Everything is possible when you don't believe

I get the impression that this is only a problem in countries that aren't secular. Here we don't see science and religion as competitive ideologies, but as two completely separate topics.

@Lavrentivs Exactly. Plus we don't try to turn either into policy.

@Lavrentivs I really don't think that applies.

@TheChief I think it absolutely applies. Secularism demands of the citizens to shift between different mind sets. So people can be perfectly fine both understanding concepts like evolution and believing in a monotheistic deity because one is meant for the biological environment, the other one is meant for their personal spiritial well-being. And this shifting between mindsets is something you aren't born with, it's a skill you develop - so you get better when you practice it; especially when you also practice accepting other people having different narratives and beliefs for their own spiritual well-being, and you still being able to interact and come to a consensus about daily life and values.

But it's easier not to do it, so there are many people who never would it if they were left to their own devices. Organized religion tends to have a history of having taken on responsibilites that should be taken on by civil society IMHO, like administration, political power, research, archiving, teaching, charity and caring for patients, the elderly and orphans. Most of them have been taken on by civil society in my country (though garegiving is still mainly in the hands of Christian organizations and their employment practices are ... not the best.)
In a context where you let this still happen - be it Mormons or sharia law being implemented - it means you leave the door wide open for those sects that offer their members an all-inclusive ideology which absolves them from having to make the effort necessary to employ other mindsets.

And I believe that is a major source of conflict, be it people here in Eastern Germany who grew up under a totalitarian ideology, be it people in Iran who live under a state religion (and some of which actually care less about its values than people whose adhesion to a religious group is mainly due to their personal feelings and their belonging to the group in which they worship), or be it in a country in which religious freedom means that people are allowed to form their own isolated communities that stronly regulate how its members are allowed to interact with everyone else. If people don't get the opportunity to practice switching between mindsets, of course they won't not get very good at it.

(And that includes scientific zealots who refer to 'science' for every bit of their personal views like an ersatz religion. Saying this as a rather non religious person myself.)

@Bao America IS a secular country. We have no established religion and as such these situations you're suggesting really aren't problems for the majority of America and therefore can't be related to the widespread sentiment opposed to the scientific consensus on climate change.

@TheChief America claims to be secular in the same way we also claim to treat everyone equally under the law. But we have a nation that was founded by people who used Christianity (whether as deists or from a more theistic bent) as a justification for enslaving Africans and murdering Natives en masse. The Constitutional amendment banning alcohol sale and manufacture was driven by a distinctly Christian ideology. Polls indicate atheists are distrusted more in the US than almost any other category of human, including criminals. And part of the stated arguments against Communism after World War II was to refer to them as "godless." If we were a secular nation, their attitude toward religion wouldn't have mattered any more than their cultural tastes for beet soup, vodka, and eating ice cream outdoors in January. This is why the conservatives scream blue murder when they have to stop flaunting their beliefs in other people's faces. They're used to being cosseted and favored. Now that enough of us who aren't them are stepping up to counter them and actually push us toward true secularism in the public square, we see the rise of the Dominionists and the election of Donald Trump. So, yes, religion is definitely tied to the vocal minority who refuse to believe scientists when they contradict their pastors.

@Lysana
1) None of this has anything to do with secularity. Secularity is-quite simply-the government has no right to tell people how to practice or not practice their religion. The law will, inevitably, come to reflect certain aspects of commonly held religious beliefs because the state has no right to say that they can't. Anything else is a violation of one's freedom of speech and religious practice.
2) The examples @Bao was giving were giving were that of blatant theocracies, such as those practiced in Iran and the now extinguished Deseret. Regardless of your opinion of religion's involvement in American politics, we are not that.
3) Polls also show that church attendance is at all time lows and behavior almost universally condemned by religious authorities-much more so than believing in climate change-such as abortion, stem cell research, homosexual relationships and sex out of wedlock are accepted parts of American culture. One can hardly make the argument that America is-as a whole-a bastion of Dominionism.
4) Donald Trump is as religious as he needs to be to appeal to the man on the street. His election is more a result of the average man being tired of decidedly anti-populist politics emanating from the left

@TheChief Since when was the GDR a theocracy?

Structural, legal and ethical secularism are quite different things. The US is relatively good when it comes to structural and legal secularism, in some aspects better than many European nations are. But when it comes to ethical secularism, things are the other way around. People use their religious views to base their political views on them. Of course it also happens here, but to a much lesser degree. I was in France for almost all of the last presidential campaign and until I checked just now, I had no idea if Macron is part of any organized religion.

I'm talking trends here. Even if in the US the attendance to religious services is falling ... in the US almost half the population seem to go once a month to once a week and about a quarter who never attend services, while in the parts of Europe I know it's about half the people who never go, and ten percent to a quarter who attend monthly to weekly. And there are rules. You don't shove people your religion in their face. You don't talk about your own as a teacher at school *unless* you're the designated teacher for one of the main confessions, and even then your job is 80% ethics and 20% confessional.

@Bao
1) I never once mentioned East Germany in any way, shape or form. Or any German state, for that matter.
2) It doesn't matter WHY you believe something-be it for religious reasons or secular, you have every right to support whatever political options you believe best regardless of why you believe them. Secularism is, exclusively, the freedom of government influence in religious matters.

@TheChief
"Secularism is the principle of the separation of government institutions and persons mandated to represent the state from religious institution and religious dignitaries (the attainment of such is termed secularity). One manifestation of secularism is asserting the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, or, in a state declared to be neutral on matters of belief, from the imposition by government of religion or religious practices upon its people.[Notes 1] Another manifestation of secularism is the view that public activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be uninfluenced by religious beliefs or practices."

In the US you have to have a belief in a religion, or claim to have one, if you want to enter politics, identifying yourself as an atheist would render you more or less ineligible... that is by definition not secularism. So, the US is secular on paper not in reality

@Hardishane Bullshit. It's not legally mandated that you must be religious, therefore we are secular. Anything more discerning is a violation of basic human rights to expression.

'@Lavrentivs' about the only example where science "competes" with religion in US is an attempt to have creationist theory taught in schools instead or on par with theory of evolution.

@comrade_Comrade Ever heard of abstinence only education? It's only one example, but it is strongly correlated with higher incidences of outcomes that we generally see as undesirable - once these teens start being sexually active, they tend to have on average more partners and use protection less frequently, resulting in higher rates of STDs and of teen pregnancy (complete that with lower education level attained for these mothers and them generally ending up single parent families, meaning, children that are raised in a weaker economic and social environment than necessary).
Absolutely a religious thing.

