal, while diplomatically ambitious, is not climate ambitious enough to drive us away from those thresholds.
Welcome back to me. I took a break due to heavy class load and studying for qualifying exams. I’m looking forward to a good 2015. I tagged plenty of material while I was short on writing time, so stay tuned for lots of climate and energy science and policy discussions.
I remember all too many climate scientists tripping over one another in their mad rush to a microphone to declare that the Arctic would be ice-free in just a few short years – a claim I thought was silly and dangerous.
Why silly? Because these same scientists, preaching objectivism and claiming science has an impenetrable hold on truth over all other comers, no more understood the cryosphere then than they do now. This most result lays bare that type of truth: we don’t know enough about the cryosphere system to accurately or precisely project conditions in the near to medium future. While it is very likely that summer Arctic sea ice will be missing at some point in the future, the timing of that event is very much in question. I think it will be sooner than the IPCC AR4 model projections (see quoted statement below), which read: “In some projections, arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century.” Papers written prior to the 2014 AR5 report projected ice-free conditions between 2037 and 2050. But there is still 35 years in the meantime. What will Arctic sea ice be like during those 35 years? Like good scientists, we should collect data as well as run and test models during that time to more fully understand the system. But good scientists do not claim knowledge they do not have.
The 2007 IPCC report made clear the level of uncertainty that exists:
A systematic analysis of future projections for the Arctic Ocean circulation is still lacking. Coarse resolution in global models prevents the proper representation of local processes that are of global importance (such as the convection in the Greenland Sea that affects the deep waters in the Arctic Ocean and the intermediate waters that form overflow waters).
Which leads to the dangerous part of scientists’ misguided efforts to “educate” the public at every turn, a strategy motivated by perceived successes by fossil fuel corporations and their backers. Moreover, the perceived extreme position of those corporations elicited a corresponding response from scientist-activists. One problem with this is the potential to appear foolish to the very people scientists are trying to convince of real climate risks when dire projections end up wrong. Scientists historically and currently enjoy wide-spread and deep respect by the public. I can’t believe that will continue if, for instance, grandiose claims of significant events end up wrong. How often do you and your friends make fun of the local weatherman after a busted forecast? I think scientists should instead tap into that deep reservoir of trust and leverage it intelligently. If the best science indicates an ice-free Arctic by 2035-2050, then say that. If conditions change radically, there will of course be a ready explanation that the public will gladly receive.
The panel intends for this assessment report to guide international negotiators as they work, in the run-up to the big Paris climate summit in December 2015, to hammer out an agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The U.N. hopes nations will find a way to squeeze through the ever-shrinking window of opportunity and cut a deal to keep the planet from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius of warming — the goal scientists have set to avoid the worst impacts of climate change — before we blow right past that target.
It is worth reminding yourself that everything you encounter in any media is biased somehow. We’re all human and we all have our own biases. Nothing is unbiased or objective because the act of putting words to concepts is derived from brains with preferred neural pathways. There is nothing inherently bad with the bolded language above. It comes from Grist, which many in the climate activist community view as a legitimate source of information (unlike say, Fox News). However, the 2 °C threshold was not originally scientific. That was one of the fundamental take home messages of my last post.
Negotiators in the early 1990s for the IPCC asked for some type of threshold that they might use in negotiations because, not being scientists, they didn’t know what threshold might be useful or appropriate. A German scientist offered up the 2 °C threshold as part of the UNFCCC process and because nobody else came up with a different threshold or challenged the temperature threshold, negotiators moved it through their process until politicians from countries around the world agreed to insert the language in a formal report. As is usually the case with these type of things, it has remained as the public threshold ever since. Climate scientists started using the threshold as part of their work in an attempt to maintain legitimacy in the funding process because politicians control research purse strings. Finally, as I wrote in my last post, the status quo is very hard to change. Witness the personalized (not science-based!) attacks on the authors of the Nature Comment that initiated the most recent version of the threshold discussion.
The language Grist uses plays into skeptics hands. “The goal scientists have set.” That implies that scientists have political power and have already exercised it at the expense of every other person. Unsurprisingly, most people aren’t fans of yielding power without a chance at involvement. Hence one very good reason to subvert those scientists. Grist is helping perpetrate the meme that there is a conspiracy against non-scientists – a meme that many climate scientist activists further inflame when they claim exclusive providence over anything climate related. If activists don’t view someone as a perfect example of their tribe, they attack the “other” without hesitation because they’re using the climate issue as a proxy for arguments they should have instead.
