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Not really doable, unless you're prepared to take it up with the largest consumer of coal, China, which consumes 51% of it. The US is distant third, after India

by m0zg 5y ago

Not really doable, unless you're prepared to take it up with the largest consumer of coal, China, which consumes 51% of it. The US is distant third, after India. In fact as of now the US derives more energy from renewables than from coal (mostly hydro and wind - share of solar is abysmally low). That's the trouble with Western environmentalism. It's glorified NIMBY. Just because we destroyed on-shore manufacturing doesn't mean coal won't be burned elsewhere to make stuff people buy. If anything, more of it will be burned, since the environmental regulations aren't as strict there.

simion314 5y ago
Typical american response, ignores population and history to point the finger at China. I am not sure if all parties in US run this propaganda on all TV channels? or how do this people know to copy paste same bad statistics in the hope to delay doing something. Even if your country is number 21 you should still do something proportional with your population and on how much damage you cause. And for the historic part, if we could calculate how much country put CO2 and methane int he atmosphere they should proportionally put money in a fund for investments in poor countries to help them skip over the coal stage.
- worldsayshi 5y ago
  Yeah, and a lot of the transition is about pushing down prices of renewable energy solutions so that they become more competitive. It happens when those technologies gets adoption. So even a small country should be able to make a big impact if they adopt green technology early. Prices of photovoltaics for example has gone down to a large degree thanks to early adopters and stimulus. Now it's quite competitive without such help. But it's not the only piece of the puzzle. Other technologies deserves to be pushed towards competitiveness as well.
- m0zg 5y ago
  I think you have some issues with reading comprehension: I specifically blame the US in this case, for simply moving all these emissions to China instead of dealing with them for real and right here. We share the planet. Simply moving this crap around doesn't fix anything, and never did, if anything it exacerbates the atmospheric effects. Also, China is not a "poor country" anymore. It's time it started setting money aside for "investment in poor countries", too, rather than build hundreds more coal power plants in the next five years.
  - simion314 5y ago
    Are you sure your text "US is only number 3" is not open to interpretation? Anyway I seen tons of similar bad arguments, that ignore the population , put China on number 1 and then say "let's do nothing until China cleans shit up and then until India cleans shit up and maybe after that we can find some other pretext not to do anything", same for plastics . What each country could do is fix their local shit, as I said even if you have 1 coal plant, that smoke affects your local people and not someone on the other side of the world, fixing your local coal burning should still happen even if you are greenest of the green. Then if everyone would be logic and not blame the neighbors you get your clean air and less CO2.
    - m0zg 5y ago
      To China's credit, they've just announced a ton of nuclear investment as well, something the United States no longer has the balls to do. This is (currently) _the only_ real solution to CO2 emissions that we have as a species, short of throwing billions of people back into poverty. The US prefers to pretend that solar is "it". But it's not, and it's never going to be, although its share will grow, of course. All I'm saying is I don't think the world leaders perceive this as a problem at all. They perceive it as a money making opportunity, for themselves and their donors (maybe with the exception of Xi Jinping who doesn't need the money since he's not replaceable, and he can just take whatever he wants). Otherwise they wouldn't have flown to Glasgow in _four hundred_ private jets and wouldn't have driven around around in hundred car armored motorcades. A videoconference would more than suffice for what they "accomplished" there. President of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen once took a plane to travel 31 miles [1]. That is not the behavior of a person who believes climate change to be a "problem". [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/02/revealed-air-miles-ursula-used-private-jet-travel-just-31-miles/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/02/revealed-a...
      - ben_w 5y ago
        > But it's not, and it's never going to be, although its share will grow, of course. Unless we make fusion (or spacemagic which beats it), the future can’t be anything else. I’m expecting the world of 2121 to be 95% PV on an antipodal power grid. (It would take a while to build at that scale, but the sun never sets on such a grid).
ben_w 5y ago
It’s something to take up with every nation emitting more than North Korea, given the scale of the problem. In that regard, I simultaneously agree that bitcoin is a pointless waste we’d be better off without and also a rounding error compared to the single biggest and easiest wins we can start with and also that despite that it needs to be stopped (I am skipping a few of the steps for why that is still the case even if 100% of power was renewable). Edit: I phrased that wrong. The maximum sustainable global emissions are approximately North Korea’s 2017 emissions. The sum of every country emitting less than NK is about 28 times what NK emits.