'@Bao' it's a moral issue, not a matter of scientific debate. If promotion of marriage would indeed be effective, it would have had a positive effect too.

@comrade_Comrade Healthcare is not a moral issue, otherwise you'd still be treated with trepanation and mercury.
Unless your goal is to specifically follow one religious teaching, you should approach the issue by setting sensible goals - avoiding teen pregnancy is one of them, because if the mother is not yet fully grown (even after a girl had reached her adult height her hips will continue to develop) the birth will be associated with a higher risk.
Outcomes like the rates if STDs are measurable. Same goes for education attained for young mothers as well as for children of young mothers.
If you make it a moral issue, the outcome will be unfavourable.

'@Bao' if some issues related to healthcare weren't moral, assisted suicide would be a popular medical procedure in every developed country. Moral preference does not take place of scientific fact, unless you think that "wait until marriage" and "use condom to limit the risk of contracting an STD" are mutually exclusive pieces of information.
Your example (if it is a comparison of abstinence-only sex education with contraception-only sex education) proves that abstinence-only mode was not sufficiently well implemented, not that poor outcomes are inherent to it. Come think of it, outcomes for society in which women reach age of 40 years without ever having children aren't very good either.

@comrade_Comrade Eh... I don't know. I remember being taught (granted, this was in a Christian school but still) that plate tectonics was against intelligent design and was therefore bunk as well. And let's not even talk about sex ed

'@txag70' well, theory of intelligent design manifests in multitude of strange ideas. I would even concede the sex ed point, if there wouldn't be so much information from competing sources and peer pressure contrary to norms of Christian morality.
It's just funny that for some people "knowing the science" is essentially a cult, where something like nuclear energy or heritability of IQ is The Devil himself.

@comrade_Comrade It is a pretty strange disconnect. I know next to nothing on heritability, but I would think that there are too many confounding factors for a definitive experiment to take place. Is this the case?

Another one is the existence of the truly bizarre young earth creationism -- or the idea that the universe and everything in it is somehow only ~6,000 years old because the Bible says so. We have trees older than that. And yet it is quite popular in much of the rural and southern USA. The idea that God created the science of the universe for us or some other intelligent species elsewhere to discover, and that a "day" to God could count for millions or even billions of years, isn't nearly as far fetched to me.

'@txag70' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
Twin studies in US were very convenient in this regard, it's probably as close to clean experiment as psychology gets. Not only it raises the issue of eugenics, but combined with existence of distinct genetic population it also raises the specter of scientific racism. Also some people don't want to accept the idea of "I am not smarter than everyone else and there is no way to fix it", so garbage like "emotional IQ" or "intelligence is a social construct" becomes popular.
Also also, children of close relative suffer significant drop in IQ, so that would put cultures that promote marriage between cousins (insert joke about rednecks, but I'm looking at Middle East) have to be considered objectively detrimental. Guess how well that would be received in social studies class.

Technically, young Earth creationism is not that far away from theory of virtual universe. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, he could create Earth 6000 years ago to appear much older. Like brand new pre-torn jeans, only more convincing.

It's a result of mode of thinking that can be observed in some moon hoax debates, and it works both ways. Two sides of argument have at some point to assume that they don't know and can't prove some specifics - i.e. while it's absolutely known that spacecraft was in orbit of the Moon, there is no way to know if it carried people or not. Those who go with official story see no reason to doubt that Armstrong has made that small step, deniers see that there is no absolute proof that he did. Each side claims that other is freaking stupid, no one sees need to change opinion, and only outcome of this debate are wasted time and rising arterial pressure.

@Lavrentivs You lucky bastards. Down here we even get anti-scientific arguments being back by "scientific" research.

@Lavrentivs If you mean to say, that Denmark, Sweden and Norway are secular, while USA isn't, is I am sorry to say wrong. All scandinavian country has a state religion. The only state without, and even split religion from the government, is USA. Yes USA might be one of the most religious countries in the world, but they declare in the constitution a seperation between government and chuch, we scandinavians doesn't have that, sadly.

@Aragnir

I can't speak for Norway or Denmark, but I can tell you you're wrong about Sweden.

The Church of Sweden and the state separated at the turn of the Millennium 1999/2000, so no - we don't have a state religion.
And even before that the church had virtually no influence in Sweden for at least 50 years - if not longer.

The only oddity is that a remnant of old traditions exists in that the Swedish regent is required by law to adhere to the Protestant religion.
That's something that was put into law hundreds of years ago of course, when those things mattered.

We'll probably get around to change that law as well sooner or later - but for now the only Swede that's bound by law to be a member of a religious community is the regent. And specifically the Protestant religious community, at that.

@Aragnir I really care more about the practical result than what is written on paper, and it becomes quite obvious that religion have a stronger influence on american politics than scandinavian ones.

@Lavrentivs Though I'd love to agree with you on this, you have to remember that USA is a very secular country (by constitution, not practice), and Denmark is by law not. We do have a 'peoples church' which is represented in our 'constitution' and therefore are not secular. That said, you are free to practice most religions in Denmark, and the church is governed by the state

@Lavrentivs Also in the Lutheran Protestant tradition of the Nordics the priests and scholars were actually quite quick to accept and promote science (in the old days.... I've both seen and heard some loonies recently), even when Darwin presented his theory (and it was translated and became known in the Nordics) some prominent churchy dude in Denmark (and this is one of the few instances where I actually admit to admiring and respecting a Dane and their stance on stuff) proclaimed that there should be no churchy objection towards Darwin's theory, nor towards science, as those pertained to the natural world, while religion and the goddy stuff pertained to the spiritual/supernatural faithy beliefy type world (He may have phrased it differently).

@Lavrentivs I half agree with you... you see, I'm from Chile, and here like in most of South America, religion is a big part of life and most of the population is religious, yet climate change is not questioned. Is not about being secular or not, is, as you said, seeing religion and science as competitive ideologies. In South America religion is not questioned, but is not understand as an opposite of science, is just something completely different

This is what happens when you elect someone who didn't have to fight for anything in his life and is a fucking piece of shit in general.

@IoannaT - This problem started waaay before Trump. There's a think tank called "Heartland Institute" that's a central hub for organizing climate change denial. It's basically a right-wing ad agency with lab coat-wearing mercenaries and has been active since the 1980s. Back then, they were on the payroll of the tobacco industry to play down the health effects of smoking. Now they're largely funded by the fossil fuel sector, with strong ties to Koch Industries.

