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73% of Young US Voters Eager to Support Candidates With Bold Climate Agenda
(www.commondreams.org)
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
How many of them support severely restricting their lifestyle to meet those climate goals?
Everyone supports climate action until they find out it means no A/C, riding the city bus, and not having 2.5 kids in a suburban McMansion
You'd be surprised. There are people who are willing to do those things.
Especially if you have city planning that actually works. Instead of what the US currently has.
Most of the young adults in America currently can't afford kids, housing, or cars.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1225957874/housing-unaffordable-for-record-half-all-u-s-renters-study-finds
That’s nice. Now figure out how the standard of living for a young adult in America with no kids renting a studio in Cleveland compares to a family of 4 in rural India
I think it's more fair to compare average income versus average life satisfaction. (using a scale of 1 to 10) (On this scale Finland is the happiest, and Afghanistan is the least happy)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-vs-happiness
Average satisfaction for Costa Rica (6.61) or Mexico (6.33) isn't that much lower than the United States (6.89) at roughly 1/4th the GDP.
South Korea (5.95) doubles Mexico's GDP ($45.5k vs $20.25k) but has a lower life satisfaction.
Or Hong Kong (5.31, $58k) is close the US ($64k) in GDP but less happy than Russia (5.66, $27.4k).
Costa Rica is at the 1.5t per capita probably safe emissions and has a life satisfaction of 6.61 compared to the US's 6.89.
Our world in data also has life satisfaction versus CO2 emissions and central america looks to be doing fairly well for themselves. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-satisfaction-vs-co-emissions-per-capita
Air Conditioning is already fully electrified. While we should be prioritizing more efficient housing and urbanism, air conditioning and heatpumps are not something we suddenly have to forego with a renewable powered grid, especially in a world that will increasingly require it for survival.