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Comment by _ink_ | Hacker News Reader

So, what can individuals do? I can stop using airplanes, stop eating meat, switch to bev and heat pumps, vote for green parties, go to rallies against fossil energy and tell my friends to do all that as well. Yet I still have a government (German), that reverses everything its somewhat progressive predecessor did with regards to climate change. And other countries are in an even worse spot. It just looks like everyone need to accept that we will simply not doing enough and that everyone under 20 will face 3°C global warming.

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The German goverment of the late 90's and early 00's, along with a very small number of contemporaries such as Denmark can claim a large portion of the credit for the good climate news that we do have.

Today, solar & wind power are the cheapest form of electricity generation, and form the vast majority of new electricity capacity being built. That's likely the primary reason why CO2 emissions have flat-lined and may even start decreasing in 2026. (China's emissions are down 1% in the first 6 months of the year). Worst case scenario is now 6 degrees rather than 8 degrees.

And why are they so cheap? Because Germany and a few others installed a large amount of wind and solar in the 90's and 00's at stupidly ridiculous prices. This volume kickstarted the production learning curve that resulted in the actually reasonable prices we enjoy today.

Germany and others spent billions a couple decades ago, and probably have saved millions of lives and will be responsible for trillions of GDP a few decades in the future.

So yes, voting matters. It matters a lot.

Nothing. Nothing can be done except hope the accelerationists are right and we have some massive technological breakthroughs that fix it.

It is simply impossible to have humans voluntarily reduce consumption at scale. The only way forward is up and out.

If yoyohello13 says so it must be true

Truer words have never been spoken.

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