Fixing climate change is about to accelerate

[@aleksander61]

As a Norwegian, I just wanted to clarify: EVs don’t outnumber all ICE cars (yet). The milestone reached was that the number of EVs has surpassed the number of pure petrol cars (not including diesel or hybrids). Still, it’s a huge milestone, and EVs are everywhere here!

[@jonathanmelhuish4530]

Bit sloppy Simon, considering the article you are showing on screen says exactly this!

[@Ewr42]

EVs save the auto industry, not the planet. Lithium and cobalt are mined with child slave labor enacted through coups(bolivia/south america) and genocides(congo/sudan/Africa) You can modify already existing cars to run on ethanol, a biofuel that's overall carbon NEGATIVE. Building a whole new car is insane when we already have too many, we should just detach them from fossil fuels, and at least 20mi people can do it overnight by choosing ethanol instead of gas bc it's been used in brazil for more than 50 years. Downside is the brazilian agribusiness genocides natives, destroy and burn the amazon to create room for cattle and soy so they can steal the land and lobby against ecological action. That's 80% of Brazil's emissions, choosing ethanol (considering the carbon is used to burn furnaces to distill it, reducing its impact to just carbon neutral)would reduce it by 1.5% and if every car runs on biofuel, it might get to 6%. Not near enough what the agribusiness industry produce. The struggle to save the earth inevitably goes through brazilian agrarian reform, and the frontline is being fought by indigenous people and the MST, the brazilian landless workers' movement. That's where climate action need to focus, on the root, by destroying those destroying earth. In the end, we MUST change the system for one where you aren't allow to profit over exploitation of natural resources(or worker's surplus value!). Capitalism is inherently bad for the planet bc it pays really well to destroy it, because you can legally profit over it. Not to fulfill humanity's needs, but their greed.

[@capnkirk5528]

@@jonathanmelhuish4530 True ... but at least Norway is moving forward. As is China. Europe is kinda wishy-washy. But the real villain is the US which is driving the planet towards an extinction event because of greed and a flawed and corrupted political system.

[@shanetroy111]

And considering he made a whole video on the reasons why in Norway. Make’s you wonder what other “facts” he may have been sloppy in this.

[@luska5522]

The fact that these motherfuckers rebranded Internal combustion engine or "fossil fuel cars" to something that has ICE as an acronym fucks me up, but its genius

[@caitmonroe9349]

It's really good to hear some positive news. The news coverage of Helene, the prospect of worsening drought in the Southwest, and both presidential candidates urging more drilling have made it really hard to feel optimistic about the possibility of mitigating climate change. As always, really appreciate your work

[@alanhat5252]

There's more than 2 Presidential candidates! (More than 2 parties as well).

[@blueredingreen]

@@alanhat5252 Technically yes, practically no. The mostly-first-past-the-post voting system of the US means that any vote not for one of the two major parties is practically the same as not voting at all.

[@alanhat5252]

​@@blueredingreenthat sounds like cowardice

[@wintermint77]

@@alanhat5252 It’s not cowardice to acknowledge reality. @thanickpowersguy has multiple videos / excel sheets showing that it is mathematically impossible for a third party to win the presidency. America is not a democracy, it’s a plutocratic duopoly. That’s the reality of the situation. The best we can do is vote Dem for the presidency and vote third party (eg @pslnational) for local elections / Congress.

[@zesky6654]

@@alanhat5252 All 4 candidates support drilling, you're not changing anything by throwing your vote away.

[@BaynexoMusicOfficial]

We are doing better, and will continue to do better. But just to be clear, we aren't doing enough.

[@turkizno]

For sure, sadly some of the things is that balcony solar panels and EV-s should be more accessible. If we are not getting affordable housing fast enough, people will struggle to charge their EV (let alone afford to buy one), and will need a portable solar panel they could set up safely.

[@robertmarmaduke186]

@@BaynexoMusicOfficial #45&4 With Joy & Laughter© (and brutal Carbon Tax on American Workers,) we will make America a Warm & Welcoming© Wide Open Borders! 🐼🙋🤡

[@incognitotorpedo42]

@@robertmarmaduke186 When you don't mind telling lies, you can make a politician look pretty bad. You should try not lying sometime.

[@harrynac6017]

Yeah, f.i. even "clean" cars pollute, and the number of total cars is still growing worldwide. In my country hardly anybody had an airco, now they are popping up everywhere. Etc.

[@gehwissen3975]

The transition to electric is just in beginning - and it doesn't run well. The West has completely failed in the competition with China. In Germany, EV sales figures are stagnating at a low level. The entire car industry in Germany is in big trouble. In the meantime, you can vote for right-wing extremists in any European country. Looks good...

[@JonasHassBonné]

Some thoughts from an environmental economics Ph.D student: First off, regarding the tipping point for electric vehicle uptake: One thing which you don't seem to mention (or that I at least missed) is the complementary role of the charging network infrastructure in the perceived value of acquiring an electric vehicle. In broad strokes, it's not very attractive to own an electric vehicle if there are a limited number of places to charge it, and similarly, it's not very attractive for a private company to build charging stations for electric vehicles if there aren't many electric vehicles on the road. In economic terms, we would say that the two things are complements. This means that governments could consider pursuing policies subsidizing the charging infrastructure in order to accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles by getting the charging infrastructure past it's "social tipping point" Secondly, on the point of interventions, this is one point where environmental economists are often hesitant to recommend various mandates for technologies, instead preferring a direct tax on carbon emissions. Essentially, this has been known as the most cost effective intervention for 30+ years, and only in very specific circumstances are other policy interventions considered relevant. In fact, the idea of taxing harmful behavior goes all the way back to Arthur Pigou in 1920. The reason why economists generally prefer taxing carbon over mandating certain solutions (such as a green hydrogen mandate) is because taxation is a more flexible form of regulation. In essence, by putting a price on carbon emissions, you are inherently disincentivizing people to invest in technologies with high carbon emissions (thereby contributing to the divestment tipping point) and incentivizing them to invest in low or zero carbon technologies (such as green hydrogen), but the key benefit of a tax is that the regulating agency doesn't have to specify which solution should be implemented, which allows private market forces to determine which options would be the most cost-efficient. Finally, regarding who gets to make the decision, I agree that it's a complicated issue with few if any good solutions. In short, our global cross-country institutions as they are currently designed have relatively little power to implement supranational policies, with the EU being a notable exception. As such, for the time being, it will fall on state governments around the world to implement their own national policies. As you mention, policies to mitigate climate change will likely (in most cases almost certainly) have negative consequences for some parts of our society. This is, however, not a problem that is unique to climate change policy, although it is perhaps most notable in this case. I personally think that climate policy must have general support among the public if it is to have any chance of succeeding, since most of these policies will take time to produce their desired outcomes, and as such we should think about how we can best help those who stand to face increased hardship in the short term from our policies. Additionally, this also means that the public should ideally be at least moderately well-informed about the various impacts of policies, both the impacts it will have on them and their fellow citizens, in order to foster a healthy discussion regarding the policy implementation and how reasonable compensation can be ensured for those negatively affected by the policies. This got a little long-winded, but I hope it's of use to at least some people

[@mikeg9b]

Good comment. Long, but worth reading.

[@stoodmuffinpersonal3144]

Can you explain this to Pierre Poilievre and Danielle Smith, please?

[@JeroenHuijsinga]

Instead of taxing carbon intense activities, one could consider an indefinite ban of carbon emissions, to gradually come into effect in - let's say - twenty to thirty years.

[@JonasHassBonné]

@@JeroenHuijsinga That is certainly also an option, but the same result can be achieved with carbon taxes (one can show that the two ways of regulating emissions are equivalent under certain conditions). So the question of which option to use essentially becomes a question of whether one prefers to know the level of emission or the cost to be incurred by emitters. There may also be certain constraints regarding which type of regulation is most feasible (this is partly why there's a carbon market in the EU and not an EU-level carbon tax)

[@2facestyle]

@@JonasHassBonné in practice we all know there won't be a carbon tax thats high enough to slow down emissions to stay well below 2C. our growth dependend economies are like junkies thirsting for cheap energy. further we know there won't be a scenario in which "the public will be moderately well-informed". they don't want to be well informed. they don't want to hear that they have to change their behavior, pay more for meat, flights, cars, energy use in general. they want to hear easy solutions for complex tasks and in consequence vote populist parties.

[@muttsmuttt]

personal electric vehicles are not the future. public electric transport is.

[@artraudgaming3575]

yup my personal vehicle will stay powered with gasoline

[@bertalankovacs8322]

Eliminating rapid personal transportation is not a realistic expectation. What is more in line with a good future arrangement is having a vast and accessible public transportation system that eliminates people's reliance on personal transport. It still needs to remain an option, but for most simple trips of varying distances, there needs to be a cheap and fast public transport route

[@OPguy10]

The problem is that public transport is really hard to make accessible in a country that's so massive

[@TheCam920]

@@OPguy10 China has a comprehensive high speed rail system and they build it in about a decade. Meanwhile America would rather wait for Musk to pretend to build hyperloops for one specific make of car...

[@pizza_mana]

@@bertalankovacs8322 next to nobody had "rapid personal transportation" throughout history up until about only 100 years ago. So explain to me again how it's an "unrealistic" expectation? sounds more like you may find it *inconvenient* as opposed to impractical. Mass transit is the only option. ICEs can be reserved for emergency vehicles, and remote locations. Massive cities have no place for cars.

[@brandonm1708]

Induction is a good example (for America at least). My parents just got an induction stove and have loved it so much, they have to gush about it to everyone who visits our house! If a lot of people who get induction here tell others about how good induction is, the growth of it will start accelerating insanely quickly

[@alanhat5252]

Induction cookers are available in every market served by China but they're totally dependent on reliable electricity & that's not necessarily available everywhere.

[@zesky6654]

@@alanhat5252 It's available in most households and they all stand to benefit from induction.

[@MrWittyBanter]

I did a google deep(ish) dive into those recently and found out that the technology behind those is indeed quite impressive. I'd be gushing too. I'm getting back on google for a refresher on those and just might end up investing in one sometime soon. I despise my old glasstop with a passion!

[@xway2]

@@alanhat5252 I'm not American but surely reliable electricity is available (almost) everywhere in the US at least? Which is what we're talking about here.

[@2mustange]

I want induction so badly. I will never buy a gas stove as i don't want the extra heat in my house

[@AnymMusic]

speaking of, apparently the Netherlands is now run on over half renewable energy. Now, atm we have a coal loving populist as our biggest party leader who has stopped subsidizing solar panels, but still. Given how much of a merchant a.k.a trade country the Netherlands is (data centres, ports, agriculture, public transport infrastructure, etc), 55% is not bad at all

[@MrKOenigma]

🎉🎉 congrats! Keep up the good work!

[@scarlet_phonavis6734]

do you really think solar panels are the solution? lol

[@alanhat5252]

​@@scarlet_phonavis6734why would clean & super-cheap electricity _not_ be helpful? Oh yes, you've got shares in coal! 🤔

[@bakerfx4968]

I’m actually pretty happy with my provinces efforts in this as well. Ontario is doing awesome: “In 2021, about 91% of electricity in Ontario was produced from zero-carbon sources: 55% from nuclear, 24% from hydroelectricity , 8% from wind, and 4% from solar.”

[@ralf4640]

@@scarlet_phonavis6734 Why not? It's about energy as a whole, and not just about electricity.

[@MageTheEmperor]

I bring bad news from the future. American politics now decided to delay this by at least 4 years

[@BLITZ0100]

Dammit, I was gonna make this comment but you beat me to it!

[@MegaChallanger]

The only saving grace... and that is a huge if. Is that elon musk at least believes climate change is real. Although I don't have faith lol

[@Max18081]

@@MegaChallanger i have a feeling that elon musk made a deal. More import fee’s on all incomming electric cars so that tesla’s are going to boom.

[@apostolosvranas4499]

Trump might even pull the US out of the 2025 Paris Climate Agreement ... again ! 😢😢

[@Max18081]

@@apostolosvranas4499 he most definitely will! Eventho elon musk does believe in climate change, he has made it clear that he does not believe in climate policies of governments.

