Consistently bad, or only bad as of 2025?

Teachers are more concerned with improving their test scores

Piss off.

By and large teachers hate the shit they are more or less forced to do by the education system.

Blame the arseholes you voted for not the poor sods at the bottom.

Some of this is the school itself and your community.

The other part is the kids have too much going on sucking up their time. Everybody is so so busy without enough time to do things because everything is competing for our attention like never before in human history. Using addiction and other psychology to steal as much time away from us as they can. It's not TV networks competing for ad viewers like in the past; it is TV vs phones vs games vs social media etc. Less time to read. Less time to be idle and exercise imagination... and imagination and creativity is down the drain (I know an old art teacher who observed the decline.)

Sports... always stupid in the USA, but it is crazy stupid since like the 90s? 80s? It's a part time job with some pushing like crazy for their kid to get a scholarship with that job which used to be a sport.

Having seen a change in student attentions for those paying to learn actually change for the worse, I'd say attention spans and all that dopamine stuff is harming people greatly. Trying to boost IQs and focus by leaving the smartphone out of the classroom does not work because they are too addicted to give it up! Even when they know it's a problem; the attitude is just like smokers.

Teens wanting jobs after school and even laws changing to allow more child labor (like somehow we're the same as a century ago when skipping high school didn't totally ruin your job prospects.) The teen needs money to consume lots of shit they want...

Building codes exist for two reasons:

insurance companies got tired of the expense of covering death traps.

those buying a house don't want to buy a death trap - or more specifically the banks making the big loans to buy a house didn't want to be stuck losing everything when that death trap falls apart or goes up in flames killing the 'owner' leaving the bank with nothing but land with a junk pile.

Sure, codes indirectly protect your life - but make no mistake they exist primarily so that your debt can be paid back.

To be fair, the fact that most British cars were crap didn't help either. Poor reliability, mostly unpleasant to drive, prone to rust.

I apologize if I've made an enemy of you - that was not my intent.

I keep hearing about instances where solar and wind are providing almost all of the power needed for large sections of the grid and for extended periods of time. Except for needing spinning-mass inertia or its electronic equivalent, I have the impression that renewables are poised to take over a very large chunk of power needs currently served by coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. And I expect both efficiencies and yields to improve, and costs to go down. Am I missing something beyond the fact that renewables may never be able to provide power for all of our transportation needs? Do you think that the majority of at least cars currently on the road could be replaced by EVs?

According to this Forbes article, the LCOE of nuclear is twice that of solar. (It also points out that "LCOE does not account for network integration or other indirect costs", but doesn't offer any additional figures). In your opinion, should we be going all-in on nuclear, or should we keep building renewable infrastructure as well?

The Forbes article also mentioned delays and cost overruns in nuclear projects. Is this just mismanagement and/or corruption, or is it likely to be an inherent part of doing something that's difficult and dangerous?

I think I asked it partly to be provocative because you hadn't explicitly mentioned nuclear power, and partly because I thought and hoped that I might have missed something which could give us a carbon-neutral carbon fuel cycle.

Who is saying to stop using any types of plastics?

PVC need to be BANNED!
It's the worst plastic! Vinyl included. The plasticizer for PVC is also a huge problem.

The USA stopped the EU from banning it long ago.

I've read some theorize the fall of the roman empire might have been connected to pollution...

I'd not be surprised in in the future we find Trump voters had the most brain damage from modern pollution.

Maybe all these whacked-out trans-humanist brogligarchs have known this for a while, figure it's going to kill humanity as we know it, and decided that the future of the human race lies in silicon and steel with maybe a few token 'meat' parts.

The plastic in your sperm and your brain and your fetuses (of which less than 20% become babies) DOES NOT PRODUCE AIR POLLUTION.

Store that carbon in your balls and save the climate! ;-)
Plus it may reduce sperm counts and births which will do far far more good for the climate.

YES! We need to promote LAND FILLS of plastic. it's the cheapest carbon storage scheme. other trash can make bigger problems but plastic trash only takes up SPACE it doesn't release CO2!

We cared more about property value (short term) than climate change and that is why we must obsess with plastic pollution and put land above air. It doesn't sound right to put land above air does it?

If you go that broad, then nothing is a circle. Any energy use will leak and not be a closed circle.

Aluminum is a circle if you are reasonable. It takes energy input; it isn't 100% pure so refining it will produce byproducts. Having children is not a circle. if you replace yourself, only on simple terms is it a cycle. since you don't instantly die when the child is born; you have 50+ years overlap. The both of you create a lot of waste output to keep you living... as long as there are maybe 500 million humans on earth the impact is within equilibrium... and you are spread out over the earth...

REDUCE is the biggest factor. We refuse to reduce. But everything else contributes to a lesser degree.

I have solar; but the biggest savings is in reducing my electrical demand - which helped regardless of my power source.

History teaches us that we do not learn from history. Those who remember their history are doomed to watch it be repeated.

And if AI can replace or reduce human workers, then that is exactly what will happen. No amount of regulation will prevent it.

If the number of people starving in the street or languishing in prison remains at a sustainable level, then we will just "carry on" like that. Birth rates are continuing to fall so the next generation might not have enough people in it for the unemployment to become unmanageable.

Don't expect something like "compassion" or "morality" to drive any policies, though.

We look for cheap CO2 storage... but why are we not questioning recycling? It's better to bury that plastic for the 1000s of years; it'll hold that CO2. Sure we shouldn't put it into every living cell on earth but collect and store it; like nuclear waste ...except competently.

Plastics are not seriously recyclable. Most have very limited cycles! Those that can in theory recycle forever like ABS still become degraded at almost every cycle. It's not aluminum, where you can burn off all impurities because it's atomic. We are greener just burying all that plastic.

The WORST thing is burning up all the plastic for fuel... think of all the chemical scrubbing steps that need to go on... not just the 1 these people found... probably funded by grants from misguided people (if not corrupt.) Sure you might think it's worse to break down plastic into more microplastic (which some have been working on -- and now we are aware that is already a growing problem) but that microplastic is a lesser problem: it's not changing climate, just polluting everything. Yes, making plastics isn't the best process-- depends on the plastic; but you don't seriously think we will stop using plastic do you? we can't curb even the most simple problems! Plastic is extremely useful stuff without any problems on the scale of oil, coal, tobacco, drugs, even sugar.. hell, disposable plastic bags and straws are dead simple and we can't ban them. (and recycling them is incredibly stupid; burning is the only practical way for them outside the obvious answer: banning them.)

Idiotocracy is civilized but much lower on the spectrum; the USA is already back stepping.