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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 14th, 2023

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  • You might enjoy dunking on them (which is fine) just as long as you’re not actively pushing them away.

    The easiest way is to enlist their involvement in dunking on the actual politicians, officials, and policymakers. A fascist movement relies heavily on a reluctant populace complying in advance, which is why little pieces of resistance can be effective against fascists. Humor, sarcasm, and outright mockery of the people giving the flimsy orders diminishes their power by persuading the public that there won’t be consequences for those who ignore those orders.

    It’s not going to be enough by itself, but having the apolitical comedians turn against fascism is still a useful thing to have on our side.


  • I fear that the likes of Trump in charge will only reverse any progress we’ve made in the West.

    It may end much of the progress towards people voluntarily sacrificing for the environment, but I think certain technologies are already on a runaway self sustaining cycle:

    • Heat pumps and electrification of residential heat is starting to make financial sense, even without subsidies and tax breaks.
    • Electrification of cars makes transportation cheaper. In some countries, much, much cheaper.
    • Solar power, during times of day that it is plentiful, is basically the cheapest energy source known to mankind. There is plenty of financial incentive to try to shift supply (through grid scale storage tech) and demand (time shifting things like heating/cooling and car charging) to meet this super cheap source of energy.

    Trump can rant about carbon-free replacements for fossil fuels, but he can’t make them more expensive, especially not outside of the U.S.


  • That’s a good chart, and probably a better metric to use.

    Still, you can see the same overall trends: the western world peaking around 2000, with India and China catching up. The question, then, becomes whether and how much the rest of the world can follow the West’s playbook:

    • Switching from coal to natural gas for electricity generation (easy for North America, more difficult for Europe)
    • Switching from fossil fuels entirely to carbon-free sources like nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal (depends heavily on geography and access to nuclear materials and engineering).
    • Switching from fossil fuels to cleaner electrified drivetrains
    • Improving energy efficiency in residential, commercial, industrial applications.

    This is where the difference is made. Not in changing birth rates.


  • The big assumption is that the child you have will likely consume carbon-emitting goods and services at the same rate as whatever average they’re assuming.

    Breaking down by country shows that people’s emissions vary widely by year and by country:

    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

    So if the UK spent most of the 20th century, and into the beginning of this century, emitting about 10 tonnes per person per year. Now it’s down to less than 5. Since your linked article was written in 2017 to the latest stats for 2023, the UK has dropped per capita emissions from 5.8 to 4.4, nearly a 25% reduction.

    During that same 125 years, the US skyrocketed from about 7 tonnes to above 20, then back down to 14.

    The European Union peaked in around 2001 at 10, and have since come down to 5.6.

    Meanwhile, China’s population has peaked but their CO2 emissions show no signs of slowing down: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics

    So it takes quite a few leaps and assumptions to say that your own children will statically consume the global or national average at the moment of their birth. And another set of assumptions that a shrinking population will actually reduce consumption (I personally don’t buy it, I think that childless people in the West tend to consume more with their increased disposable income). And a shrinking population might end up emitting more per capita with some sources of fixed emissions amounts and a smaller population to spread that around for.

    If the US and Canada dropped their emissions to EU levels we’d basically be on target for major reductions in global emissions. If we can cap China’s and India’s future emissions to current EU per capita levels that would go a long way towards averting future disaster, too.

    It can be done, and it is being done, despite everything around us, and population size/growth is not directly relevant to the much more important issue of reducing overall emissions.




  • When the definition of unemployed is changed to exclude the majority of working age people without jobs then it is no longer a helpful statistic.

    U-3 has used the same definition of unemployed since 1940.

    Whatever metric you want to use, you should look at that number and how it changes over time, to get a sense of trend lines. LISEP says the “true” unemployment rate is currently 24.3% in May 2025, which is basically the lowest it’s ever been.

    Since the metric was created in 1994, the first time that it dipped below 25% was briefly in the late 2010’s, right before COVID, and then has been under 25% since September 2021.

    Under this alternative metric of unemployment, the unemployment rate is currently one of the lowest in history.