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‘Morally, nobody’s against it’: Brazil’s radical plan to tax global super-rich to tackle climate crisis
(www.theguardian.com)
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
It's always been a fallacy that the rich can remove their money from all developed economies and still remain rich. Also, if billionaires are taxed until they're no longer billionaires, that money hasn't disappeared, it's been recycled.
And there's a fundamental series of questions under all this: who elected billionaires? Who benefits from their continuing to be billionaires? What are the costs? How can we fire them?
The ancient Athenians would vote to expropriate and exile the rich if they weren't working in the interests of the polis (cutting deals with enemy states, interfering in politics, corruption). Perhaps Western countries should all pass laws that a limited number of referenda can be held annually to make a similar disposition of the modern ultra-rich?