stickly comments on If So Many Americans Care About Climate, Why Don’t They Vote Like It? 11.2 million. That’s the number of Americans who rank climate as a their top priority but didn’t vote in the 2024 US elections

[–] theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 2 weeks ago (23 children)

Because the Democrats also have a terrible climate policy?

[–] NekoKoneko@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago* (4 children)

They have reasonably positive policy, they just are as usual terrible at explaining activity.

The Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act had quite a bit of green incentives for regular people, and it created widespread solar and non-fossil-fuel home improvements that did (in my area at least) translate to a lot of green tech being installed, not just on-paper policy.

The GOP and Trump especially are irrationally hostile to green tech, and there are plenty of examples why they're materially worse - paying again just to cancel an already-paid-for wind farm project for example.

So this isn't really a "both sides suck" problem. One side has a slightly positive policy that could be a lot better. One side is in a psychotic delusional fugue and actively trying to destroy the planet.

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[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Obama literally led the largest expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the history of the US.

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[–] stickly@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

And yet the USA's production and consumption based emissions decreased over his tenure. Seems like replacing foreign fuel shipped from across the world with domestic fuel is a climate win, but that doesn't let you own the libz...

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[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, the majority of emissions reduced during the 8 years under Obama were because fracking drove down the cost of natural gas below the cost of coal. The market drove a reduction in a coal usage in favor of fracked natural gas. But of course, that's what happens when the only thing you control for is the one variable that makes headlines.

Speaking of which, during the first 4 years of Obama's fracking boom, no one was measuring the leaks, and leaks from natural gas wells are methane, which traps 8,600% of the energy that CO2 does. They didn't even start trying to fix this until 2016, and of course those fixes were easily rolled back by Trump, because the Ds can always expand the harm, but they can't ever seem to contain it.