If anyone actually believed it was "code red for humanity" they'd be pushing nuclear power. There is zero chance of moving off carbon energy sources without causing catastrophic mayhem, unless we use massive amounts of nuclear.
For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind capacity and number one per capita. But throughout a day wind power can very from nearly zero to close to max capacity. Those periods of near zero production can last non-trivial amounts of time no realistic battery could provide for.
The only solutions are continue with our gas turbine/wind power mix where we build enough gas turbines to handle 100% of the load for when the wind production is bottoming out, or replace everything with nuclear.
Nuclear gets us to net carbon zero fastest and with technology easy to export to developing countries in desperate need of plentiful, reliable, cheap electricity.
I see this take a lot, and it’s kind of misinformed. The primary drawbacks of nuclear are:
1) incredible slow to build. A typical plant takes ~20 years from decision to productionized
2) extremely expensive, with a massively frontloaded cost. By contrast, solar and wind are fast to install and now cheaper.
> wind power can be zero at some parts of the day
There are a few solutions to this actually. First, having a more nationalized grid can amortize variant weather conditions (very unlikely it’s not windy everywhere, for example). Second, there actually are long-duration battery solutions coming out. Look up “energy tower” for a very weird one, and “form energy” for a more traditional model.
Nuclear power can be fast to build. It would need to be constructed in volume, with immutable designs. Right now, America builds so few nuclear plants that they are essentially all one-off designs. Mass production is key here.
Vis-à-vis costs, the government can poof into existence trillions of dollars with no ill effects. Cost is an easily overcome obstacle.
If a mandate came down to produce 1000 new nuclear reactors by 2030, I think it could be achieved. The country just needs the political will to make it happen.
> Nuclear power can be fast to build. It would need to be constructed in volume, with immutable designs.
Exactly. You need look nowhere further than the french nuclear timeline for that to be clear: the country grew from 4.5GWe capacity to 49.5GWe between 1977 and 1987. 900MWe class reactors took 5~6 years to build, and the 1300MWe 7 to 8. And when you've worked out the kink, this can be parallelised massively (as long as you have sites to put them on), for about 20 years the country had a dozen reactors being built concurrently, the slowdown in construction times really started as the number of plants being built decreased: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Chrono-p....
The design got more complex and there were teething issues with the N4, but Chooz took 16 years to enter service where the P3s took 8 years at most.
In 2020, nuclear energy accounted for 70.6 percent of France's total energy production what is stunning, if you take into account its one of the G7 countries:
It gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear, but electricity is only a minority of the energy we use, so France still gets most of its energy from fossil fuels:
I had the privilege of watching a bunch of (6 or 7) French engineers make an impromptu visit to the ticket desk (of the airline I worked for) at Charles de Gaulle airport and work their magic, running comms and power with no fuss, just teamwork and that brilliant "why not now?" European attitude.
Meanwhile back at Heathrow that would have taken months of permits and planning and dealing with useless subcontractors.
Were, things have gotten way less great since the 80s, it’s mostly coasted.
Too bad really: nuclear power was a way to gain independence (from the US and the oil) but then it kinda fell by the wayside as the country largely went with oil anyway (though the grid is both powerful and rather clean owing to the high ratio of nukes).
Would have been interesting for the country to ride the contrarian gallic spirit and decide to go all in on electricity and renewable way back then.
Nuclear power could have been fast to build if we had kept building it. We did not, and most of the people who knew how to do it are now retired or dead. Because nuclear power had no future for decades, few young people chose to make a career in it. The workforce needed for designing, building, and operating nuclear power at scale no longer exists and cannot be trained quickly enough. That alone would take 10+ years, which we do not have.
And thus, we will spend the next 10 years playing around with building piddling amounts of renewable power generation and storage instead of actually having a solution in 20 years.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
> the government can poof into existence trillions of dollars with no ill effects
This is because the federal reserve's printed money goes basically into treasuries and stocks.
The rich save basically all of their money. If they decided to spend it on real-world goods, there would be huge inflation.
But it's probably all nil. The cost of building enough nuclear power plants with economy of scale is probably near the same as building enough solar and wind farms.
Balancing systems do exist - I used to swim in Smith Mountain Lake[1] as a kid and that entire lake is a gigantic battery. During low demand periods they pump water into a reservoir to then run the turbines during peak demand hours. None of these systems are perfectly efficient - but we've got a lot of options in our tool belts for ways to balance peak demand that don't require more continuous production capacity.
Yes, pumped storage does exist, but to provide a nation sized battery using pumped storage, you would need to use two of the Great Lakes and pump one of them up by 200 feet.
The power needs of the occasional cold wind still winter week are fairly large.
Beyond the fact that electricity-generation is once again only part of our emissions issue, there's about ~450 reactors worldwide and the uranium ore reserves give us around ~120 years of operation on current 3rd (/3+) gen reactors (short of having fast neutron reactors basically). Having 1000 in the US (or rather 900 more or 3 times as many globally) would have brought that deadline closer by the inverse ratio, and we'd likely already have tensions on nuclear fuel sourcing.
Agree with you on the role of government spending though, but there also needs to be a radical paradigm shift in how we view the economy and what needs to happen in each sector (not just within energy in fact).
Yes, sure, we can go mine the bottom of the oceans and extract it by centrifuging ocean waters, that probably would give us marginally more than a doubling of margin.
Point remains: reserves are exhaustible, an exponential consumption may not be desirable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium#:~:text=As%20of%2....
Recent studies found that re-using a design made nukes cost more & take longer to build. Reason being each site is different, and so the design always needs to be tweaked, and at this scale changes are more expensive than from-scratch.
SMR's made in a factory seem like the only way to address that, but I have no idea if we can ramp SMR's to national viability in the next ten years.
"Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop" [0] apparently does a good job of explaining exactly how our civilization has regressed in this sense over the past 50ish years. In short, it's the principle of "As Low (risk) As Reasonably Achievable". Well, they minimized nuclear risk, but sure as hell didn't minimize global warming risk in the process.
Roots of Progress has an interesting review here [0], which is what I base that on. (It's on my list to read, just haven't gotten to it yet)
This isn't practical everywhere, but on the island of El Hierro (Canary Islands) there is a wind-and-battery solution in the form of a wind-pumped hydro-electric station. In effect there is a big pool of water acting as a battery and the wind turbine "charges" it.
When I ran across it on a trip to the island I was really impressed. Very original solution!
If it would be actually climate emergency then we would be building in mountains all where reasonable. No matter the damage to some rare species, panorama and tourism.
Don't forget the substantial costs to clean up. Just think about growing up in a world full of EOL nuclear plants left by generations before you that need to be cleaned up... In a political unstable world due to an ongoing climate crisis.
Even today we as a whole struggle with decommissioning nuclear plants, and the costs are astronomical this is already a huge problem now, let alone in a post climate change world
Just think about a world full of EOL toxic waste ash ponds left by coal power plants, each of them vastly more toxic and teratogenic than any nuclear plant, let alone a decommissioned one.
In fact, you don’t need to imagine it, you are living the dream.
The report talks about hypothetical setup with smart girds and customers reacting on price change. This configuration was never tried at 80% scale. It might or might not work.
People did try decarbonise industrial economy to 70% - it worked with technology existing not now but in the eighties. And it did not put any limitations on consumers, while taking just 10 years to implement.
Surely at code red we should be looking at things that were shown to work?
That I would guess is exactly the strategy China is adopting.
And the west IMO will reel in horror at even a single meltdown there and back off any plans to adopt nuclear the day that happens, wasting precious time we really don't have.
>A typical plant takes ~20 years from decision to productionized
If this were truly "code red" and people really believed that, we would find a way to push the bureaucrats out of the way and build nuclear capacity way sooner than 20 yrs. Humans can do amazing things under dire stress.
This is not happening, so I will assume "code red" is hyperbole, something that the IPCC is not entirely known to shun.
> This is not happening, so I will assume "code red" is hyperbole
If you take the current pandemic as an example of what we do when under dire stress, I don't think we should be that confident. Yes, some people can perform astonishing feats, and yet other people can deny there's even a problem even when it's obvious.
Humans don't always react rationally in code red situations though. Right now the irrational fear of nuclear power is stronger than the fear the average person or politician has of climate change. Doesn't mean that the climate change situation isn't dire.
> I will assume "code red" is hyperbole, something that the IPCC is not entirely known to shun.
I'm not sure that’s the case and I would encourage you to dig into what the worst or medium range scenario would mean. As I understand it, the _middle_ scenario predicts that a billion people would either die in a climate-related catastrophe or be displaced before 2050. That means that several ethnic or cultural groups would go through essentially genocide.
There are details like loss of water reserves in California and the impact on food access in the US, fish population collapse, climate-related migration from the densest populated areas in the world that are very concerning.
I’ve seen scientist give very clear alarms on several global issues (usually my father was making the point); I’ve personally made several myself, and every single time, the reaction was… dumbfounding: trying to minimise, negotiate, taking the most optimistic scenario as a worst case, delaying…
I have, unironically, witnessed several conversations that literally went:
“If you do that, you, your family and your way of life will die forever.
— You are exaggerating, that’s too scary.”
They did nothing, and soon later: exactly what the prediction said.
This is not only the most common scenario, it is the only scenario I’ve seen, with one exception: CFC and the Ozone layer. And that was because there’s a handful of industrials, who had clear alternatives that proved cheaper.
“Other people do nothing; I’d rather believe the reassuring story than evidence” is exactly how we end up with the bystander effect.
Yeah I hear this every time, but very few small modular reactors (SMRs) have actually been built on account of economic and safety barriers to building them [1].
Now, I'm sure these are soluble problems. I'm by no means anti-SMR. But most of the actual serious proposals I've heard discussed for decarbonization lean much more heavily on already-existing technologies such as solar panels, which are getting cheaper and more efficient every year and which we are putting in the grid right now.
Most of the time, when I hear people talking about SMRs, it's as an excuse to do nothing. "This research tech will solve the climate problem, so all we need to do now is wait for it to pay off." Like the original poster in this thread, who claimed that a lack of investment in nuclear somehow proves that things aren't really that bad.
Apparently, the IPCC does expect and hope for substantial increases in nuclear power as a portion of our energy supply [2][3], but "[a]chieving a rapid decarbonization of the electricity sector will require, at first, deploying proven technology," presumably because nuclear on its own is not enough, and because SMRs are too experimental to lean on in any substantial way.
If it was actually code red, we would waive literally all safety regulations and environmental policy reviews, and break ground on new plants tomorrow. And cost would be no object.
Yes. I do actually think it is critical, but it's clear that most people are using "code red" as a semantic device, not out of belief that we should act with _true_ urgency.
I think we're also forgetting that adoption of nuclear power is also dependent on a stable government. Geopolitical risks probably outweigh all the drawbacks mentioned.
Yes it's slow to build today, though it hasn't always been the case: France once built 56 reactors over 15 years [0].
Yes it's expensive, but once again, this isn't a feature of Nuclear power, but one of the capitalist (or at the very least neoliberal) system it is built into: 60% of the Hinkley point C costs are due to the mode of financing (not 100% public) [1].
The real question is not whether this or that type of electricity generation is better (although it's also an important question), but rather how we can completely redesign our socio-economic system to quickly wean ourselves off of fossil fuels (hint: global logistics are far from electrified), reduce emissions from the agricultural sector (we do need to eat), etc.
To me this makes so much sense. But when you look at the costs involved it's far cheaper and less risky to deploy 2x in renewables and a bunch of energy storage plus some gas plants and long distance transmission.
New innovations in nuclear maybe have a chance to change this, but renewables are still getting cheaper so even if they succeed they must still beat the moving target.
In another world where we had embraced nuclear long ago and kept innovating it would have made so much sense. It still will be a part of the solution, but the economics really aren't there and the private sector isn't dumb. Markets will allocate capital according to risks and returns and nuclear will continue to be overlooked until it can compete.
Nuclear is able to compete on merit and has been forever, but we chose to create a legal environment in which one or two dedicated NIMBYs could stall a project indefinitely. That's the entire reason why "the economics aren't there." We aren't talking about costs of building a reactor or risk of it melting down, we're talking about the cost and risk of 1001 strategically sequential ground squirrel environmental impact studies pushing the project duration out to infinity. Allowing this is a political choice, not an evaluation of the technology.
I tend to agree with you that the ship has sailed, though. If we had just kept building at the same pace as 40 years ago (linear extrapolation, not exponential) then we'd recently have celebrated the completion of a zero-emission grid. Unfortunately, we chose to pump the atmosphere full of CO2 instead. Ugh.
It's not really the ahead of time NIMBY complaints but the potential for future liability shifts which existing plants will not be exempt from. A good number of plants constructed in the 60s and 70s hit their EOL (after getting a a bunch of lifetime extensions from governments) and then had their nice glittering warchest of profits eaten away by cleanup expenses (which sometimes exceeded the cash left in those contingency funds with the deficit falling on state & local governments). There have been issues with water contamination due to poor holding pool sealing and due to unforseen natural disasters.
Nuclear power requires millions in its initial investment. It has a not-insignificant profit margin over other power sources, but it also has a significant chance for large liabilities (more often due to changing laws than meltdowns). The result is an investment with an extremely high investment threshold (you don't build small nuke plants) with a decent short term prospect and a poor long term prospect that's extremely hard to get out of. This makes nuclear a really bad option for private investors when held up in comparison to tech and the like.
Meltdowns can happen and they're catastrophic but the bigger impediment is the unpredictable legal and fiscal liabilities involved. And, honestly, it's my personal opinion that a fair amount of these post-de-facto fiscal liabilities are extremely just and fairly applied - they're externalities we were ignoring decades ago.
This is a segment of the market where we need government funding and guarantees to get things done - and we should do so since nuclear is an extremely safe and clean option for power generation.
Let's ask the ad engineers. :) I don't like the historical alternatives but our current society (in general) approach for social-economical organization reached it's threshold and made us waste human potential tackling artificial problems while ignoring those that were right in front of us. But who knows as those "blind investments" generated knowledge that might be critical for the next decades.
"Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget"
> Last week, prices for new wind power delivered by 2025 were set at prices as low as £40 per megawatt hour. By comparison, power from Hinkley Point C is expected to cost £92.50 per megawatt hour.
I don't think NIMBYs are the only problem. Nuclear is just too expensive to build and maintain, especially with dirt-cheap renewables and storage coming down too. I have some hope that SMRs or something will end up working out, but like you say, I think it's mostly too late.
Only because any accidents, while rare, are incredibly high profile.
Where's the compensation for all the deaths due to coal plants? Unlike nuclear, they spew carcinogenic crap in the atmosphere by design. And some radioactivity too.
Unfortunately markets are not good at accounting for those kinds of external risks (but they could be with the right incentives, like a carbon tax.)
It's a tragedy of the commons scenario. I don't understand why politicians don't just do the hard/right thing. Supposedly that's why we have them. If they always just do the popular thing we could cut them out of the picture and go to direct democracy. I'm not advocating for that, but we need politicians to step up and do their jobs competently.
The way in which markets properly account for climate change is to suffer so much damage from the effect that the market collectively agrees to internalize the costs to the climate into prices of exchange - this price adjustment might not happen before cataclysmic levels of deaths or a tipping point that makes climate recovery infeasible and coping as our only recourse.
Additional taxes, in the US at least, as currently seen as being contrary to the American experiment by a large enough segment of the population that consensus won't be gained when, while driving on the highway, we see the bridge out ahead sign - nor when we see the cliff in the distance - nor even when we feel the front walls fall off into air. We'll reach consensus when we look out the front windshield and see the earth racing up to give us a kiss... At least that's my pessimistic opinion.
> deploy 2x in renewables and a bunch of energy storage plus some gas plants and long distance transmission
Is it actually sufficient? Feel free to link even technical sources (as long as it is not paywalled without way of checking quality).
My impression is that right now "bunch of energy storage" is 100% unfeasible to provide power from renewables without blackouts. And existing ones work thanks to nearby countries with scalable non-renewable on demand power, with rare exception of countries with low population density and great opportunity for hydropower that is available on demand.
I'll turn that around and ask specifically why that's not possible.
It would require a better interconnected grid, overbuilt renewables, and plenty of storage with some level of on demand generation like gas. A good percentage of baseload power like hydro and nuclear certainly help, but it's not required.
It's just a matter of how much are you willing to spend as opposed to something that's physically impossible.
I believe renewables + grid scale batteries are already cheaper than new nuclear and much lower risk and much faster to deploy. The momentum is in favor of widening that gap.
Currently power storage is tiny, even largest hydropower projects would be insufficient to provide backup power in most places.
And just 2x renewables overbuilt would regularly run below demands - sadly solar/wind is not acting on demand. And during drought also hydropower may be unable to work.
And in most places hydropower, geothermal is unable to provide enough power.
(please correct me if I am wrong! But last time I checked nearly no place can run on renewables without relying on importing fossil-based power, and places that succeed have ideal places for hydropower/geothermal)
The big unknown to me here is the impact of the interconnects. It's obvious that the intermittency problem gets smaller with better transmission infrastructure. What I can't recall seeing is actual studies of how much transmission capacity would be needed to average the renewable input over large enough an area so that existing storage solutions are adequate.
Also, not all renewables are intermittent. Apart from hydro, geothermal comes to mind. (Although with climate change-induced changes in rainfall it's not clear that hydro will be reliable on the timescales we talk about either....)
I think this is a question of what is grid scale. Is the Tesla facility in Australia grid scale? Why not? What about the large facilities being planned currently with lithium ion batteries?
My source for my previous comment is Bill gates’ book.
Aside, I think a big battery in Australia makes a lot of sense because they have lots of sun year round and lots of unused space. So you are pretty much just storing for night time and can easily build solar panels.
In many other places, you have to store for much longer term which means you need much bigger batteries (and bigger generating plants).
This is to say I think the cost in a place like Australia may be 100s of times less than places in most of the USA (which is where I live).
> In many other places, you have to store for much longer term.
Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Overbuild and interconnect rather.
You can't do things like store summer solar energy for the winter. But there are plenty of places in the US where the sun is nearly always shining. If you can share that energy across the county you're in good shape. Likewise with the wind.
Again it helps you have solid baseload power. It's just nuclear is so expensive and takes so long to build that you can build twice the capacity in solar and wind plus a battery, plus a gas plant for a backup in less time and for a similar price.
> "bunch of energy storage" is 100% unfeasible to provide power from renewables without blackouts
Telsa’s prototype in Australia was able to prove you can stabilise a grid at scale, profitably and with simple enough technology. In addition to Li-ion (that provides good response) you can have gravity-based capacity (essentially a crane), heat-storage (rocks kept at 4000ºC feeding a thermal power plant) and liquid-metal batteries. Two of those are mostly century-old tech redesigned for a word with cheap intermittent energy; the third seems like the best, most reliable, simplest, most scalable idea out of MIT from the last decade.
I have the impression that these represent enough options, with enough evidence that it will be profitable within a short lifespan, so I’m not even sure you want government support. But if they can facilitate permits, access to the grid, etc. why not get the help? All those will stabilise the grid no matter what source of power we have, so why not implement what we can at scale, see how it helps, and double it six months later if it works? After five years, we should have enough to tell how much wind and sun it can cover but I can’t see why it wouldn’t handle 100% of demand. All of those ideas can be any size, from a hand to a large city; all have many alternative elements to adapt to circumstances, price point; there are complementary and work well together.
Are you sure that any of them is feasible at grid scale? How much it would cost to store 451 GWh (one day of electricity production in Poland if I read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Poland right)?
How large overbuilt of renewables would be needed to avoid blackouts during windless snowy winter months?
Individual projects? No idea. But Poland has a lot of mines, so a lot of room for gravity-based storage.
My suggestion is to build:
* 1 GWh capacity of those gravity-fed; and
* 1 GWh of concentrated solar heat storage — it won’t be as effective in winter but let’s try; and
* 1 GWh of Li-ion batteries; and
* 1 GWh of hydro-storage; and
* 1 GWh of liquid metal storage.
And see which one scales, and what cost, with what retention, reactivity, how is the maintenance. All should, there’s no reason a larger pile of rocks doesn’t retain heat any less well than a smaller pile, or that what you can’t get from one mine shaft doesn’t work in another mine shaft. If you think that’s too much for Poland, let’s try one in Arizona, Iceland, Australia, Kazakstan, Hawaii, and see which one works best and adapts to Polish climate.
I’ve never seen an inventor that didn’t iterate from a working prototype (which we have for all these) to a larger one, to a larger still, until they hit scaling issues. And I don’t know of currently salient scaling issues in any of those (that haven’t been addressed recently — there were targeting problems with concentrated solar that found a solution recently for instance).
“Will it scale?” isn’t the questions that an engineer would ask on any of those at this stage of the project, but rather: "How fast can we make one twice bigger?" When we hit roadblocks that can’t be fixed, we can ask about scale, but right now, all those have a clear path.
"Overbuilt" assumes that renewable capacity doesn’t adapt to winter condition but it might: cooler external temperature could mean that geo-power, or heat stored from the summer represent a higher differential, and more energy. Or it assumes that capacity is expensive, which has never really been the case with variable prices: not for gas plants, not for renewables that are not constrained by context.
If you are worried about European winter overall, that makes sense, but the solution for that is rather obvious — enormous, but so much cheaper than anything else comparable: giant capacities in North Africa, big cable through Spain and France. From there, the extra capacity in Europe can serve Northern Europe. Scandinavia continues enjoying their massive boost in renewable hydro in winter, and the winds in the North Sea will definitely need exporting too. “Windless winter” isn’t apparently a common thing there. That might require more international solidarity, but people will do that quite keenly if there’s money to be made.
While I agree Nuclear is the most probable solution it's not easy to build and fuel is very sparse. France who is leading the way is 100% depend on other countries, I'm not sure it will play well in the coming years
> 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia.
And the second issue is to focus on electricity production, while there is a ton a other things creating pollution. You won't save the planet if you still have thousands of ships on the sea and planes in the air; meat and clothes production too...
There are a dozen of topics to be addressed, with multiple solutions and I would say none of them are being really tackled. (except energy in the less efficient way = no green worldwide grid)
> You won't save the planet if you still have thousands of ships on the sea and planes in the air
Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution, though maybe 5% of global greenhouse effect (due to the high altitudes airplanes operate at). Textile production, indeed, contributes more to climate change than aviation and maritime shipping combined [1].
However, with abundant electricity you can switch many transportation modes to electric, and (where technical constraints don't allow that yet, eg intercontinental aviation) maybe utilise synthetic fuels.
> I would say none of them are being really tackled
I would say many challenges are being tackled, and the intensity will increase even further.
The altitude thing makes it a little more complicated than that, but… yes, essentially:
1. any flight that could be a train journey, make it so; if anything, luxury high-speed train is so much more enjoyable that whatever flying allows at the same cost; there will be electric short-distance planes soon, but we probably want to use those for over-seas journeys;
2. no matter what source of CO2 will remain after we address ICE cars, coal, red meat, dairy, cement and much more, we will need to go negative to restore sanity to the climate, so pulling CO2 will be essential.
The message is: all hands on deck, starting by the big stuff. Flying isn’t huge, but it needs addressing.
Basically, some gliders do have an auxiliary engine they can use to avoid ditching it the fields or possibly even to self launch from an airfield without the need for another place to tow them aloft or a glider winch.
Traditionally this engine used to be petrol powered and most still are, but electric ones are proliferating quickly as they have quite a few advantages.
For one they are much more likely to actually start if needed during flight, as there is much less moving pieces and oil/fuel that can go bad during prolonged periods of not being used. The startup is basically instant so you can keep lower margin before deciding you will not find that next thermal and engine power is needed.
The limited range is not much of an issue for a glider as its build to fly between thermals without an engine anyway, this being very efficient with insane glide ratios. The online just needs to compensate the few meters per second of height lost before you find the next upwards going column of air or to reach the next airport, so that your friends don't have to fetch your from the middle of the field + you can avoid the field disassembly of the plane to a the trailer.
For self-starting gliders electrical power also makes sense, as they really need a lot of power for just a few minutes to get to height and can then shut the engine down. A compact battery & electric motor provides just that.
I know, it’s awesome. The best part is that they are trialling the commercial options where I am (Northern Sweden) so I should be able to fly soon in one of those and go to Stockholm under one hour without polluting.
> Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution
Whataboutism, one of the identified discourses of climate delay [0]. Besides, the proportion of radiative forcing (what actually matters) caused by aviation is more than twice that [1].
0. It's not Whataboutism, though. I don't point to an entirely different problem and say, what about that. I say, if we want to tackle climate change, we ought to target the most effective and cost efficient reductions in order to get the most results with the least cost. And there I say that aviation is just a small part of the problem, so, say, even entirely dismantling aviation would not solve the problem.
1. Yes, as I said immediately following the part you quoted: > though maybe 5% of global greenhouse effect
From the article linked above: "(...) We call this whataboutism. Actors advancing this discourse often deploy statistics demonstrating their own small contribution to global emissions, or they point to large emitters such as China – “We are a nation that produces 1.8 per cent of global carbon dioxide, so I do not get closing down our aluminium smelters, most of our steel production, and now our refining industry …” "
Either we start giving get out of jail free cards to specific sectors and so on or we agree that everything needs to reduce its emissions by ~8%/year from now on, regardless of their share in total emissions, and of how hard it is technically to decarbonize.
Third is the political problem. The international community has some tight limitations on who can refine Uranium. That's reasonable in a lot of ways as an effort to limit nuclear proliferation, but countries don't exactly like being put in the position that they can produce nuclear energy but only if 100% of their supply chain is outsourced to current Western powers.
> 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia.
So there is a major uranium producer in every corner of the world? That's better than oil and many elements critical in electronic. Like whats your benchmark" it cant be as common as dirt.
This is definitely a non-exhaustive list - for example a lot of initial Soviet Uranium stock was mined in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) and contributed to it being forced to the Soviet sphere of influence.
While most of the mines are no longer active I'm sure there are still reserves that could be mined by modern methods (ideally without political prisoners doing the mining this time) and I'm sure there are more places like this.
Greatly reducing meat production, particularly beef and other ruminants, will have a smaller effect than many people expect. Even if we don't eat them, vast numbers of ruminants will still need to exist because they are a critical part of natural ecosystems.
Humans made space for their preferred ruminants, like beef, by displacing vast populations of other ruminants which have similar climate impact. I don't think most people fully appreciate just how large the natural population was before we started raising beef at scale. Even if we eliminated the beef herds, other ruminant species would immediately start filling the vacuum.
> Humans made space for their preferred ruminants, like beef, by displacing vast populations of other ruminants which have similar climate impact. I don't think most people fully appreciate just how large the natural population was before we started raising beef at scale. Even if we eliminated the beef herds, other ruminant species would immediately start filling the vacuum.
The problem with beef farming is that vast amounts of forest are burned or clear cut to allow cattle to graze. That alone raises the carbon footprint of beef. Grass on the pasture definitely doesn't sequester much carbon.
When we talk about wild ruminants, some regions that are used for cattle didn't have a bunch of ungulates on it before. South America for example didn't have huge herds of llamas roaming the lands.
In North America Bison herds were estimated to number about 10 million, but right now there's somewhere around 90 million cattle in the US. Even if cattle farming was drastically reduced, it's unlikely Bison numbers would return to their historic amount. Deer are the other part of the picture, and their numbers would sky rocket, given the opportunity. But that's where managing their numbers and reintroducing predators comes in.
I don’t know where you are getting data for ruminants in North America. Historical estimates for bison are 60 million prior to systematic extermination, at least 10 million for elk, 50-100 million for deer, plus pronghorn, moose, etc in the many millions each.
Bison may not rebound very quickly but something needs to fill the bison niche in the ecosystem. It is well-understood that several other native species undergo population declines and reducing biodiversity when beef herds are moved out of a region long-term. Cattle and bison are very substitutable for this purpose (and are related species). Deer fill in much faster than most other species of ruminants in North America, usually detrimentally.
I was going off my memory of Bison populations, was way off there, thanks for the correction.
Either way, we'd still be better off if we dramatically reduced cattle farming and restored some or all of that habitat, particularly in South America.
Agreed - if the situation is as dire as presented then nuclear fission is the only clear solution today for baseload power. All the rebuttals I usually read seem to present hypothetical alternatives that may very well come to fruition but we have nuclear as a well-tested and known solution to the problem ready for us to begin using today should we simply decide to act.
I don’t see a path forward without Nuclear. Europe and China has done better in this area than US. There is a bunch of fear mongering in liberal California circles about Nuclear. Well informed and technically minded people I know in Bay Area all support Nuclear power.
Frankly the media has done an awful job of fear mongering with the term “Nuclear” and “Radiation”.
New York just decommissioned the Indian point nuclear plant [1] due to some shady politics. The largest planned solar installation in the US was defeated by environmental groups because it would be an eyesore [2].
At some point we’re going to have to grapple with the fact many “concerned” groups don’t actually care about climate change. Instead they use it as a stalking horse for other political projects.
The group that stopped the solar installation was something called "Save Our Mesa":
> But a group of residents organized as “Save Our Mesa” argued such a large installation would be an eyesore and could curtail the area’s popular recreational activities — biking, ATVs and skydiving — and deter tourists from visiting sculptor Michael Heizer’s land installation, “Double Negative.”
The group itself is not in any way an environmental group, they claim to be locals who want to save their tourism industry.
> The majority of our community’s revenue comes from tourism. We lost a lot of tourism and businesses when the shrinking lake levels of Lake Mead occurred closing a nearby beach. We have struggled but built back our economy through OHV tourism. When people come and camp/hotel for a week, they buy our gas, our groceries, eat in our restaurants, use our mechanics and parts stores. This allows these businesses to thrive thus keeping us self sufficient. Feedback from many of our Snowbirds was that they would look for new places to go, that’s lost revenue. People would not come to recreate, that’s lost revenue.
I did read the article. Specifically, I read the second to last paragraph which states,
> Although a majority of the state’s voters approved an energy transition ballot question last year, large-scale projects like Battle Born Solar have drawn backlash from conservationists, endangered species advocates and local businesses that cater to tourists.
But you don't need to take anyone's word for it. Here is a local group very proud to assist Save our Mesa to kill the project [5][6][7].
If you would like to read more about how environmental and conservation groups sometimes oppose renewable energy projects, you can do so [1][2][3][4].
