Glueing to the streets and alike?
I never found that to be helpful. Preventing chopping down forests to open new coal strip mining on the other hand .. I would be with you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_Forest
Glueing to streets can lead to terrorism charges, taking part of a demonstration even if it is not a legal one so far not.
(but among those activists there are certainly more radical elements, also actual eco terrorists, they recently showed solidarity to someone who was hiding close there, who made attacks on power plants and transmission lines)
The ones that made Hambach happen were the people that camped there in the woods literally for years in tree houses and they (some of them) also got arrested for it.
There was a lot of intentional ideological violence towards police. Part of the reason why I did not engage with them further, but I know people there.
They still camp there btw
Also now with social media, you can find a lot of example of what are called in France "Appariteurs" who often start the mayhem then leave through police lines without getting arrested.
Yes yes, I heard that before. Let's just say I have been to many demonstrations and know the scene so sure, unprovoked police violence is a thing. But otherwise the pattern I witnessed quite often(and especially in the context of Hambach) is: some throwing stones or worse at police, police reacts with batons and teargas .. "wah wah, evil police!!"
When you have ACAB as a mantra and the core group consists of left wing extremists, what do you expect?
The openly showed solidarity with someone doing literal sabotage attacks on power plants and transmission lines. They are beyond reason and I claim the Hambach was temporarily saved not because, but despite those radicals. The mass demonstrations were what helped.
An "appariteur" was caught on video launching rocks at police recently, then when confronted by a parliamentary rejoined someone wearing a bodycam. They aren't hiding anymore. It was then confirmed by the local prosecutor he was from the police.
If they don't - they are also immune to agent provocateurs - if that is rather what happened here.
You make it sound like you proved I was wrong... somehow? I never said "0% of the world is informed and votes accordingly". I said that the majority isn't and doesn't.
Sure, once you realise you personally aren't able to change that, you can move to the next thing that makes you feel good (in this case working on "green tech", if I understand correctly). Some people go live in a hut in the woods.
Doesn't change the fact that the people is the government, and can generally vote for change. But they don't, for many reasons, including "they actually spend very little time thinking about those things". I would argue that most people spend vastly more time saying that the government is stupid than actually getting informed on problems and what it would take to solve them.
That is not true in large parts of the world. Now even the most absolute monarchy has to listen to the people sometimes, but they absolutely can and do choose to do whatevery the small power circle on top wants, as long as the situation is somewhat under control for them.
Another 8-9% is from India which while still classified as a flawed democracy is borderline.
And 11% is in the US which I guess we will find out if it is a flawed democracy or hybrid regime over the next few months. But at best it is paralyzed by polarization on the issue. And also due to lobbying/bribery from oil producing nations and states. The electoral system enforces two party rule which caused this problem in many nations, most of which are no longer classified as democracies.
These are also incidentally the nations best poised to solve the engineering issue of maintaining modern QOL while reducing emissions. The US has certainly contributed and China is working the issue very aggressively, largely out of a need for energy independence. But both of those contributions are fragile. The polarization is affecting it in the US and if China secured sources of energy that were cheaper but emitted, they would not hesitate.
Oh yeah well your country produces more emissions than Vatican City. Since absolute emissions are bad, no matter the size of the country, your country sucks too. Every country that isn't in last place for emissions sucks! Get your emissions down to Vatican City levels otherwise you're just as bad as everyone else /s
> are not amenable to international plans to reduce emissions
Please tell me more about this. They're actually flattening or reducing emissions. They signed the Paris agreement.
> Want to see the ourworldindata graph (again, probably)?
That graph tells me North America and Europe combined produce the nearly the same as China. That means if they go 0 carbon tomorrow, it's like taking out one China's worth of emissions. Is that futile?
North America and Europe have also emitted way more cumulatively than China. Historic emissions are the cause of problems today.
Here's another ourworldindata graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions
If you tell me "historic emissions" don't matter then I have to ask, where is the line? Do China's emissions yesterday also not matter? That's historic too, right?
> They're actually flattening or reducing emissions.
Reeeeally. Not reflected in the graph yet. Which of those is it anyway, flattening out, at a third of global emissions?
I've heard "historic emissions" before. You haven't reached for "per capita" yet. "Lump all the other countries together and blame it on them" is a new one. But what are you doing? Trying everything not to blame China, why?
> Do China's emissions yesterday also not matter? That's historic too, right?
That one doesn't even work, I could just agree that it's all about today's emissions.
