• MudMan@fedia.io
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    5 days ago

    Extreme poverty worldwide is down from 38% to 8.5% since 2000. Global median income has doubled in that period. And yes, that’s adjusted for inflation.

    Oh, and renewable energy generation as share of the global energy mix has consistently beaten expectations during that period, too. Solar, specifically.

    • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
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      5 days ago

      Bullshit. Global inequality is on a constant rise. The extreme poverty crap is propaganda by the world bank who lowered the poverty line for no other reason than to make capitalism look good.

      That stuff about renewaple energy is simple greenwashing. The only year since 2000 when CO2 emissions went down was in 2020 thanks to COVID.

      • MudMan@fedia.io
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        5 days ago

        Doesn’t look that way to me, given that the change has been pretty smooth and shows up on specific regions and adjusting for outliers and inflation (and matches the rise in median income).

        More importantly, it’s not incompatible with global inequality on the rise. Different stats measure different things.

        Renewable energy beating expectations is the opposite of greenwashing, it specifically compares actual generated renewable energy against previous projections. If you want to poke holes into it for the sake of… denying anything good has ever happened, I guess? you should instead point out at how disproportionately that growth is driven by China.

        And again, that’s perfectly compatible with CO2 emissions going up. Different stats, different things.

        • glassware@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          And again, that’s perfectly compatible with CO2 emissions going up. Different stats, different things.

          The only reason to care about renewables is if they prevent climate change. Why am I supposed to be happy solar panels exist, if CO2 emissions are increasing?

          • MudMan@fedia.io
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            5 days ago

            Because those are two separate parameters. Less solar panels don’t mean less CO emissions, they mean more. You are cutting down on one metric even if you’re not reversing the trend.

            That is an absurd question, by the way. Why are you supposed to be unhappy we’re making more solar panels in this scenario? What is the downside?

    • dogsoahC@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      I don’t know too much about the median income, but I’d wager that it was mostly because the really poor country got a bit better off. Also, at least according to Wikipedia, the latest definition of extreme poverty was made in 2015, before the recent inflation spikes.

      And “beat expectations” is just a non-statement. What were the expectations? And how does it matter if we’re still on track for a climate catastrophe? We’ve crossed the 1.5°C target.

      • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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        5 days ago

        but I’d wager that it was mostly because the really poor country got a bit better off.

        That’s what happened. The bimodal world income distribution has become unimodal as the working class of East Asia has seen a lot of improvement. Inequality in the first world went up since a lot of working class jobs left their countries while the wealthy were able to get richer.

      • MudMan@fedia.io
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        5 days ago

        Hey, I’ll take poor countries getting a bit better off before any benefits to any American any day. That’s good news, so point made.

        As for “beat expectations”, I was going off a specific study showing multiple official forecasts and how far behind actuals they all were, but unfortunately I don’t have it handy.

        But the data is the data, so here’s another example from an Australian blog post: https://evcricketenergy.wordpress.com/2025/01/02/2030-renewables-in-australia-forecast-2024-update/

        And some data on renewable generation overtaking fossil fuels in the EU: https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2024/09/Report_Wind-and-solar-overtake-EU-fossil-fuels-in-the-first-half-of-2024.pdf

        I don’t know why people look at this as such a binary. Climate change isn’t an on-off switch. This has to happen regardless. Faster is better than slower. Climate catastrophe or not, we need to figure this out, it’s about how bad things get before we do and how much extra work and impact we have to deal with from going over certain thresholds. Going over 1.5 doesn’t mean we can give up now, we still have to get the renewable transition done, even if now we also have to deal with a bunch of humanitarian crises that wouldn’t have happened had we transitioned sooner.