1) Save Our Mesa is the group that pushed back, successfully, against this project, to further the tourism interests in their town, according to the article and according to them.
2) Some infrastructure projects "like this" (i.e. not necessarily this one, but simply projects "like this") draw backlash from environmental groups for whatever local reason. (also, this does not mean Save Our Mesa, the group responsible for stopping this project, is an environmental group.)
3) A local group (Basin and Ranch) was happy that "grass roots killed this project" and they were "happy to help" (in an undisclosed way) -- this also does not mean that "environmental groups" stopped the solar installation "because it would be an eyesore," which is what you said in your original post.
Look, I get that environmental groups sometimes behave in ways that seem irrational, too focused on some small local issue (Basin and Ranch likes the tortoise habitat more than they like solar), but this kind of sliding different issues, takes, positions, etc., together is dishonest and shitty, whether intentional or not.
It's a whole bunch of dissimilar designs - maintaining all that must have been nightmare.
In comparison here in Czech Republic & in Slovakia we have a bunch of upgraded VVERs and that's it, providing a good chunk of our electricity with reasonable commonality.
But hey, it could be worse than in Germany! You can build a complete nuclear power plant with all the expense it entails and then newer run it! ;-)
I really wonder what all the China talking point sorts will do the day China not only beats us on emissions per capita but also on total emissions? What excuse to continue doing nothing will they pivot to then? India?
>Those periods of near zero production can last non-trivial amounts of time no realistic battery could provide for
There are many options (electrochemical, gravity etc) for grid-scale energy storage of various durations that are commercially-viable today. 0-8 hours tends to be the most needed duration in the US but there are solutions that can store power for days or weeks without losses. Even in a 100% nuclear or gas-fired world storage is critical. During the Texas blackout both nuclear and gas assets failed due to the cold temperatures.
Besides the fact that electricity generation is merely one aspect of GHG emissions (hello agriculture, land use, transportation, etc). The ultimate argument against the "let's not radically change our ways and only retool the engine" view is the following: we have ~120 years of known reserves for the current fission reactors, with a potential 10x multiplier with fast neutron reactors should anybody (other than the russians and the chinese) bother to invest into researching the field. How many more doublings in our economy (and hence energy use) does it take to consume it all ? At a measly (by economists and politicians standards) rate of 2%/year, you get a doubling every 35 years. in 350 years (yeah I know this sounds very far in the light of the current news) we'd have increased our demand by 3 orders of magnitude...
While it's true that the state has to backstop the externalities of nuclear through insurance guarantees, the obvious and present externalities of carbon burning massively outweigh these guarantees. The state picks up a huge ROI by covering nuclear risks while taxing the living shit out of carbon pollution.
> If anyone actually believed it was "code red for humanity" they'd be pushing nuclear power
In theory. I used to say the same thing until recently. Now, I'm not sure.
Let's say we decide that yes, nuclear is the way to go, as it provides a lot of energy with barely any pollution (other than mining and construction). The 'waste', while a problem, is inconsequential compared to spewing crap in the atmosphere.
Let's also assume that the designs will not cause proliferation concerns (we have such designs, as well as more plentiful fuels). In fact, let's assume we will use the best designs we have in general.
Even then, what's the turnaround time to construct new power plants? The figures I've seen suggest it takes almost a decade until a plant is operational. Do we still have the time do build them in enough numbers to make a difference?
I'm tentatively in favor of more nuclear power plants, but I'm not convinced it's the only solution. We definitely need more electricity that comes from non-carbon-emitting sources, but solar and wind seem to be winning on cost.
In order to rely more heavily on wind and solar, we will need either enormous batteries or better power distribution across the grid.
Lithium iron phosphate cells should be pretty cheap in mass quantities, and they don't require nickel or cobalt. They can also last a very long time, so cost is amortized over many years. If the batteries cost $100 per kwh and a typical household needs 30 kwh to get through a 24 hour cycle, then that's $3000 worth of batteries per household. The real cost would be higher when you add in battery management systems, chargers, inverters, and so on, but if it's centrally managed it doesn't seem like the manufacturing, installation, and operation cost would be insurmountable.
In terms of the energy grid, I think it would be a good idea to look into constructing major transcontinental high voltage DC lines so the United States can buy solar power from, say, Algeria when the sun is shining there and sell surplus power to Europe and Asia when it's daytime in the U.S..
To sum up: I think nuclear could be a part of the solution, but it isn't the only option. We do have alternatives.
I'd love to see new reactors come on line, but I remain skeptical that nuclear power will be widely used in the US as long as it remains so scary to so many people.
It's scary because disasters stay on the front page for months if not years, it's associated with civilization-ending weapons, radiation and the illnesses it causes are mysterious, we don't really have a great plan for dealing with waste, and nuclear advocates are (by-and-large) a bunch of energy nerds who actually believe some new reactor design or statistical analysis will finally convince the American public to go pro-nuke.
The scarier climate change becomes, the more people seem willing to accept nuclear power. But that could be too little too late.
Nuclear is an especially sensible option in my country (Australia) IMO; we have an abundance of uranium ore, a geologically stable continent, a high-quality interconnected electrical grid (over most of the population), and a reliable political/governance environment. It would be an enormous improvement over our current reliance on coal-fired generation for base loads.
Let's not forget that there are many regions in the world (say in the middle East or Africa) where the situation is constantly volatile to put it mildly and where a nuclear power plant would be impossible to be secured properly against insurgency.
Wasn't Bill Gates going to build a new type of reactor [0] before Trump became president and shut down US/China collaboration [1]?
It seems there's some movement from Mr. Gates around nuclear again, but not sure if the Natrium stuff is the same as the TWR (travelling wave reactor) of 5 years ago. [2]
As pointed out in he comments below, the climate crisis will reduce political stability. And stability is essential to ensure that there will be a strong enough society left to properly decommission a nuclear plant when it will be EOL in 50 years. Decommissioning is likely to be vastly more expensive than initial construction, and after that you still need to figure out how to make sure no one will want to touch the waste for the next few thousand years.
For the current crisis we need to put a cap on carbon extraction now, and quickly bring extraction rates down to zero. Let the price of oil rise and capitalism should sort it out. Only when fossil fuel prices rise to say 500 USD per barrel will people and industries start effectively reducing consumption. Other than on extremely energy intensive activities (transatlantic flights) fossil fuel prices are just a rounding error.
If you can't sell people on nuclear power, there is no way in hell you're gonna sell people on extreme taxes on oil. And even if you could, the base load problem will still be there.
Maybe if carbon were heavily taxed it would incentivize energy storage solutions but as of right now cost effective solutions are no viable yet.
We can at least try putting a price on fossil fuels. Actually the 1973 oil crisis had a profound effect on behavior, so yes a capitalistic system is perfectly capable of responding to something being (artificially) scarce. OPEC should really get their shit together and start another oil crisis "in order to save the world"
Can you kindly edit your comment to remove the accusation that people worried about nuclear power don't believe in the severity of climate change? These people are just looking at a different risk assessment.
We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let's use the same systems to fix this (or at least slow things down).
As an individual my largest carbon impact is air travel. I like to go places, it's one of the main things I work to afford. Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon emissions of my flight. I will pay it. Anyone not willing to pay it will have to fly less. Any airlines that can't operate under the tax will not operate.
Now do the same thing for corporate polluters, packaging waste, etc. If a country won't do this for domestic goods we can at least impose climate tariffs at borders.
The only other thing that could work is some fantastic new technological solution, but let's not wait for that.
Taxation of carbon totally works. British Columbia has a $50/tonne tax, which increases the cost of unleaded gas by about CAD $0.996/L and natural gas by $0.0882/m^3 [1]
Revenue from the tax goes into the government's general revenue, which allows BC to have among the lowest rate of income tax of any province in Canada. Meanwhile, BC has the highest rate of electrical vehicle purchasing in North America [2]. One study showed that employment increased by 0.74% as a result of the carbon tax [3]. Finally, research shows that the tax is highly progressive, having a smaller impact on poor households than rich ones [4].
The lower income tax actually offsets the premium I pay to live here vs other provinces. Or at least that's how it worked out when I had a job last March. The rent keeps coming, but the money ain't.
There's a threshold of savings under which things start getting very risky, that encroaches on my happyness, but on the flipside there's no amount of money I can think of that would make me work endlessly, because it doesn't make me happy beyond that
I've been saying this for years, but I finally get why "Just. Tax. It." doesn't work. The voters. They turn out in droves when it comes to taxes on something as visible as the price they pay at the pump or when it comes to the oil patch in Alberta.
It's politically easier to create import duties or to go into debt and subsidize things. The level of taxation we need to stop a complete catastrophe is higher than people will put up with in most of the world.
That's a fundamental problem with any regulatory measure intended to reduce carbon emissions. Cheap energy is good for the economy. Fossil fuels are cheap. Any attempt to reduce the use of fossil fuels is going to hurt voters in the short term no matter how you package it.
Sure, you can try to be sneaky about it, implementing policies that only indirectly impact fossil fuels and hoping the voters don't notice you're the one to blame for the rising price of energy. Or you can be honest, bite the bullet, and try to convince the public a carbon tax is necessary to avoid something even worse down the line. Either way you're fighting an uphill battle.
You really should not be sneaky about it - some of the populist-or-worse parties here in Europe are already full into "eco-fashist EU is taking away your cars!" together with their usual drivel.
True, Switzerland (who I view as a "green" and progressive country) recently voted against those taxes in a referendum. I think it would be much worse in other countries.
Switzerland, like California, is a direct democracy. Taxes that touch the assets of voting demographics fail while taxes that burden non-voting demographics pass.
Nit: Switzerland as a country is a semi-direct democracy not a direct democracy. Only 2 cantons fulfil the criteria for the classical definition of direct democracy.
Indeed, Switzerland is very conservative. Like in every other country you have a divide between the progressive/liberal/young-ish big cities (Zurich, Bern, Lausanne, Basel, ...) and the conservative/old-ish rest of the country (great skylines, very low population density).
--> Swiss cantons are split up historically, not by population, similar to US states. The conservative, low-pop cantons can hold the progressives hostage on anything they don't like because even if you get the liberal cities behind you that is still way beyond the majority of cantons.
Comment you're responding to probably didn't mean American conservative. Most conservatives support abortion in the EU, it's the far-right that doesn't.
Even when people propose this type of dividend it still doesn't usually work because the people that live in the cities already vote for the measures to curb climate change while the people that live in the sticks aren't going to see enough of a dividend to make up for the extra cost at the pump. Even allocating it by region (i.e., the taxes of a region go to paying for the dividend of the region, and there are larger dividends per person in a region with higher GHG taxes) don't work because too many people are retired or essentially non-commuting, and there are a host of issues around balancing out incentives. For example, a person may move across the street just to get a higher dividend.
To be fair, if people living in cities tend to have much lower GHG emissions than people living in rural areas, we probably want to have an extra incentive for people to live in cities, right? And even with that, there is a pretty wide variation of emissions levels between consumers in each of these types of regions.
You can have a very small town of 100 people that is designed so people can get around without a car. Small towns in Ireland, for example, look very different from small towns in the US -- but we used to build like that, and we can again. If you live out in the sticks, you probably make a lot of unnecessary trips because fuel is cheap, where there is potential to wait and do lots of shopping at once. You can probably insulate your house better, buy an electric water heater, stick solar panels on your house, etc.
Farms depend on a lot of machinery that uses fossil fuels right now, which is difficult to change, but could gradually be converted to more efficient energy sources. And actually, the Energy Innovation Act, which is Citizens' Climate Lobby's preferred carbon tax, has an exemption for agriculture -- it's a very small part of emissions, and it's worth it to get more people on board with the bill and get it passed sooner rather than later.
And we shouldn't compare an imperfect but still good tax to some unachievable ideal, we should compare it to other real-world solutions, and in that comparison, I think a carbon tax with dividend is probably the fairest and most cost-effective way to quickly cut carbon emissions.
I agree with you for cars, which is why I think the appropriate approach is to:
1. tax flying, or rather shame airlines who do not compensate aggressively until they all do, and monitor compensation schemes because at the moment, too many are non-sensical blackmail-like counter-factual arguments around cutting forests;
2. ban industrial releases of CO2: all has to be captured and stored; storage is cheap now, so industrials will rather do that than lobby (until storage price go up, but at that points, things will have gotten much uglier);
3. ban new ICE cars, or make those excessively expensive to build: second-hand cars price will explode subsidising current car owners, and opening a wider gap for electric cars. Guarantee loans on electric cars to make them unaffordable cheaper, until the resell value takes over. No need to make gas more expensive: electric cars are cheaper to maintain today. You just have to make it more obvious to buyers.
Start by taxing the big polluters, not individuals. Less than 1/3rd of pollution comes from individuals (and mostly from ICE cars, so incentivize EVs to tackle that), the rest comes from industry so go after the big piece of the pie first.
The industry will R&D ways to cut pollution since they'll be financially incentivized to do that, the resulting technology will be later adapted for other applications.
Did we just tax tobacco? People loved tobacco. At some point, with the right information (e.g media not bought by big business), we can realize that things that are bad for us are just bad for us.
We can avoid telling us that and have someone take money from our wallet to prevent us from buying the things that kill us, but why not just better inform ourselves about the way we're killing us?
Anywhere I go now, I'm overwhelmed by ads telling me to buy a big SUV, go flight somewhere every weekend, buy something new because I deserve more, etc.
Of course, those paying for the ads say they're advertising because I want those things... but why are they advertising, then? If I wanted a bigger SUV/picker so much, they would not keep the ad spend and keep that as profit for their shareholders.
The whole system wants more, more, more stuff and they know the more addictive are the bigger/larger/shinier/louder/anything-er and that takes energy and pollutes. They need that more than the consumers.
I stopped loving this shit (no car, no flight, small flat, etc), and I'm still flooded with "BUY" orders. Employers will do everything to have me buy a car (I don't need) instead of taking the money of that car for myself.
It isn't a problem of wish or desire but we're told it is, because the consumption system keeps playing with these desires. I should just watch Century of the Self again...
I'm not sure tobacco is a good comparison here. Tobacco was a relatively easy thing to tax/restrict/ban as it serves no real purpose beyond individual enjoyment.
And about the time governments started taxing the shit out of tobacco is also about the time tobacco use was starting to become quite unfashionable. Why would I or my friends care about not being able to smoke in a bar if we find smoky bars annoying? Hypothetically try passing such taxes in the 60s, see how far that would have gotten.
Point being: carbon tax? That hits everyone to some extent, and arguably hits those least likely to care about climate change the most.
Denying climate change is also becoming unfashionable, while vegetarianism and electric cars become fashionable. These are good trends that have been slowed down for many years by corporate campaigns such as Global Climate Coalition [1]. The same thing happened with tobacco.
The problem is, just taxing CO2 emissions doesn't let you control who gets hit by the price increases. It could very well lead to increases in food and transportation costs that would be disproportionately burdensome to the poorest part of the population. Raising the cost of those items is politically very unpopular since it tends to cause unrest.
So I think what we'll get instead is some complex system of first taxing everything and then subsidizing some forms of consumption (again, food and transportation), while trying to incentivize switching over to renewable energy sources.
The earnings of the CO2 tax could be equally distributed to all citizens on a monthly basis. That way, while consumer prices would increase, all those citizens who contribute below average to the country's CO2 emissions (and those are the vast majority and especially includes people who are poor) would, in sum, have more money available than before.
There's no guarantee that a "CO2 tax" would be equally distributed itself. For an extreme case, imagine if we put a universal CO2 tax on all products. A producer might chose to slash the price of luxury goods, instead funneling the cost to lower end options. That would cause the prices the poor pay to rise more than the you subsidy would offset.
Distributing the cost equally to the producer doesn't mean they carry over equally to consumer cost.
>So I think what we'll get instead is some complex system of first taxing everything and then subsidizing some forms of consumption (again, food and transportation),
or just tax everything, then giving it back to everyone via a flat dividend?
> Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon emissions of my flight. I will pay it.
So what you're saying is that it won't change your behavior. Why don't you just donate $1000 or whatever to a charity? (I dunno, maybe you already do). I don't mean to attack you, but encoded in your very language is the exact problem. No one is willing to change their own behavior, they want other people to change. Repeat this x 7 billion and suddenly you understand what the inertia is.
We live in the fading dream of a world that we sold to us that we could do whatever we want with absolutely no consequences; worse, that everything that we did that "made money" and contributed to GDP growth was good for everyone. Turns out that that was bullshit greed talking and the God of consequences is visiting its revenge on us through the same lesson every petri dish full of bacteria learns: you will choke to death on your own waste products.
Pardon me, but your post is just about virtue signalling or you're missing the point entirely.
If you increase the taxes for something, you will drop the demand and, therefore, consumption. It doesn't matter whether OP will change his/her behaviour, it matter that we, as a planet of people taking X flights per year, will reduce our flights by Y% due to tax.
I don't want to change my behaviour because that doesn't fix anything. I want to be forced to changed my behaviour, along with everyone else on the planet, through taxation for which I am happy to vote for and support with all my being.
> I want to be forced to changed my behaviour, along with everyone else on the planet, through taxation for which I am happy to vote for and support with all my being.
I agree with you, and do so with my fiat (EVs, solar, no air travel unless absolutely necessary, vegetarian, etc). There are billions of global citizens who likely don’t agree with you (or us), who will happily consume regardless of the consequences (and either can’t or won’t pay for the per ton emissions).
The challenge is in changing the behavior of disinterested or adversarial parties in the face of political apathy. It’s going to get uncomfortable.
I was by no means implying that people want this, I know categorically that almost nobody wants this.
But it doesn't matter what people want, I have already lost hope because nothing in our system is geared towards helping out with this. The incentives are completely misaligned and nothing will really change for a long, long time.
As far as I see it, you have the following:
- Our entire world economy is based simply on consuming as much as possible. This is exactly the opposite of what needs to happen in order for us to have a chance, the exact polar opposite.
- People are willing to protest even a few cents in tax increases, even in Europe. In the USA, everything required for climate action will be seen as communist by half the country.
- You have so many other countries coming from behind that will simply want the standard of living you see in the West. (China, India, Brazil, Africa etc.).
- Emissions are actually rising, even though we knew about climate change for decades.
- Politicians have their career in 4 year chunks. Nobody wants to rock the boat by increasing taxes on their constituents and get voted out.
- People have somewhat short lives. Most people who are alive now will not worst of the consequences.
You have very large forces pushing towards maintaining the status quo.
What needs to happen in order to fix our planet will just not happen because it cannot happen. We might be able to limit the damage, but that's about it. If science and technology don't solve this by some sort of miracle, it will only get worse.
I actually completely agree with what you wrote, so it's weird that we disagree about the carbon taxes. Sure, carbon taxes are going to reduce the demand for certain types of goods due to basic economics. But taxes also bless certain things as acceptable, as long as you pay your indulgences. It puts the onus on the rubes, the masses, to stop doing that.
People talk about eco-fascism and really heavy-handed things like outright bans on certain activities. Frankly, I think what is coming will be worse. It will be eco-anarchy. Mad max style where billionaires and ex-oil executives will be hunted.
It really isn't the rubes' fault. If you give a monkey a banana, he will eat the banana and throw the peel over his shoulder. If you give a monkey a bag of chips, he will eat the chips and throw the bag over his shoulder. Who's responsible? The monkey or the craven bastard who cooked up plastic chip bags to expand their market to every monkey in the world? Same principle. The bastards who are responsible are those producers who set the menu of choices and slip crack into their products on the sly so the monkeys get addicted. And then they blame monkeys and think monkeys should pay a chip-bag tax while they fuck off to New Zealand. Yeah, they will he hunted.
Well, I actually I agree with a lot of the stuff you write, but definitely disagree on taxes.
The main point I disagree with is that adding taxes somehow makes your choices seem okay. I don't really think that's the way to look at it, though I do understand there is some merit to the idea.
I'm not saying adding a carbon tax should be the only solution or even the best longterm solution. But the issue is that we cannot ban cars or flying or oil or plastics without seriously disrupting the whole world. So that's a nonstarter for me, we just can't do it, even if it would, in fact, be the best solution if you only consider the environment.
So we're down to mitigating damage at this point, since we can't directly fight the root cause. So maybe there are other solutions, but taxation is a pretty obvious way to reduce demand. Is it true that rich people will still be able to pay the tax and just indulge? Sure, we can maybe compensate for that somewhat, but rich people will always be better off. Should we all dig a deeper hole just in order to prevent some rich people having more than the rest of us?
> I'm not saying adding a carbon tax should be the only solution or even the best longterm solution. But the issue is that we cannot ban cars or flying or oil or plastics without seriously disrupting the whole world. So that's a nonstarter for me, we just can't do it, even if it would, in fact, be the best solution if you only consider the environment.
Oh, we can totally ban plastic, or at least all plastics that are not biodegradable. We lack political courage to do so, and it will cost money. I pick up a lot of litter and by far the bulk of it is one-time packaging for snack items. (It's hard not to conclude, as if studying humans as animals, that we're a bunch of fat little monkeys that can't stop eating and must carry food with us everywhere we go.)
I don't think we can ban flying though. What we need is not electric jets, because batteries will not compete with liquid fuel for energy density. We need carbon-neutral production of jet fuel, either through a process like biodiesel or a chemical process that takes electrical energy as input, e.g. from solar or nuclear.
> So we're down to mitigating damage at this point,
Oh, we are so fucked that it's almost pointless. Literally every thread of our economy is not sustainable. Crank the handle of time 1000 years, even with no growth, and every single thing we do goes off the rails. We're depleting all the resources on this Earth and even if we halt the CO2 crisis, there's a hundred thousand minor crises vying to metastasize into something as bad or worse. A thousand years, ten thousand years of modern tech living, and this planet is a tech junkyard with precious little biosphere. Humans will either go back to being monkeys eating bananas or Earth is going to be a desert hellscape pocked with nuclear-powered Arcologies.
>I don't want to change my behaviour because that doesn't fix anything. I want to be forced to changed my behaviour, along with everyone else on the planet...
That first sentence is the problem with this world. Everyone says that they want to fix a problem until it comes time to take action. You're just lying to yourself and virtue signaling to everyone else if you're not making steps in your own life to actively make a change in your own behavior.
That second sentence will be the downfall of all free people. It's weak willed people like you who won't make changes in their own lives literally begging for government to take more power. Asking the government to force you to change your own behavior.
You're very naive to think this power you would give so freely will be used benevolently. You needn't look any further than the government's inaction to punish those big companies who are destroying our oceans, our economies, our rivers. No big company CEOs ever go to prison for destroying our planet because our politicians are bank rolled by them. There is the ruling class, then there is you me, and everyone else. These are the people you will surrender your freedoms to so cheerfully.
Carbon taxes are political suicide in the US. In fact, we know that oil companies push for them exactly because they know how unpopular they are.
In Washington state, one of the more progressive states, they've failed over and over again to pass a carbon tax. Nothing they can do makes it work politically. In France, a carbon tax kicked off the yellow vests movement.
Like it or not, the Green New Deal framing works better, because it emphasizes the benefits, rather than the costs.
It seems a strategy that might work is pairing the carbon tax with a universal refundable tax credit such that it's revenue-neutral. That way people can pocket the difference if they want to use less carbon.
The more time passes, the more people support a carbon tax. A carbon tax and dividend is actually supported by a majority of Americans of both parties, now. But Congress is lagging behind popular support a bit, and needs people to let them know that we do support it.
Exactly. America is structurally dependent on cars. The working poor have been forced into increasingly long commutes to find affordable housing. We need big structural changes: densification, massive investment in sustainable transit systems and urban design.
Do you honestly believe that given enough money politicians can come up with a viable solution for climate change? Mind you those are the same people who want to end privacy on the Internet[1].
Same people who came up with European Union’s biofuel mandate which caused deforestation of Indonesia for palm-oil plantations. Across the pond, it's the same people that subsidized ethanol fuel which, more or less, benefited only corn farmers.
I might be too cynical but what's most likely to happen is that corporations will find a way to avoid paying the tax and it will hurt people who struggle the most already.
For example, in EU car manufacturers have to keep average CO2 emissions of new car sales below 95 g/km. VW buys a large amount (I believe it was around 37%) of their ID.3 electric car to reduce the average emissions of their newly sold cars.
So what you suggest is we take money from poor people and burn it. I fail to see how that will help.
I suggest we take money from anyone who wants to pollute. At source. Yes, some poor people will be impacted (though not as many as continuing to ignore the problem).
By "at source", I mean that car makers should not be taxed.
Instead, fossil fuels should be taxed as close as possible to when they are pulled from the ground. Not when they are used (like a car does).
Then if car makers decide to build big diesel chugging vehicles, of course their market will be severely limited because not many people will want to pay the cost of running them.
Car makers are therefore still incentivized by market forces. to build efficient vehicles, but we don't need artificial and easily gamed regimes about what proportion of their production is fuel efficient.
Presumably, VW buying their own cars to offset their CO2 emissions redistributes some of their profit from more-CO2-emitting cars into their supply chain, thus incentivizing them to sell fewer of those cars.
Economists have been saying this for years. Really it's the only way to let market forces decide.
Make it a publicly listed company that collects the tax, and distribute dividends equally to all citizens. Such things should be possible with digital currencies.
Carbon taxes disproportionately hurt low income people. Rich folks will still drive their cars, fly on jets, and use tons of energy in general. Carbon taxes also make your nation less competitive in a global economy. That’s not good when enemy states have zero compunction about using fossil fuels to overtake you economically and militarily. Carbon taxes also incentivize industry to move production to nations with little or no carbon tax. In general I find it extremely foolish to think that carbon taxes would be a good way of going about this.
> Carbon taxes disproportionately hurt low income people.
If the carbon tax collected was re-distributed uniformly as a tax credit (each person gets the same tax credit), would it still hurt low income people?
I Googled this and it seems like it should help people with low incomes, but maybe there's something wrong with the underlying reasoning.
No, but every proposal so far hand waves the specifics of both what the tax will go to along with all the other technical details that would actually make the tax work. We could have a utopian world where the true value of carbon is consistently taxed equally across all industries and then distributed efficiently to those unfairly affected by it. We could also have an unholy bureaucrtic nightmare where the actual tax varies violently depending on which party in power, has exemptions for every industry big enough to have lobbyist, and instead completely burdens the middle class while all profits go towards filling the desert with enough tanks to fight WWII sixteen times over while still having enough left over to think really, really hard about building high speed rail in a place that isn't useless.
Don't forget that the people that would be implementing this are the same people who are currently voting to criminalize every element of the cryptocurrency ecosystem (including development of more efficient standards) while still leaving an exception for PoW miners.
All the money has to go to the dividend, minus the admin costs which should be very small. The bill does include exemptions for the military and agriculture, so it's not perfect, but it is necessary to make some concessions to make it politically viable. I'd rather have this bill now than one without those exemptions in 15 years or whatever.
A carbon tax with dividends would solve that problem. It would be a net positive for the first 6 or 7 decile of the population while still sending a strong signal to the markets to switch to greener alternatives to stay competitive.
Regarding moving production abroad, the carbon tax should work hand in hand with a border adjustment mechanism.
Climate change disproportionately hurts low income people even more.
Those who rely on crop yields and fish stocks to survive every year and don't have the money to become refugees will have a much harder time than the first world folks who might need to start carpooling.
Yeah well that’s because poor people (in America) are hella carbon inefficient for economic value creation. They’ll drive like 100 miles each way to work a $16/hr job as a McDonalds worker.
Taxing it is still pretty hard to do. It's often hard to know exact emissions or what to test. I agree its probably an easier solution, but the accounting of "who is actually producing the carbon" is incredibly complicated, and will become more incredibly complicated as soon as literally billions of dollars are at stake.
Thousands of other things also have carbon emissions: beef production for instance. Or deforestation -- while it doesn't have a positive CO2 benefit, it removes a CO2 sink. The fishing industry has massive CO2 costs that aren't from fossil fuels.
That's 1 thing (the meat industry) whose carbon emissions are both direct (not supply-chain based) and wouldn't be captured by a petroleum+coal producers tax. Not thousands.
Meat production is about 15% of our global carbon emissions, so certainly it can't be ignored - but when the other 85% is coming from activity fueled by petroleum+coal, it doesn't make a lot of sense to throw up your hands to reject a carbon tax because there's "thousands" of emissions source (which ones?) which collectively amount to less than a percentage point of our carbon footprint.
We mustn't let the best be the enemy of the very, very good. A straight-forward carbon tax on fossil fuels is both enforceable, linear, and not that complicated. Can we ignore ranching and meat production? Of course not. So let's tax both.
National carbon taxes for the US are politically infeasible. Best we can do right now is big climate-tied infrastructure spending packages, sector-specific targets, R&D investments--whole mess of things. That is the stuff that can pass for the foreseeable future. Carbon taxes as the exclusive solution is a naive dream of economists.
Carbon taxes are pushed by the fossil fuel industry precisely because they are politically untenable. They push for the solution they know isn't going to happen.
China is the largest CO2 producer in the world and is growing. The US is second but our emissions are actually decreasing and likely to continue decreasing. Taxing Western companies may reduce the West's carbon footprint but hardly helps the overall picture while being essentially austerity.
Oh it very much helps. Non western country also have a right to develop economically. It's not that by being first to pollute the atmosphere. By reducing the incredible irresponsible per capita emissions of the USA other countries can develop within a fixed CO2 budget.
How do you define what an appropriate per capita CO2 budget is? Is it different for someone from China, India, and the US? What about the difference between individuals from rural agricultural communities vs a large city? If non-western countries have the 'right' to increase carbon emissions why don't poorer people in Western countries have the 'right' to increase their emissions?
What is the target level for developing economics? How does it make sense to mandate Western countries go to net-zero while all developing countries continue to dramatically increase per capita emissions?
Since it would be impossible to force China or India to meet the same standards the West self-imposes in this scenario, you are essentially asking Western individuals to pay a higher cost of living for NO net carbon reductions. This mandate will disproportionately affect poor people.
As a result I don't see how anyone expects radical carbon reduction policies to receive support from the Western world. I do not see how this is a rational course of action for an individual voter or for any developed economy.
> How do you define what an appropriate per capita CO2 budget is?
Negotiation of elected represenatatives constraint by a total budget.
> Is it different for someone from China, India, and the US?
Yes.
> What about the difference between individuals from rural agricultural communities vs a large city?
