One of the main reasons we as a society care about renewables is that we need to reduce CO2 emissions (and I’d like to think we care about others too). This article doesn’t mention anything about how much less CO2 is now being released. If we take EPA numbers from 2022, assume that they represent 100% non-renewable energy, take the 25% of those numbers that represent electricity generation and reduce the total.of that proportion we have a reduction of approximately 8% CO2 emissions. Great!
So why do our emissions keep increasing year over year?
A political economic system which requires infinite growth to sustain itself, requires growth in consumption, and production. If emissions go down, some industry will suffer (namely oil and gas), so their products must be used elsewhere. A collapse of the oil and gas industry would be an economic nightmare the way we currently organize our economy.
And that is why we need to move beyond capitalism.
I largely welcome restricting massproduced mobile surveillance machines made by a chinese hq’d company. Don’t misunderstand me I hate teslas too for this, but we don’t need more of this shit.
That’s a good thing imo. We do this so we can build up an industry for these things at home. That’s an important long term goal, too. If the last years have shown us anything it’s that being solely dependent on another state for certain critical stuff is a bad idea. And I’d say this is especially true for China.
There are places where natural gas is used for heating and cooking by combustion. These tasks can also be done with electricity for the power source and then we’ll be overall cleaner. However the transition is a massive task and requires a lot of convincing (e.g. that cooking with induction is as good or better even than gas, heat pump costs less in the long run).
Reasonable people understand that transition is not an overnight process. Also adoption isn’t linear which is why they say the first third is the biggest half.
Overnight? We’ve been implementing and talking about renewables since I was in high school, which was like more than 10 years ago already. Only 30% in 10 years is VERY slow. Being happy with 30% is not being reasonable, it’s being in denial.
Reasonable people are clearly being a little to reasonable. We have been looking at this for 50 years now. Exxon announced the issue in the 1970s.
But corperation. Including exxon under new leadership. Have spent a freaking fortune using false science and media lies. To try and slow down any effort to limit non renewable use.
So yes. Reasonable people are being way to fuckung reasonable.
Edit. And allowing corperations to be only concerned with profit. While killing human beings and destroying the planet.
Honestly if you add the amount of false science research funded purely to allow corperations to create anti climate change. This (plus the plastic industry.)
Have done way more intentional harm the the tobacco industry did whe they discovered the harm fro there products.
But at least many nations punished the tobacco lobby and fined them to help cover the costs.
Obviously I don't see this as good news because I can't see how ecology and capitalism can work together, unless it is greenwashing. Environmentalism/ecology/etc want sustainability, capitalism is all about eternal growth of the business, and I don't see corporations and other financial entities changing their business model? Do you?
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