Whenever you see a "scientist" or politician speak out against climate science in America, he's probably in some way connected to these people.

@detrius Oh I didn't know that! you learn something new everyday

According to the Trumpster, Global warming is a hoax created by China to hinder America's economy, while is simultaneously a good thing because New York is too snowy. The only logical conclusion I can take from this is that it's all a plot designed by the Illuminati.

@Internet_person69 Perhaps it's a lizard people conspiration? Reptiles would probably prefer a warmer planet when they take over.

@Internet_person69
George Soros too!

It's not an Illuminati plot, I would know.

OK, so let's just get to the heart of the matter: What we're really asking for here is a cleaner environment that can support us. We want clean water we can drink. We want air that doesn't smell like shit and makes sick. We want to walk in beautiful forests and see pretty animals. We want food that doesn't need to be bathed in carcinogens because of dirty practices. We want cars that don't produce smog. We want less garbage taking over the world and poisoning and choking ourselves and wildlife. We want less corporate greed ruining our lives and the world we live in.

FOCUS on that and the matter is settled. We are out of time. It's time for the humans to clean up their rooms and figure out a method to keep it tidy. We got the tools and the talent to do this now.

There is one thing I DO know for certain, and that is sustainability and cleanliness is an achievable dream.

@longtail4711
I agree, but I nonetheless maintain that we cannot let climate change deniers win this fight. They cannot oppose science and be taken seriously.

@PTTG
Don't stop there. Add anti-vaxxers, creationists and the like to the list. And while at it, do everything to combat the "safe-zone" crowd, as they are responsible for a fast increase in the suppression of intellectual debate and learning - even in places dedicated to education such as schools and universities.

@Narf

You don't actually know anything about "safe spaces" or "content warnings."
They're literally a technique for helping survivors of traumatic events like rape or combat. Do you want veterans having PTSD attacks in the middle of class? No? Then you need to have some way to warn them.

The whole anti-SJW kick the internet went on a few years ago is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. Then a teenager who's never even seen the inside of a university starts echoing the bullshit and thinks that's all that goes on in universities. It's sad.

Anti-vaxxers are dangerous idiots and creationists are medieval morons but now I'm thinking you mainly want to complain about other people rather than care about rationality.

@PTTG
Except that safe spaces are becoming extremely overused even for trivial stuff where people decided that any opinion differing from theirs offends them and is "hate speech". That stuff has been making its way into places it has no business being in. If you haven't noticed how they spread into your education you need to wake up and smell the pudding.

Also, content warnings are something completely different.

Much like the term "feminist", SJW is a term a lot of people call themselves it which simply aren't. Both have legitimate causes and great goals but get overrun by trolls, purely selfcentered pricks and angsty teens who just want to rebel but have no clue how or against whom.

But yeah, please just tell yourself that I'm just ranting... sure. I'd love to say that the rapid deterioration of the public US educational system is not my problem, but that'd be wrong.

@Narf
It
what
fuck
There's no arguing with stupid.

@PTTG
Uh... What? Every shred of credible evidence presently says the believers are who are in denial and lying their asses off to keep their agenda afloat at all costs.

The skeptical science side is not who keeps getting caught redhanded time after time faking their data and skewing their simulations then making a huge fuss over things that never have come close to happening as they were guaranteed and predicted to happen in timeframes that have already passed. Nor are they the side who had to change the name and qualifications of their agenda because reality refuses to go their way.

The skeptics are also not the side who are losing their professional groups of scientists and poltical supporters left and right, nor are they the ones who have made countless claims saying other scientists were onboard with their claims only to have those scientists go ape shit over having wanted nothing to do with said claims of their being on board and agreeing with the believers claims either.

97% of all scientist agree was shown to being in fact 97+% of scientists(and their suposedly referenced papers) do not agree and the claim was fake from top to bottom sighting hundreds of papers that had either nothing to do with AGW climate change study or went totally against the AGW climate change concept.
Same with Mann's hockey stick graph data. He got it squarely shoved up his ass for lack of proper and confirmable peer review then torn apart for falsified data for what little he was willing to share.

And the list of believers failures adds more big name people and causes every few months while the skeptics side slowly builds credibility for keeping its mind open and it's data out where everyone can look at it and make their own decisions just like real legitimate unbiased science should be handled. Especially when it's something that's purported to be a world socio-economic affecting issue that has way too many unknowns and variables for the average mainstream liberal media believing dolts to ever follow and understand.

So if you think that's winning feel free to win your believers hearts out to no end! It's the best thing you can do to kill your cause once and for all!

@Thecustodian

1: Where is the Co2 coming from, if not humans?
2: Why is the temperature rising, if not Co2?

@Thecustodian

"Every shred of credible evidence presently says the believers are who are in denial and lying their asses off to keep their agenda afloat at all costs. "

Aaaand that's the point when I stopped reading your post.

Because in the real world:

"In the scientific literature, there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused mainly by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Scientific_discussion

@longtail4711

"There is one thing I DO know for certain, and that is sustainability and cleanliness is an achievable dream."

Not only is it that - much of it is also not even a dream anymore.

At least Sweden, Denmark and Germany - all wealthy, prosperous countries - have actually lowered their total national emission of carbon (instead of just lowered their rate of increase in carbon emissions). And this despite growing populations and growing economies.
So it can be done without hurting the economy.
Germany recycles 65% of all their waste. Sweden and Norway both recycle about 50%, but they are also both importing waste from other countries to burn for heating homes and produce energy as their domestic "production" isn't big enough. Only 1% of Sweden's waste end up on landfills.

The European Union has banned old fashioned light bulbs and instead moved to more energy efficient light sources like LED's - and if Wikipedia is right so has Canada, Australia, China and other countries.

And much, much more of course - this was just a few things I came to think of now.

And all of this would have seemed impossible only a decade or two ago.
But it's not - parts of the world is already doing much of it.
We don't all have to invent the wheel here - we're all in the same boat on this planet in that we all need it to survive - so we should all learn from each other and do what works.

@Nisse_Hult And you can make a nice profit of it as well. Abandoning old inefficent technologies like fossile fuel and embracing new and better technologies usualy means a healthier and richer nation in the long run. Holding on to dying industries like coalmining only leads to unemployment.

@Rogers
I think you have that backwards. Holding on to dying industries like coal mining only leads to CONTINUED employment, (by those people who have spent decades being coal miners, and would be hard pressed to learn any other gainful trade to standard, in any reasonable time frame.)

