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The user above is just one of those guys who looks at anything the dems do and thinks, look at this bitch eating crackers.

Nothing good can ever be celebrated or praised. It has to always be bad.

And yet even still the overwhelming majority of that “small plastic” is just… tire dust. That’s still the bulk of the material.

That’s the vast scale of automobile pollution. Another piece of how horrific auto-centric society is for the entire planet.

Chinese coal is so much more complicated than people give it credit for.

Provincial leaders don’t want to risk looking bad by having to import electricity from other provinces so they build coal plants then have hilariously low usage rates. They’re basically building coal peaker plants comma but the overall Chinese economy/party wants them to be building solar and other renewable tech because China is the manufacturer of that tech.

The result is that they’re building more power plants that have increasingly low utilization rates. Declining utilization rates even as they build more of them. Basically because of stupid internal politics. Again, they’re using coal as peaker plants. Which is unimaginable to someone versed in US energy policy but that’s because we forget that the capital cost of construction largely doesn’t matter in China.

The far larger concern with Chinese coal is not their domestic policy, it’s their foreign industrial policy - it’s the outside markets they’re getting hooked on coal.

Long-term it’s a problem that will take care of itself ignoring climate catastrophe. Because, again China builds the renewable tech. They want the world buying from the long term. And I guess they see some short-term Merit in unloading bargain coal but they’re going to make a lot more selling PV. The issue is that we don’t have time to wait for that long-term.

Ironically the best policy to curtail Chinese coal is almost exactly what the US is doing - heavy investments in renewables. Hit those prices with learning curves to make fossils even less competitive than they already are. Make it so even the bargain tech doesn’t make sense for those developing nations to use.

This is the exception to prove the rule that the other interests are definitely illegitimate. This is the website telling you that they give away your data for illegitimate purposes.

It’s not a surprise. We knew this was true. But seeing it’s spelled out like this is a little galling.

Illegitimate: not authorized by the law; not in accordance with accepted standards or rules

The website is basically admitting that they’re using your data maliciously, intentionally, by having this distinction.

This is for large plastics. Big pieces of trash.

Microplastics are almost entirely just tire dust.

It’s not that few have heard about it, per se.

It’s more that there’s an intense disinformation and misinformation campaign about it. Run largely by people who should be celebrating the victories that have been made, but who instead just handwave away all progress as insufficient. Because they really, really, really hate Biden, and so accepting that he’s good on an issue (which he just plain is on climate) is not compatible with their worldviews.

You’ll see it in this thread just as assuredly as anywhere.

Where yo WON’T hear it is among policy wonks. The IRA is celebrated in serious climate circles. Just listen to, say, David Roberts (http://volts.wtf), for example, and you can barely get through any segment without talking about how much it has unlocked renewable spending/expansion.

And it’s not the endgame, it’s just the first step along a new path. It’s even built into the law that it will make further efforts politically and financially easier.

Meanwhile, people who claim they care deeply about climate don’t even know what the IRA is. I’m not one to gatekeep, but it really does show how shallow climate reporting in the greater media landscape is.

The irony is, refusing to see how much progress has been made on climate under Biden may condemn us to lose it all when Trump gets reelected as a result and follows through on his promises to reverse courses on green energy in all its forms and vastly scale up drilling and LNG. Because Trump would potentially be able to cripple the act and the institutions it created even without control of congress.

It’s likely the biggest piece of climate policy the world has ever seen. Estimated to be close to $1.3 trillion in total investment, nearly entirely in renewables and their halo.

It’s completely changing the entire market. The wonks who really get deep in policy are ecstatic about it. An amazing bill that does so much to make immediate changes, but is also structured to build longterm constituency in climate tech – it will certainly make it way easier to pass even more aggressive climate policy in the future, at least provided Trump doesn’t get back in and just gut it next year. Like many good pieces of policy, the longer it continues to exist the harder it will be to repeal.

It’s a rare time to hope. Biden’s legacy, if it doesn’t get completely destroyed by his heinous approach to Gaza, should be as the climate president.

Progressives and lefty types don’t want to hear it though. They are at full “bitch eating crackers” hate of Biden and are uninterested to challenge those prejudices.

