The NY Times is all in a lather over the superyachts of billionares. Of course, what would actually happen is that the fossil fueled boats of the average person would end up being banned
The Superyachts of Billionaires Are Starting to Look a Lot Like Theft
If you’re a billionaire with a palatial boat, there’s only one thing to do in mid-May: Chart your course for Istanbul and join your fellow elites for an Oscars-style ceremony honoring the builders, designers and owners of the world’s most luxurious vessels, many of them over 200 feet long.
The nominations for the World Superyacht Awards were all delivered in 2022, and the largest contenders are essentially floating sea mansions, complete with amenities like glass elevators, glass-sided pools, Turkish baths and all-teak decks. The 223-foot Nebula, owned by the WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, comes with an air-conditioned helicopter hangar.
I hate to be a wet blanket, but the ceremony in Istanbul is disgraceful. Owning or operating a superyacht is probably the most harmful thing an individual can do to the climate. If we’re serious about avoiding climate chaos, we need to tax, or at the very least shame, these resource-hoarding behemoths out of existence. In fact, taking on the carbon aristocracy, and their most emissions-intensive modes of travel and leisure, may be the best chance we have to improve our collective climate morale and increase our appetite for personal sacrifice, from individual behavior changes to sweeping policy mandates.
Does anyone really need to own one of these? Who cares? It’s none of anyone else’s business, but, members of the climate cult feel the need to tell Other People who to live their lives and spend their money. But, I will give Joe Fassler, a food and environmental issues “reporter” credit for noting that it’s time to take on the “carbon aristocracy” and their climahypocrisy.
Joe goes into all the megayachts and private jets owned and taken by the Elites, leading to
But this misses a much more important point. Research in economics and psychology suggests humans are willing to behave altruistically — but only when they believe everyone is being asked to contribute. People “stop cooperating when they see that some are not doing their part,” the cognitive scientists Nicolas Baumard and Coralie Chevallier wrote last year in Le Monde.
As the old Glenn Reynolds saying goes “I’ll start believing it’s a crisis when those who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis (to which I add) in their own lives.” The Elites keep telling us we need to Do Something, preferably by government fiat, yet, they’re the worst offenders
Whether we’re talking about voluntary changes (insulating our attics and taking public transit) or mandated ones (tolerating a wind farm on the horizon or saying goodbye to a lush lawn), the climate fight hinges, to some extent, on our willingness to participate. When the ultrarich are given a free pass, we lose faith in the value of that sacrifice.
If you’re doctor tells you to lose weight, yet, he or she is fat and smokes, do you listen? I’ll still give Joe points for going after the Elites, but, he loses a few for pushing government authoritarianism. However, this is all a bunch of mule fritters when it comes to climate apocalypse. However, when it comes to real environmental issues, yest, they are very much polluting.
I will start believing abortion is murder when those shouting that at us
Actually act like they believe it is murder
Trump gave our “elites” a 2 trillion dollar tax cut
Without it how could they but duodrystchs.
America ess great when taxes on the rich ere high
And straws were made in the USA. Out of paper
Nice try, Johnny. All debunked earlier. The tax cut was to all brackets, but if you have evidence of trillions to just the “elites”, by all means show us. “America was great when taxes on the rich were higher..”. And your evidence of that is…what? So America was greater when the “elites” paid a smaller share of the tax bill? Interesting. Be careful, you could lose your liberal credentials….but wait, my bad-you have no clue on basic economics so that gives you a lifetime membership in liberalism..
Eh… more than a few anti-abortion zealots *have* gone to jail over protesting abortion or even killing abortionists or bombing clinics to stop the murders.
So, yeah, that’s happened. So i guess you should at this point believe them.
Of course, sane people don’t measure the sincerity of a belief by the extremes its proponents are willing to go for it. I also believe drive by shootings kill people, but you don’t see me going around hunting down gangbangers to stop them. I believe govt drone strikes on civilian targets are murders, but why should i have to buy a jet and blow drones out of the sky to convince you?
Don’t be crazy. It’s a bad look.
