• Ben Matthews@sopuli.xyz
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    6 hours ago

    Maybe stupid provocations by US can galvanise climate cooperation by rest of the world. I remember COP6 in Den Haag - which failed due to miscommunication between US (end of Clinton admin) and EU (within which, FR and UK failed to understand each other). Six months later at COP6bis, with the US then led by Bush administration (after blocking recounts in Florida) and similarly pulling out of Kyoto protocol, the rest of the world united against US, the deal was done and the whole COP went for a celebration party cruise down the Rhine (yes the numbers were smaller then, but the boat did feel a bit ‘top-heavy’).
    Now, compared to then, US controls much smaller chunk of total emissions and GDP, and the technology transition has momentum. The bigger questions are whether India will follow a similar coal+concrete pathway as China, and eventually how Africa will evolve.

  • jol
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    12 hours ago

    Not defending Turnip, but at this point the Paris Agreement is almost pointless as we surpass the 1.5ºC. Governments around the world did very little over the last 10 years to prevent the current state of affairs.

  • Lugh@futurology.today
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    24 hours ago

    China is the global leader now when it comes to the energy transition, America is just going to become more irrelevant on the world stage.

    By the end of Trump’s term, the world of huge gas guzzling fossil fuel cars is just going to look sad and out of date. Meanwhile the Green Energy transition it’s the largest industrial project in human history. The failed orange businessman who bankrupted a casino, is just handing all the trillions of dollars of future revenue to China.