This is something that should be respected when the country allocations are made. However the distribution in the country itself is subject to decisions in the country.
> If non-western countries have the 'right' to increase carbon emissions why don't poorer people in Western countries have the 'right' to increase their emissions?
Because countries with unequal wealth distributions shouldn't be rewarded or allowed to externalize (by taking up more CO2 budget) their societal wealth distriubtution. However in terms of allocation of the budget in the country i would find poorer people getting more a workable solution.
> What is the target level for developing economics?
Being able work afford cost due to climate change. Being able to live a live without deprivation. Such that people won't need to be prevented at gun point from fleeing into the richer countries. That be a good start.
> How does it make sense to mandate Western countries go to net-zero while all developing countries continue to dramatically increase per capita emissions?
Because the consequences otherwise are ugly. The western countries could of course invest heavily to into developing countries with the goal to direct their growth. However i am not sure collolianlist meddling will be appreciated by people in developing countries.
> Since it would be impossible to force China or India to meet the same standards the West self-imposes in this scenario, you are essentially asking Western individuals to pay a higher cost of living for NO net carbon reductions. This mandate will disproportionately affect poor people.
If the mandate will disproportionately affect poor people it was implemented badly on a inner country basis. Inside your country you can do redistribution to make it less impactfull on poor people.
> I do not see how this is a rational course of action for an individual voter or for any developed economy.
Yeah, it is a case of a tragedy of the (unmanaged) commons. I don't think that this approach is feasible but i adopt this position none the less as any compromise which i am a part of will be pulled in a direction i find preferable for all mankind according to my ethics. I choose my position to optimize the resulting compromise.
Let’s say I’m from Netherlands and create dozens of companies, local, nearshore and offshore to both reduce the taxes I pay and to top up my carbon emission quota.
Clearly we're talking about different interpretations of "taxing carbon". I'm quite uninformed, but the simplest thing would be to tax fossil fuel companies per unit of raw fossil fuel they extract from the ground. That's it. They can't lie about how much they extracted: that's securities fraud. Splitting into smaller companies, offshoring, IP licensing or other elaborate tax avoidance mechanisms don't work because you aren't taxing "net income" or anything else that can be gamed.
If a country refuses to impose the same tax on its domestic fossil fuel extractors, tariff or embargo all of its exports until it complies.
This will only work if the biggest importers start doing this right away.
Who enforces the taxes? The same parties who are doing most of the polluting. The military, government, the technocrats in control of the systems.
Just. Tax. It. puts more power in the hands of the people causing the problems.
On the other hand, what if the climate change was primarily driven by natural cycles? Taxing everybody would have a negative impact on the populations' readiness & survivability to these changes. Many people already do not trust big government to be beneficial & responsive to their needs, for good reason. Making living even more difficult for the population by increasing taxes would only cause more to reject the systems that bind them.
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It seems like the downvotes, are related to some Epistimological blind spots on the part of the downvoters.
>what if the climate change was primarily driven by natural cycles?
What if climate change was perpetuated by giant sloths who want to drive humans to extinction? We can play the “what if” game and I think it’s important to keep an open mind in science, but to quote Walter Kotschnig, not so open that our brains fall out.
We can use a bit of Bayesian inference here. Given the current data, the probability of natural cycles (or ground sloths) being the root cause seems low. Given the potential risk, hanging our hat on that small chance seems like an irrational choice. Or a potential one that just reduces our cognitive dissonance so we feel better about ourselves.
I know there’s many people who bristle at the thought of any authority outside of themselves but that can become an epistemological bias in its own right.
Likewise, the comment adds very little to the discussion because the compliment can be said with equal validity.
”-The free market- puts more power in the hands of the people causing the problems.”
Can easily extend to individual consumers just as your statement points the finger at government
> What if climate change was perpetuated by giant sloths who want to drive humans to extinction?
Then we should question the assertion & by directly seeing giant sloths, one can know that giant sloths are indeed destroying the climate. However, we don't have any direct evidence that humans are causing the climate to change. We have direct evidence that solar cycles, geomagnetic field effects, & the general naturally occurring cycles do affect the climate directly, and always have throughout Earth's history. Instead, we have institutional funding directly incentivizing an opinion, which is "humans are the primary driver in climate change". If many scientists don't have that opinion, those scientists don't have a career.
We can use Bayesian inference to understand that the climates in other planets in the Solar System is also changing. Given that humans, to my knowledge, do not populate other planets in the Solar System, that makes the probability of natural cycles are the primary driver of climate change quite high. Given the potential & historically validated risk of tyrannical governments & class warfare causing genocide & mass effects on the broader population, hanging our hat on the small chance that the same people who lie all the time are now telling the truth in this one case, despite their contradictory actions, seems like an irrational choice.
I know that there's many people who want us all to just follow the self-imposed authority figures because they benefit from that arrangement, but that can become an epistemological bias in it's own right.
Likewise, this comment above adds very little to the discussion, because it seeks to distract from the central point, which is about people of power & wealth using lies, fear-mongering, shaming, & pseudo-intellectual arguments to gain even more power over everybody else.
> Can easily extend to individual consumers under a completely free-market solution.
Can also easily extend to the institutions directly responsible for the social conditions, such as the military, banking establishment, political figures, bureaucrats, technocrats, etc. The increasing consumptive behavior of these classes of people directly contradicts the "crisis" we are all facing.
If the people in power who caused these problems really are concerned about the "crisis", they should give up ALL of their power over others so the broader spirit of humanity can solve the problems that they have caused.
And my offer still stands. Give me Trillions of dollars of wealth & liquid cash and I will gladly save you from the problems that I say you created. I'll even include some statistics & Science in that package deal!
Which do you think we have more robust data about, Earth or other planets in the solar system? The amount of data has a large impact on Bayesian inference…
What, in your opinion, would be the correct way to measure direct human impact on climate? Until very recently, we didn’t have direct measurement of the Higgs particle and yet we were able to do wonderful things inferring the strength of gravity by other means. Point being, I’m not yet convinced your bar for knowledge is appropriate.
And my comment is not meant to distract from your point about central government but rather to question the strength of the basis of the claim. On the contrary, I felt your comment was a classic misinformation tactic but I was trying to employ the tack that every downvote deserves a response
> Which do you think we have more robust data about, Earth or other planets in the solar system? The amount of data has a large impact on Bayesian inference…
This is not a question of robustness of data. This is a question of commonalities. If there is significant climate change occurring on other planets, one can infer that there are influences outside of the planet.
> What, in your opinion, would be the correct way to measure direct human impact on climate?
Well, we can measure water pollution due to run-offs of industrial waste. These measures are well established, obvious, & there is a history of direct evidence & scientific consensus that mercury and pesticide run-off causes problems to the ecosystem & human health. CO2 in the atmosphere & it's direct effects, not so much. There has been plenty of credible scientific opposition. The problem is there is too much money riding on the opinion that CO2 is the #1 existential problem facing humanity so the credible voices in opposition are drowned out on an institutional level.
> we didn’t have direct measurement of the Higgs particle and yet we were able to do wonderful things inferring the strength of gravity by other means
What makes you so sure that physical reality is composed of particles. This is an atomist bias. Fields are another way of looking at physical reality. For example, our electrical equations are based on fields & can be applied to unify different phenomona.
> being, I’m not yet convinced your bar for knowledge is appropriate.
If I had $Trillions of wealth, I could easily hire people & even peer groups who have a reasonable "bar of knowledge" & incentivize them to have the "appropriate" opinion; meanwhile push out the non-believers, I mean those who have the "inappropriate" opinion, from key roles while filling those roles with people of "appropriate" opinion. In the meantime, a series of propaganda, I mean PR, campaigns through the various organs that $Trillions could influence would convince you to think "appropriately" as well. My offer still stands...
> And my comment is not meant to distract from your point about central government but rather to question the strength of the basis of the claim. On the contrary, I felt your comment was a classic misinformation tactic but I was trying to employ the tack that every downvote deserves a response
According to your view, which is biased, any opposition & questioning of Epistemology is considered "misinformation". Yes, do not think outside the narrow confines of your worldview, or it's "misinformation". I bet if you took my offer, gave me $Trillions, you would not think what I say is "misinformation" within at most a couple of years.
But. Just. Tax. It. Very credible. Begging the question is "not appropriate", only the tax money is flowing my way...
Hard disagree. Especially when you double down on the Bayesian part. Robustness of data is directly proportional to the strength of a belief in Bayesian inference. Your point here reads as someone looking for confirmation bias. After finding one “commonality” of data, one can exclaim “Eureka” and not have to confront uncomfortable and conflicting data. That’s not good science.
>There has been plenty of credible scientific opposition.
A strong claim that should probably be backed up with citations. And balanced against the credibly of data against the claim. Because, after all, science is almost never in 100% agreement. There are still credible scientists who disavow the link between HIV and AIDs; would that be enough for you to roll the dice on that issue?
>What makes you so sure that physical reality is composed of particles.
Who said I am? Or, for that matter, that I believe fields and particles are mutually exclusive? This is another one of those seemingly purposeful digressions from the actual point of inference and precisely why I thought you were treading the well-worn tracks of misinformation tactics. In a similar vein, you never actually said what your bar for changing your mind is, you just redirected into attempts sowing doubt. So I’ll ask again, more directly: what information would you need to change your mind? My experience is that when people are unable to clearly articulate their position here, it’s because they are overly dogmatic and it almost becomes a faith issue rather than a reasoned one.
>In the meantime, a series of propaganda...
There's a certain amount of skepticism that is healthy but there is also a tipping point where one becomes so skeptical of everything that it just becomes more convenient to wear a tin-foil hat because one can never be 100% certain. To circle back, I think it's wise to go with the preponderance of data when in doubt and try as hard as we can to resist irrational bias.
>According to your view, which is biased...
Yes, every human view is biased to a certain extent. That's part of being human. Which is more to the point that it's better to err on the side of the data. Even if it flies in the face of what you want the conclusion to be. I'd encourage anyone to think outside the confines of one's worldview, but that maverick-i-ness doesn't absolve one from needing data to back it up.
>But. Just. Tax. Very credible.
This was read as a pragmatic argument and I don't find pragmatism to lack credibility. I’m not sure your point here; is your stance that taxes are immoral or illegal?
>Begging the question is "not appropriate"
(Not really begging the question in the literal sense of the phrase unless I'm failing to see the circular argument related to taxation) Bringing up a question is fine, but it came across more as making a statement without any actual convincing argument or data is not
> Hard disagree. Especially when you double down on the Bayesian part. Robustness of data is directly proportional to the strength of a belief in Bayesian inference. Your point here reads as someone looking for confirmation bias. After finding one “commonality” of data, one can exclaim “Eureka” and not have to confront uncomfortable and conflicting data. That’s not good science.
If you care about data, why are temperatures falling in many places on Earth? Why is there increased volcanic activity? What about the Grand Solar Minimum? What about the Geomagnetic excursion? Did you know that Greenland has been gaining ice mass into this summer? Even with temperature stations being placed in the middle of asphalt parking lots & next to AC vents, the temperature data still needs to be manipulated to fit the narrative. Why has measured global temperature fallen despite CO2 rising in the past decade? How has technological change affected CO2, temperature, & astronomical measurement over the past few centuries?
> A strong claim that should probably be backed up with citations
You can do your own research on this. The late Freeman Dyson has some excellent analysis over his skepticism. With the current batch of scientists, it's about having a career. There is no scientific career in being an APGW skeptic, because the market is flooded with grant money going to APGW proponents. Even the incumbent oil companies want to corner the market using regulations. The skeptics are mainly grass-roots. It's David (skeptics) vs Goliath (the Industrial Complex).
> what information would you need to change your mind?
I want to be paid $Trillions to change my mind, like how your system is being fed with $Trillions to perpetuate your lies. I want all of the money returned to & compensation to the tax-payers, consumers, & people adversely affected by policies, taxes, & loss of freedom. I want action to protect the public against naturally occurring climate change, which includes the Grand Solar Minimum, Geomagnetic Excursion, increased Solar & Cosmic ionic bombardments, increased volcanic activity, supply chain disruptions. I want decreased regulation & decreased taxation. I want regional & redundant food production grown by the people, free from binding laws & regulations, some of which prevent fruit trees & crops from being grown. I want the environmental movement to focus on clean water, clean air, regenerative practices, holding industry accountable for pollution, not this CO2 canard which only funnels wealth to the powerful, while serving polluting & monopolistic industrial interests. I want poverty to be a thing of the past. There is no reason for scarcity among so many people in the world, other than hoarding & systems of impoverishment by the few so-called elites.
> There's a certain amount of skepticism that is healthy but there is also a tipping point where one becomes so skeptical of everything that it just becomes more convenient to wear a tin-foil hat because one can never be 100% certain. To circle back, I think it's wise to go with the preponderance of data when in doubt and try as hard as we can to resist irrational bias.
False & misleading data should be discarded from the conversation. Just because one worldview has captured some institutions, does not mean that the worldview is correct. It's easy to cherry-pick & not be transparent with data-collection when there's group-think backed by money. The IPCC has been wrong with their predictions. The global average temperature is cyclical & has already crested. How many times has snow being a "thing of the past" been proclaimed? There's been many doomsday prognostications by APGW proponents over the decades which never come to pass. At what point do we say "enough, leave us alone, no you can't have my money, fuck off"?
> Yes, every human view is biased to a certain extent. That's part of being human. Which is more to the point that it's better to err on the side of the data. Even if it flies in the face of what you want the conclusion to be. I'd encourage anyone to think outside the confines of one's worldview, but that maverick-i-ness doesn't absolve one from needing data to back it up.
The data needs to be interpreted. The raw data should be available. The data needs to be put in context. There good reason why grass-roots skepticism has been growing despite $Billions being poured into APGW propaganda & overwhelming institutional lock-step agendas. Your favorite institutions can flood the public with false, manipulated, & inconsistent data and some people will be convinced. However, not everybody will be convinced, especially those who are adversely affected by the increased regulations. If there was no reason to be skeptical as you seem to imply, there would not be so many people being skeptical.
> This was read as a pragmatic argument and I don't find pragmatism to lack credibility. I’m not sure your point here; is your stance that taxes are immoral or illegal?
How is stealing money from the public to benefit the powerful for duplicitous reasons "pragmatic"? Are the powerful ever held accountable for their actions or will they continue to jet-set, yacht, & own/utilize multiple mansions around the world in plain view?
> Bringing up a question is fine
Bringing up a question is never fine with you people because you have an agenda to take money from the public to enrich yourselves. I get it, it's the law of the jungle or something like that. Take from others to enrich yourself. Just don't expect us to comply with your edicts, no matter how much false & inconsistent data you throw our way.
It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc).
For that if for no other reason, I’d rather if consumer prices included an explicit CO2 tax. The here can be a rebate for poorer people, or personal allowance, whatever, but there would be a fixed yardstick for measuring your personal impact.
Off the top of my head, I have no idea which if my activities generates the most CO2. My car? Energy use? Diet? Going skiing once a year? No idea.
Newspaper articles only help a little, they usually present an incomplete picture, and optimising against an incorrect utility function is often counterproductive.
I’m imagining something like VAT, where “value added/carbon” adds up over the lifetime of product/service production.
> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production
Not really. For some reason the actually quite simple problem is needlessly complicated in the discussions.
Stop digging up ANY carbon from below ground where it was safely buried.
Any carbon above ground is part of the cycle that includes atmospheric CO2. You need huge effort to change how much of it is in CO2 form at any time while still having no certainty that it won't change very quickly (into CO2 atmospheric form), e.g. through fires (like the many burning forests just now).
The earth's solution to removing the CO2 from the atmosphere was to bury it deep underground. Getting it back out from there is the BIG problem. The details of the above-ground carbon cycle are a small problem with very little impact compared to the big issue of getting more and more of the ancient carbon back up into the cycle.
Of course, it's no use discussing the stop of all coal, gas, and oil digging, because there is zero chance of it happening. Coal at most and not even that looks likely, globally.
It's like not caring about the huge hole in the hull of the ship while arguing about how to "safely" store all the water coming in.
You're not really disagreeing with the previous poster.
We need to do what you suggest as quickly as possible. That means some things that depend on that carbon downstream should be stopped, replaced with alternatives or at the very least heavily discouraged while a market for substitutes created. But how do we decide which ones to do first? Ideally the cheapest and biggest impact. Our best tool for doing so is probably a well regulated market with a carbon fee.
Unfortunately, the same groups that caused the problem, then tried to cover up the problem, then attacked all the solutions continues to talk about how great a carbon tax will be, while also funding the politicians who will never let it happen.
But, if you want to know what the most sensible answer is then just look at what vaguely sensible countries are doing. What they're doing today is probably what we should all have been doing 20 years ago.
This usually involves putting some kind of financial incentive on electricity producers to move to low carbon alternatives (gas is fine as a short term substitute, but if we'd started 20 years ago we'd no longer need it today) and other CO2 emitters to use electricity rather than fossil fuels (e.g. cars).
Other basic elements are carbon tariffs to stop other countries undercutting your efforts.
It's not rocket science. The whole "this is impossible" stuff is just bullshit from the people who don't want to do it. EVs, Solar and Wind Turbines were all impossible according to the same people. Most of the moonshot stuff is trying to come up with a technical solution to the political issues, and that's hard.
> It's not rocket science. The whole "this is impossible" stuff is just bullshit from the people who don't want to do it. Most of the moonshot stuff is trying to come up with a technical solution to the political issues, and that's hard.
If all recorded history is anything to go by, the moonshots are probably our best realistic hope, because technology is easier than politics. The "people who don't want to" use existing solutions have all the power and it's going to be very hard to convince them to change their minds; they're protected by the common folk because they have the "high ground" of having their interests be aligned with short-term interests of regular people, while the required changes will necessarily inconvenience everyone in the short term.
No, we shouldn't be counting on new technologies to get us out of this, but it's still by far the most likely outcome out of possible futures where we do get out of this.
So it's easy if all countries agree. If that is not the case you need to find out how much carbon from the ground was used in each item at your border. At that points it becomes rocket science?
You just have to add a country wide tariff until they implement a carbon fee. Gives them the option of disadvantaging all their exports or joining a global collaboration to meet goals they actually agree with and will benefit from as long as everyone does it together.
As I said, look at what the more sensible countries are doing today and you'll see what we all should have been doing 20 years ago. No magical technology required:
The UN projects that the global population increases from a population of 7.7 billion in 2019 to 11.2 billion by the end of the century. [1]
> but stopping it faster either requires severely authoritarian measures or increasing economic safety, which counters the benefits.
Sounds like you really don't want to consider this solution at all, because you feel it can only be accomplished by a decree that would be constraining people's liberty?
Have you considered the possibility that some people might want to contribute more to sustainability of their own free will?
For each American couple who reads this post and decides to have one less baby, over the next 79 years the world will be spared from 1,562 metric tonnes (1,722 tons) of C02 emissions. [2, 3]
> And reducing birth rates too fast sets us up for disaster too.
Are you saying humans aren't capable of living with zero population growth? If that's what you are saying, could you explain the nature of the difficulties you project?
Birth rates are falling across the board, but stopping it faster either requires severely authoritarian measures or increasing economic safety, which counters the benefits. And reducing birth rates too fast sets us up for disaster too.
All it requires is education. I'd say a quarter of the over educated I know do not have kids, myself included. After a certain level of education, our society strikes one as no place moral to bring more people.
To allow education of enough people requires a significant economic lift. Not going to happen fast enough.
UN projections puts the end of population growth at some point within the next century, but accelerating that change fast enough to have an impact on climate change would require dramatic interventions, and also will not happen because it would be absolutely politically untenable for most politicians to stunt growth that way (you'll note, politicians many places are encouraging more children, and China has kept loosening up their own policies because current birth rates are causing concerns - politicians would in general rather encourage more children than open up for more immigration, and opening up for more immigration is in any case a stopgap).
So, while reducing growth is absolutely part of it, we're already doing that pretty much at the rate we can expect to be politically tenable. There are parts of Africa we could encourage a faster reduction in (e.g. some of the absolute worst, like Niger, would likely fall off a lot faster with more economic development assistance), but it's not going to do enough to speed up population reversal in time.
Remember that changes in birth rates has a trailing effect of a couple of decades, typically. So even if we could make changes now to education for example that will drastically cut birth rates eventually, it'd not affect population size enough in time.
Of course, many problems have fairly obvious physical solutions you ignore all costs of said "solutions". Containing a pandemic is also not rocket science. Just have everybody stay at home simulataneously for 2 or 3 months.
With pathogens that jump between species, as SARS-CoV-2 has with several populations, including white-tailed deer[1] in the US, you potentially need to isolate all reservoir species from each other as well.
Cross species transmission is rare and while some cases have been reported, they're really the exception rather than the norm.
If there was really that big of a risk where we'd need mammals to isolate as well, then veterinarian services the world over would have collapsed under the weight of house pets contracting the virus.
edit: curious about the downvotes. Perhaps you have proof that has eluded the virologists researching SARS-CoV-2. Please do speak up ;)
Why would they get severe disease when they get infected? Even most humans don't, let alone other species with different receptor setups. The virus is absolutely in non-human animal populations almost everywhere, and is not a candidate for eradication.
Asbestos and lead in gas were things that had suitable replacements. What you're asking people to do is give up personal transportation, which is to some their sense of freedom and in some cases the ability to head and cool their homes.
This isn't going to be easy not because it's technically difficult but because you're going to end up asking humanity to give up much the lifestyle it's grown accustomed to over the last 150 years.
You illustrate precisely why I'm confident that humanity will never make any meaningful progress on the problem. People will talk about it, but when it comes right down to it they not only won't give up their comfort, they'll think it is ridiculous or impossible to do so.
> What you're asking people to do is give up personal transportation, which is to some their sense of freedom
This is an unusual POV unique to the US when compared with the rest of the world. When I lived in San Francisco, I didn't drive a car for ten years, and didn't miss it for one minute. There's also an incredible amount of recaptured freedom available when you stop driving, as most commuters are aware. This equates to having more time to walk and enjoy the world, more time to listen to podcasts and music and read, and less stress rushing and worrying about getting into an accident.
No, but it's primarily the US and other rich western countries that need to change. Those countries where few people drive a car to this day aren't the problem.
This is misleading because it does not represent outsourced production nor accumulated emissions, which is related to building up wealth to a point where greener solutions can be afforded.
That graph depicts cumulative (historical) emissions, which is interesting, but not pertinent to the question of how to fix up things for the future.
It is not "only" the West that is a problem here. The biggest current polluter is China. If you look at per capita data, you have among the biggest polluters the US, definitely, but also Russia, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada. That's not "the West". Per capita, China emits more than the EU.
Sure, "the West" needs to clean up its act (the US in particular), but this is without doubt a global problem.
There realy wasn't. Engines switched to fuel injection, which made the octane number less critical, and catalytic converters were mandated that made lead destructive to the car itself.
The issue is that you're asking young people to give up a lifestyle that their parents considered normal, in order to compensate for the pollution that past generations have caused.
>you're asking young people to give up a lifestyle that their parents considered normal
Which has already happened for every generation for the past few centuries. Peoples lifestyles change all the time. There's no need to ask, it is an inevitable thing that happens, you can't freeze time.
Do you mean easy as in "technically possible" or easy as in "the people with the current political power and wealth will benefit from this change and will suffer the consequences if they dont?"
Climate change is the second type of hard.
As was, for example, "freeing the slaves", "giving people the vote" and other such problems that often needed bloody wars and revolutions to be settled.
Technically possible. There were alternatives developed quickly to the CFC problem that worked about as well and were only slightly more expensive. This lead to support for them politically because it was a no-brainer to switch over.
On the other hand, alternatives to oil and gas are much more expensive and require significant sacrifices compared to just using oil.
Electric cars are more expensive than ICE. They have less range and there is a lack of equivalent charging infrastructure. Those are being solved but it’s taken 30 years or more of working on battery technology and efficiency to match ICE cars for convenience.
Solar panels and wind has been similar. Years of development and billions of dollars to optimize it and still has downsides compared to oil and gas.
Things like airplane fuel and plastics there are no easy solutions to still.
Even the things that have solutions like electric cars, solar panels, etc require tons of new infrastructure to switch which is expensive both in dollars and carbon cost.
Just look at the total dollar amount of replacing all oil-using cars/trains/planes/power plants/factories/etc and compare to all CFC-generating devices it’s a lot more.
Possibly I missed it, but you don't seem to have listed a single technical reason why it's harder than the CFC issue?
When you say something is "much more expensive" you're mostly talking politics since basically everyone agrees it's cheaper to deal with climate change.
Well, the alternatives for CFC-generating are already developed and in the marketplace. There are still no equivalent alternatives for many oil-using products. Kind of indicates that it is technically easier.
The fact that there are CFC replacements but not oil replacements for all use-cases indicates that it's more difficult, no?
> basically everyone agrees it's cheaper to deal with climate change
I'm not sure that's the case. Seems like a lot of people are either hoping that it's not going to affect them that much, or that some miracle technology will be developed which will fix the problem more cheaply and not require any change in behavior on their part.
My thesis is that the reason there are not sufficent oil alternatives, is that the people who benefit from oil being burned for fuel have made sure that is the case.
The quick and simple way to a) make use of all existing alternatives where feasible and desireable and b) ensure a market exists for people to develop new alternatives is to introduce a carbon tax that accounts for the externalities.
That has been a hard task (though we've made some limited headway) and it was not technical challenges that held us back but political.
Your argument is the equivalent of a King saying, "Well, that sounds great in theory but democracy is too technically difficult", "No it's not" "Well if it's so easy why hasn't it already happened yet" "Because you murdered anyone who suggested it" "Oh yes, so I did".
I think it's you that need to support your reasoning. It is true that the capitalist elite wants to maximise profits for themselves with no regard other concerns, and since they don't have to pay for the gruesome externalities they inflict, then they will continue to happily make bank out of gassing the world if they are not forced to stop.
On the other hand, it's ridiculous to say that the solution is "just stop bro". It's anything but technically simple. If you outright ban all fossil fuels, how do you make electricity? How do you stock supermarkets? How do all goods get transported? How do people move about? Obviously it's not so simple as that. You need a plan to transition to sustainable energy and a sustainable economy in general. For instance, you need a massive Green New Deal to fund this transition, you need carbon price+cap schemes to force the transition, etc.
Which part of adding a tax to a product or a government investing in stuff are you saying is technically difficult?
I can't really think of anything related to this that anyone has ever said "even if the entire human race worked together on this for 3 decades we dont know how to achieve it" (actually, I've seen people say that a lot e.g. modern civilization isn't possible without fossil fuels because of EROEI, but those people are wrong and/or lying)
> But, I think to clearest, easiest way is to just ban "coal, gas, oil".
Doing this would result in mass deaths. Food transportation would collapse within hours. And mechanized farming would be unfeasible anyway. Death toll would be in billions.
That is nonstarter.
And that is without part "people would freeze to death in unheated homes" applying in many places.
If you mean "reduce dependency on them slowly over years/decades" then it would more reasonable but it is not "just ban".
The error with lead was the opposite one. It was a moral panic that's lead to the current health crisis, both mental and physical. People need heavy metals, they are essential.
They’ve been advocating heavy metals for a while. IT’s a really bizarre infatuation, but far enough from reality that it’s unlikely to make any difference and harm anyone.
It’s interesting in that I can’t think of any political or cultural conflict it ties into? They just enjoy their daily cadmium, it appears.
Are you talking about the obesity epidemic? There was a recent paper discussed on HN talking about how it was probably an environmental change, but I don’t think they mentioned heavy metals. I think they mentioned plastics and lithium as possibilities. Was lead widespread in the environment before the 20th century? I don’t remember pre-20th century photographs showing widespread obesity.
The reason why I think so is that the versions of proteins with heavy metals seem to be superior to those with the supposedly "correct" metal, as well as the heavy metal being extremely strongly preferred by the metabolism.
In the case of lead, it seems to be necessary for glucose transport, and seems to have effects similar to Rapamycin. It seems that Rapamycin basically only works by compensating for lead deficiency to some degree.
Take an individual that bikes everywhere. What other changes can he make in his life that would reduce the demand of "digging out carbon"?
As it turns out, he's relying on rubber wheels for his bicycle, he's relying on synthetic clothing for comfort, and numerous in his life products are made with plastic. What are the highest impact changes he can make?
I realized this additional perverse thing about trying to improve the world by riding a bike, as an individual:
In our market economy designed to get people to consume cars, your foregoing car ownership actually just makes it a little more comfortable for all the car owners out there sharing the road with you. You reduce traffic for them, reduce the wear on the infrastructure, you drive down the price of cars and gas, and you free up a parking space.
Of course this is all on the infinitesimal scale of your own individual influence on the world, its ecosystem, and the economy you live in, but so is your actual reduction in fossil fuel consumption if you give up driving.
Point is, there needs to be something a lot bigger than your individual choice as a consumer. We need an economy that prices in the environmental impact of cars, and I’m pretty sure we need the state for that.
The other ironic thing about bikes is all the technology that enabled cars was invented for bikes. Chains, inner tubes, spokes the quality of the steel.
Sometimes I think the worst mistake we made with cars was making the refueling process so easy. If people still had to lift buckets of gasoline to fill their tanks, they'd have a much better idea about the massive quantities of fuel that are needed for small amounts of car use.
Rubber, synthetic clothing, plastics, do not get used up and ejected directly into the atmosphere. There is some energy use in manufacture, probably some chemistry that may emit some CO2. But it is absolutely dwarfed by the massive amount of gasoline fuel ejected directly into the atmosphere by driving.
The store in a bike frame is probably the most carbon intensive part of a bike. For every pound of steel, two pounds of CO2 is currently emitted in manufacture (but this will probably go to zero in the future).
For a 20-60 pound bike frame, that's the equivalent of only three gallons of gasoline. Three gallons. Because as a gallon of gasoline combusts, it picks up extra oxygen atoms and ends up being 20 pounds of CO2.
Think of a 20 pound plate for weight lifting, and that's a gallon of gasoline once it's burned.
All the other stuff in life--rubber, clothing, plastics--are almost a rounding error compared to the daily commutes we make in cars in the US.
Lesson: get on that bike as soon as possible, and if you can't, at least get an EV.
Get fewer of his calories from animal products, for one thing
- not necessarily go vegetarian/vegan, but cutting down by 50-75%, and switching to grass-fed, organic meat (which doesn't require petrochemical derived fertiliser in its production) makes a significant difference.
