That's kind of like if I were morbidly obese, and my diet consisted of 6 big macs, 6 large Cokes and 6 large fries daily, plus a cheesecake at the end of the day for dessert, and I patted myself on the back because I went on a "diet" by cutting out the cheesecake.
Growth in CO2 emissions has recently plateaued, but the world still pumps out about 40% more CO2, every year, than we did in 2000. Stopping the growth doesn't really matter that much, we need to drastically reduce overall emissions.
It’s even worse. Not only do we need to get emissions as close to zero as possible, we need to suck a whole bunch of CO2 out of the atmosphere. The amount of effort, resources, energy, and collective action needed is extraordinary. The challenge ahead cannot be overstated.
@computerphage: Thank you for the typo correction! I am off for more coffee.
Effectively this is going to require massive and coordinated action. We are going to have to rapidly develop and share the tech, and scale it quickly.
It is also insane how long humanity has ignored this issue. At least we have seemingly moved from ‘12 years left for real action? Hah!’ To ‘Oh shit this is happening and maybe we have that 11 years’
The good(?) news here is that the ocean is a crazy good CO2 sink. If we were to stop all CO2 emissions, global CO2 levels would start to drop dramatically because the oceans would soak up the atmospheric CO2. This doesn’t work endlessly, but right now about half of the CO2 emissions end up in the oceans, and that system doesn’t just stop if we stop producing it.
That being said, it’ll definitely continue to wreak havoc with ocean acidification. But it’s important to know that it’s not necessary to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere to get rid of a huge chunk that has already been emitted.
My concern around the ocean as a CO2 sink is how much longer can it absorb CO2 without pH drifting beyond what can support sea life. We keep pulling the elastic band tighter without knowing when it’s going to snap or what happens when it does (metaphorically speaking).
There’s a book called ‘The Sixth Extinction’ By Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert which talks about this. The sixth chapter is about the rise in ocean acidity.
She also details a critical acidity point (I forget the PH level but I think with current rise in acidity it is modeled to reach that point in 2100) where calcifiers cannot survive due to the acidity essentially breaking down their shells. Think oysters, barnacles, coral. Major parts of the ocean’s ecosystem that could have a ‘cataclysmic’ effect if wiped out.
What's interesting is that we already know it's going to result in economic contraction, loss of profits, and general instability in the financial sphere. So we already know that tacking it will be profitable in the long run versus the alternative.
Perhaps the conversation needs to center on how to factor the long view into capitalism. Because in my view it is pretty shit at that, with often short term profits favoured over long term and the effects of that being felt long term.
Right now our intervention option looks like direct intervention to make things less profitable in the near term, and then we run into the problem of democracy also favouring short-term popularity over long-term stewardship and the immediate pains it bring to voters.
Every politician who has attempted or done this has paid a heavy political price. We won't do enough to stop this problem until hundreds of thousands are forced to find new homes, at which point we'll have our hands full with the immediate problems we've caused by this.
It is not about economic systems, governments, or corporations. People are making choices that do not line up with the bigger things they say they want. Frankly I am getting tired of people with their SUVs, new phones, new computers, plastic everything, and huge homes bitching at me because I am "releasing carbon" when I burn wood. Don't even get me started on the people who bitch about my Nissan versa being gas powered instead of their clean battery powered alternative (Batteries, vehicle electronics, weight, tire size, and the source of their clean energy is my bitch here). People just need to shut the fuck up, live a frugal life and this problem with mitigate itself.
The carbon that has been released into the atmosphere from oil is here to stay. I am not even sure we should go looking for some energy guzzling carbon sink because we really need to give the earth time to breath and settle into the ecosystem that exists today. The earth will heal itself and balance will be restored but we can never go back to pre-industrial revolution levels of carbon.
The last big expansion of wind and solar from a percentage growth perspective happened when oil was hitting 100 USD. We shouldn't discount how efficient markets are at allocating resources. If expenditures into oil (something like 6bn USD per day) went to wind and solar, then much would change.
Government subsidies targeted at technologies perceived to be green could potentially be taking resources away from other energy innovations. In the end, some of those innovations might have resulted in greener energy.
I'm a socialist, but I hate this meme on the left. We simply do not have time to build socialism before tackling climate change, especially with the recent crushing defeats the left has suffered in Western countries. We have to do this under capitalism, or we will not be able to do it at all.
That isnt the only alternative. A state run free market like china would actually be really useful for this global problem, if of course climate change was the priority for the government.
lack of personal freedom and ease of abuse probably make this a terrible choice, but it would without a doubt be better for climate change than currently
> A state run free market like china would actually be really useful for this global problem, if of course climate change was the priority for the government.
The cure suggested here is worse than the disease.
And I'm not entirely sure. Is authoritarian rule worse than billions starving to death, with collapse of the ecosystem?
All the enlightenment ideas fall apart when we actually reach the limit of the earths resources, and can potentially cause our own extinction along with the rest of the animal kingdom
The balance is between (a) effectively addressing an issue & (b) empowering government and risking it abuse its power.
Most long-lived democracies appear to have optimized to mitigate the risk of the second, over the long run, but at the cost of limiting the first.
One thinks the Roman Republic had a pretty good thing going politically... but declaring a temporary dictator in times of crisis only worked until it didn't.
Is it capitalism, or is it our current regime?
I'm not sure that capitalism itself demands eternal growth, or that pollution not be taken into account.