[@---iv5gj]

I just visited shenzhen with my family. EVERY VEHICLE is EV. EVERY SINGLE ONE, that includes buses, lorries, dump trucks, garbage trucks etc. on top of all the passenger cars. It made traffic through the city so very bearable, no ear defening noise, no choking exhaust.

[@guringai]

Wow fantastic!

[@stoodmuffinpersonal3144]

I would also like walkable cities, and investment in transit. Maybe some other things. But. That is good to know! I would like to figure out how to get more momentum to push thar kinda innovation, here. And how to better repair and recycle these things. Still, great news though ❤

[@RogatkaWR]

That would be amazing to see in person! Did you get to see the Civic Center (the building with the wavy roof and red and yellow pillars) in the Futian District?

[@skierpage]

Shenzhen is the headquarters of BYD the battery and plug-in car company. It pushed local government to switch to electric buses and taxis early on. I wonder what the home cities of Chinese e-bike makers are like, maybe there are bike paths everywhere instead of multi-lane expressways.

[@MsHojat]

Might be a bit less noisy, but China has by far the dirtiest air in the world. Literally smog all over the place all the time, and it's not just visual, it burns your throat and lungs. China is producing 95% of all the coal plants in the entire world. Granted Shenzen specifically is one of the less smoggy cities, to stay on topic, but it's not representative of China as a whole.

[@BGTech1]

Unfortunately, my country just elected a person who will create the worst-case scenario for climate change. I'm already hearing about cooperation's abandoning their net zero goals, and he is not even in office yet.

[@wertigon]

Proudly working as an engineer in the renewables field; proud to be part of the journey :)

[@reahs4815]

Sustainable is a lot more important than renewables

[@Solstice261]

In this case there are one in the same, since renewables are apparently extremely easy to recycle on top of thatt, meanwhile there is no sustainable natural gas or fossil fuel​@@reahs4815

[@maximusasauluk7359]

@@reahs4815 It's more critical to fix our atmosphere than the way we use resources. I'd rather the planet be covered in plastics than the atmosphere continue to heat...plastic is a problem for later, the atmosphere is urgent.

[@robertmarmaduke186]

@@maximusasauluk7359 #24&9 Official 97% Agree lPCC AGW is +1.8°C by 2100. *+0.025°C per year.* Official 97% Agree NASA-NOAH Seal Level Rise is +2.74mm per year. *1 foot in 100 years!* The rest is your Signs & Tribulations Fourth Revelation Evangelicals, Wall Street Greenwashing and Göv.Scí Hucksterism

[@robertmarmaduke186]

@@maximusasauluk7359 #34&8 Wow you erased that fast! Repeat after me. Official 97% Agree lPCC AGW is +1.8°C by 2100. *+0.025°C per year.* Official 97% Agree NASA-NOAH Seal Level Rise is +2.74mm per year. *1 foot in 100 years!* The rest is Signs & Tribulations Fourth Revelation Evangelicals, Wall Street Greenwashing and Göv.Scí Hucksterism

[@Solstice261]

I really hope you are right but I am as always fearful that optimism will be twisted to inaction, which seeing stuff like the fires in the arctic and the drought of the amazon(which can we please acknowledge how insane it is), it's something we can't afford, we mustn't allow companies and countries to continue using anti science tactics to delay action, and on top of that, can we please consider how have rights to protest being reduced just to incarcerate climate activists, I don't care how annoyed you are for a road blockage a longer sentence than actual violence is ridiculous

[@robertmarmaduke186]

After reading your comment, I'm going to smear myself with blackstrap molasses then glue myself to a STOP sign! 🐼🙋🤡

[@Panthless]

I think pessimism is more likely to be twisted into inaction. On that point I think that "activism" does not count as "action". It can be useful to bring attention to problems, but, at this point, pretty much everyone knows about the dangers of climate change. We don't need more activism we need to figure out actual solutions we need actual action.

[@jaimekaplan4029]

Pessimism definitely leads to lots of inaction I agree with you there, but there's tons of existing solutions that need more "activism" to force the hand of politicians etc to actually implement, or implement at greater scale than they're currently being implemented.

[@Solstice261]

@@Panthless i wasn't really advocating for activism, I just wanted to add the weird legal crackdown that has happened, in any case that such sentences are being distributed is a cause for optimism since it means that the message as you said is clearly there

[@Solstice261]

@@robertmarmaduke186 how mature

[@Alex-cw3rz]

It should be politicans informed by scientists, but when half of politicians don't believe in it or are paid to not believe in it. And the other half are not really interested in what the scientists have to say as the media is what informs them what to do and that is mostly contradictory baffling ignor ant nonsense. You end up in a conundrum.

[@disruptive.design-au]

A conundrum which is great for business as usual.

[@Alex-cw3rz]

@@disruptive.design-au exactly

[@robertmarmaduke186]

@@Alex-cw3rz #34&8 Official 97% Agree lPCC AGW is +1.8°C by 2100. *+0.025°C per year.* Official 97% Agree NASA-NOAH Seal Level Rise is +2.74mm per year. *1 foot in 100 years!* The rest is Signs & Tribulations Fourth Revelation Evangelicals, Wall Street Greenwashing and Göv.Scí Hucksterism

[@petersilva037]

I think politicians are looking to get elected. They don´t care about truth, they care about what is popular. So the struggle is to make the truth popular enough that politicians will get on the bus. I think a lot more should be done to criminalize corporate mis-information. It has happenned over and over again with at best disingenuous campaigns by big tobacco, and big oil, and big auto that mis-direct us into preventing a consensus building on the facts. These campaigns have huge, long term impacts delaying action by decades. Climate science should not be controversial. Staff in companies that distort or mislead should be considered personally and collectively liable for mis-information and it should be treated as a form of fraud. Lock Them Up. Eventually the battle over tobacco was won. Similarly, the battle over oil will be won, and people will wonder what the fuss was about... but these campaigns by large corporations cost us decades on the timeline to resolution.

[@whataboutthis10]

Basically derived why giving power to few people is bad idea, yet still believes in it smh

[@acard1985]

Today we reached a negative tipping point in the US, unfortunately.

[@BGTech1]

I am so frightened. I want to have kids one day, but now I'm questioning the ethics of bringing them into a rapidly deteriorating world

[@nebulaaah]

Drill, baby, drill 🤪🤦‍♂

[@nils3031]

Yeah, just got this recommended and had to check the upload date lol

[@balsalmalberto8086]

@@BGTech1Drill, baby, drill - Republicants

[@TheBloodRedDane]

I bought and electric car in 2021, and had a ton of people come up and ask me "hey, is that an EV? How you liking it" and such, but in the last year or so; No one really does that anymore.

[@alexx12545]

i think people have had enough exposure and made up their minds on a gas or ev, not every curve is super substantial is what i think, but a new development in ev tech? thzt could start it up again, we'll see.

[@hollylockhart9423]

Three years in, how do you like it? Do you have a home charger?

[@brodyerb1999]

I’m thinking about buying a tesla

[@alexx12545]

@@brodyerb1999 i'd do some thorough research and compare, imo don't but i'm just some guy on the internet.

[@veggieboyultimate]

This video did not age well, for America that is.

[@BGTech1]

I know. I am so unbelievably disappointed and frightened by my country

[@st.altair4936]

Dems will move rightward too as a result again lmao. We ain't fixing climate change anytime soon.

[@nathanparker8604]

Once more the world will have to make up for the USA’s blunders. At least when things go south here the pollution rates in the country will drop.

[@fredericovicente3959]

Has this study considered the extra emissions needed to push forward these "tipping points"? It's always about making more, more cars, more energy output, more consumption. We don't need more electric cars, we need less cars overall. We need to accept that unlimited growth, green or not, is untenable.

[@alphamikeomega5728]

The bulk of economic growth comes from technology, know-how and efficiency savings. A single software engineer can, in essence, work on millions of devices at once. This kind of scale was extremely rare only fifty years ago.

[@Hou413]

Not all positive tipping points are technological/require emissions. One example of positive tipping points is the explosion of youth climate action! Another is the divestment movement against fossil fuels (banks, investments, etc)

[@Shrouded_reaper]

The resources in the solar system at large are quite tremendous. Not unlimited, sure, but you can have a LOT more growth. Many, many orders of magnitude. Dirty manufacturing process can be moved into orbit. They may seem difficult to access now, but I'm sure that's what everyone else was bemoaning about access and transportation of remote resources prior to the construction of railroads. Lasers have been advancing on a solid moores law style trajectory for quite a while now and pretty soon beamed propulsion will be a reality, cracking open the solar system for access. No fusion, fission fragment, orion drives, antimatter rockets or unusably slow chemical drives needed. Just solar panels powering lasers onto foil wings to propel crafts at tremendous speeds.

[@altrag]

> Has this study considered the extra emissions needed to push forward these "tipping points"? Yes, though perhaps not directly. The whole "building an EV uses more CO2!" is a decade-old idea that is not wrong on the surface, but it's been thoroughly proven to be well more than compensated for by the reduced emissions from (average) usage - ie: the total CO2 is lower even if the up-front is slightly higher. Same goes for solar panels, wind turbines, etc. > We don't need more electric cars, we need less cars overall. That's absolutely true, but also fairly irrelevant as there's not much we can do about peoples' desires. Certainly there are places (most prominently the US) that could reduce car usage through better city design, but that's a 100-year project and there's still loads of people who fight against even starting it. It's just not going to happen fast enough to help with climate change. Switching to EVs can (potentially) help without having to tear down and rebuild 100 years worth of infrastructure - a process that in itself would release tremendous amounts of CO2 both to operate the construction machinery and also because concrete production releases CO2 directly as well (ie: not just from burning fossil fuels for energy - the chemical reactions to make concrete release CO2 all on their own, regardless of the energy source powering the production). > We need to accept that unlimited growth, green or not, is untenable Again, true but irrelevant. Capitalism may or may not be replaced with something else some day, but not fast enough to help with climate change (also, we can't predict what will come afterward - it might be even worse for sustainability).

[@aceman0000099]

Trying to switch to electric and renewables has been difficult enough, and you're saying we need to upend the global capitalist economy? Yeah good luck pal. Would certainly cause a lot of riots at the very least, if it was attempted. Conspiracy theorists already thinking climate change is being used to push authoritarian policies or whatever (nevermind that the WEF is capitalist, they're too stupid to distinguish that)

[@singlesightart]

Electric Vehicles NEED to have sound. I’m a legally blind person and my area has a lot more EVs than it used to. I cannot hear them. The sounds some of them do meke in no way indicate they are a vehicle. So now not only do I have to worry about drivers not paying attention, I have to worry about cars I CANNOT HEAR. even with my Seeing Eye dog, I cannot begetting express how stressful and dangerous this is for the blind community. EVs need standardized sound built in so we can hear them.

[@RafaelPereira-vz5qf]

a

[@allbromobro3505]

A more tame version of those white noise backup alarms would be a perfect solution. Have it be a continuous sound that gets louder the faster it's going or something like that

[@doctorf7501]

Agreed. I own a Tesla in Australia where there were no laws about this. Tesla actually removed the speaker for this that was required in America! (A problem of deregulation) I didn’t realise until delivery. The thing is way too quiet at low speeds.

[@doctorf7501]

Btw just want to clarify that Elon went crazy after I bought it. I won’t buy another at this rate

[@Timi7272]

Or enough traffic lights that have sound for when it's green or red

[@degustatorpowietrza1364]

I think the wideo pushesway too much pressure on individual choices instead on systemic solutions. Simon has clearly good intentions and a optimistic outlook, however he likely knows that Norway is rich enough from seliing fossil fuels to buy EV yet didn't mention it

[@ArtificialDjDAGX]

since he's an influencer, that just shows a deep lack of caring on his part, as he fails to do his due diligence and ensure that his viewers get the correct information on the topic.

