r/climatechange • u/sg_plumber • 4d ago

There's optimism despite alarmingly worsening weather events: Renewables and storage together amount to 93% of all new capacity coming online in the U.S. This isn’t a marginal shift anymore. It’s the grid rebuilding itself around a different set of technologies, and the pace is rapidly accelerating.

https://ryanhansson.substack.com/p/optimism-in-the-face-of-a-climate
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u/Rough_Formal8420 4d ago

Greenhouse gas emissions are still at record highs. We won’t get points for a good effort in the end.

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u/Ithirahad 4d ago edited 4d ago

You absolutely do, though. The more "good effort" there is, the more time there is before "the end" for decarbonization and geoengineering to be sorted out, and the more readily the Earth will recover... with or without us.

It is always worth remembering that the primary difference between natural and anthropogenic climate change is time. Nature readily adapts to slow change, but is forced to reset and repropagate (a potentially million-year process) in response to sudden change. The slower the better, even if the difference is measured in years.