Our left wing party is still opening new coal and gas mines so be thankful for whatever progress you get I say.

perfection is often the enemy of good.

I whole heartedly agree. Things don't change overnight. We can't rebuild hundreds of cities to eliminate car dependency by next Wednesday.

What we can change rapidly is behavior. It isn't hard to convince someone to eat less beef when alternatives are cheaper. It isn't hard to convince people that buying one nice 30 dollar shirt that looks better, feels better, and lasts for many years is cheaper than 2 20 dollar shirts that fade and unravel at the seems in a year.

We can't expect everyone to junk their canyoneros tomorrow. We can convince them to harass city officials into put bollards up on the bike lanes because more bikes is less traffic that they have to sit in.

As an elementary school teacher, “the hard way” is the overwhelming choice of kids. I don’t think it changes that much when they grow into adults.

Or we can work to stop things that are existential crises.

Gotta nuke something

It's doubtful curbing CO2 output will put a stop to it now. We're already seeing the beginnings of feedback loops kicking in, and with them runaway climate collapse.

Not exactly. Most references to 1.5C are about the long term average hitting that level, not an individual year.

IMHO this mostly tells us that Biden is talking about climate policy with the people around him. That's enough to be a big deal.

Nuclear war is quick.

Climate change is slow.

Gimme the quick flash over the boiling frog deal Everytime.

The scariness multiplied by the probability of it happening maybe...

IDK, climate-fueled illnesses — tied to hotter temperatures, and swifter passage of pathogens and toxins. Continuing pandemics would be no treat.

We're still some years from hitting an ongoing sustained average of 1.5°C above what it was in the late 1800s. That's what people mostly talking about when they say 1.5°C

May I remind you global thermonuclear war is bad for the environment?

Nobody is suggesting that the US suddenly and instantly stop extracting, but that it be phased out in conjunction with getting rid of the need for oil in the first place.

The Saudi royal family has an alternative at this point, which is to live off their sovereign wealth fund, which owns stocks and bonds outside the country. They are also sitting on several million barrels/day in reserve extraction capacity, and could pretty easily crash oil prices if they felt like it.