Taxes fund research for research sake. Taxes are supposed to be applied to infrastructure maintenance and upgrades. Taxes are supposed to fund educating the populous beyond just a bare minimum able to hold a job. We should have been funding research since the 80s into new ideas for energy and teaching the kids to be smart enough to figure out the problem. It pulls the profits out of the super large corporations that are run by investors, and at least in theory redirects into employing the people in making things better. Theoretically. In a dream world where everything is cheese.

We knew all the way back in the 70s that we were having an effect on climate systems. We didn't quite understand what those effects were, but we were trying to figure them out. So over the decades, more people have collected more data and gone "Hey, there's something seriously wrong here. We may want to slow down until we can figure it out." But companies want to make their profits and we don't do anything to slow them down as they turn into giants. But all of us have seen the changes in the landscape over time.

The world that we have now isn't working and we all know it. And we're seeing the fallout from the inaction all around us. Kentucky floods, yes. But not back to back. You'll get one bad flood and then it's done. But now you have storms training up over the same area with repeated flood events in short time periods. One flood doesn't make too much of a difference. It's repeated events that's the problem. Multiple data points.
Texas has hot summers, but good lord this is too much. I've gotten 5" of rain this year total. Jacob's well stopped flowing for the 4th time in recorded history.

I keep having to answer the phone and losing my train of thought.

People who have made a lifetime of bad decisions always want a new system.

Changed here....getting a little rain finally

looks like the TAX increase is paying off..................

Will more taxes make it stay in the 70's all summer?

what time of day are we talking?

Well I assume the more we pay the more choice we have in the climate. Surely we will get results we can measure.

This may be why taxes are higher as you go to a higher latitude.

i'm thinking a tax rate of about 50% would get us close to those temp's.
if it's going to save the world we need to do it.

So after I’m taxed into oblivion to make the climate cooler and it fails (which it will) will the gubment refund all the money back to me, to us? Will china, India or any other massive polluting country participate in this this colossal goat fornication? Will their citizens pay their “fair share” to make Tx summers cooler?

To paraphrase, people (I'll say "people" instead of all of us because I am not included in the population described in this revisionist narrative) back in the 70s realized "hey, something is wrong so maybe we need to pause things." Pause what? Stop driving to and from work, or on vacations, or to to check on mom and dad in Wichita Falls, or anywhere else for that matter? Quit generating electricity to heat and cool or homes? What were we supposed to pause, and considering the 70s were five decades ago and we're all still alive and breathing air and drinking water, just how urgent was this problem that caused the allegedly needed pause?

"The world isn't working and we all know it." I'm sorry, I hate to be rude, but this is idiotic gibberish. What isn't working, and what makes you think that "we all" agree that it's not working? I live eight miles as the crow flies from a refinery and if I started early I could walk to the site of the Daisy Bradford well that brought in the East Texas Oil Field almost 100 years ago. My mom could walk outside her door and see the smokestack from a lignite power plant. My wife's mom and stepdad live across town and have lived near power plants, oil fields, and other "fossil fuels" facilities most of their lives. She is 89 and he is 96. There are millions of East Texans, Americans across the country for that matter, who could say the same. None of us have a third eye growing, and none of us glow in the dark. I fish almost every weekend, frequently in the cooling lakes alongside power plants, and it's amazing. There are plants like hydrilla and water lilies growing all over the place, there are bass and other fish that appear to be perfectly healthy swimming in the water...along with the entire ecosystem that keeps them and everything else alive..., there are deer all around as well as doves and frogs and lizards and raccoons and baby rabbits...and of course people.

In what make believe world do some of you people live, a world where problems abound everywhere and life is dying or disappearing?

Where are the rising seas that are going to consume cities? The Statue of Liberty was built in New York Harbor in the late 1800s, on Liberty (at the time Bedloe's) Island. Guess what? If you look at pictures of Liberty Island in 1900 alongside today the water level is the same. Ships and ferries and boats have been using the same piers and docks in New York and New Orleans and San Francisco for decades and decades and decades. Why aren't they underwater?

Creating a fantasy and then demanding that everyone agree that it is true...with the demands being in the form of taxation enforced by the threat of prison and the mandated giving up of personal belongings such as vehicles to "save the planet"...is not only extremely arrogant, it is incredibly destructive to society, economy, and most of all freedom.

We pay too much of our fair share in property taxes and other ways that they are granted exemptions from. It isn't any one way that we're screwed, but many and varied. No other country has the sheer brainpower and inventive curiosity that we can have when we're at our best. But other countries are facing their own disasters too and they have to do something about it to survive. We're the biggest and the best and the brightest. We're the leaders of the world... so lead.

"they" create jobs. You and I don't. not a hard concept.

We tried to lead with Trump and the free world got pissed when we acted like leaders and pointed out we are tired of dragging their dead weight. We spend all of our money on entitlements or protecting the free world. Once they grow a pair and pay for their own defense we could shift monies elsewhere.

You are confused. Listen, I don't give a [censored] if you raise billionaire's effective tax rate, or lower mine to theirs, but they shouldn't be paying less as a percentage than me or anyone else for that matter. And the same goes for the folks on the bottom. EVERYONE should pay in. Bezos's paid zero for half a dozen of the last 20 years. He used the roads, the fire department, our military, and laws as much or more than me. No free lunch for anyone. And lastly the budget should be balanced. It's got nothing to do with jealousy, and I'm not at all sure what's confusing or controversial from a conservative point of view about any of that.