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

I know where you're coming from. A lot of the onus has been pushed to individuals to reduce their carbon footprint (I think the fossil fuel companies actually invented this term to distract from being held accountable themselves)

It's a massive global scale problem. It won't be solved by individual action. It requires states to implement policies that mean the easiest most sensible choices that citizens make are also compatible with our climate change goals.

The national fleet of cars won't electrify overnight. Homes won't all move to electric heating at the same time. The electricity grid won't be all renewable overnight. The most impact a citizen can have is to let our politicians know that meaningful action on climate change is a top priority.

Ireland are actually in a privileged position. We have, for the first time in our history, an opportunity to become an energy exporting country. Given the precarious nature of global oil and gas supplies, we should be speeding up our plans to build offshore wind farms and the interconnectors necessary to fully exploit these resources

There is no point caring or doing anything while China, India, Russia and others will do nothing but increase their CO2 output. Ireland's contribution to anthropogenic CO2 is 0.3%, so anything we do amounts to diddly squat of nothing. Wake me up when the ecologically conscious, greener than green Norwegians leave their fossil fuels in the ground and stop exporting every CC of the stuff they can locate. Currently they are hard at it looking for more while the whole world looks on and oohs and ahhs at how many EV's they drive, envious of the positive eco-cred they get from being the worst eco-hypocrits on the planet.

Basically, we have to pay carbon taxes to make up for the billions who don't. There is something wrong with that logic, and I think I know what it is.

Wind turbine support towers largely come from China. Don't worry, there will likely be massive lobbying by green interests to exclude all the green bits from the tariffs, even if thay are all made using coal power.

You cited a paper from 2013?

I question the methodology given how ubiquitous ‘the cloud’ is and how many devices besides phones access it. It’s not talking about the actual phone itself.

The US consumes an estimated 389 billion kWh for residential cooling while just 70 billion kWh powers the Internet.

And if we look on that pie for refrigeration knowing the space cooling slice is 389 billion kWH - I just don’t see how the internet eclipses those values. And that’s for all devices not just phones. Dare say the claim that phones use more energy than refrigerators is bunk. Thanks thermodynamics

But of course if people think it’s a problem stop posting because according to some people this post used the same energy as baking a chicken or something?

0.3% of emissions and only 0.06% of population.

Rumor mill has it many of these ‘climate activists’ ruining artwork and store fronts just before the midterms for some apparent reason is actually a big oil AstroTurf job to incite the kind of sentiments against climate action that you are demonstrating.

What do you expect in a frigid country where the average annual temperature is just 9.3°C?

Big oil money too.

"I feel bad for her."

Depending on her situation your sympathy might not be enough.

The real question becomes what is the acceptable cost of these protests having an effect?

Somebody who is struggling not getting the money they need is already acceptable, we've established that with this post. Is her patients not getting the care they need and acceptable cost?

I'd be interested to see where the line is drawn? Let's say a protest costs 10 people their lives, is this an acceptable cost for the protests to achieve their goals? 100 lives? 1,000 lives?

I don't see how anyone gets to say that it's fine for the student nurse to be prevented from getting to work when we haven't really asked if she consents to being in that situation. We've basically said "the protestors goals are more important that your well being so please accept our condolences and go away."

So, what you are saying is that establishment & corporate based interests will execute false flag operations to ultimately get what they want? Jayzus man, to coin a popular phrase up in here - I think there is a forum for dat ----------->

It's just the same people discussing these issues on boards.ie so I don't even see the point in it any more, yet here I am.

So China are wrecking the place, and people think why should we bother. The Communist conference or whatever was the other day in China and Xi did set out an agenda to move to Green energy and even mentioned biodiversity.

We in Europe can say f*ck it and do nothing but that just means we'll all bed led to ruin sooner rather than later. The way we consume is not sustainable and will have to change through lack of resources or whatever sooner or later, regardless of what China are doing. Look at how bad oceans are, wildlife, everything. All the metrics are just awful.

Surely if you have kids or care about the future you know we must change our ways eventually?

I understand that but how have we concluded that whatever happens to this random nurse as a consequence of these actions it is all acceptable if it helps us achieve a goal?

She doesn't get a say in this at all?

Yes and all this abuse they get about being middle class etc. I can't think of many movements that weren't led by educated middle class people. Daniel O'Connell, Wolfe Tone, Gandhi, Che Guevera, people who started the RSPCA etc. were all looney lefty middle/upper class folk.

People on the breadline are too busy putting food on the table to worry about stuff like this.