- make sure fuel prices increase globally

- The US economy is relatively well-shielded from the fallout by its own fossil fuel sources, local and in colonies like Venezuela.

- export more US fossil fuels, especially to Europe, at inflated prices. US insiders reap the profits.

- further kneecap European competitiveness in energy intensive sectors, steal market share. Oh well, small gift to China here too, but still a net win for the US.

Iranians were rioting against the regime, Israel intelligence handed the US a report that the collective "Head" of the Iranian regime will be all together at one place, at one time.

Cut off the head, and the rioters riding high on the win will topple the rest. Coming off of the swift clean victory in Venezuela, and Trumps incredible desire to put feathers in his cap, it was an irresistible proposition.

So he decided to cut off the head, which was successful. The miscalculation however was that the rioters got scared/apathetic rather than motivated. The power vacuum was filled by the same people who were there before. I'm sure Mossad and the CIA were probably on the ground trying to ground swell support, but evidently it didn't happen.

Killing a few heads of Iran was known to not be an effective strategy, because the power is in the hands of the IRGC as an institution and large group, not the figureheads. This is especially hilarious when the Trump admin was so freaking stupid, they couldn't figure this out even after it didn't work the first time. They continued trying to kill random figureheads as if that plan would have had more success if you killed people nobody had previously heard of.

None of this is "miscalculation" or bad luck or taking a reasonable gamble. It's stupidity. There was not evidence to believe this plan had a strong chance. There was no organized resistance. Claims of supporting the Kurds, a group the Trump admin has fucked over more than once (nit: Other Kurds, they aren't a single group), happened only after the war was already going tits up and involved absurd tweets about "dropping them weapons" as if that's just a thing you can do on a whim and as if the Kurds themselves were willing, ready and able to resist the Iran regime.

We did not "Cut off the head" in Venezuela. We conspired with insiders to replace one figurehead with another. It was not a victory except for extremely weird people who think abducting a foreign head of state is somehow a good thing.

The Pentagon was actively telling the admin all of this, which is why some of them were fired.

What happened was even dumber than this absurd post-hoc rationalization: Israel was fucking pissed after Oct 7th, which is reasonable, and decided that "Mowing the grass" was done, and they were going to Finally fix this. They planned to attack Iran. Their strikes over the next year were done to enable this. Shortly before their planned attacks were to start, Bibi came to Trump and told him about this Righteous war they were about to do and got it in Trump's mind that it would be good for the US to look Strong if they attacked first, as Iran would probably attack US bases in retaliation anyway, and may end up pulled in regardless. IE, there's a chance Kamala would also have gotten sucked into this quagmire in some fashion, depending on how Iran had reacted to just Israel's strikes. Nobody was in a strong position to tell Israel "No, don't start this war, that's stupid, it's stupid, you've already neutered all the proxy groups, just take your victory and go home"

This is Israel's war. They don't mind the straight being screwed up. They don't mind the world economy falling down.

I prefer the version where Bibi quietly threatens Trump with videos/etc from his island vacations.

Negative externalities:

- loss of trust

- loss of evidence based policy

- loss of long-term planning

- loss of talent

- financial loss for almost all except the rare insiders

George Friedman, The Next Decade

Seems to be in contradiction.

When Iran hit some of Exxon's oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, their stock actually shot up. Because they have an even greater investment in LNG in Texas which are now incredibly valuable

The truth is probably much more multi-headed - though hard to see how the US would have gone to war without some assessment of their own energy situation.

That can't end well?

A rise in crude prices might pay off for a small country that lives almost exclusively off it (say, Saudi Arabia, in the hyphotetical case that it could keep exporting as normal) but for the US? I don't think it does. Surely, Europe is more exposed than the US and will suffer even more, but this is not a zero-sum game.

So I don't think it's an elaborate plan, it's just Trump being reckless as usual.

The fun part about this is that it shows what people actually care about.