But be mindful that not all plant calories are equal, especially those that are air freighted (more of a problem in NW Europe which airfreights a lot of fresh fruit and veg in from African countries than the US).
Take trains not planes wherever possible, and avoid long haul flights entirely if you can: one return long-haul flight can undo all the good of a year's worth of biking.
> Stop digging up ANY carbon from below ground where it was safely buried.
If a country does this today, they will be at a severe economic disadvantage compared to a neighbouring country which continues using coal. All their manufactured goods will end up more expensive, nobody will buy their exports, and their population and economy will suffer.
Only a few countries have done this to any extent, and they are countries who either don't have many fossil fuels, or whose main exports don't involve energy.
The only real solution is for all countries to agree to limit/stop digging up coal/oil/gas at the same time, and to apply punitive sanctions to countries who do not adhere to the agreement.
There isn't really any other way. OPEC could do it if it had a few more members. The US could do it if they were prepared to threaten sanctions or millitary force. Nobody else can really do it.
That may have been true a decade ago, but today renewables provide the cheapest electricity.
We have a clear tech path that leads to cheaper and more abundant energy, we just need to choose it and stop listening to the fossil fuel interests that don't want the transition to happen.
Technology development accelerates the more we produce it. Accelerate the purchase of storage and renewable tech, and the quicker we will get to a future of abundant clean energy.
> That may have been true a decade ago, but today renewables provide the cheapest electricity.
I think that depends on where you are. Certainly in the US I’ve seen articles claiming that new wind is cheaper than running already built coal plants, and fully believe it. That seems unlikely to be true everywhere, though. Why would China be building expensive coal burners if renewables are so cheap?
Planning processes from five years ago or ten years ago don't always get updated. And corruption is still a problem in China. Perhaps not as bad as, say, India, but still an issue. Which is to say, that not everywhere makes cost optimal decisions all the time.
Even the IEA, a huge skeptic of renewables, that consistently makes ridiculous claims limiting the potential for solar and wind, acknowledged that solar is cheapest:
Decision makers often have huge biases from past data and cultural influences. The bias against renewables and storage in the energy industry is absolutely oppressive. And in most infrastructure decisions, decision makers don't have to answer to shareholders about getting outcompeted by a smarter decision maker that made a better choice.
It is most definitely the cheapest way to heat houses and run cars. At least on raw economic costs; some utilities inflate electrical costs relative to natural gas costs in a way that makes a heat pump more expensive than natural gas heating, but that's just a distortion of the underlying economic costs, and only for some people.
We don't yet have electrically driven steel or concrete production methods, but this is a great opportunity for startups and new technology.
Steel will be more straightforward to decarbonize, but even if decarbonized steel is 50% more expensive, it will have negligible impact on the cost of downstream projects. And the industry can then apply their profit margins to a higher base cost. It's likely that either electrolyzed hydrogen, or with more direct electrical application with new methods that are more like aluminum refinement.
For concrete, it will be far more difficult, as a base chemical reaction to produce concrete releases carbon. However, there's significant room for improvement and new chemistries other than Portland cement, but worst case we will need to do carbon capture and sequestration. This will be more expensive, but it remains to be seen by what factor.
In any case, the extra expense of these most difficult to decarbonize areas will be offset by new opportunities from abundant, cheaper electricity.
The suggestion I've seen is that key countries will put a price on carbon, and then add tariffs to imports from countries that lack a carbon price. That at least goes some way to removing the economic disadvantage.
There is unfortunately still a lot of scope to game such a system.
A country can sign up to the carbon pricing scheme, but then subsidise disadvantaged industries by almost the same amount as the carbon taxes they pay. See the EU carbon trading scheme for example - companies are given (for free) credits representing the carbon they emitted in past years.
A multi-country carbon taxation scheme gives every country a strong incentive to either collect the tax badly on their own companies, or make policies to effectively reimburse companies the tax collected.
It's probably still the best approach despite this shortcoming.
I think the broader problem is the human mental condition. One of the largest contributors to global emissions is large scale factory farming but how many people are going to stop eating at McDonalds?
Point being: people’s habits need to change across the board, but yet they argue that policy makers have no right dictating what they can/can’t do…
If you ask a big business owner to halt production in the name of climate change, will they? Hell no.
The government can squeeze people financially though so it literally is up to them to force businesses to comply lest they will exhaust their finances for non compliance.
> One of the largest contributors to global emissions is large scale factory farming
Unlike digging up carbon from below ground any activity involving only the carbon already above ground does not make the problem nearly as much worse, if at all.
Unless you mean the energy cost for that farming, which is mostly based on using fossil fuels? Which I don't think is a problem specific to animal farming (which of course should be reformed for ethical and health reasons alone) but to almost all farming all over the world. "Plant farming" is not carbon neutral either because it too requires a lot of fossil fuel input. So I don't think mixing problems and targeting only and specifically animal farming, which should be targeted for different reasons, is not helpful because it misdiagnoses the hearth of the problem of current farming techniques relying on ancient deeply buried sun energy instead of only using current sun energy (like the plants themselves do, but our processes don't).
> One of the largest contributors to global emissions is large scale factory farming but how many people are going to stop eating at McDonalds?
McDonald's process is likely also one of the most energy-efficient ways of producing these foods - they have incentives set right for that.
This is where things get a bit tricky: people like to paint a dichotomy between factory farming and small family operations, and God knows factory farms are indeed strip-mining the soil. But if we were to suddenly replace them with family operations, how much would we need to still feed everyone? I suspect the answer is, "way too much", and thus any working solution will have to be somewhere in the middle between the two extremes.
There are extreme efficiencies coming from the methods and the scales at which industry operates - we can't, and shouldn't, throw that all away. This conversation begs for being zoomed into, details cry out for consideration. Is industrial farming energy-efficient? Yes. Emissions-efficient? No. Can the former be improved without sacrificing the latter? Probably. Can large-scale farming be done sustainably with respect to soil use, without destroying efficiency? It's possible. Definitely worth looking into.
> Point being: people’s habits need to change across the board, but yet they argue that policy makers have no right dictating what they can/can’t do…
Yeah, that's part of why we are in this mess. I don't see a democratic way out of this; people won't vote for the right things until we're already all falling off the cliff, and marketers can no longer confuse regular people with disinformation.
Currently, I think our options boil down to one or more of:
- Governments getting more authoritarian and forcing businesses and consumers alike to adopt a much less carbon-intensive lifestyle;
- New technologies pop up that allow politicians and/or businesses to have their cake and eat it too - offer less carbon-intensive way of doing the things that are already being done. Renewables and electric vehicles are two examples of this - despite initial troubles and active resistance, they crossed the threshold after which the market wants them, and it's politically safe to mandate them.
That's why I'm very much bullish on all technological projects in climate space, and very angry at the "you can't solve social problems with technology" bullshit - new technology is a tried and true method of solving problems which are economically or politically untenable. New inventions offer new options to politicians and shareholders - which is what we need to have when our combined incentives paint the social process into a stalemate.
I’m also bullish about tech; and the more I think about it, I expect any attempt by a government to force uneconomical solutions would result primarily in that government being outcompeted by others, so I see techno-cake as the only solution rather than one of two.
OK, stop digging up any carbon from below ground, but let's do it slowly. Turn off all the oil extractors and coal mining equipment tomorrow and I'm guessing we'd have at best a month before chaos erupts in the streets. One ransomware attack caused panic buying and chaos on the east coast for a few days. I'd argue that we need some oil production, for plastic if nothing else. But on a much smaller scale than how we use it now.
You'd have to get this done globally, though. It doesn't matter if one country stops if others double down. It would be best to be done in concert with the other oil extracting countries so that prices wouldn't destabilize. This is probably what climate agreements should target rather than reducing consumption.
Oil isn't extracted from the ground because people like it's color or something, it's what runs our industrial civilization presently. And I don't want to start looking for a piece of land in the mountains tomorrow that I can defend and start ammo-ing up because we suddenly decided oil wasn't going to be extracted anymore :)
I do like the idea of looking at the problem at it's source, quite literally. Turn that tap off in a way that doesn't cause massive instability and the carbon in the atmosphere will eventually take care of itself. It's a perspective I never thought to look at the problem from. Not sure why, it seems obvious in retrospect.
You're describing the objective function, but ignoring the constraints. Stop digging up coal - fine. Cut off power to people who have no other power sources? Erm... What about emergency diesel generators for hospitals, diesel use for shipping goods (lowest-carbon-emitting means of transport). It's just not that simple.
We have more than enough oil in storage now to fuel diesel generators alone for a long time.
Emergency generators is not where the demand comes from.
The medicine is still likely better than the disease, but it really entirely depends on how much you choose to downweight the worth of the lives of future generations.
But yes, it is very likely that a solution will have to render formerly inhabited, far-flung areas as uninhabitable or at least much more expensive.
Diesel demand comes from shipping goods primarily. How do we replace the 4 million trucks on the road quickly? How do we get rid of container ship emissions? How do we solve backup generation problem? Go look at what's happening in South America right now because of low water levels -- lots of diesel generation.
We need to wean off fossil fuels but governments need to subsidize and support alternatives which they are doing bare minimum today.
Thing we need? Let's list them and figure out solutions
Things we like? Sorry? I like living. I like this planet. Things we like very seriously need to take a back seat to needs right now.
I've heard the same thing from a family member when I ask why they eat certain items while they are morbidly obese. Because they like them. Come on now, we're literally killing the planet with likes.
99% of all the products you take for granted are using fossile fuels.
Medicin, contact lenses, paint, textiles, electronics, windmills, solar cells, concrete, asphalt, heavy machinery, most industrial manufactoring, all types of lubricants, plastic, mining, food production and I could go on.
If you like living you are going to need most of the above. In fact if it wasn't for fossil fuel usage the likely hoood of you being alive let alone as rich as you are today would be very small.
Energy is the industry that powers all other industries. You make that more expensive you make everything more expensive which means more people go hungry, less people can afford medicine, food production becomes more expensive and more people will die. It's really that simple.
If you really believe we can do without all these things I would urge you to live without anything that has been made possible by fossil fuel industry for a month. Then you will realize just how live giving fossile fuel actually is.
Very good start for separating like from need, thank you! You're correct that these thing use fossil fuels, but that doesn't mean that's the only way of making them
and that's why we have this mess: because of people like you in the governments of this world only thinking about theur personal, short-term gain... it's fucking ridiculous. don't you care about future generations and the way they'll inhert your planet?
> What about emergency diesel generators for hospital
Use carbon capture to generate fuel from the air. Yes it's expensive compared to regular diesel, but for use-cases with low consumption like emergency generators that really shouldn't be a huge issue.
No it's not and you have not a single scientifically demonstrated foundation for that kind of claims.
Using fossil fuels is saving more lives, in fact it's making it possible for billions of people to live today. That wouldn't be possible without fossil fuels. In fact most of us wouldn't be here.
> No it's not and you have not a single scientifically demonstrated foundation for that kind of claims.
There's pretty clear scientific consensus that climate change will result in more hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, cold spells, floods, droughts and especially that there will be shortages of clean water and land suitable for agriculture. All of those things kill humans.
Definitely! Vegetarian food is a big part of the solution. Methane from the absurd amount of meat produced is really bad, and also contributes around 10x CO2e.
Ah, so we just eliminate low-cost transportation, agriculture, textiles and consumer goods and consequently starve billions of people. A modest proposal for such an ill-specified problem with unfalsifiable causes. I like it.
I did not propose anything. I pointed out what the actual problem is. If you want to refute that, feel free.
Just because the problem is practically unsolvable does not equal it cannot be said out loud. Carbon above ground is going to increase and at most we can lower the speed of extraction, and until we have (sun-based energy) methods at scale to bring carbon back underground we will have to live with ever increasing CO2 levels.
A change in trend to more getting buried than brought up (full stop first is impractical, plus methods will have to be developed and tested step by step) is not even on the horizon of the most optimistic scenarios.
There are lots of people equating making the statement with "you say we should just do nothing" (I did not tell anyone about what they should/can/cannot do?) or with comments like yours, which is strange but very human.
It is too late for everything, there are cascading effects that are completely out of control like the permafrost melting and releasing methane. What are you going to do about that?
There is no evidence we have reached runaway warming yet, and while there are positive feedbacks, there are also negative ones as well. We have not accounted for all of them, which means we should keep trying.
The evidence is not there to suggest fatalism yet, and even if it were, the impacts occur on a spectrum.
> There is no evidence we have reached runaway warming yet
There is evidence, which the various papers on the issue point to. It is not irrefutable evidence, but the nature of the question is such that there cannot be irrefutable evidence. For some reason, confusing “not irrefutable evidence” with “no evidence” is common on HN in both scientific and legal discussions.
Here's a small parametric projection you can adjust to get a rough idea[1]. The conclusion is that we need to work on all ends, starting with heavy carbon taxing.
We have pretty much squandered the time for anything but a drastic 180 degree turn.
The best thing you can do as an individual is to be vocal about those concerns and put pressure on your political representatives to take action, CCL[2] being one example of that.
I'm not a big proponent of the individual carbon footprint thing, it's mostly an attempt to shift responsibility to the individual when the ones that can actually get meaningful action on the way are corporations and governments. Despite that, avoiding meat (if you can't avoid all, focus on beef), buying local produce and avoiding flights where possible are still beneficial things to do and the biggest contributions you can make.
I would add not driving a 20 year old car, but a lot of time you not driving it just means someone else will be driving that car instead.
I love how corporations can pollute the absolute shit out of the atmosphere, but when it comes to me having a steak, I’m the bad guy, this is one of the biggest cons of our time.
Could you imagine how much more damage cheap air travel, coal fired power generation etc has done compared to people eating food ?
Do you know who eats all the beef they like ? Oil company executives.
The steak one is usually more nuanced. Not all land that raises cows can be productive for crops. I tend to buy beef that is locally sourced, which also reduces a carbon footprint.
To be very specific -- if you want a carbon fee & dividend, which is strongly supported by both economists and scientists as the most efficient, effective way to get the USA to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, call and write your senator as soon as you can using this link which will help you out with instructions (as well as explain more details if you're interested):
Of course the biggest emitters are industrial. Anything we attribute to individuals pales in comparison to the transport industry, production of goods like steel and concrete, resource extraction, power generation and production of consumer goods.
Telling consumers to cut back on X is essentially passing the back and making consumers feel bad without actually addressing the bulk of emissions.
Aren’t industrials working to sell things to individuals ?
You are the customer of the transports industry, you live in a concrete and steel building, you buy the devices made with extracted lithium or gold, power generators are running for every one of those … and for heating your house.
The problem is difficult because no one is responsible, but our entire civilization as such is responsible.
Yeah, we could probably make marketing people accountable for over consumerism. But they are just materialization of the ugly side of our civilization.
Show me where I have consumer choice about which transport company my goods are shipped on (as well as a shipping company that isn't a huge polluter), and I'll happily wield my influence.
There are many places where there are consumer choice (eg. electric cars, carbon offset credits for flights, renewable energy electricity providers, organic foods at the supermarket[1]), and the uptake there is tepid at best. The critical mass of demand is just not there.
[1] I'm not saying that organic food helps climate, but it captures a similar idea. People complain that industrial food production is bad because of pesticides/hormones, organic mostly solves these problems, but people strangely aren't taking up on it.
The problem with Organic food is the same with carbon emissions; the cost of is generally too high compared to the perceived individual benefits of the organic/low-emissions alternative.
Dunno, as someone who cares deeply about food (and really enjoys it) organic, if nothing else, tastes better (usually). Especially if it's local, small-production organic. Plus has organic pesticides (or no pesticides) so it's probably healthier.
In my experiece organic doesn't taste better for most things because the varietals are the same. Alternative varietals of fruits and veggies tend to be organic, and of course those often taste better or have more complex flavor, but its not because they are organic.
It's actually better with organic food, because you can benefit yourself by not ingesting pesticides/hormones/whatever, whereas with carbon emissions the most you'll achieve is save the earth from 0.00000001 degrees of warming.
My point is not that your personal benefit isn't potentially good with organic, but like reducing carbon emissions, there is a deferred, nebulous benefit to consuming organic which is hard to value against the immediate increased cost.
>Telling consumers to cut back on X is essentially passing the back and making consumers feel bad without actually addressing the bulk of emissions.
That's not quite true. Individual action leads to societal change. Climate change will never be treated as an emergency until we believe that it is, and until it makes us change our individual behavior to show that it is. The other problem is that this behavior change needs to start at the top. We need to see that our elected leaders are treating this like an emergency. Unfortunately that will never happen because of a certain political party in the US that ignores science and delights in human misery.
Psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley tested this exact scenario in a now-classic study. Participants filled out a survey in a quiet room, which suddenly began to fill with smoke (from a vent set up by the experimenters). When alone, participants left the room and reported the apparent fire. But in the presence of others who ignored the smoke, participants carried on as though nothing were wrong.
Yes, but those things do not exist in a vacuum, they are produced based on demand. If we care so much about our own convenience that we are unwilling to change the things we can on an individual level, how will we ever be willing to sacrifice things as a society? Are you going to give up your 2-day prime delivery because we no longer ship things by truck? Or a wide variety of items at your grocery because we stop gathering food from the four corners of the earth?
Come on, it's not that GP, or me, or you willed 2-day prime delivery into existence. It's something Amazon, and other companies, offer. It can be "given up" by everyone, without any objection, by said companies deciding not to offer it anymore. People will grumble and adapt, because they can't really do much about it.
The leverage over this, and all other conveniences, rests squarely with the companies offering them. People choose out of what's available on the market, not from the space of possible offerings.
Sure, Amazon could stop offering it, and that may be a good thing. However people are not used to the convenience and will stop using them and use Walmart's two day shipping. Or just drive to the store themselves, which is likely even worse for emissions.
Although I am not certain it would be a good thing. It is my understanding that delivery services like USPS, UPS, Amazon, etc. are better for emissions than making little trips to the store. Its dozens or hundreds of deliveries aggregated into a single highly optimized trip that keeps many other people off the road. If you give people the convenience of having it within a day or two, it may actually save entire round trips to the store. Without it, I think you have more cars on the road with more emissions.
There could be some good in more incentives around Amazon Day deliveries. Where all your goods show up on the same day each week. Reduced packaging and potentially reduced emissions. It would actually be cool of they did something and produced routes, where each neighborhood gets the same day, rather than individuals get to pick and change their own. That might make some decent impact. But you still have to convince people to wait a week.
Although that is not getting into the consumerism that Amazon fuels, and the extra plastics and trash that are produced because of it. Which are bad. But that I don't think you can put that entirely on Amazon, that's a society problem.
Fair enough. Delivery services are perhaps not the best topic to talk about in this context - there's a strong argument for them being net better for climate than brick&mortar shops, particularly in car-centric cultures.
My comment was less about the particulars of 2-day delivery, and more about the general problem of punting the responsibility to consumers for things they're structurally unable to affect. The concept of "voting with your wallet" is one of the biggest modern-day scams.
And Amazon will stop offering it if people stop using it. It seems to me that people are using this argument to put all the blame on corporations and big industry while ignoring that their own actions are the reason such entities exist in the first place.
You can tell every consumer to check every purchase they make, and put an enormous burden on them which will not happen. Or you can legislate companies and actually get it done.
That's the point of legislation: when the free market doesn't solve something, you add rules and enforce them. That's why food products must be edible and you wouldn't ask consumers to research and pick the right ones.
> Or you can legislate companies and actually get it done.
Politicians write legislation, and are elected by the people. If the people are unwilling to sacrifice any amount of their comfort then they won't elect politicians who will make them. And let's not kid ourselves, forcing industry to be more green will come at a cost to everyone: things will be more expensive, less readily available, and possibly of lower quality.
Even last mile delivery isn't that polluting... We're talking things like steel and concrete production, massive ocean container ships, coal plants, the extraction of every type of ressource, etc...
Again, the things you mention are putting the onus on the consumer and are relatively small.
Everything consumers and non-industrial businesses do accounts for only 13% of global emissions. The entire global agriculture system accounts for only 10% of emissions and of that, 80% occurs during the production stage.
By contrast, concrete alone is 8% of global emissions. Forestry is 10%. Steel production alone is 9% of all emissions. Simply producing these base products creates more emissions than absolutely everything consumers do. Energy production is 25% and of that, industrial producers use most of it.
> Even last mile delivery isn't that polluting... We're talking things like steel and concrete production
Right, but reducing consumption has knock-on effects across the board. Less need for ocean shipping when we demand fewer non-local goods, less need for concrete and steel when we build less stuff with it, etc.
> Everything consumers and non-industrial businesses do accounts for only 13% of global emissions.
Until you account for how many industries would exist if there were no consumers for their products. This whole argument stinks of trying to push the blame away from ourselves, just like the corporations are doing. We are all responsible for this, but we're all too self-centered to ever do anything about it because our comfort is much more important to us than the future of the world.
That steel and concrete builds new buildings, it doesn't get sent down to the dump to rot. This is a common refrain I hear against individual action, but those industrial emitters aren't doing it because they love how CO2 smells. They are producing consumer goods or in a supply chain to produce consumer goods.
Can industry exists without consumers? If you don't buy any cars then you have an impact. If you don't buy a new laptop/phone each year you have an impact on electronic industry. If you don't order online a 1$ gadget daily you have an effect.
Your individual effect is a rounding error. It's not even measured. Meanwhile, the fact that everyone else buys new laptops/phones/cars/gadgets makes it hard for everyone to individually forgo these things.
On the other side of the table, the choices made by the industrial players have immediate, large scale impact. A single board can decide to shut off some of the operations - stop making a gadget, stop making 100 different models of the same thing to try and segment the market, etc. - and, while they will have to convince dozens of other influential people to approve, if they succeed, the effect will be immediate and greater than a million consumers voluntarily changing their purchasing patterns.
> Your individual effect is a rounding error. It's not even measured. Meanwhile, the fact that everyone else buys new laptops/phones/cars/gadgets makes it hard for everyone to individually forgo these things.
No raindrop is responsible for the flood eh? This is why the problem will never be dealt with.
Indeed. Have you ever seen meteorologists appealing to raindrops? Have you ever seen a hydrologist counting water in fraction of CCs? A flood management system where individual droplets mattered?
No, a flood is a bulk event. It's managed like a system, using means with leverage over whole flows. Measurement starts with cubic meters. Nobody gives a damn about single raindrops, they're immaterial.
Same applies here. Focusing on regular individuals, and trying to get them to change their life style one by one, against the gradient of economic incentives controlling all of our lives, is like trying to pluck individual raindrops from rushing flood water. It's insane to even try. The answer is in redirecting the water stream; the droplets sort themselves out.
> This is why the problem will never be dealt with.
No, the problem will never be dealt with for as long as we focus on attempts to brow-beat everyone into self-sacrifice - to which people naturally react by ignoring the beating and resenting the beaters.
I am not demanding you to "self sacrifice" in the sense I don't think you should stay in the dark to use less electricity but more on turn off the lights you don't need.
Similar, don't buy shit you don't need, do a bit of effort to research if maybe you can "sacrifice" a bit of money to buy a greener product or that will be shipped from a closer location etc. The industry is burning fuel to give you the shit you want, for you whims , you can't just blame them.
> No, the problem will never be dealt with for as long as we focus on attempts to brow-beat everyone into self-sacrifice - to which people naturally react by ignoring the beating and resenting the beaters.
And if people are unwilling to make sacrifices, and people elect their government, then who will make the changes?
Correct, but now imagine you have a large number of individuals not only 1 .
Have you seen just this last week the Blizard/Activision responding to just individual action??? If just a random dude would have protested they would have done nothing, but when "influencers" and communities got involved shit happened, those bastards lost money and they had to do something.
Industrial is the largest energy consumer by sector, but doesn't pale in comparison to transportation, commercial and residential. If anything C19 has brought residential up to industrial levels.
That one for Sweden. In countries that neglected it in building codes, before buying green energy there's an "greenify your home" bit. Mostly heat insulation and removal of fossil fueled heating.
Also note that some of them are easy and you can simply do them today. Buying green energy might not be as good as ditching your car altogether, but it's a lot easier so you might as well start with the quick wins.
And the category of buying shiny new stuff is missing. It's a big part of consumer-influencable emissions, though it's admittedly even harder to make a significant impact on than ditching cars after you bought your essentials second-hand (where possible/reasonable of course). Pushing for products to be produced in a climate-neutral fashion (voting with your wallet) would definitely be something though.
Edit: wait, Sweden. How is space heating not on that list? Surely where the majority of the Swedes live is not too cold for heat pumps with perhaps a bit of aid from pure electrical heat creation for a few days per year, is it?
The highest bar in the chart says "have one fewer child". It actually exceeds any others by extremely large margin [0].
How is that even considered as the option? One child less means halving population after every generation. Eliminate the population and problem solved?
All of our economics relies on having new people. Pensioners, ie people who cannot produce anymore, are effectively upkept by the younger generations, in exchange for their savings.
We don’t know how to run economies without young people. Look at the demographic issues in Japan, and lesser extent now in China.
They appear to be suggesting exactly that, if you read the asterisk:
"Cumulative emissions from descendants, decreases substantially if national emissions decrease."
So doing all the other ones actually lowers that one.
And even then it only makes sense if no-one else has more kids to compensate, so it's a personal action that will cut your personal carbon, but like most things in this area not something that works unless we all do it (globally)
Why would we have to reduce the population below a number which is sustainable? Nobody is advocating that.
The actual number could be fine tuned through tax breaks. Give childless couples an X% tax break. Single child families a Y% tax break. 2 child families no tax break. 3 child families a tax penalty. 4 child families a larger penalty.
One child less means halving population after every generation.
Only if you assume the average is two children per couple and a replacement reproduction rate, which doesn't fit the reality I know. We have a huge population in the billions precisely because that's not what is going on.
If we drop to something below exponential growth rates, this is not a tragedy.
Massive population reduction (I don't think any serious person is suggesting elimination) would be the single most effective advancement we can make in reducing our environmental problems. It's definitely a tough sell for politicians, and environmentalists seem dismissive of it -- which makes me doubtful of their policy prescriptions. If population reduction isn't on the table of things to achieve, then the other arguments are lost on me. Nothing is sustainable when scaled up to an ever increasing population size.
One fewer doesn't mean 2 -> 1 necessarily, does it? There's no sustainable way to maintain a greater-than-replacement birth rate long term (excepting self-supporting space colonies or something).
> That's not actionable advice on a timescale that will affect co2 emissions any time soon. Are you suggesting we kill people to reduce the population?
Your second sentence is an overreach. The natural death rate in the United States is about 0.9% of the population. [1]
Okay, so how many years would it take to halve the world population through natural death rate, and how do you stop all people on earth from having children without a world war?
> Okay, so how many years would it take to halve the world population through natural death rate
If the natural death rate is 0.9%, the population would decline by about 9% each decade.
The drop doesn’t have to go to 50% - just down to whatever the sustainable limit is.
> how do you stop all people on earth from having children without a world war?
I’m not sure that even a world war would achieve that. And again, it’s not necessary or desirable to go to that extreme. If the goal is sustainability, we just need to rightsize the population for sustainability. The actual population depends on the prevailing per capita emissions from whatever energy technologies we are using at any given time. The more carbon neutral the technology, the higher the population can be sustained, at least with respect to greenhouse gases.
To reduce the birth rate, rather than force everyone to stop, we could just reward those who are willing with tax breaks. X% tax break for zero children. Y% tax break for 1 child. 0% tax break for 2 children. And extra taxes for >2 children.
No, even not having children has lower impact than not doing these things. Especially that environmental costs of them ramp up slowly.
Humans tend to be on their own barring social pressures carbon neutral. The biggest expenses being food and water, if these aforementioned practices are applied. It gets even better if these young can work to reduce the impact of the warming.
We'll need a lot of manpower to pull off the necessary changes. Just due to the scale of it. Well educated people too. We're on at least one to two generations of lag in education related to physics, chemistry, agriculture, material science, civil engineering, process engineering, general ecology, social engineering...
And the old will start to wear down and think in old patterns.
Additionally further down the list is "live together in higher density" and "buy locally made things" bits.
I have a hard time believing that "humans tend to be on their own barring social pressures carbon neutral." Can you find some of these carbon neutral humans in first-world countries to show me, as an example? Or when you say "barring social pressures", do you just mean "if you don't count this whole society thing"?
And what’s your solution to this? And has any study said explicitly the number of humans is the main problem? Or their actions and consumption that’s the problem?
Sometimes it has its place. Can you imagine a public speaker making errors like this? I think it detracts from the message. Public, and especially popularly read stuff should be as correct as humanely possible. Good grammar is a habit, improved by repeat exposure.
Some would disagree with this on the moral point that its basically a call for genocide, whether that is intentional or not is hard to tell.
I'd disagree on the facts though. There's already such a wild difference in carbon intensity between two humans, that it would be ridiculous to suggest that the first step would be to remove humans rather than the activities that make that difference (and are sometimes wasteful, inefficient or counterproductive)
How does this differ if the majority of your electricity is zero carbon?
Coal electricity is 60% of emissions. Aviation is less than 5%. How is skipping a flight that highly ranked of you are burning a ton of carbon just being at home (if you have coal fired power).
Because that 60% from coal is more or less shared across everyone, but flights are, on the global scale, a luxury item. In many cases, taking a transatlantic flight emits more CO2 equivalent than your average person commuting for a year.
So even though aviation is a small part of it all, it is one of the individual actions able to have outsized impact, usually for leisure or at least often for non-essential reasons.
I live in Southwestern Ohio and get probably 75% of my power from coal. My pot of coffee emits far more CO2 than someone in Portland, who gets 0% from coal and most of their power from hydro. It's the same pot of coffee. Our cost of energy is similar and our standard of living is similar.
Where you get your power greatly affects how much CO2 you emit doing the exact same things. All energy is not created equal.
There are two huge barriers to doing anything about this problem. The first is denialists and those with vested interests in fossil fuels promoting denialism. The second is well-intentioned people who understand that there is a problem over-complicating the issue, promoting misunderstandings, or promoting the idea that this can't be solved without massive decreases in standard of living.
The latter, which I term "abstinence based environmentalism" by analogy with abstinence-based sex ed, will work about as well as politely telling teenagers not to have sex. If you tell people they need to become poorer to save the planet, they'll ignore you... especially if they are already poorer than you in which case you look like a hypocrite.
