this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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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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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's just common sense that eating a plant is more efficient than growing many, many plants in order to feed an animal that is then eaten.

That said, I'm not willing to make that much of a personal sacrifice to push a boulder the size of Texas less than an inch. If we really want to make a difference, we need systemic change.

I'd absolutely support a 100% tax on meat. It'd be easier for us all to change if we did it together.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Sure, but that legislation is not on the table because the meat lobby wont even let people see what the inside of a slaughterhouse looks like and actually because of their lobbying power the exact opposite of what you are suggesting is true; instead of taxing meat, our tax dollars go to subsidize meat to keep it cheaper than plant based alternatives. We do actually need people to change individual habits, because the political machine has huge incentives not to change at all. Perhaps if the plant based lobby could become big enough to challenge the meat lobby we could make bigger changes, but that will require individuals making small changes in their diets first.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

It's not on the table because it'd be wildly unpopular, and anyone who proposed it would never get reelected.

Can't say I know how to fix that, but that's what I'd rather work on.