What happens if petroleum prices go up? People use less. It's the entire premise of a carbon tax. Fuel costs more so people buy a hybrid or electric vehicle, power utilities find renewables or nuclear more attractive relative to natural gas, etc. In a market economy this is the primary way to get people to switch from something to alternatives -- which is pretty important if you think climate change is a problem.

This is obviously not why Trump is doing it, but it's the consequence of it anyway. So now we get to see what people care about. Do you like higher oil prices because it speeds up the transition away from fossil fuels, or dislike them because of who it is that caused it this time?

We dont have to imagine this. We kind of see both variants in the open.

The ICE recruits are raising the bar.

Oh and now the FBI can consider those with a background in bestiality, so lots of fresh talent there

> https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/iran-war-warn...

We had a retard in the Oval Office 2017-2021 surrounded by "the deep state" (i.e. career managers of the ultra-complex organization called "the government"), and politically constrained by Congress.

Now we have that same retard, but supported by vast purges of aforementioned managers, and politically unconstrained by the cultists and cowards (the two forms of GOP representative) in Congress.

When all is said and done it will be he, not AOC or Bernie or any "Green New Deal" folks, that will be remembered by history as the president who did more to get people off fossil fuels than any other.

The Venezuela comment is extremely weird. You know Venezuela has negligible production, right, and that it would take 100s of billions of investments, over decades, to get reasonable production that would make a difference. That's ignoring that currently there is a laughably illegitimate puppet government -- literally just Madero's government minus him, as they did the coup with the US -- that has a 100% chance of a violent overthrow in the future. Which is exactly why all of the oil companies are shrugging and saying no thanks.

Venezuela is a farce -- much like $5000 "dividend" for a government literally on the precipice of bankruptcy, as Bessent runs around, near tears, trying to convince everyone that they're the house and he's the big dog German Shepherd instead of the face of a failing empire having its last pathetic gasp, to laughter all around -- that Trump thinks gives him leverage against Canada. It is unbelievably pathetic business, like renaming a 400+ year old name on a lake like a little bitch.

There is zero scenario where this has benefitted the US, but a drunkard incompetent secdef (sorry "secwar") convinced a foolish demented rapist, who already had Israel whispering in his ear, how easy and painless this foolish debacle will be.

ROFL.

Incompetence or malice? Both is also possible...

That will require adapted tactics. I'm not very qualified to speak on how to convince people in leadership positions there. How do you convince Erdogan, Modi, Putin, Trump, Xi, the North Korean dynasty and others?

Here's two stories that might inspire:

- I've seen a desperate, fragile grandfather seriously contemplate peaceful Gandhi style sit-ins targeting fossil fuel infrastructure, "so my grandchildren would know I at least tried".

- I've seen a couple radically cut their consumption of about everything. "Taking good care of the earth is a tenet of our religious views. We're realistic enough to realise our efforts won't help anyone directly, but perhaps it might inspire others."

Getting more noses worldwide pointing in the same direction could perhaps make a sliver of difference. The tricky bit will be getting specific groups on board. I can think of a few challenging ones:

- the downtrodden struggling for survival as it is already. They have other priorities, like food on the table.

- those outside liberal democracies (93% of the world!) in a position to bring change. They have to count with sociopaths with little accountability in charge.

- those that won't make a noise because historical experience has taught them to shut up.

- those with too little education/intelligence/eagerness to understand. They will require simple stories and example behaviour/idols/heroes to copy.

Nature's alarm signals itself will induce some fear. That will be the best publicity for change.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...

(Renewables were not fully competitive with fission until the 20teens, too late.)

It’s dialed in.

That’s not to mean replacing stuff with non carbon emitting sources today is worthless. It’s very important. Right now we are dialing in the next escalation of the problem, and we can still blunt that if we give a damn.

One thing you can do today is keep arguing against the romantic anti industrial unscientific greens. Degrowth and “abstinence based” policy will never work. People will never go for it, and we are never returning to pre industrial times. It’s a fantasy. If you try to force it people will elect anti environmental populists (as they have) and you will get the opposite of what we need.

