English-language media reports on this too: The Hague will become first city to ban fossil fuel ads by law

Doomerism is fun and all but what’s the end game? Just making everything worse than it has to be?

You would, if you don’t give a shit, yes.

But if you’re actually fighting for a green transition, this is definitely not what you buy. Especially if you have the kind of money available to you that she has. Putting your money where your mouth is incredibly important. I don’t even know why I am repeating this — the article put it quite succinctly.

Surely, if you’re the Green party leader, you would simply not invest in that particular index fund, and probably would not invest at Vanguard either. When people say you should “divest from fossil fuels”, it obviously also means taking your money out of these index funds.

It’s Harris or Trump. If you’re spreading content designed to demotivate potential Harris voters days before the election, congratulations, you’re doing Trump’s bidding. I hope you’re at least getting paid.

If you find the time in the midst of your 5-hour podcast, I could really use some manliness-affirming tiger testicle pills, to cure my depression.

the narrative spinning the fight between red and blue.

The fight is between Red and Blue. FPTP election systems don’t really allow new parties to become relevant — and if a new party did gain relevance, it would fully replace one of the existing parties within very few election cycles.

The point is: You need a Democratic or Republican majority to reform the election system first before the Greens or any other party can become a relevant factor. The US democratic system is older than the democratic systems of most other countries. And it shows.

I know it’s a bit of an ask because in terms of taste it’s nowhere near an exact replacement for meat or cheese, but tofu is both cheap(ish) and healthy. Unless you have a soy allergy, do incorporate that rather than Impossible et al.s bleeding, complicated protein remixes powered by VC money. (I don’t have a hardline stance against vegan meat replacements but when they are too pricey for you there’s no reason to buy animal meat.)

Green electricity is both cheaper and much more available. Green H2 is inherently at a price disadvantage compared to green electricity. Unless absolutely unavoidable (as with steel or fertilizer production), why would you use it for anything?

Maybe I am looking at this from too much of a European perspective, i.e. on average, the grid is stronger here than e.g. in the US – but I don’t see going off-grid as a major factor either. If you can, you generally avoid going off-grid intentionally, because it’s just extremely expensive. Even if you’re planning for natural disasters, I see going with grid-connected, off-grid-capable solar as a much better idea, at least for most of the year.

The global project pipeline is long though, so we should get there.

Quite honestly, I don’t see how we will get there with green hydrogen, at least in the next decade. Portable hydrogen tanks are a good thing, but they won’t solve all that many real-life issues.

6 billionaire families financing the Heritage Foundation is proof that most ordinary Americans hate the IRA. (Am I don’t this right?)

Grist’s version is this article was already posted here a few days ago: https://slrpnk.net/post/14524183

Fuel cells produce electricity, not motion. The electricity is then usually buffered in a small battery, so the fuel cell can produce at optimum efficiency even though the requirements may change quickly. At least that’s how the Mirai and other modern H2 vehicles work.

Alternatively, you can simply burn H2 in a motor but that’s supposed to be a lot less efficient.

Now they just need to solve the energy consumption and cost parity questions surrounding green hydrogen.

And no, burdening taxpayers with financing nuclear reactors to produce “cheap” (read: subsidized) energy/pink hydrogen does not count.

I’ve recently heard about natural H2 reservoirs for the first time. If that turns out to have potential, I guess it might be the saving grace H2 in land transport applications. Although that’s kind of like using fossil fuels except without the CO2 emissions.

And solves ebike/powerstation charging on the go problem.

You still need to either take an additional cartridge or find energy infrastructure.

Also, wouldn’t you need an entire hybrid drivetrain in your ebike to make this work?

So, I guess portable H2 tanks don’t solve any issues for cyclists/powerstation users or am I missing anything?

Hearing Roberts speak is a bit otherworldly—not sure if that’s the best adjective. I’ve seen all those patterns before, because of course these clowns influence policy in all industrialized nations. But he’s so extreme in his positions while simultaneously being superficially friendly.

One thing I was a bit confused about was that Gilles (the NYT guy) didn’t seem to ask questions about either those “elites” pushing climate policy or how the oil/gas world is supposedly benefitting “the global poor”.

Global Emissions Peak is a bit like the Year of the Linux Desktop. (We should also keep in mind that mismeasuring of emissions is rampant, as is outright cheating. So whatever year it is determined to be, in actuality it’s probably going to be later.)

No doubt: Richer people can afford new shiny things more often. And electric cars are new shiny things right now. But …

To learn more, the researchers obtained data from the CLIMATE NUDGE survey, which was a questionnaire sent by other researchers to thousands of people across Finland in 2022 […] This, the researchers note, is because wealthier people in general have a bigger carbon footprint—they use more electricity, which is most often produced at a coal-burning plant, they consume more goods, the production of which tends to release greenhouse gases, and they drive more and travel more.

I have my doubts about the electricity bit of that particular reasoning. Electricity in Finland is generated primarily from low-CO2e energy: nuclear, wind, and hydropower. IEA, Electricity Maps (be aware: the latter site’s CO2e numbers are deeply flawed, however the origin percentages are correct).

Switching from existing structures like parking etc to public transport? How? How fast? What do we do with that space? Who pays for it? I’m frustrated by the system but we can’t just start from a blank slate, we have to work with it.

Are you serious? I was in the US just once, and within 3 days, I felt depressed. I had originally planned to travel through the US and CA for two weeks but following a one-week work thing and decided to just return after following obligatory week 1.

At least two thirds of basically any downtown appears to be parking and there’s at least a further 15% that’s overly wide roads.

You could remove the concrete and build parks which would improve those cities’ water household and have made me feel less depressed. You could build housing. You could build stores. You could build third places. You could make downtowns livable.

And it’s definitely possible. Because those places all existed before they were bulldozed to better suit cars.

The UK has actual problems to spend [almost] 900 million pounds p.a. on. They could spend it on improving the grid or heat pump subsidies, or on remedying Tory-inflicted social issues. All of which would be massively more effective than wasting it on projects that will never be profitable and will, even conceptually, not be the most effective use of money for at least two decades.

The US wouldn’t actually need to cooperate with other countries, the US GHG footprint is huge. Even considering just the US military, such a scheme would make a massive difference.

If implemented US-wide, it would obviously be an issue how you then tax (cheap) imports made with fossil fuels (which incidentally is a question the EU is already pondering) and what to do about your exports. But it should definitely be possible.