Yeah, there were historic cases dating to the prohibition era/early 20th century. And there were historic laws – largely unenforced – that stayed on the books for a while. Laws based on total nonsense. It just got caught up as part of garden-variety moral panic.

There’s definitely still an air around the spirit that it is somehow more illicit and special. Which it… really isn’t.

Yes, give them permission to continue polluting if they just pay the fee. That’s such a good plan. And let’s ignore that this policy, like any tax tied directly to consumption, tends to be highly regressive – hurting the poorest people onto whom the costs are inevitably pushed the most. Not to mention it’s just goddamn radioactive, politically. But sure, throw all the eggs in that basket. Ignore that it’s the longest shot. The neoliberals have this one figured out and their policies always work out well.

Just look at how the public at large feels about the carbon tax in Canada. They sure do love it.

The reality is, carbon taxes would just increase profits for polluters, who will pass the costs (including margins) straight onto the consumers.

The bad behaviors need to be banned, not paid for.

Fortunately, the actual best thing is policies that are actually being pursued (e.g., the Inflation Reduction Act) don’t try and do things in this backwards, Reaganomics-thinking way. Instead, these policies build wide base and financing for renewable projects. They leverage market competition to hurt fossils directly and support/extend renewable sectors. They make use of industrial policy (maybe we can get some energy production out of Keynes spinning in his coffin). And have wide-reaching effects by dangling carrots – effects like the growing sector of electric industrial heat batteries, excess capacity being gobbled up for once-nonsense projects like green hydrogen or DAC where once it would’ve simply been curtailed, and the like.

And the best thing about these policies is they build constituencies, make allies of even slow capital, and directly benefit the poorest people by creating visible improvements in their lives (like helping them install rooftop solar and thus lower their energy bill). If they just stick around a little while, they become impossible to repeal, rather than a festering wound everyone can wag fingers at.

The next phase will be (more) blocking of permits for things like LNG projects and major utility reform. Renewables already outcompete fossils on the open market economically, but we need better transmission capacity to make use of all that cheap energy to continue shutting down fossil plants.

Absinthe is such a strange mythos.

The thing is, absinthe was quite strong (often ~120 proof – nothing you can’t get today by any means and there’s a lot of popular whiskies that bottle even stronger). It had a whole ritual around drinking it involving fountains/bloom. Importantly, in its heyday, it was popular among the young and arts types because it was just a regular old fad. It was trendy.

But most important, it was popular during a moment in history where alcohol abuse was RAMPANT. One of the drunkest times in history. It was a really bad time that often gets elided over, but the mid 19th century had bonkers alcohol consumption. People were routinely drinking a pint of strong spirits with breakfast and then continuing through the day.

So the tea-totalers slandered it. They made shit up. They said it made you hallucinate, abandon all virtues, go into rages, blah blah blah. Every known thing any drug could do to you, absinthe could too, according to the anti-alcohol lobby. People were literally dying of alcohol toxicity routinely, so the stories were easy to believe. And absinthe developed this almost mystical reputation for being different from other kinds of spirits in the effects it would have on consumers.

A reputation it still has today. People STILL think it is/was illegal, even recently, because it was a hallucinogen. The urban legend that some particular ingredient in it – often the wormwood – is a unique and special substance capable of things nothing else can do. It still has this weird mythology around it.

Meanwhile, anisette spirits much like it are honestly super common all around the Mediterranean and likely the world. Herbsaint, Ouzo, Pastis/Richard, Sambuca, Arak, and any number of Aquavits or Aguardientes. Most of them involve the same kind of ritualized drinking/bloom that absinthe does, too. But none of them have the mythology (+ frequent highly artificial coloring) that absinthe does, so none share it’s ridiculous reputation.

I do like it though. Absinthe limeade is my go-to summer tall drink.

I like the way the pit stops are car swaps.

This is the only thing I know about formula E.

This is in fact the only coherent argument for why US electric vehicles all have such absurdly huge ranges - so that they still have decent ranges even when old.