Fantasies displace realistic solutions in the discourse, and “everyone needs to become poorer” gives anti environmental and fossil fuel industry shills a way to frame their case as “we are on the side of human development.” Don’t give them that argument. Stop it. It also won’t work with developing nations. “Hey Africa, we know we colonized you and all but can you do us a favor and stay poor to help fix the problem we mostly caused?” There is not enough “fuck you” in the universe for that one.

The solution is to replace fossil fuels with non carbon emitting sources, not to stop people from using energy.

It won't work. You can absolutely trim a lot of fat from the modern lifestyle, but then you'll be left with a residual. Meanwhile the developing world will keep developing and we have no right to order them to stop.

The idea that it's not possible is bullshit too, and it's still bullshit even if you ignore nuclear power.

https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/0...

Back in the 2000s there was a ton of discourse around peak oil. As part of that, I recall reading very detailed breakdowns written by actual engineers and scientists arguing why you would never have a mass-market EV with the range of a gasoline car and you would never be able to power more than 10-20% of a modern economy with solar power. I own two EVs, one with gas-comparable range, and California currently gets almost 40% of its total electricity (averaged across day and night) from solar, and climbing. There were whole books on this. I think one was called Power Down. It was all 100% wrong.

I also recall reading detailed analyses by aerospace engineers about how you would never have a reusable rocket, that it was simply impossible or would cost so much it wouldn't be practical. First stage reusability is now routine, and second stage reusability is coming.

Detailed breakdowns of why X is impossible have an incredibly poor track record unless they reduce directly to the laws of physics. Will faster than light travel ever be possible? No, and I believe that, because if it was it would mean a huge part of modern physics (not just relativity) is wrong in very bonkers ways.

There is no first principles physics argument for the limits this guy is arguing.

Of course if you imagine infinite growth on a finite planet, that fails. That's a trivial argument. But that's not happening, probably due to birth rates declining. The question I'm addressing is: can this civilization and its near-future extrapolation be powered without fossil fuels? The answer is yes, and again even without nukes. Throw nukes in there and it just gets easier.

IMO this is 100% ideology and is an example of what I call "problemism." A "problemist" is someone who uses a problem as a stalking horse for one and only one solution that turns out to smuggle in some kind of ideological or social agenda.

I see problemism as a dishonest propaganda technique. It's a way to sell the idea without directly selling the idea, instead using concern over some other thing to smuggle it in.

So you know I'm not just picking on the left: right now there's a big freak-out on the right about birth rates. The problemists there argue that it's why we need to get back to ultra-traditional family structures and take rights away from women. They're not interested in any solution that doesn't do that, because they don't actually care about the problem. They only care about taking rights from women.

This guy and those like him only care about degrowth as part of what is probably some kind of anti-industrial political ideology. If the problem could be solved without it, that would be bad as far as they're concerned, just like how the far right doesn't care about solutions to birth rate decline issues that don't involve reactionary social agendas.

Most of these people are anti-capitalists. Thing is, I don't mind that. I don't think capitalism is the ordained perfect system. But if you want to sell me on an alternative to capitalism, argue for it directly on its merits. The test is: if climate change and fossil fuel depletion did not exist, could you still make your argument for abandoning capitalism in favor of your system? If not, then you're engaging in "problemism" to sell bullshit. Because there is no physical reason that you could not drastically cut CO2 emissions without abandoning capitalism. A simple progressive carbon tax combined with cheap renewables could do it. We just lack the political will.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/road_go_ta_to...

In 2008, people and businesses were still buying new computers every year or two, printing everything on paper, buying physical media. I don't know anyone that does this anymore. I don't think that is a good proxy.

https://www.bts.gov/us-tonne-kilometers-freight

(a bit easier in table form as the graph does not aggregate accross all means of transport).

