this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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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: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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If you’re a US citizen, no matter where in the world, start by making sure you’re registered to vote. Many districts are gerrymandered, so you’ll want to register as the party that’s likely to win congressional and/or state legislative districts where you live, and vote in that party’s primary.

In addition to voting, you’ll want to influence politics beyond that. Your local races are a good place to start; cities and states control local land use and things like building codes.

To affect Congress, you’ll want to pick swing house districts or swing senate seats. Volunteer for a Democrat and donate accordingly.

For President, the reality is that the Biden/Harris administration has done far more than Trump would even consider, starting with the Inflation Reduction Act, for which Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate, and continuing through numerous executive actions. Getting involved in this race means volunteering, ideally for a climate-focused event like the Tuesday & Thursday phonebanking and if you can, donating to the Harris Victory Fund. If you’re giving really large amounts of money, and the logistics of it work, go to an in-person event and talk to the candidate or other official about climate:

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

As someone from outside the US, I just want to say: please do vote again for Joe Biden. He is without doubt the most pro-environment US President there has ever been.

EDIT: Thanks to [email protected], I've been reminded to update this post to say:

Vote for Kamala Harris, the Vice President to the most pro-environment US President there has ever been!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Scratch that comment. Vote Harris! :-)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

that and convincing Republicans to vote green

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Thanks for posting this!

I would add that I believe calling or mailing (like with paper) and even faxing your representatives is something that can make a difference. If you do it, tell your friends and maybe they will too!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Excellent post. I’d like to add to the comparison of presidential candidates.

Trump repealed 112 climate regulations in one term, setting us back over a decade of progress, and left The Paris Agreement.

Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, revoked the Keystone Pipeline permit, created a 13 million acre federal petroleum reserve for Alaskan wildlife, greatly increased oil site lease cost, signed $7B in solar subsidies, and enacted the Inflation Reduction act to support clean energy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There's a much more extensive list of what Biden has done here — but you can't get it outside the paywall because the last was started before the Washington Post started doing gift links.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wow. I was going to copy and paste them into my comment, but then I saw there were 98 pages of accomplishments. Well done!

Here’s a link to get around the paywall: https://archive.is/2024.05.20-232047/https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2021/climate-environment/biden-climate-environment-actions/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Unfortunately you lose all the interactive features on the archived copy, so you can't see any of the details, just numerical summaries.