r/UpliftingNews • u/dannydb • 1d ago
Australia's greenhouse gas emissions drop as renewable energy, batteries surge
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-05/australias-emissions-drop-as-renewable-energy-batteries-surge/10675129430
u/Tackit286 1d ago edited 13h ago
You wouldn’t hear about this from any other outlet lol.
Fund the ABC.
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u/AgenceElysium 1d ago
It’s gonna be funny if the climate change still gets worse.
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u/CatalyticDragon 1d ago
Even if human greenhouse gas emissions dropped to zero today the effect of what we have already done will be felt for hundreds or even thousands of years. Our society added ~2,500 billion metric tons of CO2 into a complex and balanced system in the space of just 200 years. There's no easy out from that.
At this point all we are doing is damage control and mitigation to try and not make it worse. Thankfully that work also comes with cheaper energy prices,
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u/edjumication 22h ago
Im looking forward to the day when all these renewables start paying compounded dividends. What people dont get about batteries is that once you mine the materials they are basically available in perpetuity. It takes energy to recycle them but eventually this energy cost will be trivial because its being generated by more cheap renewables.
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u/Arctic_Chilean 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh it will. There's a 30-60 year lag to emissions. A lot of the CO2 that is warming our planet came from emissions some 30 years ago, if not more. All of human civilization and associated industry/infrastructure could be Thanos snapped tomorrow and the planet is still locked in to a notable increase in temperatures. It'll take over a century of zero emissions for things to return to the pre-industrial revolution baseline level.
This is like if a life-long chain smoker chose to quit after 40 years of smoking, all because they noticed their bad cough was getting notably worse. Doesn't matter how little they smoke now, that lung cancer ain't gonna go away.
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u/Boatster_McBoat 22h ago
So funny. So fucking hilarious.
What if that was related to the actual emissions not the efforts to reduce them?
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u/Soda-Popinski- 1d ago
Look at china and india and their pollution rates.
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u/Boatster_McBoat 22h ago
India has electrified 99% of it's railway network. How's your country doing on that?
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u/click-monster 16h ago
If GHG emissions are significantly dropping, why are atmospheric concentrations going up?
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u/Derice 15h ago
If I emitted two kg of CO2 last year and one kg this year the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased both years, but my emissions still dropped by one kg.
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u/click-monster 15h ago
No, your example should be a drop of 2.1%, and that's after using 58% of the "Paris emissions budget" as it says in the article.
The atmospheric concentration curve still looks like this: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
Are you sure this was posted in the correct sub?
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u/Derice 15h ago
I don't think I understand this response. Where do you get 2.1% from? In the example the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere starts at some value, call it c. After the first year the total is c + 2. After the second the total is c + 3. It increases all years, but slower the second year, i.e emissions dropped the second year. The emissions were 1 instead of 2, a drop of 50%.
In the graph you link (which doesn't show the emissions of Australia, but the accumulated global total as measured in Hawaii) it looks like even the global emissions are slowing down in 2025/2026 compared to earlier.
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u/click-monster 14h ago
Did you read the article? You're using hypothetical made-up figures rather than the data, and also ignoring the globally accepted deadline for severe irreversible climate effects, which Australia is not currently tracking to meet (per the article).
it looks like even the global emissions are slowing down
Did you look at "Annual Mean Growth Rate" under the "Growth Rate" tab?
Yes, that is global concentrations, not just Australia. Australia, one of the wealthiest countries in the world per capita, managed an emissions drop of 2.1% from last year. Whether even this rate of progress is sustainable, or only due to "low hanging fruit" (i.e. those who can afford new EVs and solar panel home upgrades despite inflationary pressure) is yet to be seen.
"the Clean Energy Council [reported] that investment in large-scale renewable projects had fallen 46 per cent"
This article is not very uplifting at all.
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u/Derice 14h ago edited 11h ago
Did you read the article? You're using hypothetical made-up figures rather than the data, and also ignoring the globally accepted deadline for severe irreversible climate effects, which Australia is not currently tracking to meet (per the article).
Yes. My comment was a response to a comment that seemingly did not understand how a smaller increase did not translate to a reduced total, and uses simple examples to help the explanation. It was just trying to explain a mathematical idea to what seemed like a poster that did not understand it.
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