[@degustatorpowietrza1364]

@@ArtificialDjDAGX Other than the Norway part I wouldn't be so harsh towards him. Midway he grounds the viewers that optimism alone isn't enough

[@whataboutthis10]

@@degustatorpowietrza1364 optimism is here not just not enough, it's bad because it believes 'enough is being done'. It's nowhere close to enough, the exploitative system has to dissolve

[@halflive3convirmed553]

I feel like all the work put into renewable energy and other improvements are being made in a way that people in the west just feel better and stop putting pressure on our governments. Because apart from the fact that we aren’t even doing remotely enough in the EU the things we (EU lobbying) are doing oversees like rain forest removal, overfishing or just having stuff produced for us in a 100% not renewable way is getting worse every day

[@finn6988]

Getting more people to drive an EV isn't going to solve the global problem alone. The "carbon footprint" of the EV industry in more than just what your EV emits alone, so long as lithium and cobalt mines still employ archaic methods and don't clean up. Climate change isn't a local problem at any point, anywhere; it is a global problem everywhere.

[@halflive3convirmed553]

@5:20 this graph is nice and all but all the other energy sources (except coal) are also still growing and when you think of the energy plan of the US who want to tripple their gas extraction I’m not as optimistic.

[@jjunior48]

he’s not just optimistic he’s completely ignoring that fact bc it doesn’t support his point

[@mikeshafer]

The US will get there. Nuclear is on the return and solar is everywhere. Plus I lost track of how many EVs I see each day. It just takes longer in the US because we have a lot of weirdos who love gasoline for some reason.

[@buzzvuzz]

It's nice to hear news like this, but we rarely address the elephants in the room, mostly - if we're getting more energy efficient, then how do we keep using more and more energy each year instead of less. A notable example is a new solar park in my city, which is great for green initiative, but at the same time city built that park it also installed street lights for several km on the road nearby that was doing just fine without them for 50+ years, technically those km's are now using about 25-30% of that solar park annual output. Same as EV's - it's great that we have a battery car option, but it would be a hella better if people could use public transport and be able to exist in the cities without needing to own a car in a first place (and I'm really specific about cities, rural areas are different topic). We're kind of solving a huge problem, but we're ignoring our ever increasing, more often than not irrational, appetite for energy just because we can "use more now"...

[@Solstice261]

It's a well known problem of consumerism, if you get a more efficient system that lowers cost then you can either lower the price the consumer pays and produce the same amount, or you can make more until you are back to paying the same, since the system demands constant growth one can see what is demanded, the current system just doesn't allow stability, if you are in a company and mange to get an eternally sustainable production that will allow you to with all certainty get the same amount of money year after year forever, you will be fired because that means the line doesn't go up, even if the line doesn't mean anything really, countries have to deal with this as well, the moment a countries economy doesn't grow it enters a crisis, that is how broken the system is

[@seagaivo8513]

Jevons paradox

[@Solstice261]

@@seagaivo8513 thanks, forgot what it was called

[@nazmiyahsayuti7050]

Right, "fixing" climate change should be by degrowth, which is unlikely, but instead by producing more??? Maybe climate change is not a problem, it s a predicament that we got to accept, and then let go many things to the world which would no longer exist.

[@tealkerberus748]

Thank you for remembering that rural people exist. I live in an area where it would be stupidly inefficient to provide public transport just in case I wanted to go into town today - but when I do go into town it's often to bring home a hundred kilograms or more of assorted shopping. A car is the only valid way to do that! But my situation represents less than 5% of the total population of my country, and transport policies for the nation really need to be focusing on the other 95%, not me. I just don't want to see a policy for the 95% that makes my life unliveable by forgetting that I exist too.

[@kiae-nirodiariesencore4270]

Good timing on releasing this excellent video on the day the UK closed its last coal fired power station.

[@ThePilotGear]

oh wow, that's a huge milestone! You'd expect electrical infrastructure to vastly improve knowing it's carbon footprint is far lower.

[@AzimuthAviation]

12:16 My degree is in Physical Science/Mathematics. Being able to see and understand the interdisciplinary evidence of anthropogenic climate change and potential outcomes of non-action is heart breaking...

[@jsbarretto]

The UK shut down its last coal-fired power plant today. There are scant few things that make me proud to be British, but it's making the list!

[@joaquimbarbosa896]

I wouldn't say you are a good exemple. Isn't the UK about to close their oldest steel factory?

[@jelink22]

Lets see how you feel when you have no electricity this winter.

[@cre8tvedge]

Congrats.

[@epicmonkeydrunk]

We have wind and oil. No need for coal. ​@@jelink22

[@xXESproductionsXx]

​@jelink22 you say that like they shut it down without a viable replacement

[@szaszm_]

I think most climate scientists underestimate how bad the situation really is. I'm living in Hungary (unfortunately), and while I was growing up, snow was a regular thing in the winter, sometimes building up to really thick layers, so we could make snowballs and snowmen in a large part of the winter. Nowadays we have a bit of snow maybe once or twice a winter, that melts away quickly, except when a heavy or extreme snowfall comes, like in 2013 March 14-15. And summers go longer without rain, noticeably hotter, and that combined with the heat sponge effect of the concrete jungle of cities, it's less and less possible to survive without an AC, even though a lot of people can't afford one. I suspect Europe got hit among the hardest by the climate crisis.

[@riveness]

Yes, because they ate totally unsuitable and unqualified. They are not engineers, but they pretend to be.

[@tealkerberus748]

I have a group of close friends who live in Europe. I'm trying hard to persuade them to get out while they can. At present, an EU citizen is pretty welcome to emigrate to pretty much anywhere in the world. Compare that to how wealthy nations treat people who want to emigrate from low-income and high-violence countries .. you don't want to be a person trying to get out of one of those. Between climate change generally, the impact of the AMOC specifically, anger and racism triggered by poorly managed immigration leading to a rerun of fascism, and the history and prospect of violence in Europe, it's hard to see how its present golden age won't be remembered as yet another very brief golden age. There has not yet been a century in recorded history without at least one episode of widespread warfare and destruction in Europe, and there is no reason to expect this century to be any different.

[@szaszm_]

@@tealkerberus748 I don't think it's gonna be that bad. Europe is rich enough to more or less deal with the consequences, and currently it doesn't look like anyone wants war aside from putler.

[@tealkerberus748]

@@szaszm_ One person wanting war is quite enough when he has an army and also nukes and stuff at his command. I would really like to find out I'm wrong, but putler seems like the sort to want to take the whole world with him when he goes.

[@cre8tvedge]

It's happening everywhere. You are not alone.

[@Panzer_the_Merganser]

2:42 While that's great, reducing the emissions from individual vehicles, the cars still need to charge, and those sources are still major pollutants. I don't know if this is the shift that will make a difference sadly; we need the entire power grid remodeled and made more efficient to see real drops in CO2. EDIT 3:47 ok it's touched on here.

[@rogerphelps9939]

Well, here in the UK a lot of our electricity is from renewables so a very low carbon footprint. There is no more coal generation and combined cycle gas generation is over 60% efficient. That compares very favourably with about 25% efficiency for an ICE not accounting for the emissions from fossil fuel production.

[@KalebPeters99]

on "who gets to decide [what we do about climate change]?" i think the first step is to make available *comprehensive, free education* on the subject, and in that respect, you're leading the crowd, Simon. 🙏🙏 i think education and access to information/perspectives is the biggest problem we face this century, not LEAST in relation to the environmental/climate crisis... and that only once we *_collectively_* have access to (and *trust* towards) a shared set of _sufficiently substantiated_ observations about our impact on the planet, will we be able to make the kind of informed, collective decisions necessary to avert the oncoming apocalypse that will follow our current trajectory if we don't change course...

[@user-ke3li4yr7r]

Politics is a real tangible part of this equation. If you support or try and fail to enact a good policy, you make your party vulnerable to attacks and fear mongering. In the American two party system, that directly means risking a Trump presidency. In essence, if you support policies that are too fast for voters, you risk consequences that are worse than if you did nothing at all. There is no “I wish it wasn’t like this, I wish people saw the big picture” This is a fact of politics that we must deal with to solve the climate crisis. This is why I support Biden’s subsidies for electric vehicles. I think subsidies as a whole are a great solution because that is essentially how gas vehicles work. We pollute the atmosphere and rivers without paying a dime for the damage. We are paying less for gas and gas vehicles than it truly costs. In essence vehicles have always been subsidized and an EV subsidy is just leveling the playing field, doing nothing new. And on top of that, EV subsidies are no doubt cheaper for society than gas vehicles and climate change. PS I know we need to decrease car dependency but that will take 10+ years. On the other hand, EV investment in 2024 will spur innovations in battery tech that will last forever.

[@caustinolino3687]

War makes climate instantly go to the bottom of the priority list. Which US political party is more likely to get into more wars? I dont know and neither do you, so why are you so confident in which one would be worse?

[@alphamikeomega5728]

That's rubbish: Russia's war in Ukraine has given the West (and anyone inclined to worry about energy independence) even more reason to eschew Russian gas - which also means favouring renewables.

[@user-ke3li4yr7r]

@@caustinolino3687 My comment did not mention war. When I claimed a Trump presidency would be worse for climate change than a Biden presidency, I was comparing their climate policies. Trump vows to end electric subsidies and during the debate made it clear he has no plan to solve the climate crisis, and possibly doesn’t even know what climate change even is.

[@migBdk]

I think better than subsidies is to make gas vehicles and other fossile fuel users pay the true cost. Just imagine that the law was changed so heart disease and lung cancer patients could successfully class-action sue companies dealing in fossile fuels (especially coal) and get their cost of treatment paid for. All 8 million cases per year worldwide. See "Global mortality from outdoor fine particle pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion: Results from GEOS-Chem, Karn Vohra a , Alina Vodonos b, Joel Schwartz b, Eloise A. Marais c 1, Melissa P. Sulprizio d, Loretta J. Mickley d" Or, you know, put a tax on CO2 emissions for the same amount.

[@timothyrussell4445]

@@caustinolino3687 Wars are a product of instability. Ask yourself which candidate is likely more stable.

[@blarghblargh]

Why in Norway? My guess: They tend to be relatively rich, and they tend to be pretty nature focused.

[@geoffreymartin6363]

While yeah, this is a good thing, the electric car is here to save the car industry, not the planet.

[@ThePilotGear]

the electric car will still lower a sizeable CO2 footprint. It's not the sole reason but it's an important puzzle piece. EVs pollute in different ways as well, but those are also in process improvement. The best thing would be simply to not buy a car, but if you need/want a car, an EV or a PHEV would be the best choice environmentally.

[@peterchandler8505]

UK today has taken a great step forward (whilst acknowledging hat it would have been better to have more advance investment in alternatives for those who are losing their employment), the last coal powered power generation and the last coal powered blast furnace end tonight! :) :) :) For the future, surely the government should migrate taxes away from climate friendly business such as heat pumps, renewables etc etc to climate damaging industry such as fossil fuel combustion. The lower cost of renewable power generation is almost certainly a major part of the expansion of renewables, with tax being a relatively simple tool to speed that process up.

[@phantomaviator1318]

Unfortunately, for some places, such as West Virginia, that's just not an option. You kill coal here, and you kill us all. Coal, quite literally, is the lifeblood of the Mountain State. It's sad, but it's true.

[@ASDeckard]

A nation that barely produces any power, and almost literally produces no steel, shut down the tiny coal plant that was clinging to life and ended their steel production? Neat. I wonder who is going to take up that latent demand.... Oh, it's coal burning Germany and Coal burning China. Nice. At least the British will pay less for steel imports.... What do you mean they're higher!? Isn't China supposed to make cheap stuff?

[@rogerphelps9939]

Yes. The polluter pays principle should be applies vigorously.

[@phantomaviator1318]

@@peterchandler8505 Where did my comment go...

[@peterchandler8505]

@@phantomaviator1318 Not seen it, KZbin does delete some comments, it appears to me that comments with links disappear, wonder if this will to?

[@seese9456]

There needs to be a nuanced discussion around EVs, especially because majority of the minerals mined for its productions relies on slave labour and ethnic cleansing in the Congo, Sudan and Papua New Guinea. There needs to be more investigation and crackdown on tech companies because they're paying for these bloody minerals. There should be more focus on bike lanes, walkable cities, trains and buses. These modes of transport are far more energy efficient and cost effective. whilst also being pollutive than personal automobiles, urban sprawl and traffic congestion.