The fantasy is that an economic system predicated on infinite growth can be made compatible with finite resources. Take, for example, the fact that renewable energy keeps growing as a percentage of total energy generation, yet total GHG emissions keep rising. That's a result of the system of incentives set up by capital. Yes, the economy can become less coupled to resources (as it has), but there is a limit, unless you seriously want to argue that iron (for example) can be an arbitrarily small portion of the economy.

An economy is a method of allocating resources. This economic system is extremely terrible at meeting base human needs (consider that we produce many times the amount of food that's needed to feed everyone's needs, but massive amounts of it used for industrial meat production and biofuels).

> we are never returning to pre industrial times

This is an absurd strawman.

> everyone needs to become poorer

This is, in fact, the industry propaganda. What degrowth advocates for is taking as our first priority meeting human needs and living sustainably (which can be made compatible with most of the technology we have today in some form), rather than the ideology of growth for growth's sake, which mainly results in massive amounts of wasted resources and funnelling wealth into the hands of a few.

> “Hey Africa, we know we colonized you and all but can you do us a favor and stay poor to help fix the problem we mostly caused?” There is not enough “fuck you” in the universe for that one.

This is misdirection. Getting water, food, shelter, and medicine for everyone on the planet is well within our means as a species. It is the ideology of free movement for goods but not people and infinite growth that makes it impossible to meet those needs, because it requires and underclass who can be used for cheap labour and contained in states built for that purpose.

It's not poor people who stand to lose from degrowth, it's the ultra rich.

Trivially false, and I think this is the root of it. I'm lazy so I asked Claude Fable, but what it gave me is in the same ballpark as a blog post on this I saw a while back that I now can't find.

Question: "Lets say a billionaire spends 100% of their time on boards a medium sized private jet. They also own three 10,000 square foot homes, all of which are heated and cooled 24/7. How much energy do they use? What is that energy use in terms of average European households?"

I used European because Americans are notable energy pigs and can cut a lot without losing much. Europeans are closer to the reasonable baseline.

The total it comes up with for our gas-guzzling fat cat is 96-97 GWh per year. That's including three homes and a continuously operating jet aircraft. This is a totally ridiculous footprint, of course.

Claude Fable says the average European household uses about 15,000 kWh/year in electricity, heating, etc. That means our fat cat corresponds to about 6,400 average European households.

The population of Europe is around 750 million people.

There's about 3000 billionaires worldwide, and if they all lived as absurdly as my caricature they'd use 288 TWh per year.

That corresponds to around 19.2 million European households, or about 2.5% of the energy use of a middle class Europe.

The vast bulk of energy and resource use supports the middle class, and raising people out of poverty.

Inequality probably reduces energy use. If we improved equality it would mean more people with a basic middle class standard of living. A society in which almost everyone has a European middle class standard of living would consume far more energy than one in which a few fat cats live it up and everyone else is poor.

Personally I agree with the left at least a bit on this. I think we have too much inequality. If we reduce inequality, that will increase energy consumption, so we'd better build solar panels and batteries and reactors at the same time.

(There might be one exception to that: reducing warfare. War is a gigantic waste twice over: tons of energy to fight, tons of energy to rebuild all the stuff we break. But I doubt eliminating warfare would be enough alone to cut emissions enough to matter.)

There's only two ways to reduce CO2 emissions by a large amount in a durable lasting way:

1. Replace CO2 emitting sources of power with those that don't emit CO2.

2. Destroy the middle class.

Actually I guess there's a third: kill a lot of people.

Anything less is a rounding error that won't make much of a difference.

I'll take option 1. Luckily the laws of physics say we can do it. We just need the political will. There's also precedent. Many developed countries' emissions per capita has been falling while growth has actually continued (in most cases) and standard of living hasn't moved much. We just need to do a lot more of what works.

