New Amazon layoffs announced, notably even from the AWS department, which is Amazon’s cash cow, even Google didn’t layoff staff from Google cloud in their round.
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Think that speaks more to Google’s desperation to grow the business at they’re third and still not profitable.
There are some fantastic/depressing figures in the policy summary of the IPCC synthesis report here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/figures/
This one in particular I find really effective:
I feel like it really demonstrates how much climate change is already baked in to our future due to years/decades of inaction.
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It’s just a theory, A global theory! …and Cut!
In all seriousness, yes, we should have transitioned to renewables much sooner than we did, but the tech wasn’t ready back in the 70’s/80’s, but we should have at least tried, however i was born in 1995, so what do I know
Carter put solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1979.
Even where the technology wasn’t ready, or not mature enough, had more money been put into developing it at an earlier stage, it would’ve been ready much earlier.
Companies like Shell and ExxonMobil knew about the dangers of climate change as early as 1981. Action could - and should - have been taken then rather than kicking the can down the road for 40-odd years.
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Didn’t those get taken down though by the next presidency
This makes it seem like they were removed between 2004 and 2014: Solar Panels at the White House: 42 Years and Counting (everlightsolar.com)
Even now the deadlines for things seem so far out they feel like deferred problems for the next generation and remain a pipe dream. There’s just no need for it.
We had Dale Vince (Ecotricity’s founder) doing interviews during the worst of the energy price hikes explaining that if we took the money we spent on fossil fuels and put it into building renewable infrastructure we could be both fully energy independent within 3 years (no more rising bills) and be powered by 100% clean energy. But we’re just not doing it. And I don’t know why. In addition to being better for the planet, it’s the cheapest form of new energy we can build.
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Which is, sadly, what I think will happen here. Because the change needed is almost revolutionary, and I’m not sure what government would want to be the first to make it.
Things like:
- banning internal flights (France has already done this)
- Bringing the ban on combustion engines forward and increasing taxes on higher emission vehicles
- Heavily subsidising the move towards hydrogen/electric cars (though I’m less convinced about the latter!)
- Re-investing into transport links outside of London and the South East
- Investment into nuclear at an increased rate (and I’m taking significant)
And many more, probably. But until we’re told that we can’t jet off around the world whenever we want to, can have access to only green energy (mandated heat pumps etc, forced removal of gas) and any combustion cars are taxed to a point of non existence it ain’t gonna happen
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Because money talks, and the whole economy is built on gas and oil. Until that changes, sadly nothing much else will, I think
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Yes, Reagan took them down in probably 1986 during “roof repairs” and never put them back.
However, this doesn’t change the point that I was making - that there was ready an available technology even in the '80s. The page you linked to also makes that point with the following quote from 1979:
“It serves as a symbol that American technology in solar is available, it’s reliable, and it’s ready for millions of Americans across the country.” -Cyrus Wadia, Former White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
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Do you mean the former? Hydrogen is still too far off from being a viable solution for passenger cars given the urgency of the problem and rate of change needed. Battery EV’s are already making up 14% of new car registrations in 2023 (compared with less than 1% in 2018).
Even if there were affordable hydrogen cars and an infrastructure for charging them, there is practically zero green hydrogen production in the UK at the moment. And even if the UK added the vast quantity of renewables necessary to produce enough green hydrogen, the process is so lossy that you lose most of the energy you put in. Just makes sense to use less than half the renewable capacity to charge cars directly.
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What I mean is, I’m less convinced the move towards electric cars is truly all that “green” in terms of batteries, disposal, materials required to produce in the first instance.
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Well its all in comparison to ICE.
“Greener” than the current situation both from well to wheel, and also the clear air out the back VS the ICE emissions.
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We never ever turn our heating on so essentially we’re paying more but still, first thing to ever go down on an email 
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vaguely interesting survey from the met office…
Attitudes are changing - really quite dramatically, I would say, especially if you compare with say 10 years ago.
People want to do the right thing but the tolerance for inconveniencing themselves in order to do the right thing is still relatively low.
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Isn’t the elephant in the room that the planet is vastly overpopulated? Whilst growth is slowing down, there are still an extra 67 million people a year on the planet. That is the entire UK’s population added every single year to the planet! THAT is not sustainable in terms of emissions to feed them, transport them and so on.
Of course nothing can (or would) be done about it on a global scale.
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I wouldn’t call it an elephant in the room. It’s just one of the facts we need to deal with when considering the future, which the climate models do.
It’s not an insurmountable problem - 10 billion people living a carbon negative lifestyle would actually be better for global warming than 8 billion for example.
Interest rates have gone up by 0.25% to 4.25%…
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I really wish the BoE stop.
I’m beginning to seriously question the classic logic that raising interest rates will stem inflation. I get the principle, but I don’t see how it affects the actual causes of this inflation. This latest rises are due to fresh food price raises, which were necessary because of a supply crunch.
Supermarkets and everyone else are already aggressively trying to keep prices low, they just can’t.
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Cue inflation rising forever! 
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