There are really just two issues that matter this election:
One is climate- Biden put us on a path to halve carbon emissions in 6 years and reach net zero by 2050. Harris will continue that. Trump will actually increase use of fossil fuels while gutting regulations.
Every person on Earth will be harmed and endangered by that, regardless of your identity, location, or views.
The other issue is the peaceful transfer of power. Whatever problems you may have with Harris, she'll leave peaceably in 4 or 8 years. Trump will not. This is not fear mongering or hyperbole. He has said that if he wins we'll never need to vote again. He met his last electoral defeat by inciting and enabling a violent insurrection. Sure, he's an old man, but he's surrounded by young men who share the same contempt for democracy and the rule of law- like his Vice Presidential nominee, JD Vance, who will assume power if he dies in office.
We were lucky to get him out once, barely. His people are much more prepared for a coup now, he'll have broad legal immunity now thanks to SCOTUS, and he's openly vowed to become "a dictator on day one" and deploy troops on American streets.
Any issue with Harris is a temporary problem, and you can try again in 4 or 8 years. With Trump, you can't.
THE ONLY REASON TO ELECT TRUMP IS IF YOU ACTIVELY WANT THE WORLD TO BURN. And don't care how many actual people burn in the process. And if that is your position, then by your own choice you are an enemy of all humanity.
With a massive, nationwide effort the United States could reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 using existing technology and at costs aligned with historical spending on energy, according to a study led by Princeton University researchers.
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I’ve said it before and I will say it again; we more or less know what we need to do to stop climate change, we just need to actually do it.
This Princeton study lays out five possible paths the US could take to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050; their roadmaps to net-zero go into greater detail than previous studies, down to the state and sometimes even the county level.
Most importantly, all five paths to net-zero “involve annual spending on energy within the historic range of what the country spends on energy each year”. Which is only around 4-6% of our GDP. We could reach net-zero without spending more on energy than we have in the past.
A new report published Wednesday by a trio of progressive advocacy groups lifts the veil on so-called "net zero" climate pledges, which are often touted by corporations and governments as solutions to the climate emergency, but which the paper's authors argue are merely a dangerous form of greenwashing that should be eschewed in favor of Real Zero policies based on meaningful, near-term commitments to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
The report, The Big Con: How Big Polluters Are Advancing a "Net Zero" Climate Agenda to Delay, Deceive, and Deny, was published by Corporate Accountability, the Global Forest Coalition, and Friends of the Earth International, and is endorsed by more than 60 environmental organizations. The paper comes ahead of this November's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland and amid proliferating pledges from polluting corporations and governments to achieve what they claim is carbon neutrality — increasingly via dubious offsets — by some distant date, often the year 2050.
However, the report asserts that "instead of offering meaningful real solutions to justly address the crisis they knowingly created and owning up to their responsibility to act beginning with drastically reducing emissions at source, polluting corporations and governments are advancing 'net zero' plans that require little or nothing in the way of real solutions or real effective emissions cuts."
"Furthermore... they see the potential for a 'net zero' global pathway to provide new business opportunities for them, rather than curtailing production and consumption of their polluting products," it says.
According to the report:
After decades of inaction, corporations are suddenly racing to pledge to achieve "net zero" emissions. These include fossil fuel giants like BP, Shell, and Total; tech giants like Microsoft and Apple; retailers like Amazon and Walmart; financers like HSBC, Bank of America, and BlackRock; airlines like United and Delta; and food, livestock, and meat producing and agriculture corporations like JBS, Nestlé, and Cargill. Polluting corporations are in a race to be the loudest and proudest to pledge "net zero" emissions by 2050 or some other date in the distant future. Over recent years, more than 1,500 corporations have made "net zero" commitments, an accomplishment applauded by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the U.N. Secretary General.
"Increasingly, the concept of 'net zero' is being misconstrued in political spaces as well as by individual actors to evade action and avoid responsibility," the report states. "The idea behind big polluters' use of 'net zero' is that an entity can continue to pollute as usual — or even increase its emissions — and seek to compensate for those emissions in a number of ways. Emissions are nothing more than a math equation in these plans; they can be added one place and subtracted from another place."
Australian Retail giant Woolworths has pledged to power all of its operations – over 2TWh’s worth of demand – with 100% renewable electricity by 2025. At the same time, it becomes the most massive single Australian energy user to jump on board the global RE100 initiative. On November 11, RE100...
The University of Pennsylvania announced measures to achieve net zero in its fossil fuel investments by 2050.
The university is taking great pains to calculate and measure its investments’ encouragement of greenhouse gas emissions.
As the email explains, “this is a complex undertaking, and achievement of our goal will require significant efforts across many fronts.” The Office of Investments “anticipates collaborating with Penn faculty experts, with organizations developing frameworks and accounting standards, and with other institutional investors who have similar goals.”
Students quickly released a statement declaring that the university ought to be more aggressive.
The Student Sustainability Association at Penn — an “umbrella sustainability community” incorporating twelve undergraduate activism groups — doubled down on its demand for Penn to reach carbon neutrality in its endowment by 2025
The students promised to “host events furthering [sic] demonstrating divestment’s role in the constructive climate solutions conversation" and blamed the university for “greenwashing” under the guise of “a bold act of leadership.”
Husky Energy has both bought and sold credits as part of Alberta's carbon offset program, but the company wants the federal government to introduce a national system so it has the ability to offset emissions at its operations in different parts of the country where no offset schemes currently exist. The company points to its West Wild Rose oil project off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador as an example of a facility that could have net zero emissions. Husky plans to use technology to ensure the facility produces oil with 50-per-cent lower emissions compared to the average barrel of crude produced in the country. If Husky was able to buy offsets at a reasonable price, officials say it could be a net-zero facility.
Kyle Bakx, 'The environmental policy the oilpatch wants from Ottawa ASAP', CBC News
The country’s last-minute commitment before next week’s climate summit is built on hope for new technology, and little else.
Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:
After months of debate and delay, the Australian government on Tuesday promised to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050, unveiling a plan built on hope and investment in low-emissions technologies.
Promising jobs and no new taxes or mandates, the plan did not include any toughening of emissions targets for 2030 — a major component of what scientists have said will be needed from world leaders at next week’s U.N. climate summit in Glasgow. Despite international pressure, Australia signaled it would not retreat from its overreliance on coal and gas.
Both play a major role in Australia’s electricity grid and as subsidized exports. Under the plan released Tuesday, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison called “uniquely Australian,” that dependence on fossil fuels will continue, prompting critics to argue that he will be arriving in Scotland for the climate gathering with an outdated status quo wrapped up in new packaging.
“This is an update on the marketing materials used by the federal government to claim it’s doing something when it’s really doing nothing new,” said Richie Merzian, the climate and energy director at the Australian Institute, a progressive research organization. “It’s kind of ridiculous.”
Australia emits less than 2 percent of global greenhouse gases, but its climate decisions carry significant weight because it is a coal superpower and the world’s third-largest exporter of fossil fuels. At the same time, the country is increasingly vulnerable to global warming. Since 1910, Australia’s average surface temperature has warmed by 1.4 degrees Celsius, surpassing the global average. Fires, droughts and cyclones have all become more frequent and severe.
If temperatures continue on their current trajectory, which is what world leaders who have made more ambitious commitments are seeking to avoid, Australia will see major ecosystem loss in its oceans, higher food prices from severe drought and hundreds of thousands of coastal properties put at risk from flooding, climatologists say.
