This thread has a relevant discussion and citations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35758192
> Agreed that 1% of the United States' 28% of global CO2 emissions is negligible in the grand global scheme.
This is incredibly ignorant of the "death by 1000 cuts" issue of climate change. 1% or 28% of global CO2 emissions, if this statistic is even true, is huge. Very few climate change interventions are this effective.
The more effective climate change interventions include strict supersets of this, like "banning all new fossil fuel construction", which, if implemented in the US, still only gets you a few percentage points on the larger problem, and would get much greater pushback from people who don't care about climate change and will always cite government overreach for any regulation.
What do you think would be a non-negligible difference? Do you even believe in human-caused climate change? I'll be happy to provide more, real citations, but it's hard to tell what level of burden of proof I should be taking on if I don't know what you think I need to prove.
1% of 28%. If we trust that number, that means that the best we can hope for from this change is 0.0028 (0.3%, rounding up) of global emissions. That number is a ceiling: it assumes that not only do new buildings not have gas stoves, but that all old gas stoves in the United States are removed as well.
This negligible (IMO) improvement comes at the cost of 1) being vulnerable during power outages, 2) having a far worse cooking experience on a daily basis, according to many, and 3) generating significant political backlash that will hinder changes that will actually make a difference.
One of my favorite climate change books is How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, by Bill Gates, in which he outlines where the biggest opportunities lie. His approach seems far more practical and likely to make a dent in the problem.
This is one of your favorite books, and it literally, explicitly disagrees with what you're saying?
One of the core points of that book is that reducing emissions is not enough--we have to eliminate emissions, not reduce them, and investing in reduction solutions may in fact prevent eliminating emissions. Natural gas is literally the example he gives of this. He notes that natural gas is a minor carbon emitter compared to other fossil fuels, but continued investment in natural gas means that we'll still be emitting carbon in 2050, which is his target date for eliminating carbon emissions. That reduction won't be enough--elimination is the only solution.
I mean, dude, it's in the Wikipedia summary. Why would you cite this without at least putting in 30 seconds to investigate whether it supports what you're saying?
