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Thanks for creating the thread. I voted on the Database, for information : Per on 61RZ01 (Congrats Ian), 61RZ02 (useful monitoring) and 61RZ03 (should be obvious).
61RZ01 - AUS
If I am privileged to be confirmed by the Ziu, then I intend to step down from my position as Senator.
61RZ02 - PER
61RZ03 - CON
I at least have to give the author credit for calling out China and India for emissions in addition to just the United States, but there is a very real way in which that makes the resolution even worse.
Wealthy nations have the luxury to replace a portion of their energy with costly and unreliable alternatives like solar and wind. Inconvenient and boneheaded for sure, but survivable. Developing countries simply do not have this option. Less fossil fuel means less opportunity and flourishing, and more starvation, disease, and death.
QuoteDHARNAI, India — One year ago, environmentalists hailed this tiny village as the future of clean energy in rural India. Today, it is powered by coal.
Dharnai, a community of about 3,200 people in eastern India's Bihar state, had been without electricity for three decades. So when activists with Greenpeace set up a solar-powered microgrid in July of 2014, the excitement was palpable. But, residents said, the problems started almost immediately.
When the former chief minister of Bihar state visited to inaugurate the grid, villagers lined up to protest, chanting, "We want real electricity, not fake electricity!"
By "real," they meant power from the central grid, generated mostly using coal. By "fake," they meant solar.
Analysts say the story of Dharnai illustrates how difficult it can be to provide reliable, high-quality electricity to the world's poor without using the central grid. The challenge is coming into focus as Prime Minister Narendra Modi moves forward on an ambitious pledge to generate 175 gigawatts from utility-scale solar and wind energy by 2022 and increase coal-powered generation. Much of that power would go into the central grid, rather than being disseminated through small, decentralized energy systems.
Vijay Kumar Das, a line engineer with Dharnai's electricity committee, compared the village's solar microgrid experiment to polluted groundwater.
"If you don't find bottled water to drink, you have to settle for water from the hand pump," he said. "Similarly, when we did not have real electricity, we had to make do with solar power."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-trumps-solar-in-india/
Come what may, the possible consequences of climate change pale in comparison to the moral necessity of increasing fossil fuel use. In fact, in addition to all the other benefits they shower upon us, fossil fuels also provide the tools we need to counter climate-related disasters like droughts, storms, and heatwaves. Climate-related deaths have declined 98% over the last century and will continue to decline unless governments pass resolutions like the one under consideration now.
There are no alternatives.
Quote from: Sir Ian Plätschisch on May 01, 2025, 06:02:03 PMThere are no alternatives.
Not sure. The Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement are not in opposition to the development of nuclear energy. Both agreements are focused on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and nuclear energy can play a role in that effort because it produces very low direct CO₂ emissions during operation.
According to ChatGPT (sorry for the CO2 cost of this request) :
Kyoto Protocol (1997)
• It set binding emission reduction targets for developed countries.
• It allowed countries to choose their own methods for reducing emissions, including the use of low-carbon technologies like nuclear energy.
• Nuclear energy was not excluded from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), although political and public opposition limited its practical inclusion.
Paris Agreement (2015)
• It is a non-binding global framework where countries set their own emission reduction goals (NDCs).
• It does not prescribe specific technologies, instead focusing on results (lower emissions).
• Countries are free to include nuclear energy in their national plans if it helps them meet their climate targets.
Quote from: þerxh Sant-Enogat on May 02, 2025, 01:53:16 AMQuote from: Sir Ian Plätschisch on May 01, 2025, 06:02:03 PMThere are no alternatives.
Not sure. The Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement are not in opposition to the development of nuclear energy.
You are right, nuclear fission (and hopefully fusion if we can figure it out) is the one viable supplement (and perhaps alternative in the long run) to fossil fuels, and I hope many more nuclear plants are built in the coming decades. Unfortunately that doesn't seem particularly likely.