Thread by @hankgreen

Can we...just accept that we suck at this?

I want to tell you a story that has made me kinda hopeless about Twitter's ability to affect positive things happening, and it starts with this tweet from Hillary Clinton.

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1782400479743324603

It was (and I understand why) widely mocked. The graph is confusing and bad, especially the part where it flattens out in 2030 (which is when most of the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate change bill in the history of Earth, expires.)

Some of the people making fun of the tweet were like "How do I vote for Target" which is a good joke. But the majority of the popular tweets about it were like "This is the problem with Democrats, they will only ever be just a little better than Republicans."

https://twitter.com/caitiedelaney/status/1782485794151858380

This is very demonstrably not the case if you pay attention at all, and I will explain why, but all of these tweets got over 10,000 likes.

There's also this take, (this one with 11k likes) which is just incorrect. The 2050 goal was set by the Paris Agreement, and Biden's 2030 goal is more aggressive than the 2030 goal set by the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement's goal is to limit warming to 1.5C.

Anyway, the fact that people misinterpreted a graph which would be better represented as the below graphs (created by @nolightupstairs and @jaxroam respectively) isn't what makes me so sad and frustrated.

I mean, it does frustrate me...like, people see what they are primed to see and obviously a lot of progressives are primed to see the Biden Administration as half-assed on climate.

But here's what really frustrated me.

A couple days after this Bad Hillary Tweet went viral on progressive Twitter, the Biden Admin and the EPA announced their new CO2 rules for the power sector, regulating the ability of coal fired power plants to EXIST ANYMORE.

Coal plants are just 20% of our power mix right now, but because it's so dirty, it's still more than half of the power sector's CO2 emissions.

The new rules say that coal fired power plants need to capture all of their CO2 by 2032 or close by 2039.

This is a big deal that will dramatically increase our chances of hitting the 2050 target. The rules also say that this switch away from coal can't be accomplished by just building base-load natural gas plants (unless they are not emitting CO2.)

This is amazing news. It's a massive change that the fossil fuel industry is going to hate and attack Biden over RELENTLESSLY.

But the story of how we got here is interesting and important, so please stick with me.

It began in 2005 when the Massachusettes sued the EPA saying, "You have to regulate harmful emissions and CO2 is a harmful emission." The Supreme Court agreed and the EPA sent their findings to the Bush administration which REFUSED TO OPEN THE EMAIL and stalled until Obama.

The Obama admin quickly interfaced with the EPA and attempted to do the obvious thing...create a carbon market where different sectors could trade credits so we could decarbonize as efficiently as possible.

But then the Supreme Court (with justices appointed by GWB) stopped the regulation from going into effect, and eventually said, "OK, you can regulate CO2, but you can't create a carbon market. You can only regulate individual power plants."

But then Trump was president and he of course scrapped everything.

So, Biden's EPA had to figure out how to do it in a way that fit with court precedent, and that meant keeping it a regulation that affected individual power plants, which mean't "capture carbon or close."

But if the coal companies could credibly say "No, carbon capture isn't ready yet, you're asking us to do something we can't do." Then the court would just overturn it, so the Biden Admin first had to pass laws that developed and supported CO2 capture technology.

They did this with the IRA and the Infrastructure Law (a move that a lot of progressives disliked, but was part of these machinations.) Because Trump appointed so many conservative justices, they had to get that passed before they could legally justify the new rules.

The coal lobby has always said "Carbon Capture is the Future" so the Biden Admin is saying "OK, 2032 sounds like the future to me....here are the tools to get there. If it isn't the future, then stop emitting CO2 by shutting down."

They worked for years to make a legally strong case that the EPA has the ability to regulate the majority of our power sector's CO2 emissions out of existence and it ALMOST DIDN'T HAPPEN and it's a testament to hard, smart, long work that it did.

Now, do you think I found out about it when tens of thousands of people shared tweets about it? Yeah, of course not.

The Sierra Club and NRDC and Earth Justice all tweeted excitedly about it and got...dozens of likes. Governor Jay Inslee GOT RATIOED OVER IT!

I found out about it this weekend because I listen to the dorkiest, most inside-baseball climate podcast on Earth, Shift Key.

(If you want to actually care about climate change, this (and Volts from @drvolts) are the podcasts!)

https://twitter.com/robinsonmeyer/status/1783969260785860967

So why is the Biden Administration working it's ass off to get to the 2050 target when:
1. It is going to increase power costs, providing ammunition to conservatives.
2. It's a huge pain in the ass because conservative justices keep getting nominated.

3. The people who actually care about climate change WILL NOT EVEN KNOW IT HAPPENED, DO NOT CELEBRATE IT, AND INSTEAD WILL FOCUS ON A MISINTERPRETED GRAPH AND OWNING HILLARY CLINTON.

The only answer I have for this question is because the Biden folks don't want the fucking world to end. They want to hit the Paris Agreement targets and so that America can lead by example, even if there is a political cost and very little gain.

So, I guess, we're just all very lucky to have people working their asses of to address climate change even though, apparently, it will go unnoticed and not sway anyone to vote for them because we're too busy being snarky on a website.

@austin_walker @RDondret I get what you’re saying though and I hear that I did a bad job of being clear about what my problem with your tweet was.