this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

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

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[vlogbrothers 2021] Wrong on the Internet - The importance of individual action (www.youtube.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hank Green on the importance of individual action, not because it helps directly (which it does), but because it helps remind our brains of the problems which need to be solved.

Social scientists have studied this, and they've found that people taking individual action leads to more pushes for policy change, not less. The original idea is that if you focus more on individual action there will be less push for policy change. It turns out to be the opposite of that.

As social psychologists Leor Hackel and Gregg Sparkman said in their 2018 article, "People don't spring into action because they see smoke; they spring into action because they see others rushing in with water."

I've seen a lot of the "It doesn't matter what individuals do because 90% of the emissions are done by 50 companies" sentiment on Lemmy, and find it concerning. What are the best ways to address this?

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

I agree that it's a distraction, just like the "100 companies" is a distraction. I can't stand the systemic/individual comparisons because people don't even know the difference. For example, I can get a 30% tax credit for solar/storage, $2k on a heat pump, $12,500 off an EV in Colorado, and more coming soon for low/moderate income folks via the IRA in the US. When people go to buy this stuff, is it an individual action or the result of these policies? Does it even matter outside the context of this weird debate where the two things are falsely thought of as mutually exclusive? We can all walk and chew gum at the same time. Do what you can, vote, talk, etc. and don't get caught up criticizing beneficial things others are doing because they aren't exactly what you would do in their shoes. Building a culture around solving the issue takes many forms.