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:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
From this report
I'll note that California is a bit unusual, having imposed energy efficiency standards on buildings decades ago (much of the US didn't) and having actively taken steps to substitute solar, wind, and storage for fossil-fuel based electric generation
But the tail pipe emissions are coming from Oregon, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. In California, you can breathe the exhaust from Amazon trucks right off the tail pipe.
California really needs to get its car dependency in check. There are small movements in this direction in recent years but we’re decades behind many European countries at this point. Unlike other emissions categories where we’re close to the best performers among large economies.
California at least has a law in place, which makes fossil fuel cars sales illegal. That does not solve car dependency, but at least it massivly helps with the oil problem. California HSR is also going to help a lot.
Super interesting, I would assume California has a good amount of electric cars? But where are emissions from cattle / other farm animals / agriculture?
Neat trick, if you import all your meat, it doesn't show up on the plot.
Yeah, this report is designed with a transportation agenda in mind, so the graph only shows a select set of emission sources to make the tailpipe emissions look as bad as possible. Add in all other sources of emissions and the graph doesn't look quite as impressive for the point they're trying to make.
Figure 1: In the 2019 statewide greenhouse gas emissions inventory, car tailpipes accounted for 119 MMTCO2e — roughly 28% of California’s overall emissions, and more than the emissions from the entire buildings sector and electricity sector combined.
This is also 5 years old data. Would be interesting to see how things hold up nowadays
It would be interesting. Anecdotally, many more EVs now, but also larger vehicles and people driving longer distances due to increased super-commuting.
Not sure how it would shake out. Probably a bit lower because I suspect the EV effect is larger.
EVs make up a very small percentage of the market. The majority of cars are gas powered, and more people are buying more cars, so it's not like the number of gas cars is decreasing, just some of the additional cars are EV. It was be very hard for California to be climate neutral while it's still so dependent on cars.
25% of all vehicles sold, and 4% of vehicles on the road in 2022. Considering the continued growth it’s likely higher by now. That’s not a huge number but it’s starting to be enough to bring emissions down, especially in combination with the decarbonization of the electric grid.
However, I agree that the best and easiest solution is to move away from the private automobile as the main mode of transit.
Sure, but there are likely 4% more cars on the road now than there were in 2019. One graph I see shows about a 1% YoY growth of the car population in the US. EVs might have saved us from a 4% increase in car emissions, but car emissions are still increasing. I am really not convinced that EVs are the solution to the US's massive car emissions. Ban production of all gas cars in 2024 and then maybe there's a solution in sight.