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The ‘AOC Left’ Has Achieved Plenty
(nymag.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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And how does that jive with record numbers of new oil and gas development leases? Do you not think those will raise emissions? Why are we putting trillions into new fossil fuel pipelines and production if we’re lowering our emissions? Not to mention that our emissions did not fall 2 OR 4% last year, they went UP 1.4%. The trend of emissions going down ended at the end of 2020.
The IRA wasn't passed until more than halfway through the year. I'm not surprised that our emissions didn't fall, given the bill wasn't even 6 months old, and all government actions are lagging -- i.e, the effects of a given bill aren't seen immediately, but in the future. This should be a readily apparent observation.
In addition, there's two other factors you aren't accounting for here. It's possible for emissions to go positive for a few years and we still end up with a 40% reduction in 2035. Because of the lagging nature I mentioned, I'd actually expect this to be the case. Development and construction of renewable energy facilities will lead to net increases in emissions at first, but once they power on, they'll cut our emissions significantly.
Second, it is possible to have increases in emissions from oil and gas and still have an overall reduction in emissions. With oil and gas increasing emissions, we need to more deeply cut emissions somewhere else. If new oil and gas plants add +10% emissions, but renewable energy reduces our total emissions by 30%, we're still -20% overall.
I have a problem with your final but of analysis there.
If fossil fuels raise our emissions 10%, they’ve raised our emissions 10%. Renewables don’t lower our emissions, they just don’t raise them anymore. If instead of building new O&G infrastructure we were decommissioning facilities, then the added energy output from renewables could be used to replace O&G, which would bring down our emissions not because we built renewable, but because we lessened O&G. However, building more infrastructure will lead to increased emissions, regardless of the amount of renewable infrastructure we build.
I’ll wait and see if your lagging indicator works out, but in the meantime, all available data shows our emissions have risen so far this year, likely due to a combination of said increased infrastructure, and severe heat waves prompting increased use of AC.
Yeah the heat wave isn't doing us any favors at all, except possibly making it undeniable that climate change is here and action needs to be taken. Even Republicans now are proposing a solution. It starts and ends with planning trees, but baby steps I guess.
You could very well be right that the projected emissions are incorrect and currently overestimate it. We just don't know. I prefer to be an optimist and look for reasonable explanations for the claim to still be true while addressing the odd situation (here, the rise in emissions).
Regarding the oil and gas development itself, I have a theory. I think the idea may be to smoothen the transition by still maintaining plentiful and cheap energy as we bring renewables online. Up front then we'd have higher emissions, but when possible without raising energy price, we'd phase it out. From the perspective of governing the whole country, I can understand that philosophy.
I just hope my charitable interpretation is correct and not being overly generous.