True. As long as you’re not pulling fossil fuel out of the ground it’s better for the environment. I still consider it a (hopefully) short-term stopgap until we can transition to 100% renewables.
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It isn’t neccesary to cut down these trees to get the biodiesel. You harvest the seeds, and process them. The trees stay alive and continue to pull carbon dioxide out of the air.
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Well a whole lot depends on how the fuel is sourced of course, it has to be done in a responsibly sustainable way, and it would have to be alongside other renewable energy sources. I don’t think any one type of renewable energy source, will be sufficient to replace fossil fuels on their own.
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If I was magically in charge, I’d turn the regressive tax system to at least neutral if not progressive. For example: no more FICA cap. And I’d treat everything you are given by your employer as income and tax it on the spot AS INCOME.
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Which – if I’m not misunderstanding you – is another way of saying you’d tax everyone such that all paid their fair share. Of course the wealthy are really good at evading taxes and the best way to close loopholes is to not have any in the first place. The problem is that good-intentioned and bad actors alike, over time, layer on exemptions and about 10 seconds later people figure out how to game those exemptions in ways the authors didn’t (or sometimes did) intend.
I’m not sure how to prevent that from happening, though. And tax incentives can be an important tool in the toolbox at times … not sure we could do away with them entirely.
Best we can probably do is to have a societal ethos that treats paying taxes as a civic responsibility, very much including supporting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged among us. That, and probably have a more collaborative form of governance that encourages more universal participation so most people have “skin in the game” and a better understanding of how governance works.
For all that to work, there’d have to be quite a shift in attitude on a number of fronts. In the US. More than most places in the world, we assume way too much of each other. That people experiencing a rough patch must be at fault somehow, and should bear the shame of it and deserve no kindness, empathy or compassion. That employees by default are feckless cheats who want something for nothing and so need to be constantly repressed. Etc.
I also like the concept that “billionaires should not exist”. We can argue about how much is too much, but beyond a certain point, more $ doesn’t incentivize or make anyone happier. This country prospered post WW2 just fine with marginal tax rates exceeding 90%. That is one concept from the imagined “good old days” that we SHOULD return to.
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I would build a city full of atheist churches and atheist cathedrals, then i would build hundreds of research facilities in all the scientific fields.
Then, I would make it an independent monarchy city-state with his own pope: the atheist pope in the atheist vatican city.
Then the atheist pope will nominate atheist bishops, atheist priests, atheist deacons etc… And then researchers from all over the world will come to work in the research facilities.
The atheist churches, chapels and cathedrals will be decorated with all the symbols of the great men of sciences and the masses will be dedicated to them.
I wouldn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the churches and have institutionalized unbelief. Not sure how that would work, anyway. Large systems like that need a unifying common experience and ethos; atheism is way too narrow of a belief position on a single topic to support that. An atheist pope wouldn’t have anything to do (being as there’s no atheist holy book or dogma) so he’d get up to mischief, making holy books I suppose, and pressing everyone to conform to them. No thanks.
I like the part about building a lot of research facilities and honoring men of science for their accomplishments, though. That neither requires atheism nor excludes private faith. Nor should it.
The role of the atheist church would be to spread the concept of critical thinking in all the corners of the Earth, the gospel of atheism will be announced to all the people of the world in order to make them learn that there is no god.
The atheist church will also fight against pseudoscience, conspiracy theories and scammers who use the supernatural as a mean to deceive their victims.
The third goal of the atheist church would be charity of course, what kind of church doesn’t do charity?
useless to say that I am speaking hypothetically, I DO NOT ACCEPT DONATIONS, SO IF ANYONE COMES HERE ASKING FOR DONATIONS IT’S NOT ME AND YOU MUST NOT GIVE THEM MONEY.