Environmentalists have been making the "abstinence first" guilt trip argument for decades and it's done absolutely nothing and it will never do anything. That approach is a total failure. I use the abstinence framing because it's like abstinence-based sex ed. Instead of having sex, teenagers have guilty sex.

Let's say Claude's wrong. The argument still stands if it's off by 10X. Soaking the rich won't help by more than a rounding error, and redistribution might actually increase resource use. It's also a one-time thing.

Speaking of AI: turning off all the AI data centers won't help either. They're a few percent of electricity use. A few percent won't matter and it's another one-time thing. It's not an ongoing solution to anything if the economy is still powered by burning stuff.

Then you have the developing world. Let's say we can cut energy requirements to live a middle class life style to 1/4 the current level, which might be possible.

There are about 1.4 billion people in Africa who mostly live below that level. We have no right to tell them they can't have what we have. There's also probably a billion more in Asia who are still climbing to middle class.

If Africa modernizes on coal like China did, that'll add another China worth of emissions, which would be catastrophic. The only way out is for Africa to industrialize and modernize on sources of power that don't emit CO2.

Luckily that's possible, but telling them to stay poor isn't how you make that happen. It's how you get them to say "fuck you" and ignore you.

Here in Washington State, a decade ago we had an initiative (I-732) to do a carbon tax and lower regressive taxes (we have one of the most-regressive tax structure in the USA). The environmental groups opposed it because it wasn't handing out money to them and it lost narrowly.

Eventually the legislature passed a complicated cap-and-trade scheme and they spend the money on bullshit and lie about it: "The projects the department touted amounted to just under 4% of their original estimates." https://phys.org/news/2026-01-washington-state-overestimates...

But energy source isn't the only problem. The problem is partially that energy use is high in and of itself. Solar panels (which only generate electricity; energy use is much bigger than just electricity) require materials like cobalt, which is mined (partially using child slavery) in Africa (DRC) in ecologically devastating ways (since you clearly care so deeply, I'm sure you knew that already). The ideology of infinite growth requires ever more cobalt, and so it depends on that oppression and ecological damage. Reduce, reuse, recycle are in that order for a reason, but we are never able to do the first because of infinite growth.

I think your framing of "abstinence" is nonsense. What are we abstaining from? Economic 'growth'? Energy usage? Consumerism? If so, all we're "abstaining" from is the thing that benefits rich people to our own detriment. We must distinguish economic growth from improvements to lifestyle, which as I stated are frequently at odds.

> They're a few percent of electricity use.

Continually growing, using far more resources than just electricity, for mostly downsides to humanity, and causing significant local pollution.

> Let's say we can cut energy requirements to live a middle class life style to 1/4 the current level, which might be possible.

Sure, let's just make up numbers. Sorry, I meant let's burn methane to have 'Claude' make up numbers.

> There are about 1.4 billion people in Africa who mostly live below that level. We have no right to tell them they can't have what we have. There's also probably a billion more in Asia who are still climbing to middle class.

But you haven't dealt with the fact that the reason they're deprived is because of the very system you're supporting. I agree that all people ought to have the same access to technology and standards of living, and doing so requires that we reshape how technology works and is distributed. That will never happen under the current system, because doing so would impact profits. Infinite growth is the thing preventing us from fundamentally improving our technology and societies to be sustainable.

> telling them to stay poor isn't how you make that happen

I am arguing for the opposite, but you seem not to have read what I wrote.

Cobalt isn't used in solar panels.

The top 10% is overwhelmingly not billionaires, or even millionaires. The top 10% is basically all of the US except the poorest. And some upper middle classes elsewhere.

Good thing that's just degrowth propaganda.

> This economic system is extremely terrible at meeting base human needs.

Except in comparison to all others. Crop failures and famines were common in feudalisms. Planned socialism is known for food insecurity. The system today might not be best possible, but it's, by no means, terrible.

> This is an absurd strawman.

Need to read more degrowth fiction then.