EV battery recycling is already a thing. Hopefully the relevant authorities start putting out some standards for battery packs to keep them at least somewhat recyclable though, since that’s getting to be a problem given that every single auto manufacturer seems to be building custom packs for every car.

A lot of US states are starting to close the classic vehicle exceptions too. Because their pickup-loving busybody mid-level bureaucrats are aesthetically displeased by kei trucks and so wield the levers of the administrative state to ban them for bullshit reasons.

I was definitely already amid doing the research for getting an old Kei truck and converting it to electric when I found out my state wouldn’t tolerate me doing it anymore. Because evidently a kei is super dangerous to be in on the road. More dangerous than a motorcycle or bicycle. Somehow.

Doesn’t sound like winner winner chicken dinner for housing affordability – rooftop solar doesn’t make sense for all installs and the last thing California needs is more cumbersome, one-size-fits-all riders added to its building codes. Solar already makes financial sense for many people even with the dumb changes to CA net metering. You don’t need to require people to do things that make financial sense – you just need to make sure there aren’t odious barriers in the way.

What they should be doing – and certainly are – is funding green banks and the like to create low/no cost financing for people who want to install residential renewables. Or for neighborhoods/communities that want to go in together on solar gardens et al… Dollar for dollar way more effective, and carrots always work better than sticks in the body of US politics plus (and are harder for conservatives to snatch away down the line thanks to delicious loss aversion).

If they’re modifying building codes, it should be to reduce/eliminate the scope of expensive, leaky, anti-consumer natural gas and increasing home efficiency standards overall. And more important, eliminating cumbersome restrictive zoning/parking requirements and encouraging locally-driven infill development at the smallest scales. Also be strict as hell with urban green bands which are proven effective at improving urban density/fighting sprawl over time. Sprawl is the worst thing a city can do both environmentally and for its financial sustainability and don’t let the YIMBY types tell you otherwise.

If he wants to stay he’ll just change the rules to allow himself to stay. He’s done it before and has consistently proven no one can stand up to him in Florida.

I think a lot of people might be sympathetic to the idea that in wartime, you need to be stricter because of the incredibly high stakes. That Ukraine is at war, so they need to find and deal with these sources of disinformation.

I think those same people need to realize that the policies never get rolled back to a more liberal state when the war is over.

It sucks that this is a systemic advantage for authoritarians. It really sucks. It feels bad. But it’s the handicap you have to accept to resist authoritarianism.

That’s pretty normal for construction sector helper job starting wages, though, depending on region. Probably shouldn’t be, but is. The nature of federal programs is that they have really strong guardrails to keep their wages on prevailing, which can go both ways and this is the rare occasion of it going a worse way, in my opinion.

Those jobs tend to see significant pay bumps for people who last and are useful.

Not to mention the huge amount of this funding going to green banks. Green banks are just flatly good programs. Highly effective at making renewable projects happen, very high return on investment.

Better, money is mostly going to green banks, which are by FAR the most effective way dollar-for-dollar to get renewable projects going.

They work by providing low-interest loans to applicants doing these specific projects. Sometimes not even the full value – just enough to make it work and get off the ground. They then collect back the loan over time, and use the proceeds to fund further projects. So long as the loans don’t overwhelmingly fail, they can then continue financing more and more projects according to their mission forever. These institutions can activate 5, 10 dollars worth of projects for every federal dollar sent to them. They’re multipliers. They’re amazingly effective. And they cut through a lot of the worst bureaucratic bullshit – at least until the GOP manages to create miles of red tape in the pursuit of “accountability” on the incredibly low-risk investment they represent.

I’m real damn tired of progressives pretending Biden and his administration are bad on climate. They aren’t. They’re kicking ass on it. The IRA has me hoping for the first time in a decade, and so long as Trump doesn’t get back in and murder it next year it will become at least as sticky and hard-to-repeal as the ACA because of the inertia and constituency it builds and reinforces. Plenty of legitimate stuff to criticize in this administration. I’m so tired of all the “bitch eating crackers” he gets on climate from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Literally the first paragraph:

President Joe Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities. He also plans to expand his New Deal-style American Climate Corps green jobs training program.

what the fuck are you talking about?