The UK likes to go the other way by talking up a ridiculous goal and then immediately failing it, like "Our goal is to produce zero CO2 and become the global leader in renewables by 2025” and then immediately open a new coal mine.
Yes, but the goals in germany are written into a law, and the highest council actually blaming the government for failed goals.
The kind of law where people go to jail or the kind of law people have long televised meetings and write op eds?
The government has more interest in pursuing the global power ambitions of the Standort Deutschland rather than accomplishing environmental goals, even in spite of one of the parties being named Die Grünen (which is basically just good PR for them and nothing of substance) - and the goals that are being pursued anyway are all to the slogan of Cem Özdemir "Zwischen Wirtschaft und Umwelt gehört kein oder". Environmentalism as long as it remains profitable, even at costs of +2, +2,5, +3 or more °C
The next elections are sure to be won by Merz, with or without the AfD, and very likely to have the FDP in influential ministries, so nothing will change - or perhaps even for the worse.
That's what happens when the main goal of production is not the goal of creating socially necessary goods, but to insert money into the labor process and end up with more than you had at the beginning.
It’s amazing how all these countries set weak goal
It's can kicking. Make a promise for something 25 years in the future. Who cares if the country can't meet it? You'll likely be out of office or retired by that point. That's the next person's problem.
That's the next person's problem.
it is until people start getting organized and seeking justice on those responsible
I'm much more optimistic, though I do think it will get worse before it gets better. I think we'll end up with a few mass killer enviromental events before humans start to save themselves properly. It'll never be too late as Earth is always going to better than anywhere else for us.
Quick list of things hopeful in my feeds of the top of my head.
- Renewable energy is the cheapest energy.
- Agrivoltaics can increase yeilds while also providing power.
- Home Solar & battery pay back time is coming down all the time.
- Electric cars are the cheapest over their life time and the upfront costs are tumbling.
- Electrification of more and more transport types is happening to save costs.
- EVs are going V2H/V2G/V2X which means you get a large home (and office?) battery to take part in energy markets.
- Second life EV batteries will eventury be a source of larger, cheaper, home batteries.
- Just the other day another methane solution : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/22/bacteria-that-eats-methane-could-slow-global-heating-study-finds
- Fusion looks closer than 50 years out now.
- RightToRepair + OpenSource is slowly spreading and will reduce life time costs and reduce e-waste. Regulators are waking up too.
- Vertical farming is developing and will end up cheaper.
- Lab meat or precision fermentation is a path to animal free animal protein at lower costs.
- 5 minute cities as an idea is spreading.
- Covid has normalized WFH
- Green spaces in cities to cool them and improve mental health is increasingly being talked about and pushed in some forward thinking cities.
- Peak population is constantly revised down and sooner. Once population starts to fall, it's not set to stop for a long time.
There is a lot of movement. It's all about aligning economics with fighting climate change. Which is natural as using less to do the same thing is better for both.
One thing that is a very good sign is oil companies are scared. They are spending a lot of money pumping out FUD. Doom peddling to slow climate action, but economics is against them. Even without climate damage being costed in. Which governments will do when oil is less powerful.
Fight the doom!
Some of the things you listed are indeed good, but we're not going to avert climate catastrophe unless we reject the idea that we can only do good things if they're less expensive than the bad thing alternative.
I think it's the way to ease the masses in. You also missing that the other end is to make the bad stuff expensive. Bring environmental cost on to the balance sheet. Criminalize and enforce those laws, environmental crimes. Carrot and stick.
but how will we get that massive and necessary political actions required when the ones killing us have all the money
Democracy is for that. In Australia, Teals won on a partly climate agenda. It helps that solar is a no brainer there. Also non-fossil money wants cheaper energy, so is increasing finding itself assigned with the environment against fossil fuels.
This is the German plan:
- Shutdown the nuclear plants
- Burn more lignite
- WFH
The council said assumptions made by the transport ministry on the effectiveness of the planned and already implemented measures, such as a discounted national rail ticket, a CO2 surcharge on truck tolls and increased working from home, were also optimistic. "Private vehicle individual transport is not addressed, so to speak. And that is ultimately a gap in the transport programme," Brigitte Knopf, deputy chairwoman of the council, told a news conference presenting the report findings on Tuesday
The plan for transportation emissions, 2/3 of the target to be cut, is WFH. Yikes!
Funny, because the energy sector was the only on track to fulfill the targets. Last year it even overshot its targets and is expected to again save more CO2 as planned in 2023.
