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Earth United States

Greece Passes First Climate Law, Vows To Cut Dependence on Fossil Fuels (yahoo.com) 60

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Greece has passed its first climate law, which sets out specific targets to fight climate change and wean itself off coal in power generation by 2028. From a report: The legislation sets interim targets for Greece to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and by 80% by 2040 before achieving zero-net emissions by 2050. It also engages the country to cut dependence on fossil fuels, including weaning off indigenous lignite or brown coal -- once the main source of energy -- in electricity production from 2028 onwards. This target might be brought forward to 2025, taking into account security of supplies. "It's an existential matter, a very important one, because it has to do with our lives, because it has to do with our children's lives," Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas told lawmakers before the vote. "Is this just going to help protect the environment? ÎÎ, it's not. It also helps the country's energy security."
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Greece Passes First Climate Law, Vows To Cut Dependence on Fossil Fuels More

Greece Passes First Climate Law, Vows To Cut Dependence on Fossil Fuels

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  • not to save the planet, but because it's profitable. There's a good chance it's too little too late. Especially for the American Southwest where climate change caused droughts are on track to clear out cities in a decade (if you're laughing at those liberal west coasters you won't be when they pile into your cities and your cost of living skyrockets...).

    Still, maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be like leaded gas, where the scientists saved us. On the other hand, it turns out Gen X got the worst exposure t

    • The american southwest is where we could be building square miles of solar collectors and battery, or solar heat collectors and molten salt storage. If only we had an administration with a plan instead of being energy hostile with no replacement energy in works, imagining we'll be saved by electric cars.

      Democrats really blew it this time, controlling house and white house but just so busy being woke dingbats they aren't minding the store. The blowback from this will cause fossil fuel flowing like niagra fa

  • I'm sure this has nothing to do with a certain war going on right now and the possibility that the country might eventually be permanently cut-off from a major source of fossil fuel from a country that shall not be named.

  • I try to be hopeful, but I'm really starting to think climate change is a lost cause. What isn't istThe west's dependence on despotic regimes for liquified and gasified prehistoric life forms. Forget climate change, the real prize is being able to tell OPEC they can go suck a fat one.

    • Re:At this point, the best arguments against fossi (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @05:17PM (#62578220)

      Reducing the yearly literal millions of deaths by air pollution would be quite a good start.
      So far it's a much bigger ongoing disaster than the climate change.

    • Theoretically, the United States could already go tell OPEC to suck a fat one, if people were content to permanently pay $50+ per barrel for petroleum, since our domestic frackers will struggle to produce profitably below that price. ANWR could change that, maybe, but petroleum producers seem skittish. Despite high oil prices, nobody really seems to want to lay out the cash to expand production using existing leases, much less the leases that they could get from a friendlier Presidential administration.

      In

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        "Theoretically, the United States could already go tell OPEC to suck a fat one...."

        And if the US were content to nationalize their oil industry, or at least prohibit import and export. I think it would probably be pretty rough getting that through the senate filibuster.

        • They wouldn't need to nationalize anything. All that would need to happen is for US producers to increase production. Problem solved. If you had paid attention to the rest of my post, you would see that the smart money is on NOT increasing production, which is why OPEC won't do it and why American producers aren't in any hurry to do so, either.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            OPEC cuts production, which reduces supply. The international price increases due to the law of supply and demand.

            US producers do what?

            If they're not required to sell oil domestically for a controlled price, they're going to sell it at the world market price, and OPEC can make that as high as they like. I guess I was assuming your "$50+" was "at a price that makes US oil economic," which I think is pretty reasonable from the context.

            I read your post all the way through. I guess I thought it through for more

  • Unlike many laws on addressing increasing CO2 emissions, and the damage from global warming that is feared to come with it, they did set short term goals that the people passing this law could possibly be held to in a future election or debate. Must such laws set a goal so far out in the future that the probability that anyone voting on it will be in any public office, or even still alive, is quite low. Good job on them for setting goals in six to eight years as that is the kind of time frame that elected

    • In my naive youth, I thought nuclear was a great technology, would be reliable and with some practice could even limit the problems with fuel reprocessing and nuclear waste. Decades later, I find that failure has proven to be less work and more profitable for the "nuclear power industry" than delivery of power.

      Fix that and the rest of your endlessly repeated arguments begin to hold water.

  • Unless they build new nuclear energy they are just wasting time.

    • That's definitely not true.

        Switching from coal to natural gas by itself is a huge improvement in air quality (because of the higher mercury content of coal, among other things). Even if they don't reach perfection, that doesn't mean they are wasting their time.

      • In the US, "natural gas" means fracking, which is a huge greenhouse gas polluter. The methane leaks from fracking are obscene. It's nothing but another money grab & delay tactic by fossil fuel industries.

