As the Republican presidential candidates barrel toward their first debate under the shadow of a front-runner facing dozens of felony charges, The New York Times examined their stances on seven key issues.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/1514949

I wouldn’t consider voting for any of these people in the general election, but I recognize that people often live in gerrymandered districts, and therefore vote in Republican primaries in order to have some influence over their local representatives. For people living in such a district, choosing a least-bad candidate is a way try and moderate the Republican party just a bit.

Candidates are listed by poll-based estimates of their support, which makes it rather clear that Republicans as a whole have sought to reject any kind of meaningful path to zero greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Trump: His actions as president may have caused irreversible damage to the global climate.

  • DeSantis: He has supported efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change, but not to prevent it.

  • Scott: He acknowledges climate change but rejects most efforts to stop it.

  • Ramaswamy: He opposes all government efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

  • Haley: She supports carbon-capture technology but has denounced efforts to reduce emissions.)

  • Pence: He claims climate change is exaggerated and would prioritize domestic energy production.

  • Christie: He supports action on climate change with some caveats.

  • Hutchinson: He denounces government mandates but supports private renewable energy development.

  • Burgum: He has supported carbon-capture as governor, but what he would do as president is unclear.

  • Hurd: He acknowledges that climate change is a major threat, but what he would do is unclear.

  • Suarez: He has pursued significant emission reductions in Miami.

  • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Recently, even the CEO of Ford struggled mightily on a recent trip with an EV pickup.

    I didn’t follow that, but the typical problems are issues with the charging network (which can be solved by making them more like gas stations – which is the natural evolution) and improvements to battery technology for faster charge times (which are on their way).

    suck as recreational vehicles

    Eh… I’d say the jury is still out. This is a space that hasn’t seen much investment, but I could see EVs with solar panels that you can just drive from campsite to campsite in the future, and never pay for power.

    sports cars

    I’m struggling with this one. I mean have you seen the acceleration on EVs? Electric motors are hands down superior in every way to an ICE.

    larger volume transport

    For now. This just needs a better breakthrough https://news.yahoo.com/nasa-incredible-solid-state-battery-130000645.html

    Though really, it doesn’t even need that. Just hand off trailers at rest stops while a truck is charging. It would be a change to the trucking industry, but I fail to see why that wouldn’t be doable.

    we can NOT supply the electricity needed to charge a full fleet of EVs anyways.

    Oh hogwash. Says who? Show me your calculations that the grid can’t be scaled and that nuclear, wind, tidal, solar, and geothermal can’t capture more power.

    Gas stoves are still preferred by many people and thats their right.

    I’m not going to argue with this; gas is an efficient means of producing heat and I’m not that dogmatic. Though I have seen some links to gas stoves and asthma… But I think over time things will run their course, people don’t use wood burning stoves anymore after all (because things naturally evolved).

    What happens when the power goes out and we all have electric furnaces & stoves?

    Well a more distributed grid based on renewables would be harder to “take down” to start with. There are tons of advantages to more localized power production in that sense (and to be fair dangers to utility workers that need worked through). … this says nothing of the advantage to not needing to go to war over oil or the more stable electric generation prices vs barrels of oil/dependence on oil.

    Ignoring that, your car is a giant battery, you could cook with it: https://www.engadget.com/gm-will-enable-vehicle-to-home-charging-on-all-ultium-based-evs-164248583.html

    My personal opinion is that things need to be different, some things can lag (we don’t need to force people to buy new stoves, furnaces, etc – these things are really good at their jobs and efficient) and we shouldn’t completely shut down production of those things, but it should be scaled back. We should generally focus on minimizing pain as we find new ways to do old things that don’t depend on foreign energy, don’t pollute the environment, and don’t increase carbon.

    Personally, I expect advances in EV technology to come at an increasingly rapid rate as economies of scale kick in. We’re in an era of innovation again, there are going to be new designs, weird designs, etc. That will happen regardless of who’s the president, unless someone actively gets in the way of it and uses political power to hinder renewables (Trump worries me the most in this regard).

    In general, this isn’t a “we can just keep doing the old thing” option though, we WILL run out of domestic oil, and we WILL make the very real climate crisis worse.

    From what I’ve seen so far Christie would be the least bad option in the Republican field… Pretty good chance I’ll still be voting Biden, but Christie is at least not a “hell no” from me.

    Edit: This isn’t just a war against climate change, it’s a war for energy independence, and FINALLY having stable prices on transport costs.