Clean energy, largely wind and solar, have grown significantly over the last decade, due largely to policies by a range of countries, including China, Germany and the U.S.
Who was projecting that global energy related CO2 emissions would increase from 34 gigatons to 50 gigatons between 2014 and 2040? Was that a reasonable projection? What was it based on? Is this evidence of “progress” or inaccurate projecting into the future?
I can project that the murder rate will increase 50% between now and 2050, and then when the murder rate only goes up 10% I can say, “omg, we’ve made such great progress on the murder rate,” even though it still went up, because it didn’t go up as much as I projected it would. But was my projection likely or even feasible in the first place?
From the article:
The top blue line shows what the IEA was predicting would happen with policies in place and under consideration back in 2014.
I haven’t chased up the data myself, but that seems like a reasonable baseline to use.
This is whose data they’re using. The IEA has made notoriously bad predictions of renewable deployment. They’re a body heavily entrenched in the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. This is why the progress reported in the original article isn’t so. We’re measuring against the projections of people opposed to renewables.
Yes, that shows that the curve we’re on is a distinct improvement against the ‘no renewables added’ baseline, which we’ll get if we don’t keep pushing. It’s shows some progress, but it’s also a warning that that progress is both fragile and insufficient. Even the lower projection, which shows emmisions decreasing is not enough. As they put it in the article it’s bad vs. worse.
A bit of perspective, and arguably positivity, is no reason to slacken effirts, but a call to redouble them.
The chart for anyone who doesn’t want to visit Axios:
Ignoring that this chart is designed to minimize the scale of the problem, it doesn’t convey “progress being made on climate change” to me, rather “we’re still making things worse, but marginal progress might be realized in the future so long as no big emitters reverse course on policy”.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. The dip during Covid actually gives me hope. Hope that climate change will soon enforce upon us a systemic collapse on such a scale that we have no choice but to transform our society into one focused on community and wellbeing.
It’s something but if you rescale to 1940 values for example…
Being a doomer about climate change doesn’t help. We need to be realistic and take action in everything we do. People who think their actions do not make a difference are a part of the problem. Corporations hold a lot of blame, but also take some personal responsibility, you’ll feel better by doing your part. How hard is it to not eat beef?
With the prices of food. Its easier than ever before.
The headline and graph are pretty misleading imo. The declining projection seems to indicate some kind of regression. Those are yearly emissions though. As soon as we use up earths CO2-budget, which is pretty soon, everything above 0 will have devastating consequences and they will worsen with every single day that the graph stays above 0. The headline stating “progress made” is also misleading in the way that it makes it seem as if we are somehow weakening climate change, but its just that we are accelerating climate change at a slightly lower rate than predicted. Also, if we take into consideration the predicted consequences of those enormous (predicted) emissions and compare them to current predicted consequences of the much lower emissions, we are still worse off than we thought we were. Its highly likely that we still underestimate the consequences of climate change.
I would love for us to fix climate change while not maintaining the same horrible systems that led to it.
So, things are still getting worse but will somehow magically start to turn better in five years. So all is ok.
Yeah but if we all work together and do our part we have a good chance to… Nevermind
To solve climate change, we need two fundamental beliefs:
- There is an urgent problem
- We are capable of taking meaningful action
This graph proves that we can take meaningful action. That proof is essential to our success.
I don’t understand the people who insist that while there is an urgent problem, we have never done anything to address it, we’re currently doing nothing to address, and we will never do anything to address it.
What is the point of that belief?
Perhaps the certainty of failure is more comforting than the vulnerability of working towards a success that isn’t guaranteed.
It’s just the culture.
All my older relatives, all highly educated and secular/scientific, got like this watching Fox News. Any mention of climate change in a documentary or something triggers some really crude, dismissive joke because that’s the pattern.
I don’t understand the mentality going towards accelerationism.
It’s like it’s somehow marginally better, or even more exciting, to see their home explode instantly in a ball of fire than to see it slowly catch fire in different rooms as the fire department gets held up in gridlock.
Playing devil’s advocate, I can kind of see the theory.
People will happily get slow boiled, like a lobster in a pot.
But if an explosion happens right in front of their face, it gets them to pay attention (and maybe react before they’re fully boiled).
30 gt of co2 is the new aspirational net 0 :(. That is still 3ppm per year increase. Feedbacks likely to make it worse.
I can see covid in that graph!
They said pollution reduced with so few planes flying.
The cynic in me says way too much of this is simply natural gas being less expensive, with no environmental motivation. And even worse that it doesn’t account for methane leaks
If progress is to happen under capitalism it will be due to market pressures, though. At least it has so far. (Most) people don’t install solar panels on their houses to save the planet, they do it to save money. Now apply that to entire markets and nations.
Sure, but solar panels are an end goal. Natural gas is at best an intermediary goal that also established new fossil fuel infrastructure, and may be much worse for the environment than expected, depending on methane leaks
What I’m seeing:
The current trajectory is a downward trend, i.e. we are slowly going backwards (thanks to the orange turd)
We are WAYYYY behind the targets that we should be at and planned to be.
Not sure what’s positive about that.
Check the axis labels again. I think you may have glanced at it too quickly before replying.
This attitude is why everthing is shit. Spiting progress for perfection.
And they get upvoted for spreading gloom, we get downvoted for pushing back against blind negativity whatsoever. I’m having another “I should probably leave Lemmy” day
Going higher (up) in the graph means more tons of carbon emitted, i.e. worse things done to the climate.
I think they were not referring to the graph butto current politics
Confidently incorrect
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