This problem is actually pretty simple. The following steps won't solve it 100% but they'll go pretty far.
(1) Phase out coal for electricity generation in favor of... almost anything else except maybe oil shale.
(2) Push electric vehicles, not because all EVs categorically emit less carbon than gasoline cars but because it's a hell of a lot easier to replace a few point source power plants than it is to replace a vast fleet of millions of internal combustion engines. (That and your typical EV is indeed better... even if your electricity is 100% coal an EV is generally no worse than an ICE car due to the superior efficiency of large power plants and the high embodied energy of gasoline.)
(3) Continue to subsidize renewable energy and grid-scale storage.
(4) At least stop shutting down perfectly good nuclear power plants before renewables are in place to replace them, and at best put some serious funding behind next-generation nuclear efforts. Fusion is also grossly under-funded. Ignore the "it'll always be N years away" idiots. There has been substantial progress even with very limited funding available.
There is no point in quibbling about small contributors like aviation (<5%) while we are still burning shitloads of coal and coal is far easier to replace than jet fuel. You don't solve a problem like this by making the solution maximally inconvenient.
I'm aware of this. I'm living in a place where power is over 99% renewable and makes use of no gas for utilities, work from home and drive fewer than 5,000km/y as a household, and eat a low-meat diet.
The biggest gains to be had are obviously systemic, and what I do as a consumer is far more limited in its scope and impact. I still limit my flights, no longer attend in-person conferences, try to travel more local, because what else am I going to do? I'm aware this is like putting out a cigarette when the whole town's already on fire, but I can't deal with the dissonance otherwise. It's still an individual luxury that can have an oversized impact compared to everything else I do.
Advocating for it is not going to be sufficient at all, but it's still the most impact I can have when all the big stakeholders who have to fix their powergrid are not even in countries I live in.
The unit of capital allocation in airlines is one plane, and cancelling a flight or adding a new one probably requires some advance notice to airports and other agencies not to mention time for maintenance, flight crews, etc. to ready it or take it out of operation. Then there's pilots' unions etc.
So no, your decision does not immediately affect the number of planes flying, but if many people fly less the net effect will be fewer planes in the air after some time delay.
The inability of the US to pass a carbon tax will be one of humanities great tragedies. That they are the theoretical champions of the free market is just piling cruel irony on top of that.
This is infuriating for me as an Eastern European… they keep piling taxes and adding expenses. Soon steel and no more ICE cars.
Who do you think absorbs the 50€ / ton and rising shock better, a German making 4000€ / month or an East European making 300€ / month?
We either go at this together, in a thought out way, or we don’t go at all. The EU distrusts nuclear energy; we’ve been advised against nuclear energy projects. The EU dislikes coal; we’ve been advised against coal. So what can we do? We can’t build nuclear, we can’t work with coal. What do our workers do? Do we just continue to be meat for the betterment of the west?
I can’t even imagine the difference between the American standard of living and someone in Africa barely hanging on by a thread.
I don’t have a point, I’m sick and tired of being late to the western party (industry? services? startups?) and then we can’t even catch up because the persons in the high castle know better… and now, after burning the world for tens of years, the west is still the saving grace swooping down and imposing global restrictions in order to further protect their lifestyles. Sickening…
I can understand your frustration, but I still don't think you understand how this CO2 tax scheme works.
The money raised from the CO2 tax does not leave your country, but is gathered in a climate fund, that the EU member country generally uses to grant subsidies for energy efficiency and renewable transition. So, more tax should mean more grants for renewables, but that depends how your country sets up the conditions to grant the subsidies.
The biggest emmiters also generally get a certain amount of CO2 emission coupons for free. If they go over their allotment, then they need to buy coupons on market, which is where the money can leave your country.
That the EU dislikes nuclear is IMHO a poor decision. Generating electricity from nuclear fission is one of energy miracles. No fuel gets such energy density.
I don't understand your argument, can a western salary better absorb these taxes? Sure but how does imposing CO2 tax "protect their lifestyles"? The tax is based on how much CO2 you produce so rich people who consume more also end up paying more.
Furthermore the tax aligns incentives to actually decrease CO2 production by finding greener alternatives.
Last but not least pointing fingers at each other for past transgressions does very little to actually help the do or die situation that climate change is rapidly turning into.
> I don't understand your argument, can a western salary better absorb these taxes?
Yes. And their lifestyle should absorb more of these taxes then just part of the money they produce at present time. We have dozens of nations each with their contribution scheme, it’s not so easy to measure opportunity and lifestyle. My Danish friend pays 60% of his salary in taxes and enjoys a great life, like most of his conationals. In other EU countries, taxes are more lax and personal wealth is maybe higher but the infrastructure holding it together less consuming…
> Sure but how does imposing CO2 tax "protect their lifestyles"? The tax is based on how much CO2 you produce so rich people who consume more also end up paying more.
EVERYONE needs a home. When the EU increases tarrifs on coal and steel without encouraging local production, they are in fact reducing the housing availability for low income people… such as in Eastern Europe. Economically forcing some of us to move westward so we can produce more money so we can afford certain lifestyle options thus building the great pyramid of western economies.
> Furthermore the tax aligns incentives to actually decrease CO2 production by finding greener alternatives.
We have insanely lucrative European Projects that could be used to encourage this. We don’t need taxes to innovate, we need oportunities… which are not as evenly spread out as one might expect.
> Last but not least pointing fingers at each other for past transgressions does very little to actually help the do or die situation that climate change is rapidly turning into.
Neither is imposing taxes on my great grandma that has the CO2 imprint less than my cat. And I wholeheartedly disagree that pointing fingers does not help. Are we supposed to just forget that countries have built their whole wealth on exploiting others and now SHOULD work harder and reduce their lifestyle in order to compensate for the hundreds of years of global resource extraction? A new clean pass? It’s exactly what I find horrendous about this approach.
re your last paragraph, if you expect to have happy grandchildren, you should really start focusing on the future, not on the past. i'm from an eastern eu country, too, and frankly it's disgusting how deep in the past some people live here. it blinds them to future challenges.
I am focused on my future, and the future of my family and of my children, and making sure they will have enough to handle what I believe the future to look like.
At the current rate of brain drain, and innovation investment, my children will either find it very hard to build here, but realistically, as 3 / 4 people I’ve met in my life, they will have to move to the west and start a new life there.
I’m not sure why I come of as past oriented, I don’t think I’m that kind of person, but I’ve certainly passed a point in life where I can’t look through rose-tinted goggles anymore.
You do have a point, all these middle class western fuckers unironically calling for more taxes on basics like food and electricity are completely out of touch. Not to mention the upper class, who don't give a flying fuck.
The poor in their own countries struggle, it will come to a point where they've had enough. We can already see it with electing more and more authoritarian leadership that doesn't care about "woke" stuff.
They will rely on the police for protection, but there's only so many pigs around.
> You do have a point, all these middle class western fuckers unironically calling for more taxes on basics like food and electricity are completely out of touch. Not to mention the upper class, who don't give a flying fuck.
So, to be clear, what are said western fuckers supposed to do? Go "oh well, guess we're too detached from reality, may as well give up" and 100 years from now humanity has been driven to near-extinction by climate change?
Although one should mention that raising that CO2 tax in EU seems to always be an uphill battle against lobbyism and corruption in the EU as well and according to many the CO2 tax is laughably low still. We have a long way to go before we can pat ourselves on the shoulder for a working CO2 tax.
Road tax (levied on road-worthy vehicles) in the UK, and I'm sure elsewhere, has been tiered by emissions for decades. London also has had the congestion charge and now ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ) for driving through with inefficient (and now with almost anything) per day.
I know that's not quite what you meant, but I think it's probably more feasible to have multiple specific things like that than an overall tax somehow?
Even for companies, forcing them to account for their carbon footprint, auditing it, etc. just seems like it'd be more 'busywork' and open to loopholes to me than 'just' taxing specific purchases or activities.
There was in Australia for a short time. The topic has become poisoned though and it will be very hard to bring back with newscorp still running things.
It is, for example in Switzerland, but it's a bad joke in many ways, the most important for me is:
If you have make a carbon emission high product, you rather change the production country (to a less controlled country, where you even can trow your waste water into a river) then to research the next 20 years on new technology.
And the income from the tax goes to insurance company's and Rent rather then to green projects..it's just another tax without any meaning:
Reading the linked document, why do you think it goes to insurance and rent?
AFAICT, 1/3 is used for renovations and renewables. 2/3 is redistributed to residents and companies. Residents get their share via health insurance companies, though that shouldn't make a difference.
"in proportion to the settled AHV payroll of their employees"
I'm not sure how you equate AHV with rent, as it seems to be a social security / retirement system, and furthermore I'm under the impression that it's only used for the payroll data, with the money going to employers.
As for making huge amounts of money while holding money (around 87CHF * 8M for <1 year?) - is it really that huge and aren't they already holding orders of magnitude more money?
What’s with the hyperbole when this topic is discussed every time? It doesn’t add weight to your argument after a certain point. With the US being no where near China and India in CO2 production I think it’ll be fine. You can sleep safe and sound at night.
The per capita argument makes sense from a human perspective, even for any culture globally, as it is an appeal to fairness and equality.
However, the natural phenomena governing the planet's weather does not care about anything other than absolute CO2.
Fair or not, absolute CO2 is the number that matters for the planet.
We can come up with a mitigation or fairness mechanism, but in the end the planet works just like a virus or a script, it's a complex mechanism that you cannot negotiate or reason with.
The planet also doesn’t care about political borders; it doesn’t make sense to say “this arbitrary geographic area has more CO2 than this arbitrary area, so therefore the latter area is ‘fine’”.
This seems so obvious I can’t understand why people continue to compare country emissions. Break China into two countries and suddenly they are no longer at the top. Or look at the US by individual states instead and each state is way down the list, so no problem.
> We can come up with a mitigation or fairness mechanism, but in the end the planet works just like a virus or a script, it's a complex mechanism that you cannot negotiate or reason with.
From the perspective of humanity, particularly on this topic, the planet (and reality itself) runs on the human mind (a collection of them), and the human mind to some currently small degree, can be negotiated and reasoned with.
It's a start though. It makes the CO2 use visible and transparent. I reckon so many people would care a lot about carbon in electricity if their itemised power bill included a fat slice of 'carbon'. Suddenly there would be pressure to decarbonise etc. Large companies could optimise their (significant at scale) bill for carbon use. Do the PCs really have to run 24/7 for example?
It's the old 'you cannot improve what you cannot measure'.
I think the GP was that many things happen outside the normal consumer flow and the choices of impeach individual have a minimum direct impact.
Also, I’m not sure just forwarding the CO2 tax to the consumer is the best way to go, it still puts to responsibilities with the consumers instead of everyone.
Passing the CO2 tax to the consumer is exactly the solution.
In the UK we had a sugar tax. Soft drinks were taxed by the amount of sugar inside. Practically overnight it became impossible to buy drinks containing more sugar than the tax minimum limit. It wasn't illegal to sell them, but no corporation would waste money on a silly thing like taste.
The point is that the profit motive that has got us into this mess, can get us out of it too. Price in the externalities.
> Practically overnight it became impossible to buy drinks containing more sugar than the tax minimum limit. It wasn't illegal to sell them, but no corporation would waste money on a silly thing like taste.
Oh yes. Poland introduced a sugar tax recently, and I've never seen so many low-sugar offerings in the shops in my life. Marketing people of course got to work spinning this; a well-known brand of fruity beverages that advertises to children suddenly started highlighting how their products are healthy for children because they're sugar free. That's despite the fact that until few months earlier, they were the symbol of sugar-full beverages for children.
This is to say, profit motive is reality and sanity-bending, it should definitely be put to use through carbon taxation.
Yes, there it worked because there is a good alternative, healthier and same price, readily available.
There are many products on which society depend where the alternatives will have a similar CO2 footprint. Taxing these products will only serve to increase the base price.
Edit: I suppose what I mean to say is that adding a co2 tax shouldn’t become an issue for the lower incomes by raising prices while more well off persons can circumvent it somehow, further increasing the gap between poor and rich.
Small changes to personal consumption are not the best way to contribute to fighting climate change. A significantly more effective actionstep would be to donate a small portion of your income to highly effective climate charities [1].
I'm not against changing personal consumption - for example, I went vegan. But this is not where the majority of my impact on the world lies, as even a small donation vastly outweighs the effect that my veganism has.
Not sure what solutions that group is supposed to be espoucing but they're mostly just a political lobbying group.
Frankly until the shouting and arguing stops and someone who can make a difference comes to the table I'm out.
There is was too much posturing which makes no difference and is bad on both sides from plastic signs complaining about pollution to politicians who travel from ecological disaster to ecological disaster via private jet, and that's even before you realise just how in the pocket mainstream politicians of both sides are to the current status quo.
Of course they are a political lobbying group! No shame in that, if they weren't they would be stupid.
Shouting and arguing is how human beings deliberate since the beginning of our species - and it's how plenty of things have gotten done historically.
Waiting until your age of enlightened and reasoned debate around climate issues comes ensures that you never have to take action at all, which, I suspect, might be your point.
Action is worth a thousand words. Take it and sensible men will follow. Be the change you want to see in the world not the people arguing about it.
Take public transport. Repair rather than discard. Take up a new skill and improve a thing rather than buying a new one.
Reduce you own energy footprint (frankly given how at turns into more money in your pocket this should be common sense not a talking point among midwits).
I'm not talking about going off the grid and living off turnips. Make 90% changes and then share these with others to enable and empower them to do the same.
> Shouting and arguing is how human beings deliberate since the beginning of our species - and it's how plenty of things have gotten done historically.
What if humanity has run into a problem where that is not enough to solve the problem? What if the true (but unknowable) state of affairs is that our traditional ways of communicating, even at their best, are not enough?
What if it's even worse, what if our traditional ways of collective decision making are also not enough? Or even more worse, what if the very way we traditionally think must be improved adequately in order to adequately address this problem?
As a thought experiment, imagine that these premises are literally true...what shall we do? What are some plausibly adequate responses to this set of problems?
350.org have done a bunch of stuff — as for plastic signs complaining about pollution. Yes that's annoying, (it annoys me that 350.org's website is incredibly bad for environment https://www.websitecarbon.com/website/350-org/)
If you want to make a difference, do something local. That's where the biggest shifts are happening — and you're unlikely to encounter any real arguments. People tend to only have those arguments when they have an audience, e.g. Twitter, TV
Reuse, repurpose and repair everything that just requires some effort or to learn a new skill.
Buy less plastics and vote with your wallet.
Use public transport (big one here which America seems reluctant to adopt)
Focus your effort on 90% changes that make the 90% impact for the 10% time, rather than wasting time searching for the 10% that costs the 90% of time and effort.
Be the change you want to see. Back groups who aren't being controversial and getting famous for shouting at idiots and back the companies developing new useful tech to turn a profit based on the above.
Nothing changes people's minds better than clear action and benefit. It's louder and better than hundreds of hours of arguing.
So. Yes. My principles are intact. My money and foot are behind them.
And yes, with popularists in charge who will avoid talking about China except to cover their own failings yes, we're all doomed.
Just look for me, I'll be one of the last ones with the light still on making soup in the end.
I think we all have a fairly good idea of some things that would help, it's the scale we struggle to comprehend. But even if you could find out the magic threshold for what it would take, if there's anything that lockdown and covid restrictions in the UK have taught me in the past 18 months, it's that we all need to follow the rules or it's pointless.
It's so disheartening to see others not pay these taxes, to not restructure and restrict their lifestyles.
It seems that unless things change globally, why are we even considering making changes? 1000 people in Quatar generate over seven times as much CO2 as 1000 people in the UK. Luxembourg, the US, Canada, Australia (and more) all generate three times as much CO2 as the UK per 1000 residents. The US has no carbon taxes. They've long been able to buy fuel and fly domestically for ridiculously low prices. Yeah, I'm having a whinge, but this is my point. If we're not all in this together, what's the point?
> If we're not all in this together, what's the point?
The point is that while we are squabbling over the most fair division of the burden, we are screwing future generations.
Qatar has 0.03% of the worlds population. We can't let climate renegade states preclude us from taking action, and we can't sit around until we have a world government.
Yes, they're a bad absolute example but there are others in that list that are still many times more destructive, yet are physically and culturally close to the UK. If we're ever going to sell the idea of investing in the future by sacrificing what we do, we need our neighbours to, too.
Another reply talks about sanctions and I think I broadly agree that tariffs and levies could be applied but I'm not sure how this amounts to much more than "normal" protectionism. It makes everything more expensive locally, and local sacrifice increases.
To ignore public buy-in will only breed another generation of malcontents. I don't want an "ecological Brexit" where half the populations gets swayed into giving up... Sorry. "Taking back control" [from an unelected environment].
I'm not sure how that would work. One country's power to enforce anything like that would —I think— just look like trade tariffs. This can be effective, but they sometimes just make things more expensive (and in doing so, seem like yet another sacrifice).
But maybe there are enough countries to form a pact, with enough alternative producers available to make this effective.
Make things more expensive for both sides and meanwhile incentivize producers to switch to more carbon neutral methods.
Yes, it requires sacrifice, but it would also require sacrifice if the other unilaterally switched to more carbon neutral production methods without a tariff.
The attempt to force people into limiting their lives for CO2 concerns falls into environmental authoritarianism. That’s why. Lots of people see it that way and when you mix hyperbolic environmentalist doomsday predictions that never actually happen people stop taking this seriously.
Additionally, the US is built on the foundation of personal freedom and autonomy. We would be the last country where people would willingly restructure and restrict their lives for someone’s agenda.
> We would be the last country where people would willingly restructure and restrict their lives for someone’s agenda.
You've have thought stopping the country from burning, sinking under the sea and being ruined by drought might be higher on the US populations agenda but perhaps they all want to go the way of the dinosaurs…
What's the name for the epistemic dark arts practice of attaching an ominous-sounding label to an argument, so it can be dismissed without consideration?
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is to be wary of problems slipped under the rug. The climate change issue is backed by hard evidence, and the eventual result of the current situation if unchanged is dire.
If we wait to act until the eventual result is in our face, then we are no different than animals that try to outrun a flood, if so then what is the purpose being self aware? Freedom eh?
The impacts will be extreme, and it is not alarmism to say so.
The issue is that the impacts (lots of death) will be for generations down the line and will not really affect us today at all.
Personal choice effectively means screwing the future generations, because most people don't actually care about them. But those future generations are never given any choice at all.
This sort of commenter is what I'm afraid just forcing people into change will create. People so disillusioned with what we can do if we all do it that they're afraid to even try. Too afraid to even attach their name to it.
Climate deniers aren't new, but I suspect once people start experiencing what carbon tariffs actually mean, there will be a surge.
People like this are lost. I'm sure there's a way back, but seeing the recent damage of Brexit, Trump, QAnon, seeing how far people can disassociate from simple logic, it's probably a better use of resource to stop more people following them than try to convert them back.
> Additionally, the US is built on the foundation of personal freedom and autonomy.
What a… onesided view of the world. Do you think other countries are built on the foundation of being under the boot and up for restructuring themselves for someone’s agenda?
Should we stop calling out Saudi Arabia and China because they are built in a certain way? Are we Europeans not allowed to say no to a tax, because we were built on serfdoms?
The easiest way to approach this is to "stop burning stuff". Is a material being burned? Then it almost certainly emits CO2. Do you call it fuel? Stop using it or use it as little as possible.
Most personal energy use is for heating living spaces and transportation. EVs are great for transportation, e-bikes are even better. Heat pumps are great for heating and cooling living spaces. Using these one can drastically reduce direct personal CO2 emissions. Sure, you're then buying electricity and part of electricity is produced by burning stuff. If possible, you should then get solar panels, to at least offset the amount of electricity used.
With regard to purchasing one should regard objects that have been over temperature of boiling water as things that took a significat amount of energy to be created: food is cooked, metals and glass are melted, and so on. Is there a way to reuse them, or at least recycle?
With meat the important thing is to know the turnaround time, eg. how much time does it take for an animal to reach adult size. Bigger animals tend to have longer lives. More lifetime means more food, water, energy.
Beef has really long turnaround time, pork is not much better, poultry is quite good, insects are really hard to beat. Eggs are also a great source of protein. Having your own chicken coop is not a bad idea, if you have the space for it.
Cement is problematic because the CO2 comes from the process even if you use non-CO2 emitting fuels for heating up the raw materials, which eventually become cement. Alternative to cement is to use wood for construction, which I think is quite popular in the US.
> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production
To a first approximation, every time you pull out your wallet, you're emitting carbon. The bigger the $ sign, the more carbon you're emitting.
New car > used car
New furniture > used furniture
High energy bill > low energy bill
High grocery bill > low grocery bill
Big house > small house
Long commute > short commute
Expensive vacation > cheap vacation
After you've gotten past the big stuff, there are nuances. Burning your trash is cheaper than paying for trash removal but obviously worse for the environment (better yet; generate less trash). A diet of Twinkies is cheaper than a diet of leafy greens but it'll cost you on healthcare in the long run, so likely worse carbon emissions.
Try to run your household budget as lean as you can, and vote for politicians who support collective action against climate change. I think that's as much as any individual can do.
Do what we do in Vic, Australia: Add usage tax for EVs, with only a narrow timed limited vehicle discount for standard range EVs. And not a single ICEV co² tax in sight.
I think others have mentioned CCL already, but if you live in the USA want a specific, concrete, easy action you can take RIGHT NOW to move us toward a carbon tax & dividend, check this out:
Right now we have the best chance in a long time to actually get a carbon tax passed, but it depends on lots of us calling and writing our senators to make sure they know we want one! If you support this, please do it as soon as you have a chance.
And I very much agree -- even for people who are willing to take individual action, without including environmental impact into the price of things, it's very hard to figure out where you can best make a difference.
There will be companies exempt, banks making "carbon tax loans", the rich will be paying it easily, while the poor, and small companies, as always, will have to make the most concessions.
Why give even more money to the people that lead the world here
But in general if you create regulation for companies to produce less trash, explore all natural resources responsibly. Invest all public money and outsource contracts to the most environmentally friendly companies...
You don't need to punish the market
If you just keep the current public investment in environmental R&D and eventually you'll have the better product, and who invested will be rich... just standard stuff really
Also people in general were always in favour of clean and green. The only issue has been and will be corporate greed
A Corporate carbon tax would be interesting if all profits went local first. And people decided where it should go
> But in general if you create regulation for companies to produce less trash, explore all natural resources responsibly. Invest all public money and outsource contracts to the most environmentally friendly companies...
hmm yea, that make sense, but i guess lobbying makes that difficult...
my pipe dream is, companies to be taxed base on all the pollution they generate in general (everything from how much excess plastic, cardboard they use in boxing/packaging to the sources of electricity they use (renewable or coal etc) to how much chemical waste they may make... no pollution, no tax!
(yes i know its unfeasible, but its a nice pipe dream)
I think the reality is that even parties who take the issue seriously know the solutions are difficult. Making difficult decisions is a great way to get voted out in the next term.
An example from the US:
During discussions for the recent bipartisan infrastructure deals, Republicans wanted to raise the gas tax to help pay for the bill. Progressives felt it would affect the middle class too much so they pushed it out.
I think France saw something similar with the "Yellow Vest" movement. I'm definitely not knowledgeable about French politics, but I think a lot of that protest was around an increase in gas tax.
In the US, any party that takes the issue seriously does not get elected in an meaningful capacity. Maybe a city representative, even state representative here and there, but that's about it.
This helps, but there's a time lag, and the person you voted for does not know why you voted for them over the other party. Letting your congressperson know that you care about it by calling them or writing them directly is much, much more effective at getting policies you care about implemented. You should vote (in every election!) because they know who votes and who doesn't, and want to make voters happy -- but you also need to know that this is an issue of interest to you.
The rebate-for-poor-people thing is really the main issue. the West is already on its way towards reducing CO2 emissions and it's accelerating with new technologies, without austerity forcing the hand. Meanwhile the developing world (the poor people) are growing CO2 dramatically. It's irrelevant where CO2 comes from. That's why this is so damn hard.
In France and in Europe we have online emissions calculator. If you happen to live in France, you can make the simulation on the « Mes Gestes Climat » website.
I don’t know if it exists in USA (since those things are highly country-dependent) but I suppose it may exists. Those are interesting tools to get actionable feedback.
The most impactful thing you can do as an individual is devote yourself to improving clean energy resources and carbon sequestration technologies.
If you're here there's a good chance you have the ability to help engineer these techs. That's going have way, way more impact than riding your bicycle.
Not sure if I’ll get voted down as a conspiracy theorist, but some kind of mobile app “passport” or “digital ID” would be a great way of tracking your carbon budget. Especially with a bit of big tech surveillance supporting the whole programme.
I wonder how they could get something like that adopted quickly?
The dividend from the taxes should be evenly distributed to everyone. This would compensate people who have good environmental lifestyle and allow local business that produce low carbon (due low distribution) to be more competitive
Heat is necessary, AC is not necessary (I realize this is not entirely true, but I think it's fair to say a lot more people would die without heat than without AC).
Living in inhospitable environments is a choice, not a necessity, that is causing environmental degradation. Let’s say an ideal human environment temp is around 60-80 degrees. In 110° weather, you just need to move 30°. In freezing weather you’ve gotta move 48°. That’s 50% more delta.
I think trying to fit the populations of North America, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Korea, the Stans, Mongolia, the Baltics, New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina, not to mention alpine countries like Nepal, into the ideal human habitability zone would go poorly.
> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc).
We don't even need a carbon tax per se; we just need consumption based tax system (as the US had until 1913), instead of a productivity based tax system.
Agree, though the ability to add a tax to goods/services for carbon seems unlikely in the US. I suspect people might be more agreeable if they knew there was a direct relationship between carbon tax and carbon abatement-and couldn't be squandered on something else (like cutting taxes for wealthy/multi-national corps). i.e. $1 of tax means $1 toward sequestration, or something like that.
It's not hard to know what actions impact CO2 production. Like nosianu else said, just stop taking carbon fuel out of the ground. Anything above ground is part of the carbon cycle and is fair game - manure, trees (to a point), etc.
But I think what's hard about this is not understanding what causes CO2 production, but understanding what it means to stop burning buried carbon fuel. It means no more computer, cel phone, cars, no flying, no 2-day shipping for [ANY PRODUCT!], no container ships and planes shipping food and products all over the world. It might mean abandoning air-conditioning and having to hand-wash your clothes. It means abandoning modern comforts (not necessities). It means abandoning a hyper-consoomer lifestyle and becoming more localist, which most of us simply cannot fathom doing.
Actions everyday people can take are a drop in the bucket. The answer is in stopping major polluting corporations. And it's also the one thing America will never do, because that's who has the money.
Only people are final consumers in every production chain, not corporations. (Even if indirectly, say, by driving on a freshly built highway.) So people’s everyday decisions could have a major impact, if collective. Often it’s very hard to understand how CO2 emissions flow along the production chains though.
I don't think conscious customers can steer the economy quickly enough. If we stop emitting any greenhouse gases today, global warming will still accelerate for more than a decade. (And I don't believe very much in boycotts anyway - when a customer decides to switch to a different product, marginal price changes are likely to cause another customer to switch the other way, simply speaking.)
I think at this point we need an international coalition that slams the breaks and sets a strict deadline for ceasing CO2 emission. If there are not severe shortages, it means we are not strict enough and can go faster. And then let the market work. If a steak costs $100 or you have to wait 3 years for a car, that's sucks, but so be it.
If you have children, then that is probably the most impactful. They will need/want the same living standards as other people. They get the full package of other impactful things you mention plus some more like house building. For example a young family does no longer live in the same small 2 person flat, but instead builds a house (or lets build). Especially in first world countries and developing to first world countries, where everyone wants to have the high living standard, having children will be the most impactful action.
Perhaps there should be a high CO2 tax on having children, which one needs to continue to pay, while the children live?
If we are going down that line of commentary-- Large families with lots of children are usually more efficient than small single or two child families, since large families tend to spend less per person and the children learn to make do and be resourceful. Resources are pooled, everything is used, hand-me-downs are used multiple times. Reducing, reusing and recycling are parts of daily life out of necessity. More activities and entertainment are undertaken in the house and less vacations/travel are used. Things like boardgames are more feasible on a daily basis, etc. Home production is also more economical.
The wealthy people with one child lavished with entertainment, travel, and resource expenditure learn to be wasteful and buy every new fashion and gadget.
Of course, I believe we should generally leave people alone and let them go about their business instead of imposing arbitrary government requirements; but if we go down that road, then the poorer families with lots of children should just get a free pass since they are more efficient by nature.
Good point, I guess. But what is the consequence of it? Do we allow only some families to have more children, while others are not allowed to have any, to get this effect of more efficiency of resource usage? How do we get there in a fair way?
I think the point is that we don’t specify how many children people can have at all. In addition to being ethically dubious, it has a high chance of backfiring as it had in China, and likely will be ineffective, as most population growth is currently relatively localized to a few areas of the world like the Middle East and Africa. Places like the US or Europe or East Asia have already largely stabilized population wise. What remains to be done is making the emissions per person sustainable, which isn’t true especially in the West. This in turn will make the technologies required for reducing emissions cheaper and more widespread for those countries that are still growing to utilize before their emissions per capital grows to that of current rich nations. Population control is a non-starter.
Just wanted to be clear that I think everyone should have the number of children they want to have. I don't think the government should interfere in that decision and it should be up to the couple whether they have lots of children, one or two, or none. Just wanted to point out an interesting point about efficiency of some families as a response to the parent. And I'm not even definitively saying that I'm right, but it is a perspective.
I think even families with only a few children _can_ be more efficient, but it is not the natural thing to do, and people with fewer children often do so because they prioritize higher resource consumption from a perception of quality of life or other factors.
I guess the main point is that these things aren't clear cut, there are reasons for both depending on a person's perception of life and pursuit of happiness. That's the tricky thing, even when we believe a problem is simple from out perspective, it usually isn't.
> If you follow your logic to the extreme, the most beneficial actions would be things like euthanasia or just plain suicide.
