So today I took out a payday loan. Small ($230) and it won't cover all my rent but I'm expecting big checks in January and I sold some dental and vision plans this afternoon, so Monday may have a nice check.
On January 10 I need to pay $50.25 (interest only). If I take the full amount of time to pay, 13 payments every two weeks, I'll have paid like $800+. As I said, I'm expecting to get paid well shortly, but that may be 2 weeks. I'm also expecting to sell a couple of Medicare plans tomorrow, but they won't pay until after Feb. 1, when the policies start. And all the Medicare I sold during Annual Enrollment? Those are the big checks I'm expecting in January.
It is expensive and soul-crushing to be poor. I'm pretty sure I'll be fine, but a lot of other people aren't. And I have worked with Faith in Texas to get cities to not allow pay day lenders in the city. It sure was convenient today, though.
The more people there are, the more strain there is on the resources humanity needs to stay alive. Pointing out that a small minority is causing most of the damage does not change that.
Asserting that population is a problem in itself is not an automatic call for killing people, as many folks seem to suggest. Perhaps by framing it that way they hope to redirect the conversation? More good would come from limiting the oligarchs' wealth than would any proportionate reduction in the population; that is, keeping the same proportion of extremely wealthy folks is not much in the way of progress. I have a book at hand called "Drawdown" edited by Paul Hawken. It is a collection of discussions on studies that have been established to actually reduce global warming. There are many other ideas which sound reasonable and may be true, but have not yet been established to do this.
One thing is educating girls in countries where this is not traditional. Another thing that works is providing health care to poor families, including birth control. These two things improve the lot of families in several ways, but their effect on reducing global warming or things which cause global warming (such as fossil fuel emissions) seem to work by reducing the population, or at least slowing down its growth.
Robert Scribbler calls us "captive consumers". We can reduce waste, of course, but to approach 0% we would need to become invisible homeless. Also, many of us have personal obligations - kids already born, parents sick and needing care, a family that needs a house not yet paid off, etc.
I compost kitchen garbage. We buy few things* and keep our winter thermostat low. But for very practical reasons, we will have to collectively make major changes. I can go vegetarian, no problem; I'm close to it now. But how do I make the pleasant guy across the street stop fiddling with his fume-belching vehicles? He could work on electric motors and maybe convert old gas cars to electric. (?)
But we have to collectively make major changes. No matter how much you and I walk to the grocery store, until they stop fracking, building new power plants based on coal (thanks Germany!), calling oil in other countries "US resources", etc., we will not have a chance of fixing this.
You and I should still do these things, for reasons, but we can only fix it from the top down.
Carbon taxes, real ones - not handwaving, are the only way to efficiently and quickly address gg emissions. Your suggestion warms the cockles of my heart.
It’s actually the Swiss Army Knife of Army conversations
Climate scientists - heck, a lot of scientists in general - were giving us a "Hey, you need to pay attention to this" on Global Warming in the 1980s.
An Inconvenient Truth was released in 2006.
I'm not optimistic.
So today I took out a payday loan. Small ($230) and it won't cover all my rent but I'm expecting big checks in January and I sold some dental and vision plans this afternoon, so Monday may have a nice check.
On January 10 I need to pay $50.25 (interest only). If I take the full amount of time to pay, 13 payments every two weeks, I'll have paid like $800+. As I said, I'm expecting to get paid well shortly, but that may be 2 weeks. I'm also expecting to sell a couple of Medicare plans tomorrow, but they won't pay until after Feb. 1, when the policies start. And all the Medicare I sold during Annual Enrollment? Those are the big checks I'm expecting in January.
It is expensive and soul-crushing to be poor. I'm pretty sure I'll be fine, but a lot of other people aren't. And I have worked with Faith in Texas to get cities to not allow pay day lenders in the city. It sure was convenient today, though.
But are the 5 banks that tried to fuck the U.S. economy in 2008 signatories? Not that it matters, those fuckers lie.
I think The Constitution was the most popular, although one person had quite an extensive list.
Bury or Plant trees?
The more people there are, the more strain there is on the resources humanity needs to stay alive. Pointing out that a small minority is causing most of the damage does not change that.
Asserting that population is a problem in itself is not an automatic call for killing people, as many folks seem to suggest. Perhaps by framing it that way they hope to redirect the conversation? More good would come from limiting the oligarchs' wealth than would any proportionate reduction in the population; that is, keeping the same proportion of extremely wealthy folks is not much in the way of progress. I have a book at hand called "Drawdown" edited by Paul Hawken. It is a collection of discussions on studies that have been established to actually reduce global warming. There are many other ideas which sound reasonable and may be true, but have not yet been established to do this.
One thing is educating girls in countries where this is not traditional. Another thing that works is providing health care to poor families, including birth control. These two things improve the lot of families in several ways, but their effect on reducing global warming or things which cause global warming (such as fossil fuel emissions) seem to work by reducing the population, or at least slowing down its growth.
Aware of all that, but Greta Thunberg refers to herself as having Aspergers, so I defer to her self-description, even as I recognize it's problematic.
Robert Scribbler calls us "captive consumers". We can reduce waste, of course, but to approach 0% we would need to become invisible homeless. Also, many of us have personal obligations - kids already born, parents sick and needing care, a family that needs a house not yet paid off, etc.
I compost kitchen garbage. We buy few things* and keep our winter thermostat low. But for very practical reasons, we will have to collectively make major changes. I can go vegetarian, no problem; I'm close to it now. But how do I make the pleasant guy across the street stop fiddling with his fume-belching vehicles? He could work on electric motors and maybe convert old gas cars to electric. (?)
But we have to collectively make major changes. No matter how much you and I walk to the grocery store, until they stop fracking, building new power plants based on coal (thanks Germany!), calling oil in other countries "US resources", etc., we will not have a chance of fixing this.
You and I should still do these things, for reasons, but we can only fix it from the top down.
* Well, maybe books.
Bury dead ones. I think he is referring to either CO2 sequestration or biochar. CO2 can be stored long term if it's buried properly.
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Because, of course, their analysts finally figured out how to do cost/benefit analysis. Twats. Some European banks have been doing this for 20 years.
Carbon taxes, real ones - not handwaving, are the only way to efficiently and quickly address gg emissions. Your suggestion warms the cockles of my heart.
Carbon offsets are silly. Carbon taxes are the only solutions that will work. Real carbon taxes. $25 - $50 per ton.
I have this posted on the door of my office in a business school.
Call in the Russian hookers. They might do a freebie for old time’s sake.