GoofY:“It’s harder to site large projects in California because the real estate is expensive. Texas is bigger, and real estate is cheap because nobody wants to live there ;)”
You’re right. Some entire counties have populations of 3000 or less. One county has a population of 150 but lots of oil money.
King county TX is 30x30 miles or more and population of 279. One ‘town’ of 50 and the rest on ‘the ranch’.
The article was about the failure to submit climate plans since the Glasgow meeting in November eight months ago. That is the responsibility of the administration in Washington, DC. — You are wrong.
The administration may not feel up to it, but it is still their responsibility. Of course, as noted upthread, no countries (as in zero) have bothered to make the effort to update their plans.
Like I said, Texas will leave CA in the dust. Only 36 GW there?
Like I said, that’s very good news! Texas has seen straight weeks of >100 degree weather and Power demand surpassed 75 gigawatts daily usage multiple times this year and almost surpassing 80 gigawatts.
Climate change will continue to increase >100 degree days in Texas. Texas already leads the nation in total power consumption. Texas also leads the nation in total CO2 output.
So… yeah, Texas has some work to do. California’s energy usage is half that of Texas
Geez. All this bragging from Texas. I’m surprised someone hasn’t said they’re the biggest state yet! (One of these days Alaska will split into two states, just relegate Texas to being the third biggest state).
I’m just not sure how Texas is going to top California by the end of the year, given this from March of 2022:
How can the administration in Washington issue a climate plan with Supreme Court ruling that EPA can not regulate CO2 emissions and the conservatives in congress not supporting any climate plan to reduce CO2 emissions.
Jaak,
As long as the court decides all of these things the public wont get involved in guiding congress to do its job. That excuse is vanishing.
Like I said, Texas will leave CA in the dust. Only 36 GW there?
and “Ercot’s solar capacity will jump to more than 20 gigawatts by summer 2023,”
By 2027, well have 100 GW of solar.
Thank you for recommending this post to our Best of feature.
It turns out, people and nations do what is in their own self interest.
Thank you for restating one of my best quotes:
Fundamental Law of the Universe 23B
Every organism, from the lowest ameba to the smartest human does what they perceive to be in their own best interest.
Fundamental Law of the Universe 23B
Every organism, from the lowest ameba to the smartest human does what they perceive to be in their own best interest.
,,,in propagating the species....in propagating the species.
Something supply side econ fails at and demand side econ succeeds in.
The ME generation has 90% of white males over age 50 without enough in savings to retired. We voted down all forms of retirement funds generally speaking. But is not just retirement funds. We voted down pay. Meaning many males are laid off by age 55 and most of those took steep pay cuts.
Just voting for me to succeed sounds good but is not how it works.
Fundamental Law of the Universe 23B Every organism, from the lowest ameba to the smartest human does what they perceive to be in their own best interest.
We can only hope that all of them, at the same time, perceive that not having their citizens bake alive, like the frog in a hot water pot, is a better outcome than having another 74 kinds of ice cream, custom delivered to your doorstep, three times a day. Or something.
Seems unlikely. I like convenience too, bit perhaps not at the cost of having to live underground for six months of the year.
It’s harder to site large projects in California because the real estate is expensive. Texas is bigger, and real estate is cheap because nobody wants to live there
It’s harder to site large projects in California because the real estate is expensive. Texas is bigger, and real estate is cheap because nobody wants to live there — Is this really true?
I think he meant to write that he didn’t want to live there.
COP26: No countries have delivered on promise to improve climate plans
Collapse of G20 talks in Bali spark fears of ‘backtracking’ on climate pledges www.climatechangenews.com/2022/09/02/collapse-of-g20-talks-i…
Energy and climate ministers from some of the world’s largest economies have failed to agree on joint texts at G20 meetings in Bali, Indonesia. With two months to the COP27 summit, host Egypt has warned against “backtracking” on climate commitments.
Draft texts seen by Climate Home News show G20 ministers clashed on language over Russia’s war on Ukraine, climate finance and whether limiting global warming to 1.5C or 2C should be the world’s climate target. After talks broke down, COP26 president Alok Sharma and incoming COP27 president Sameh Shoukry both warned against countries backsliding on climate pledges.
Egypt’s foreign minister Shoukry said…“It is concerning to see coal coming back as a source of energy in some parts of the world,” he said, adding that shortcomings on climate finance were worrying: “It is equally concerning that climate finance commitments, especially the $100 billion goal, are still lagging in implementation while the needs of developing countries continue to rise.”
The 10-day Bonn talks were consumed by a power struggle over the conference agenda, which remained unadopted until Wednesday night.
The EU — backed by other Western countries as well as several Latin American nations and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) — added an agenda item on the “mitigation work program,” aimed at scaling up emissions cuts worldwide.
That prompted the group of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) — dominated by emerging economy emitters like China, India and Saudi Arabia — to block the agenda unless rich countries also accepted a new agenda item about climate finance.
“That was a point of principle,” the EU diplomat said. “They want no outside pressure on reducing emissions. China doesn’t want us to be the guiding force.”
Others accused Western countries of wanting to avoid a climate finance debate, in particular one — as demanded by the LMDCs — focused on what rich nations owe the Global South.
We all know enough economics and political economy on this board to know that what was needed was NOT governmental pledges, but steadily rising taxes on hydrocarbon burning with the funds directly rebated back to citizens, setting the correct incentives in the correct way to change course. The rebate would have kept the citizenry from having their politicians bribed away from the public good by ExxonShellSaudPutin…
We are now screwed, and no surprise, and the costs will almost certainly far far far far outweigh the supposed economic benefits of hydrocarbon burning.
And we all know enough economics and political economy to know that was never, ever going to be possible. Voters (in general) would never have stood for it. Some would, but most wouldn’t. They don’t want to bear any non-trivial economic costs in order to fight climate change, so they won’t accept any proposals that impose non-trivial economic costs to fight climate change.
Of course, they also want politicians to fight climate change. They don’t want to pay for it, but they still want it. So politicians gave the voters what they wanted - policies that they claimed would fight climate change without costs (or even provide a net benefit). Since you can’t fight climate change without paying for it, though, these low-cost policies were inevitably utterly ineffective in reducing carbon emissions.
95F approximates the wet-bulb temperature for human viability. If temps do not fall below 95F, the human body cannot cool itself sufficiently for survival.
A 2C increase would raise that 91F average low to 95F. Under those conditions, Phoenix would not be survivable to humans without artificial aid (e.g., air conditioning).
Any sort of tax increase on fuel is a non-starter.
In the debate last night, people were floating the idea of repealing all the federal fuel taxes, to make fuel “affordable”. So, if there are no fuel taxes, where does the money come from to maintain the roads? I had this conversation with a staffer at the local office of my Congressman, in 2008, when the Congressman robocalled me for feedback on proposals to suspend the gas tax.
For years, Michigan underfunded road maintenance, to help pay for tax cuts for the “JCs”. Trust me on this, you don’t want road maintenance defunded.