[@glockmanish]

Are you realizing how rediculous you are? "slave labour and ethnic cleansing in the Congo, Sudan and Papua New Guinea"? That sounds VERY "nuanced"! You should breathe a dose of reality! 1. The ammount of minerals needed is handled by industrialized mines. 2. The ammount of critical minerals needed is constantly reduced (same ammount of Cobalt while having quadrupled the capacity) or even outright avoided. Look up Lithium-Iron-Phosphate batteries. Almost every serious electric bus and truck uses it. And passenger vehicles are adopting it, too. My Volvo EX30 is running LFP. They also easily live a million kilometers. So I don't see ANY wastefulness in them! 3. Even cheaper battery types like Sodium-Iron are reaching mass-production-phase. Every ressource in there is easily available everywhere, uncritical and sustainable. No Lithium or Cobalt or Manganese or Nickel ... not even copper! The people that produce the stuff, you are used to in your happy city life, don't have the option to "just use the bike" or "just use public transport". They live in remote areas with shitty public transport, are working in shifts, are transporting not just themselves and the fancy iPhone and MacBook (where is the critical thinking is that regard?). The housing price situation makes "living where you work" more and more impossible!

[@joaquimbarbosa896]

No. The majority of minerals in an EV battery include manganese, lithium, iron and by far the most present is graphite. What you are refering to is cobalt, wich is a small part of some batteries. However, cobalt is already being replaced. LFP batteries and sodium ion batteries don't use any cobalt at all. Moreover you can recycle cobalt just like everything else in batteries and there have been amazing advancements made there. Lastly you also need cobalt to refine oil, and you kinda can't recycle that...

[@arcoirislagallinacanibal]

What impulsing the cobalt mining in africa is not lithium batteries, since they don't use large amounts, and lithium is mainly mined in Australia, is chips and electronics, like the ones used in phones and computers, particularly bad now since the "ai revolution" consumes ridiculous amounts of chips, electricity and water

[@FoxBoi69]

the big issue with electric cars is that they are still cars. just becasue they don't burn fuel locally to get their energy does not mean they fix cities and make them safer for pedestrians and cyclists

[@cre8tvedge]

One problem at a time. And at least Tesla has anti collision software that brakes the vehicle and swerves the vehicle to avoid collisions.

[@Sunni_Abolishes_Empires]

​@@cre8tvedgeahem... electric fires.. not low income accessible... not even medium income accessible... again, it MAY NOT lower emissions very much, either, because coal or fossil fuels are being burned to create the electricity still. Only a small fraction is created using windmills, solar or water works

[@JustinThorntonArt]

They still use rubber tires and release microscopic particles as they wear into the air that have been found to affect respiratory health. We need less cars not just swapping to a slightly less bad car solution.

[@arcoirislagallinacanibal]

Urbanism solutions will take more time, because they are not an issue of technology they are issues with policy, in order to change policy you have to change social perceptions of entire cultures about public transportation and zoning, in the mean time we do this that we can control through throwing money, and as we do we make the education and awareness that urbanistic changes will require. I think urbanism youtube has done a great job so far considering how young this medium is been used for it, but there's no way we can change the structure of society before the mid of the century

[@joythought]

​​​@@JustinThorntonArt so you're under 30 or you don't have a family. Got it. Impractical urbanism gives off an elitist view where you are the solution and everybody else is the problem. I can't tell you how offensive it is but I can't tell you it's an incredibly ineffective argument. I'm lucky to be a father of three and be able to have my kids walk to school and I work from home with shops in walking distance but that isn't affordable for most people in most cities, suburbs or rural areas.

[@maxbaard452]

It's such a crucial question when thinking about who decides what to prioritise during these green transitions. In South Africa, for instance, the Just Energy Transition (JET) is taking this very seriously. JET is looking at how to ensure the shift to renewables doesn't leave communities behind, especially those dependent on coal. By focusing on retraining workers and finding ways to support affected regions, they're really trying to avoid the negative consequences that can come with these tipping points. It’s a reminder that we need thoughtful, equitable solutions alongside the progress we’re making

[@ericlotze7724]

This has been my thought in the matter. Once the “panic mode” sets in we can work together and do remarkable things. So in my opinion it was always going to be “fixed”, main thing was how many things go extince / how many tipping points are reached before then. (Granted Glaciers and ESPECIALLY Ocean Currents are things we may not be able to fix really so those tipping points bring reached terrify me)

[@alwynwatson6119]

When panic mode sets in governments will be banning sustainable tech. The only hope if to solve the problem with out the normies finding out that the fossil fuel industry is being threatened.

[@CaptainBlitz]

Someone, somewhere out there is going: "SEE?? FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE IS SO EZ"

[@The8BitPianist]

14:26 was the part for that exact person, but they might not watch as far

[@WaveOfDestiny]

and this is exactly why we need to tell more people to push forward now, probably the most important time, to keep riding the wave of positive actions.

[@altrag]

In this case, I'd actually accept that. If what they mean by "so ez" is just "vote for someone who has a positive climate policy" then great - it really is that easy for them, and the people they elect will (hopefully) be able to do the less easy work of actually writing useful laws and regulations.

[@amanofnoreputation2164]

Imagine looking back on these times and realizing that America ceased to be a global superpower because it clung to fossil fules against all sanity; the substances that precipitated it's rise to power in the first place.

[@robertmarmaduke186]

@@amanofnoreputation2164 Imagine 1898 pre oil & gas when all you had was a pair of jeans, two teeshirts and boots with no socks, hunched over your bowl of corn phone the same as your horse in your tin stove uninsulated stump farm shack. Your Big Day would be gnawing on some pole cat.🐼🙋🤡

[@rogerphelps9939]

@@robertmarmaduke186 Butt now we know how to do things so much better.

[@robertmarmaduke186]

@@rogerphelps9939 Not even 8% of the US grid is renewable wind and solar. AI blade warehouse demand for constant non-deharmonizing ripple-free power means defacto 0%, 'renewables.' They are 'anti-stability', use chopped square-wave inversion and out of frequency lock with each other, they cannibalize! Have worked for a public utility with 25MW solar farm that so disrupted the grid, they built a huge load sink to dump the solar, but keep the Federal Carbon Credits. 100% Bravo Sierra!

[@robertmarmaduke186]

@@rogerphelps9939 Apparently since the AI erases my reply!

[@ewanlee6337]

It’s pretty normal for great civilisations to hold tight to what made them great even as it drags them down.

[@ronvandereerden4714]

The bench looked like it was made of recycled plastic. I get that it's technically downcycled plastic, but it is part of a rethink of what can be done about another very related problem in the short to medium term. In the long term we shouldn't be using fossil fuel derived plastics so ubiquitously. But making things with recycled plastics that might otherwise have been made with new plastics is another area where a tipping point would be a good thing.

[@gabrieldsouza6541]

It will never be economical to recycle plastic because virgin plastic is always going to be cheaper

[@ronvandereerden4714]

@@gabrieldsouza6541 Never is a long long time. Always is a long long time too. I wouldn't make that bet. Look how much tech and processes have changed in so many ways in the last 10 to 20 years.

[@gabrieldsouza6541]

@@ronvandereerden4714 And even with all that change, virgin plastic has gotten cheaper, and recycled plastic has essentially stayed the same price or gotten more expensive. I'm comfortable making the bet that recycled plastic will never be competitive ever.

[@ronvandereerden4714]

@@gabrieldsouza6541 What is the difference in GHG emissions for each process?

[@rogerphelps9939]

@@gabrieldsouza6541 Not so here in the UK.

[@kneekoo]

12:02 "Who decides?" is a politically charged question, and the wrong one. Politicians are happy to ask that, and talk at length about whatever. The correct question is _"What's better, fossil fuels or renewable energy?"_ The answer is simple: renewable energy, because fusion is still about 30 years away. But the right way forward is to make the transition smooth enough so the people who make a living from the industry being displaced can still make a living after that one shuts down.

[@5353Jumper]

If only someone had suggested we start the transitions decades ago so it could be a smooth painless process.

[@Valjurai]

One thing I've noticed in the EV sales curve ... and this does bear more research insofar as an educated perspective is not enough ... is that the much greater reliability and easier operation of EVs is lowering turnover, which is (likely) being misinterpreted by economists used to higher turnover as 'a slowdown in EV sales.' Though every time they've said there's a slowdown, it has been brief, generally paired with winter months, and generally inconsequential so far.

[@ReesCatOphuls]

Meanwhile we have reached 22-month average over 1.5C (era5: 1850-1900), drax is still considered to be green, co2 growth continues, sinks appear to be failing. Everyone I know continues to fly, and do what they like. Labour thinks blue hydrogen is valid. We'll see if these changes start to get ghg concentrations down. We appear to have accelerated in the last two decades with massive EEI. Also: 16:28 no seatbelts, is that legal?

[@paulbo9033]

This is just plain wrong. Emissions aren't increasing they're plateauing and the direction of travel is that they'll decrease, the data is clear on that. The only question is how fast can we do it.

[@cre8tvedge]

You had to be the guy with all the valid scary stuff. Now it's time to double down on changing. You can change. I can change. Pete can change. We all can change. We can all demand our govts change. And guess what. Power companies are changing because it improves the bottom line. Other companies change for the same reasons. We stay or we go but we don't have to submit to going because of fools. That would make us fools.

[@tearsintherain6311]

Does anyone remember the ozone layer hole? We fixed it. It was huge, Millenials will remember it being taught in school, it was the biggest thing in climate science… and we fixed it There is hope, folks

[@arghjayem]

The hole still exists. It’s just not as bad as it was before as we aren’t putting out the CFC gases that started to destroy it in the first place. We haven’t fixed it, we’ve just stopped damaging it.

[@mooreanonumbers]

It happened because we were against limited business interests that could be forced to take the L and make profit in different ways. You could also argue that big tobacco took a huge, existential hit in the past few decades, because again, this is a niche(but powerful) business interest and very few people outside of big tobacco needs tobacco to live or make money. Meanwhile humanity ran on(and pretty much defined its existence on) fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. We need hope but let's be realistic.

[@axeman2638]

It was always just natural variation, the scare was about dupont's patents on refrigerants expiring.

[@tealkerberus748]

This. The ozone hole is still in the process of healing - we stopped putting more ozone-destructive chemicals into the atmosphere, but it takes a long time for natural processes to remove the chemicals that were already there from before we stopped. Anyone who wants to check its progress can find that information easily, even though it hasn't been news for decades. It's just quietly getting a bit better every year, and the graphs and reports are all online. The acid rain phenomenon destroying northern hemisphere forests and limestone buildings was another one. Governments took action to ban the release of the chemicals that were causing that, mostly flue gases from coal burning, and the problem was resolved within a couple of years. The trees that were sick got better, baby trees sprouted to replace the trees that had died, and while the buildings couldn't heal, they stopped getting worse and there was a new industry in restoring them. There was so much hope when we were young - because when our scientists pointed out the negative consequences of our actions, our politicians took heed and passed the right laws and enforced them and *we fixed the problems*. It breaks my heart to see what the world has become now.

[@David-CoolDave]

Great video Simon. Norwegian mates have been talking about the amount of electric cars scaling up massively in the last few years. Hope you and the fam-jam are doing well 😊

[@TheTonycima]

Simon, first of all, great work and thanks! After taxing my tiny brain on this whole climate issue I have come to the conclusion that the most important step is to reduce income and wealth inequality in most developed countries. This means changing neoliberal thinking and electoral systems. Yes, I know this is Politics rather than science but there you are.

[@tealkerberus748]

When the richest 10% of people in the world are producing 50% of the greenhouse pollution, you cannot separate political economy from the science.

[@DerDummePunkt]

"Physical scientist" is term that sounds so weird. I mean, i get it, "physical science" as in "the systematic study of the inorganic world", but still, whenever I hear that, my mind is like: "As opposed to what? Ephemeral scientists? Ghosts?"

[@Alex-cw3rz]

These tipping points also totally debunk this idea of why should we do anything when other countries aren't. As it shows if we do we start the revolution, we make more money and it is a small population making big changes.

