Dan Romero on Warpcast

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Leo pfp

Putting an oil guy in charge of energy is going to push oil production up, prices down, and renewables out. From foreign policy to climate change, Americans chose America over the world. Can’t hugely blame them, but other countries are not taking the same route. That said, if, like me, you believe the learning curve of renewables is going to make solar much better on price than a barrel of oil in the near future, this isn’t terrible news. But Trump is pushing that timeline out by a few years, and a few years is meaningful when you acknowledge how much damage extreme weather events are causing around the world. If you push oil prices down by a few dollars, but you get one extra hurricane which causes $50bn in damage, is it even worth it?

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Carbon emissions declined during the first Trump presidency. https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/10/06/us-emissions-four-years-president-trump/

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Thanks for the link, two points from it The IEA is quoted as “can the US do more? Definitely. Can the US be a leader of the global energy transition? Definitely. So therefore the US politics will matter more.” And this is largely due to the general trend away from fossil fuels, which nonetheless slowed down Generally the article is critical of Trump on climate; maybe because it’s biased, but still: overall this article makes me more confident in my view of ‘Trump is bad for climate, so thank god solar is getting so cheap’ Is there anything Trump did with the purpose of improving the climate? This is what would change my mind

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Oooo do cancer alley and how chevron deferral is being used to continue to poison the workers

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Could that be related to the pandemic? (FWIW I haven't read the article yet)

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@aviationdoctor.eth

It’s not just the net direction of travel that matters — it’s the speed of travel too in this case. We’ve already blown past the 1.5°C lesser goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement and we’re headed for a 2°C exceedance well before the end of the century. Every ton of CO2 emissions that could have been avoided, but wasn’t, will have an increasingly expensive opportunity cost (the social cost of late carbon is greater than that of early carbon). And the current valuation of Trump’s expected energy policies puts America (the world’s second largest scope 1 emitter, let alone scope 3) well off-course from where we need it to be (Biden’s policies would have also missed the mark, but by a lesser margin). I’m not American and not a US resident, but I obviously share the same atmosphere so this concerns me just as much. Methodology at https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-trump-election-win-could-add-4bn-tonnes-to-us-emissions-by-2030/

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