172
Um, I think we all just won | Biden is halting the biggest fossil fuel expansion on earth
(billmckibben.substack.com)
"Delaying"
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
172 points (96.7% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5298 readers
848 users here now
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.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
And subjecting it to a test based on the damage done by its emissions. Realistically, that means we can stop it from being built.
Yeah who the fuck thinks this counts as "we all just won"?
This will be the model for future developments of climate change policy ....
"As the world becomes inhospitable, people die, liveable environments evaporate, forests burn, ocean acidify, and weather worsens ... we have to first think of the economy and the finances of a hand full of people who we all have to sacrifice ourselves for because their money is more important than our lives."
He blocked the fossil fuel projects for now. I call that a win.
...for now...
The ability to impose large delays on capital-intensive projects tends to keep them from getting built. I'll take it as a win
All of that is part of $7.8 billion finanancing they have secured, so this might very well be half a billion dollars they loose every year.
The things he's done have been dripping out at a slow and steady pace since Inauguration Day. He hasn't been perfect, with a couple of missteps along the way, but a world better than any Republican would have been
We'll win if we mitigate global warming to.1.5°C. I don't see Biden phasing out coal and fossil gas or setting lowered targets for oil. No, as it is, we will exceed 2.0°C.
He doesn't set targets for any of them. Full phase-out won't happen in his term, but Biden did set a policy of gradually ending them:
This can reasonably be said to be part of it.
Sure, so has almost every country in the world. Men are words, and words are wind.
He has gone through with a pile of policies which to try and achieve that though, and US emissions are falling.
Not falling fast enough, not falling for 1.5°C. Don’t do PR for presidents who don’t give two shits about reaching climate goals.
Definitely not enough for 1.5C; whether recent policy changes get it to fall fast enough for 2C is an open question. They might if we can keep them in place after the election and the rest of the world joins in.
Anything less than 1.5°C is defeatism and is literally the end of the world as we know it. It will literally mean mass death. I won’t settle for a 2°C target.
I'll be fighting for every fraction of a degree, but I don't seriously expect to pull off 1.5C seeing as we're likely to pass that point permanently within the next couple years
@silence7 @mambabasa east coast US & Europe better get ready for AMOC to be shutting down as early as 2025. Florida gonna turn blue despite the red MAGAhats.
"as early as" means it comes from a paper saying "between 2025 and 2095". Even then, what other scientists are saying is that the paper points out that it's a risk, it's still something like a 10% chance of happening in that time frame.
fingers crossed!
Quit doing a victory lap hoping for Biden to fix it. He is no friend of environmentalists he is a neoliberal who is tanking his chances at relection to support a genocide.
He's the moderate compromise candidate, instead of the one who is out to tank the environment for spite. He's been doing a lot of the right things.
I'll go for that any day.
Vote for who you vote for. I'm in a hard blue state and I see zero reason to vote for Biden in the general. Those in swing states should vote for the democratic nominee that exists because to not do so helps Trump. In states where Biden is for sure going to win people should vote for someone else.
Compromise cannidates don't work. They let the country go right with no benefit. You know which cannidate actually got lots of crossover votes from Republicans? Bernie Sanders
Sanders had the support of about 1/3 of the Democrats. You can't get somebody like that to actually be the nominee unless you get the rest of the Democrats to support their policies.
he got screwed over by the party, twice. primary elections explicitly aren't free and fair, legally
If he had a majority of Democratic primary voters behind him, that wouldn't have mattered so much. The reason he was leading was that the moderates were split across many candidates.