Getting away from coal mining may well be the best thing to do, but it's throwing career miners under the bus, and that's not popular. Especially with those voters who have spent years digging that black rock out of the ground.
The same goes for legislating any other industry out of existence. Those who are employed in that industry, and those people whose livelihoods depend on that first group continuing to have, and spend, money, WILL oppose you when you start throwing around plans to make them redundant by law.

@SeanR I was rather unclear there. What I meant was that they should face reality and change careers as soon as possible.

I don't want to make them reduntant by law, economy or any other way but it will happen sooner or later anyway. Robots will replace their work and other sources of power will replace coal. Protest voting won't change this. It's a small and shrinking number of voters anyway so politicians will abandon them too. It may seem cynical but a few coal jobs is a cheap price to pay for better economy and probably better climate.

But of course no one likes to change their habits, especialy not when some foreigners tell them to. In fact I think people should challenge authorities more than they do now. Sadly for them it won't matter much in the long run.

@Rogers
Well, I can agree with that...but.

Remember, it's not JUST the people who go into those dark holes who are voting to maintain coal mining as an active industry.
You also have that Walgreens pharmacist in some small West Virginia town. You have the kindergarten teacher whose parents frequently show up to take their kids while covered in coal dust. You have the grocery store bagger whose dad is a coal miner and who would find out really quickly how little a former coal town can afford to have that grocery store...or a bagger for it.
You have whole communities who are voting to maintain Their main export industry, whether or not most of those voters ever sit foot in a shaft, or participate in chopping down mountains.
If you want to win those communities over to abandoning coal mining, you have to bring the opportunity to THEM. You have to find some suitable industry that a coal mining town can be retooled to do. They already know their days are numbered. Mechanization has been eating into their numbers for decades, now, if not centuries. But, the coal is still there. One way or another, that coal can be made to pay for prescriptions, schooling, and groceries.

Or, you can wait until all the kids with potential move out, and leave nothing but a shell of a dying town. But, then you're responsible for uprooting communities, and that's another way to lose elections.

@SeanR That was rather poetic.

There are many small communities like that in the world. Built around a single industry far away from the big towns at the coast. When economy and/or technology change they inevitably fade away. All we realy can do for them is to help them get new jobs elsewhere (usualy the big town at the coast). Some may call this defeatism but I don't see what else we can do. Soon that coal can't be made to pay for anything.

@SeanR @Rogers

Coalmining is a really insignificant part of the US work force and economy today already.
It's big only in Trump's and his voters imagination because he keeps playing them up and promising to bring their jobs back - but like everything else he promises that's never going to happen of course.
Industry experts and even some of it's leaders all agree that coalmining is a dying industry.

And that's not because of evil left wing regulations - it's because of right wing capitalist economics.
Mining coal for energy production is simply not economically profitable any more, compared to newer technologies.

Those jobs are never coming back simply because no one is going to invest money in an industry with as low profit margin as the coal industry.

The Trump administration, caught up in it's own lies about how they where going to bring coal jobs back, are now pushing completely misleading statistics to try to support their claim about how coal mining is having a resurgence under Trump - but it's just all lies as usual.

They also played up the first new opening of a coal mine under Trump's presidency as if he had anything to do with it, when in fact the decision to open the mine was taken before the election.
The mine in question will mine coal intended for steel production - a very small subset of the entire coal industry and one that won't mean anything for the general decline in coal mining that's mostly producing lower grade coal for energy production. And it will only ever employ 100 people.

But you won't hear any of those facts when Fox News reports about it like it's all a gift from Trump that signals great things to come for the coal miners:
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/06/10/new-coal-mine-donald-trump-pennsylvania-fossil-fuels-regulations

The sensible thing to do would be to invest in these communities to support the miners and the other people who live there, help them attract other employers and offer the unemployed re-education for other work.
But Trump and the Republicans won't do that - because that costs money they want to use for tax cuts for themselves instead.
But slashing environmental and worker safety regulations won't cost the federal government anything, but will save the mining companies some money.

They'll probably still not expand coal mining as it still won't improve the profit margin that much - but it'll enrich the owners of the mines already in existence and probably stave of the industry for closing completely for some time.
At the cost of destroying the local environments of these communities and endangering the lives of the workers in the mines.

Other sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/31/8-surprisingly-small-industries-that-employ-more-people-than-coal/?utm_term=.278ee70fb6ff
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/pruitt-epa-coal-jobs-exaggerate/529311/
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-updates-everything-president-1497309388-htmlstory.html

@Nisse_Hult
I actually agree with you.
I live in an agrarian area. Farming employs FAR FEWER PEOPLE over the ENTIRE COUNTY, than, probably does the local Wal-Mart. Directly.
But, farming is a product that is exported. Never mind you could squeeze all the farmers within 50 miles into a single banquet hall, that product goes out, bringing money into the area.
Wal-Mart, however, is a drain. As is Arby's. Farming brings money in.
Communities are naturally protective of those things which bring money from outside the community, into the community.

No, coal mining will not employ more people. Mechanization has been eating into the coal miners bread and butter for centuries. At least since Sterling figured out how to make a heat engine that made hauling the stuff out of the hole easier. Possibly, you should start with when the first wooden rails were laid to facilitate pulling the product to the surface more efficiently.
The future of coal-mining is probably the same as the <s>future</s>present of farming. One guy, operating a multi-hundred-thousand dollar piece of equipment, doing the work of hundreds.

The sensible things WOULD be to find some other industry that could employ the fresh graduates of those regions. The problem is, what is a good fit for a community that has been sublimating its best and brightest to other, richer, communities for decades, while its adequate have been putting on dust masks and hard hats and climbing down into a dirty hole?
Remember that coal has one thing going for it that some manufacturing job doesn't. It can't be boxed up at 3AM and shipped to Mexico when the owners and the workers get at loggerheads over who is responsible to who for what.

@SeanR

I'd like to put it this way - we seem to draw the same rational conclusion from the same available hard data.
I said that only as a way to emphasize that an issue like this isn't actually a question about different opinions that one can agree or disagree with - it's a question of hard facts that you either accept or refuse to accept.
Claiming that coal mining was hindered only by regulation and that it will make a huge comeback if you just deregulate every environmental protection is simply not true - there are hard economic truths here that needs to be faced one way or another.