[@petersilva037]

The problem is that the people who buy electric cars before the tipping point... well they deal with no chargers existing, paying more for the vehicle, having troubles road tripping, etc... so they incur many costs... in the case of climate change, it could be seen as paying more for energy from renewables at first and hampering your economy until the tipping point is reached. If Renewables are already cheaper, then great! We are passed the tipping point. But if not, then the early movers pay all kinds of costs the late movers don´t ... and they never get any advantage from it, other than bragging rights.

[@paulbo9033]

It's also a nonsense argument because other countries *are* doing something about it. When I first heard this argument doing the rounds it was about China, but then it became so apparent that China is doing something about it in a big way that they changed the target to India, but now India is also doing something about it. This argument is a fossil fuels industry argument to try to get people to think it's hopeless so don't bother changing it.

[@cre8tvedge]

Geebus are you uninformed. Read some articles and get away from talking heads. Other countries are doing way more than the US. Other facts you missed. US power companies are increasing clean energy because of profits. EVs sales in the US are increasing and ICE sales are decreasing just like everywhere else. Just way behind. You only sound like a denier trying to con people.

[@97SuperGabri]

@@whatsyourname9581 thing is this debate only exists in the West. Emerging economies couldn’t care less how we, who became wealthy 80 years ago, decide to produce energy. They were colonized, exploited and now they’ll use coal and gas and oil to reach our economic output. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it, because they are motivated to grow and become rightfully wealthy

[@djhero0071]

I've got a feeling this is gonna be wrong by January 2025.

[@Sugar3Glider]

12:00 Never mentioned UBI once while talking about the consequences of degrowth is dangerous, to say the least.

[@merla692]

This video is very optimistic, and I wished things were that simple. But you have to consider the extremist right movement that has been happening all around the world

From a purely engineering standpoint, the problem isn't so much energy use, no matter what it comes from, but energy WASTED. Unnecessary short stop-and go trips, running the HVAC continuously when it's a lovely day and sane people could open their windows, sitting idling in fast-food lanes, poorly timed stop lights and other traffic-control devices...it all adds up to a staggering total nobody ever addresses. "Saving the planet" is a lot like modern "healthcare", in that everyone seems to believe there's some magic pill that will fix everything, with no actual personal effort to change habits on any individual's part. W R O N G .

[@tealkerberus748]

That idling issue is where the hybrid vehicles win out. When you're driving down the highway, they have all the range and convenience of a fueled vehicle - but in stop-start traffic they run on electric, and when the vehicle isn't moving it's not using power. Of course this doesn't address the real problem of people driving when they could stay home or use public transport or whatever. We need a lot more support to get people working from home, including a tax on the employer for every day a person is made to commute to an office. We also need a lot more remote-controlled vehicles for deliveries and stuff so that delivery drivers can work from home too - and you don't have to wonder if they're going to eat your pizza. Owning a car in order to be able to fetch groceries once a week shouldn't be a thing unless you live too far out in the country for the delivery vehicles' range.

@@tealkerberus748 Believe it or not, some people actually still do physical work that can't possibly be done "from home" and that AI-driven robots won't be doing for decades, if ever. And some of it it critical to the functioning of civilization, and it's not done by uneducated mouth-breathers either. So the need to get to work will never go completely away...unless the world changes into the Matrix entirely. People need to T H I N K about how their actions and lifestyles affect the planet they love to whine about. Yes, hybrids are a good solution to all-around-capable vehicles...but people's B E H A V I O R S need to change.

[@wroughtiron6031]

"WE BEATING BACK THE APOCALYPSE WOTH THIS ONE" 🗣🗣🗣

[@BHNative]

The one part that sucks about this is that we wouldn't have to go through scorching hot temperatures and apocalyptic tragedies to fix things if there weren't ignorant people denying anything they do has any consequence to the environment. Some humans suck and have delayed progress.

[@darylfoster6133]

Watch Tom Nelson podcast if you want to actually learn about the climate.

[@BHNative]

@@darylfoster6133 A podcast? Seriously?

[@JasonBellVideos]

It isn't ignorant people it's people who are incentives by the oil lobby to spread and promote false information in order to keep public opinion on climate change negative

[@Zedprice]

Unfortunately, because batteries are VASTLY heavier than gasoline by weight, electric shipping trucks just aren't anywhere close to viable. If anything, we should be making electric vehicles smaller.

[@Solstice261]

To be fair, for private vehicles, specially in America, we should be making vehicles smaller period, including combustion engines, making them more inefficient to have a massive useless SUV is clearly only playing into manufacturers pockets

[@rogerphelps9939]

Apparently electric articulated lorries such as those produced by Tesla and Volvo are proving you wrong.

[@_yonas]

This is wrong. Just about every major truck manufacturer in Europe has at least one BEV truck model, and often more. There is this German YT channel called "Electrotrucker" (lit. electric trucker) and he drives long distances in Germany. The company he works for has also bought dozens of these BEV trucks from different companies, they are building their own charging infrastructure at their depot, etc. It makes perfect sense because in Europe drivers can only drive for so long, and they have to take breaks during which the existing chargers are fast enough to recharge the batteries.

[@Solstice261]

@@_yonas I don't know much about trucks, I'll look him up, thanks for pointing towards information

[@Shrouded_reaper]

We used to have these cool things called trains, which ran on electricity from overhead lines...

[@jaapfolmer7791]

Some tipping points will be decided by market forces. E.g. grid storage is already PROFITABLE, simply because electricity generation has always been terribly inefficient without storage. We have always had to invest in huge overcapacity to meet peak demand. So, storage will come, regardless of the politicians. And yes that is a tipping point, because storage will overcome the intermittency that is currently holding back renewable energy sources. Not their price.

[@ReubsWalsh]

It's not so much that democracy moves too slowly, but that our democracy is too shallow, and if it was deeper, it would likely also be faster. What do I mean by "our democracy is too shallow"? Too much, especially 'under the surface' of our society is profoundly undemocratic, a dictatorship of capital, and because of the way so many are disenfranchised not only by being denied equitable access to voting and to the information needed to successfully participate (perhaps also skills, and time to develop an understanding of the issues), and by the lack of a system where the candidate whose views most represent the constituents' is also most likely to win (e.g., no duopoly, campaigns financed uniformly/fairly and centrally). We deepen democracy by making more of our society structurally democratic and our democratic structures amenable to more of our society. So, democratized workplaces, no inequitable barriers to voting, campaigns financed fairly and centrally. Like, this is all good but I can't help feeling like this is maybe still thinking too small. It feels like this is how capitalism and (more of) the capitalist class can survive the climate crisis. I think a lot more people and ecosystems can be saved if we abandon this inherently destructive and expansionist economic system entirely, rather than trying to 'ride the dragon'.

[@ArtificialDjDAGX]

bit of an issue with that is that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with reality, due to infinite growth being one of its core tenets. Especially since even if humanity somehow expanded its reach at lightspeed in all directions, humanity would only be able to access less than 5% of the observable universe, as the rest would have accelerated out of reach by the point we'd reach the "edge", thanks to the expansion of space. Doesn't help either that capitalism maximizes inequality, and that if wages had kept pace with productivity, like it should have done, the minimum wage would've been over $18/hour last year. Instead we've had wages basically flatlined since around the time of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Actually sustainable future would require reworking the resource distribution system that humanity currently uses, among several other things, such as: Infrastructure that incentivizes travel by foot, bike, or public transit; A bunch of social structures, like the governmental system, so that people can vote on the things they want enacted, rather than having to vote on whatever group promises to do more of the things that the voters want enacted.

[@ReubsWalsh]

@@ArtificialDjDAGX I mean, I agree. I think you're saying much the same thing I was?

[@ArtificialDjDAGX]

@@ReubsWalsh somewhat, but I was also adding more information to the statement, so that people won't come and complain about how change is being advocated for without any real idea of what needs to be fixed. Apologies if I appeared hostile in my first reply.

[@Atome65]

Totally agree about capitalism and democracy. Capitalism is giving the economic power to a small group of people, because the own a lot. This is inherently undemocratic. When added to the observation that most of what rules our lives is economics based (what I can eat, where I can live based on my revenues, whether or not I can work, where I can work, where I go on holidays, whether I can go to the hospital... almost everything), then calling our systems "democracy" because we vote once in a while and endure the rest of the time, feels like endorsing an unfair and unsustainable system.

[@tealkerberus748]

The problem with democracy is that once every several years we elect representatives, who go off and do .. whatever. And in the days before internet or even widespread education, that was the best we could do. But we have education and communication now. We could have a weekly or monthly vote on actual policy. "Do you want to continue these subsidies for the ICE vehicle industry, which employs this many people and has these side effects, or do you want to transfer these subsidies to EV production, which is forecast to employ this many people and have these effects instead, or do you want to put the money into public transport services, which would employ this many people and have these effects instead, or do you want to stop the subsidies?" Give people the various options and what key experts from both sides say is most likely to happen, tell them how much it's costing in total and how many dollars of their personal tax that is (according to their declared tax bracket) so they have a real-world number to understand, and let the people decide.

[@robertvolek8360]

There are reasons to be optimistic, but this is too optimistic. I work in green fertilizers and ill tell you, it will take 20 years to actually meaningfully transition away from fossil. Just because something is theoretically cheaper to produce doesnt mean we all switch to it tommorow. The ammount of construction that needs to take place is astounding. Also, green mandates make green technologies cheaper... but only in the long term. Right now, mandates will cause you to pay more, potentially much more (and that extra money will pay for the scale up needed to make it cheper 10 years from now). The green fertilizer mandate particularly will cause absolutely insane political backlash if not handled well.

[@mariusg8824]

Of course fixing climate change will accelerate. So will climate change. The question is: will we outrun it? And if so, when? If we stabilize at 6 degrees after 2100, we will be effed for centuries.

[@tomwright9904]

Dunno of civilisation survives to 2100 we will probably have all sorts of crazy technology to help us.

[@livid_snail]

If you're into literature/fiction, I'd reccomend Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future. It asks many of these questions and attempts to answer them with well-researched science. (also check out his Mars Trilogy!)

[@jp5481]

Check out *all* his books!

[@doghat1619]

I'm a fan of Robinson's works but I would only recommend them if you're a fan of science, not a fan of literature or fiction. Outside of his Mars trilogy, which does have 'decent' characters, his works are full of bland forgettable characters. His stories exist to create scenarios where he can explore and explain different ideas about possible futures for humanity, they don't exist to be well written or engaging works. They're enjoyable, but certainly something I'd not recommend for pleasurable reading.

[@AlexHop1]

In the U.S., our governments at every level, make these kinds of decisions. But as coal is phased out, the people in coal country need to be educated as to why it's being phased out and need to be cared for. Other industry needs to be brought into coal country. That's one example. The idea is that where there are negative impacts on specific populations, these impacts need to be mitigated. Thank you for your excellent and hopeful video!

[@Thanir8957]

The coal mining sites and coal plants can be converted into something sustainable so that the same workers don't lose jobs. Examples are water reservoir, renewables plant, storage facility, agricultural land, radioactive facility, etc.

[@tealkerberus748]

Stopping the release of more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere isn't enough - we've already passed so many tipping points that we'll only find out about in decades to come. The other thing we need to do is a realistic and effective carbon capture and storage - not to allow people to continue polluting, but to retrieve the pollution we've already released. And so far, the only technology we have that can capture and store carbon is plants. What we need is to start growing high-capture crops like bamboo, hemp, and algae, and pack biochar from these crops back into all the old coal mines and other open-cut mines around the world. Masses of solidified carbon like that are still flammable and we'll need to layer them with something like clay to keep the air out so we don't risk huge underground fires in these pits, but the holes we dig the clay out of will then be more holes we can fill with solidified carbon. The people who worked the machines digging the coal out have all the required skills to work machines packing biochar back in. The people who ran the coal burning plants can re-skill to grow things like algae and process them - those crops use an array of valuable nutrients we don't need to sequester in holes in the ground, so the biochar process is about separating the solidified carbon compounds from all the plant nutrients we need to reuse for the next crop. Bonus points, crops like algae are usually quite easily separated into solid carbon compounds for burial, and liquid carbon-based oils that could be used as a replacement for fossil fuels in situations where electricity isn't a valid option. Ocean-going cargo ships, the military, and a few other sectors, are never going to completely change over to electric vehicles, so developing a clean fuel source for them at the same time as realistically sequestering excess atmospheric carbon is a win-win scenario.