        • You don't have wind or solar without natural gas as a backup.

          • Currently, yes, because of a lack of investment in base-load alternatives, e.g. hydro-electric (dams, wave, tide, etc.), geothermal, & various energy storage systems. The idea is to adapt to local conditions, find useful opportunities, & develop infrastructure that minimises our use of greenhouse gas generating energy sources. There's no single solution to every situation (over-simplification makes a difficult task impossible) but we can drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels if we're sma
      • Deep decarbonization is not possible using natural gas. Just because it is better than coal does not mean it is good.

        • It's good. Your point is that because it's not perfect, it's not good. But that is not correct. An improvement is good.

          • No it is bad. 490 g CO2 per kWh. That's bad. It also leads to poverty. Natural gas is expensive for the consumer. 500% increase is some places this year due to the Russian invasion.

  • Pretty meaningless in reality (Score:4, Informative)

    by LaBelle ( 1063070 ) on Monday May 30, 2022 @07:39PM (#62578398)
    Unfortunately, this is a valueless gesture. The reality is that China emits more greenhouse gases than the entire developed world combined, and is continuing to increase its emissions. Feel good ideas, such as "reducing dependence on fossil fuels" and "refusing to sell anthracite coal overseas" are exactly that - feel good ideas that harm the people of the developed world. China continues to build new coal powered electrical plants. China is perfectly happy to use its own "bunk" coal to fuel those plants. Our refusal to sell cleaner coal and cleaner coal technology doesn't bother the Chinese in the least. Indeed, the Chinese now produce most of the world's Kraft paper and the industry is more polluting than ever since the Chinese didn't bother with all of that emissions control crap. Indeed, the Chinese imported entire Kraft (AKA "pulp") plants from places such as Albany, OR in their progress to make China essentially the major manufacturing site of the world. While foolish people blather about banning fossil fuels (apparently they plan to plow with horses or oxen, fertilize with sewage, and replace novocaine with biting down on shell casings) the Chinese commitment to "global warming reduction" consists of agreeing to eventually "consider" their pollution and whether or not to reduce it or to just continue increasing it. Examining Chinese policies suggests that there is no foreseeable decline in Chinese pollution - and India is starting to openly share that perspective.
    • in 2020 China emitted about 1/3 of the world's CO2:
      https://ourworldindata.org/co2... [ourworldindata.org]
      The reality is that in 2020 China installed more wind energy than the rest of the world combined:
      https://gwec.net/global-wind-r... [gwec.net]
      The reality is that in 2021 China installed 1/3 of the world's new solar power
      https://www.visualcapitalist.c... [visualcapitalist.com]
      The reality is that China is building more new nuclear power than any other country.
      In summary, seems like China is doing as much or more than other countries AND they make a lo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Translation: China desperately needs more power, and is practicing the standard Chinese investment model of "shove a funnel into the economy's throat and pour money down it, regardless of it making sense or not".

        It's the same pretty much everywhere else in China, which is why the moment the funnel of money being shoved into the system is even disturbed, you get Evergrandes. Everyone is addicted to more debt being used to repay debt. So you get absurd investments into everything, regardless of their function

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      "But China" has already been widely debunked. One more time then, just for you...

      China's per-capital emissions are much lower than the US. It's true that they are increasing, but China is a developing nation. Telling developing nations that they can't follow the West, that they have to stay agrarian and poor, isn't going to work. They want, and indeed have a right to, a good quality of life similar to ours.

      So two things need to happen.

      1. China needs to peak a lot lower and a lot earlier than we did, and the

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Xicor ( 2738029 )

      even if this were true, it's a dumb argument to make. someone else being a bad person doesn't preclude you from being a good person.

      even if 99 percent of all bad deeds were done by one percent of people, it still helps the world if the other 99 percent of people don't join them.

      plus the advantages to renewable are quite clear. electricity becomes cheaper the more of it there is.

    • I can only fix me.

      I cannot control China... Can you?

  • Then pass the buck onto others for when it fails miserably.

    Tale as old as time...

  • Now since this is in greece (Score:3)

    by Dirk Becher ( 1061828 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @02:18AM (#62578816)

    how do I bribe my way around it?

  • ...can save Greece a fortune on its energy bills. They're low tech, cheap & easy to set up & maintain. It's just a tank of water & some black hosepipes on your roof. In the Greek summer, you'd need to cover them from the sun because they'd get too hot.

    The there's photovoltaics for air-conditioning & charging electric vehicles. Again, massive savings. There's even more savings from investing in public transport infrastructure too which also stimulates economic activity (multiplier effects).

  • It's a bit stupid to run tanker ships with fuel for generators on 227 islands if you can avoid it.

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