The economics unfortunately currently still work against these types of plants in many cases. Let's hope the IRA provides enough backing that this projected plant can actually go into production.
Nobody trusts those efforts. They exist because politicians felt they had to do something and lobbyists told them this was something and so it was done.
(Electrifying transport on land will go a long way towards reducing oil use though.)
Seems like there's some conflicting information in the article with the World Bank guy at the end contradicting the Texas regulator from earlier concerning the impact of enclosed flares.
Pretty good conversation! And you're right, his mentioning that 40% of ships simply transport fossil fuels was kind of a revelation.
I also found the bit about financing in the developing world interesting.
One aspect where he came really short though was "agriculture? Oh yeah, I haven't looked into that". Then going on about ruminants. Actually, it's the same thing as with primary energy — much like the demand is for lighting rather than coal, there is demand for healthy food rather than for animal parts.
The article is about New York City's pizza, not New York City Pizza. If your "local Italian restaurant" is in NYC, they will need to switch to electric too.
Their money is a big part of their power. We need some wedge in there to be able to take more and more of their power away eventually. What's still happening right now is that they extract money from society and use a small amount of that to pay dividends to people with political/judicial power.
In that sense: Taxing exploration and extraction can be a gateway for more, including criminal justice. But we do need to get over that initial hump.
The non-hypothetical is that climate change is going to massively worsen outcomes of poor people, especially in tropical and subtropical regions. The rate of migration from Africa to Europe is only going to increase longer term, no matter how many dictatorships EU and UK are making deals with. Unless we act to limit climate change and help people in these regions to adapt. But in any case, we need to learn to better deal with migrants rather than try to keep them at bay at all cost.
It's so weird. This Rwanda-deportations idea has been taken up by politicians in other countries as well, despite very obviously being completely illegal because of Human Rights. But as the UK government insists on pushing for this bogus illegal measure, "conservatives" all over Europe pretend like the idea is validated and supposedly it's going to "solve migration". Or something.
They definitely tried to strike a balance but they didn't account for climate science itself tending to be too optimistic because certain mechanism may still be unknown. They didn't even mention the possibility of tipping points/runaway events. And they focused entirely on the electric grid (not on heating, transportation, agriculture, etc.).
I think they're right about electric grids overall getting cleaner though. Basically, I guess, we just need China to stop building coal plants at this point. That point can't be too far out, given the economies.
This is really close to truth. So many of those products producing trash are useless (bottled water) or even actively harmful (soda, cigarettes). You don't actually need to pay Coca-Cola at all. You just need a reusable bottle and a water fountain or tap.
Coca-Cola and Phillip Morris will not suddenly start being helpful.
In that sense: encourage your municipality, employers, etc. to set up public water fountains and no-smoking zones. (And if you really want sweet drinks, buy syrups.)
The story of Uruguay is inspiring but it's not utopia. Iirc, energy prices are pretty high and the erection of wind turbines on farmland resulted in more money/power for large land owners, increasing inequality somewhat.
The economics unfortunately currently still work against these types of plants in many cases. Let's hope the IRA provides enough backing that this projected plant can actually go into production.