Every responsible person of course cares at least in some part for the miners and other people in these and other rural communities. They didn't chose to be born there but they where and if they've spent years just doing that job and have little other education of course it'll be hard for them to find something else. Especially if there are no new companies moving in.

But it's also a fact that this kind of rationalization has always happened and will always happen and there's no sense in supporting industries that can't financially sustain themselves in the long run.

Every rural area can't survive and we have to accept that and not demand that time stands still just because that would suit our personal opinions about how things "should" be.
Most of the mining communities probably didn't exist before the mines opened anyway. They might have been there for centuries by now but the only reason they are is because of the mines and if they close - do people really have some natural right to demand that the nation invents new job for them there so they can stay?
It's not a black and white question, to be sure.

But what society at least can and should do is to help in transitions like this.
Put money into re-education of the old miners, offer subsidies and incentives to small start ups that can grow locally if they have a viable financial plan for the long run, offer people that want to move financial support for doing so and so on and so forth.

Politicians are very fond of getting big, splashing headlines in the papers - like the recent news that technology-giant Foxconn have said they will build a big new factory in Wisconsin:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/26/technology/business/foxconn-wisconsin/index.html

But Foxconn already promised another big plant in Pennsylvania in 2013 and nothing ever came of that.

Huge players like these also demand huge taxbreaks and sweetheart deals because they very well know that local politicians want their business. But these are also the manufacturers that will just as easily leave once they no longer get the preferential treatment they demand - or someone else offers them even more.

So instead of bending over backwards for multinationals like these, local politicians should help locals set up their own businesses or expand local businesses, or attract smaller entrepreneurs that can offer a divers mix of smaller corporations as employers.

Some will probably fail and the taxpayers might even loose some money - but all won't and some of those might well expand as time goes on.

The fact that coal as a commodity production can't be outsourced abroad isn't something to hold on to, really.
Commodity production is the lowest end of the production chain and a modern industrialized nation should move away from that whenever it can - not try to hold on to it.

Food is another matter as local food production has great environmental benefits.

Regarding drain or gain by import or export, that's not really anything most people think about - nor should they have too.
That's up to national policy, and economically speaking there's no question that freer trade is more beneficial to every nation. Not completely free - all nations employ some quotas and regulations - but my point is that what's usually called "free" trade is actually not completely unregulated - just freer.

What's important is however that the wealth this free trade generates doesn't all end up in very few pockets at the very top.
It's because the wealth for a long time has ended up there, and ordinary workers see few gains for themselves from this free trade, that people turn against it.

Which is completely understandable of course.

But the US as a nation is far richer today because of free trade policies. In fact, you're the richest nation in the history of the entire world.

But most ordinary Americans don't benefit from this in at all the same way as the teeny tiny handful of billionaires at the top that rake the profits in.

Do something about that inequality in distribution of wealth and you've solved the problem. But you won't see any Republicans and hardly even any Democrats talk about that elephant in the room - because it's from those billionaires they get their campaign funding.
So they are the ones setting the American political agenda - not the ordinary citizenry.

@Nisse_Hult
I can agree with nearly everything you just said.

However, locals do think about money flowing in, or out, of a community. It's the basic reason why Wal-Marts typically have a chilly reception when they move into an area. It's why you see signs saying "shop <location> first" outside locally owned businesses. At least in small towns and rural communities, that flow of money is felt. Maybe we shouldn't have to worry about it. In a diverse enough local economy, maybe we'd not notice such a tiny change as a single industry shuttering its doors, or suffering some production slump or cut back.

I can tell you that when we have a drought, everyone is praying for rain, including the people who only ever see the fields out their car windows. Farming is central enough to our local economy that every person who pulls a paycheck feels the pinch when farming suffers.
(Incidentally, my area is big on wheat, cotton, and beef. There's a reasonable chance that something you've eaten or worn within the last week originated from a commodity either raised or grown within 100 miles of me. I'm inclined to say a good chance, and within the last day, but I don't know if any of those are exported to Sweden, or not.)

You're right that a properly developed business incubator would be superior to a single major local industry, especially a single industry owned or controlled by a small group and with high barriers to either entry or profitability. I am hopeful that micro-manufacturing may some day make all towns into boutique manufacturing towns.

@SeanR that's depressing

@Rogers

Yes you can!

In that regard it's actually a benefit to the rest of the world when the US isn't even competing to win all the fat contracts to supply new high-tech to other nations.

But on the other hand the rest of us won't have much use for all our wealth if we don't have an inhabitable planet, so I think we can all agree we'd rather see the americans taking this seriously as well.

Maybe tricking them would be a way to get them into the action? They get really upset if they don't win all the time - especially their current leader.
Maybe if our leaders just all ignored Trump in the next international meeting and instead just heaped praise on whichever nation has the most advanced renewable energy technology?

He won't know who that is anyway, so let them just all pretend it's Belgium.
So everyone heaps praise on the Prime Minister of Belgium and holds speeches about how impressed they all are and how strong and what a winner Belgium and it's leader is for having the best renewable energy technology.
And ignores the US and Trump completely.

I think that might actually get to him...

And then when we get them into competing we do slightly worse then them so they get to feel like winners.

"Oh, Mr. Trump - your American solar panels are SO good - how can we ever compete with you?"

I actually think he'd be a lot more interested then. ;-)

@Nisse_Hult Do you realy think Trump cares that much about what happens outside the USA. And his own imagination but that's another topic.

It might be better to play on his pathetic rage against Obama. If Obama did something he want to do the opposite. So just say Obama loves coal and hates solar power. He might just be stupid enough to fall for that kind of reverse psychology.

@Rogers

I think Trump cares very much about being praised and I certainly think he's insecure enough to have a real problem with being ignored like that while someone else in the room got all the attention.

But being him he could also react by throwing a tantrum and declare war on North Korea on twitter - so it's a plan that could go either way really...

Key would be to manage him closely and try to steer him to go for the right choice.
It's basically what every parent ever does with their children, so it shouldn't be impossible - even if the risks are also bigger.
Because when kid throw tantrums they might throw themselves on the floor in the store and shame you publicly - but at least they don't nuke North Korea.

Playing on his insecurity against Obama (I think it's actually insecurity and not rage - deep down he knows Obama is more popular then he'll ever be, and that hurts him deeply) could have been a workable plan if it had been done from the beginning.
I've read news articles in reputable newspapers that state that European diplomats privately and confidentially have confirmed to them that Trump's first question on any topic is to ask what Obama's position on it was - and then declare the exact opposite.
He's not at all interested in what the actually policy is, he almost never understand what it is anyway - he just want to be against anything Obama was for and vice versa.

