It’s going to get a lot worse no matter what. That being said I have a huge problem with trying to forecast the future by taking the current slope of a graph and extending it with a ruler as though nothing is going to change.
Australia has very likely gone from being one of the biggest emissions/denial countries to being absolutely terrified right in front of our eyes.
From what I’ve seen from Aussies on Reddit, the conservatives there aren’t much different than ours and Murdoch media has convinced them that this is all the green parties fault because they refused to allow back burning. Bullshit obviously but apparently its caught on. Also the fires were started by climate change fear mongers.
It’s going to be like this 3-4 months a year from now on. Good luck to the propagandists holding public opinion back for more than another year or so.
You know who believes in climate change now? My grandfather from coal country who retired to myrtle beach. Real life cures propaganda when it’s obvious.
I definitely hope you’re right. The handful of Trumpers I know in person always believed climate change was real but think the market is gonna fix it and liberals would just make it 100 times worse.
Either way they’re never getting on board with shit like a green new deal which is what it’d take to even hope to make a dent.
FWIW I’m mostly an optimistic like yourself but I’ve been slowly drifting over to team WAAF and thats especially true on climate change.
Carbon tax and dividend my friend. They aren’t entirely wrong that capitalism can get us out of this mess. We just have to make carbon=money. Carbon being free is a huge part of the problem.
Capitalism is pretty good at minimizing costs.
https://twitter.com/timduffy/status/1216493874367123468?s=21
FIRE BAD!!!
(someone here will get the reference)
Australians will vote against anything related to emission reductions 6 months from now. A large percentage are already blaming the green party for the fires because back burning was limited by them for environmental reasons which is bullshit. Although that is not as bad as blaming islamic arsonists.
Needed to rake the outback.
Not to mention all of the water that we just let flow out to sea. So wasteful.
Since the Aussie’s failed to pre-rake and collect water, they’ll have to go with plan C: Nuke the wildfires to stop them.
Seriously do not get me started on rivers or water rights/thievery!
Queensland and its treatment of the great barrier reef is why I don’t think the fires will have a lasting political impact in Australia. I was lucky to visit the reef 20 years ago and went back a couple of times since and everyone can see that it is getting destroyed. But the Adani mine still got approved and water still flows into the ocean untreated.
This.
I have no idea how you come to feel that way. Germany has one interest and that is protecting its car industry. Every wide-ranging solution is being watered down by our government. We will miss all targets we agreed on in Paris or any other convention.
We had a thriving green energy sector but subsidies for wind energy gets cut further and further. Hell we are still discussing how we can transport the energy produced on the sea towards the South of Germany because Bavaria fights new power lines to the death.
I have a collegue who is a nice and caring person but she often mocks me a little bit when I try to go more organic etc… In our region is a huge coal plant which will shut down in the near future but she is not that excited about it because her husband works there. She also reads about nature, loves the countryside here but in the end the possibility of job loss ignites the bigger fear than what will happen to this planet if we continue to burn coal on this massive scale.
I somehow come to the conclusion that the mantra that we should travel less isnt helpful at all. People need to see the beautiful places on earth. From time to time I watch the bucketlistfamily-yt and I get really inspired to go places. If people stay home and only see their neighborhood we wont get them excited to protect a rain forest or a reef somewhere thousand of miles away.
In all the things we do to reduce our carbon footprint we should find a way to get people to see the world. You wont have that on Mars or somewhere else. The collegue also said she doesnt think that space travel is the solution and shouldnt be the solution. If we fuckup this world we should be done and not get some escape plan. Yet we are concerned about the closing of a coal plant.
She knows that already after she had to take organic mincemeat recently. 
Agree. Here is one more example of Germany’s terrible climate policies: Germany is shutting down C02-free nuclear power plants while at the same time starting new brown coal mining operations that literally obliterate whole villages. From an enviromental perspective Brown coal is one of the worst ways to produce energy.
Norway probably #1. Most of the new cars bought there are electric.
Switzerland maybe? Environmental Performance Index - Wikipedia