houseofleft

I know your comment is satirical so I don’t really want to take it in bad faith, but all the same. . . .

Lots of people are working reeaaally hard at changing society for the better, and reducing environmental catastrophe, the studies from the 80s sparked soneof the biggest environmental groups we have today (the likes of Green Peace and Friends of the Earth).

Lots of other people, often with money, are cynically blocking the protection of the human race for their own gain. And the majority of people are caught between these groups, often feeling despondent.

My point is, don’t get despondent, get involved! You can join the first groups efforts today, and it you do, you’ll be concretely helping the survival of our planet and society.

If you’re interested in specifics, both Green Peace and Just Stop Oil hold regular monthly/weekly welcome to all sessions (if you know about others, post them here!)

What about a cap and trade market for battery fires?

I sorta have three not entirely coherent and increasingly cynical feelings about this.

1. That’s neat! If redesigning bottles helps a little with emmissions then that’s cool!

2. Even though it might reduce emmisions, sometimes I worry that people think this is what ecological stewardship looks like. “Keep on burning fossil fuels and running an economy based on the exploitation of the earth, just change the shape of your wine bottles and we’ll be ok!”. We’re not ok and this isn’t enough, small actions like this don’t cut it and we need to hold fossil fuel companies to account for the destruction they cause because it’s too late.

3. Wait, it’s plastic!?!? Are we gonna pretend like CO2 is the only issue and killing millions of fish with plastic a year is something to ignore? Also, doesn’t that effect the global carbon heat pump? Seriously, why is it plastic!?!? My only thought here now is that this is some cynical greenwash of a decision that was made to maximise profits and reduce costs.

This is really beautiful! I think it’s pretty common if you’re switched on to the damage we’re doing to our world to feel very anxious and negative, but it’s important to remember that reducing climate change is not just about avoiding disaster, but building a utopia too. Thanks @NafiTheBear@pawb.social !

• Am driving into a wall
• Turning or breaking in time sounds tricky
• Might as well accelerate, maybe car will take off and fly over wall?
• Woops, I died!

Thanks for such a well reasoned response 😁 My knee jerk “public transport good” response did miss a lot of the subtlety you’ve captured here!

AI: “Have you tried funding public transport and regulating the carbon industry?”

Ok, now we need to make a new AI so that AI can solve global warming but without using an existing solution that might marginally inconvenience the mega rich.

Public transport would be a much more effective and cheaper solution, but we’re all looking at EVs because it means not having to change anything about the status quo.

I don’t agree they’re looking at all areas at once, solar, wind and the net zero per mw by 2030 goal only relate to energy, not things like gas heating reduction, or public transport etc. Energy is also one of the few areas where as a country we’ve already made quite a bit of progress. There are points where only 10% of the UK’s energy comes from fossil fuels.

In fairness, I did share the wrong article, sorry! Here’s the actual opinion piece it’s referring to (which was written in the Sun, I agree it’s a shit rag, but Kier Starmer chose to publish in it, so here we are): https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/30853358/keir-starmer-great-british-industry-net-zero/

Specifically, the bits I’m referring to are:

This ground-breaking technology, known as Carbon Capture Usage and Storage, is a game-changer in our efforts to fulfil our legal obligations to reach Net Zero by 2050 in a sensible way, while supporting jobs and industry.

Shifting focus onto onto bare minimum meeting of legal obligations and positioning carbon capture as a central part of that strategy.

To those drum-banging, finger-wagging extremists I say: I will never sacrifice Great British industry.

Said in opposition to people wanting regulation of carbon emissions over carbon capture investment.

But this is a third way that brings industry with us on our path to Net Zero

Again, in opposition to regulating emissions more strictly.

To be 100% clear, this is speculation from Labours messaging that implies they’re gearing up for a massive backslide, we won’t know for sure until their budget is announced over the next few weeks. I think this is where a lot of objection comes fron though. If we see large investment in public transport and heat pumps, and regulation of emissions, then I’ll be extremely happy to be proved wrong.

I 100% agree with you! But I think you’re missing some key context on why people are angry about this:

• The new UK government is from the center left Labour party, who were elected under the promise (amongst others) that they would do more about carbon change that the previous government

• They recently announced funding for carbon capture as the central part of their climate change plan

• Their plan to achieve the UK’s legally obligated net zero targets (they no longer plan to reduce emissions by anything more than international law mandates) depends on the success of this very unproven technology

• The UK prime minister referred to critics of this scheme (which should include pretty much anyone who wants climate policy to be based on scientific evidence rather than lobbying) “finger wagging extremists” in an opinion piece[1]

So, although I’d support investing into climate capture research as part of a much broader carbon reduction plan, this policy is really an incredible backslide and a massive betrayal of anyone who voted for the party on the basis of their climate change policies.

Edit: spelling!

[1] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/30855560/keir-starmer-ignore-climate-extremists/