The problem is that he already knows full well where Obama stood on coal and renewable energy, so now it's to late to try and fool him like that.

But it would still work on most other policy issues - especially foreign policy - as he certainly dosen't read the briefings that are prepared for him.

Tell him Obama was for supporting independence for a region called Skåne in the south of Sweden because of their long and arduous struggle for self-determination, culminating in the Bräckkorvs war of 1975-76, and he'll adamantly declare that the US from now on will be totally against the separatist movement in the south of Sweden - and probably offer Sweden military support to put down those Obama-supported rebels.

As his own foreign secretary said - he's a f*cking moron.
He knows nothing of the world and could easily be fooled like that.

@Nisse_Hult
We have lower emissions now because the stuff that used to be manufactured here is now made in China and other such places,
I assume that the total emissions are now actually higher because those places have lower standards and also we are buying more stuff than before.
It's a bit same as with the virtual water in imported food.

@Kuusi

While it's certainly true that much manufacturing has moved to other countries, that's still not actually the entire explanation.

Because this effect of globalization has been going on since the 70's and the carbon emissions have still steadily increased in the entire western world year after year.

That's because we drive a lot more cars now then we did in the 70's, and because we consume much, much more energy with all our computers and cell phones and TV's and everything else we want.
Sure, each individual unit has become more frugal and consume less energy - but we have shitloads more of them and our populations are always increasing so the consumption has still been going up.

Until we realized we really have to make an effort and the western world at least started reducing the speed of the increase in carbon emissions. And a few countries have also actually managed to decrease their overall carbon emissions - often by moving their energy production over to renewable sources.

I used the chart in this article as a source:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/carbon-emissions-per-person-capita

And according to it, between 1996 and 2006 Germany reduced their carbon emissions by 4%, Sweden by 15% and Denmark by a whopping 19% - while other, comparable nations, like France increased their total carbon emission by 7%, Finland by 9% and the US by 7% as well.

Now these are total carbon emission numbers and counted per capita as you should do when you compare nations of varying population sizes, there are still big differences - the US is the per capita world "leader" in carbon emissions while most European countries produce far less.

But it still shows there are differences even between rich, developed nations with comparable abilities that can't simply be explained by manufacturing moving abroad.

It's not like much of Sweden's and Denmark's manufacturing moved abroad between 1996 and 2006, while domestic manufacturing increased in France, Finland and the US at the same time.

@Nisse_Hult Germany is a silly example tho, they've been dismantling nuclear power in favor of coal because EEK RADIATION! and failing to understand that coal, in addition to everything else, radiates more than nuclear power plants and spreads it hundreds of miles away. So as I understand it they are building wind power which needs supplementary power for peak loads. And so on.

@bananaforscale

Actually it's not, as what I wrote is still true - they have managed to reduce their overall national carbon emissions - not just reduce the rate of increase in emissions.

Now you obviously don't like their decision to phase out nuclear power - but they've done so for a host of reasons and I can assure you they haven't "failed to understand" anything.

They've just made a different evaluation of their preferred way to lower their own emissions - and since they've succeded in doing so, it's apparently working for them.

There are a lot of people online who think nuclear power is the perfect answer to every nations energy need, and I'm not going to waste time arguing over it with you if you're one of those people.

Germany decides what energy policy she pursues, and so far she's one of the most successful nations in the world in cutting emissions - so I wouldn't be throwing any rocks at her from whatever glass house you live in, if you catch my drift?

Also, they're actually phasing out coal power too.

You can read more on this topic here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

and here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_phase-out#Germany

@bananaforscale Germany has just figured out that Fission based nuclear power plants aren't economically competitive. If they wouldn't get huge state subsidiaries electricity prices would be much higher.

What subsidiaries does nuclear power get?

There has been huge state sponsoring to technology development and construction.
Most countries promise extremely low liability limits in case of nuclear accidents that heavily reduces insurance bills for nuclear plants.

If I understand correctly that was thinking behind German decision to reduce nuclear power. Too bad alternative technologies aren't yet good enough to be environmental better solutions (when excluding probability for a catastrophic nuclear accidents from the equation). But we can just hope that alternative technologies improve enough to reduce need for supplementary coal power (either energy storage or alternative cheap to operate and fast to start to operate clean power plants).

PS. I know that wind has pretty bad side effects too that aren't always fully accounted to the cost like noise pollution and risk to migrant birds.

@longtail4711
We have clean water we can drink. Standards for potable water have only gotten stricter, and the municipalities are managing to keep up, or almost keep up, (the city water near me has too many tri-halomethanes, which is another way of saying the reservoir has too many fish in it before the water's chlorinated. Bad for you, but not as bad as, oh, say, Hepatitis A, or Cholera. And far better than it was 50 years ago.)
Air quality has only improved in the US, and presumably Europe. Places that are still experiencing economic growing pains? Yeah, I understand China has air as bad as it ever was in the US.
Okay, forests and other wilderness areas are an issue. We're not really getting any back, not counting places that are or were too hazardous to visit like the former border between the Germanies, the area around Chernobyl, or the beaches of the Falkland Islands (landmines that the penguins aren't heavy enough to set off, but which make humans stay away if they want to keep their limbs; leftovers of a war in the 80's.) Otherwise, once land is in human hands, and human uses, it tends to stay that way.
Cars are cleaner than ever, and getting more so.
I can't speak to garbage, but I suspect we're making progress there, too. I haven't heard as many cries of medical waste on the beaches, lately, but maybe people just got tired of yelling about it. We haven't had a river fire in a few decades, either.

And then, the linchpin. Corporate greed.
So many wanted this one gone first, and the rest is their plan to get there. To roll back to a "simpler time". They'll continue to ask, beg, and legislate humans into a corner, trying to starve this one beast. Oh, for the idyllic years of pastoral living.
Never mind that pastoral living stinks, literally, (though not as bad as downwind of a major hog operation or a feedlot.)
Never mind that corporate corruption is not a new thing. The Robber Barons of yesterday weren't Merrill Lynch and Enron, but they were there. Look up "Lincoln County War" for one measure of how bad it could get. And that was a single strongman local with ties to the state government.
Never mind that, in many cases, those corporations are more able to navigate, or plow through, the red tape that is thrown up to achieve those idyllic goals. You'll notice that some of the most well heeled corporations LIKE the idea of carbon credits. It squashes competition.

