this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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By how much is a human decision though. The bulk of coal, tar, oil, and gas are still in the the ground. There are forests yet standing. Cattle are the bulk of mammals.
We can choose to leave fossil fuels in the ground unburned. To manage forests to keep them around. To shift away from eating animals. Do those, and we can limit the damage.
Yes, we can choose to.
But those in power only care about money and power. And until they are dealt with or otherwise removed from said power, nothing is going to change.
We've already started to get change, even with the very limited and imperfect power that we have. Here's what is happening in the US:
The 2022 report shows a 0.8% increase for U.S. emissions. I get your point is that there are many plans to change that, but so far we're still going up and that's including offshoring some industries. That's why the world overall reached a new high. Granted the EU has made some progress, being I believe the only group showing a decline in emissions (-2.5%). As with any call for solar and wind (which was probably a key component) I have to ask if the environmental costs due to their manufacturing was worth it. I know, we have to do something...we sure can't look at the demand side of things though, can we? Always about how to make more energy with less bad effects.
Sorry...once you take the red pill it's hard to look at anything positive anymore. I used to think that way...
South America also had a decline in emissions in the last two decades. Well North America as well, but coming from a high level. Africa is intresstingly having stable emissions since a decade, but given how poor the continent is that is likely to change. Really emissions growth comes from Asia and that is basicly it. It is countries like China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia becoming wealthy, which requires more energy. Obviously a lot of that is from fossil fuels.
However on a per capita bases the US is still among the worst and while Europe is better some countries are still bad.
Yes, there's a rise as a result of the decision to stop doing anything about COVID. It doesn't really change the trajectory driven by a piece of legislation which won't be fully in effect for a couple more years.
Buckle up, it will get worse.
It's a human decision as it's humans who can make this decision.
However it's a decision that only a very small minority of humans can do, most of us have no say in this.
Most us aren't the final decisionmaker but have a lot of ways to out our thumb on the scale to influence the outcome
Sounds kind of like "I had a liter of cyanide and only drank 1 cup of it,. Most of the cyanide is still in the bottle, so I should be fine if I don't drink the rest!"
Even if we hit all the reduction goals as they stand now worldwide. We'll still deplete world oil and gas reservoirs between the century. The damage is done. Humanity made a decision about 120 years ago and we chose wrong. Even if we all died right now and all fossil fuel burning, industrial agriculture and extraction stopped all at once. It would still take the ecosphere a couple of centuries just to course correct, let alone return to the climate patterns of two centuries ago.
Let me tell you the quiet part out loud. Some rich countries individually might be hitting their climate goals. But worldwide overall we are way behind. So buckle up, it will get worse.
We're not where we need to be in order to limit warming to 2C, but we're doing a lot better than we were a decade ago, when it looked like 4C by 2100 was likely.