Trabisnikof posted:

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1486860015067566083?s=20&t=q8KGU-MEYJ7KIOOHmuSVdQ

And yet to me, it seems easily possible to imagine a future where we don’t just muddle along with business-as-usual, but in which we do address the threat of climate change with only mild disruptions of our current way of life. The biggest reason is the advance of technology. Renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicles, and other green technologies have gotten so good, and so cheap, so quickly, that the economic incentives now favor decarbonization.

And this is not just theory. Recent data revisions from the Global Carbon Project show that total annual global carbon emissions — including from both fossil fuel use and land use changes — were approximately flat between 2011 and 2021:



Global annual emissions from electric power alone, meanwhile, peaked in 2018.

Now, annual emissions represent the total amount of carbon we add to the atmosphere each year, so the carbon in the air is still going up (and there’s also methane to think about). But the fact that a decade of rapid global economic growth wasn’t accompanied by any increase in global carbon emissions is a very good sign; as technology continues to improve, we should start to see big drops in annual emissions.

Now, technological improvement by itself is probably not enough to avert extreme outcomes from warming. But concerted government policy — by democratically elected governments in capitalist countries — can make a really big difference. The UK passed a climate change bill in 2008 that created a legally binding emissions target. As a result, the country began a rapid and sustained switch from fossil fuels to renewable power:
...
Now, that doesn’t mean everything’s fine and we can go back to sleep and muddle through with business as usual. These small-looking numbers conceal big differences — the effects of just 2ºC of warming are pretty dramatic, and 2.5ºC probably falls within the range of what we could reasonably label “global catastrophe”. So no matter what, Earth is in for a bumpy ride this century, and if we drop the ball on policy, some of the very dramatic scenarios could still manifest, technological progress or no.

But this doesn’t mean that climate change will force us to reorganize either society or our economy in radical or unprecedented ways. The UK’s experience shows that we can keep our social-democratic capitalist mixed economies and our modern democratic governments (or in China’s case, its modern autocratic government) and still do what’s necessary to avoid catastrophe by 2070 or so.
...
And by the same token, it would be premature for us to abandon the impulse toward positive social transformation. The Climate Left may have no chance of ending capitalism, but they’ve inspired lots of center-left businesspeople, scientists, and policymakers to take climate change more seriously — which, ultimately, is what will contain climate change’s effects. And there are plenty of other problems in our society that will need big pushes in order to fix — our broken health care system, our ruinously high construction costs, and so on.

So while I want to reassure you, I only want to reassure you a little bit. America’s great strength is that we freak out about everything, thus bestirring ourselves to early action when other countries might have let problems fester too long. If all goes well, 20 years from now we’ll look back on the 2020s as when society started to become sane again and we started to rebuild after a decade of chaos and rage. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

quote:

but they’ve inspired lots of center-left businesspeople, scientists, and policymakers to take climate change more seriously — which, ultimately, is what will contain climate change’s effects.

Trabisnikof posted:

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1486860015067566083?s=20&t=q8KGU-MEYJ7KIOOHmuSVdQ

And yet to me, it seems easily possible to imagine a future where we don’t just muddle along with business-as-usual, but in which we do address the threat of climate change with only mild disruptions of our current way of life. The biggest reason is the advance of technology. Renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicles, and other green technologies have gotten so good, and so cheap, so quickly, that the economic incentives now favor decarbonization.

And this is not just theory. Recent data revisions from the Global Carbon Project show that total annual global carbon emissions — including from both fossil fuel use and land use changes — were approximately flat between 2011 and 2021:



Global annual emissions from electric power alone, meanwhile, peaked in 2018.

Now, annual emissions represent the total amount of carbon we add to the atmosphere each year, so the carbon in the air is still going up (and there’s also methane to think about). But the fact that a decade of rapid global economic growth wasn’t accompanied by any increase in global carbon emissions is a very good sign; as technology continues to improve, we should start to see big drops in annual emissions.

Now, technological improvement by itself is probably not enough to avert extreme outcomes from warming. But concerted government policy — by democratically elected governments in capitalist countries — can make a really big difference. The UK passed a climate change bill in 2008 that created a legally binding emissions target. As a result, the country began a rapid and sustained switch from fossil fuels to renewable power:
...
Now, that doesn’t mean everything’s fine and we can go back to sleep and muddle through with business as usual. These small-looking numbers conceal big differences — the effects of just 2ºC of warming are pretty dramatic, and 2.5ºC probably falls within the range of what we could reasonably label “global catastrophe”. So no matter what, Earth is in for a bumpy ride this century, and if we drop the ball on policy, some of the very dramatic scenarios could still manifest, technological progress or no.

But this doesn’t mean that climate change will force us to reorganize either society or our economy in radical or unprecedented ways. The UK’s experience shows that we can keep our social-democratic capitalist mixed economies and our modern democratic governments (or in China’s case, its modern autocratic government) and still do what’s necessary to avoid catastrophe by 2070 or so.
...
And by the same token, it would be premature for us to abandon the impulse toward positive social transformation. The Climate Left may have no chance of ending capitalism, but they’ve inspired lots of center-left businesspeople, scientists, and policymakers to take climate change more seriously — which, ultimately, is what will contain climate change’s effects. And there are plenty of other problems in our society that will need big pushes in order to fix — our broken health care system, our ruinously high construction costs, and so on.

So while I want to reassure you, I only want to reassure you a little bit. America’s great strength is that we freak out about everything, thus bestirring ourselves to early action when other countries might have let problems fester too long. If all goes well, 20 years from now we’ll look back on the 2020s as when society started to become sane again and we started to rebuild after a decade of chaos and rage. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Source4Leko posted:

What drugs are these people on that they think society will become more sane? Can I have some?

Trabisnikof posted:

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1486860015067566083?s=20&t=q8KGU-MEYJ7KIOOHmuSVdQ

Rectal Death Adept posted:

figures Biden's main priority with the environment would be to replace old forests with young ones

Rime posted:

https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1486863953074393088

Rectal Death Adept posted:

figures Biden's main priority with the environment would be to replace old forests with young ones

lollontee posted:

lmao

Basic Poster posted:

Infrastructure week is back baby

NPR: A bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed on the day of Biden's planned infrastructure visit.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076343656/pittsburgh-bridge-collapse-biden-visit

mediaphage posted:

and the euro model:

https://twitter.com/weather_west/status/1486870917430927363?s=21

Basic Poster posted:

Infrastructure week is back baby

NPR: A bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed on the day of Biden's planned infrastructure visit.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076343656/pittsburgh-bridge-collapse-biden-visit

Basic Poster posted:

Infrastructure week is back baby

NPR: A bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed on the day of Biden's planned infrastructure visit.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076343656/pittsburgh-bridge-collapse-biden-visit

quote:

Biden made a stop at the collapse site Friday afternoon. "I've been coming to Pittsburgh a long time," he said of the city with 446 bridges. "And we're going to fix them all," he said.

Biden put his hand on the shoulder of a police officer and said "these guys deserve an incredible amount of credit."

Tempora Mutantur posted:

Tempora Mutantur posted:

Perry Mason Jar posted:

The cops knocked the bridge down?!

Perry Mason Jar posted:

The cops knocked the bridge down?!

Basic Poster posted:

Lol WTF I like cops now ?!?

The Protagonist posted:

whoa now, lets not say anything we can't take back

jetz0r posted:

in a way, yes.
https://twitter.com/226669ha/status/1487076819731890176
https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/le...it-reveals.html

Alobar posted:

lol holy loving shiiiit