Absolutely. Any logic followed to the extreme will yield extreme results. It could, however, be argued without much difficulty that people that exist have more rights than people that never will exist, so expecting someone to commit suicide (an extremely angst filled action that is also likely to cause an incredible amount of suffering within the person's close social circles) is not really at all comparable to asking them to not procreate - something that may not happen anyway for a number of reasons, and which does not inflict any particular amount of extra suffering.
It could also be argued that we don't really need to be eight billion, so some/most of us not procreating does not imply that there will be no future generations.
And, it could also be argued that all other life forms on earth are not worthless, and their well being alone - sans humans - could be worth preserving a reasonable climate for.
Did I say it didn't? Advising against something is not the same thing as forbidding it.
In either case, this "right" doesn't change the fact that the most significant (non) action you can do to lessen environmental impact is to refrain from procreating. No matter how much you argue that this is everybody's "right" (which is ethically questionable other reasons anyway), assuming that your children won't miraculously have a significantly smaller environmental footprint than you do, it is the single action you are likely to perform that will have the largest impact.
Of course, you can say "screw the environment, I want kids". I didn't say you can't. I do suggest, though, that producing more people until we've figured out how to lessen the environmental footprint of each one is incompatible with caring significantly about the environment (including climate). You can lie to yourself and say "but I do other things...", but in the end, those other things will not add up to a fraction of the impact a single (let alone multiple) child has.
Then don't follow "to the extrem"? Why do you think that it has to be taken to an extreme?
There are many ways in between reproducing ever more humans and not reproducing at all. For example if people really want to have children, they can adopt children instead of making even more ones. There are sooo many children in the world, who do not have a bright future, whom one could adopt. If one really loves children for the reason of seeing them grow up, develop, learn, become good human beings, then adopting one should not be a big problem compared to making one.
Then there could be a rule similar to the following: First child is OK to make, second child needs to be adopted. If the second child is not adopted, but instead made, then there are financial penalties for that.
In any case, how do you propose to get back to perhaps half of current population?
We're living through a strange time but please do not be defeatist and try not to let alarmist (it's trying to push certain actors into action quite rightly) make you feel that like that should ever be appealing.
I remember in the UK when a think tank asked do you need a family pet like a dog which lives 10+years which is almost exclusively a carnivore and needs specialist things bought for it.
Turns out over a lifetime that's worse than a 2nd family car for the environment (who's have thought)...
The group was attacked for being heartless. Not to mention that they did mention family size and population growth in the same report without suggesting that be tackled. (They tries to be taken as not a doomsayer)
Then again British policy over the last 2 years has been based on a promise from a liar that 20M+ people will die in Britain alone. So if someone goes to the British govt promising the climate will kill 40M+ over all time maybe they'll listen...
I guess the GP's suggestion is to let people think twice before getting any? Children are expensive without this tax but most people don't think 1 second about that because it is somehow a right to have them so the state will provide (and in many countries here, indeed they will). If you can clearly see that you and your better half will never be able to support them until they are 18 (which goes for many people already, without any ridiculous taxation), you might think twice about having any at all?
It was supposed to make it obvious that your tax proposal is absurd. If you don't plan to make murdering children legal, then what you are de facto proposing is making some people slaves. From X children forward, poor people become slaves, having to do forced labor just to pay the "child tax" that they can no longer avoid.
If you think that there are circumstances that justify slavery (they should've thought about it before having that many children!! It's a reasonable punishment for their deeds!) then, sure, I guess.
That is quite a far fetch you are making there, from implementing a financial penalty for not taking responsibility for ones actions (getting more than one child) to "slavery". I think you are mispainting or misinterpreting the picture in an extreme way. No one is suggesting slavery here. That's a strawman,
And yes, people should think before putting a child into this world. I don't know how that is even debatable.
I agree on "people should think before putting a child into this world". Will you agree also on the following:
* Despite the should, some people will not think before doing X. So the punishment you propose will not just be an abstract thing that convinces people to "not do X", it will be something you actively inflict on people (otherwise it's completely meaningless, if not enforced).
So let's go back to the tax. Statistically speaking, who are the people who have lots of kids? Those who are rich (and might be deterred by an additional tax) or those who are poor and can barely feed said kids? Now, if you enforce an additional "kid tax" (and not just as a temporary thing, but as a perpetual lifetime punishment), what exactly is the effect that you think it'll have? Won't you de facto withdraw or limit "social security" exactly from the people who need it the most?
Just look at the data. Population doesn't increase when people become wealthy, on the contrary, it decreases. Rich people just don't have that many kids. Your tax could only serve the opposite purpose, while making the poor even more miserable.
Instead of trying to control people's lives and their very personal decision to have children and how many, we should be ensuring every women in every country in the world is provided at least basic education. A vast amount of benefits including an 'automatic' birth rate drop.
The population in the first world is dropping. Immigration from less wealthy countries is the reason for the growth.
If I do all of the things that I can do to reduce my families CO2 output, and I mean really dig into sacrificing our quality of life, how much CO2 will I prevent for all of that hardship and sacrifice? How much CO2 was put out in service of President Trump's endless rallies? How much CO2 was put out in service of President Obama's birthday bash this last week?
As long as the elites, including the goddamn political elites, are living in opulence and emitting immensely more CO2 than my family could ever hope to save with even a barebones existence, I will choose to be damned to hell with the rest of humanity before I make one more sacrifice of my family.
Carbon needs to be taxed and it needs to be fair. There will be no future for us if we continue down this opt in path. That much is crystal clear.
The emphasis many countries take is to focus on car owners and drivers by taxing private commuters to death, with dubious environmental gains outside of increasing state income. Meanwhile one cargo ship or cruise liner arguably pollutes way more than millions(!) of cars. I'm not sure that's a great route to take politically, no pun intended. They seem to go for the lowest hanging cash grab before going after those where it's actually the easiest to get the biggest gains in terms of environment and actually lowering of negative emissions.
> The emphasis many countries take is to focus on car owners and drivers by taxing private commuters to death, with dubious environmental gains outside of increasing state income.
There was a study that came out a while ago that showed the majority of pollution in Los Angeles came from commercial trucks, likely involved in shipping and delivery. I think I also read that those trucks and the type involved in construction have extremely loose pollution controls and requirements. Many of them might be exempt or grandfathered in to current regulations.
Is that true? I’m seeing that cruise ships emit a lot of particulates (namely sulphur dioxide), but the actual co2-equivalent numbers I’m seeing are 0.8t/passenger for cruise ships - which is bad, but not quite as bad as described in your post.
Same with garbage bags and plastic straws. Stuff comes in stores absolutely wrapped in tons of plastic and they go and ban plastic straws. Not to mention stuff that's triple wrapped (sweets for example).
Plastic straws are social media outrage about a tortoise and has no significant impact on global warming. People upset about plastic in the ocean should be focused on ghost fishing nets.
Plastic straws were never a trash problem in Norway, where I live. Yet restrictions and incentives were still implemented. It's viewed by most people as a rather hypocritical and annoying token move, leading to lower enjoyment of life for most people, with little if any gain, to the point of pushing people away from the green movement. Or perhaps that was the point all along? Sure paper straws deteriorate far better in nature. Except most plastic straws aren't thrown into nature. They're thrown in the bin, since it's mostly used in an urban setting and in cafés. Besides Norway already has a pretty well-functioning recycling strategy for plastic. Moreover, if someone were to drive off with a plastic cup and throw it at the side of the road – which most Norwegians would never do – it's still far more plastic in that cup than in the straw. So what's the point of banning just the straw? It boggles the mind, unless it's just silly posturing!
The day true environmental costs are embedded in every item, is the day capitalism will come to an end. The nature of the system is to underpay for items that are not helping certain groups. Take just the example of food. 90+% of the price you pay go to middlemen. Real producers make close to nothing on each food item. But food contributes to a large percentage of global warming. Suddenly you will have to start paying lots of money to producing countries of most food consumed in the world. And this is just one item of the things we consume every day.
We bought an expensive washing machine 3 years ago thinking it will last us a long time. It already broke down twice. It's been broken for almost a month now waiting for parts and whatnot. There's a good chance we'll have to get another one.
Does Electrolux/AEG care? No. They don't care about the environment, their only obligation is to their shareholders. But frankly neither do I anymore. Next time, I'll buy the cheapest one and when it inevitably breaks down I'll throw it away and get another cheap one.
It's absurd that in the world where planned obsolescence, cruising industry and fast fashion exist, ordinary people are tasked with saving the planet. This is like trying to improve performance of a program using naive algorithm with O(n^2) complexity by rewriting it in assembler.
> ordinary people are tasked with saving the planet
I can’t read minds, but my sense is that much of what individuals are asked to do is knowingly conservation theater. If you want to put a positive spin on that, you can say it makes them feel more committed to supporting the regulatory changes necessary by building a sense of shared sacrifice. The cynical version writes itself.
> I can’t read minds, but my sense is that much of what individuals are asked to do is knowingly conservation theater.
Oh it's not just conservation theatre, it's also cynical responsibilities shifting: by convincing everyone that the public at large is to blame, corporations get off scot-free
My house recently started vigorously composting. I can't help but wonder how many centuries of daily composting we would need to offset the climate impact of the plastic composting bin, composable bags, and composting infrastructure. Feels good, but no impact. Sigh.
Yeah, I don't know if it's true (which is a separate problem in itself!), but I was always taught in school _not_ to recycle because the infrastructure around consumer recycling (outside of large cities) did significantly more harm than good.
The truth is 'it's complicated' and that cuts both ways. If you have the time, assessing what is and isn't worth doing based on your location is a better approach than just blanket recycling=bad or recycling=good.
For example, at-home recycling of organic waste by composting? Excellent. Municipal glass and metal recycling? Generally a net positive. Plastics recycling in the boonies? More of an energy waste than useful, in many cases the 'least worst' place for that material is landfill.
The other end of the consumption pipeline is where we should be focused IMO. If we nail that, the tail-end stuff becomes a much smaller issue as a matter of course.
I completely agree and think pricing should reflect more of the externalities.
Side note: I do not consider myself a "handy" person. Never cared much for fixing things around the house. However, thanks to YouTube and (at least in the US) RepairClinic, I have found that certain kinds of repairs to appliances are actually easy and I can get them done much more quickly than when calling a repair service because RepairClinic has the parts in stock. (I have the added benefit of living ~30 minute drive from RepairClinic.)
Also, I haven't personally found a correlation between price and reliability.
Ironically I have often found the cheaper models to be more reliable because they tend to be less complex, less parts, and are "dumb" mechanical machines vs these "smart" devices that are to clever for their own good
My 35 year old Miele is also working fine. I had to replace the pump once after 20 years but that was easy, I just ordered it from Miele for a few Euros. End of production for this model was in the 80s by the way.
Haha. Two days after this post the drier started acting up. Luckily it was just a matter of opening it up and putting back the rpm counter/home sensor.
That's not normal. Both my Siemens washer & dryer will reach 10 years this December and both are working like new. Price wise in the 75th percentile models (of Siemens).
The dryer is a heat pump model, which was quite a bit more expensive than other models at the time. The salesperson at the local MediaMarkt even recommend against it, since you would never 'make the money back' in energy costs from it. This is quite wrong. In fact, with EU energy prices you recoup the difference within 2 years using it twice a week.
Not sure which country you live in, but if you can get a speed queen branded washer / dryer, you'll likely never have to replace them. They're repairable.
Either we can have more stuff and larger material/waste/energy/emissions footprint to save us some time/effort or improve convenience/pleasure, or we can put in the time & effort to lessen our footprint. I say we're overindulging our pleasures and underperforming our responsibilities.
That's not to say we're necessarily lazy, but likely due to a combination of pressures that distract and exhaust us through the course of our modern lives. Remove the oppressive/coercive/manipulative influences and more individuals will have the space to act responsibly. The greater challenge will be to train them to actually do so.
You seem to want to wash your hands of the whole thing, as if the presence of major polluters somehow absolves you from your part in this. Ultimately, it comes down to the actions of individuals. The faceless organizations pillaging the environment subsist entirely on our patronage; stop feeding into them and they die off. Ezpz.
Is handwashing dishes & clothes really too much to ask?
A handful of corporations are responsible for the vast majority of warming. It's not our fault, it's theirs. They did it, and they knew they were doing it. Any individual action may make you feel good but it does nothing to address the problem.
>A handful of corporations are responsible for the vast majority of warming. It's not our fault, it's theirs. They did it, and they knew they were doing it.
Consumers want oil. Drilling for oil is legal. BP drills for oil. Why is BP's fault?
Or, to switch around the entities a bit. America likes widgets. Making widgets generates pollution. Prior to the 90s it was mostly made in America, so that's where all the pollution is emitted. It's clear that America is to blame. Now it's the 2000s. Thanks to globalization it's now cheaper to make in China rather than the US. Now all the pollution is being emitted in china. Who's fault is it? Is America suddenly off the hook?
Where have you been? You missed oil comapnies spending billions to misinform people, the corruption, the carteling, ghe cover-ups, the greenwashing and everything else?
Are you saying that "the vast majority of warming" is caused by "spending billions to misinform people, the corruption, the carteling, ghe cover-ups, the greenwashing and everything else"? While I would agree what they did is truly horrible, I'm also skeptical of the implied narrative that "if only we didn't have oil companies doing misinformation campaigns, climate change would be solved".
I'm also not sure how does "the carteling" refers to, and how that contributes to global warming.
If only we didn't have widespread climte change denial and minimizing caused by their broken incentives caused by failure to caputre externalities, yes, we'd be a hell of a lot further along.
The cartels were used to outcompete all alternatives and bend governments to their will. See 1979 for how just a 4% shock caused pandemonium.
>If only we didn't have widespread climte change denial and minimizing caused by their broken incentives caused by failure to caputre externalities, yes, we'd be a hell of a lot further along.
"a hell of a lot further along" is much more vague than the original claim of "responsible for the vast majority of warming". Furthermore, most of the climate change in the future is going to be caused by developing countries rapidly industrializing and getting richer. How much of that can be attributed to climate change denial?
>The cartels were used to outcompete all alternatives and bend governments to their will.
That doesn't sound like a cartel to me. Excerpt from wikipedia:
A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. [...] Cartel behavior includes price fixing, bid rigging, and reductions in output.
>See 1979 for how just a 4% shock caused pandemonium.
It's unclear how that's due to cartels. Shortages during covid shows that a supply/demand shock in any essential commodity will cause pandemonium (eg. toilet paper, hand sanitizer, mask).
> How much of that can be attributed to climate change denial?
Just as much because a hell of a lot further would include alternatives. We'd have or be on our way to a functioming market, which they'd just be entering into. Also, you can't deny the negative effecr of denial on global culture via education and media.
> It's unclear how that's due to cartels.
It seems like you're just in the mood to argue or something. I didn't say cartels caused the 1979 shock, I was using it to illustrate how much power the cartels had and have.
So now we can get rid of fast fashion, mandate reusability for products, reintroduce basic woodworking, metalcrafting and sewing/repair work in school and with that get rid of a huge chunk of the needless shipping?
Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food while thought leaders fly across the globe in private jets (no kidding) telling us we need to change our diet?
PS: I'm already a enthusiastic carbon cutter even if it historically has been because it correlated very well with cost cutting and self sufficiency.
Individual action won’t solve this problem. We need to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, which means switching energy sources, which is not something individuals have much influence on. Reducing energy use at the individual level is good, but insufficient if the energy used comes from fossil fuels.
I’m not sure we need to switch lifestyles that much, but we will need to radically change energy production. There has to come a global moratorium on fossil fuel production and the wells that exist need to be capped. If it comes out of the ground it will be used somewhere and the carbon will end up in the atmosphere. The more low carbon our lifestyle the cheaper fossil fuels will get and someone somewhere will always buy and use them. Regrettably politicians dare not talk about this elephant in the room.
"Individual action" is a euphemism for changing your lifestyle in the slightest, even if imposed from outside through tariffs/taxes or other regulation. What people want is their exact same lifestyle, except eveything bad has been spraypainted green. It's understandable, I want my wishes to turn things into gold.
Action against companies is an extension of action against consumption, not an alternative.
I'd say many are ready for individual action but are discouraged on a daily basis especially by
- hypocritical politicians and environmentalists traveling the world on first class/private jets
- negativity like yours and the one I originally answered
- misinformation/information overload/infighting: whatever good someone tries to do someone will pop up to explain why it is bad: nuclear, organic, frugality, you name it, someone will magically pop up to tell you how worthless exactly your contribution is.
I say: almost every effort is worthwhile as long as one doesn't actively destroy. At least spread enthusiasm and knowledge.
> Individual action won’t solve this problem. We need to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, which means switching energy sources, which is not something individuals have much influence on.
The covid shutdown should have put this myth to bed forever.
Hundreds of millions stuck at home and no longer commuting took a massive dent out of carbon emissions and sent shock waves through the oil industry.
Individual action can save the planet; we have to be drops in the flood.
> I’m not sure we need to switch lifestyles that much, but we will need to radically change energy production.
There's no way we can continue to works as we do and plan cities as we do and stem the oncoming catastrophe with any alacrity.
In what world is hundreds of millions of people drastically changing their lifestyle because they've been instructed to stay home by their governments "individual action"? That's a collective response to a crisis mandated by government.
Yes, the individuals were coerced to take action. Note that what many intend when referring to individual action is not that the individual _chose_ to take action, but that the individual _does_ take action. When claiming that individual action won't make a difference they're claiming that changing how we live as collective individuals won't make a difference; it doesn't matter what motivated that change for their thesis to be considered.
IMHO, Governments ought to _heavily_ tax commercial office space to coerce companies to support WFH. Make it so that the opportunities to commute start to disappear.
I don't think I've ever heard an argument that defines individual action in the way you do. Most "individual action" arguments tend to lean towards pushing people to make individual choices to reduce emissions, and many are not substantive – take shorter showers! bike instead of driving to the gym! Even the actions that are reasonable – "give up air travel" – only become significant in aggregate.
> IMHO, Governments ought to _heavily_ tax commercial office space to coerce companies to support WFH. Make it so that the opportunities to commute start to disappear.
I think that's absolutely reasonable and something that should happen now. But "I now work from home because my company told me to because the tax on the office/parking increased to push a shift in behavior" is absolutely not an individual choice.
> I don't think I've ever heard an argument that defines individual action in the way you do. [...] Even the actions that are reasonable – "give up air travel" – only become significant in aggregate.
One person making a change has never been a reasonable solution for global climate change; advocating for individual action has always meant making changes in the aggregate behaviour of individuals.
> But "I now work from home because my company told me to because the tax on the office/parking increased to push a shift in behavior" is absolutely not an individual choice.
Correct, it is not an individual choice. It is an individual action.
> Correct, it is not an individual choice. It is an individual action.
Every world government has passed a law, rigorously enforced, that says each person can drive no more than 20 miles a week. dleslie drives 20 miles a week. Has dleslie performed an individual action to address climate change?
> Apparently I've done the opposite, because that's more than I drive in a week now. ;)
Ha! Pandemics, eh? :)
> But not to be trite, yes I would have
This feels to me like over-egging the pudding - but getting into this discussion is really more of a question of philosophy than climate science, so it's a bit of a distraction.
It seems that, beyond the semantics of what constitutes "individual action", we seem to agree with what's needed:
> advocating for individual action has always meant making changes in the aggregate behaviour of individuals.
> Make it so that the opportunities to commute start to disappear.
> but getting into this discussion is really more of a question of philosophy than climate science, so it's a bit of a distraction.
Ah, but the politics of it are important to causing change to happen. If we can't get voters to buy-in to changing their behaviour then Governments are unlikely to create such policies.
The important concept for the opposition to individual action, I think, is that the opposition is rooted in two ideas:
1. Individuals shouldn't be burdened with having to change the way they live
2. The burden should be on the big evil capitalist corporations
Neither of which hold much water, I think; the data behind carbon reduction due to covid restrictions shows that changing the lives of individuals is an important and necessary part of the solution.
And those big evil corps are mostly serving consumer demand. They're not pumping carbon into the atmosphere just because they're evil, right? Moreover, some of the largest polluters are in China, and China has been a major polluter for generations; it's not a strictly capitalist concern.
> Global CO2 emissions declined by 5.8% in 2020, or almost 2 Gt CO2 – the largest ever decline and almost five times greater than the 2009 decline that followed the global financial crisis. CO2 emissions fell further than energy demand in 2020 owing to the pandemic hitting demand for oil and coal harder than other energy sources while renewables increased. Despite the decline in 2020, global energy-related CO2 emissions remained at 31.5 Gt, which contributed to CO2 reaching its highest ever average annual concentration in the atmosphere of 412.5 parts per million in 2020 – around 50% higher than when the industrial revolution began.
> What if "safe for the environment" isn't just another brand that you can choose to buy if you're willing to pay the extra dollar?
But "safe for the environment" is a brand that you can choose to buy. Every environmental damage can be offset.
I'd reverse the question: what if solving global warming is something that can be achieved without outlawing anything, including SUVs, plastic garbage and wasteful lawns? Certain people perceive global warming as an opportunity to reshape society in their preferred image; (visibly) ecologically conscious, "green", friendly, local, low power, low consumption, etc. This can be seen in the discourse around technological megaengineering solutions to global warming, such as a space sunshade - usually you will find in the comments someone saying "but then we'll just keep burning fossil fuels!" Yeah, so? I thought this was about warming?
> Loss of biodiversity? Sea level change? Loss of ice sheets? You can't pay a tax somewhere and unshatter that glass.
Sea level change and ice sheets are a result of climate change and thus can be offset with carbon offsets; they're the poster child for the concept.
I don't recognize loss of biodiversity as damage.
> Oh, not even close, not if even if there were less than 1 billion humans on Earth. None of those things is sustainable in the long run.
Those things are negligible footnotes in the long run. And all of those things, including the plastic bags, can be run off solar. All it needs are the right incentives.
Individuals can and should reduce their direct CO2 footprint. Most of personal energy budget goes for transportation and heating and/or cooling the living spaces. Two solutions enable you to stop directly burning stuff: EVs and heatpumps.
Beyond that, cap-and-trade scheme has worked to reduce SO2 emissions and it will work to reduce CO2 emissions.
Am EV over a fuel burning car is huge improvement, however EV’s alone are not a sustainable solution to our transport needs. There needs to be mass transit and wider adoption of cycling/walking in more towns and cities. EV’s are still burning fuel if they’re not charged using 100% renewable energy, which clearly we are not at yet, and at the end of the day they’re _still_ an inefficient means of transporting people over any distance.
To reduce transportation emissions worldwide, there needs to be greater emphasis on alternative modes of transports to cars, electric or not.
- Long distances should be covered by train/bus.
- Medium distances by metro/bus/tram/whatever works in a given city’s geography and layout.
One issue with individual action, in the absence of a market incentive such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, is that reducing your use of power/fossil fuels reduces demand, thus ever so slightly reducing prices, which will give others licence to use more. It doesn't 100% cancel out your efforts, but it does reduce the effect.
One issue with EVs is that they aren't necessarily a feasible option for a lot of households due to their cost. Putting a market incentive in place would lead to a hundred different ways of reducing our CO2 emissions from driving, not limited by the ingenuity of one person or organization. More people working from home, more carpooling, distributed co-working spaces, more use of public transportation, even shifting how we design and zone our towns and cities, are a few things I can think of.
I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to take a very direct, immediate, simple action to move the USA toward having a carbon fee and dividend policy* take a look at this (or at the very least, send it to your environmentally concerned friends and family): https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/
(*a tax on carbon, where, that get returned to all citizens so as to reduce or even eliminate impact on lower income families)
Individual actions help, they aren't sufficient alone but if every citizen went vegan and didn't vacation, it would probably buy us a couple more years to transition our energy system. Every little bit helps, but I do agree industry is the low hanging and greater emitting fruit that must change first. For instance air conditioning, there are very potent greenhouse gasses in ACs, companies would do well to phase those out fully and quickly and dispose of them properly. A little government incentive there would be a massive win, much easier than telling humans not to travel.
> which means switching energy sources, which is not something individuals have much influence on
I'm not sure how it is in the US or around the world, but in Germany switching to 100% renewable energy for your home takes about 10 minutes online, by changing contract or company. Sure - if everyone did it there would not be enough supply, but apparently the majority does not despite being able to.
I'll just mention though that I think there is some double dipping going on here:
"Every" Norwegian seems to be happily thinking that they are using green hydropower, while at the same time the green certificates are sold to Germany.
Not saying this to discourage you guys, what you do makes green power more viable. Edit: The problem is Norwegians are living happy lives thinking they aren't contributing from power at least and nobody is telling.
I only want to help lit a fire under the feet of Norwegians :-)
And personally I could accept a small extra fee to get certified nuclear power ;-)
This argument is the problem. If we stopped producing fossil fuels right now, there would be an economic collapse, and starvation, and probably a few wars.
In 50-75 years we will probably be looking back in horror at the missed opportunity to avoid the ongoing economic collapse, the massive famine, starvation, and plagues that will follow on COVID, and the continuous wars as refugees flood from the front lines of climate collapse to places where the impacts aren't as severe and immediate.
I went to school in the 90s and we were learning about climate change then. The argument of "we can't stop now" seemed good enough 25 years ago, but we've still not actually made any progress towards making it easier to stop. We need to do that right now.
This is true. But if large portions of the electorate start living like GP, they'll have no problem with voting for carbon taxes and other measures that'll cost money. They won't be swayed by talking heads on TV shouting "environmental Marxism!".
Since I am GP: I really hope I'd not fall for anything so stupid :-)
That said I am also a conservative and I think I know a bit about conservatives; if one want conservatives to change as fast as possible phrase it in a way that sounds reasonable to the conservative mind:
- it is economically smart on individual level
- "repairing things is the traditional thing to do" and "it feels good to be in control"
- "industry should look for ways to save resources to stay competitive and increase yield on investment for shareholders" (sorry, English is not my first language, if this reads as a parody it is not meant as)
- "take advantage of the green wave". Competitive advantage: Point out that wealthy consumers will, on average, choose the greener product if they are otherwise equal. (Maybe poor ones will too, but we are here to sell this idea, aren't we ;-)
- On a national level: we need to get independence from China
- "reach individual monetary independence faster by making smart choices"
Doing this instead of continuing to make a partisan issue about it should go a long way I think. That is, if getting the results is more important than "being right".
People are already making money this way: just yesterday I heard a close friend explaining enthusiastically (I'll translate it on the fly from my native language as well as adding my explanation of why I think this was potent):
- a US jeans company had gotten hold of "the last real loom that wasn't sent to China" (local business argument)
- "hired the old operators to teach the how to use it" (traditional argument),
- "picked it apart - about a million pieces - and restored it" (self sufficient etc argument)
- and are now selling expensive pants - but it is real jeans (the actual sales argument)
There are different ways to reach different sections of the electorate, and we should use all of them. I'm in total agreement with you that those are the talking points to use with people on the conservative side of the political spectrum.
> Doing this instead of continuing to make a partisan issue
Unfortunately, making it (doesn't matter what "it" is) a partisan issue has been shown to work, over and over and over. It's depressingly predictable at this point. People go into all sorts of mental contortions and doublethink to explain why the stance "their" side has taken is the "right" one.
People and industries who have more to lose from a greener economy have no hesitation in employing these tactics to stall or block change, and influence people.
> Unfortunately, making it (doesn't matter what "it" is) a partisan issue has been shown to work, over and over and over. It's depressingly predictable at this point. People go into all sorts of mental contortions and doublethink to explain why the stance "their" side has taken is the "right" one.
You are of course right.
But since this issue is already owned by democrats/progressives/whatever and since conservative thought leaders have painted themselves into a corner maybe I should say: we shouldn't say anything that makes it an even more partisan issue.
The more we can avoid the soreness of doing what "the other side want" and focus on "this is beneficial for me/us/"our country" - right here and now, next quarter etc the better.
> People and industries who have more to lose from a greener economy have no hesitation in employing these tactics to stall or block change, and influence people.
Of course, which is why we need to outsmart them :-)
The problem is that for many people climate change adaptation boils down to that dichotomy. It'd be nice if there would be people teaching us there are other ways. Of course, we won't escape the fact we use a lot of energy and that, for the time being, most of it produces CO2.
A carbon tax that would be high enough to force changes quickly enough would also be devastating for the poorer segment of the population and hence very hard to pass in a democracy. I mixture of a carbon price and other measures can be easier to sell to the voters.
> Using X costs you Y Using XX costs you YYY Using XXX costs you YYYYYY
And instead of one company or person using XXX, you will have a three small companies using X or one person having three cars in his garage that just happen to each be registered under a different person.
Exponential taxes are a hell of a lot of an incentive to avoid them and you see how far people go to just avoid linear ones. Also, managing the company tax depending on how much the consumer used so far is going to be bureaucracy hell. It's a nice idea, but I highly doubt it will be possible to implement, especially when far easier and straight-forward measures already fail to get through legislation.
I'm well aware of that. I remember reading a story about one of the cities in Asia which forbidden car traffic with driver only. Soon there were passengers for hire standing by the road.
If AWS can charge their clients by milliseconds then I'm pretty sure an airline can add a zero to a 10th ticket booked on the same passenger's name.
The number of products/services taxed progressively wouldn't have to be huge to make a difference. You don't need to progressively tax an electric toothbrush just energy consumption, but all products should be taxed based on their production externalities.
> taxes on usage/consumption could be progressive.
Ideally the poor part of the population should be able to use the roads in the same proportion as the wealthy part of the population. Putting taxes on road usage (which what fuel taxes actually represent) will hit the poor part of the population way harder than the wealthy (or even the middle-class) part of said population.
> You could still get a cheap flight once a year, but you won't be able to fly every weekend.
That used to be one of the few remaining "pleasures of life" for a big part of the lower and lower-middle-classes from Western Europe. It was actually cheaper to fly with your lads from Luton Airport to somewhere in Eastern Europe on Friday afternoon and come back late on Sunday, all this while having lots of fun (from said lads' perspective). Taking this away from them will mean them having to hit the very expensive pubs/bars of Manchester or Oslo and not having the same amounts of fun because the money for purchasing said fun (i.e. alcohol) will just not be there. Unhappy lads may mean an unhappy populace ready to throw stones at the powers that be.
As such, the upcoming football matches from the next few months in the European big leagues will be a very good litmus test, it will be the first time in one year and a half when we'll have lots of young people together ready to scream at things (the opposing teams' players or the said powers that be). We've already had one game suspended this weekend in Montpellier (Southern France) because of fans throwing bottles at the opposing team's players.
