the climate story right now is in a very weird state of flux
a) the warming we've priced in is bad and really starting to show itself
b) the renewable story is astoundingly good and getting better
we are left with "warming is going to get worse but almost certainly not as much as it could have"
it's always important to demand better, but part of the reason that the story of climate policy isn't sticking is partly because bad news feels more plausible and partly because the people most invested in this policy understand its limits. www.notus.org/biden-2024/v... hard to sell "mixed-positive"
I think a lot of folks steeped in climate doomerism have internalized "we break 1.5/2C and we're Totally Doomed" but every tenth of a degree we can prevent, warming-wise, is very important!
1.6C > 1.7C > 1.8C, etc
it is important to take the good news as evidence that we can limit the damage
absolutely
it's a weird balance to strike, because we absolutely have not done enough and there's endless work to do here - both in mitigation and repair
the message that I hope we can take is "it's worth doing that work, because the work we've already done is making a difference"
I also think that there’s people who are saying “we’re not done, there’s a lot to do, I don’t want to imply this is enough” because news nuance is hard.
Seeing incremental progress is so important, even if there is more left to do. It's evidence that the work *can* be done, *is* being done, an *should* be further supported moving forward.
It's how we got childhood cancer from a death sentence to a 90% all comers survival rate. But not overnight.
