We could all be past the tipping point as well. Likely are or pretty much too close to it, if you believe much of the science that's been put out there.
Top consumer for now, the percentage of global GDP from the US is rapidly shrinking. It seems pretty reasonable to think Africa, S. Asia, and China will have larger carbon footprints when their billions of inhabitants modernize closer to our level.
We can have a telethon with celebrities and artists begging for money to save the planet on all TV channels 24/7. Maybe an additional go fund me campaign for those who do not watch TV to save the planet. Of course all the money raised must be given to workers who are "not employees" of Uber/Lyft Green New Deal.The libertarian way. "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem" Saint Ronald Regan, 1980 doncha know.
Eventually we are going to have to declare a national emergency not just for the Orange One to have a "win". . We may have to send our extraordinarily funded military to start doing things like planting trees and build solar and wind farms in the third world nations that we currently like to invade so they can produce more oil for our oil companies.
They aren't producing the oil for our oil companies. They nationalized their oil industry and produce it for themselves. Our big oil companies have access to less than 20% of the world reserves. When referring to big oil you should be refering to Aramco, Pemex, Rosneft, China National Petroleum Corporation, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, etc, etc, etc. As an example of how big those nationalized companies are.... Aramco made 33.8 billion in the first half of 2017. Shell made 7.4 billion in the same time frame which was the biggest of any major US oil company for that time period. Exxon has a market cap of around 320 billion. The Aramco IPO was going for a valuation of 2 trillion.
Even still cutting CO2 would buy us time to implement solutions. Given at how slow humanity moves to address problems, time is precious.
I agree, but without nuclear being a significant part we can't produce enough electricity with solar and wind. For now, expand the natural gas plants so we can close the coal fired electric plants. It's not perfect but it's still cleaner. I would also switch buses into natural gas that drive routes and end up at a home base like city or school bus and/or electric buses but they will cost a lot more money than retrofitting buses to take natural gas.. That way you don't have to build a massive natural gas infrastructure all over. Just at the bus bases. Trucking is another problem though. Natural gas would obviously be a reduction but I don't see the left getting behind a massive infrastructure expenditure for natural gas stations.
I think nuclear needs to be put on the table. If there was one reactor design approved it would be a lot less costly and could be built far quicker.
[Premium Post] I hate to be the one who destroys your hopes and dreams, but the overwhelming majority of American citizens are unwilling to pay for climate change prevention measures. It's fairly stunning that liberals have yet to realize this. Washington state even failed to get through a carbon tax in November of last year -- the most favorable year for Democratic causes in many cycles. Obama missed his chance in 2009, now this issue is kind of played out. Time to move on methinks. GOOD DAY
A top consumer means in the Top group of consumers. I didn't say THE Top consumer but it really isn't going to change much because our lifestyle isn't changing and there is the key issue. Our rank at the moment and in the near future doesn't matter, because whether we are the Top or even in the Top 10, it doesn't make sense to import a bunch of people who would be from countries not even half way up the list and add more high level, wasteful consumers. Here is a map from world bank that shows recent data per capita that gives us a good picture of CO2. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?view=map Granted this is just one set of data, and you could argue the US is going downward, however we are shifting our factories onto other countries which is in turn polluting at an even faster rate. A NIMBY attitude basically about carbon, but we still end up contributing to places like China where we support their manufacturing by way of our consumer driven lifestyle. Do I think adding more heavy consumers to the U.S. market is a good idea? Absolutely not. Americans are notorious for being the biggest sinners in the carbon world. It's really quite funny that people would be pro environment and anti border. (not that you are, I don't know what you favor regarding border restriction, but this is an example)
The Republicans just gave the next Democrat president a pretty easy solution to carry out... Thanks Trump!! “The National Emergencies Act.... when you get bored of Democracy”
I'm not making a claim that mass migration from developing nations into developed ones is going to "solve the problem". I'm refuting your claim that denying any immigration from developing nations will help solve climate change. It won't. It won't have any effect, in fact most likely, it will result in slightly exacerbating temperature rise in a minor negligible manner due to what I discussed. To make it short and simple. Underdeveloped nations are rapidly developing, and the population in those nations will eventually be large carbon footprint consumers like us but on less efficient systems.
Do you think scientists who make projections of future energy footprint projections are pulling the extrapolated data from their ass?
We either need to do nuclear or have some sort of Manhattan Project to create a new type of battery that would make wind and solar more viable. Batteries have been improving over the years, but still greatly lag behind where they need to be.
Yes, and currently there is no solution to this. Those people want light at night, heat when its cold, AC when its hot, the ability to travel other than by foot and all the other things energy provides. So carbon use will increase X fold and the earth is f***ed.
The standard conservative response seems to be mega-enviro-engineering, presumably because they envision that it won't require people having to change their behavior. I do appreciate why it is appealing, but there are all sorts of reasons why it is a dangerous idea, mostly having to do with theoretical technologies and metastable chaotic systems.
Future energy footprint isn't a "science" or "scientist" issue, it's an economics and finance thing (since your footprint is a product of demand which is a subset of your economy), and as for being pulled out of their ass, no, but the end result when looking back won't look any different to had it been.
I think we need to put more into trying to modernise old crap too, the level of pollution modern factories produce really isn't that dissimilar to the difference in decades of car technology.