[@arcoirislagallinacanibal]

@@tealkerberus748 We first need to go carbon neutral, then begin to carbon capture, you patch the wholes of the pool before putting more water in

[@tealkerberus748]

@@arcoirislagallinacanibal I think we need to be working on both. It's too urgent to wait to stop releasing more carbon before we start work on pulling the excess out of the atmosphere. We just need the system regulated so that carbon capture activities can't be used as an excuse to continue carbon release activities.

[@karlInSanDiego]

Ok, hard truth about EVs. They are only 50-75% lower emissions than ICE cars. They are ultimately, completely unsustainable. So our EV adoption is a step in the wrong direction, reinforcing car dependency instead of being forward looking and understanding that shared public mass transit (electric, rail, & pantograph) and micromobility are ultimately sustainable, or as close to sustainable as we can currently understand. Zero emissions does not include lower-but-still-substantially-high-emissions, which is what personal car use represents whether we power them with electricity and batteries or another source. Production emissions creating EVs ranges from 17 tons CO2e to 39 tons CO2e from the data that manufacturers who will disclose their totals, admit. If you don't understand if 17 tons or 39 tons is a lot, you'll need to dig in and maybe ask Simon to show how much CO2e we currently emit per capita in various countries per year, and how much we can emit per person globally to get to zero carbon. The answer for the last figure is about 2 tons/person/year, including not just our transportation, but food, shelter, shared infrastructure, products, EVERYTHING. So no, EV cars aren't viable, and even if companies like Volvo and Polestar (sister Co's owned by Geely) insist they can get to zero emissions including production, they're delusional or lying. It's just not possible. I am very much pro solutions, and don't at all endorse delay or nihilism. But EVs are a transitional technology at best. And understanding that Natural Gas/fracking was a expressed as transitional tech (bridge fuel), we should be eyes wide open that eliminating car dependency and quickly adopting electric rail and micromobility for all (think e-bikes, e-trikes, electric velomobiles, e-scooters). Imagine how difficult it will be to pry the EVs out of the hands of Gen X & Millennials after you spend 20 years coercing them into believing that EVs were actually zero emissions, when they absolutely are not.

[@rogerphelps9939]

Complete and utter dross. EVs wil eventually be practically CO2 emission free. In tthe UK the plan is to get rid of all CO2 emissions from electricity generation by 2030. From then practically all of the CO2 emissions from EVs will be from manufacture and these will decrease rapidly as industry is decarbonised. There is absolutely no prospect of that happening with ICEs.

[@Jewshiesty6969]

Simon’s bought and paid for

[@SPLICEKNIGHT]

@@Jewshiesty6969 I mean, to be fair, him being honest made him broke. So he changed his approach, something he admitted as much to, but it's true that positive tipping points are a thing. The important thing with EV's is realizing that they're a significant step down per capita of emissions compared to an ICE car, 50-75% is a lot of difference, which when applied at scale, is massive. Now, is it as massive as many other potential solutions? No, but your hyper electrification of Ebikes, trikes and transit is just as prone to flaws. The only difference is one person having up to 3 different electric modes of transport, rather than one. Which is to ask, how big the footprint of each is, combined, to scale. The reality is that no tech based solution is truly net zero without time... which... we don't actually have. The game is evening out the temperature across the planet, which means end game is right around the corner.

[@macmcleod1188]

I'm sorry, but electric trains and electric bikes *also* have a carbon cost. The most significant positive tipping point we could hit would be the growing decline in birth rates. If we could drop the population from 8 billion to 3 billion without getting into a runaway extinction negative behavioral sink, then that has a small chance to avoid +5C. But seriously, IMHO, +5C is unavoidable.

[@macmcleod1188]

Also, that assumed EV's cease to operate after only 8 years. If the EV lasts 1 million miles, then it's more like 5% of the carbon cost.

[@meaganhough535]

It's nice to be reminded that progress is being made and that there are positives out there.

[@Fabric_Hater]

Progress of what? This was just about an industry. Nothing about climate change.

[@Islander255]

Electric cars are better than ICE cars on the whole, but we will not solve greenhouse gas emissions in the transit sector simply by encouraging everyone to replace their ICE car with an EV. EV's still have a lot of the same problems as ICE's--particulate-matter pollution from tires, encouraging suburban sprawl & terrible land use in cities, and creating a dangerous environment for pedestrians and cyclists. And even though EV consume less energy because they run off electricity, they still consume dozens of times the energy to transport one person as, say, an e-bike. So honestly, EV uptake is a pretty shitty tipping point, if indeed it can count as one at all. A much better tipping point would be a greater number of people choosing to go car-free to the point that we stop investing in personal vehicle infrastructure and instead invest in much more efficient modes of public infrastructure.

[@paulbo9033]

"They consume dozens of times the energy" Firstly, no they don't. You're just plain wrong here. EVs are far more efficient than ICE vehicles. There is virtually no energy loss because they run on power not petrol. With ICE vehicles, the clue is in the name, they are "combustion" engines, an enormous amount of energy is wasted in energy leakage through heat in particular. They also have to convert chemical energy into mechanical movement, whereas with EVs it's power direct to movement. Secondly, the energy EVs do consume is pulled from the overall energy system which is itself decarbonising and at an increasing rate. Basically you're factually wrong on all counts.

[@bill-og]

Yeah but decarbonizing depends on what part of the world you are in. The US still depends very largely on fossil fuels, isn't really making change, and EVs are projected to overload our grid by 2030 because we can't upgrade or build new infrastructure in the power sector, green or not. As such, simply buying EVs isnt going to fix the issue, at least in the US

[@vience_8599]

@@paulbo9033 He/she is not talking about the efficiency, but about the power constumption of an EV, moving 2 tons takes way more power than the 80/100kg of an eBike + person. EV's are about 97% efficient with the power they produce, ICE cars are about 30-40% efficient with power consumption, which is a win for the EV, however if the electicity used is made using fosil fuels it almost evens out. Not to mention the production of EV's produces way more CO2 than the production of an ICE car, with them lasting for a shorter time aswel, EV's aren't all so great it wouln't change much just the place the CO2 is emmited. The production of the lithium ion battery is horrible for the enviorment, using more efficient public transport like trains that do not require batteries will have significantly better results for the enviorment.

[@paulbo9033]

@@vience_8599 pls see my other comments I've already addressed this. You're wrong. 1: Power generation is much cleaner and much less emissions than a global car fleet based on oil. Already half of the power gen stack is renewables, the other half is gas which can be produced carbon neutrally with CCS and greater production efficiencies. This is already happening. 2. The Production of EVs being as carbon intensive if not more, relies on an incorrect assumption that the industries that produce inputs for EVs aren't themselves decarbonising. They are and will continue too. It's also not a good point or even true, that ICE production is less carbon intensive than EV product. What really matters most in ICE production is not ICE production, it's Oil production, that is where more of the production damage is done by having Ice vehicles. And oil production being less carbon intensive is a function of which rigs/wells/asset portfolios you're taking about. If you have a portfolio where production has been electrified because Industry in the region is decarbonising, then yes it is. If those assets haven't been decabronised then it isn't 🤷‍♂️ So basically you're wrong. Industry is decarbonising, EVs are better than ICE, CO2 emissions are plateauing, and renewables is increasing. Cheers up, we're going to make it!

[@vience_8599]

@@paulbo9033 I've no clue where you're from but far from half is renewables here, in the Netherlands 15% of the energie used in 2023 was renewables with the bulk of it being biofuel, than about 30% by gas and 30% by oil and a little bit of coal. China is the third largest producer of lithium and control 60% of the global battery grade refining capacity. Australia is the biggest producer of lithium and exports 90% to china. So basicly by far the most batteries are produced in China, a state of Taiwan that doesn't really care about all the emission thingies. Those awsome things as decarbonising can be done but it doesn't mean they are used and we are creating EV's sustainably, the bulk of the production is still done in China with horrid working conditions and without caring about emissions. So using trains that require no batteries, smaller batteries in E-bikes forexample or E-fuels that work in our existing cars like hydrogen or the benzine Porsche in making would be way better options than depending on China for battery production.

[@samardevneo]

Social Scientist here, working specifically on the justice aspects of climate mitigation. There are several forms of justice, all of which risk being sidestepped especially in the application of socio-technical “levers of change”. I work on the application of Bio-CCS in Scandinavia - and incumbent industry actors have a hugely disproportionate influence on government investments and incentives for Bio-CCS - meaning the future they envision for Swedish forestry gets prioritised politically (continuation of clear-cuts and increasing material extraction - meaning less old growth forest conservation and less incentives for biodiversity work). Regular people who have relationships to and opinions about forests, small-holder forest owners and indigenous people are sidestepped in these political processes - meaning futures for Swedish forestry which envision more conservation, protected reindeer pastures, reduced material demand and abandoning clear-cutting - are not on the political agenda because of the potential profits imagined in Bio-CCS and corresponding (but still hypothetical) Negative Emissions. So the political processes of mitigation and who gets to be heard in them have real ramifications. Climate Change has the tendency to override other issues (biodiversity, indigenous rights, water issues, land grabbing), especially when “solutions” are presented as economically profitable for industry incumbents (who often have all the political sway). This is problematic in many places - a colleague of mine works on solar in India, where small-holder farmers and pastoralists are regularly and forcefully driven off their ancestral land because of government funded solar and wind parks (with corresponding suspicions of corruption involving local politicians and renewables-corporations). The green tech revolution has a lot of losers whose rights are not being recognised and whose solutions (which may not be profit-driven) are disregarded.

[@HealingLifeKwikly]

That's depressing.

[@carlpeters8690]

As a Canadian I welcome a return to the historic climate that allowed giant plants and animals.

[@mikeg9b]

Giant spiders are not welcome.

[@carlpeters8690]

@@mikeg9b How about dragonflies with a 3ft / 1m wingspan? 8-D The big plants would be nice though.

[@adblocker276]

Thank you to my Chinese friends for making solar Pvs available for cheap for everyone

[@AmateurBMS]

You should really thank Germany first for creating a demand. Unfortunately for Europe, the Chinese out-competed, or rather out-subsidised European producers.

@@AmateurBMS german politics decided like 20ish years ago, that the solar sector isn't allowed to grow faster than a certain speed or something, which killed german solar industry by choice pls don't thank germany, politics full of lobbyists

[@erozionzeall6371]

@@AmateurBMSkeep coping

[@shanecollie5177]

@@AmateurBMS China out competed primarily because they have cheap reliable energy, which europe no longer has, the primary reason for china's cheap energy is it's reliance on coal generation.

[@Shrouded_reaper]

Yes, they provide cheap solar panels at a massive ecological cost and horrible labour conditions. If they were required to properly deal with the waste products, pay their workers decently and give them good working conditions, the panels would be much more expensive. Also, they are so cheap because they are heavily subsidised by both the Chinese government and very likely your local government. Not that it's a bad thing, but that's why they are cheap.

[@PixelShade]

Please Internet, can we stop spreading lies that electric cars is actually a solution to CO2 emissions in the transportation sector? it's REALLY (I cannot stress this enough) REALLY NOT A SOLUTION!!! They are marginally better than gasoline cars, but cars are still cars; the bulk of the environmental impact comes from producing and even needing them in the first place. It's not like electric cars are produced out of thin air, and it's not like these huge monolithic batteries are particularly cheap on the environment either (equating to ~10000km of gasoline)... The REAL environmental solution to transportation is for us to design more local societies, where everything we need is within walking/biking distance. NOT needing to own a car is in fact the solution. You can literally buy 50 e-bikes and it would have the same life cycle cost as one electric car.

[@rogerphelps9939]

You are wrong. evs are far far better for the environment than ICEs. You are a sad victim of fossil fuel FUD. You should really do some research then you would u nderstand.

[@simonsanchezkumrich8489]

That'd be neat but now most cities are designed for cars

[@quinnfranke1347]

Finally, somepne saying something smart. Electric cars are a scam. Where i live we burn fossil fuels to make electricity, so you are just wasting energy driving a rivan pickup.