> What degrowth advocates for is taking as our first priority meeting human needs and living sustainably (which can be made compatible with most of the technology we have today in some form)

The problem here is the "human needs" part, which are famously infinite.

> ...than the ideology of growth for growth's sake, which mainly results in massive amounts of wasted resources and funnelling wealth into the hands of a few.

Also degrowth propaganda. No one "grows" for the sake of "growing", lest they have a need for it. All choosing actors act towards fulfilling their needs, regardless of whether anyone find them "fundamental" or not.

We won't go back. That's the thing, the false option. I think you underestimate how much being poor sucks. I personally call this the "it's better to reign in hell" principle.

So if we are dumb and don't cut emissions, we will "reign in hell," and it'll look like a dark cyberpunk dystopia. There might also be some pretty nasty wars and genocides in there.

I think that's the real choice we have. If we reduce carbon emissions enough, we can blunt the effects of climate change and adapt without too much pain. If we don't, we get to LARP Bladerunner with billions taking shelter in air conditioned mega-blocks when the deadly heat waves hit.

Nature isn't happy life in harmony. Nature is suffering and death. It's an amoral Darwinian meat grinder.

Let me make it concrete. I have kids. Let's say you give me a choice.

Option 1: I go to the future where we live closer to nature, more primitively, but my daughter died of a childhood disease.

Option 2: I go to the future that looks like Bladerunner or Kowloon Walled City with killer heat waves requiring air conditioning to survive, but my child is alive because of modern medicine.

I'd pick two and so would most people, which is why we'll never go back. The infant and child mortality rates alone in "wild nature" are enough to turn people away. It's better to reign in hell.

But I don't think we have to do that. We could do things like carbon taxes, provided we stop spending the social and political capital on guilt trip tactics and back to the land bullshit that will just be ignored, which is why I'm wasting my time ranting about this.

Crazy thing is they wouldn't even lose it. They'd still be obscenely wealthy and powerful.

Climate change as a whole requires a fundamental shift from the basis of almost all chemical manufacturing and transport logistics. And doing so will cause cataclysmic changes to the socioeconomic standings of entire regions of the world.

The tin-foil tongue in cheek joke in the refrigeration industry is "how do you know if a refrigerant is bad for the atmosphere?. because DuPont's patent expired".

Which is to say that R12 would've never gone out of fashion if not for big moneyed first world interests who have the ear of politicians whining that the 3rd world was gonna make and sell stuff cheaper and hurt their profits and that protecting the ozone layer only happened because it was good for big business. Subsequent changes in refrigerant are less flagrant but the undertone is still there. C02 never really caught on because you can just buy the stuff at any welding gas supply place for pennies, the entire supply chain stands to lose a source of profit with that as a refrigerant.

We're going to have those anyway. Might as well make them count for something.

How many humans are worried about getting food on the table today? How many have the mental space to dedicate to climate change in any way? I'd guesstimate more people are worried about short term food security...

Renewables reduce CO2 emissions today. Building a solar farm takes months, building a wind farm takes single-digit years. They'll have recouped their construction emissions well before the first nuclear reactor comes online.

It is important to remember that the challenge we are facing is not *how do we build a fully-renewable grid", but "how do we reduce CO2 emissions the fastest". Having a 95% solar-and-wind grid with 5% fossil backup 10 years from now is significantly better than having a 100% nuclear grid 20 years from now!

>Historically, CMIP models, the gold standard in climate science, show the AMOC is very stable; although it may weaken, it will always recover [...] In 2020, research estimated if warming stabilizes at 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), 2 °C (3.6 °F) or 3 °C (5.4 °F) by 2100; [...] does not approach collapse,

Even France, that is heavily pro-nuclear, can't find the economics to build new nuclear energy at decent pace.

Also, nuclear was not replaced by more carbon, except again a for a couple of years in a small country (by global standards) called Germany. Everyone else is planting more clean energy.