> Ideally the poor part of the population should be able to use the roads in the same proportion as the wealthy
Yeah unless you want to give everyone the same income or have some other way of not needing money to travel anymore, that's just not going to be the case. Also today, the wealthy could do road trips much more often than the poor could. That much won't change, I think the best we can hope for is either a slight improvement or not make it worse, for example by taxing heavy use more significantly like GP proposes. I consider myself wealthy but if using 3x the average adds 5x the tax, it's not as if I have unlimited money just like the vast majority of people.
If we want to be carbon neutral in twenty years, poorer people need pretty strong incentives too. I don't see that working out if the carbon tax is mostly cost neutral for them.
They'll have a choice between two similar products. One is $10 because of a $5 carbon charge, the other is $6 with a $0 carbon charge. What will they choose?
They'll choose the $6 one, and keep their carbon tax dividend in their pocket too.
They won't really be worse off.
On the other hand, the rich will be worse off because they take more flights, consume more resources, and generally cause more carbon emissions anyway from their day-to-day lives.
Eh, many poor people don't have a choice when it comes to two their biggest carbon sources: transportation and heating. They're forced to use an old ICE to get to work, because biking and public transport is not practical for them, and they live in a rented apartment that is heated with oil or gas.
True, but we generally waste a lot of our emissions because fossil fuel energy is so cheap. People don't realize that you can save a ton of energy by, say, reducing the thermostat set point on your hot water heater, or putting plastic film over your windows and searching for and blocking drafts when it gets cold (or hot!) A lot of energy use is just habit that can be changed with very little cost, if the incentive is in place.
Granted, that won't get us to net zero, but there are a lot of high-impact, low investment changes we can all make.
Longer term, if fossil fuel energy places rise, I expect a lot more pressure put on local governments to make public transportation more accessible, and to remove legislation that blocks the building of walkable neighborhoods and cities. I'm convinced that the vast majority of driving we do is completely unnecessary, and is just the result of myopic laws about how we can build cities and suburbs that tend not to get challenged, which lead to us just building in a really dumb way that ensures everyone needs to drive.
Unless you are a factory putting out metric tons of CO2 I don't think the tax is going to be much to sneeze at for most people. Gas going up another 50 cents a gallon doesn't actually make that big of a dent to your pocket book at the end of the day, especially in cities where rent is already like $2000 a month for a single. If you fill up your car once a week, even if the tax at the pump was a full dollar, you are throwing down like $48 extra a month, or 2.4% your rent. Seems reasonable to me.
Investments into public transport and bike infrastructure is relatively cheap and improves streets for everyone.
Taking a car lane and/or parking and making a dedicated bus and bike lane out of it will reduce congestion and increase the mobility of nearly everyone.
Yes, I think the point still stands. A carbon tax is an efficient measure that will reduce emissions and not harm poor demographics.
However there are other things we can do as well to reduce emissions as well as increase life quality at the same time (improve public transport and bicycle infrastructure) where poor people benefit especially.
needs to be coupled with subsidies for alternatives, transport (public, electric vehicles, etc) and with the knowledge that a poor person will drive that old diesel car into the ground, so give them an incentive to switch.
Why not a carbon tax that's used to pull carbon out of the atmosphere? It's pretty much inevitable that we have to pull carbon out of the atmosphere at scale at some point.
Yes. Bury it, put it into use for hundreds of years. Anything that stores the carbon in the long-term. It's inevitable that we have to do this one way or another.
Will that help though? Capitalism and "letting the market figure it out" is how we got here. None of the systems in place work and are completely skippable by those with cash.
> Impose a co2 emissions tax and let the market figure it out.
Aka those who are rich will simply buy their way out of having to change, and the poor masses will have to bear the load. Neo-feudalism is not the answer to climate change - the problem starts with capitalism.
I live in the countryside in Norway - a famously long and sparsely populated country - and I either work close enough to home to go by bike or I work far enough away that I can manage to pick up my laptop and get some work done while in public transit. And yes: I get to the train station by bike, bus or by feet, if necessary it is just 30 minutes brisk walk.
Edit: not every Norwegian can do this, but far more than today. I guess this is true for a number of other countries as well.
I'm curious what kind of town you live in. I grew up in a rural area, in which google claims its a 50 minute bike ride to the nearest grocery store, along curvy & hilly country roads with absolutely no sidewalks, let alone bike lanes, and where monstrous pickup trucks are liable to sideswipe you out of spite as much as accident.
My sister lives in a suburb in Florida: better, but the weather is unbearable for half the year. She also has three children, making carrying sufficient groceries in a bike pretty much impossible.
If people can bike, they should. But a lot of people live in these sorts of conditions that are not conducive to biking, enough that "just bike to the grocery store" is not a realistic or achievable goal.
All I hear is excuses. Excuses why someone "needs" to drive a 2 ton truck, excuses why someone "needs" to fly across the Atlantic, excuses why someone "needs" a house with more bathrooms than people, excuses why it's too cold/hot to cycle.
I'm not talking about buying a 2 ton truck or flying across the Atlantic, or owning a big house. I'm talking about people needing to get groceries.
I would prefer that infrastructure in the U.S. were more dense, that less people were not required to drive everywhere. But the reality is that, as life in many parts of the U.S. is currently set up, people cannot rely on bicycling as a safe, efficient, and effective means of transportation in their daily lives. Biking, if you live in a place that supports it, is good, but telling people to "just bike" remains a useless and naive plan for addressing climate change. Your energy will be better spent elsewhere.
If you had to make that ride to eat, you would. If you did it regularly you wouldn't think anything of it. I have a hard time believing motorists are out there hitting cyclists out of spite.
People enjoy cycling on country roads with hills and no bike lanes. Some also enjoy cycling in all weather conditions. If you haven't tried it, it is a bit much to call it impossible.
That said, I think people should be able to consume energy however they choose, even drivers of "monstrous pickup trucks". If it makes them happy or they otherwise find utility in it, it is their money to spend.
If a motorists injures someone with their vehicle, they should pay damages.
Even if I accepted the premise of climate apocalypse, which I don't, the idea of allowing technocrats control over what the public can and cannot consume seems like a more dangerous precedent. Especially when we are talking about something as essential to modern life as energy consumption.
"...If you can’t justify your existence; if you’re not pulling your weight in the social boat; if you are not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself." George Bernard Shaw, on eugenics.
Nothing can be consumed without some form of "externality" and the negativity of someone's consumption is purely subjective. Consider the first principles of the proposal and where they lead.
You'll note that the above poster invoked "monstrous pickup trucks", a clear indicator of tribal, if not political affiliation. Ultimately it amounts to nothing more than a partisan condemnation of the 'other' and their culture. The scientism rationalizing it is nothing more than a thinly veiled window dressing over intolerance.
Of course, entertaining this flavor of intolerance and rationalizations for central planning could be considered a negative outcome. The threat of tyranny, the fallibility of man and his predilection towards corruption should be well understood by now. Just as two parallel lines will never meet, these are axiomatic truths of human nature. Whereas climate doomsaying is the latest in a long history of failed predictions of apocalypse. Nobody should be surprised that the fear is used to centralize control over energy resources, but here we are...
Close inspection indeed. You've misread the comment entirely.
I can assure you that I'm opposed to death panels and eugenics. Consumption is essential to living one's life. Under a laissez-faire system, one cannot consume more than he produces in terms of subjective market valuations.
Shaw's proposal is not libertarian, but illustrative of where the logic of subjectively determined "negative externalities" leads. Sorry that wasn't clearer for you.
As an American expat, I know what you mean, but the problem is this simply isn’t true. Americans think this way because they have never seen an alternative. What it does mean is that the cost of consumption goes way up, which is exactly what’s needed.
The problem is, you simply cannot tell people to drop their cars when there is no public transport. No matter the country.
If you want to change the behavior of people, you have to build out public transport and bike lanes first or you'll (and it ashames me to say it as a leftie, rightfully) get laughed out of the door.
Yes. Also, in my country, there are alternatives, but it is so much faster and time efficient to use car. I would gladly used any alternative that would not cost me additional time than car.
OK? I live not that far from an airport and I can say I have noticed a significant decrease in traffic, so much that I pointed at a passenger plane the other day to show one of my younger kids. Until COVID-19 that would have been just funny, now it was informative.
> Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food
I mean, yes, we should continue doing that. Our relationship with food is unhealthy and also a massive contributor to environmental decline. I'm not sure why you contrast this with other improvements we can make, many of which, individually, would be less impactful than a transition to a more sustainable diet.
Meat is unhealthy? You may want to take a deeper look at where that notion stems from. I recommend the book The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz for a history primer. Or just look at the lifespan in Hong Kong which is one of the top meat consumers in the world per capita.
I think it's suspect that the USA, the number one polluter and the unhealthiest country in the world now wants to dictate what other people should eat while consuming 10x the gasoline per capita as others. For environmental and health reasons of course.
Between us, there is indeed room for improvements, but when we are discussing this topic with our fellow Americans, we must put things into perspective. Compared to them we are perfectly fine, as their meat production and consumption is an absolute shitshow!
Farming is a small contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the recent attacks on red meat for example are nonsensical if you look at the math that is used to justify it.
>Farming is a small contributor to greenhouse gas emissions
This is soo wrong:
>The AFOLU sector is responsible for just under a quarter (~10 – 12 GtCO2eq / yr) of anthropogenic GHG emissions mainly from deforestation and agricultural emissions from livestock, soil and nutrient management (robust evidence; high agreement)[11.2]. Anthropogenic forest degradation and biomass burning (forest fires and agricultural burning) also represent relevant contributions.
>
>Annual GHG emissions from agricultural production in 2000 – 2010 were estimated at 5.0 – 5.8 GtCO2eq / yr while annual GHG flux from land use and land-use change activities accounted for approximately 4.3 – 5.5 GtCO2eq / yr.
>
>Leveraging the mitigation potential in the sector is extremely important in meeting emission reduction targets (robust evidence; high agreement) [11.9].
>According to the August 8 Carbon Brief in-depth article on the SRCCL, Chapter 2 provides data on livestock methane emissions, about 66% is agricultural methane" and "about 33% of global methane emissions" come from livestock.[22][23]:38
Attacking our own food supply over a supposed 25% of emissions should be lower priority than for example taxing actual emissions so that the food suppliers can adapt, and people can stop going on vacations to Bali twice a year. Doing it this way will push farmers towards e.g. regenerative agriculture which can actually be carbon negative. Waging war on certain foods will accomplish relatively little and also alienate huge parts of the people we need to cooperate with us.
>and people can stop going on vacations to Bali twice a year.
Who goes to Bali twice a year? Those aren't representative at all, and why count on people who destroy so much to save our planet? We can ignore them and simply ban such spending. There are so many things I cannot buy (e.g explosive) because we know it's too dangerous for society. Why not prevent the very few from neutralizing all the efforts of millions? A Paris-Bali flight emits more than one year of heating and cooling for a whole family!
>taxing actual emissions so that the food suppliers can adapt
Wait. The only way this could have an impact is you make meat/fish so expensive that people stop buying it. Then, what's the point of adding taxes if you just want people to stop buying it? I bet you simply want to have the freedom to continue to do whatever you want only because you expect to have the means to pay this tax. So you'd only want others to change... and you argue that we cannot expect people to change (e.g become vegetarian versus to having the resources to eat meat/fish). But I understand why you don't believe you can get people to change since you start by excluding yourself from this possibility...
Also, can you explain why I've become vegetarian after I heard facts about the impact of agriculture? Facts that are now more and more spread (see OP's story). The money I save from meat and fish goes to farmers (I've since joined a cropsharing group, which is organic, of much better quality than what can be found in markets, and provide far more support to farmers than just paying more for the same quantity). I'm not pushing farmers to be carbon negative, I'm pulling them because I accepted to change and inviting others to do the same. There's really nothing preventing anyone to be vegetarian (or almost veggie) except ignorance and misconceptions.
> The AFOLU sector is responsible for just under a quarter
1/4 of world-wide emissions. In developed nations it isn't nearly that large of a fraction. The US agriculture industry is responsible for a little less than 1/10 of our emissions.
Does that chart separate out the transportation that's involved in agriculture, though? It has transportation at nearly 30%. If the answer to my question is "yes", then the question is how much of the transportation slice is part of the agricultural process (transportation of raw materials, to processing facilities, to packaging facilities, to grocery stores, etc).
And a further question, regardless of the answer to the above question, is: how much does this change depending on the type of agriculture? For example, I would imagine the supply chain for beef would have much more transportation involved than that for beans or soy (think of all the steps that go into making animal feed alone, and that is step 0).
I'm not sure what exactly is a 'healthy' relationship with food, or when the last time any significant fraction of the human population had attained this. Maybe before agriculture, but even that is dubious.
I'm not convinced it is possible at current population levels.
The point I got from the OP was that traditional culture was low-carbon from day 0, and that at least Britain's climate change minister was jetting about an AWFUL lot, and there are plenty of jet-setters pushing a vegan diet upon the world when home-kept chickens are obviously a net plus, both in terms of food waste (accounts for a significant carbon and other pollution footprint, as we pay to produce it) and in terms of proteins that don't require killing your chickens over (eggs).
Contrast that with having a cat or dog (look at amount of animals slaughtered for pet foods)
I agree that our systems need revamping in a large-scale way, particularly agriculture, as you imply.
The only way you comment makes sense to me is if you talk about male chickens and even then it is not necessary:
When keeping chickens at home like GP suggest you can keep the around and it would still be a net plus in the carbon calculations since you are just using food that would have been thrown away otherwise.
That sides, unless we are going to bring veganism into this there is no reason to do that.
Again, if you feed them from food scraps you can keep them alive as long as you fancy or until they die from old age and still be carbon negative compared to throwing the food to waste.
It is just a choice. If you are OK with keeping livestock but don't want to kill animals, keep them around.
If reducing CO2 emissions is more important, kill off male chickens as well as old ones and instead keep more of the productive ones and share some eggs (and some knowledge - if possible) with friends.
Unless you use artificial insemination to only produce hens, you’ll run into a problem. You will end up with many roosters who won’t produce eggs and you have to feed and care for them as well. Unless you have a gigantic yard or want wild roosters everywhere, you’ll end up killing a lot of them.
The hens you’ll have will produce eggs, but maybe only one a day and they’ll skip laying quite often. You can avoid that if you get modern hens who were selectively bred to lay excess eggs, but they will require more food than “table scraps” (they really need calcium supplements) and their bodies will be destroyed within two years. At that point you either kill them or let them suffer - neither us a good outcome for them.
There are plenty of scalable alternatives to raising chickens for their eggs. Plant-based options do require mono cropping, but it can feed the world and kill fewer animals.
> Unless you have a gigantic yard or want wild roosters everywhere, you’ll end up killing a lot of them.
Exactly what I tried to say above.
It is a choice: you can keep them and as long as you feed them mostly with grass and kitchen scraps you still reduce environmental impact by not consuming eggs from grain-fed chicken - even when you feed some roosters.
Choose a quiet breed though or be prepared to make some significant peace offerings towards your neighbors if you want to keep every rooster around until they die from old age ;-)
Personally I'd rather (rot13, blunt speak): pubc fbzr puvpxra arpxf. V terj hc ba n snez naq juvyr V qba'g gbyrengr navzny nohfr gurve yvirf nera'g fnperq gb zr. V jnag gurz gb yvir unccl yvirf jura va zl phfgbql naq n fjvsg, harkcrpgrq naq cnvayrff qrngu nsgrejneqf.
Even at the current level of population demand on resources is too great and will be massively too great if poverty is eradicated (as it should).
The long term solution for both the environment and people's quality of life (I don't think that not being able to travel, not being able to eat what one wants, having to live in a small flat in a dense city with mass transit only is a good life) is not only to have an objective to cut emission but to also have an objective to cut population.
Now, that is a very sensitive topic and so everyone prefers to ignore it.
>The long term solution for both the environment and people's quality of life is not only to have an objective to cut emission but to have an objective to cut population.
>
>Now, that is a very sensitive topic and so everyone prefers to ignore it.
No. You are ignoring that countries whose population is increasing are, per capita, not emitting much. Please compare the eqCO2 per capita in Africa vs Europe or USA. If we ask a minority to curb their pollution, we can easily fix the climate problem. But those who emit the most ask everyone to not have children... because they refuse to change their behavior. This is a sensitive topic only to the minority that is responsible for the catastrophe.
Again, I beg your to research who are polluting more that what our ecosystems can endure and tell me why we should block human beings from procreating vs asking the culprits to curb their crazy consumption/pollution and leave the rest of the world alone.
> You are ignoring that countries whose population is increasing are, per capita, not emitting much
No I'm not and this is what makes the situation worse.
When people get richer they consume more. This is not only about CO2 per se but all resources. Global population growth has been a driver for both CO2 emissions and demand on all resources, but this is also compounded by reduction in poverty.
Imagine a world where all humans consumed as much as a Western European, or even worse an American, today: This would be much, much worse than our current situation.
So unless we want to live in 1984 meets The Matrix in order to drastically limit consumption of resources then we need to get the population down so that every human can enjoy a good life in a thriving environment.
I must say I don't understand why there seems to be a taboo on this.
> asking the culprits to curb their crazy consumption/pollution and leave the rest of the world alone.
It's not "us vs them". We are all on the same boat. The poorest do not want to remain poor, and rightly so. Everyone should have the right to reach highest living standard possible.
>When people get richer they consume more. This is not only about CO2 per se but all resources.
Why would that be inevitable? I mean, you're asking to prevent people from having children! I bet it's easier to ask people to not pollute (even as they get richer) than not to have the family they want.
I, for one, I've become multimillionaire in the last decade (thank you, neoliberalism /s) while cutting my carbon footprint in more than 3. It was much easier to do that than changing my family's plans. By the way, going vegetarian makes you richer but also not flying too, not buying a bigger house and a bigger car, etc.
Being richer does not require to pollute more even if this has been the case until now, but again, we're also having more children so why would you want fewer people polluting more when we could be free to have the family we want and be responsible?
So you're becoming richer but sacrifice yourself and stash the money under your bed? Because if you're spending the money you're consuming and thereby contributing to the pressure on the environment. That does not make much sense to me as a way of life.
You also do not seem to realise how much more you're already consuming compared to the poor on this planet. If everyone was consuming as much as your family is then the environment would be in even worse shape than it is now.
If we want poverty eradicated and everyone to enjoy a high standard of living then consumption per capita has to increase globally. My belief is that everyone has the right to have a high standard of living and to enjoy greenery, nature, living space. The only way this is sustainable is if the number of people decreases to compensate.
There is a massive difference between spending my money taking my kids to the local open farm with shows, animals to pet etc or if I spend the same money hosting a party with lots of junk decorations that gets thrown away afterwards.
Same with spending my money creating a house that is well insulated and built to last vs skipping on quality and adding lots of high maintenance luxuries.
Even just keeping the money and investing it you can do something right just by vetting and prioritizing funds with a proven good profile.
> There is a massive difference between spending my money taking my kids to the local open farm with shows, animals to pet etc or if I spend the same money hosting a party with lots of junk decorations that gets thrown away afterwards.
This strikes me as a very "first world problems" view of things.
What I meant is that there is a massive difference in consumption levels (both in term of energy and resources) between you and I living our comfy Western lives and the life of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of human beings on the poorest end of the scale.
Just a drive to the supermarket for our weekly shop probably consumes more energy and resources than months of consumption for some people on this planet.
Those people have the right to be lifted out of poverty and to enjoy a high standard of living, like we have the right to enjoy those standards but this is not realistic with 8 billion people. It's simply wrong IMHO to condemn humanity to restrictions and sacrifices, so if we want everyone to be 'rich' and save the planet at the same time the only solution is to aim at cutting population significantly.
This starts by a paradigm shift, we must accept that population cannot keep growing and should in fact decrease. Then adapt to that as it has fundamental impacts on the economy and social fabric.
Start with the entirely unnessecary carniverous apex predators (aka pets) people insist on keeping. If people cant get rid of pets, then asking them to avoid replicating their own DNA is going to be a challenge.
I upvoted you, but do keep in mind that there is a lot of loneliness and some of those animals probably save us from lots of healthcare expenses. Not everything can be brought down to simple economics.
That said I have said no to dogs myself - mostly because of cost and the constant need to be looled after - and the animal we do have is a rodent that we got second hand, meaning that food cost is leftover carrot shavings etc + a bit of hay
Have you considered that for many people have pets because they don't have/can't have/don't want children? Compared to an actual human child, the footprint of a pet is quite minimal and their lifespans are short.
Well, if we need to change our diet, give up pets, give up travelling, give up individual travel in general, etc. then I think that proves the point I'm trying to make.
> This pact aims to keep the rise in global temperatures well below 2C this century and to pursue efforts to keep it under 1.5C.
It seems to me that continuing to communicate just the average temperature increase is a missed opportunity to engage with a greater portion of the population.
1.5 or 2 degrees do not seem like much, but once one understands that’s an average made out of much bigger positive and negative swings in temperature, one gets a much more dramatic picture.
I suspect focusing on the widening of the temperature range, rather than the average temperature change would work better with communications to the wider public
I wrote about this not long ago, the problem with the climate crisis is there's no crisis point.
In a "proper" crisis or perhaps "ordinary" is a better term, there's a point where the leadership needs to drop all other agenda items and focus on the crisis. Whether that's bailing out the economy, starting a war, or calling a new election, there's a time when nothing else matters.
The climate crisis is a thousand individual, distributed, manageable events that happen all the time. Forest fires, floods, storms, they all happen and they're all dealt with locally. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and moves on. Every time. Forever.
It's the frog boiling analogy. Can we handle x amount of rain? Yes. Can we handle 1.1x? Sure. How about 1.2x floods? Sure. It will be like inflation was to our generation, grandad will tell stories about how you could buy a whole meal for a dollar. Except instead of meals, it's hurricanes.
There doesn't seem to be anything in the context of what you said in your comment that would lead us to a "let's deal with it now" moment. Telling people about the 1 or 2 degrees, sure, they need to know, but it will never bring anyone to a negotiating table.
You'll experience the climate crisis as an ever increasing digital stream of catastrophes captured on cellphone camera until, one day, you're the one doing the filming.
I sincerely hope it won't be necessary, but in Kim Stanley Robinsons book Ministry for the future, there is a wet bulb heat wave that kills hundreds of thousands that serves to at least somewhat galvanize the world into action. Perhaps something like that could be a plausible thing to happen.
There's nothing to "keep" under 1.5C, we are pretty much already there when error bars are considered. 2C is going to be breached regardless because even if we went carbon neutral today we have decades of locked in warming.
Why the scientists are not communicating this information which has been in pop-science (as early as An Inconvenient Truth (2006), which documents the lag between CO2 rise and temp rise) is beyond me.
I still advocate for mitigation/reduction efforts because future generations exist and they deserve the best climate we can pass on, but let's not pretend like we are on track to preserve any level of normal. 1.5C is more than a moonshot - it is behind us.
> Why the scientists are not communicating this information which has been in pop-science (as early as An Inconvenient Truth (2006), which documents the lag between CO2 rise and temp rise) is beyond me.
I might be biased but popular newspaper in my country have interviews in which scientists do talk about that.
Don't quite know what you mean by "locked in warming" (nor didn't have time to look at this report yet), but the previous scenarios have massive scale future magic carbon takeback tech baked in. I assume if there was something like that ongoing on a global scale and almost no new emissions, 1.5 degrees might be theoretically possible?
Thanks, good call out. This was largely based on some charts from An Inconvenient Truth which showed temp as a latent responding variable to CO2 PPM.
Obviously a lot of research has happened since then, so I looked it up, and the lag period between CO2 and temperature rise is much shorter than I expected. It seems it is just a decade - so if we went to carbon negative today, we could see results in under 10 years [1] [2].
Kind of unclear if the baseline carbon we could achieve will result in YoY decrease in temperature, given the feedback loops and it already raising temperatures every year.
If the research you mentioned is predicated on massive carbon takeback then I am highly suspicious. The public sector doesn't have the will, and the private sector doesn't have the incentive.
The exact way climate lag functions is still a very uncertain science. It is communicated, but it can't be communicated we because (unlike how Al Gore portrays it) the evidence around how long the lag is is still very uncertain.
I've done a lot of research into this because I am interested in climate lag.
Also people need to be presented with the consequences.
I still know a lot of people who genuinely believe it means slightly warmer summers. They think I'm a crazy person when I mention the never-ending storms and lack of drinking water.
Also just dropping this link here as I remember watching it at the time and thinking isn't it great we're not there yet:
Waitbutwhy put it well: “ 18,000 years ago, global temperatures were about 5ºC lower than the 20th century average. That was enough to put Canada, Scandinavia, and half of England and the US under a half a mile of ice”
That's not really helpful, when you think about it: Are the effects linear? How much ice would the US be under for temperatures of 1°C below 20th century average? A fifth of half a mile? No ice at all? And what does that imply for 2°C above? 0.2 miles of ice below the surface?
I prefer actual predictions of the effects, not bad analogies or useless data points.
Sure, it's unhelpful if you're trying to build a model or understand the science, but 90% of people aren't; and it's accurate –if unhelpful– analogies like this that get those people onboard.
Yeah, I don’t mean to be disparaging but the average person doesn’t really seem to grasp this beyond: it’ll be slightly warmer. And in a cold European climate, most people seem to think that’s a good thing. Warm summers are enjoyable when you’re swimming in the sea and having barbecues in the park.
Maybe there should be more focus on the frequency and intensity of storms, floods, extreme heatwaves, etc.
Although to be honest if this is lost on people up until now anyway, what hope is there?
A significant number of people just don’t seem to care.
What is the thesis here, that storms are a new hitherto unknown phenomenon that are radically outside the human experience?
There has never been an era where humans didn't have to put up with horrific storms. It took Pompeii 4-6m of volcanic ash to stop humans picking up the pieces and carrying on.
I don't think a focus on "oh there'll be more storms" is going to cut it. We have to be ready for storms anyway, having more of them doesn't change the risk calculations all that much in my mind. I'd rather pay the taxes for a big well air conditioned community centre to deal with heat waves. It'll be cheaper than what gets wasted on sporting venues.
The thesis is you trade up. This isn’t about an extra thunderstorm or two, big storms are expensive and disruptive. More tropical storms become hurricanes. Category 1 hurricanes hit 2 etc, and what would have been a 5 hits harder and stays a 5 for longer.
It’s about more frequent forced evacuations, overtopped levies, and massive cleanup etc. Rising sea levels aren’t just larger high tides their also larger tsunami. Beyond that you just get more extreme events like heat waves in the Arctic, longer drought mixed with extra flooding, more hail, mudslides, bigger blizzards etc.
We’re looking at 100’s of billions in damages per year not simply adding a few AC to community centers. Though you’re also likely to have higher cooling bills.
This bothers me less than water shortages and desertification, as well as extreme high temperatures making certain areas uninhabitable. That's what will really lead to suffering on a wide scale.
I guess major coastal cities around the world becoming part of the ocean is bad too.
It's not the increased natural "disasters" that will really mess things up. It's some places becoming entirely uninhabitable, permanently displacing many millions of people.
Most of the cost from weather events isn’t born by the federal government. Looking just at extreme 1+ billion dollar weather events over the last 20 years averages close to 100 billion per year in the US. “The total cost of these 298 events exceeds $1.975 trillion.”
However, things are getting worse. “The 1980–2020 annual average is 7.1 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2016–2020) is 16.2 events (CPI-adjusted).“ https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/
Of course not all of that is based on climate change, but smaller storms also cost money for everything from snow removal to lost crops, and preparation for storms costs even more.
It's difficult to care about long-term problems like climate change, when you are struggling to provide for your family in the present.
That's some of it, although some others seem to emotionally reject any information about climate change, which is more concerning (especially when those people end up in positions of political power).
This year has proven that climate change isn't just a long term problem.
Manhattan was engulfed in smoke from the west coast. People were flooded out of their homes in Western Europe. And heat waves across the west coast lead to dozens of deaths.
I'm probably missing things happening in Asian countries due to consuming western media.
We can look at our response to Covid as a model for how we might respond to climate change slapping us in the face. If that is a fair comparison, I am worried.
>I'm probably missing things happening in Asian countries due to consuming western media.
Tokyo Olympics, specifically the heat has been getting tons of coverage in western media. As a Tokyo resident I can't recall a summer this hot over the six years I've lived here. Floods in China have likewise received a fair bit of coverage. A few media outlets have managed to join the dots but they appear to be in a minority.
I don’t think our responses to COVID was only disaster. Big parts of them was disorganised and inconsistent. But in the whole they were also forceful, creating not only one, but several effective vaccines in a fraction of the time it usually takes, and making them available to billions of people. Also, suddenly, there are trillions of dollars made available to keep the economy afloat and reduce personal sufferings.
If the same scale of efforts were used to fight climate change, it wouldn’t be a problem.
Right now I’m just waiting for the natural disasters being big and frequent enough so people can’t deny what they see with their own eyes. After that I expect things to happen relatively fast. Maybe some oil and coal executives that have spend billions spewing lies will be found dangling from lamppost too, when people finally understand what happened. (I in no way condone the last part, it is merely meant as a way to express that some people probably will be very angry.)
> And in a cold European climate, most people seem to think that’s a good thing. Warm summers are enjoyable when you’re swimming in the sea and having barbecues in the park.
This is especially frustrating in the UK, where our existing warmth relies on the gulf stream; without it, our climate would be closer to others on the same latitude, like Canada.
The gulf stream is already being disrupted by meltwater from the arctic.
> This is especially frustrating in the UK, where our existing warmth relies on the gulf stream; without it, our climate would be closer to others on the same latitude, like Canada.
That is overstating the effect of the gulf stream. Canada and Russia have continental weather - they get cold because the interior doesn't have a huge heat sink in the form of an ocean surrounding it keeping it warmer (or cooler).
The UK is small and surrounded by ocean, with prevailing winds off that ocean. It isn't going to have a continental weather system if the gulf stream is disrupted, and it isn't going to suddenly have a climate as cold as canada. It may have unpredictable effects and may not be desirable, but we wouldn't suddenly be suffering from equivalently cold weather as the same latitude in Canada or Russia.
I can confirm that: I am from EU, far inland. Warmer climate seems like a good idea to me and rising sea level does not bother me at all.
