“President Biden has made turning the tide towards a clean energy transition one of his Administration’s top priorities,” the White House said.

(please be true, please be true, please be true...)

and significant steps in the transition are built one way or another into all the big bills he's signed since.

...there is SOOO much more that the administration could be doing.

Yes, the 2 bills that deal with climate change were great!

But they're just the start of what's needed and just a touch of all that he can be doing.

Hopefully, this recent announcement means he will finally be prioritizing his efforts to keep those 3 year old campaign promises!

(please be true, please be true, please be true...)

Plus the minority-rule senate is a big problem.

in 2024 give us majorities in the house and senate, and of course, reelect Biden, then there’s a great deal more will be able to do. The stronger the majority’s the more.

...there is an endless amount of work that can be done by a motivated administration that does NOT need any approval, votes, or agreement with any other branch of the government.

A simple, but robust, public awarenes and engagement campaign, along the lines of the WW2 War effort, the 'Race to the Moon' public education effort, even the anti-drug use "just say no" campaign (pathetic as it was) ar all examples of one small effort the administration could, and should be doing.

And that's just one idea. How about publicly directing every agency and department under the Executive to begin a measured scale down of all of their individual carbon footprints?

There is a LOT the administration can be doing. Using the "but our hands are tied!" excuse doesn't cut it when there's so much they could be doing with their voice, their head, their elbows, knees, and feet.

Those and the need to get re-elected by big margins and ensure that Dems regain control of the House and widen their margins in the Senate to help him save the nation from fascism.

Since any actions without the approval of Congress cause him to be accused of acting unconstitutionally, it may be important to his effort to be re-elected to avoid overuse of some of those methods until that is achieved. Plus they can be overturned, so having Congressional approval is preferable.

...the urgency of the CO2 situation, and the huge amount of damage more atmospheric CO2 will cause, hasn't yet sunk in to everyone's minds.

We have to take action now, and deal with the much less important consequences of those actions once this "existential threat" (Joe's own words) is past.

First world citizens will not be inconvenienced. Deep inside we all know the individual sacrifices needed to even partially avert climate catastrophe. The will to do what’s required is not there.

Now is the time to incorporate adaptive engineering into all curriculums from K— northward…
That won’t happen either. Humanity to next generations, “OK, you’re royally fucked, we did it, you fix it, deal with it. Good luck.”

...I'm going to be pushing for anyone and everyone to do anything and everything they can to reduce and eliminate CO2 emissions.

I understand you're not interested in that and have already surrendered, and I can certainly understand why you feel that way, it sure does look like we're past the point of no return.

But I just don't feel comfortable knowing that children are still being born while I willingly and knowingly sit back, not trying to mitigate some of the harms we are causing them.

I’ve worked for many years in marine environmental cleanup as the problem continues to grow. There are remarkable efforts happening across the environmental spectrum. I do the work as a spiritual exercise. I do other bits as I can.

The problem is, we need about 3 billion Gretas.

Everyone's effort matters, no matter how small, big, easy, difficult, or even successful.

It's the willingness and intent to take action when action is needed that matters.

Unfortunately, too many people try to dodge the responsibility for taking action by pretending the intent doesn't matter, that it's only solid success that matters.

How could we possibly achieve success without the intent to try in the first place?

From one Greta to another, know that I am Deeply Grateful for your efforts!

Yet I worry that our forward momentum will crash to a halt if the Republicans regain power. Their denial is deep.

The election matters tremendously, for our planet and for our democracy. Individually we can only do so much. United we can have a huge impact.

...the "lights out" party DOES begin.

It's going to take a lot of $. (No, that shouldn't be read "lot of money.&quot

Not all will find its target, some will land in other pockets (or the targets will be well pocketed and padded). And much of the $ "invested" will head to targets that result from "this will work, I've done the math" thinking by somebody who avoided calculus and even pre-cal and majored in psych or ethnic studies or poli sci to become a lawyer or politician, based on their deep knowledge of biofuel technology. (They read a Corn Flakes box and listened to college friends from psych or ethnic studies or poli sci that now work for advocacy groups, but PhDs know it all, right?)

Note that ethanol is a biofuel. I'm sure India will devote millions of hectares to devoting crops to producing ethanol, even as they ban the export of basmati rice and atta flour because of the need to feed their own population. I mean, so much extra farm land!

Or they look forward to the tech and the $.

I like some projects. Biodiesel is great, if you have access to the fats. (But hey, Impossible Meat scraps doesn't render well.) It was gross, but dumping the grill's grease trap and spent oil from frying chicken into the grease barrel was a good thing--at the time it went to a place that either produced soap or found other uses for it, not just soaking the landfill with fat. (The restaurant was paid for the poundage.) I even took the fat from the roast beef broth and chucked it in there.

I'm looking forward to when they manage to get some microscopic organism properly geared up to photosynthesize a fuel, and not just a palm oil surrogate--sadly, I suspect that must fail in most cases because most of our fuels are toxic. Then again, methane (say, from decomposing pig shit) isn't a bad thing, it just at current prices has trouble being cost-effective. (And if you want to triple the price of natural gas to be green, please accept the responsibility at the polls for what would normally be billed as "inflation".)

We'll see if they successfully reach the targets even if they successfully reach for the funding.

I guess anything is worthwhile if, for no other reason, it moves the needle on the intransigence meter.

...is to do all that we can to maintain some level of society while we diminish our reliance on fossil fuels.

If we can keep the lights on AND stop burning fossil fuels to literally kill the fossil fuel industry, we can then continue our work toward reducing CO2 emissions without an extremely wealthy and strongly politically connected industry fighting us every step of the way.

Some evidence that is not exactly true:



On average, GHG emissions from corn ethanol are 34% lower than gasoline when including Land Use Change (LUC) emissions and 44% lower when excluding them.

GHG emissions for cellulosic ethanol average around 97% lower than gasoline when including LUC emissions and 93% lower when excluding LUC emissions.

The use of B20 (20% biodiesel, 80% petroleum diesel), a common biodiesel blend in the U.S., can reduce CO2 emissions by 15% compared to petroleum diesel. The use of B100 (100% biodiesel) can reduce CO2 emissions by 74%.


https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/biofuels-factsheet

Joe cares about climate