There’s been some conservation wins that I know of. Okaloosa Darter fish came off of endangered status, and eventually off of threatened The Red Cockaded Woodpecker was elevated from endangered to threatened a few years ago.
Controlled burns in the US long leaf pine forests have also lead to a return of the quail population.
Just trying to sprinkle a little good news out there.
American Bison, too. The repopulation of American bison (often mistakenly called buffalo) is one of the most successful repopulation efforts in history. The reason you’re able to order buffalo (again, not actually buffalo) burgers at your local hipster burger joint is because American bison is no longer endangered. The population has come from less than 1000 total bison (all privately owned by a handful of conservationists) to over 400k today.
TCO is expected to return to 1980 values around 2066 in the Antarctic, around 2045 in the Arctic, and around 2040 for the near-global average (60°N-60°S). - Source
iirc ~1/4 of the worlds energy production is renewable. More than 90% of all new electricity capacity worldwide came from renewable sources in 2024. Doomers want you to believe it can’t happen again while we are in the very decade that is likely to change the world. Public policy doesn’t even matter at this point, renewable energy is cheaper, so nearly all new investments are in renewables.
Energy sources are only part of the issue (albeit a major one) and enormous damage has already been done to a disastrous point, calling people “doomers” with an intent to ridicule their angst, worries and experiences is akin to climate change denial.
Also, public policy is constantly used in an expensive way if that it suits the ruling classes, markets are not some neutral forces in a vacuum.
I’m concerned about climate change. But if you ask most people how much progress we’ve made they would say “barely any”. That belief that we can’t do it, is the main thing aside from public policy slowing us down. When people think things are hopeless, they often don’t see the point in fighting or changing their behavior. I also think most people don’t realize that renewable energy adoption has accelerated so quickly the last few years. Every year we have had massive growth over last year in adoption.
We could stop producing all greenhouse gases today, and the planet would continue warming for 100 years. it’s a pretty tough problem we have on our hands.
Sure but the problem would be 100 times worse if fossil fuel adoption doest decline. Its good news that we seem to be on the way to shifting our behavior.
Well it’s understandable, the concept of being able to actually cooperate and do something about the environment on a world scale instead of just blindly pretending it’s not a thing until it kills us all is a bit hard to believe for younger generations for obvious reasons.
The banning of CFCs due to their environmental impacts, retooling the aerosol and refrigerant industries, is what it looks like when we have a functioning world society.
There are adults now who were born after that and don’t remember a time when we could behave that way, so they have every right to be cynical.
We managed to dial things back a bit, so that became a smaller problem.
We used to see regular news reports of actual rivers on fire. Things are still way too bad, but we forcefully throttled some things as we saw how quickly the damage was compounding.
Women’s hair doesn’t defy gravity without lots of help.
Kids these days don’t even know about the hole in the ozone later.
It’s kinda our last big environmental win.
There’s been some conservation wins that I know of. Okaloosa Darter fish came off of endangered status, and eventually off of threatened The Red Cockaded Woodpecker was elevated from endangered to threatened a few years ago.
Controlled burns in the US long leaf pine forests have also lead to a return of the quail population.
Just trying to sprinkle a little good news out there.
American Bison, too. The repopulation of American bison (often mistakenly called buffalo) is one of the most successful repopulation efforts in history. The reason you’re able to order buffalo (again, not actually buffalo) burgers at your local hipster burger joint is because American bison is no longer endangered. The population has come from less than 1000 total bison (all privately owned by a handful of conservationists) to over 400k today.
I had a Bison meatloaf once that was so good. It’s so much lighter than beef. It was like eating a meat cloud.
I saw on Ted Turner’s wiki page that he helped with that.
None of that is worldwide.
Tbf, its not even yet a win technically.
iirc ~1/4 of the worlds energy production is renewable. More than 90% of all new electricity capacity worldwide came from renewable sources in 2024. Doomers want you to believe it can’t happen again while we are in the very decade that is likely to change the world. Public policy doesn’t even matter at this point, renewable energy is cheaper, so nearly all new investments are in renewables.
Energy sources are only part of the issue (albeit a major one) and enormous damage has already been done to a disastrous point, calling people “doomers” with an intent to ridicule their angst, worries and experiences is akin to climate change denial.
Also, public policy is constantly used in an expensive way if that it suits the ruling classes, markets are not some neutral forces in a vacuum.
I’m concerned about climate change. But if you ask most people how much progress we’ve made they would say “barely any”. That belief that we can’t do it, is the main thing aside from public policy slowing us down. When people think things are hopeless, they often don’t see the point in fighting or changing their behavior. I also think most people don’t realize that renewable energy adoption has accelerated so quickly the last few years. Every year we have had massive growth over last year in adoption.
We could stop producing all greenhouse gases today, and the planet would continue warming for 100 years. it’s a pretty tough problem we have on our hands.
Sure but the problem would be 100 times worse if fossil fuel adoption doest decline. Its good news that we seem to be on the way to shifting our behavior.
I just told my kid about how we fixed acid rain through regulation just this morning
Well it’s understandable, the concept of being able to actually cooperate and do something about the environment on a world scale instead of just blindly pretending it’s not a thing until it kills us all is a bit hard to believe for younger generations for obvious reasons.
I don’t understand, why would it sound implausible? Isn’t that what governments are FOR?
Not when all governments have been captured by oil tycoons it isn’t.
Oh. But they were good for this before that, right?
The banning of CFCs due to their environmental impacts, retooling the aerosol and refrigerant industries, is what it looks like when we have a functioning world society.
There are adults now who were born after that and don’t remember a time when we could behave that way, so they have every right to be cynical.
The refrigerant industry. Oh boy.
It’s what governments are supposed to be for.
Oh. Just oil?
But government BAD! Taxes BAD!
I think the only reason it worked was because there were cheaper alternatives to CFCs already available. So it didn’t cost them money.
We managed to dial things back a bit, so that became a smaller problem.
We used to see regular news reports of actual rivers on fire. Things are still way too bad, but we forcefully throttled some things as we saw how quickly the damage was compounding.
Women’s hair doesn’t defy gravity without lots of help.
And there was that whole thing about trying to make cars burn a little cleaner so you could actually see from 1 side of a major city to another
Trump wants to bring it back.