12 ms·

Most people don't realize how much progress we've made on climate change

60 points by lamontcg 3y ago

nobodyandproud 3y ago
Even though my cynical side mentally checks the positive stats, it’s nice to read something encouraging for a change. Now where’s my affordable BeV?
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  It’s in China. Lately it feels like the real question is not “can we deploy these technologies scalably” but rather: “can the West possibly catch up with China.” It’s thrilling that things are moving so fast in China, but simultaneously really worrying that we in the US and Europe are so far behind on the deployment of renewables and battery tech. It also feels like our financialized system deploys capital on a ridiculously short time horizon, while China has correctly realized that it can make uncontested long-term bets in these critical areas and destroy the competition.
  - corethree 3y ago
    The reason why China is able to move so fast is ironically the reason why there's so much division between the West and the east. China is centrally controlled. There's no debate about climate change in this context. In the US everything is a debate. Every single thing. So we spend more time debating then getting things done.
    - tomekf 3y ago
      China is producing more CO2 in a week than many more countries in a year. Same with coal production. They also build many new coal plants (together with atomic ones). China should be first place to address emission.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > China is producing more CO2 in a week than many more countries in a year. Well, yeah, China is more than 52 times the population of many other countries, so that's hardly surprising.
        corethree 3y ago
        Right. It needs to be measured per capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita#/media/File:20210626_Variwide_chart_of_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous... From here it's easily seen that An individual in the US is on average one of the worst offenders while an individual from China is doing extremely well.
      - corethree 3y ago
        You're right. We should be glad it's centrally controlled. If business interests in china were able to insert their own democratic opinion into the debate the problem would be much worse. It begs the question how good is democracy when huge powerful corporate entities with only business interests in mind are able to participate in a democracy? There's no clear answer here.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      There is plenty of debate and compromise about climate change in China, it just happens behind closed doors. This includes basically all the same questions in the US: Is it real, how bad will it be, what is the acceptable cost for mitigation, how much mitigation is worth it. Stance and strategy on all of these things can and do change in China. Furthermore, this is a public discussion about climate change in China. The Chinese public ranks climate change as higher priority than in the US. There are several reasons for this, not all of which are top down propaganda. For example, the Chinese population has more recent, immediate, and extreme experience with the negative impacts of environmental disruption.
      - corethree 3y ago
        Right, of course there is always compromise. But this compromise is made by a third party authority with NO business interest: The authoritarian government. This type of compromise is unbiased and that's why it's able to move faster and be more effective. And like you said, public opinion can be shifted via propaganda and manipulation towards more environmentally positive outcomes. In the US compromise is different. Compromise is active corporate entities with zero interest in the environment trying to further their own self serving goals. When two people are debating with each other they use any means necessary to stop the other party which usually results in a a standstill outcome where nothing is changed. You can see why it's less effective. Additionally, because of freedom of the press propaganda, from both sides can influence public opinion which leads to division of opinion.
- gizajob 3y ago
  Teslas are affordable - just earn more.
Biologist123 3y ago
I sometimes wonder if pieces like this are really just an insight into the writer’s coping strategies. For better or worse, they need good news to keep going. I don’t know if it applies to everyone.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  What else can one do? South Texas, where I live, seems to be going through desertification. Giving up on the future doesn't seem like an option for many.
- jasmes 3y ago
  It isn’t the worst thing in the world to occasionally take a moment to be like “okay… we made some progress. Cool.” As long as people know we have a whole lot more to do shrug is it coping or just stress management? It can be fatiguing to perpetually feel screwed.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    more than that
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I think coping strategy implies some sort of cognitive dissonance or falsehood. Meanwhile, US CO2 emissions peaked in 2007 and are down 20%, which is Franky astounding. Global CO2 emissions is predicted to peak this year or next, although a retrospective analysis may show that it already peaked earlier in 2016 or 2018. [1] If net zero is the goal, of course we are a long way from that, but it is crazy to think that there hasnt been progress. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html
  - illiac786 3y ago
    the curve about CO2 concentration in the atmosphere available at your link is very linear maybe slightly accelerating. If anything it's showing that not much is changing... I selected trends in co2, global.
stoneman24 3y ago
There is some good progress, but there is so much still to do, especially when you consider the other impacts to the eco-systems around the world (pollution, species extinction etc). We know that there will more energy in the weather systems as a result of the high levels of CO2, leading to more frequent severe weather. A real concern is climate tipping points, where the weather patterns shift and stick in new patterns. Living in Scotland, the Gulf Stream weakening further or stopping would be a real change to a much colder climate. It’s already cold enough.
Pet_Ant 3y ago
Honestly I was surprised with how during the shutdowns we were still able to produce everything we needed. There were no food or power shortages. Wild animals started to return to cities. It demonstrated that most economic activity is really not necessary for our standard of living. We can do so much better. We have lots of wiggle room.
- konschubert 3y ago
  Consider that most people did not enjoy the shutdowns and they quickly became extremely unpopular politically.
  - triceratops 3y ago
    People didn't enjoy the inability to socialize freely, go to the movies or the hairdresser. I know others who had the time of their lives hanging out with friends in the backyard, drinking beers and grilling.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Well there's shutdowns and there's shutdowns; "hanging out with friends in the backyard, drinking beers and grilling" was pretty much illegal during some of them.
      - triceratops 3y ago
        Reducing economic activity to deal with climate change wouldn't be the type of shutdown to make socializing illegal. Quite the opposite actually. Also I don't recall it ever being illegal to meet people outdoors with social distancing.
        konschubert 3y ago
