this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A few reasons:

  • Spending significant amounts of money needs congressional support and the Republicans control one house of Congress
  • Changing laws requires not just a majority, but a 60% supermajority in the Senate
  • The US regulatory process is designed to be slow, and the EPA lost most of its staff under Trump, so they prioritized the low-hanging fruit
[–] echutaa@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sounds like it’s probably not going to happen then if all the stars have to alight to get it.

[–] DrugsMcChrist@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

funny how real change is just on the horizon but always out of reach. almost as if it were by design

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The US political system is designed to protect the prerogatives of the wealthy. It takes a sustained majority over time to overcome that. We've gotten to the point where there has been significant but not yet sufficient action:

The Washington Post has a much more complete list

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not so much about the stars all aligning, but needing to hold a majority of the centers of power for long enough. We've gone from being blown off to not having the votes to do anything at all to getting significant but not yet sufficient action. Getting to where we need to be is going to happen at some point, and it's on us to make it happen sooner rather than later.

[–] echutaa@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I envy your optimism, but this just sounds like an empty promise with a built in scapegoat. What makes you so sure this will happen?

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 year ago

I'm not. It takes electing more and better Democrats instead of lurching into fascism. We could well fail, but it's crazy to not try

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

It is hypothetically more likely to occur when folks who want it to occur are employed/elected than when those people are specifically absent

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, opportunities for different policies are determined by the political cycle. Bold policies are usually done at the beginning of a term, presidential or otherwise because they know they've got the American people behind their back. They were just elected after all.

Mid-terms are usually when they focus on the economy and other things closer to normal people so that when the election roles around, what that politician did will be more salient in the voter's mind.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 year ago

We got a lot of that:

The Washington Post has a much more complete list

Some things got overturned in court, like the drilling permit moratorium.

Also, the mid-terms were in 2022. Getting more and better Democrats in congress plus reelecting Biden would make it possible to do a lot more.