West Virginia has much lower rates of homelessness and public drug use compared to liberal states despite having higher rates of drug addiction. Because housing is much more affordable.
Homelessness rates increase and decrease in direct proportion to the cost of housing as a proportion of median income. When housing costs increase more and more people become homeless and the ones that end up on the street tends to be those already living at the margins so you see more drug addicts and mentally ill people on the street and assume it's the cause.
Its well understood that being homeless makes it much harder to provide treatment and services. Sweeps of encampments make it even harder as their belongings tend to be thrown out.
So we have places with lots of services, but extremely expensive housing or places with affordable housing, but no poor public services.
Imagine if people could have housing and services how much better it would be. Maybe we wouldn't even have to strip people of their freedoms to make improvements. Wouldn't that be preferable? Isn't it worth trying?
A quick back of the envelope calculation shows that airborne microplastics can't possibly be significantly contributing to global warming. That's not surprising; there are millions of other things that aren't contributing to global warming.
Despite this, someone decides to do a study, and finds that, to no one's surprise, airborne micro plastic is not in fact making a significant contribution to global warming. So that should surely settle it, right?
Nope. Instead, they declare that it's far from conclusive, leaving the door open for another round of the same grift, taking away funding that could be going to things that actually _are_ contributing to the problem.
And somehow _pointing_this_out_ is "overly cynical bs"?
I am 100% in favor of real research, basic or otherwise.
That's _why_ I'm so opposed to hype, grift, misrepresentation of results, p-hacking, and all the other nonsense. Science is measured in explanatory progress and facts discovered, not in number of nonsense papers published and funding.
So little political will is needed at this point as the economics now favor renewables. Unfortunately most of the political will seems to be leaning towards protecting the more expensive fossil fuel sources of energy.
Because the money for politics is in oil. Renewables are investing any dollar they have into building more. Oil has a lot of money that is best invested in politics thus creating the political will.
Don't worry too much, the return on investment of renewables is much better than politics. Politics can put a few brakes on, but that only slows things a little, it won't stop it. (and politics is not set - there are plenty of forces opposing oil - they are not in power now but they are still powerful and are likely to gain power again as the tides switch)
They're interested in protecting the profits of industries that line their pockets. It's the most corrupt administration in US history and it isn't even close. Theres some far right ideology mixed in. Particularly from Stephen Miller, but mostly it's grift and graft
Homelessness rates increase and decrease in direct proportion to the cost of housing as a proportion of median income. When housing costs increase more and more people become homeless and the ones that end up on the street tends to be those already living at the margins so you see more drug addicts and mentally ill people on the street and assume it's the cause.
Its well understood that being homeless makes it much harder to provide treatment and services. Sweeps of encampments make it even harder as their belongings tend to be thrown out.
So we have places with lots of services, but extremely expensive housing or places with affordable housing, but no poor public services.
Imagine if people could have housing and services how much better it would be. Maybe we wouldn't even have to strip people of their freedoms to make improvements. Wouldn't that be preferable? Isn't it worth trying?
reply