        Okay, I’ll bite. How much was economic activity reduced during the shutdowns? By how much did did reduce emissions, was it 2 percent or 5 percent? By how much would we need to reduce economic activity to reduce emissions by 100%( Which is the amount of reduction needed for dealing with climate change)? What if we, instead of shutting down the economy, redirected it to build renewables and nuclear?
georgeburdell 3y ago
No Greenhouse Gas chart past 2015, so other metrics cited through 2023 mean little.
wavemode 3y ago
When you talk to regular people (not activists and not politicians), their general attitude around climate change tends to be that nothing is really being done and that the Earth is doomed. I don't think that mindset actually encourages more activism and more action - rather, it encourages people to throw up their hands and ignore the issue (to avoid getting depressed). So I've never really understood the concerted effort to downplay or silence good news about climate change. You can't keep telling people that everything they're doing is futile yet expect them to stay motivated to keep doing it.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  People, in aggregate, are uneducated, uninformed, and unsophisticated (I mean this entirely as an observation and no way passing judgement or a sleight; "I ain't mad, it is what it is"). Pay attention to the stats and ignore the masses. As long as long policy levers are pulled hard and trajectories are locked in (electric mobility, renewables, fossil fuel consumption destruction [1]), that is what is material to the outcome. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38507695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38507695 (citations)
  - whythre 3y ago
    You sound like a fucking tyrant, my guy.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Because I have to live in a rapidly changing world where the climate might be unlivable for billions of people (heat, crop failures, sea level rise, more powerful storm events) [1]? Yeah, certainly to people who have gotten their way for 100 years dumping their externalities on the planet [2], making changes might sound like tyranny when you're used to "freedom" to do whatever you want without consequences. Freedom has limits, and boundaries where one's rights end and the other's rights begin. Can't take the lizard brain out of the human I suppose. It's silly really, as besides having to switch to renewables, EVs, a bit less meat consumption and air travel [3] [4] [5] [6], not much hardship is being asked for (the most impactful thing one can do is have less or no kids, and lots of folks are opting for that already [7] [8] [9]). I have kids, and handing them a world they can survive in for the next 100 years is important to me. We might have different objectives, mental models, beliefs in climate change and the potential risk outcomes, etc. I believe in climate change and that extraordinary effort is required to mitigate it, and that is the position I operate and argue from. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072491 (citations) [2] https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 ("Our World in Data: Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?") [3] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 ("The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions") [4] https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.aan7083/full/greenhouse_drupal_copyedited-01-1644908613280.png https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.aan7083/full/gree... (emissions savings graphic by action) [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 (citations) [6] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usda-climate-crisis-meat-consumption https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd... ("High steaks society: who are the 12% of people consuming half of all beef in the US?") [7] https://www.vox.com/23971366/declining-birth-rate-fertility-babies-children https://www.vox.com/23971366/declining-birth-rate-fertility-... ("You can’t even pay people to have more kids") [8] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rates/ https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rates/ ("Our World in Data: Fertility Rates") [9] https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/World-population-by-level-of-fertility-without-projections_850.webp https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/World-population... ("Our World In Data: World population by level of fertility over time 1950-2010") ("In God We Trust, All Others Must Bring Data")
LudwigNagasena 3y ago
Considering that entire nations were supposed to be wiped off the face of the Earth if climate changed weren’t reversed by 2000, I think we’ve done lots of progress.
- callalex 3y ago
  Where can I read about that claim being made?
mrkeen 3y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi... Progress in which direction? Article subtitle: The rapid rise of renewables and EVs has already put us on a safer path. Very few people on Earth have a Tesla. I can't begin to imagine the fuckening of the planet that has to happen in order to get the rest of the world up to our level of consumption & gridlock.
- ravetcofx 3y ago
  Electric Cars aren't the answer, active and public transport through making our towns and city's more distributed and decentralized
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    The more decentralized a place is the harder it is to offer good transit service. Some of the most famous and used american systems like chicago or nyc are hub and spoke centralized systems.
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      Most people live in cities. Even better, only a few countries vastly over consume per capita. The solution is straightforward technically, but not politically. Westerners (and especially Americans) will balk at public reducing consumption in line with the rest of the world.
    - ravetcofx 3y ago
      Well people really seem to like the suburban model, in which case we need lower density mixed use commercial where we can have small grocers, cafes pubs, low rise offices intertwined with the suburbs, rather than the current euclidean zoning model
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        Honestly thats not all that different than what exists in euclidian suburbs. You just have the offices/pubs/grocers on the arterial while housing is on residential blocks just off the arterial. I’ve always been able to walk to this sort of stuff even in lower density suburbs. Maybe I haven’t lived in the worst cases of them though.
Proven 3y ago
[dead]
whatilearned 3y ago
[dead]
dawnerd 3y ago
It’s insane how much the air quality in Southern California has improved. There’s still bad days but you can see the mountains now and that should be celebrated.
1letterunixname 3y ago
We shouldn't be too quick to pat ourselves on the back. While 30% of global electricity is produced by renewables and increasing quickly, net negative carbon balance is nowhere on the horizon. A solution to this includes considerable ($20 T globally over 10 years) investment in biological- and high-efficiency, industrial-scale CCS. Carbon neutrality cannot be the goal. It must go much farther, somewhere around 300 ppm.
sillywalk 3y ago
Progress will be when the accumulated CO2 decreases. When the "ppm" stays stable for a year and starts to decrease. At the very least, the private jet, mega-yacht, and cruise ship industries would be outlawed and eliminated. Decades ago. Building a trillion EVs will make this situation worse, not help this. They do not remove CO2 out of the atmosphere. They do not spring into existence from no-where. The production, transportation, and maintenance of "green vehicles" create massive amounts of emissions.