Maybe, just maybe, its more relevant that other sectors are managed by the FDP (market liberals) and SPD (social democrats), while energy is managed by die Grünen (greens).
Do you know about the transportation sector? It is where 2/3 of Germanys planned reduction is.
China still is the ONLY country in the world to have met the super meager Paris Climate Accord goals.
China has absolutely not met the Paris accord goals. Check climate action tracker for a good breakdown of countries policies and actions and the projection it puts them on. No country is anyway close.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/08/climate/cop27-emissions-country-compare.html
https://archive.is/pUfa6
New York times reported China is ahead of pledges
... did you link the correct article? It seems quite critical of China's emissions?
None of the world's biggest emitters -- China, the United States, the European Union and India -- have reduced their emissions enough to meet the Paris Agreement goals.
Over the past two decades, China’s emissions have surged as the country has developed economically at a breakneck pace. Mainly because of its reliance on coal, one of the highest-emitting fuels, China now accounts for almost a third of all human-caused greenhouse gases — more than the United States, Europe and Japan combined.
Granted, the article says that China's emissions are projected to peak in 2025, but that still means emissions are estimated to increase every year for another 3 years. They have not (yet) actually reduced their annual emissions, let alone achieved anything close to net-zero.
According to projections from Climate Action Tracker and other monitoring organizations, China’s emissions are nearing their peak, years ahead of when China’s government had pledged to reach that goal. Analyses show China’s rate of emissions neither growing nor declining from now until 2025, before gradually dropping off. China’s peak will occur at a far lower per capita emissions level than countries like the United States.
The goal that China has beaten, it would seem, is their own internal peak date goal. It's good that they set and kept a goal, but keeping an internal goal is not the same thing as keeping the Paris Accord goals. The Paris Accord represents the bare minimum for avoiding a climate catastrophe and should continue to be the primary bar which we measure countries against.
They literally have a graph showing their paris accord goal as of now, where they as of now, and a 1.5c goal. They and India are ahead.
Also
China’s emissions are nearing their peak, years ahead of when China’s government had pledged to reach that goal.
Every country has different pledge responsibilities it would be drastically unfair to ask more of developing countries to reduce at the same rate as non, especially taking into account the looting the west has done and the offshored emissions on their behalf.
I'm not anti-China. I'm just pro-clarity.
When someone says "China has absolutely not met the Paris accord goals" and you respond "New York times reported China is ahead of pledges", it creates the impression that you are correcting the former statement with a contradictory source. The source is not actually contradictory, however, because it explicitly affirms the original point.
They literally have a graph showing their paris accord goal as of now, where they as of now, and a 1.5c goal. They and India are ahead.
That is excellent. I'm very pleased to hear this. Perhaps you could share that graph next time instead?
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It's in the article.
spoiler
How is your reading comprehension so poor?
This graph, correct?
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It doesn't seem much closer to the blue Paris Accord goal compared with any of the other graphs in the same article, as far as I can tell.
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As for India, I don't see how beating a goal of **+**25% emissions with +20% is any cause for celebration. I actually agree with you and the article when you say that they don't need to be held to the same standard as fully developed economies, but in that case we probably shouldn't be talking about them at all when it comes to meeting emissions reduction goals.
Fair enough if we're going just on pledges on total emissions change by 2030 than China and many other countries like India, Sweden, Denmark and Morocco are in line for the pledges taken. This is just a component of the Paris Accords the main pledge was to take action to limit warming well under 2 degrees. No countries action or policies are in line to meet that pledge. That can be seen in the article you linked showing how far off all four emitters are to 1.5.
Climate action tracker and the CCPI they put out are the best sources for accurately tracking countries actions. China and pretty much all other countries fall down on their net zero targets rooted in fiction and missing NDC targets.
Well duh? Are they nationalizing all carbon emitting industries to begin a managed decline of the industry or are they hoping economic magic and wishful thinking will work?
they're turning their coal power plants back on after shutting down their nuclear power plants. oh, and planning on converting existing natural gas pipelines to carry hydrogen instead... likely generated by natural gas.
The UBA is truly one of the funnier institutions. It's a federal agency tasked with suggesting and studying how to cut emissions, so they propose goals for legislation, none of which ever have been listened to even slightly. It's basically a welfare program and I don't even mean that derogatory.
Woah
no one could have predicted this
Meanwhile china with tens of trillions of dollars to be invested in a planned economic initiative to go completely renewable