Capitalism doesn't force us to continue to burn fossil fuels. We could impose massive fines or taxes against any greenhouse gas emitter, but we lack social will.
It can only be done under Capitalism, since we're at the point where drastically reducing CO2 is woefully insufficient to curb global warming in the next 50-100 years. We need technological innovation to cool the planet.
You can't do that right now. Basically what you are asking is to ask a lot of people to lose their jobs, starve, for something uncertain (scientifically proved or not) in the future.
In the same time, the only thing we can do, as individuals, is to reduce the emission from our side. But it's wrong to enforce it upon others.
Yeah man, downvote me as you wish, but LOL you won't get very far.
This comment is wrong on several levels. First, citation needed for the starvation hyperbole. There are more than a few competent people predicting that tackling climate change will actually create jobs because we will have to solve a whole host of new problems. Things like distribution, mass manufacturing, long term maintenance of equipment, design of the systems in the first place and on and on.
Second, "scientifically proved or not"? Are you really questioning whether we've proven climate change is occurring?
Finally, if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that the voices telling us that climate change is an individual problem and not a policy reform/regulation problem are basically Big Oil propaganda designed to demoralise you with guilt. It's not about individual action. I would still recommend it for spiritual and philosophical reasons, but not scientific.
I didn’t downvote but would be curious about your definition of “enforcement” that makes it wrong. I assume you mean “morally” wrong here and it seems NOT enforcing repercussions for externalities would be the immoral choice.
When you say "growth has plateaued" do you mean that year on year increases to our output are now constant? Or do you mean year on year output is now roughly constant?
I realize this distinction between derivative values is further complicated by the even more baseline measure of total accumulation. But I do ask in earnest and don't know the answer.
We're on track for a roughly 3C increase in global average temperature according to this chart from the IPCC[1] and this [2] from world data.
And that IPCC projection doesn't take into account the dozens of reinforcing feedback loops contributing to further warming. For example, the Amazon rain forest is now a net green house gas producer due to human activity [3].
And my parents keep asking when I'm giving them grandkids. Why would I make a child go through this? That these things don't keep people up at night is bewildering to me.
Go through what? Raising global temperatures may require moving away from current coastal areas or life changes like that. I've not read anything that would make it seem like a global warming future would be a hellscape not worth living in.
I have young children and have worried for them quite a bit. If they're healthy, if they're getting everything they need, if they're safe etc. I have never once considered global warming as a concern for them. While they're children I'll be able to handle any such changes. When they're adults, they will.
The 1.4 to 2.0C range is where we are going to start seeing large scale crop failures. Also massive fish die offs in the ocean. Unless we drastically change trajectories, this will occur during the lifetime of your children.
You hope you and they will be able to handle these changes, but there are going to be a lot of downstream effects from warming and sea level change.
maybe you're too young, I've heard the doom and gloom sine the 80s and those older than me have heard it since the 70's. If you look out across a sea of people there will always be a group of people holding a sign reading "Repent sinners, for the end is near".
Hearing doom and gloom since the 80s is consistent with the scientific evidence. It was in 1988 that James Hansen spoke before a U.S. Senate committee about human caused global warming. And it's not as though things have been getting better. They're getting worse, and at a faster than expected rate.
Yep, back in the 1970s it was the coming ice age, and it was also the "population bomb." If neither of those happened, we were going to have a global thermonuclear war. Doom-and-gloomers will always find reasons to preach doom and gloom.
> Yep, back in the 1970s it was the coming ice age,
No. That was an artifact of hype in the mainstream press. If you look at the research being published at the time, the consensus was fairly consistently for warming scenarios (by a factor of 2:1 during the most cooling-friendly years):
Contrarian argument, if I was given a chance at existing in a world full of death, turmoil, and instability _or_ the certainty of not existing at all, I sure know what I would want.
The post-scarcity period we experience in developed economies is very much the exception not the rule, if you look at the whole of Human History.
I understand and share you're concerns but you are removing all agency from whatever children you might have. A child born now will in all certainty reach their 20's. If they share their parents values they will most likely be an agent for change in the right direction.
Excess population and excess pollution (per capita) are not necessarily overlapping problems.
I don't about the predictions but the annual CO2 emissions are climbing yearly. 1999 - 24.43 billions tons. 2019 - 36.44 billion tons. I think that's ~49% growth in 20 years. That is a bad forecast if you go 100 years into the future.
We have also had 30+% global population growth in the last 20 years and massive reduction in property.
Around 1980 people assumed rising standards of living would result in dramatic increases in CO2 per person which didn’t happen. Even as recently as 2000 models assumed as much as 10% increases over current levels where likely.
Surely partially due to outsourcing manufacturing to outside the US/western world, and partially due to the rising living standards of the rest of the world.
Yeah consumption needs to be slowed down. Even dumb things like those Bird scooters littering cities...
I saw a t-shirt down here in New Orleans the other day that read “music, culture, industry” with a strike out line through industry. It boggles the mind.
After all how will our t-shirts and musical instruments be made?
This. So much this. We can't blame China for its emissions, while acting like we've solved ours, when all we did was shift our emissions from manufacturing to China.
The closest thing to flat you’re going to find is global CO2 produced per person is nearly flat. Global population has significantly increased, so that still represents growth in emissions but it clearly could have been much worse with massive increases in both population and CO2 per person as the 3rd world industrialized.
Net emissions just keep stacking, but if you compare total emissions today with past predictions they simply don’t line up with 2021.