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In both scenarios the government is using their power to prevent data collection they don’t like.

How are they not equivalent?

Whether or not they were successful in preventing that data from being collected is irrelevant. That set the precedent for this kind of behavior.

Is the data gained from the programs described in the article worth the $15M per year cost? That’s the real question.

It’s entirely rational to think such an expense is unnecessary, especially if your politics inclines you to believe the data collected by these programs will be used to push for more stringent environmental regulation that you dislike.

Even granting that the data is valuable, is it worth $15M per year? Can it be collected privately? Why does the government need to fund it?

To answer your question, yes, people can defend this action rationally. You don’t even have to be MAGA to do it. We should all want more efficient government.

Yea but you may lose the people, hardware, whatever to remove it from orbit easily. SpaceX designs their satellites to passively deorbit within 5 years to remove the space junk risk. But satellites in higher orbits take much longer.

They can brute force their way out of it by sheer political will, the transformation to electrify China's traffic, the hyperscaling of PV production, the rollout of high-speed trains were all accomplished in timelines the USA won't ever see in our lifetime since it lacks any political will to do big things anymore.

They are installing more solar than the rest of the world combined, other renewables as well. China doesn't have oil, they don't want to depend on oil or fossil fuels, and the CCP needs to keep some kind of social cohesion by showing off to their citizens that "things are being done".

Air quality over Chinese big cities has improved massively the past 10-15 years, they will only continue doing so, it was popular.

> https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-count...

Well, well, well: https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country...

You probably have never visited China to be able to compare how it was in the 2010s to now, right?

By large armies of trained soldiers who invariably suffered disproportionate casualties. Fortifications are very effective for this specific application.

Salt the land and wait for the rations to run out.

Not one of OPs, but it's become common knowledge these days that a real class war has been ongoing for decades, with the final blow likely delivered by Thatcher and Reagan.

The social contract, between the effective ruling and representative classes and the populations they are supposed to serve, seems to have been completely broken.

So you could say everything not pivoting to this point is basically a distraction.

Distraction from the fact that there's not going to be a perfect solution that solves the climate without inconveniencing us "common folks."

By advocating for a perfect solution that sticks it to the bad guys, one can put off talking about concrete, actionable plans. Very convenient.

You are drastically underestimating how incompetent this government is compared to all others that preceded it and how deep the loss of expertise hits. You do not recover from lost bureaucratic competence for decades.