60 points by lamontcg 3y ago

Even though my cynical side mentally checks the positive stats, it’s nice to read something encouraging for a change. Now where’s my affordable BeV?

matthewdgreen 3y ago
It’s in China. Lately it feels like the real question is not “can we deploy these technologies scalably” but rather: “can the West possibly catch up with China.” It’s thrilling that things are moving so fast in China, but simultaneously really worrying that we in the US and Europe are so far behind on the deployment of renewables and battery tech. It also feels like our financialized system deploys capital on a ridiculously short time horizon, while China has correctly realized that it can make uncontested long-term bets in these critical areas and destroy the competition.
- corethree 3y ago
  The reason why China is able to move so fast is ironically the reason why there's so much division between the West and the east. China is centrally controlled. There's no debate about climate change in this context. In the US everything is a debate. Every single thing. So we spend more time debating then getting things done.
  - tomekf 3y ago
    China is producing more CO2 in a week than many more countries in a year. Same with coal production. They also build many new coal plants (together with atomic ones). China should be first place to address emission.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > China is producing more CO2 in a week than many more countries in a year. Well, yeah, China is more than 52 times the population of many other countries, so that's hardly surprising.
      - corethree 3y ago
        Right. It needs to be measured per capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita#/media/File:20210626_Variwide_chart_of_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous... From here it's easily seen that An individual in the US is on average one of the worst offenders while an individual from China is doing extremely well.
    - corethree 3y ago
      You're right. We should be glad it's centrally controlled. If business interests in china were able to insert their own democratic opinion into the debate the problem would be much worse. It begs the question how good is democracy when huge powerful corporate entities with only business interests in mind are able to participate in a democracy? There's no clear answer here.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    There is plenty of debate and compromise about climate change in China, it just happens behind closed doors. This includes basically all the same questions in the US: Is it real, how bad will it be, what is the acceptable cost for mitigation, how much mitigation is worth it. Stance and strategy on all of these things can and do change in China. Furthermore, this is a public discussion about climate change in China. The Chinese public ranks climate change as higher priority than in the US. There are several reasons for this, not all of which are top down propaganda. For example, the Chinese population has more recent, immediate, and extreme experience with the negative impacts of environmental disruption.
    - corethree 3y ago
      Right, of course there is always compromise. But this compromise is made by a third party authority with NO business interest: The authoritarian government. This type of compromise is unbiased and that's why it's able to move faster and be more effective. And like you said, public opinion can be shifted via propaganda and manipulation towards more environmentally positive outcomes. In the US compromise is different. Compromise is active corporate entities with zero interest in the environment trying to further their own self serving goals. When two people are debating with each other they use any means necessary to stop the other party which usually results in a a standstill outcome where nothing is changed. You can see why it's less effective. Additionally, because of freedom of the press propaganda, from both sides can influence public opinion which leads to division of opinion.
gizajob 3y ago
Teslas are affordable - just earn more.

