4 ms·

It is? To my understanding, the only time CO2 emissions were down was during covid. While there are a few localized success stories, I'm not aware we've actua

by ffsm8 1y ago

It is? To my understanding, the only time CO2 emissions were down was during covid. While there are a few localized success stories, I'm not aware we've actually meaningfully impacted our trajectory. To be abundantly clear: it's true that eg. Trump's administration will have limited effect, mainly because it's a global thing ... But global emissions have been rising, too. People have predicted peak CO2 multiple times, but it hasn't actually crystalized beyond the shutdown year to my knowledge.

generativenoise 1y ago
I think reality is a potentially a bit darker in that we really have impacted the trajectory, it is just grossly insufficient to have a meaningful change in the direction. We now seem in the unfortunate place where we have kicked or are kicking off system dynamics that are going to cause a large scale reconfiguration of our life support system.
bildung 1y ago
I think we witnessed a profound paradigm shift last week - China is the new global driving force to avert climate catastrophy. The probably peaked CO2 output last year. Last yeear they reached their 2030 target for renewables as share of total energy production. Almost 60% of new cars sold there are electric. And China produced more PV cells in the first half of this year alone than have been installed in the US in sum, ever. And now they stated a public CO2 reduction goal for the first time. I suspect people in the US haven't really noticed this as much because the 100%+ tariffs on cars and PV isolate the country from the dramatic changes happening everywhere else. Here in Germany I can buy 2 kWp in panels plus an inverter for under 400€.
softwaredoug 1y ago
We can say the growth curve is not exponential, its now linear. At the most hopeful, we can say its plateauing and we will hit peak carbon emissions soon (some say we've already hit it). But all that's modeling, there are too many variables to really know.

by ffsm8 1y ago

generativenoise 1y ago

I think reality is a potentially a bit darker in that we really have impacted the trajectory, it is just grossly insufficient to have a meaningful change in the direction. We now seem in the unfortunate place where we have kicked or are kicking off system dynamics that are going to cause a large scale reconfiguration of our life support system.

bildung 1y ago

I think we witnessed a profound paradigm shift last week - China is the new global driving force to avert climate catastrophy. The probably peaked CO2 output last year. Last yeear they reached their 2030 target for renewables as share of total energy production. Almost 60% of new cars sold there are electric. And China produced more PV cells in the first half of this year alone than have been installed in the US in sum, ever. And now they stated a public CO2 reduction goal for the first time. I suspect people in the US haven't really noticed this as much because the 100%+ tariffs on cars and PV isolate the country from the dramatic changes happening everywhere else. Here in Germany I can buy 2 kWp in panels plus an inverter for under 400€.

softwaredoug 1y ago

We can say the growth curve is not exponential, its now linear. At the most hopeful, we can say its plateauing and we will hit peak carbon emissions soon (some say we've already hit it). But all that's modeling, there are too many variables to really know.