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alex_duf • today at 9:28 AM • 4 replies • view on HN

Let's hope it's not just a temporary dip, I'm not holding my breath but we could really do with some longer term good news at the moment.


Replies

eesmith • today at 9:39 AM

The link says it's a temporary dip.

It says the report "finds that clean energy growth is not yet fast enough for a durable decline in global fossil CO2 emissions" and quotes the report's lead as “A decline in fossil CO2 emissions is encouraging, but a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution.”

The most optimistic note was “If further acceleration of clean technology deployment can be supported through time, a sustained peak and decline in global CO2 emissions could be a few years away.”

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iagiagiag • today at 11:39 AM

CO2 emissions will decrease in the next decades but mostly because of demographics. People get older and tend to pollute less, growth is slower. It happened to Europe and it'll happen to China sooner than we think when we look at their pyramid of age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China

I think we shouldn't mix (1) negative events in the world which impact CO2 emissions (covid, Ukraine war, Iran war etc.), (2) with "normal" events such as population decline in polluting countries, (3) with an actual coordinated and effective action against global warming.

(1) and (2) can have a large impact on CO2 emissions. (3) is more difficult to notice.

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_joel • today at 12:37 PM

Well, holding your breath would decrease the CO2 output but I wouldn't recommend it :)