That’s awesome! There’s a lot of work to do to make renewable heating more of an option though- even with the £7,500 grant, British Gas estimate most of their installations cost an extra £5,000 due mainly to plumbing and radiator reworks. That’s sadly a lot more than installing a new combi-boiler, so most households won’t touch it.

I don’t have any suggestions, but if the UK wants to make really strong progress, we need to tip the balance so that clean heating is a more economic choice than doubling down on gas.

Ok, so this is a little embarassing, but I thought the Lenmy summary text was the whole this and this was like 4 paragraphs with an inflamatory headline. I still think the headline isn’t a good framing, but reading the article know that I know it exists (doh!) It actually makes some clear and well argued points on difficulties enforcing it.

I still stand by my initial point, I think the Paris agreement has driven some of the real progress that European countries have made on climate, and branding it a “delusion” isn’t helpful.

I think this is a dangerous take. Is the Paris agreement ideal? Hell to the no. But it’s one of the biggest political achievements on the environment from admittedly lacking list so far.

Make no mistake, big polluters hate the Paris agreement, which is exactly why Trump left the Paris agreement as fast as possible both times he’s been in office.

We should learn from the mistakes of the Paris agreement, and we need to do better, but we shouldn’t see it as a “delusion” or a complete failure. Giving up only helps polluting companies.

Also just to add, mainly because it’s so interesting, that a lot of current existing companies participated in the holocaust, including US ones like Ford: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust

To be fair, VW is a company that had ties to fascism during WW2, if you buy a Tesla today, you’re putting money in the pocket of fascism. There’s definitely a difference.

How meaningful is the golf vs renewables comparison? Wind and solar require different ammounts of land, especially factoring in offshore wind? Also, Sweden has one of the cleanest energy make ups, but a comparitively high amount of golf courses, so like, I dunno?

Off topic, but any other non-US people here, how are you reacting to the USA’s facism on hyperdrive streak?

I don’t think the US has ever been the most popular country, but now the president is trying to eradicate palestine, disrupt European security from Russia, and plunge the world into a climate apocalypse at an even faster than before rate, I feel a lot worse about any interactions with the USA. I’ve been trying to move away from using anything US produced or owned, which isn’t particularly easy.

Is it just me? Was I naive to think US was any better before? Am I naive in singling out the US?

Sharing this here as it’s exactly what you mention!

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity

CO2g per KWh is the standard metric for “how much a countries electricity pollutes”.

Tldr China’s is 580 and improving. USA is 370 and improving at a similar rate (this obviously might change under the current administration).

Others worth pointing too is Sweden (40gCO2) which is a good marker of what’s possible for a wealthy country and India (700gCO2) because as a country with a lot of economic development and recent historic poverty, it shows why China’s improvement is worth noting.

EDIT: I probabably implied that China and USA should be compared in terms of their improvements, but didn’t mean too! I figure Lemmy is a mostly USA centric place, so thought that was a good benchmark. Comparing USA to similar wealthy, established enconomies like European countries, it’s improving a lot slower. Comparing China to fast developing countries like India or Nigeria (probably a messy comparison) shows its improving faster than you’d expect.

Do you mean as in civil dissobedience (so that the administration are forced to fire you or accept that you aren’t going along with facism) or as in sneak ops sucking at your job to slow things down?

I like both ideas! I’m sure plenty do them as well, but maybe get less attention/coverage than high prifile resignations.

Well, we can achieve much better than either of those two if there’s political will. But given 3.95C or 4C I know which I’d pick, and aren’t many western conveniences I wouldn’t trade for even that small improvement.