Peter, thank you for these brilliant and well researched thoughts. I'll be up all night checking and double checking all the sources you've included here! I can't see anything I disagree with and I'm very much looking forward to your forthcoming article.
It all boils down to our programming being so successful, we can't let go of the notion of needing the state to govern us. The rise of "green energy" within capitalist framework brought that fact to the surface like never before. I can't even wrap my head around people believing that any promise the state has ever made regarding "green targets" was truthful and that there has actually been a genuine intention to reduce our emissions and become sustainable. It just goes to show how little breadcrumbs people need to swallow the entire bait and start enabling and perpetuating the system.
There has never been and there can never possibly be a solution within a violent, extractivist framework of colonialism and capitalism that is by default anti-life (human and planetary). The state pursuing various targets, pledges and treaties will never save us, for it requires us to surrender our power to the state with a belief that we need to be governed and a blind trust that we can be governed justly and humanely. Only we can save us, as a collective that has dismantled and rewritten the framework.
And yet, even with the planet burning at a critical point, those of us who think this way are still a minority - a minority bigger than ever before, but a minority still, with the majority desperately clinging onto their rulers and their promises. We truly didn't move far from the times when we unconditionally surrendered to and believed in the divine rights of kings, we just reframed our language to soothe ourselves with the breadcrumbs of the alleged progress.
I think it's worth mentioning that military-based creation of carbon is not even counted in the emissions goals, and that the US military, in particular, is the largest consumer of hydrocarbons in the world. https://substack.com/@animalpolitics/p-147424712.
I could add more, but I think you highlight the problems of reliance on state or oligarchy-controlled systems to address pollution admirably. Everything they've done is a fraud. I'm not sure what the solution is, though. I'm a believer in conservation at every level, but what do you think it's going to take to stop the mass extinction going on right now? Or is it already too late?
I really liked your article. You mentioned you would post the article you were doing this research for after August 16th. I can't seem to find neither link nor article. Is it online yet?
The article is fantastic, the situation is of course shocking. Especially when you know it doesn't have to be that way. They are miserable hypocrites and too many still believe them or I think that many don't want to give up their privileges and want to keep everything like that, whatever. I read that there was a landslide on the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes, 60 km from Los Angeles, known as the city of the rich. Their villas are sliding into the sea. I couldn't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude. Oh and I also translated this article into German and distributed it on Masto. I'll put the link below here, what it looks like. Solidarity and regards, Sofie
Sorry. While I agree with many of your broad points, I think your story's headline, and much of its text, was misleading.
The headline reads, "Two Years and $300 Billion into Biden’s Climate Plan, Emissions Are Higher than Ever." The implication is that *U.S.* emissions are rising. Yet you acknowledge, around the sixth graf, that they fell last year. You're right that the drop was meager. You say 3%, I calculate a slightly smaller decrease, 2.3%. But at least it was a drop, not a rise.
You dismiss that, first by calling it "a government claim" though it's a numerical fact, and second by insinuating that the drop is bogus because it applies only to carbon fuels burned and ignores carbon fuels extracted and exported. Yet national emissions *should* be calculated based on fuels burned. If U.S. exports are fueling other countries' usage, our point of attack should be on that usage, without which U.S. exports would disappear.
Alas, your accounting convention, if you will, is of a piece with the larger climate movement that you appear to deride. I view the climate movement (and, it seems, your) focus on energy supply as badly misplaced. We should be attacking usage/demand, on every possible front: from promoting congestion pricing (for which I've campaigned in NYC, where I live, for decades) and YIMBY development that forestalls suburban and exurban sprawl; to bicycle culture and infrastructure to stopping highway expansions; and, yes, building large blocks of renewables including "industrial"-scale wind farms and large solar arrays, that, with every kWh generated, keep equivalent fossil fuels in the ground.
I also object to your dismissing the carbon-reduction value of the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act because it didn't immediately expand renewable-electricity production and, thus, continue the excellent but overlooked post-2005 phenomenon by which energy-efficiency plus increased wind power plus increased solar have cut emissions by more than the substitution of fossil gas for coal. It takes time -- more than you evidently want to allow -- not just to site and construct renewable energy facilities but to site and build the factories to manufacture the wind turbines and solar arrays. You could have at least acknowledged that.
For the record, I far prefer carbon pricing to green-energy subsidization. But since the former isn't in the offing, I'll gladly, for now, settle for the latter -- at least the intelligently crafted form offered in the IRA. Next time, please be more judicious in parsing emissions (though I'll pull back somewhat on that criticism if your story's headline was entirely the editors' doing).
Peter, thank you for these brilliant and well researched thoughts. I'll be up all night checking and double checking all the sources you've included here! I can't see anything I disagree with and I'm very much looking forward to your forthcoming article.
