Why should I care about Climate Change while China has 43 New Coal Fired Power Stations in the works

The same link shows us 2nd in total emissions (4500 Megatons). Footprint is a net calculation after carbon offset.

When a person says they believe in "the science", they know nothing about it. Climate change is not a problem you adapt as proof you have adapted to global cooling and warming all of your life, your children will adapt. It is climate policies that have very real potential to kill you, and much sooner than advancing old age, by destroying both energy and food production, making both scarce and expensive.

The price inflation we are experiencing today in our day to day living is due to the shortage of energy, and while Putin is the blamed as the proximate cause, energy prices had already risen significantly prior to February 2022. What Putin has done is bought forward the energy crisis that had been in the making since the Kyoto protocol was signed in 1997 and was expected to affect us directly here in Ireland by the end of the decade.

Did you know your smartphone uses more energy than a fridge. The manufacture of solar panels is energy intensive and dominated by Chinese manufacturers. Fertiliser depends on natural gas,and due to the shortage of gas molecules, manufacture has has to cease or be curtailed, the shortage of fertiliser is going to translate into a shortage of calories to feed humans and animals. The competition for gas from rich countries is causing problems for poor countries such as Bangladesh.

Over the past decade Western European politicians have decided that their states economies can be run solely on electricity, in pursuit of that goal they have impeded the discovery and extraction of fossil fuel sources on their doorstep, closed and demolished reserve generation power plants, banned (Ireland) or phased out nuclear generation (Germany), run down their fleet (France) and allocated substantial resources and subsidies to unreliable energy generation sources such as wind and solar and created mandates that increase our dependency on electricity generation.

To cover the deficiencies of Wind and Solar generation they increased their use of natural gas. There is no miracle cure here, the only option open based on pursuit of current energy policies is energy rationing and right now this by price mechanism, gas molecules cannot be printed or borrowed like fiat money can. You don't need a science degree to see what is happening now, you are experiencing it and even the Greens are praying for global warming this Winter, cold temperatures kill more people every year (excess Winter deaths). This part of the rock typically sees temperatures from 4 to 8 C during daylight over the Winter months.

But Coal is bad - The smog and air quality in cities that burned 'smokey' coal was killing millions of people a year and destroying the air quality across all urban centres

Oil is better than coal, but still affects air quality. Electrical heating is better for the environment if the energy comes from a cleaner source than an oil or gas fired central heating system

Leaded petrol absolutely was bad, it was poisoning people and the environment with toxic heavy metals, Petrol was better, and Diesel, with the modern filters (properly maintained) was supposed to be cleaner than petrol (except that the Car manufacturers falsified their emissions tests) Electric, is much better for air quality in towns and cities and if the electricity is generated using clean renewable sources, it's even better still. Sure there are some pollutants in the batteries, but compared to the amount of dirty oil and all those used filters and engine parts that an ICE car produces over the 15+ years and all of the gunk released when refining the oil needed to make the fuel during it's operation, I'd say the battery electric car is much cleaner in the long run.

I really don't see your point.

In 20-30 years the solar panels will be reaching their end of life anyway, and they will be due to be replaced with whatever the most efficient tech there is at the time. As long as we're not being greenwashed by companies selling dirty technology and pretending it's environmentally friendly, then I see it as a good thing that we're finally taking things like air quality and efficiency and climate change into consideration when planning our home and transport infrastructure

I would be worried about the hydrogen economy being a trojan horse by the fossil fuel sector to keep using methane to generate 'blue' or 'grey' hydrogen

We do need to be very vigilant about where we invest to ensure it's an actual improvement. The Diesel-gate controversy shows that we cannot trust industry to regulate itself. We need to insist on independent evaluation of claims made by industry.

The people throwing soup at priceless art, I have no issue with them. The art is protected, it is not in any danger of actual damage, They are calling for the end of Oil and gas, and we need to keep calling for this as loudly as we can because we know that as soon as we stop paying attention, the oil and gas industry return to business as usual.

They're not going to get oil and gas production to stop immediately, but by calling for this, it highlights the 'targets' to be 'net neutral' by 2050 need to have action taken immediately or else it's just more empty rhetoric aimed at allowing them to continue polluting our planet. A target 3 decades in the future is utterly useless. We need targets for 2023, 2024, 2025 etc so we can measure our progress instead of letting our governments do nothing knowing that they'll be out of power before they're held accountable

If governments want to get tougher on climate change they need to attack the causes of it. Corporations, industry and big businesses.

of course they don’t have the stones for that, they’d rather attack the guy on the street for not driving an expensive hybrid or not using the invisible public transport that isn’t there.

China's economy isn't even close to being the largest in the world. They would need to grow by another 20% while the us remains stagnant. They have higher growth sure but it will be harder and harder to maintain as they become more developed. Maybe you are using some other measure but in terms of GDP at least , there's a long way to go. That's ignoring the potential impact of political decisions such as zero COVID or trade wars with the us.

I'm in favour of measures such as education etc. as a means to help alleviate climate change but I'm not in favour of taxing the sh1t out of us while the main polluters continue to pollute on a large scale, e.g. China, USA, etc.

What we are doing is akin to thinking that we can lower the height of a lake by taking a teacup of water out of the lake while a river flows into the lake. On a global scale, we are making no difference whatsoever. All we are doing is penalising ourselves with extra taxes.

Ireland produces approximately 1/1000th of the world's greenhouse gasses. Even if we magically went carbon neutral overnight, we would only improve things by 0.1%.

What's the point of sticking a carbon tax on a bag of coal. It does fcukall good in the scheme of things and penalises some auld wan who has no option but to use an open fire. I'm all for trying to improve things but we are wasting our time while the main players are contributing hundreds of times the greenhouse gasses that we do.