by m0zg 5y ago

simion314 5y ago

Typical american response, ignores population and history to point the finger at China. I am not sure if all parties in US run this propaganda on all TV channels? or how do this people know to copy paste same bad statistics in the hope to delay doing something. Even if your country is number 21 you should still do something proportional with your population and on how much damage you cause. And for the historic part, if we could calculate how much country put CO2 and methane int he atmosphere they should proportionally put money in a fund for investments in poor countries to help them skip over the coal stage.

worldsayshi 5y ago
Yeah, and a lot of the transition is about pushing down prices of renewable energy solutions so that they become more competitive. It happens when those technologies gets adoption. So even a small country should be able to make a big impact if they adopt green technology early. Prices of photovoltaics for example has gone down to a large degree thanks to early adopters and stimulus. Now it's quite competitive without such help. But it's not the only piece of the puzzle. Other technologies deserves to be pushed towards competitiveness as well.
m0zg 5y ago
I think you have some issues with reading comprehension: I specifically blame the US in this case, for simply moving all these emissions to China instead of dealing with them for real and right here. We share the planet. Simply moving this crap around doesn't fix anything, and never did, if anything it exacerbates the atmospheric effects. Also, China is not a "poor country" anymore. It's time it started setting money aside for "investment in poor countries", too, rather than build hundreds more coal power plants in the next five years.
- simion314 5y ago
  Are you sure your text "US is only number 3" is not open to interpretation? Anyway I seen tons of similar bad arguments, that ignore the population , put China on number 1 and then say "let's do nothing until China cleans shit up and then until India cleans shit up and maybe after that we can find some other pretext not to do anything", same for plastics . What each country could do is fix their local shit, as I said even if you have 1 coal plant, that smoke affects your local people and not someone on the other side of the world, fixing your local coal burning should still happen even if you are greenest of the green. Then if everyone would be logic and not blame the neighbors you get your clean air and less CO2.
  - m0zg 5y ago
    To China's credit, they've just announced a ton of nuclear investment as well, something the United States no longer has the balls to do. This is (currently) _the only_ real solution to CO2 emissions that we have as a species, short of throwing billions of people back into poverty. The US prefers to pretend that solar is "it". But it's not, and it's never going to be, although its share will grow, of course. All I'm saying is I don't think the world leaders perceive this as a problem at all. They perceive it as a money making opportunity, for themselves and their donors (maybe with the exception of Xi Jinping who doesn't need the money since he's not replaceable, and he can just take whatever he wants). Otherwise they wouldn't have flown to Glasgow in _four hundred_ private jets and wouldn't have driven around around in hundred car armored motorcades. A videoconference would more than suffice for what they "accomplished" there. President of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen once took a plane to travel 31 miles [1]. That is not the behavior of a person who believes climate change to be a "problem". [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/02/revealed-air-miles-ursula-used-private-jet-travel-just-31-miles/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/02/revealed-a...
    - ben_w 5y ago
      > But it's not, and it's never going to be, although its share will grow, of course. Unless we make fusion (or spacemagic which beats it), the future can’t be anything else. I’m expecting the world of 2121 to be 95% PV on an antipodal power grid. (It would take a while to build at that scale, but the sun never sets on such a grid).

ben_w 5y ago

It’s something to take up with every nation emitting more than North Korea, given the scale of the problem. In that regard, I simultaneously agree that bitcoin is a pointless waste we’d be better off without and also a rounding error compared to the single biggest and easiest wins we can start with and also that despite that it needs to be stopped (I am skipping a few of the steps for why that is still the case even if 100% of power was renewable). Edit: I phrased that wrong. The maximum sustainable global emissions are approximately North Korea’s 2017 emissions. The sum of every country emitting less than NK is about 28 times what NK emits.