Politicians and diplomats set the 2 °C threshold. They were the only ones that had the power to do so. Scientists don’t approve the IPCC’s language. They write their own papers and contribute to the IPCC process, but politicians are responsible for approving every last word in IPCC reports. Grist writers and editors should know this. They’re all too willing to allow zombie myths to keep roaming the discussion space, it appears.
Twitter and the blogosphere are aflutter with references to David Robert’s post, “Preventing climate change and adapting to it are not morally equivalent“. I read the post with the mindset that David was trying to continue recent climate-related public themes. With that in mind, I wanted to respond to some points.
Climate hawks are familiar with the framing of climate policy credited to White House science advisor John Holdren, to wit: We will respond to climate change with some mix of mitigation, adaptation, and suffering; all that remains to be determined is the mix. […] It makes them sound fungible, as though a unit of either can be traded in for an equivalent unit of suffering. That’s misleading. They are very different, not only on a practical level but morally.
I’ll start by noting my disagreement that Holdren’s framing establishes equitable fungibility. That’s not the way I interpret it, anyway. For me, it boils down to this: we have a finite amount of resources to devote to climate action. What we spend them on remains undecided. I don’t think of one unit of mitigation equaling one unit of adaptation. Such a frame strikes me as silly, to be quite frank. Many factors will go into deciding where to spend resources. I think local and state US governments are choosing adaptation because they’ve correctly assessed that mitigation is costlier. Governments have responsibilities to their constituencies – not far-off populations that are admittedly more at risk from climate change than ours. That’s one of the Big Pillar Problems: climate change effects impact people with little responsibility to the problem disproportionately. It is psychologically sound to muster less action for “others” than “selves” – for better or worse, altruism isn’t rewarded in our society. Unfortunately, that’s the reality we live and operate in. Wishes aren’t going to change that.
Communities and organizations could break up resources to mitigate potential dirty energy projects and make them clean in foreign countries where it is relatively cheaper to do so while simultaneously allocating remaining resources to address perceived threats locally. That’s a harder thing to do than what I describe above – only adapt locally – but it’s also cheaper than mitigating locally (for now).
Say I pay $10 to reduce carbon by a ton. I bear the full cost, but because all of humanity benefits, I receive only one seven-billionth of the value of my investment (give or take).
David contradicts what he said prior to this with this statement. The poorest and most vulnerable benefit more than he does. But note the fundamental, critical point here: can anyone benefit by $10/7,000,000,000? What can I do with 1.43*10^-9 dollars? Absolutely nothing. And neither can the primary benefitees, who have to share most of that calculable but meaningless number. The second point which follows quickly on the heels of the first is that any mitigation investment requires multiple billions before anyone sees one dollar’s value and multiple trillions before anyone sees something meaningful. Where does that money come from and how do we convince people to make the required investment with the aforementioned psychological barriers to doing so?
One obvious implication of this difference is that, to the extent spending favors adaptation over mitigation, it will replicate and reinforce existing inequalities of wealth and power. The benefits will accrue to those with the money to pay for them.
I’ll look at this differently to help understand it better: will additional mitigation spending reduce wealth and power inequalities? Is David arguing that developing countries will be equally wealthy and powerful if climate spending is directed towards mitigation and not adaptation? That’s probably a logical extreme. Will we reduce inequalities between developing and developed countries to a greater extent due to mitigation or adaptation is one potential question we can address. I haven’t seen anything that convinces me of one argument or the other. I haven’t seen anything that addresses quantitatively either argument, to be frank.
It becomes more expensive to mitigate to an arbitrarily chosen threshold if the date by which to do so remains unchanged. That is, if you accept <2C warming by 2100 as a goal (though I’ve detailed many times why such a goal is unfeasible), then mitigation costs are lower if we begin mitigation today instead of 20 years from now. But why do we accept unnecessary firm boundaries on the problem? If, as I’ve postulated, <2C warming by 2100 isn’t technologically or politically feasible, then one or both boundaries must change. The further out in time we set the goal, the likelier it is that technologies will exist to more cheaply attain the goal. The higher the temperature goal is, the likelier we are to achieve it. And just like in the rest of our lives, the easier the goal is to attain, the likelier we are to do so. And once done, the easier it becomes to attain subsequent along-the-road goals.
What’s left out of these goals is developed nation-level energy generation in developing nations – in other words keeping poor people poor indefinitely. Mitigation alone won’t reduce wealth inequality. If David wants to reduce wealth inequality, the best way to do so is to post-industrialize developing nations as quickly as possible. With reduced inequality comes increased power. The side benefits? Developed nations actually work on mitigation (again, saving costs by mitigating where it’s cheaper) they can concentrate on adapting to climate effects along the way.
I recognize David’s valid point that skeptics are likely to latch onto the “we need to adapt” frame as a way to continue avoiding “we need to mitigate” concept. But skeptics are going to continue avoiding the problem so long as we don’t switch how we talk with them.