@SeanR

"We have clean water we can drink."

Neither Flint nor Puerto Rico would agree with you.

And those are just the tip of the iceberg that everyone know of because they're clearly visible.
In reality, millions of Americans drink contaminated water or water that no one knows exactly what it contains and what the long term health effects are from drinking it.
And now you have an EPA chief who sees his mission in life as dismantling the agency who's job it is to keep Americans safe from pollution.

These are the top links a Google search for "polluted drinking water us" gave me - but there is much, much more out there on this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/us/tapwater-drinking-water-study.html
http://time.com/4813336/drinking-water-contaminated-toxic-environmental-working-group-report/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/14/63-million-americans-exposed-unsafe-drinking-water/564278001/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tap-drinking-water-contaminants-pollutants/

@Nisse_Hult
Would the problem in Puerto Rico be recent? Because I generally don't include the aftermath of a natural disaster in my considerations of how far we've come.

Flint is, a special case that I hope doesn't repeat. I was under the impression it was caused in much the same manner as Minamata, Japan's issues, but on further reading, it looks like a black swan event. Someone didn't take into consideration that not all water sources, otherwise safe, were equal. The great thing about black swans is, once you see one, they're obvious, so, hopefully no one else will make the same mistake elsewhere. It becomes one more thing on the checklist.

I didn't say the water was perfect. Nor did I say the air was. I said it was better than it was, and it's still improving. Just in the past ten years, urea injection in diesel engines has greatly improved the air quality at stoplights...and going uphill following an 18-wheeler.
The regulations have gotten tighter over the years, and some communities haven't kept up with the pace of those regulations, sometimes even with upgraded or modern plants. This doesn't mean the water today isn't as good as the water in the 1960's. Most likely, in most places, it's far superior. Flint would be a probable exception, since it represents a mismatch of water source and pipe.

But complaining about these things is like whipping a galloping horse, because we haven't made it to the finish, yet.

I fully expect that some day, the superior plastic pipes we use today will be identified for something, maybe estrogen analogues in the water, and there'll be a hue and cry to upgrade again, to some newer pipe that is somehow superior to the currently superior pipe.

@SeanR

Try goggling the same thing I did - "polluted drinking water us" - and remember that you're the richest nation in the history of the world.

Why do you even have any problems at all with clean water? That should be a non-issue for a nation as rich as the US.

And of course it actually is - from a technical standpoint.

It's the unwillingness to pay for these things and the unwillingness to regulate companies according to the known scientific data that puts you in this position - not a lack of money or know-how to fix it.

Flint's situation wasn't a mistake like those responsible for it now like to pretend - it was a deliberately risky choice to save money that turned very expensive and dangerous. Again - in the richest nation in the history of the world.

That the US even still has lead piping came as a complete surprise to me as we've known the danger of lead in waterpiping for a very long time and no such piping has been allowed to exist in Sweden for many decades.

But apparently this is still common in the US and in some other countries in the world.
All of it should be replaced as soon as possible of course - and doing so will also provide plenty of domestic jobs, for among others those miners we talked about in another part of this thread.

Again the only problem here is the willingness to pay for work that has to be done to improve the nation.
The US can certainly afford it - it's only a matter of levying the taxes needed to finance the work that needs to be done.
70 years ago the US had no qualms about doing this, and that financed your victory in WWII, the G.I. Bill and the Marshall plan - and later on your space program, among other things.
You could easily do the same today.

Plastic piping can possibly turn out to contain something we yet can't trace - that's true - but there are many different kind of plastic piping and only a select few are certified for fresh water distribution in Sweden anyway.

Other then that our water mains are mostly made of cast iron that needs to be dug down rather deeply to survive our winter climate. They occasionally burst (as cast iron is more brittle then more expensive steel), but other then that they're harmless.

Iron (that does seep in trace amounts from cast iron piping) is an element the body actually needs and uses unlike lead and if the iron content ever becomes higher then normal it's immediately detectable by the taste of the water.
Though iron is toxic in high enough concentrations it's almost practically impossible to be harmed from if by ingestion as the taste gives it away and the human body also has a natural ability to regulate it's uptake of iron, letting access iron pass harmlessly through the body.

And Sweden's been using cast iron piping in it's water distribution since the 1860's and we haven't found any other potential health hazards with it yet - so I'd say it's pretty safe.

@SeanR -- Flint and multiple other cities might argue with you about the clean water, not to mention Canada and their tar sand fields, along with the Gulf of Mexico right now. People living near facilities for gas, tar sands, fracking, and oil along with as you mentioned those downwind of farms for livestock and crop spray pollution would argue about the clean air. Standards for personal responsibility are being rolled BACK at an alarming rate, not that in many cases anybody bothered to enforce what was already on the books anyway. People could be driving cleaner cars and have cleaner sources of energy for their homes and offices that much faster if Big Oil wasn't actively doing everything to crush our ability to create it by either writing laws to stop us or removing laws that stop them.

It’s only from the USA where I hear people not believing the Earth is round, not believing the fact that climate change is real and gets offended by being identified only as a male or a female.

@chryssee10 It's not just the USA, I have seen many posts from people in the UK who believe the earth is flat, global warming doesnt exist and chemtrails do. Most of them voted for Brexit too. :'(

'@T3m3r1ty' flatearthers are everywhere. Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider

@chryssee10 We're going to have to see some scientific consensus on the matter of nonbinary gender [edit: I mean the matter of nonbinary gender being somehow invalid—the consensus among psychologists is just the opposite] before you can start lumping it in with those two. Which may be hard, considering that human decency isn't a question of science.

@Permutator I had no idea psychology wasn't a science. Gender may be a social construct, but since all societies have constructed such a concept, it's clearly an aspect of how we think as a species. And historically, so many societies have had more than two genders, claiming we need proof of their existence is just being stubborn.

@Lysana I'm sorry, my intended implication was that we don't need science to demonstrate whether or not it's okay for people to define their own identities, nor to decide whether or not to respect them if their ways of doing so are unfamiliar. The person I was replying to was expressing irritation about people who "[get] offended by being identified only as a male or a female."

I'm aware of the consensus among psychologists regarding questions of gender. I probably should have brought it up. It would have helped to highlight the hypocrisy of that comment.

@chryssee10 We also have some flat-Earth freaks in the Czech Republic. You know, if the Earth was round and the gravity was real, all water would fall down to the bottom of the globe and there would be none elsewhere. The elites don't want us know it's flat because...reasons. I don't really know why they would keep it as a secret and how the fuck the flat-earthers know about it.

