If you had bothered to read past that sentence, you would have noticed this:

That said, renewable energy will almost certainly still be the cheaper option. Plus, renewable energy is just much more efficient. An electric car charged from renewable electricity is going to lose significantly less energy to waste than an ICE car running on gas.

Renewable energy tech is also sensitive to oil prices. Those products are just as dependent on global supply chains that still run on oil. So, renewable energy tech might go up in price like most everything else.

That said, renewable energy will almost certainly still be the cheaper option. Plus, renewable energy is just much more efficient. An electric car charged from renewable electricity is going to lose significantly less energy to waste than an ICE car running on gas.

But honestly, the affordability of renewable energy tech is dependent on one country: China. Without China’s massive industrial manufacturing capacity, and the Chinese government’s willingness to heavily subsidize key renewable tech industries, the renewable energy transition wouldn’t be possible.

For renewable energy to become viable, the tech had to come down in price. But the only way to bring down the price was to over produce.

Price is determined by supply and demand. If you produce a lot of a certain product, but the demand for that product is low, the price for the product will go down. That’s good for consumers but it’s bad for the business. Now it’s true that businesses can still make a profit even as the per unit price for their product is coming down, by increasing overall sales volume. But that’s risky, and it wouldn’t have worked for renewable tech anyway because we needed the price of that tech to come down a lot, and fast. There’s no way the producers could have remained profitable with prices coming down as much and quickly as they have without heavy subsidies.

There was no will to do that in the “free market capitalism” West.

“I am literally the only Democrat in America, in Congress, that I’ve come across that’s saying, ‘I think it’s a great thing to break and destroy the Iranian regime,’” he added.

There are plenty of Democrats who have often supported a US interventionist foreign policy. There are plenty of Democrats who are perfectly fine with letting Israel direct US policy regarding the Middle East. This has led many Democrats to support terrible foreign policy decisions, like the Iraq war. To their credit, many Democrats are finally starting to wise up and learn from these past mistakes. They’re ever so slowly starting to realize that it might not be such a great idea to keep making the same devastating blunders, over and over and over again.

Unfortunately, men like Fetterman and Trump are not big on learning or wisdom. They’re too fucking stupid to realize that they haven’t destroyed the Iranian regime, they’ve certainly strengthened it. All they’ve done is put a younger Ayatollah in power with even more reason to hate the US and Israel. Congratulations, you’re an idiot. But they have weakened the global economy! So there’s that.

How bad things get, Rahmstorf explained, all depends on how long the planet stays above 1.5 degrees. The Greenland Ice Sheet, for example, might be salvageable if people figure out how to bring emissions down and actively cool the planet…

“actively cool the planet”

Geo engineering, or “solar radiation management,” as they’re calling it now. Yeah, that’s right, folks. They’re gonna pump sulfur dioxide, or something, into the atmosphere to cool the planet. I know it, they’re going to do it. That’s how they’re doing to “fix” this. We can keep burning the fossil fuels that way. Burn the coal, burn the oil, burn the natural gas, it’s all fine because we can just cool the climate down. It’s so easy!

We are so cooked.

Such a rich and vibrant culture.

There’s a pro-war part of the progressive movement? How can you be pro-war and a progressive?

Correlation does not imply causation.

That doesn’t mean the correlation is irrelevant. The fact is, not a single one of the top ten democracies on the planet today have populations above 20 million. Not a single one. Source. I don’t necessarily know why that is, but it is.

I don’t think modern global capitalist civilization will peacefully transition to social democracy, or democratic socialism, whatever you want to call it. I think the capitalist global economy will continue growing until we hit some hard limits to growth, at which point it will collapse, which could be sooner than most realize. It’s not going to be pleasant. Global population could decrease significantly, average life expectancy could decline, as could total global industrial output and average living standards. Who knows what will come out on the other side of that.

Democratic socialism is already working in several Nordic countries of millions.

Those countries are social democracies, not democratic socialist. Democratic socialism and social democracy are different systems. I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but they really are distinct.

Social democracy is a mostly capitalist economy with a democratic government that has a progressive tax system that funds a social welfare system and basic, universal public services. Social democracy does exist in many nations around the world today. Even the US has hada version of this model in the past.

Democratic socialism is a socialist economy with a democratic government. Most services would be provided by community or government owned non-profit organizations. Some for-profit businesses might exist but they would be worker owned. Unlike social democracy, Democratic socialism has never actually been tried. It’s entirely theoretical.

Together they have populations of tens of millions.

Yeah, tens of millions. Not 350 million like the US. Of the top ten democracies, according to the democracy index, all have populations under 20 million, and most have populations under 10 million. Clearly, social democracy has a population limit. I believe democratic socialism would too.

The goal is to evenly distribute the wealth such that everyone has what they need to survive and then if you still have enough wealth left over (if the wealthy class were dismantled we would), you make sure everyone has enough to be comfortable. You take the business assets and you share ownership with the people working in those businesses.

I think that’s a very nice idea. But I think you’re going to have a very hard time getting enough people to support it.

For a very long time I considered myself a democratic socialist. I joined the Democratic Socialists of America eight years ago, but I left after just a few years. To me, democratic socialism just made so much sense. I thought, this is the solution. I was convinced that Democratic socialism, along with environmental sustainability, was the future. Boy, was I wrong. Very few people shared my view. After a while I realized it was futile.

Most people who would read this cartoon don’t want to overthrow and replace the system, they just want the money. They’d prefer the $4 million, but they’d settle for the $50 /hr. You can tell them there’s a better way, but your words will just fall on deaf ears. They ain’t interested. They just want the money.

There won’t be an awareness campaign followed by a wave of socialist political movements that sweep the parliaments and governments of the world. There won’t be a glorious proletarian revolution, which sees the workers seize the means of production. A post capitalist society will one day emerge, but it will only be after capitalism has collapsed, taking the modern world down with it. Maybe on the other side of that, democratic socialism might be possible, in some small pockets of what’s left of humanity. But it will only be on small scales. Democratic socialism is incompatible with empires, and other large, complex civilizations. So any democratic socialist societies that do exist will be relatively small. Not that’s a bad thing. Not at all. In fact, I think it’s much more sustainable. But that means no dynamic, fast growing, expansionist civilizations. Again, better, more sustainable, but much different than the world we know today.

But if this happens at all, it’ll be long after I’m dead.

No.