It all boils down to our programming being so successful, we can't let go of the notion of needing the state to govern us. The rise of "green energy" within capitalist framework brought that fact to the surface like never before. I can't even wrap my head around people believing that any promise the state has ever made regarding "green targets" was truthful and that there has actually been a genuine intention to reduce our emissions and become sustainable. It just goes to show how little breadcrumbs people need to swallow the entire bait and start enabling and perpetuating the system.
There has never been and there can never possibly be a solution within a violent, extractivist framework of colonialism and capitalism that is by default anti-life (human and planetary). The state pursuing various targets, pledges and treaties will never save us, for it requires us to surrender our power to the state with a belief that we need to be governed and a blind trust that we can be governed justly and humanely. Only we can save us, as a collective that has dismantled and rewritten the framework.
And yet, even with the planet burning at a critical point, those of us who think this way are still a minority - a minority bigger than ever before, but a minority still, with the majority desperately clinging onto their rulers and their promises. We truly didn't move far from the times when we unconditionally surrendered to and believed in the divine rights of kings, we just reframed our language to soothe ourselves with the breadcrumbs of the alleged progress.
I think it's worth mentioning that military-based creation of carbon is not even counted in the emissions goals, and that the US military, in particular, is the largest consumer of hydrocarbons in the world. https://substack.com/@animalpolitics/p-147424712.
I could add more, but I think you highlight the problems of reliance on state or oligarchy-controlled systems to address pollution admirably. Everything they've done is a fraud. I'm not sure what the solution is, though. I'm a believer in conservation at every level, but what do you think it's going to take to stop the mass extinction going on right now? Or is it already too late?
Hello Peter,
I really liked your article. You mentioned you would post the article you were doing this research for after August 16th. I can't seem to find neither link nor article. Is it online yet?
The publication got delayed but here it is!
https://inthesetimes.com/article/inflation-reduction-act-green-energy-carbon-emissions-broken-climate-framework
The article is fantastic, the situation is of course shocking. Especially when you know it doesn't have to be that way. They are miserable hypocrites and too many still believe them or I think that many don't want to give up their privileges and want to keep everything like that, whatever. I read that there was a landslide on the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes, 60 km from Los Angeles, known as the city of the rich. Their villas are sliding into the sea. I couldn't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude. Oh and I also translated this article into German and distributed it on Masto. I'll put the link below here, what it looks like. Solidarity and regards, Sofie
https://sofie047.wordpress.com/2024/09/06/standpunkt-klima-landliches-amerika-nach-zwei-jahren-und-300-milliarden-us-dollar-laufzeit-von-bidens-klimaplan-sind-die-emissionen-hoher-als-je-zuvor/
https://popularresistance.org/two-years-and-300-billion-into-bidens-climate-plan-emissions-are-higher/
Sorry. While I agree with many of your broad points, I think your story's headline, and much of its text, was misleading.
The headline reads, "Two Years and $300 Billion into Biden’s Climate Plan, Emissions Are Higher than Ever." The implication is that *U.S.* emissions are rising. Yet you acknowledge, around the sixth graf, that they fell last year. You're right that the drop was meager. You say 3%, I calculate a slightly smaller decrease, 2.3%. But at least it was a drop, not a rise.
You dismiss that, first by calling it "a government claim" though it's a numerical fact, and second by insinuating that the drop is bogus because it applies only to carbon fuels burned and ignores carbon fuels extracted and exported. Yet national emissions *should* be calculated based on fuels burned. If U.S. exports are fueling other countries' usage, our point of attack should be on that usage, without which U.S. exports would disappear.
Alas, your accounting convention, if you will, is of a piece with the larger climate movement that you appear to deride. I view the climate movement (and, it seems, your) focus on energy supply as badly misplaced. We should be attacking usage/demand, on every possible front: from promoting congestion pricing (for which I've campaigned in NYC, where I live, for decades) and YIMBY development that forestalls suburban and exurban sprawl; to bicycle culture and infrastructure to stopping highway expansions; and, yes, building large blocks of renewables including "industrial"-scale wind farms and large solar arrays, that, with every kWh generated, keep equivalent fossil fuels in the ground.
I also object to your dismissing the carbon-reduction value of the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act because it didn't immediately expand renewable-electricity production and, thus, continue the excellent but overlooked post-2005 phenomenon by which energy-efficiency plus increased wind power plus increased solar have cut emissions by more than the substitution of fossil gas for coal. It takes time -- more than you evidently want to allow -- not just to site and construct renewable energy facilities but to site and build the factories to manufacture the wind turbines and solar arrays. You could have at least acknowledged that.
For the record, I far prefer carbon pricing to green-energy subsidization. But since the former isn't in the offing, I'll gladly, for now, settle for the latter -- at least the intelligently crafted form offered in the IRA. Next time, please be more judicious in parsing emissions (though I'll pull back somewhat on that criticism if your story's headline was entirely the editors' doing).