3724

Yes, I can tell you haven’t read it because I wasn’t quoting the jacket leaf. That was from the preface and first chapter, which are the parts I read. I don’t need to read any more. If he is this lost after 4000 words, he will never find his way back.

3725

During the 20th century, global population grew by a factor of 4. Energy use grew by a factor of 9. (This is a factoid from JR McNeil’s Something New Under the Sun, which is the book that has definitely had the biggest impact on my environmental ethics.)

Yeah, energy use is going to fuck us. (Has already, actually.) But you can’t really do whole cloth environmental policy. Hell we haven’t even made a single tiny dent in carbon emissions growth. Asking environmental policy to fold in family planning and immigration is too much to lift. I’m a bit of a fatalist as far as this goes. We can’t and won’t solve it. We’ll just have a lot of dying.

3726

I have said I have not read it, up above there, and that I probably won’t read it, and that I don’t know if it is stupid or not. But go ahead, try and score some more cheap rhetorical points while I ignore them.

3727

I think my problem is that I can’t really understand what immigration rates have to do with this. People who immigrate are already alive, so permissive immigration schemes don’t directly drive global population growth, and it is ultimately global population that you think matters when it comes to environmental issues. Is that not the case?

3729

I guess i’m assuming regional vs. global policy making in my arguments. It’s a bit of “we can’t save everything, but we can save everyone south or north of X”. In theory if we had global policy making there’s no reason to not have both at the same time. OTOH, in the real world where all a region can do is make policies for itself, if a country decided they wanted to reduce their environmental footprint by reducing their population by natural attrition (just for fun, 8 billion worldwide could become 8 million worldwide in 10 generations of one-child per couple policy), i don’t think they should be pressured into increasing immigration because of surface economic benefits or be disparaged with some kind of xenophobic suspicion for not doing so.

3730

Perhaps, but their actual immigration policy would be irrelevant to the global environmental problems they were hoping to solve, as those un-immigrated people would still be alive somewhere causing those global environmental problems. The immigration decision makes no difference.

I suppose it does if it’s a wealthy energy-using country seeking to trap the teeming masses of the rest of the world in permanent energy poverty, starving those others of energy to enhance their own standard of living, but I would definitely disparate those hypothetical people.

3731

What the fucking fuck is up with these idiot celebrity wanna-be’s? If you’re serious, do the grunt work and run for lesser office first you egomaniacs!

Governing is hard work, and if you actually want to be able to do the job well, you had better get some experience.

3732

Seriously, go into the house or Senate. Or be a governor. Then, if you are good, you can be president.

3733

That’s a lot of work and time.

3734

I’d take her over Trump, just saying.

3735

Fuck off Nancy Pelosi. Don’t you have enough problems without finding common cause with the Russians to discredit the MHRA?

I mean I know living in a failed state you might forget how things work, but the PRime minister has no ability to “approve” a drug.

3736

Who is responsible for loosening the law, if not the UK government?

A change in the law will allow the UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), to grant temporary approval for a vaccine from October, before it has been given a licence by the European authorities, which would be the normal procedure.

3737

That allows any MHRA approved vaccine to be used this year (by January they would have authority over this anyway) The MHRA would still have to approve it. The prime minister has no ability in instruct the MHRA to do so.

If you read the article it really doesn’t support Pelosi’s misguided claims - that Boris Johnson could approve an unsafe vaccine. Also, EU states have made plans to do the same thing if there is a hold-up at the EMA (which actually seems pretty unlikely).

3738

The point is that Johnson’s government intervened to allow distribution of a drug that normally would not be distributed.

If you place your trust exclusively in the normal institutional mechanisms of drug approval, then it’s irrelevant whether intervention is a good idea, whether other countries are doing the same, and whether it would have happened eventually without Johnson’s intervention.

The US recently debated whether government should intervene to expedite to the normal process of drug approval and decided against it. So it’s natural for the US to express skepticism of governments that made the opposite choice.

3739

Johnson’s government intervened to allow the scientific body responsible for approving the distribution of a drug to do it faster, if they decide it’s justified.

No it didn’t. The FDA has issued multiple emergency use authorisations this year. For exactly the same reasons. The example you linked was another emergency use authorisation, designed to speed up time to market for vaccines. The only controversy was the White House intervention, not the existence of the authorisation in the first place.

3740

Neither of those articles say what you claim they say.

3742
3743

Some guys are just so strange. You just have to wonder how many times before…

Also everyone should have… these by now.

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3744

I’m curious as to exactly what his thought process was.

3745

Yeah, even if he thought it was “muted” or the camera was off, just why?