It's funny to have to make this case but tbqh we don't make it enough: human efforts to counter fossil fuel use have had *at least some* effect on total greenhouse gas emissions since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015, and there's some evidence to back up this position A lil thread 🧵
CAVEATS FOR THE WHATABOUTY REPLYGUYS - All of this is wildly insufficient - None of this will automatically continue - Much of it can't continue without deeper systemic changes - Very little of this was thanks to Free Market Technological Innovation (and more in the thread as you'll see) #1 - deviation from the worst scenarios If fossil fuel use had grown at the rate it did in the 2000s, global CO2 emissions would be ~5-10 ish gigatonnes (a few percent) higher than they are today They did not - and they deviated pre-pandemic, too.
Always my fav chart from the GCB, and here's the 2025 update. It lays out what we've avoided, what we've failed to avoid, and what's at stake if we let the future slip We are not on a good trajectory, and slipping back into a worse trajectory is always possible. But: we know it bleeds
Similar story for IEA scenarios (2025 update on this coming soon). The older "current policies" outlooks have simply ended up not coming true. That's because the policies did not remain 'current' - there were 'new policies'.
#2 - Academic studies of whether climate policies do climate things The IPCC WG3 summary is getting a bit old now, but it's a good outline of the top-down and bottom-up efforts to actually check whether or not climate policies have a direct effect on the physical dumping of GHGs
listen up, climate policies have resulted in the avoidance of greenhouse gases and global emissions would be way higher had we done nothing here is a wall of text from the IPCC report with evidence ipcc.ch IPCC AR6 WG3 Chapter 14 Cross Chapter box 10 (14-43, line 39)
Also this one (I'm sure there are more)
www.annualreviews.org
#3 - the power sector This is the simplest and the most significant (bc most progress to date has been in wind and solar) Fossil fuel use for power would have grown *way faster* had it not been for wind and solar deployment over the past decade ember-energy.org
It is physically impossible that new wind and solar did not crowd out *something else* after they became energised on power grids. New power stations do not induce new demand: grids just do not work like that. In places where demand has also stagnated or fallen, WS have led to falling fossil use This is clearly where the case goes from likely to flat-out undeniable. In the alternative universe where we shrugged it all off as impossible, emissions in the world's power system would be far, far higher. (side note for ecomodernists: wind and solar would not have grown w/out gov't policies) Just so its clear: none of this is slam-dunk toxic-positivity BINGO insta post Good Newsâ„¢ shaving a few ppm off coal in this is barely detectable in the ultimate atmospheric co2 ppm as it get mixed around with land-use shifts: we have to make WAY BIGGER changes before this even turns up in ppm
But most generations today have basically been conditioned to believe humanity cannot exist without burning coal, oil and gas, even though all three of them are historically very recent. Fatalists (whether from the fossil industry or just volunteers) set their mind to helping preserve this belief Often it's centred around wanting to see a *different type* of action: generally something centred around tackling growth, inequality, corporate power and capitalism Somehow that distaste for the mode of action ends up as a declaration that all action is impossible? Including their own suggestions? The most rancid capitalists will take any sign of progress and present it as vindication of their model (eg bsky.app) Conversely: people who argue in favour of deeper systemic change and post-growth worlds wrongly see any sign of progress as a threat to their ideas, and attack
Here's the lie: it wasn't "innovation" that shifted trajectories It was - Massive deployments of wind (and solar) (contrary to Gates' wishes) - Huge gov't subsidies to help that - The climate movement aggressively defending those policies against people like Gates' friend Bjorn Lomborg
(maybe the worst example of the latter, unique in terms of sheer mumbling-anglosphere-white-guy laziness, was planet of the humans in 2020) ketanjoshi.co
ketanjoshi.co
I take the sign that the fossil fuel economy bleeds when you prick it as a very straightforward signal that whatever path we find to eliminating the substances causing the overheating of Earth, we simply know that it's possible to do so. All of it is hard AF, but none of it is "impossible" So when I say that it is extremely important that we know now we can exist as a species without burning fossil fuels, I do so knowing that it'll satisfy the glibbest ecomodernist dudebro and it'll infuriate the most online performance-fatalists But it's still important that we know this I really know we've never been at global lower levels of Holding Two Ideas In Your Head At Once but please: consider it