As a physical scientist who has also studied social aspects of science and technology, language – specifically word choice – is important. That is why when “ozone hole healing” jumped out from my Twitter feed today, it disappointed me. Why?
Is the ozone layer alive? Is it currently wounded? Can it heal?
I know environmental activists like to use the frame of Earth as a living thing. It’s not. It is a celestial body with multiple interacting physical systems. The Earth neither grows nor reproduces within its environment. There are things that are alive (obviously) on Earth. Phenomena occur within Earth systems, but that doesn’t qualify as life. Thus it cannot heal because it is not diseased or injured.
Metaphors are powerful tools in our language. We must take care to use them appropriately. There is nothing wrong with using scientific language to describe scientific processes. We can make explanations as simple as necessary, which should promote wider understanding of complex phenomena.
This isn’t news to anyone that reads this blog regularly: concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide hit a record level in 2013. News flash: they hit a new record in 2014. And they’ll do it again in 2015, 2016, 2017, …, and on until we innovate and deploy technologies that remove the gas from the atmosphere.
The article also includes what I consider to be a fairly realistic assessment of upcoming climate negotiations:
While stressing the need for that agreement to be “legally binding”, Mr Davey explained that actual targets for emissions reductions may not be covered by that term.
“We do believe that the foundations of the agreement have to be legally binding, so what that might be? That might be the rules. That might include the measurements, the monitoring and the verification and those sorts of things.
“We would prefer the targets to be legally binding, we already have legally binding targets in the UK and we are trying to argue for more ambitious legally binding targets for the EU, but we recognise that other countries find that a little bit more challenging.
The agreement in question is the follow-up to the failed Copenhagen climate conference. Countries since then have talked a lot about what they want to accomplish in terms of emissions reductions, but nobody has put together anything concrete. As Mr Davey said, the UK has “legally binding targets”. As with anything, the devil is in the details. The UK isn’t going to meet their “legally binding” reductions (see below). And what will happen when they finally acknowledge that they won’t? Who knows – it will be the first time such a thing happens. I think a safe bet is almost nothing will happen. And therein lies the problem. With no penalty, there is little incentive to actually make and enforce policies that will achieve stated goals.
First, the obligatory admonishment: more disaster talk. Really? Really? Quick to the chase: it turns people off from whatever else you have to say. Starting your article with it is the worst strategy. I’ve worked my way through climate disaster porn for over a decade now, so I continue.
The article tries to move the goal posts – the wrong way. Alexander White, for the Guardian, argues that while a 2°C limit on global warming is the commonly used target for climate negotiations, the limit should be reduced to a 1.5°C. After noting that national pledges aim only for 3°C and the real world is actually on track for 4°C. Now I ask: what possible motivation would countries have to aim for 1.5°C when current policies lead to 4°C+? Will moving the goal posts to 1.5°C somehow convince climate negotiators to go at it a bit harder? No, of course not.
White makes several arguments for the 1.5°C target, based on moral points which I agree with. However, neither he nor I can will the world to 1.5°C policies just because we want to. Real people have to argue for real policies – mostly in democracies in Western nations. Mr Davey had it correct: the first step is measurements, monitoring, and verification. Countries should have implemented those rules 25 years ago. They didn’t and we’re well on our way to 4°C.
Pricewaterhouse Cooper has the following in their summary:
In the Index’s G20 analysis, an unexpected champion surpassed the annual target – Australia – recording a decarbonisation rate of 7.2% over 2013, putting it top of the table for the second year in a row. Three other countries – the UK, Italy and China – achieved a decarbonisation rate of between 4% and 5%. Five countries, however, increased their carbon intensity over 2013 – France, the US, India, Germany and Brazil.
The UK achieved a one-time decarbonization rate of between 4% and 5%. What do they need to achieve their legally binding targets? Between 7% and 9% every year until 2020. And beyond too. Those decarbonization rates have never been achieved in history. To achieve them requires beyond Chinese-level investments in clean energy research and deployment by every country for the next 100 years. Until we come close to achieving that, arguing over a 1.5°C target versus a 2°C or 4°C target is peeing into the wind. It doesn’t accomplish much of anything useful. On a related note, Chinese 2013 fossil fuel deployment far exceeded every clean energy deployment worldwide during the same year. We need to spend our time establishing, implementing, and improving novel climate and energy policies. What we’re really arguing over isn’t 1.5°C vs. 2°C, it’s 3.9°C vs. 4.2°C – which is not much of a difference, is it?
White finishes with:
A challenge for us all leading up to the New York summit is that the 2°C target rhetoric is likely sabotaging policy negotiations that would meaningfully tackle global warming.