@chryssee10 also the anti-evolution thing... seriously, anybody in the wolrd aside the USA have problems understanding evolution is real?

It’s not really that people don’t think there’s climate change, it’s just that many people still don’t believe that humans influenced. Or they don’t believe that climate change is bad, and instead think that the Earth can heal itself. So most of us Americans know that something’s up with the weather and climate, it’s just a matter of how much of it we caused.

@Americanada Especially when the only real life outcome is US paying the Paris climate agreement expenses

@Tyekanik Well, it's not like the country should pay in accordance to its size and effect on the climate, right?

'@Asheram' someone should tell that to China.

@comrade_Comrade And are we telling China to take a timecourse of impact, or pretending history doesn't matter?

'@SvenTheBold' you might want to phrase it better. Also not obvious what kind of history do you mean.

@comrade_Comrade Well, you see, the pollution in China is not just their fault. Lots of waste is sent from the U.S. to China so if anybody should be paying for China's pollution, it shouldn't just be China itself, but U.S. as well.

'@Sonrisa' over 50% of China's electricity comes from coal power plants. I don't think that it counts towards "sending waste from US".

@Americanada
Nah, a lot you actually doubt climate change itself. Your own president said that it was a lie invented by the chinese, and half of your nation didn't take that and his other inane utterances as a hindrance to vote for him.

Even if we wanted to argue the impact of humanity on the change... what does it even matter that much? If there's a large asteroid heading towards earth threatening to destroy civilization, you don't sit around with your thumb up your rectum argueing whether humanity caused the asteroid or not, you do something about it and at least attempt to prevent the catastrophe or lessen its consequences. Right now, the US are doing the opposite.

I do agree that people didn’t take this election as seriously as they should’ve. And nowadays few people want to admit that when it comes down to it, it still was the people that let Trump have this power. We also aren’t doing anything to prevent climate change’s consequences. But I can’t tell if it’s because people genuinely believe that climate change is a lie, or if they’re trying to convince us it’s fake (mostly because admitting the existence of climate change would not help our economy).

@Americanada That's just not true. Most Republicans in the USA deny that there's climate change. That's how the US ended up with a President of the United States who said (and this is a direct quote): "I don’t believe in climate change."

@EdPalmer You are wrong on that. Most Republicans agree that climate change is occurring. Even among self described "conservative Republicans" belief in the existence of climate change is at about 50%. It is much higher among moderate and liberal Republicans. What conservatives and some other Republicans don't believe is that it is being caused by humans. In the same poll, it showed self-described "conservative Republicans" believe that climate change is being caused by humans at about 20%.

for those who want a visualization of climate data since the last ice age: https://xkcd.com/1732/

'@theeldar' here's another short visualization: https://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg

@theeldar I like how you can clearly see that climate change (temporarily) decelerated after WW2. Had to overlay a ruler over my screen to determine that it was really after WW2. Gotta admit that even with the ruler I'm not 100% certain that it was really after WW2 that it slowed down, but it seems to check out.

@Zeust Well when a few million people die suddenly you tend to have less need for coal powered electricity.

@Hoovies Also, there was a sudden mass reduction of infrastructure on two continents.

It's not a question of believe/don't believe, but party allegiances. People put the "party line" before facts - as long as the party is pushing that "Climate Change is a Hoax", they'll believe it. Science vs. Belief doesn't even factor into their thought process, as tragic as that is.

Trust me, so many of us in the US are just as baffled that it's even a question for some people. Also Flat Earthers. It's amazing I don't have a concussion from all the head/desking.

Though religion doesn't help, Republican refusal to believe in climate-change isn't rooted in religion. There's no religious tenet violated by believing in climate change. Rather, Republicans refuse to believe in climate change because that party is completely owned by rich donors thanks to a combination of the Citizens United decision and gerrymandering. The Citizens United decision legalized de facto bribery. Gerrymandering means that political parties can pick their voters instead of the voters picking them, which makes politicians more beholden to party leadership than to the people. The combined effect of these two things mean that America simply is not a democracy. America is an oligarchy with just enough democratic elements to act as a kind of release valve preventing widespread unrest.

The result of this legalized bribery and the political parties picking their voters combination means that rich donors like the oil industry completely own the Republican party and heavily influence the Democratic party. It results in the Republican party being the attack dogs of the most insanely pro-big-oil positions like denying climite-change. And the Democrats not fighting them hard at all, being essentially paid jobbers.

It also results in bizarre things like 90 percent of Americans wanting universal background checks on guns, yet such a law never being passed. The gun manufacturer industry bribes politicians to vote against even such mild gun-control laws. A country in which a law has 90 percent approval yet can't get passed is simply not a democracy.

@Uhtceare

That increasingly the problem in Britain as well. Powerful and wealthy vested interests gaining an increasing concentration of wealth and power.

Here we Have some precations against gerrymandering but as methods of measuring voter interests and activities have got better, plus the disasterous 1st past the post system it means that both major partiies increasingly concentrate on a limited number of marginals. Coupled of course with what's sometimes called the zombie vote - where people commit themselves automatically to a party regardless of what it actually says or does [doesn't] do for them and their country.

'@Uhtceare' "The result of this legalized bribery and the political parties picking their voters combination means that rich donors like the oil industry completely own the Republican party and heavily influence the Democratic party"
Looking at the list of richest corporations in US I wonder why anyone gives a damn about oil at all. Interesting how it's not Big Oil that has a lot of influence on news cycle too.

"It also results in bizarre things like 90 percent of Americans wanting universal background checks on guns, yet such a law never being passed"
I wonder how many of them want federal gun registry or additional legislation without removing something in return.

"The gun manufacturer industry bribes politicians to vote against even such mild gun-control laws."
Except that majority of NRA's budget doesn't seem to come from major gun manufacturers. Who wouldn't give a damn about background checks anyway, because if gun regulation wouldn't be a slippery slope, agreement on background checks would ensure their future position on market at no significant price to themselves.
Come think of it, gun and ammo manufacturers would rather like to see another Obama's term or two.

Loyalty to party over voters looks interesting too, given the obvious split among Republicans and, to some extent, Democrats.

@comrade_Comrade the russian goes with the industry card... thats new.

how many rubles did that post spat at your bank account?
becayse while people generally do not read between the lines.. we have somewhat of a talent on it.

some good points there. when it comes to bribary you would know the stuff.