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Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat

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Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

The consumption data is quite interesting. Takes into account the fact that we put most of our emissions in China, and shows what we actually consume per person. And indeed the UK and US have gone down, and India and especially China, have gone up. But that World figure seems pretty flat overall. And we all live on the same ball of slowly heating rock, and none of us are anywhere close to being net zero.

ourworldindata.org/…/consumption-co2-per-capita?t…

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booly@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
That’s a good chart, and probably a better metric to use.

Still, you can see the same overall trends: the western world peaking around 2000, with India and China catching up. The question, then, becomes whether and how much the rest of the world can follow the West’s playbook:

Switching from coal to natural gas for electricity generation (easy for North America, more difficult for Europe)

Switching from fossil fuels entirely to carbon-free sources like nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal (depends heavily on geography and access to nuclear materials and engineering).

Switching from fossil fuels to cleaner electrified drivetrains

Improving energy efficiency in residential, commercial, industrial applications.

This is where the difference is made. Not in changing birth rates.
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- Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I fear that the likes of Trump in charge will only reverse any progress we’ve made in the West.
  
  The developing world is going to use more and fossil fuels unless we basically pay them to use something else. And foreign aid seems to be a thing of the past too. I can’t really blame the rest of the world. The west has grown fat and rich off the last 150 years of using it, and now we’ve got the gall to turn to them and tell them not to.
  
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  - booly@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    I fear that the likes of Trump in charge will only reverse any progress we’ve made in the West.
    
    It may end much of the progress towards people voluntarily sacrificing for the environment, but I think certain technologies are already on a runaway self sustaining cycle:
    
    Heat pumps and electrification of residential heat is starting to make financial sense, even without subsidies and tax breaks.
    
    Electrification of cars makes transportation cheaper. In some countries, much, much cheaper.
    
    Solar power, during times of day that it is plentiful, is basically the cheapest energy source known to mankind. There is plenty of financial incentive to try to shift supply (through grid scale storage tech) and demand (time shifting things like heating/cooling and car charging) to meet this super cheap source of energy.
    
    Trump can rant about carbon-free replacements for fossil fuels, but he can’t make them more expensive, especially not outside of the U.S.
    
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