Comment by latexr
14 hours ago
Are you based in the US? Seeing how the current regime is doing its best to gut climate protections I get how it could seem that way, but it’s definitely not the case in e.g. Europe where energy from renewables continues to grow.
Anecdotally, as I spend time between the US and the EU, the divide is large and clear now. It feels like folks in the US sort of just gave up (me included to an extent), whereas in Europe there seems to be a stronger resolve at a personal level and institutional level, to keep reducing energy use, plastics, driving, waste, etc. The US on the other hand is accelerating overconsumption in all directions.
It's especially depressing for me when it comes to younger folks. In Seattle where I live (not the suburbs, actual Seattle) some teenagers drive to school in 6 seater SUVs and spend their lunch time in there, with the engine on. A minority of students of course but that's still a mindfuck... in Europe they would get so much shit from other kids and neighbors. Drop in the bucket in terms of actual emissions but a very strong symbol of the lack of awareness/motivation.
The individual contributions from emissions are much smaller than industrial scale emissions. People can still do what you describe if we magically move all power production to solar/nuclear, and move to cleaner airplanes, and things would be headed in the right direction global warming wise.
Most countries including the US are deploying record amounts of renewables. But the climate conversation is definitely reduced, and that's global. Its been a good while since I saw angsty euro teens throwing tomato soup on paintings or gluing themselves to motorways. That used to be a monthly occurance.
The US still produces more than half (58%) of its electricity from fossil fuels. In the EU, it’s less than a third (29%).
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/united-states...
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/european-unio...
In the EU I hear of new climate initiatives all the time. From the US every bit of news I know about is how they’re making it worse.
What is the effect of the new climate initiatives? Undoubtedly $trillions have been spent on what might be termed 'fighting climate change' by all means possible. Looking at the Mauna Loa data on C02, can anyone see any effect at all? https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/. I merely present this as an observation. In other words, your comment is spot on at least with respect to the EU.
That was .. last year?
There's a "top of stack" effect in that there can be only a certain number of issues which are most important in discourse, and the Israel/Iran situation has taken over the top of discourse as has the US President.
A vital part of good governance is caring about things which aren't in today's newspaper.
No, it was more of a 2023 thing, which is now three years ago. It had definitely calmed down by 2025 too. Iran situation is only a few days old.