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Two former Department of Energy staffers warn we’re doing carbon removal all wrong
(www.technologyreview.com)
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.
The profit-driven industry is the physical source of the problem, but it's the conservative minded citizens at large who keep voting against good climate regulations who are the real villains here. Yeah, the people at the top have a disproportionate amount of power compared to any one person, but in aggregate, the general public has the ultimate power. If only we could get everyone to act with long-term implications in mind for a single moment...
It's ironic to watch the self-delusions unfold in countries that have working multi-party voting systems, and a dedicated green party. In self-interest/status quo preservation, voters avoid them like the plague because "they are too extreme", and rather vote for some other party that puts up a fake eco-friendly front based on some technological pipe dream & shoveling off responsibilities to other countries.
Previous election in Norway (late 2021), the green party were the only ones who went to election with a pledge to stop search&test drilling for new oil fields (extraction from the currently running & newly prospected oil fields will run well into the 2050's)- they got below 4% of the votes, and no other party wanted to include them in negotiations for forming a government, because they were "too extreme".
Today, the foreign minister of the government lead the Dubai climate negotiations and pretended to be disappointed that other countries blocked the term "end our dependency on fossil fuel", and that they had to compromise for something vaguer like "start the transition away from fossil fuel" or something like that...
It's common for the people who vote these stooges into office to say stuff like "the politicians aren't doing enough to combat the climate crisis". The hypocrisy lies thick in the air.