alvvayson

For the past 10 years or so, most climate change activity was, in a large part, a massive subsidy for oligarchs.

For those actually interested in stopping emissions, we know that carbon pricing is efficient and actually raises tax revenue instead of taking government money.

It could have even been introduced slowly enough to allow private capital to efficiently transition without subsidies. And by transferring the proceeds to the public as tax rebates, the public would not be poorer and most would even be richer.

Instead, we got massive tax subsidies for oligarchs. Sure, some of those subsidies were relatively efficient. But in the end, they still saddled the public with debt in order to enrich the few.

So no, I am not surprised that they were faking it all along. It was obvious from the start.

I agree. It also works the other way in terms of censorship.

My original account was on an instance that once censored one of my comments. I don't remember if they deleted my comment or banned me from the community.

On reddit, I had come to just accept that as a fact of life and every few years I would delete my old account and register a new one.

On Lemmy, I just switched to a different instance which is much more tolerant of free speech and I haven't had issues since.

The irony is, my comments on the old instance can still be deleted, but only for users from that instance.

I don't know the full details, but Lemmy definitely has the more 2000-2010 type of culture that allows people to speak their mind freely.

You are right, but you are just missing an important ingredient: a physical community.

It's quite easy for autocrats and gangs to isolate and eliminate loners.

And as for the communities, there is a hierarchy. Police officers and soldiers have no hesitation to eliminate gangs and terrorists. That's their job.

They will have a little more hesitation to attack civil organisations, e.g. sports clubs, political parties and trade union places. But eventually, if someone tells them that terrorist activities were being undertaken, they'll just follow orders. The way this is done is by getting people unfamiliar with the community to come in and do the dirty job.

They will have the most hesitation to attack religious places of their own religion. Many of the grunts tend to still be religious/superstitious.

I would really recommend you get some kind of mental assessment. It must suck being dumber than a chatbot.

Storing carbon dioxide as a gas in geologic formations can be done without leakage. Natural gas has literally been stored in geologic formations for millions of years without leakage

But most solutions actually turn it into carbonic acid, which is not a gas and which will be stable for billions of years in the form of carbonate minerals.

You are missing the point.

Those days might be numbered, but these places are the last bastion.

They will invade private homes, businesses and offices with impunity first.

Churches in particular have a long history of being relatively safe in (civil) war.

Not immune, just relatively.

The next step, in my opinion, is strong privacy and decentralized organization that fully leverages constitutional rights.

I.e. a privacy preserving social media where labour unions, political parties and religious groups can federate with each other. Servers hosted on their premises and members register through an on-premise process.

A church in a foreign country could generate a thousand aliases and distribute them to their federated sister organizations in a privacy preserving way. Only the church knows which organizations got which aliases and they protect this information.

Your local labour union chapter picks up 20 of those aliases and distributes them to members. They are the only one who knows the person behind the alias.

An observer in this private fediverse trying to obtain the identity would first need to approach the church. The church can stall them and warn downstream through a canary.

The labour union chapter observes the canary and immediately wipes all information.

And if that fails, then full I2P and Tor, with nodes hosted on-premise of churches, political parties and labour unions.

Perhaps read an introductory article on carbon storage, or ask ChatGPT:

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): This involves capturing CO₂ emissions from industrial sources, transporting it, and storing it underground in geological formations.

Direct Air Capture (DAC): This technology captures CO₂ directly from the air and stores it underground or uses it in industrial processes

It's a sad state of affairs that a fellow human being is more insufferable to talk to than an AI.

It would feel fair, but it's also not that important for either the EU or the Euro itself.

The Euro is really a 1990s invention, when cash was dominant. Now that all payments are digital, it really doesn't matter if countries use the Euro or their own currency.

I agree.

There is a lot of BS about setting an example and punishing them, but I have not seen anyone who actually knows how the process works say anything remotely like that.

It would also be a massive case of the EU cutting off it's nose to spite it's face. That's just not how the EU rolls.

The normal process of joining has requirements geared towards poor peripheral countries that the UK already meets or exceeds.

The UK can join anytime it wishes and there is even a lot of room to negotiate mutually beneficial terms.

I think that they were winning before they invaded the Soviet-Union.

In an alternate timeline where they kept the alliance with the USSR, I think they would have won.

The USSR had resources while Germany had engineers and technology.

And without an eastern Front, they could have held off the allies on the western front.

But they got cocky, paranoid and greedy.

And I am glad they lost.

We're not strangers, we're Europeans.

In my small village of the Netherlands there are graves of RAF pilots. And in NATO, we are still allies.

My wife made scones and lemon curd this weekend.

My favourite heat pump geek (urban plumbers on youtube) is a Polish guy living and working in the UK.

All these attempts by people trying to divide Europeans are pathetic. It's sad that many people fall for it, because we share a culture and a history.

The UK rejoining the EU in some shape or form (perhaps the EEA) is just a matter of time. Same with Ukraine.

And personally, I think we should already start planning on how to form strategic defense and trade alliances with Turkey, Egypt and a post-Putin Russia. That will solidify a peaceful and prosperous 21st century in Europe and West-Asia.

I honestly think that's very wrong and one of the last brexiteer arguments that still seems to be believed by reasonable people.

Under the old terms, the UK was one of the largest net contributors to the EU. And also one of the countries absorbing the most immigrants. In fact, the exemptions they got were all quite reasonable.

Without the exemptions, the UK would have been an even bigger net contributor and would have had even more immigrants.

Just from pure self-interest, the EU would be foolish to demand more than the old terms. In fact, with smart negotiating, I am sure the UK could get even more exemptions than they used to have.

And we, the EU, know this. The war in Ukraine is expensive af. The UK is already helping above and beyond what we could expect from them. The EU economy isn't doing all too great either.

The mutual benefits of the UK rejoining will be billions if not trillions of extra economic output on both sides. It would be billions extra budget for the EU.

Why would we drive a hard bargain to squeeze out the Brits?

Friendly terms that make the British politicians look good and that make the UK public feel like winners and which provide direct short term economic benefits are the way to do it.