[@alphamikeomega5728]

They have their issues, especially in cities, and better public transportation and locality are usually better solutions. However, you underestimate the difference between EV and ICE pollution - especially once grids are low-carbon (at least at night, when demand is low). You say that the majority of EVs' pollution comes from manufacture and disposal. You're right - but ICE cars cause almost as much from manufacture and disposal, which is still dwarfed by the impact of burning petroleum at about 30% efficiency as you drive them.

[@JoffroyBoutin-uf4dc]

Absolutely! I always say it's not magical technology that will save the world but by changing our habits. The good news is less and less people can afford the buy a car. Car seam to be becoming uncool for the young and educated.

[@elonchan4883]

A few ideas on execution: The US government could lift solar panels tariffs when the panels are being supplied to US solar manufacturing companies as long as their sales are greater than 50% domestically made panels, allowing the US to make china pay for our green energy while not compromising “political interests” The US government could add a special capital gains tax to assets of companies while produce petroleum products. Additionally, they could make it so this tax is payed by the ETF rather than the person buying an ETF (like S&P 500) essentially forcing the ETFs to take petroleum companies off their offerings. This would immediately allow the 9% tipping point to be reached (and I mean overnight). Congress would never let this happen but theirs a real chance that an executive action or rules within the IRS could be used to implement this. I find the talking point about electric vehicles a little tricky because data shows the best option is (as always) reducing consumption. An older vehicle which has already paid off its carbon debt is greener than buying a new vehicle due to all the carbon emissions of manufacturing. Oh and heat pumps are artificially more expensive in the us (technology connections video as reference). Making it legally required that all consumer HVAC units sold in the US MUST be heat pump combo units will quickly make this units about the same price as traditional AC units.

[@cliveapps7105]

Fuel burning needs to be stopped everywhere possible. H2, NH4, CO, CH4, and other fuels are cleaner but they still create heat. Heat control needs to become a priority as much as greenhouse gas reduction.

[@tealkerberus748]

If we build our houses so they don't need externally supplied energy to keep warm or cool as needed, we not only save a whole lot of energy, we also have comfortable houses and we don't have poor people dying in their homes from being too cold or too hot. There really is not a down side to building good houses for everyone. We just need to build our good houses to last. If we design for a 500 year building design life instead of a 50 year building design life, we just cut out 90% of the annualised embodied energy of our housing. The challenge is that people building houses 500 years ago weren't building for indoor plumbing or electric lights or wifi in every room. How do we make the houses we build now, sturdy enough to last 500 years, but adaptable enough that it will be easy to add new technology that we literally cannot imagine now?

[@cliveapps7105]

@@tealkerberus748 Steel, other metal frames, or timber, extra unused conduits in the walls, install fiberoptic networks (basically unlimited bandwidth), passive design for heating and cooling, make walls wifi/rf permeable if possible, install natural light sources don't build in areas prone to landslides, floods, earthquakes, fires etc., shock absorbing foundations, don't build on good farmland - build where crops are not feasible (also use those areas for solar/wind power as well), buildings sized to needs not to excesses and luxury.. kzbin.info?search_query=passive+lighting

[@cliveapps7105]

@@tealkerberus748 Steel, metal or timber frame. Do not build on good farmland, (poor land can be used for housing/solar/wind power etc.). Do not build on flood/fire/earthquake zones. Use passive heating/cooling/lighting. Size buildings according to needs, not wants/excesses/luxury. Build with organic and organically neutral materials if possible. Reduce use of luxury materials. Use long life construction materials metal/slate/ceramic tile roofs, etc. Use WiFi/RF permeable surfaces, add unused conduits and fiberoptic systems at construction for future tech expansion. Search youtube here for more ideas: results?search_query=passive+lighting results?search_query=passive+housing+design results?search_query=minimalist+housing+design /results?search_query=effecient+inexpensive+housing+design

[@tealkerberus748]

@@cliveapps7105 I agree with most of this, but baulk at steel framing. It's a death trap in a fire - where a timber frame will hold its structural integrity even while it's burning, steel slumps at 600 degrees. It doesn't actually melt, but framing that's gone soft like well-boiled spaghetti is not what you want holding the roof up while you try to get out. Small amounts of steel encased in timber, such as nails holding the framing together, are empirically pretty safe, but a whole steel frame is a very bad idea. Steel also has a massive carbon footprint, where locally produced plantation timber can have a negative carbon footprint if it's managed right. I think that should be a consideration wherever two materials are functionally equivalent, even though in this case timber and steel really are not equivalent. Also the question of where to build needs to consider where people want to live. A perfect city in a place nobody wants to live is a waste of resources. Areas subject to flood, fire, earthquake, or other disasters, are better managed by requiring that houses are built to those conditions - such as the traditional "Queenslander" style of house built on floodplains where there is nowhere within 100km that is actually safe to build a house on the ground. People living and working in those areas still need houses - they just need houses built to the conditions. Protecting farmland is even more nuanced, because the place people live should be within a day's walk of where all their needs are produced - and that means people living surrounded by farmland. If there isn't any non-farmable land to build their houses on, that means building houses on farmland .. but the single biggest predictor of how productive an area of land will be, is how many person-hours are spent cultivating it. So putting a village of houses on good farmland will make the soil underneath those houses inaccessible, but if the people in the houses all have back-yard vegetable gardens, the productivity of the total allotment will still be vastly greater than if the allotment had no house on it because it was part of somebody's hundred-hectare wheat crop. If you take the time to scrape the topsoil off where the house is going to be, and put that topsoil where the garden is going to be next to that house, then you've amplified the effect further by giving them a double depth of good soil for the garden. Fundamentally, everything is nuanced.

[@jefferylebowski7355]

The Neal Stephenson book _Termination_Shock_ is a "climate fiction" novel that experiments with these "who decides?" and "who pays/benefits?" ideas. Check it out if you are a "hard sci-fi" fan.

[@MrChainsawAardvark]

Considering that there are a lot of political factions that want to push back against these points (See US presidential election/Project 2025) this is almost certainly a place where we need the scientists to make the decisions. Now how we enforce those choices is another question. Frankly I thin we need to find ways to actively undermine fossil fuels (by disrupting their supply infrastructure/refiners/rigs etc) because a lot of these companies survive based on the stock market and futures, not the actual profit margins of the product. You can't implement a cheaper solution if the people who control the old method also control the government.

[@SimeonRadivoev]

I like how growth is the answer to most climate solutions. Just buy and build more, it's gonna work out fine...

[@youthculture523]

endless growth is delusional

[@Jerguu]

degrowthers btfo

[@joaquimbarbosa896]

Thats quite literally true

[@AB-fh9zh]

'How do we consume our way out of this?'

[@joaquimbarbosa896]

@@AB-fh9zh Build sh1t tons of public transport and clean energy

[@MarkShapiro-m8r]

Just a nitpick: Norway now has more BEVs than petrol cars, not more than total ICE cars. Diesel cars still dominate the fleet. Still, they are the electrification leaders by far, and an inspiration.

[@gfbprojects1071]

Who gets to decide. I used to believe that referendums were the most democratic of democratic mechanisms. Recently however, in Australia, we witnessed the depressing spectacle of referendums on important matters influenced by well resourced and fundamentally cynical media actors. Regardless of reputed past human rights issues, I applaud the Chinese government for taking the necessary action to move its people into a low carbon and fundamentally safer energy world.

[@esbrasill]

Just out of curiosity, how much CO2 does it take to make a solar panel, and how much CO2 production does it avoid over its lifespan? ... and same question for EV's

[@PingSharp]

Oh! I wrote my high school graduation paper about this! (It was 40 pages of summarizing life cycle analyses and similar). When you measure the carbon emissions of a product, you essentially take the production stage, usage stage and decommissioning stage into consideration. It's mostly measured in units of "carbon dioxide equivalent per unit of energy produced" (Co2eq/kWh). Here are the averages from all the sources I compiled: (in grams of Co2eq per kWh) Solar: ≈20 Hydro:

[@_yonas]

In addition, EVs use electric motors which are highly efficient - ~90% compared to ~20% for internal combustion engines. So EVs are likely to be even cleaner than ICE cars even when charged by relatively dirty electricity, and if you use a reasonably clean electricity supply it's not even a question of EVs being significantly better than ICE cars.

[@RobOfTheNorth2001]

Common coal fear tactic trying to get people to do nothing. These new technologies produce far less co2 than current ones.

[@maxwilson8917]

@@_yonas I actually did the calculations for this once; a regular EV on a heavily fossil fuel powered grid still has lower emissions than all but the top 2 or 3 most efficient hybrids.

[@joaquimbarbosa896]

Those numbers are counted in the CO2/KwH figures

[@12kenbutsuri]

Im super hyped about green energy taking over, but evs are not much cleaner than non EVs if we include the manufacturing process, and thinking that electric trucks are even remotely possible is batshit crazy.

[@darylfoster6133]

Tesla semi?

[@12kenbutsuri]

​@darylfoster6133 its fake. Have you ever seen one with your own eyes before?

[@NostalgiaandChaos]

@@12kenbutsuri I've seen tons. I passed about 10 traveling through Nevada this summer, they're not widely adopted yet but they are out there.

[@derloos]

Even setting aside the initial argument which has been debunked time and again for the benefit of anyone who's not banned on Google, EVs can actually get cleaner as the grid gets cleaner, unlike any petrol or diesel car.

[@12kenbutsuri]

​@@derloosi agree that EV is much cleaner once its running. The issue us manufacturing the car itself, and building roards / road maintenance, on top of that social issues allowing resources to be allowed to be further away from eachother that canbe managed by trains.

[@lubumbashi6666]

The simple fact is that there is no way to save the earth at a profit. Your example of Norway exposes your logic. Norway can afford to buy electric cars because they are pumping vast amounts of oil.

[@blobberberry]

Looks like there's an address to this point in the article, at least the screen at 2:21 would suggest. I haven't seen the Nebula video.

[@LuluTheCorgi]

I don't think they are pumping that much oil right now but the money does come from the fund they have for the public that was funded by oil drilling for decades

[@LuluTheCorgi]

​@@blobberberryit's a disingenuous argument It's not relevant WHY some money isn't coming in (direct subsidies vs tax breaks) It needs to be replaced with some income stream either way, in their case that's the public oil fund, in other countries it could be taxes (of whatever kind) or debt but the money has to come from somewhere

[@Nemrai]

As a norwegian, I agree. Norway really isn't very willing to take the big steps needed to wean outselves of oil, and develop other industries. Including that a lot of norwegian are big consumers, we're far from as good at things as we're often presented as, and we're going to see huge trouble in the future if we continue being as dependent on oil.

[@thecommentator9181]

Those are two very broad and pessimistic statements. The first is simply not true, given that as of late renewables have become increasingly cheaper and decoupling has been rising in the past years. As for the second, plenty of other countries have plenty of EVs, but not every single one of them gets their profits from oil. The money is of the state and it has to come from somewhere, as another commenter stated already.

[@mr.duck1246]

So far, electric vehicles are not an option in Canadian prairie winters, as it just gets too cold. We do have some electric buses though, so we’ll see how those fair in the winter

[@leventelajos5078]

The example with Norway is missleading. Norway is one of the richest country on the earth, and the givernment helps to buy electric cars. But if you look at the actual used ot electric cars, it is evident that Norwegians buy these cars because they are subsidised, and they keep their gasoline cars too. So basically in one of the richest country, people buy subsidised electric cars just for fun, but they use their combustion engine cars when it is needed.

[@rps1689]

Brings to mind that the price of energy has always been artificial, as there is no free market in energy, not even during the industrial revolution and since. All energy industries are a network of subsidized administered oligopolies. Nobody would put up with paying the full price of energy. Not the powers that be, not the consumers. Perhaps this mindset has got to EV owners and makers ; )

[@goldfishbowl42]

People have been asked since the 1980s do you want to do something about climate change of your choice now, or be forced to do something later. People always chose "force us later" and yet they still don't accept that later has come and gone. In fact it was probably a decade or so ago. A crisis is a problem ignored.

[@cre8tvedge]

So we can take it you are running your diesel engine as you text in 70% temps to keep your ass comfy cause it's too late. Take a hike.