I disagree. This is the result of a fundamental misinterpretation of what policy negotiations failed to tackle historically. Developed nations will continue to fail if the focus remains on abstract targets such as 2°C or 1.5°C – neither of which is achievable anyway.
Is your state one of the 10 most energy-efficient US states? Mine (Colorado) isn’t. More context: the US is good at buzzwords, but lousy at implementing policies that increase energy efficiency. Although it’s a good thing that China is currently ranked #4 globally – they’ll have much less legacy infrastructure than the US and other developed nations to upgrade in the future.
This might be news to some: climate models that did the best at portraying natural ocean cycles the best also did better than their peers when projecting the recent surface warming pause. What most people don’t understand is that each climate model run portrays one individual potential outcome. That said, scientists don’t claim that individual models make perfect predictions. The recent warming trend is well within the range of available projections. Many skeptics, of course, gloss over this important detail when they falsely claim the models are no good. How much time do those same skeptics spend on financial projections, anyway?
This has the potential for misinterpretation and misuse: climate worriers don’t, on average, use less electricity than those who don’t worry about the climate (at least according to a very small UK study). They use more. This will continue the claims of hypocrisy by skeptics, and perhaps justifiably so. My net utility use is 14% to 17% of the average American’s 903 kilowatthours (kWh) per month: 125-150 kWh per month during the past year. That’s in a modern home with AC, computers, and smartphones. People can use much less than they currently do with a modern lifestyle. They just don’t prioritize it.
Random thought: poverty-wage employers always ask if people would be willing to pay more for products if they paid their employees living wages. I haven’t come across an easy rebuttal: were customers asked if they were willing to pay more for products if they paid their executives millions of dollars with guaranteed golden parachutes? Guess what most people would rather support? That’s right, the folks in their communities, not executives in their fenced off country club homes.
In recent years, Republicans in the US Congress, and in state legislatures as well, refused to approve budgets unless they cut programs. Which programs? Well, the ones that benefit the low and middle classes at the expense of the wealthy, of course. There are a number of kinds of hypocrisy here, to be sure. Two occupations and private defense corporation operations to the tune of $2,000 billion and counting? Republicans didn’t bat an eyelash to approve all of that. Tax cuts for the wealthy that weren’t balanced in the budget? No eyelash there either. A prescription drug program that cost additional billions of dollars? Yup, still no eyelash. Those are only a few examples of real costs that Republicans forced American taxpayers to pay for. Cost that grew the national deficit and debt – issues that Republicans cared about only when a Democrat (and a black one at that) became President. The Teabaggers didn’t get organized until the Kochs told them to get organized after Obama took office. I don’t want to go through with this experiment, but if a Republican in 2016 is elected President, I’m willing to bet the Teabaggers wouldn’t object to continued deficit spending – so long as it’s their ideological causes that receive the largesse.
Given all this, I play “what if” when I read news stories. Earlier this week, there was news that the Obama administration wanted to spend $236.3 million to eight states to improve electricity infrastructure in rural areas. Which got me to think, “Where would Republicans demand spending cuts for “fiscal conservatism” to remain true to their debt fetish?” Of course, Republicans will not demand spending cuts. But maybe Democrats should. In order to remain deficit neutral, what should we cut to spend $236.3 million taxpayer dollars – dollars that primarily came from urban areas by the way? Should we cut agriculture subsidies? Should we cut rural road spending? How about drought and flood insurance subsidies? See, this is where the rubber meets the road, Republicans. What are you willing to give up to spend money to ensure rural areas have power in the face of weather losses?
Or how about the problem of forest fires? By and large, this is a wilderness and rural problem. Fires are burning in Washington and Oregon right now. Where does the money come from? Again, primarily urban taxpayers. If Republicans want to cut SNAP money to veterans and children, why won’t they also propose cutting rural firefighting dollars as well? Because they know the former affects more urban Democrats and the latter affects more rural Republicans. Why don’t the mountain folks pull themselves up by the bootstraps and fight their own fires? Why must they continue their federal welfare addiction? Why do they like the nanny state so much? Wouldn’t fighting their own fires instill a little confidence in themselves so we could reduce the federal debt?
How much do Republicans really care about the debt? Only so much that it hurts their political opposition. Republicans are considered serious thinkers when they propose cuts to programs that keep people out of poverty, that keep American children educated, that keep our food and water safer than they otherwise would be – programs that by and large impact more urban people. The corporate media would make a clown out of any Democrat that, in the name of fiscal responsibility, proposed cutting programs that benefited rural populations. I for one would sure like to know when Republicans are ready to get serious about debt reduction.
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