Post #4366366

2026-08-03 08:07 UTC

It’s fine to have a different opinion but you havent actually contradicted anything. You just listed adaptations without any actual steps to reduce carbon emissions in power generation. Efficiency may help with other resources but for power generation, efficiency alone is just a strategy to lose the planet more slowly, and given the increasing speed of change in recent years i’m not even sure it can achieve that to a meaningful extent. Hell, look at coca cola: they could, all alone, reduce plastic pollution massively overnight by removing 500ml bottles and selling only alu cans. They have the production facilities already but they dont do it. Being more efficient about resources used is all well and good, but we still NEED to get carbon neutral on energy production. And that is something that requires political will; and politicians will not touch net zero (or upset rich lobbies) if they think the electorate will settle for an efficiency drive. Already the nuance in this thread far exceeds anything the political class will engage on. Just in a few comments we have introduced separating power generation from use of other natural resources like water, and factoring human mobility, architecture, materials technologies, national housing stocks, and more. There are just too many places for the energy companies and polluters to dissemble and hide. Net Zero is a simple, single target that can be measured and people can be held accountable.

Replies (1)

@sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 2026-08-03 11:36

You just listed adaptations without any actual steps to reduce carbon emissions in power generation. Then you’re not paying attention. If energy production contributes to carbon emissions (and it does), then reduction in energy consumption reduces carbon emissions. Moreover, reducing energy consumption allows the largest polluting sources to be phased out first, as there’s no longer as much of a need for those sources. Look at the daily power production by source in specific grids at different times of year. Plenty of US grids (and I’m sure other grids elsewhere) run fossil plants only at night during parts of the year where solar+wind+battery+nuclear+hydro are enough during the day. And those who work in green energy are doing everything they can to actually outcompete fossil sources on price and capacity. There’s not a government order to turn off the gas plants on sunny days, because it’s just economics that make fossil sources uncompetitive on price during those days. The “net” in “net zero” means subtracting emissions from sequestration/capture/fixation (including large numbers for natural processes, like biological growth or rock weathering). If you reduce emissions, then that’s moving towards net zero. Maybe even overshooting to reverse some of past emissions. And these are real efforts being made! Better passive cooling, greater deployment of heat pumps, better insulation, etc., are making new buildings much more energy efficient than old buildings, and adapting them to a reality of higher temperatures moving forward. Conserving and restoring coastal ecosystems is making coastal communities from the hazards of storms and flooding (made worse by climate change) while maintaining carbon sinks. All the examples I gave in my previous comment are actually being implemented in places, and should be expanded even more. These are the conversations that are happening around adapting to climate change: mitigation of the effects in ways that also reduce carbon emissions.

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