[pjc50]

Really the two big reasons for not driving ice cars are temperature and sea level rise. Even then I think most of America and even Florida would regard losing Florida over the next century to be a reasonable price to pay for not having to get on a bus.

[xp84]

I think most people - even Floridians - know that our pretty small-population country swearing off all internal combustion transport will have zero impact on whether sea levels rise, because a ton of the coal burning and other massive pollution happens in countries that aren’t going to decarbonize (in fact, they think it’s fair game and morally right for them to use that cheap coal for 100 years since the Western countries got to do that).

There is one political party who believes the US should do degrowth and major carbon regulations, but they have been losing relevance even at the state level lately.

[ben_w]

> because a ton of the coal burning and other massive pollution happens in countries that aren’t going to decarbonize

Everyone is moving away from burning coal, even when they have plenty of plants in which to do so, because of the very same logic which had us burning it in the first place:

Price.

> There is one political party who believes the US should do degrowth

Yes, and I dated one of their campaign managers. However, the Green Party isn't relevant.

[pjc50]

America is not a small population country and is still per capital emitting more than China; while China is now on a downturn (admittedly from a very high absolute level of emissions)

[tooltalk]

IMO, that remains to be seen. China is still adding new coal capacity roughly equal to America's entire coal capacity, or about ~160+GW, just in 2025(74GW)/2026(90+GW expected) while retiring almost none.

[ben_w]

Capacity is less relevant than usage. It's not like you drive a combustion car by putting your foot to the floor on the accelerator and only modulate your speed with the clutch and breaks.

Chinese coal *consumption* seems to be trending down, not up, regardless of capacity: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

[tooltalk]

Sure, but China isn't building new coal plants, just for decorative value, but because renewables aren't stable.

Sure, we've seen this rodeo before, circa 2015 -- when it dipped a few points, then it continued on its march toward coal supremacy since.