We do and all we get is attacked on the streets, have our help centers set afire and our churches graffitied. What else do you want? The pro baby killing mobs and the pro fag and tranny mobs are the most dangerous racist terrorist organizations in America. Just last week they attacked Riley Gaines for saying she resents loosing at woimens sports to a man. They threatened her life and basically held her hostage.
Radical leftists are the most dangerous people on earth. We learned that by the body count last century their leaders created to make Germany, Russia, N. Korea, Cambodia, Cuba, and China a utopia.
Now the left in America is only happy when they’re killing our unborn babies and grooming the survivors to perverted sex. What a blight on the world the left has become. They support nothing wholesome and good only death and perversion.
Again with the Trump shit. You are scared to death of one guy. He gave EVERYBODY a tax cut you fuckin moron. Including YOU. And you once stated you pay millions in taxes. Not enough? Send in more. So STFU already you sound like an idiot.
Sleepy joe has been fake president for two years if you idiots wanted the tax laws changed he could have. Whatever exists NOW exists because biden allows it to.
CarolAnn,
I’ve yet to find an anti-abortion zealot who actually believes their own BS that ‘abortion is murder’. Are you willing to go to jail, even die, protecting babies from murder? Or is the extent of your efforts to vote for right-wingers who will appoint anti-abortion judges?
I’ll believe a fertilized ovum is a human person when you act to stop these murders!!
Millions of fertilized ova are flushed down the toilet or thrown in the trash every year. If a fertilized ovum doesn’t implant in the uterine wall is it still a human person? Shouldn’t they ALL be saved? Please discuss.
What a blight on humanity the American far-right has become! Reactionary rightists are the most dangerous people on Earth!!
93% of abortions occurred in the first trimester. The rate has been dropping steadily. But now, far-right Christian activists want to force 12 yr old rape victims to have a baby.
First of all I’m not an “anti abortion zealot” and I don’t think any of us here are. They are few and far between unlike the “kill the babies zealots” that seem ubiquitous at rallies and such. Must a believer in Life be willing to go to jail and even die to show his beliefs to you? If so why? Why must those who oppose yor opinions (and that’s exactly what this is) be willing to go all ape shit to please your inability to follow the science?
What we reasonable pro life people want is guys like you to admit at some point even you know scientifically that embryo is a human and draw the line at that point. Why can’t you bring yourselves to do even that? You know a baby does not become human the second of birth so just tell us when you think that “cluster of cells” becomes a viable human being: 2 mo., 3, 5 months? Is that so hard?
We know your burning hatred for both God and Christians but try and keep a clear mind long enough tyo realize it’s not just far-right Christian activists who believe life begins at conception. We know that’s hard for you because your mind is made up and closed. Do you somehow believe that killing the baby of a 12 year old rape victim rather than supporting her through her pregnancy and having the child adopted un-rapes her? Does it in some way make everything as it was because you killed her baby? She’s 12 years old and can’t buy a pack of cigarettes but you want her to make a life altering decision about her and her baby’s life? How does that make things better. You are the big statistics guy how many females kill themselves every year because of the guilt of an abortion or don’t they matter in your equation? How many carry that guilt for the rest of their lives?
I’ve been through this stuff it’s not as cut and dry as you paint it. You were never there so your opinion is worth jack shit. This is a deep matter between her and the father not her and dowd. I know girls who have had nothing but misery because of their abortion(s).
Isn’t helping the girl move on with her life and get the child adopted better than killing the kid or are you so in love with death to babies you just can’t face allowing one to live?
CarolAnn,
My point is that your claim that abortion is murder is not supported by your actions.
I won’t admit it because it’s not true that a fertilized ovum is a person. Not even you believe that. Almost everyone will make great sacrifices to save a child. Pro-life, pro-choice, doesn’t matter. Everyone.
You didn’t answer. What are your feelings regarding the millions of fertilized ova that do not implant and are lost. According to you, this is a person lost and thrown away that could be saved. Will you admit that a fertilized ovum is not even a potential person until it’s at least implanted in the uterine lining? How do you propose the state monitor whether every American female is pregnant or not? If she is pregnant one month but not the next does the prosecutor investigate? Maybe she took the mifepristone/misoprostol combo or maybe she just had a miscarriage. How will your police state decide.
