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Meh when I see that we are barely able to stop the growth of fossile fuel usage ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption#/media/Fil

Meh when I see that we are barely able to stop the growth of fossile fuel usage ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption#/media/File%3AGlobal_Energy_Consumption.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_cons... ), I'm not sure why peoples are so optimistic. And it's not like Enr and other suggestion you propose will not need insane amount of ressource extraction. Heat pump usually need a well insulated home, just isolating all the needed house in the next 25 years is probably a challenge itself between cost and having enough workers. And it's not like there was an article last week on electrician shortage ...

dan-robertson 4y ago
I guess when I look at that chart I’m actually optimistic: - coal and oil not really growing (but there is Covid at one end and no Ukraine war effects). This is especially noteworthy for coal because china continues to increase coal power generation so the only way for it to be flat is many others decreasing - the ‘other’ section growing at 16% per yer (doubling in less than 5 years) is basically renewables I am sad that fossil fuels continue being burned more and I’m sad nuclear isn’t growing but the growth in renewables is encouraging. A thing people often say when looking at per-country data is something like ‘emissions in developed countries are only decreasing because they are offloading polluting industry to developing nations which you can see are burning more’ but this doesn’t appear to be true. Studies that try to measure trade-adjusted emissions find that they aren’t massively different from the raw amounts and that the difference has stayed pretty steady for a while even as developed countries’ emissions have fallen despite growing economies.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  I think you are being optimistic because you are neglecting the urgency of this issue. We have maybe 10 years left to get to 0 emissions. We are not even decreasing. If this graph were something happening in the 80s, I would be ecstatic (well, if I had been born and had known about global warming). Right now, it's far too little far too late. This is not a time for finding a new way of abundance, it is a time for accepting that we have been growing our economy on burrowed time, and we have to significantly shrink the global economy ourselves, or the planet will do it for our children or grandchildren 20-50 years from now.
  - dan-robertson 4y ago
    I don’t think the crises or emergency phrasing is particularly accurate. We have already locked in a great deal of climate change over the coming decades and urgent actions now won’t change that. I don’t think ‘emergency’ should apply to situations where things get worse over the next 30 years but actions today may cause them to be less terrible in 80 years. The narrative about shrinking economies doesn’t make sense to me because for lots of countries like the US, they emitted more when their economies were smaller. We don’t want to go back to that. I think pushing to reduce emissions by shrinking economies is unconscionable as it effectively corresponds to reducing standards of living across the world and particularly harms the poorest countries. I also dislike it because it is obviously politically unpalatable and so the people who favour it either long for some kind of authoritarian to impose it[1] or get to smugly say they were right while their desired plan doesn’t get implemented. I would much rather governments were pushed towards policies that would be desirable to people while also reducing emissions. [1] I also note that the biggest authoritarian country is burning more and more coal with increasing emissions while the biggest non-authoritarian countries have falling emissions and growing economies.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      US domestic emissions have fallen slightly - much less than US manufacturing was moved overseas. Also, I am definitely in no way advocating for authoritarianism. I'm advocating for realistic, charismatic politicians to present the real situation to people and help them understand the urgency of this threat to the future of the world. Not to mention, there is plenty of room for reducing economic activity without materially impacting living conditions for the vast majority of consumers. All the cheap plastic crap being produced and shipped overseas is an obvious contender, which produces both massive emissions and additional, faster working pollution. Fast fashion and fast food need more care (as they are important to many poor people around the world), but more sustainable alternatives that reduce overconsumption without impact on basic necessity are certainly possible. Regulating and reducing advertising is a more indirect approach that would help revert the trend of encouraging massive overconsumption in all aspects of life (since one of the biggest focuses of modern advertising is simply to increase the whole market, and only incidentally to advocate for a particular brand). And note that this very much is an emergency, even if the effects are slow to be seen. It's like a contamination with prions - if you don't stop it right this second, it will inevitably produce disastrous effects 5-10 years from now, with no possibility to stop it or even mitigate it later. Just because the disastrous effects will happen later in the future doesn't make the current moment any less of an emergency.
- adrianN 4y ago
  So far we've mostly replaced coal with gas. That is a questionable improvement. Total carbon emissions are still rising quickly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions#/media/File:Annual-CO2-emissions-by-region.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

