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:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
Xi is pushing climate, study shows
Enabling climate acceleration are economic sectors such as land use, China coal, Saudi Aramco, Coal India, Gazprom (Russia), National Iranian Oil — in that order.
Since 2021, China coal sends more carbon in the air than NATO equities and Arab states combined. The China coal sector is increasing capacity and is delivering 12.7 GtCOe in 2024.
The #GreenhouseForcing results are published at: http://data.yt/projections/2024-results.html @climate
They're still barely over half of US GHG emissions per capita. Fine they use more coal per capita, still much better than the US overall.
You picked one of the worst countries on the globe.
China has managed to surpass fucking Germany in emissions per capita, one of the worst polluters in Europe with an enormous fossil fuel car & coal lobby.
And yes, just like China, Germany exports more than it imports. Any outsourced emissions are offset through this.
Not to mention they're installing more solar than the rest of the world combined. They're definitely putting effort into transitioning.
Yeah, the only reason coal emissions are going up is because they're growing too fast for even renewable energy buildouts to match increasing demand, so coal is their only option to keep up with power and steel production. The alternative is to slow development, and they're understandably not willing to do that with the US breathing down their necks and India right next door growing just as fast.
This is a situation where the conclusion you can draw is based on the metric you choose. If you instead choose GHG per unit GDP, they're far worse than the US. That's a measure that's less diluted by their vast population.
Why should how wealthy you are factor into how much you pollute? Per capita is the only sensible measurement here.
The idea is GDP is a measure of activity. So using per GDP allows you to see the efficiency which you are producing "value". That's not a terrible idea in general but it accepts a very narrow definition of value.
GDP is a really flawed measure of how well a society is performing. I wonder what it would look like if we used Gross National Happiness or Total Quality Life Years. Could also think about ecosystem health or biodiversity as a valuable output of a country but that's highly linked to CO2 emissions so wouldnt be meaningful.
Also worth saying whilst per capita is absolutely important as a measure for us to understand the performance of human economic systems the earth systems only respond to gross total emissions.
Creation of value means nothing in the context of climate change. The atmosphere doesn’t say “you’re less at fault because you made so much value for the shareholders”.
The only measure that means anything is absolute emissions, full stop.
I acknowledged this in my last paragraph. We should care about value though and we need to fight for that value to be something positive and meaningful (human and non-human health and wellbeing is a good start imo) not just shareholders.
Ultimately, there is a lot flawed in carbon accounting systems but we do need measures that allow us to assess if individuals, organisations and nations are doing enough and importantly articulate what pathways to zero emissions look like and that does mean trying to work out which processes are producing something we want with low or no emissions or not.
I guess it should be the other way around. More money (per person) means you should be able to afford reducing GHG. For example by better isolating your home, using cleaner sources of energy or constructing more power efficient machines.