i'm just curious: when you cost things out, and make sure everything is "paid for" in your political vision, who exactly are you actually talking to?

there is really no actual fiscal conservative movement out there, anymore. maybe there used to be, but where is it today, after successive right-wing administrations since the early 80s have run record deficits to line the pockets of investors and shareholders, while neo-liberal administrations masquerading on the left have had to reign them in by cutting access to basic services?

right-wing voters clearly don't actually care much about budgets. if they did, they'd vote for the neo-liberals. and, even the centre-left of the mainstream parties has been complaining about cuts for well over a generation, now.

so, when you hear statements like "if we don't pay for climate change now, it's going to cost us more in the future" who are you talking to?

surely, you aren't talking to the people who stand to profit from inaction, are you?

then, you accuse them of not having a plan. but, this is completely wrong - there is a plan, and the plan is to wait until the very end, because that's how you maximize profit. if you're a company that exists on government procurement like haliburton, or bombardier in canada, then you directly profit from catastrophe, and you want more of it, not less of it.

in that sense, winning the fight requires getting the money out the door as quickly as possible in order to overpower the short-sightedness of contemporary capitalism. and, while i doubt bernie has the analysis correct, he's right in the approach.

if we want to actually do this, we have to throw as much money at it as we can. otherwise, the structural realities of the economy are going to wait for disaster to react - and they're going to reap in record profits from our collective grief, which is the actual climate plan currently in place.