Ben Matthews

I suppose they try to buy some time, to get out of the mess that much of UK security info and equipment is closely dependent on US. But indeed at such a pivotal moment, when there even seems to be cross party consensus, it’s daft to miss the chance to re-orient towards Europe.

denied, from belgium

It must be bitter especially for the greens to support this debt-spending on infrastructure that they were not allowed to do (by FDP and CDU) while in government, so will they just vote it through quickly now?

I’d like to have no phone at all, I don’t like small screens, nor being interrupted. Problem is that phone apps are now almost obligatory for IDs, transport tickets, passes, banking, etc. So I’d just like a phone-receiver (modem) with a sim card on a USB stick that can enable phone-app-stuff via my laptop or tablet. (Yes some tablets have data sim cards, but we still need sms and occasional phone functions for ‘verification’ etc.). Any suggestions?

No. first line in the article - “emissions in the world’s second-largest economy rose slightly as coal remained dominant”. It’s bad news. Also, article is about 2024 and your plots stop in 2019/20.
However your question is reasonable - when they made such “intensity” (emit-per-gdp) based targets, it seemed like a way to avoid constraining the economy and disguise emissions growth - but they didn’t anticipate the covid slump and such rapid demographic peaking, so maybe they’ll change the methodology for next ndc target.

This sounds positive, albeit unlikely it’s enough.
As I don’t follow the biodiversity COPs like the climate COPs, I’ll ask - was this like a COP16bis, and deal with or without US ?
I still recall UNFCCC-COP6bis which was a success despite Bush govt pulling out, inspired the rest of the world to unite.
And are people optimistic about COP17 in Armenia? Hope inspired to do better than Azerbaijan with climate. I suppose all Caucasus has much unique mountain biodiversity, maybe this can help overcome political divisions.

We are already in Putin’s hybrid world war three (by definition on multiple continents), it began long ago. For Ukrainian’s their hot war began 11 years ago in Crimea. But Putin and his ex-KGB clique have been plotting since 1990 to break up ‘western’ democracy, perceived as an obstacle to making the russian empire great again. Even before Crimea, they helped to suppress the Arab Spring in Libya, and then Syria, followed more recently by helping to create and sustain multiple wars in Africa all the way across the Sahel (with aim, not just to extract minerals, but displace french influence). And his most effective weapon has been information warfare, which included pushing Brexit and Trump via social media, and similar efforts in other countries. Now it seems he’s just taken over the government of USA, and Europe stands, shakily, alone. Zelensky ‘crime’ is just to expose the reality of this war, with simple honesty, he’s not the gambler.

I’m more interested in distribution of users and local-focus of communities than country-based instances, nevertheless the map does illustrate that Lemmy has huge gaps - no country instance in all of Africa, hardly any in Asia… What can we do to make it a more global conversation ?

Too true, and good analogy with building a house extension…

D’autres pays (comme par ex Nigéria, Brésil) ont déplacé leurs capitales, mais cet idée me semble fou, si c’est déjà 40ºC là près du golfe, il va devenir encore moins habitable avec le réchauffement climatique.
Tehran benefice d’un altitude d’environ 1200m avec accès aux montagnes, aussi c’est plus nord et assez sec.
Meilleur résoudre les sources de pollution actuel.

" countries in the Anglosphere experience the highest costs for building transit due to overbuilding and overdesigning".

Too true … Look at HS2, they didn’t need to aim for 400km/h, now they can’t afford to finish it.
So - hope Canada can do better.
Maybe Sweden is a better example to study in this case ?

I recall Putin himself expressed that, at a big climate conference they hosted in Moscow in 2003. But of course, there were also plenty of intelligent russian scientists who understand that melting permafrost, burning forests, flooded cities, and grey rain replacing white snow, is not such a great idea.

I prefer suspend. Article 7 gives a mechanism for suspend, but there is no process to expel. Also Hungary is geographically central in europe.

It is essential for EU to reform to remove any one government having a veto (aka decision by “consensus”). That does not have to mean simple majority rule, nor exclude opt-outs by topic. Transactional dealers just play their vetos for unrelated gains.
Likewise if Europe now constructs common defence structures, don’t repeat similar mistakes, as within Nato.

They say the other side (favour US over Ukraine) is only 20% - so 48:20 is a big difference ( in such surveys, there are always plenty who don’t know or hedge bets - and many people just don’t think beyond their local world) .

The asymmetry is interesting. It suggests that while Canada has reason to fear what this US administration might do next, the latter’s aggressive approach to neighbours and former friends is far from having majority popular support. To change that they may create situations, step by step.
Note that regarding the new Trump-Putin axis, if you look at a globe Greenland is geographically halfway (between central US and central Russia excluding Siberia). For such connection across the arctic, Canada is in the way, but maybe if the most conservative and fossil-dependent provinces could be split from the others, they’d have a clear path for such axis …
Could this issue help Liberals, NDP and Québécois to cooperate in face of such new threat ?
We also need a Canada-Europe alliance.

It seems the problem is the regional governments , which are prioritising regional coal mining, to prioritise regional jobs. In China there is plenty of renewable energy capacity but the sun and wind are mainly in the W and S, while the old coal mines are in the E and N. China has plenty of climate scientists and diplomats pushing central government policy, but these have less influence on ‘local government’. As many ‘local governments’ in China govern populations larger than European countries, this is something like Poland trying to keep it’s coal mines alive, in contradiction to European climate policy. Eventually there will be surplus energy, some coal contracts are going to break, question is who wins and loses then. Western observers tend to think of China as a big centrally controlled monolith - it isn’t, the ‘local’ chiefs have a lot of power. Similar central / ‘local’ governance problem with housing bubble and debt.

It’s not a bad concept to replace terminus stations with through links. Berlin and Wien Hbf work very well, as does Thameslink in London (only 2 tracks but busy to capacity), and it’s hard to imagine belgian railways without the jonction Nord-Midi (completed post-war).
Stuttgart was also a terminus with many through trains reversing, so they tried to fix this - but the orientation of the new line to the SE was fundamentally designed to serve the airport, not for efficiency of the railway. Similarly with many costly projects elsewhere in europe - conservative governments didn’t really like railways (maybe rails and electricity go against their freedom concept) so they prioritised airport links. It’s not fair to blame the recent government, the faults are much older.

How about Salvini and his Lega, did they comment on this topic?

Potentially (ok - not currently), “24 gigatons of carbon accumulated in methane hydrates” is a serious amount. Note that as methane increases in the atmosphere, it’s lifetime increases as oxidising capacity is used up, a positive feedback. Methane may also help explain the rapid at the ends of ice ages (when sea-level rose ±100m). If there’s any really bad runaway warming scenario, it has to do with methane.