silence7@slrpnk.netM to Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.@slrpnk.netEnglish · 10 months ago
silence7@slrpnk.netM to Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.@slrpnk.netEnglish · 10 months ago
The US has meaningfully cut coal use, resulting in an overall emissions drop, and put in place the measures which will sharply lower the need for oil in the coming years. It makes total sense to support Biden in light of those.
The lower coal lead to 2.5% drop in US CO2 emissions since 1990. At that rate the US is at zero emissions in only 1200years. That is not what meaningful change looks like.
Peak US coal use was in 2007. This makes it very misleading to use a linear trend based on data starting in 1990.
I’ll attribute the date of the peak to the Obama mercury regulations, which made it substantially cheaper to avoid coal. The continued drop is in large part because gas, wind, and solar, and short-term storage have become cheaper over time. Part of this is due to an improved regulatory environment and subsidy system under Biden.