[@goldfishbowl42]

@cre8tvedge No, we have solar on our roof and I have been a member of the UK Green Party for 20 plus years. I cycle as much as I can and barely drive, and try to grow lots of my own food. But my carbon footprint is still high as I live in a world where change is hard and polluting it cheap and easy. The problem is people still vote for the easy answers. Blame immigrants and don't want to listen to the people with complex answers to complex problems.

[@ohnolookwho241]

In the 1980s though they were warning of a global cooling. So you've hardly been consistent.

[@goldfishbowl42]

​@ohnolookwho241 who's they? A small fringe say all sorts all the time. The IPCC's First Assessment Report was in 1990 which couldn't have happened unless there was a large body of evidence before it.

[@bedardpelchat]

Obviously you haven't heard or read "The Limits to Growth" (1972) based on a MIT model that is still correct or the Jevons Paradox. You haven't got a clue about why the scenario you're illustrating is doomed.

[@youthculture523]

yup

[@thecommentator9181]

The limits to growth model is junk science doomers love to quote without actually checking the book itself. It failed to take many things into account. Also, it isn't still correct at all, since the original MIT researchers ran simulations multiple times they made multiple 'predictions', however three things are worth noting: 1. The model makes bad assumptions and failed to take many things into account by compressing lots of complex systems into simple one dimensional values, skipping over things like efficiency or productivity to remain static or only slightly change when the reality is a lot different from that. 2. Some predictions like the population growth were simply wrong and in dissonance with actual population growth (see our world in data), meaning the model has to be updated every decade or so to make century-scale predictions, putting everything it 'predicts' into a very uncertain area. 3. The only thing the BAU2 model is correct about so far is the general growth in industrial output, food, and services that comes "right before the collapse". Except they have made that exact prediction in BAU1, which said the world was going to collapse or start collapsing the past decade. (See the 2014 The Guardian article that said limits to growth was right). That, conbined with the fact that barely any of the contributers to the paper/model itself had barely any knowledge on economics or how actual growth works, makes the entirety of the paper irrelevant in any serious discussion about resource usage or technological advancement. The Jevons paradox isn't really relevant in this context either, given that most modern advancements in technology or energy efficiency far outweigh how much more usage it would cause. Plus, we're not aiming to expand per se, rather replace fossil fuel energy with renewables. The Jevons paradox isn't relevant in that context, because if we were to reach a fully renewable energy grid, even if the elaboration of solar panels, nuclear plants, windmills etc cause some carbon emissions, they're still a net improvement in comparison to continuing to use fossil fuels.

[@youthculture523]

@@thecommentator9181 Population growth, fossil fuels consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, all have been going exponential since 1800-1850. Exponential population growth, causing exponential carbon emissions, facilitated only by fossil fuels. It's all correlated. This is all you need to know.

[@arcoirislagallinacanibal]

@@youthculture523 The math is wrong, the predictions were wrong, but line went up so it was actually right!

[@youthculture523]

@@arcoirislagallinacanibal I wasn't talking about limits to growth

[@nerobernardino88]

Norway is NOT an example in fighting climate change. They're still a major exporter of oil and does not force their buyers to adhere by climate preservation.

[@fmilan1]

Nothing good can be achieved by forcing anyone into doing anything. People will spontaneously switch to renewables when it makes economic sense. There might be some people trying to hold on to fossil fuels but if it makes more economic sense to switch, people will.

[@TrecherousMonki]

At least they're reinvesting that money in the good of their country. Meanwhile Australia just friggin gives our resources away to these mining companies

[@CmdrTobs]

@@TrecherousMonki Probably not accurate, but anyway....

[@cre8tvedge]

Let me guess. You are a well paid denier team player. Here's a picture for you. Norway has zero electric vehicles and exports oil. What is the volume of it's CO2 emissions? Norway has 100% EVs and exports oil. What is the volume of it's emissions? Now as you p ss on Norway remember that your country (I assume Russia) fits scenario one. P ss off. Or I could just be silent..... but that doesn't help. Solutions. Solutions. Not whining.

[@cre8tvedge]

One other thing. Norway has incentivized buyers to buy electric.

[@gljames24]

More people need to learn about Sigmoidal curves. It's basically the 80-20 rule, but continuous.

[@sirripsalot420]

This doesn't really change the fact we're heading off a cliff

[@Bookhermit]

Your graph at 5:30 shows exactly why this all is going to be FAR less effective than you anticipate. While electricity use IS going up faster than fossil fuel use, it is INCREASING fossil fuel use that is allowing it to do so. We aren't replacing fossil fuels by clean energy, we are ADDING clean energy use TO fossil fuel use, with no real expectation of ever lowering fossil fuel demand. Clean energy DEPENDS on fossil energy to a far greater extent than people imagine.

[@CmdrTobs]

I agree, this is generally true.

[@paulbo9033]

This is misinformation. Clean energy generation is increasing and fossil fuels generation is going down and those trends will continue. That is a fact. There are companies that track all these assets and the data is super clear on this.

[@An_Iron_God69420]

Can we just all collectively move to public transport now? ;-;

[@MathGod-kf6xd]

I want only scientist to decide policies, cuz politicians are too old, uneducated on climate, and generally prefer policy that help big companies who support them instead of what good for public

[@tealkerberus748]

This, but also I've seen scientists consistently underestimate how bad climate change is going to be and how hard it's going to happen. They don't want to look like the hen screaming about the sky falling in .. but actually, the sky is kind of falling in, and we've known it would since before the turn of last century and nobody has really done anything to fix it yet.

[@KonstantinZilberburg]

buying more cars won’t save us. using more public transportation might

[@CoordinatedCarry]

As an American truck driver, I was a diesel fan boy for a long time. I absolutely love my electric car. I’ll never ever go back.

[@jamesphillips2285]

I hope you are right. Edit: because nobody mentioned it yet: We now have about 4 years 10 months to phase out fossil fuels at current burn rates (202Gt of carbon budget left to hold the line at 1.5 degrees of warming; 40Gt/year burn rate). I see somebody already corrected you on the Norway segment (at 2:00) : EVs outnumber gasoline cars, by not diesel ones (yet).

[@guard13007]

"Who has the right to make these decisions?" Experts in climate change working with experts in social support services. It's that fucking simple. Fix the bigger problem, with input from people to fix the knock-on problems. And if we're very lucky, the social services people can implement changes that have a real positive impact instead of just compensation. Lack of social services is basically the 2nd biggest problem we have right now (the 1st being climate change, obviously).

[@CmdrTobs]

Oh dear. It was expert advice in the field to shock homosexuals out of it until the 60's. The world isn't that simple, clearly you are

[@borisbergman8428]

Cars are not going to solve anything. Electric or not.

[@mikester4896]

Electric cars will remove a lot of the air pollution that we individually pump into the atmosphere, it will also reduce the amount of illnesses caused by air pollution. Admittedly, there are issues with pollution in the production of electric cars but we will likely see advancements in technology which will reduce that as well.

[@axeman2638]

@@mikester4896 CO2 is not pollution, it's plant food and man is a very minor contributor to it, 3%.

[@AlJay0032]

@@mikester4896 Teslas make a lot of air pollution before they run the first mile. The CO2 break even with a diesel car is after 250'000 miles because it takes a lot of energy to mine and refine the materials in the batteries. There is a reason EVs and their batteries are expensive and people only buy them because of subsidies and dumping. Second Teslas make a lot of particulate matter in wheels, they need special tires but facts really don't interest people, right?

[@mugnuz]

​@@axeman2638thats simplified nonsense. most plants cant process that food when it gets hotter. many species have problems already...

[@axeman2638]

@@mugnuz utter rubbish, the planet is greener from higher CO2 , and it's cooling not warming , all claimed warming is due to data "adjustment" and urban heat island effects.

[@edreusser4741]

You have put your finger on something I have noticed but couldn't describe. The developed world reached a tipping point in the late 1990s regarding tobacco products. I was a 3 1/2 day smoker who quit smoking cigarettes at 10:30 in the morning of May 22, 1983. It was both ther easiest and the hardest experience I have ever had from medication withdrawal. I have had to eat the pain of opiate recovery 5 time because of hospitalization with serious enough problems I was taking a lot of narcoticsd. Noting was even close to withdrawal from 3 packs a day (Bensen Hedeges 100). I will never forget being in this really fancy meeting, the outcome of which I was heavily invested. Right in the middle of the meeting, I burst into hysterical tears. This was purely physical because I didn't feel bad or depressed; I was just suddenly crying my eyes out in front of a room full of strangers. I got up and ran out of the room, only to get halfway down the hall before I fell and had convulsions right there where I worked. I am telling you it was bad./ This was before there were patches. I believe they were just coming to the market in 1983 when I quit.

[@autohmae]

An important tipping point is: battery technology gets cheap enough that EVs are less expensive than "ICE" cars.

[@3_ormorecharacters]

aged like milk on a radiator

[@beaub152]

EVs are not the solution. We need more public transportation, banning automobiles in large cities would improve quality of life for all.

[@AlexWohlbruck]

EVs will not solve the climate crisis

[@cre8tvedge]

Not alone but all you've don is show that you don't know what you are talking about. I suspect you've been lied to. Fox?

[@stilnaughttelling6587]

@@cre8tvedge He apparently knows more about it than you. Oil is going nowhere. You need it to make the materials for producing EV's and the renewable energy infrastructure. So now you have oil's infrastructure being relied on even more so it can build transportation (EV) that already exists in another form (ICE). This parallel system adds to the pollution by mining rare earth minerals for magnets and batteries for the EV's. So EV's just made things worse. And after you have the renewable energy infrastructure, it will make electricity. What about all the other products that we got from refining oil, such as fertilizer, medicine, polymers and lubricants for making EV's as well as the roads to drive them on? You will still need oil, use more of it, and have an entirely new source of pollution on top of that. Nothing will be solved, just made worse.

[@ScooterCat64]

@@stilnaughttelling6587 EV's are just the latest trick on the public and it's already fooled so many people.

[@FitR_MusicProductions]

Like saying brushing your teeth won’t fix cavities.

[@stilnaughttelling6587]

@@FitR_MusicProductions Brushing your teeth doesn't fix cavities, it prevents them.

[@piersdowell832]

In answer to your question Simon, Scientists, the Public or Polititians: Scientists, preferably ones with transparent funding. I hate to sound all lofty but a few minutes on Facebook soon deters me from thinking the Public should be left in charge of such a decision. Polititians have consistently failed to do the one thing they are voted in to do, provide policy in our best interest, instead they put in policy for which corporate entity lobbies the hardest. I always though the transition to a greener future would be an s curve as opposed to a straight line, let's hope you are right. Great Video, thanks.

[@apezucolabooster]

Non-native english speaker here.. How does "ten times cheaper" work? If you have an item worth 100 USD and someone says they got it for one time cheaper, how much did they pay? What if it's two or five times cheaper? That sounds so very inaccurate and susceptible to interpretations.

[@gdmathguy]

divide 100 by five, it's now 20 Do you not know how basic arithmetic works????

[@tealkerberus748]

It's not just stupid to a non-native speaker. I am a native English speaker and this phrase sounds stupid to me too. Ten times more expensive is easy. If it cost 100 dollars and it's now ten times more expensive, it's now 1000 dollars. "Twice as cheap" or "Ten times cheaper" is nonsense. "Half the price" or "One tenth the price" makes sense. If something was previously discounted 10%, you could have "twice the discount" or "twice the savings" if it is now discounted 20%. There are a lot of different valid ways to use words to express changes in price ... but "ten times cheaper" is only valid if they're paying you to take the product off their hands.

[@cre8tvedge]

@@tealkerberus748 Ten times less than 100 is 10.00. Easy peasy.

[@segment932]

The tipping point I'm waiting for most is the 15 minute walk able city. If you have that you have no need for a car at all.

[@WaveOfDestiny]

public transport that works

[@IlPinnacolo]

I mean, this is a realistic goal but the pie in the sky dream should be that we exist in pods in an unconscious state like the movie The Matrix. One megabuilding can house all of us and then Gaia can heal ❤

[@joaquimbarbosa896]

More and more famous as a concept