I'm not aware of a dictionary which defines "most" as 31%.
> Not reflected in the graph yet
Actually it is. The graph you yourself shared. And it only goes up to 2024. The following year had actual reductions.
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/
> Trying everything not to blame China, why?
You're trying everything to blame only China. Why?
> I've heard "historic emissions" before
And you think they don't matter? What do you think is warming the planet right now?
> You haven't reached for "per capita" yet.
Hey if per capita isn't important then get your country into last place. Until then it sucks just as hard as every other country not in last place. That's what you're saying, not me.
Yes, I think who did what in the past is irrelevant to solving a problem now. What's that for, punishing sinners? Not the goal. We can decide that it's not morally China's fault (ha), but they'd still be the ones doing it, and it would still be hot (in the future, the only controllable part).
I can't comprehend this "last place" stuff. I think your idea - or ideology - is that the West is responsible (as in having agency) and blames China as a distraction. This flies in the face of the plain facts of where emissions come from and which entities have control over that, specifically the CCP and the CCP.
And you believe this government will be able to order the population to stop burning fossil fuels, go back to living pre-industrial lives? Heck no.
That government was however able to order far-seeing investments in solar panel and battery manufacturing (done for national security, not climate, but who cares).
Even if China went 0 carbon, it wouldn't solve climate change because the other 69% of emissions would continue. Existing emissions will go on causing heating. Everyone has to make a change.
China for its part has done a ton of heavy lifting with its 31% of emissions. It manufactures abundant panels and batteries which make the transition cheap for everyone.
> Yes, I think who did what in the past is irrelevant to solving a problem now
You may think so, probably because you live in a rich country. But the people in developing countries asked to sacrifice in solving the problem do not.
If you move into a shared house with existing housemates, would you accept that you have to clean the already-disgusting bathroom prior to moving in because you have IBS and would use the bathroom more after moving in? You'd say "fuck no the people already living here messed it up".
That's what convincing developing countries to abandon fossil fuels at great personal cost is like. Make it cheap for them and they will do it. But if they see Westerners driving SUVs and flying everywhere, it's the same as your average Westerner's resentment of Elon Musk's private jet.
> they'd still be the ones doing it, and it would still be hot
Only 31% of it. Not even most of it. It would still be hot if they stopped.
> I can't comprehend this "last place" stuff.
It's the same as your "first place" stuff. If "most emissions" is terrible and everyone else is blameless, then "least emissions" is unalloyed good and everyone else is to blame.
> that the West is responsible (as in having agency) and blames China as a distraction
I think everyone is responsible and the West blames China as an excuse to do nothing (probably China does the same internally, I have no idea). Most emissions happen outside of China and are very much within the West's power to affect.
China, you mean, not changing the subject?
> asked to sacrifice in solving the problem do not.
So you mean that China wants the west to make some emission reductions, and then China will cut back on industry. I'm inclined to think they might be happy just with the first part and not bother with the second.
I think their 32% is instrumental to the rest of the world's political will, so I'm pretty much saying the reverse of what you're saying. This might indeed be a "you first" sort of situation, but there's no credible dialog about it anyway, Paris Shmaris.
No I mean all developing countries including China. For example, India's emissions are rapidly rising and people in the West love using that as a secondary pretext for their own inaction.
> So you mean that China wants the west to make some emission reductions, and then China will cut back on industry.
China already has reduced fossil fuel use in electricity generation and industry. I gave you two sources earlier. Here's a third: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transi...
Now if you're intent on blaming solely China regardless of the facts, I really can't help you. You should examine your blindspots and biases before continuing the discussion.
> I'm inclined to think they might be happy just with the first part and not bother with the second.
I'm not. China is more exposed to climate change than most Western countries. And also PV and batteries are legitimately cheaper than burning coal. So they might just race ahead on sheer economics while we bicker.
> I think that 32% is instrumental to the rest of the world's political will,
I really don't think so. They'll just pick on India or some other poor country trying to haul themselves out of poverty. Because "political will" was never about what China or India do. It's about protecting the fossil fuel industry and its cheap energy.
A ton of carbon is a ton of carbon. It doesn't matter who reduces their emissions. Since we both agree on that logic, then the question is "who reduces emissions first?".
To me it's obvious: the richest countries first, because they have the most money to do it. This is where our views diverge.
Why is "trying to haul themselves out of poverty" an excuse for causing climate change, by the way? That's a good trade-off, you imply? Being a poor underdog means you can have a dirty industrial revolution, because it's only fair that you should get a turn at burning a load of coal, is that the idea?