People like you in Idaho now propose to monitor Idahoans traveling out of state to end a pregnancy. How will that work without a police state?
Roe vs Wade was a compromise. 93% of abortions occur in the 1st trimester. Republican laws are now forcing women to wait even longer and later.
Who gets abortions? Primarily the poor, the young, the undereducated. Catholics, Protestants, atheists. Black and white.
Wouldn’t it be great if no woman every felt the need, or had the need, to terminate a pregnancy?
You are not reasonable. You are unwilling to compromise because you have a belief that a 2-cell zygote is a person. You want to force 12 year old rape and incest victims to have babies. You want a woman at risk of dying to have babies.
You desire to force your unpopular beliefs on others. What will happen is that Republicans will continue to lose elections. Look to Michigan to see where this is headed. Look to Wisconsin. It won’t happen overnight but America will continue to push back against right-wing tyranny. Eventually freedom wins. I wish there were NO abortions, but there has ALWAYS been and will continue to be abortions whether Republicuns outlaw them or not.
Make education, social services, healthcare, father financial responsibility and contraception more widely available. Do things to make life easier for the poor single mother with 3 children who doesn’t think she can handle another. Good Christians like you and Mr Teach blame women for unwanted pregnancies, telling them to ‘keep their knees together’, calling them whores, sluts and tramps. I don’t know of a single pregnancy that didn’t involve a sperm donor. Are those sperm donors also sluts?
Your tactics of calling others murderers, baby killers in love with death to babies will not work.
Welcome to Gilead.
The distinguished Mr Dowd wrote:
It’s not like anything bad has ever happened when we defined people as something other than human. We had slavery for thousands of years because some people defined others as less than human. Europeans were able to persecute the Jews for centuries — the Holocaust is only the worst example — because some people defined the Jews as something insidious and less than really people.
Now we have the spectacle of the left defining a living human being as not a person. What could possibly go wrong?
The pro-abortionists would never make the argument that one person’s inconvenience outweighs another’s life, because it’s an obvious loser, so they have to define one as just not a person.
It is Mr Dana’s belief that a fertilized ovum is a person, even though common sense advises us that that is not the case.
I respect his belief but disagree on the actions. And I would never attempt to persuade a woman to terminate a pregnancy (unless the woman’s life was in danger. “Grave danger?” “Is there any other kind?”).
An ovary contains 1-2 million oocytes (eggs). Early each month hundreds start to mature, but usually just one leaves the ovary (ovulation). Each month the other maturing oocytes wither and die are eaten (resorbed) by other cells. A female may ovulate 300-500 times in her fertile life. That’s a lot of potential babies!
Every ovum represents a potential person. Why not limit ‘wasting’ ova? Nearly every month, a non-chemically controlled female between the ages of menarche and menopause wastes a perfectly good egg that, in nine months, could have become a person! Many millions of ova are wasted. Millions of fertilized ova do not attach and are lost in the subsequent menses or before. Many fertilized ova attach but are viciously attacked and devoured (cannibalized) by a woman’s own macrophages!
Yikes, so if most embryos die of ‘natural’ causes, and there are about 4 million live births a year in America, how many millions of persons are lost each year? It’s a fizzucking Holocaust!!! Year after fizzucking year!! How does an anti-abortion American contain his grief… The argument often used is that God makes a lot of mistakes and these are ‘defective’ persons that He destroys. Yikes.
Anyway, I highly recommend that anti-abortionist females NOT get an abortion, nor should their anti-abortion men support them getting an abortion. Further, they should lobby others not to obtain an abortion. For my part, I promise never to force a woman to obtain an abortion.
Once anti-abortionists declared zygotes to be human persons, they tried murdering doctors and nurses, fire-bombing clinics and harassing people entering and leaving clinics, but it was pointed out that murder and fire-bombing are often illegal in most states, so they then turned to their prime directive – have the State enforce their personal beliefs. And here we are today.
The rape victim is one of the favorite arguments of the pro-abortion crowd. Well, in this country we don’t punish the child for the crime of the father.