Biologist123 3y ago

I sometimes wonder if pieces like this are really just an insight into the writer’s coping strategies. For better or worse, they need good news to keep going. I don’t know if it applies to everyone.

hotpotamus 3y ago
What else can one do? South Texas, where I live, seems to be going through desertification. Giving up on the future doesn't seem like an option for many.
jasmes 3y ago
It isn’t the worst thing in the world to occasionally take a moment to be like “okay… we made some progress. Cool.” As long as people know we have a whole lot more to do shrug is it coping or just stress management? It can be fatiguing to perpetually feel screwed.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  more than that
s1artibartfast 3y ago
I think coping strategy implies some sort of cognitive dissonance or falsehood. Meanwhile, US CO2 emissions peaked in 2007 and are down 20%, which is Franky astounding. Global CO2 emissions is predicted to peak this year or next, although a retrospective analysis may show that it already peaked earlier in 2016 or 2018. [1] If net zero is the goal, of course we are a long way from that, but it is crazy to think that there hasnt been progress. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html
- illiac786 3y ago
  the curve about CO2 concentration in the atmosphere available at your link is very linear maybe slightly accelerating. If anything it's showing that not much is changing... I selected trends in co2, global.

stoneman24 3y ago

There is some good progress, but there is so much still to do, especially when you consider the other impacts to the eco-systems around the world (pollution, species extinction etc). We know that there will more energy in the weather systems as a result of the high levels of CO2, leading to more frequent severe weather. A real concern is climate tipping points, where the weather patterns shift and stick in new patterns. Living in Scotland, the Gulf Stream weakening further or stopping would be a real change to a much colder climate. It’s already cold enough.

Pet_Ant 3y ago

Honestly I was surprised with how during the shutdowns we were still able to produce everything we needed. There were no food or power shortages. Wild animals started to return to cities. It demonstrated that most economic activity is really not necessary for our standard of living. We can do so much better. We have lots of wiggle room.

konschubert 3y ago
Consider that most people did not enjoy the shutdowns and they quickly became extremely unpopular politically.
- triceratops 3y ago
  People didn't enjoy the inability to socialize freely, go to the movies or the hairdresser. I know others who had the time of their lives hanging out with friends in the backyard, drinking beers and grilling.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Well there's shutdowns and there's shutdowns; "hanging out with friends in the backyard, drinking beers and grilling" was pretty much illegal during some of them.
    - triceratops 3y ago
      Reducing economic activity to deal with climate change wouldn't be the type of shutdown to make socializing illegal. Quite the opposite actually. Also I don't recall it ever being illegal to meet people outdoors with social distancing.
      - konschubert 3y ago
        Okay, I’ll bite. How much was economic activity reduced during the shutdowns? By how much did did reduce emissions, was it 2 percent or 5 percent? By how much would we need to reduce economic activity to reduce emissions by 100%( Which is the amount of reduction needed for dealing with climate change)? What if we, instead of shutting down the economy, redirected it to build renewables and nuclear?

georgeburdell 3y ago

No Greenhouse Gas chart past 2015, so other metrics cited through 2023 mean little.

