this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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The first car-free community built from scratch in the US is starting to take off: 'For some, cars equal freedom, but for me, it's a restriction' (www.thecooldown.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Also a huge number of people in the US travel to places that are walkable:

  • Disney World
  • Las Vegas (The strip is anyway)
  • DC
  • NYC
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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that is far more logical - The pics in your other post illustrate the concept well. The major hurdles are transportation and retrofitting. New towns and construction are well and good but for adoption to take off benefits must outweigh existing convenience and not eliminate mobility overall. Scalability is another one.

It's a lot to try to balance. Designs I've seen get the most traction involve reclaiming blocks and offering elevated rail to move about or use of subway where logical. The more modular the better. And I've seen a few like that get /close/ but they'd strike out on scope or would piss in some lobby's cereal and get early enemies. That one's a minefield.

I feel like we could see some rapid creep if someone got the ball rolling and it was reasonably successful... but that's a hell of a big step to take. And make no mistake - it will be a retrofit that starts the creep. Has to be a city or a substantial dense town to draw interest.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Another major hurdle is the petrol industry & incentives for the few to get rich my building & maintaining roads. Public transport on the other hand (hopefully) doesn't generate profit as it is a service for the people. So those in local/regional/state power have more to benefit (personally , financially) from building roads. It's like taxes, people that influence/write/adopt tax policies are the ones that benefit from tax cuts whereas the majority loses more through all the services they have to pay double for.

It takes civil organizing to produce politicians and high enough demand for such change. Often through things like higher commercial rents or local service fees (like stores in the center pay more for water or waste disposal as they would in a mall outside the city - and the difference pay the customers though cars, time, and well-being).