What we did: growing China and all Asia at high rates based on coal, for decades. Offsetting by a lot internal combustion engine efficiency by buying bigger and more cars. Buying stupid and useless stuff on the other side of the planet. Everyone first hobby today is "travelling the world", preferably by plane. Being 10 billion people, and richer (more capita and more consumption per capita). None of those thing would be solvable with more nuclear plants.

They are the biggest economic force bar none (at least for now, lets see in few years when their car industry will be mostly a thing of the past). They steer 500+ million continent like a fiddle.

I have to crap on Merkel here yet again - she was horrible, utterly despicable leader. Much of the backlash in popularity of extreme right across Europe is her doing. She killed nuclear which wasn't in greatest shape, but it was well before we had actual replacements. She studied as nuclear physicist. Europe as a continent would be in much better shape politically, economically, militarily and socially if she didn't get so much power for so long. German ADF is completely her doing.

Of course when she met real power dealers like putin she caved immediately so he played her like those proverbial fiddles.

https://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun-robert-anderson/

https://truthout.org/articles/top-oil-and-gas-lobby-spent-mo...

http://climatecoalition.org/how-american-petroleum-institute... (sorry, no https)

Russia has huge influence in German politics. I believe there is connection there as well, but I cannot find any public information to cite regarding funding of anti-nuclear power movements.

I'd take it.

And now, not even the French are pursuing them, sending the strong signal that nuclear is off the table as anything but a minor contributor to stopping CO2 build up.

1. The fact that nuclear power has been quite safe so far does not mean that it would have been just as safe if its deployment would have rapidly spread.

2. Nuclear energy is unfortunately tightly coupled with nuclear weapons, as well as the treaties and geopolitics that were designed to keep them only in the hands of the few. Quite many late 1900s crises in Europe could have looked different if nuclear material was even more widespread than it was. I don't even wanna think about nations outside Europe that have been extremely unstable in the past and in recent history.

3. Seeing how intensely fossil fuel companies spread misinformation and disinformation about green technology and climate science, it's hardly a far-fetched idea that that same industry had a hand in helping policymakers steer away from an energy source that would unseat it from the throne.

And then you are also going to trust the same people when they are saying the waste issue is solved.

If your arguments are luddites and fearmongering you have not improved trust in any way.

No nuclear accident has involved a reactor built after the 1960s. Yet we regulate as if a dozen more Chernobyls have happened

With that further changes can be very quick as forcing EV no longer requires reallocating money from other things.

You might also see battery prices push the price of new cars well below that of second hand ICE vehicles.

Even if the replacement window for existing vehicles doesn’t change, the environmental impact would run ahead of the adoption curve. High volume use cases like delivery and Ubers would be the first to switch to EVs.

Climate change is related to our consumptions, period, focusing only on energy or transport doesn't tackle the whole problem: we consume too much, eat too much (cattle and fish in particular) and destroy too much in our quest for more and more.

Inefficient transport or energy is just one aspect of the whole problem.

But I'm tired of hearing how it is just a matter of energy or transport, it's literally missing the forest for a tree, even if it might be a particularly big one.

But it's our consumption and expectations that feed into it.

I present to you "Svalka" wine glasses. Dump", rubbish heap", or easy, promiscuous woman of ill repute in informal Baltic (and Slavic?) slang.

but no trash talk, no swear words, nothing gross or offending.

Fun fact: Although "Sarna" comes from Latin, seems like it's only used in Romance languages present in the Iberian Peninsula (Galician, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish...) and not for example in Italian, Romanian or French, as it's an Iberian loan word. Most other languages derive from another different Latin word, "scabiēs".

What do you base this on? Do you speak Swedish? Did you look up the phonetics?

They are no more similar than A and E in English.

{ avoid meanings, avoid affiliations, avoid fitting }

My solution is generally to repeat the word for each item that needs it, but I can see how the repetitiveness isn't great either.

Fart means speed, smäll (smell) means impact or bang.

A bed would be a little too on the nose I think.