You say "China is more exposed": do they - anybody influential in China - actually express any concern about it? I don't know either.
It's a better reason than "I like hamburgers and steaks, big cars, and jet travel". Do you imply the West's choices are somehow nobler? Or is it ok because those "sins" as you call them are grandfathered in?
What are a poor country's choices? Stay poor, climate change happens anyway, and now they don't have any money to deal with it. Or get rich and have a chance of surviving.
> Being a poor underdog means you can have a dirty industrial revolution, because it's only fair that you should get a turn at burning a load of coal, is that the idea?
They would happily use free or heavily subsidized solar panels and batteries instead. Rich countries could easily fund this and tariff anyone who still burns fossil fuels. Why not do that instead of going "It's useless to do anything because China blah blah"?
> do they - anybody influential in China - actually express any concern about it?
They have targets to reduce carbon emissions, energy consumption per unit of GDP, particulate pollution, non-fossil fuel energy in total energy consumption, and increase forest cover in their current and previous 2 5-year plans. I didn't go back further than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Five-Year_Plan
Why coal when the peaks exceed what renewables can offer? The same reason the US builds natural gas plants (and is building more of those than anyone else in the world)--it is their fossil fuel that is the cheapest and has the most secure supply.
Unless you can make a good case that some people have some kind of natural or divine right to a bigger share of whatever planetary CO2 budget we decide we have, shares have to be allocated per person rather than per country.
Any other systems leads to absurdity once you take into account that groupings of people can change.
Well, you did qualify it with "in the" US but the US military is a bigger polluter than many nation states; number one source of carbon emissions in the world
Soooo yeah, Murica. As your vanity demands; all the attention is on you.
I and the rest of the world look forward to the US objectively failing to meet the moment.
If the US Defense Department were a country, it would have ranked 59th worldwide in emissions in 2024
https://thebulletin.org/2026/08/mission-impossible-quantifyi...
I recommend any doubters to watch Abby Martin's documentary Earth Greatest Enemy.
Or not? Maybe we just focus on mitigating the loss of quality of life?
Climate is extremely complex. I'd rather we did not screw it up even more with climate engineering. But that's not all: even if we somehow managed to safely do climate engineering, it would only have an influence on the climate emergency. We have an energy problem and we have a biodiversity loss problem.
We are currently, measurably living in a mass extinction. It is happening orders of magnitudes faster than the famous one of the dinosaurs. And it is completely unrelated to climate change (but related to human activity of course). Of course, climate change makes it worse! But if we fixed the climate, we would still be living in a mass extinction event.
Climate engineering doesn't solve that. The solution to that is to do less of what humans are doing. And ideally do it better, so that it mitigates the impact on our quality of life.
Agreed, we're pretty much screwed.
Still, I find it more rational to try to bet our survival on what we understand (we have to cut our CO2 emissions) rather than stuff we don't understand ("look 'ma, if I put this in the atmosphere for a few minutes, it has this effect locally. Let's assume nothing will go wrong when we do that for years at a global scale. After all, if it goes wrong, we're just dead... could be worse, right? Right?").
Russia not so much, the melting of the perma frost might even enable agriculture in some regions previously impossible.
China will also suffer strongly, they know this so they are investing heavily also in resilience measures. anti desertification measures in the green wall, Water management, even geo engineering (which caused some tensions with india about raining off clouds before the water drifts away)
Source? Climate change causes a lot more issues than just "it's a few degrees warmer", are you aware?
Like... extreme weather events and biodiversity loss, for a start.
The overall yield of grain crops in Russia is expected to decrease by 17% by 2050
we are talking about economic effectrs that might convince a trump/putin to take action. So biodiversity loss will likely not convince them. neither will indigenious habitat loss.
Well "biodiversity loss" doesn't sound too bad. The "biodiversity loss" problem we are facing right now is a mass extinction orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs.
The day we cannot produce enough food anymore, won't it have an economic effect?
Ironically most conservative policy makers are not very avid conservationists...
And we all import tons of stuff from China. Stop importing from China if you want to reduce their carbon footprint. Instead of paying them to build cheap stuff and then complaining because they build stuff for you.
"If I wasn't selling cocaine to kids, someone else would be doing it (from the statistics I just made up in my head to feel better), so surely it's not bad if I do it"?
That completely ignores realities of society, power and influence, even in democratic societies.