wavemode 3y ago

When you talk to regular people (not activists and not politicians), their general attitude around climate change tends to be that nothing is really being done and that the Earth is doomed. I don't think that mindset actually encourages more activism and more action - rather, it encourages people to throw up their hands and ignore the issue (to avoid getting depressed). So I've never really understood the concerted effort to downplay or silence good news about climate change. You can't keep telling people that everything they're doing is futile yet expect them to stay motivated to keep doing it.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
People, in aggregate, are uneducated, uninformed, and unsophisticated (I mean this entirely as an observation and no way passing judgement or a sleight; "I ain't mad, it is what it is"). Pay attention to the stats and ignore the masses. As long as long policy levers are pulled hard and trajectories are locked in (electric mobility, renewables, fossil fuel consumption destruction [1]), that is what is material to the outcome. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38507695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38507695 (citations)
- whythre 3y ago
  You sound like a fucking tyrant, my guy.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Because I have to live in a rapidly changing world where the climate might be unlivable for billions of people (heat, crop failures, sea level rise, more powerful storm events) [1]? Yeah, certainly to people who have gotten their way for 100 years dumping their externalities on the planet [2], making changes might sound like tyranny when you're used to "freedom" to do whatever you want without consequences. Freedom has limits, and boundaries where one's rights end and the other's rights begin. Can't take the lizard brain out of the human I suppose. It's silly really, as besides having to switch to renewables, EVs, a bit less meat consumption and air travel [3] [4] [5] [6], not much hardship is being asked for (the most impactful thing one can do is have less or no kids, and lots of folks are opting for that already [7] [8] [9]). I have kids, and handing them a world they can survive in for the next 100 years is important to me. We might have different objectives, mental models, beliefs in climate change and the potential risk outcomes, etc. I believe in climate change and that extraordinary effort is required to mitigate it, and that is the position I operate and argue from. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072491 (citations) [2] https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2 ("Our World in Data: Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?") [3] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541 ("The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions") [4] https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.aan7083/full/greenhouse_drupal_copyedited-01-1644908613280.png https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.aan7083/full/gree... (emissions savings graphic by action) [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 (citations) [6] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usda-climate-crisis-meat-consumption https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd... ("High steaks society: who are the 12% of people consuming half of all beef in the US?") [7] https://www.vox.com/23971366/declining-birth-rate-fertility-babies-children https://www.vox.com/23971366/declining-birth-rate-fertility-... ("You can’t even pay people to have more kids") [8] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rates/ https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rates/ ("Our World in Data: Fertility Rates") [9] https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/World-population-by-level-of-fertility-without-projections_850.webp https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/World-population... ("Our World In Data: World population by level of fertility over time 1950-2010") ("In God We Trust, All Others Must Bring Data")

LudwigNagasena 3y ago

Considering that entire nations were supposed to be wiped off the face of the Earth if climate changed weren’t reversed by 2000, I think we’ve done lots of progress.

callalex 3y ago
Where can I read about that claim being made?

mrkeen 3y ago

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi... Progress in which direction? Article subtitle: The rapid rise of renewables and EVs has already put us on a safer path. Very few people on Earth have a Tesla. I can't begin to imagine the fuckening of the planet that has to happen in order to get the rest of the world up to our level of consumption & gridlock.

ravetcofx 3y ago
Electric Cars aren't the answer, active and public transport through making our towns and city's more distributed and decentralized
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  The more decentralized a place is the harder it is to offer good transit service. Some of the most famous and used american systems like chicago or nyc are hub and spoke centralized systems.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    Most people live in cities. Even better, only a few countries vastly over consume per capita. The solution is straightforward technically, but not politically. Westerners (and especially Americans) will balk at public reducing consumption in line with the rest of the world.
  - ravetcofx 3y ago
    Well people really seem to like the suburban model, in which case we need lower density mixed use commercial where we can have small grocers, cafes pubs, low rise offices intertwined with the suburbs, rather than the current euclidean zoning model
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Honestly thats not all that different than what exists in euclidian suburbs. You just have the offices/pubs/grocers on the arterial while housing is on residential blocks just off the arterial. I’ve always been able to walk to this sort of stuff even in lower density suburbs. Maybe I haven’t lived in the worst cases of them though.

Proven 3y ago

[dead]

whatilearned 3y ago

[dead]

dawnerd 3y ago

It’s insane how much the air quality in Southern California has improved. There’s still bad days but you can see the mountains now and that should be celebrated.

1letterunixname 3y ago

We shouldn't be too quick to pat ourselves on the back. While 30% of global electricity is produced by renewables and increasing quickly, net negative carbon balance is nowhere on the horizon. A solution to this includes considerable ($20 T globally over 10 years) investment in biological- and high-efficiency, industrial-scale CCS. Carbon neutrality cannot be the goal. It must go much farther, somewhere around 300 ppm.

sillywalk 3y ago

Progress will be when the accumulated CO2 decreases. When the "ppm" stays stable for a year and starts to decrease. At the very least, the private jet, mega-yacht, and cruise ship industries would be outlawed and eliminated. Decades ago. Building a trillion EVs will make this situation worse, not help this. They do not remove CO2 out of the atmosphere. They do not spring into existence from no-where. The production, transportation, and maintenance of "green vehicles" create massive amounts of emissions.