dan-robertson 4y ago

I guess when I look at that chart I’m actually optimistic: - coal and oil not really growing (but there is Covid at one end and no Ukraine war effects). This is especially noteworthy for coal because china continues to increase coal power generation so the only way for it to be flat is many others decreasing - the ‘other’ section growing at 16% per yer (doubling in less than 5 years) is basically renewables I am sad that fossil fuels continue being burned more and I’m sad nuclear isn’t growing but the growth in renewables is encouraging. A thing people often say when looking at per-country data is something like ‘emissions in developed countries are only decreasing because they are offloading polluting industry to developing nations which you can see are burning more’ but this doesn’t appear to be true. Studies that try to measure trade-adjusted emissions find that they aren’t massively different from the raw amounts and that the difference has stayed pretty steady for a while even as developed countries’ emissions have fallen despite growing economies.

tsimionescu 4y ago
I think you are being optimistic because you are neglecting the urgency of this issue. We have maybe 10 years left to get to 0 emissions. We are not even decreasing. If this graph were something happening in the 80s, I would be ecstatic (well, if I had been born and had known about global warming). Right now, it's far too little far too late. This is not a time for finding a new way of abundance, it is a time for accepting that we have been growing our economy on burrowed time, and we have to significantly shrink the global economy ourselves, or the planet will do it for our children or grandchildren 20-50 years from now.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  I don’t think the crises or emergency phrasing is particularly accurate. We have already locked in a great deal of climate change over the coming decades and urgent actions now won’t change that. I don’t think ‘emergency’ should apply to situations where things get worse over the next 30 years but actions today may cause them to be less terrible in 80 years. The narrative about shrinking economies doesn’t make sense to me because for lots of countries like the US, they emitted more when their economies were smaller. We don’t want to go back to that. I think pushing to reduce emissions by shrinking economies is unconscionable as it effectively corresponds to reducing standards of living across the world and particularly harms the poorest countries. I also dislike it because it is obviously politically unpalatable and so the people who favour it either long for some kind of authoritarian to impose it[1] or get to smugly say they were right while their desired plan doesn’t get implemented. I would much rather governments were pushed towards policies that would be desirable to people while also reducing emissions. [1] I also note that the biggest authoritarian country is burning more and more coal with increasing emissions while the biggest non-authoritarian countries have falling emissions and growing economies.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    US domestic emissions have fallen slightly - much less than US manufacturing was moved overseas. Also, I am definitely in no way advocating for authoritarianism. I'm advocating for realistic, charismatic politicians to present the real situation to people and help them understand the urgency of this threat to the future of the world. Not to mention, there is plenty of room for reducing economic activity without materially impacting living conditions for the vast majority of consumers. All the cheap plastic crap being produced and shipped overseas is an obvious contender, which produces both massive emissions and additional, faster working pollution. Fast fashion and fast food need more care (as they are important to many poor people around the world), but more sustainable alternatives that reduce overconsumption without impact on basic necessity are certainly possible. Regulating and reducing advertising is a more indirect approach that would help revert the trend of encouraging massive overconsumption in all aspects of life (since one of the biggest focuses of modern advertising is simply to increase the whole market, and only incidentally to advocate for a particular brand). And note that this very much is an emergency, even if the effects are slow to be seen. It's like a contamination with prions - if you don't stop it right this second, it will inevitably produce disastrous effects 5-10 years from now, with no possibility to stop it or even mitigate it later. Just because the disastrous effects will happen later in the future doesn't make the current moment any less of an emergency.
adrianN 4y ago
So far we've mostly replaced coal with gas. That is a questionable improvement. Total carbon emissions are still rising quickly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions#/media/File:Annual-CO2-emissions-by-region.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...