Yes, I dislike storms, floods and droughts but these are thing we know and we are prepared. And it might be even cheaper to be better prepared for storms than to bear externalized costs of CO2 ... hard to estimate that.
We need some new technology, something very cheap, efficient and disruptive, that will force oil and gas to stay in the ground economically :-|
When I was a kid, that was what I believed in too. And that is what most people would say if they heard it for the first time.
What most people do not do while saying this statement is taking the context of the change in average temperatures around the world. What should be shown are graphics like this XKCD [1], which puts in perspective the average global temperatures in past 22,000 years. (spoiler: the last time Earth's average global temperature was 4 degrees below the average global temperature during the 1970s, the Earth was covered in sheets of ice). This is where we have well and truly allowed climate change deniers to take over and spread misinformation.
> They think I'm a crazy person when I mention the never-ending storms and lack of drinking water.
If you put it that way it's no wonder that they think you are crazy. Storms mean heavy rainfall that means more drinking water. What is your point, exactly?
In the late 80's I took a Botney class at Sonoma State.
The professor always talked about what 1 degree of warming will do to the oceans. He talked about it all the time. It was his worst fear.
I though he might be overreacting a bit at the time, but not now.
He was an interesting guy, and was far from politically correct.
I remember his stance on people/bikes who don't walk on designated paths. The whole, "You are ruining the indiginious fauna argument". Well his unpopular stance was the surviving plants will be stronger.
I will never forget the honest worry he had over a 1 degree change in temperature.
Yes. In first approximation, if we reach a global temperature increase of X degrees, the actual temperature increase that people will actually feel on land will be double that. Oceans are warming up much more slowly because they are so deep and trap all the heat.
An ice age is a global temperature difference of about 5 degrees. So we are going to have at least a third of an ice age’s temperature delta in heating, if we do everything right, and two thirds if we do business as usual.
Yes and I don't think people are going to wake up till everyone faces the consequences of climate change in their personal lives, which is quite honestly just sad.
There were people infected with Covid, in hospital, which still denied that Covid is real. Granted, those extremes are rare, but it shows how resilient in their beliefs deniers are. I think you are quite optimistic in thinking people will wake up.
Nevertheless, we don’t need everyone to accept the reality, for us to be able to take action as a civilization.
I don't think this is going to be enough. We see everyday people affected by the pandemic yet many of them still refuse to get vaccinated, keep distance or even wear a mask... They will just dismiss these consequences as "one offs"...
I believe that our best chance is to do as much as we cand right now and to induce a sense of climate awareness into the younger generations. Bring them up believing, well, actually knowing, that the climate must be respected and protected constantly.
It might sound harsh but we're lucky that large scale pandemic like this had comparatively lower death rate, the scenario might've been completely different if it was more fatal. So, I think people will wake up if there are harsher consequences in large of chunk of population in their personal lives than covid (this is pretty horrific that we as humans with all our knowledge and technology can't prevent this without immediate danger).
I know that there are going to be some people even in that case to deny climate change, but that would be significantly smaller minority compared to what it is right now in case of covid (at least I think so).
> I believe that our best chance is to do as much as we cand right now and to induce a sense of climate awareness into the younger generations. Bring them up believing, well, actually knowing, that the climate must be respected and protected constantly.
Well, definitely not North America because there it seems to be a mandate that you gotta freeze inside during summer. But trust me, you (still?) can live without AC.
Bucharest here. I'm fine at 25 but if you ask my wife she'll say that it's too cold. I do realize though that different people have different definition of comfort ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I agree that communicating the average seems very ineffective, and if you can carefully source better numbers to replace that measure, you would do well to post them here. People will be happy to copy those if you can show it to them.
I suspect it may not be trivial to find a measure for the widening that people intuitively understand, but it's worth trying.
1 or 2 just isn't a big number. How about using the number of Joules it would take to heat the Earth's atmosphere by 1 degree (Celcius, because we're not Philistines). It'll be an approximate (as is any measurement at planetary scale, eg 1 AU) but that's fine.
I see this a lot, too. "It's just 2 degrees" – what the hell is wrong with you? If your body temperature is 2-3 degrees above normal, you feel like absolute shit.
Likewise for atmospheric CO₂ concentrations; "it's just 0.04 %" – dude, you surely start noticing the effects of "just" 0.04% alcohol in your blood. Or hey, try cyanide.
But this isn't about body temperature or alcohol concentrations, so comparisons like that are not useful.
Look, I just had a glass of cool water, perhaps between five to ten degrees celsius. And I'm about to have a coffee. What's that, fifty degrees? With 5% to 10% milk concentration. And I think I'll be just fine. You don't?! What the hell is wrong with you?
If you want to explain why a two-degree increase in average temperature on the planet is dramatic, then you need to do better than compare it to something completely different.
No, you are underestimating the fact that people already understand how average temperature works, especially folks they have ever lived in a modest home with no AC.
If someone's home is 24-26C, and they turn on their oven to cook something for dinner, it will warm up their home, depending on the size of their home and ventilation.
Overall the average temperature increase won't be that much, but they localized temperature increase is very dramatic. Your apartment might not be hot, but that small area that is 200C is having a dramatic impact on everything else in your apartment.
Bonus points for extra comprehension if they have a basement or ground floor that has a substantially lower temperature. Again, the average temperature might be high, but it doesn't mean that it's hot everywhere in the house.
Understanding this isn't rocket science, and the only reason people are ignoring it is because people in power have a vested interest in keeping people ignorant of it by outright lying, obfuscating, or denying it.
A change in average temperature (either direction) does not imply extreme temperature swings. My current apartment is much warmer than my previous apartment! I'm not dying, and the extreme temperatures at the oven or the cool parts of the apartment are not any more extreme than they were before. And no, I haven't ever noticed my oven having a dramatic impact on everything else in my apartment. So, no, this kind of appeal to intuition about the average temperature in an apartment does not help explain why 2degC across the globe means more than just.. a bit warmer temperature. And most certainly comparing it to something like body temperature (which tends to be very steady compared to air temperature) does not help at all.
If my room was 2 degrees hotter right now, I would barely notice. So "2 degrees" by itself actually really does mean very little even to me - and I already know about the catastrophic effects that are going to come out of 2 degrees. I have to think about the sea level rise, increasing heat waves, more floods, more extreme weather, and so on for it to actually have an impact on even me.
You're right in a sense. I would certainly notice the change if it happened very quickly. However, I would quickly adapt and think it was just normal. (Mind you, my room is about 17 C at the moment.)
Certainly, if someone told me my room was going to be 2 degrees hotter permanently, I wouldn't think twice about it.
> However, I would quickly adapt and think it was just normal.
This definitely does not happen to me in these temperature ranges. 32 is too hot to function no matter how long I sit there. 30 is livable, but permanent discomfort. 28 is more or less ok, through I prefer lower temperatures.
You can feel how those differences affect your body.
If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you capture). The greatest hope I see for the future of humanity is the incentive for a brilliant mind/leader to become the next Bezos/Musk via climate change technology and to do that the incentives have to be setup to make it happen. I'm past hoping for people to do the right things en masse.
Believe it or not, western countries have reduced carbon emissions over the last ~15 years, in both absolute and per capita terms (despite a growing population). The only countries that are growing their carbon emissions are developing countries; mainly China, India and Russia.
China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita.
And it's not that China is producing emissions during manufacturing goods the entire world consumes. Take a look at "China: Consumption-based accounting: how do emissions compare when we adjust for trade?" and you'll see ~90% of their emissions are for consumption [2]
> Annual consumption-based emissions are domestic emissions adjusted for trade. If a country imports goods the CO₂ emissions needed to produce such goods are added to its domestic emissions; if it exports goods then this is subtracted.
2018 had 8.96 bn carbon tons in consumption out of a total of 9.96 bn total tons (~90% consumption)
The good news is that China is good at collective action. The bad news is, they're China.
> Believe it or not, western countries have reduced carbon emissions over the last ~15 years, in both absolute and per capita terms (despite a growing population). The only countries that are growing their carbon emissions are developing countries; mainly China, India and Russia.
One American is emitting 15 Indians worth of carbon emissions.
In terms of your claim that "western countries have reduced carbon emissions" it is important to realize that increasingly developed countries have been outsourcing most of their high polluting industries. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/1533104...
"During the early 2000s, these “emissions transfers” were growing at a stunning pace, nearly 11 percent per year, as more and more Western manufacturing was shifting to Asia. Factories making computers, electronics, apparel, and furniture would close in the US, open up in China, and then ship their products back home to the US. Americans got the goods; China got the pollution (and the jobs)."
> In terms of your claim that "western countries have reduced carbon emissions" it is important to realize that increasingly developed countries have been outsourcing most of their high polluting industries. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/1533104...
Now, isolate those Indians who are living in India with an American standard of living (big house, car(s), frequent flyer), and I'm sure emissions will look a little bit more even. There are probably a lot more people living in poverty and not emitting much in India than in the U.S., it doesn't mean the situation per capita is better for these poor people in India that might lack electricity and plumbing (but on paper are living carbon neutral). Another case where the median might be better than the mean.
Per-capita is irrelevant. Total CO2 is the problem. The US is on the right trajectory, and all signs point towards de-carbonization intensifying with technology maturing as we speak (EVs, offshore wind, solar price plummeting, new homes being better insulated + heat pumps).
Per capita and development status IS relevant. How can you expect nations like India who still have populations in poverty, still have huge rural-urban migration, to be able to focus as much on green energy than a mature nation like Europe USA?
The bigger humanitarian crisis in India is the sheer amount of poverty, not the impending climate crisis.
> One American is emitting 15 Indians worth of carbon emissions.
> it is important to realize that increasingly developed countries have been outsourcing most of their high polluting industries.
Neither of these points apply to the OP. They did not make the claim that the US emits more than India per capita. Secondly, your rebuttal of the point that "western countries have reduced carbon emissions" is not a rebuttal at all -- the OP specifically addressed this point in their comment if you read it. 90% of China's emission are directly caused by consumption, not manufacturing or export.
Of course the per-capita carbon footprint of the USA is unfairly high, and the result of a consumerist culture with poor urban planning, a legacy of racialized housing discrimination, etc. Although these are all very important concerns, they are ethical concerns. And the climate simply does not care about ethics.
The fact is that western countries are decreasing emissions and decarbonizing infrastructure, while China is still building coal plants for domestic consumption and attempting to export coal projects to poorer countries abroad in order to expand geopolitical soft power. If you believe that high levels of climate change have the potential to cause mass suffering around the world -- and particularly in the Global South -- then you must agree that the risk and harm involved in expanding coal outweighs the ethical concerns regarding per-capita carbon disparity.
That said, the Paris Accords specifically allow developing countries (China included) more time to lower their emissions compared to Western countries, precisely to account for inequitable per-capita carbon footprints. All western countries are on the right path -- the only question is if they're decarbonizing fast enough. The question for China is: will it even start decarbonizing soon enough?
China produces most of the world's solar panels and has amassed a wealth of research and development potential for renewable energy. The fact that they choose to continue building coal plants is inextricably tied up in political and geopolitical reasons.
As far as India goes, they have made a tremendous effort to meet their climate goals and the world owes them a huge debt.
The West lowered their CO2 production by moving all manufacturing to China, so this isn't too surprising. Also, China, like most of the world except for Afrika, has a shrinking population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate).
China needs to start building nuclear power plants and replace all those coal plants.
China is launching thorium-fueled molten-salt reactors starting with a 2-gigawatt prototype in September; they plan on building lots of smaller ones for production. I'm hoping this replaces coal pretty quickly.
China has 1.4 billion people. You would expect them to have about ~20% share of emissions in a perfectly fair world, instead they have 28%. Since 1751, they have emitted 12.5% of all emissions while having an even larger share of the global population.
The US has 315 million people. You would expect them to have 4.5% share of emissions in a fair world. Instead, they have 15%. Since 1751, they have emitted 25% of all emissions.
That doesn’t make the ”CO2 outsourcing” claim untrue. For the 1990-2008 period, the paper[1] cited as the source for the graph in question notes:
> Collectively, the net CO2 emission reduction of ∼2% (0.3 Gt CO2) in Annex B countries from 1990 to 2008 is much smaller than the additional net emission transfer of 1.2 Gt CO2 from non-Annex B to Annex B countries (equivalent to subtracting the net emission transfers in 2008 from 1990 in Fig. 2).
The situation may have improved since then[2], but already in 2008, China’s consumption share of its own emissions was 80%. This figure in itself neither proves or disproves whether developed nations have outsourced their emissions.
I just straight-out don't believe that. Maybe this is by some incredibly narrow definition of CO2 production, whereby if the produce of a factory is first shipped to a harbor by a Chinese company before leaving China, it counts as 'internal'?
This study is a bit old and I’m ignoring their “technology based” method because I don’t think the climate cares if a country would have emitted less if they had equivalent tech[*] , but it shows Chinas consumption based emissions is about 84% of its production based emissions. I.e., 84% of the emissions generated in China were for products/services consumed in China.
To your point, though, the article corroborates the emissions export claim. (The US is shown as a next exporter in emissions, with consumption based emissions ~13% higher than production emissions). Both points can be simultaneously true.
[*]for the sake of this discussion, at least. I can understand the relevance for creating policy though
Most of the world does not have a shrinking population. The birth rates may be below replacement, but populations are still growing as the age structure shifts. Japan has achieved true negative population growth.
Every country in the developed world plus the former Warsaw pact members have negative natural population growth. They're being propped up by immigrants, that's why they're populations are growing. For example France has about 67 million people but the number of natives is estimated to be around 50 million. Which would be about their population in 1971, 50 years ago. Similar story with the UK, Switzerland, the US, etc. In Japan it's just visible because they have negligible immigration plus even lower birth rates.
I've counted. 235 countries and territories. 30 are downright decreasing.
Plus:
> As of 2010, about 48% (3.3 billion people) of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility.[2] Nonetheless most of these countries still have growing populations due to immigration, population momentum and increase of the life expectancy
That was back in 2010 and fertility rates are only going down plus Covid has accelerated this so I'm willing to bet real money 50%+ of the world's population is living in countries with net natural population loss due to low fertility rates.
These things are very localized, look at the world map on that page to see where this growth is concentrated.
It isn't all bad. The aging population will have to be supported by fewer people, which is obviously a problem, and one that can really only be solved by asking the elderly to work to a greater age.
On the flip side, Japan has incredibly dense cities with tiny houses. As the population drops to half its current level there will also be more space for living decently, with bigger houses, more green spaces, etc. It's not at all impossible that in such a situation, women may choose to have more children again.
That's at best a temporary situation though. If births are below replacement rate, at some point the population will also drop. People aren't going to age indefinitely.
The blue countries are below replacement rate, and represent most of the world. Green countries are at replacement rate. The rest is above, and are all in Africa except for Afghanistan and Iraq.
Not sure what your point is here, but whatever it may be, I feel sure it is not helpful wrt to climate policy in the world's largest emitter. If you have some other axe to grind, maybe take it elsewhere.
China is dominant in industries that are currently significant in renewables. Especially solar PV. They already have the largest EV fleet, including buses.
The next industry to really matter will be energy storage. China is positioning to dominate in batteries too. If they do, good luck to them. Not because I love everything about China, but because somebody needs to scale this and if China does, then that's good for energy transition.
>> they have a growing population
Currently about +0.3% per annum. Which puts them around the lower 30th percentile of countries by population growth.
China is certainly large, but it is not growing much and should soon be shrinking.
> The only countries that are growing their carbon emissions are developing countries; mainly China, India and Russia
Developed nations have polluted the planet for decades, with highest rates of energy consumption per capita. They have failed to build systems and processess that enables sustainable living. They have lived their excess and now lecture the world that their "90% of emissions are from consumption"
One group of people have taken the world for granted. Now want everyone else to bear the cost. Typical.
It's not lecturing. It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. Even if emissions went to zero, it would only push the timeline back a few years
This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be on preventing that to happen rather than Monday morning quarterbacking the last 100 years of industrialization?
I agree with you, and to add to your remarks, I suspect if most first world countries implemented a sufficiently strict border adjustment ("carbon tariff") for trade with China, etc it would probably do quite a lot to motivate developed nations to improve as well.
Anyway, I find the criticisms of the West to be both ignorant and tiring. Tiring because the "blame the West for everything" meme is so worn out and ignorant because there's a pretty stark difference between pioneering industrialization centuries before mature climate science and China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences.
The US emits about twice the CO2 per year as India, 3x Russia, 4x Japan, 6x Germany, 7x South Korea, 8x Canada, 10x Mexico, 12x Australia, 13x UK, 14x France, and 18x Taiwan.
By your logic then shouldn't most first world countries also implement a strict carbon tariff on the US?
Maybe they should. But I can't help but comment that you're abusing statistics here. Smaller population countries like Canada and Australia pollute more per capita than the US. Also, the carbon tariff should ideally be applied on an activity-specific basis, not at the national level.
> But I can't help but comment that you're abusing statistics here.
Actually, that was kind of the point. For problems dealing with scarce resources that are shared planet wide (such as the atmosphere or oceans) any fair system to determine how those resources are allocated needs to take into account population, but enforcement of any such allocation has to be done by country. The atmosphere doesn't care about our arbitrary political boundaries, but for enforcement they matter.
Too many people make the mistake of thinking that both enforcement and allocation should be by country.
> Smaller population countries like Canada and Australia pollute more per capita than the US.
Australia does indeed emit more per capita than the US, about 4% more. Canada emits about 4% less. The only countries ahead of the US per capita besides Australia are Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago, Kuwait, Brunei, Bahrain, UAE, New Caledonia, the Dutch part of Sint Maarten, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan.
South Korea is about 25% less. Taiwan and Russia are about 30% less than the US per capita. Germany and Japan are about 40% less. The UK and France are about 65% less. Mexico around 72% less. (China is about 55% less).
> Also, the carbon tariff should ideally be applied on an activity-specific basis, not at the national level.
Correct. The way this would probably best be handled if we had a world government would be a revenue neutral carbon tax on everything. But we don't, so we have to cobble together something else.
I don’t think this makes sense because American productivity depends so much on pollution outsourced to countries like India. For example, if US cars are assembled “greenly” from components that are manufactured dirtily, then it hardly seems meaningful to brag that America’s productivity is “greener”. And do bear in mind that I’m not one of the folks who are determined to make the US out to be the bad guy in every thread.
We don't export a lot of electricity. We do export a decent amount of agriculture, but my understanding is we don't export a ton of meat - which is where the majority of the carbon comes from.
Yes, I'm fully on board with that. No country should enjoy a competitive advantage because they externalize costs onto the environment. I don't think the US is a particularly grievous culprit on the global stage, but if everyone implements fair border adjustments then it's moot.
A good amount of emissions from China go into the goods produced for western countries (such as the U.S.). The pollution has been outsourced and externalized.
That's exactly the point of a border adjustment. China out-competes with clean manufacturing because it is more willing to pollute. Western countries should tax goods that are manufactured in polluting countries so they don't enjoy a competitive advantage over clean alternatives. This is probably "necessary but insufficient" sort of thing, but it solves the problem you're highlighting.
> But the US is worse when it comes to CO2 emmited per capita. That means that US should also be taxed.
China - as all nations - has a responsibility based on its population scale (ie its total emissions output), not just its per capita output. The total output matters far more than per capita, as we're dealing with a matter of planetary survival, not whether it's fair that Monaco has higher emissions output per capita than China.
Other nations are not responsible for China having those 1.4 billion people. China bears that responsibility. Other nations are obviously not responsible for the US having its per capita emissions output, either.
Estonia having 4x the per capita emissions output of the US wouldn't pose a terminal risk for the planet. And sure, maybe it's fair to argue a tax to incentivize per capita behavior of high per capita emissions nations. And what to do about China's total output risk, given it's going to destroy the planet (whereas smaller nations do not pose that risk)? The logical thing would be to apply taxes to both, in a way the keeps the planet from getting destroyed: it means China can never be allowed to have parity with smaller nations that have high per capita outputs.
China, with its 1.4 billion people, would pose a terminal risk for the globe if it reaches per capita emissions output parity with the US (actually it's already approaching that risk now, and it's merely half way to parity). Taxes don't mean much if half the planet is wrecked. China has a different responsibility than Estonia does given China can all by itself destroy the world with its emissions. I use Estonia merely as an example to highlight the point, very obviously the US has a responsibility as well based on its scale. Sure, we can focus a tax in on Estonia in that case, however it's by far not our most pressing matter.
China going from ~28% of global emissions to ~45%, is a very pressing matter. The globe can't afford China to increase at all at this point.
If a country had four billion people, it similarly wouldn't be reasonable for it to reach emissions parity with the US: it would kill everyone in doing so.
The equation of fairness must also consider the scale of the threat being posed, as it's also not fair if one outsized population nation gets to destroy the planet because it has 1.4 billion people. One can live in fantasy (where fairness means every nation gets equal emissions output per capita), or live in reality. In reality it matters how many people you have and what their per capita emissions are. Reality is course the dimension where we can all die from the emissions output of a nation the scale of China.
What matters is fantasy when it isn't politically feasible. The only consensus for an emissions regulatory framework is going to be based on per capita. Growing populous countries with the most say will never agree to anything else which is counter to their interests, i.e. China could propose a framework based on de-growth since the PRC population is set to decline to less than 1B by the end of the century, but western countries that rely on growth via immigration would never be up for it even if ultimately de-growth is the more pragmatic solution. Reality is also going to be that emission standards will be based on historic per capita emissions since developing countries will need to catch up on new infra emissions which western nations hide in historic emission data. Reality is global warming is less politically existential than poverty and development for domestic politics for many countries, as long as it kills others more than yourself, even if it ultimately kills everyone. This highlights the even more unpalatable reality that there are climate change winners and losers.
Climate change discussions remind me of covid19 policy wank and panic control but stretched out over decades. Many of us were fairly confident covid19 was going to be a pandemic we’ll have to live with, that’s just reality when most of the world do not have capability to respond properly. There’s a lot of interventions and technologies leading countries can export to mitigate, but ultimately everyone has to come to an understanding that we can’t stop climate change due to political realities.
We've known the consequences since at least the 70s. Industry has done everything they could to cover it up and propagandize the population into believing otherwise.
> China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences
That if they didn't their population would remain poor, and lacking access to healthcare, food, and water? And in an even worse situation when climate change finally hit? Are you suggesting that if China hadn't concentrated on development, the developed countries would be currently falling over themselves to fix the problem?
My recommendation which China is already seems to be taking is to go for nuclear power and solar in that order. Maybe add some hydropower to the mix but they have a plenty of it.
The chief problem is that they're not ramping up nuclear quickly enough, and it's hard to deploy in desert west of the country.
And thanks to our persistent self-sabotage there's civil unrest related to these power plants.
The nuclear is to be used to ramp production of solar PV and batteries cleanly, then decommissioned. Timeframe would be 25 years.
Decommissioning of current old reactors is a problem already but there's really no alternative - ramping solar PV with standard energy sources would be bad. A lot of reactors are expected to shut down by 2025...
You framed Chinese development as compassion for Chinese citizens. I pointed out that the Chinese government doesn't much care about the welfare of its citizens.
I don't think I said "compassion" anywhere. But today they do obviously care about having an economically strong nation with a good standard of living. It's what will help keep them in power.
We're not talking about today, we're not just talking about the last ~50+ years. And moreover, even today they are pretty happy infringing on many other rights of their citizens.
Politicization threw a wrench into COVID and it’s doing the same to climate change. Years of media gaslighting, fear mongering, and authoritarian tactics have left us in a social reality where nobody cares any longer what the talking heads in the media or shouting on social media have to say.
I would argue that the problem is that we care far to much about what the talking heads in the media and the shouting on social media. That's the source of misinformation and inaction on climate change.
This may be country dependent. In the US, the Supreme Court has been clear that there is no hate speech limitation to the 1st amendment, for example. But there are limits to lying, as in perjury and libel cases.
It's difficult to judge speech even by contemporary standards. There tend to be high bars for bad speech, clearly harmful, E.G. fire in a crowd when there isn't fire.
How easy is it to prove something is a lie, rather than a very selective viewpoint or opinion? What if someone chooses to believe a set of sources biased to their preferred outcome?
We should also be lucky to encounter and hopefully have laws against hate speech; the slippery slope stuff that's subjectively icky but not quite across that line is more insidious.
> It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels.
Sure there is. We've had two experiments where we saw this happen:
April 2020 - for a very short time when Western economies took a major hit, emissions dipped quite substantially.
In 2008 - The global financial crisis, which did impact the world, started in the US and again caused on of the only major notable dips in emissions we've seen.
It's very clear that US consumption and economic activity is directly tied to GHG emissions globally. If just the US had decided to remain in our April 2020 depressed economic state, and cooled from there, we would have seen a downward trend in emissions.
Maybe you would argue that economic shrinking is not "realistic" (in which case we are most certainly doomed, unless we run out of fossil fuels before we cross certain boundaries). The common argument is people won't tolerate a radical change in lifestyles... but that change is coming either way. However extreme the changes need to prevent catastrophic climate change, they are certainly less extreme then letting climate change run it's course.
I personally believe we will not chose this path, but don't pretend that this path doesn't exist. As the center of the global economy the United States fully has the capability to reduce global emissions.
Alternatively if we run into a economic crisis of unprecedented scale, which looks reasonably possible, we'll also see reduction in emissions without having to worry about "choosing" this path.
> It's very clear that US consumption and economic activity is directly tied to GHG emissions globally.
This is true today, but it will not be true in the future.
In the past and today, it was the contention both of fossil fuel interests and of degrowthers that emissions and economic activity are inseparable.
However, we are showing that that's not true. If you look back since 2008, sure, the big economic contractions showed big drops in emissions. But also, with economic expansion, we are lowering emissions, just at a lower rate.
And in fact, the true decoupling of GHG and GDP will involve a spectacular amount of economic activity. A huge number of jobs for everything from the obvious like deploying wind turbines and batteries and solar panels and expanding grid distribution and transmission, to less obvious stuff like insulating homes and installing heat pumps in place of natural gas.
There is another path, with massive economic growth, that results in complete decoupling of GHG and GDP. This is the easiest path in terms of lifestyle changes, but the most difficult path in terms of upsetting entrenched powerful interests.
> There is another path, with massive economic growth, that results in complete decoupling of GHG and GDP. This is the easiest path in terms of lifestyle changes, but the most difficult path in terms of upsetting entrenched powerful interests.
People have been fantasizing about this my entire life and all we've seen in more environmental destruction, and accelerated GHG emissions. I remember hearing things like this all the time in 2006 when an Inconvenient Truth was big. At the time I thought "that sounds reasonable and the only test will be time".
Here we are, likely already past some crucial boundary conditions with no immediate signs that we'll achieve any of the new targets we have set (since we've already missed all the old ones).
> This is true today, but it will not be true in the future.
How much time do you think we have? In 2000 maybe this was a reasonable argument, but even if emissions dropped to zero today we still have already signed up for plenty of climate change.
Despite vigorous GDP growth, which is showing the decoupling of GDP and emissions. (Total US emissions have also dropped over the past 15 years, but I am having trouble finding a clean graph of that quickly)
I do not believe, and scientists do not believe, that we are past help, or that we have locked in so much change that everything is hopeless. See, for example, this interview:
We know that RCP8.5 isn't going to happen. But we also know that our actions now have big big consequences.
We have a huge opportunity to change our future, right now. That window of opportunity is closing quickly.
Everything we do it reduce emissions now will make the future a much much better place. We really do have the opportunity to change our behavior and keep a planet that is as welcoming to us as it is today.
If you honestly don't believe this, I suggest skimming the (massive) SR15 report form the IPCC. It's getting out of date in terms of the technology available today that wasn't when it was written, but it should provide you with a lot of hope and a lot of reason to take action now:
Because we have continually outsourced our emissions to China while still reaping the financial benefits of expoiting resources in those countries. I know there are studies that try to account for this but they still fail to look at the bigger picture of resources we have outsourced.
Cheap and large scale manufacturing in China has meant enormous benefits for the US economy. We see a decoupling of GDP and energy because we are playing tricks with accounting.
> We really do have the opportunity to change our behavior and keep a planet that is as welcoming to us as it is today.
First we are absolutely locked into increasing global warming from emissions, so we have without question given up on a planet as welcoming as today.
We do have an opportunity to change our behavior, I have repeatedly said that, but that means actually reducing fossil fuel usage, globally and immediately.
As I have said, the US can reduce global emissions because we have seen the US do this twice: April 2020 and 2008.
> a lot of hope and a lot of reason to take action now
There's reason to take action now, but since you won't even accept the notion that you might have to reduce your standard of living, at least until renewables catch up again, means we are not going to change our path.
I had these exact conversations in 2006, and very similar ones in the 1990s (though people were less sure of the extreme risks then). The IPCC reports have been for years considered by many to be far too optimistic, and again those people have been proven correct over and over again (until recently they didn't consider positive feed backs and also assume scalable CCS).
At what point would you admit you are wrong? I'll admit I'm wrong if we see three years of decreasing global emissions starting this year and reduced global emissions by 20% in the next 5 years. These aren't enough to get us to our required goals, but if I see this I'll still be shocked and admit I've been too skeptical. Currently I believe this would only happen with a catastrophic financial crisis (which may be the only way we can avoid climate catastrophe).
> Because we have continually outsourced our emissions to China while still reaping the financial benefits of expoiting resources in those countries.
That's simply not true. The chart I linked is CO2 accounting based on consumption, not US production, it takes into account Chinese emissions for US consumption.
> There's reason to take action now, but since you won't even accept the notion that you might have to reduce your standard of living,
Sorry, what? What do you know about what I want to do? My preferred life would be considered a "reduced standard of living" to many Americans, because I want to live car-free in a walkable neighborhood.
> At what point will you admit you are wrong?
When there's evidence that a position I have taken is wrong. Start sending me data!!
Will you admit that emissions have decreased, even accounting for moving production to China? Will you admit that we have cleaner energy sources ready to deploy that will replace fossil fuels, if we choose to do so? Will you admit that we can develop alternatives to industrial processes that generate non-fossil-fuel emissions? Will you admit that we can switch disastrous land use policies that reduce the ability of the ecosystem to sequester CO2?
These are all possible without a drastic reduction in the quality of life. The question is how quickly we can make that transition. At this stage in the game, nihilism is as bad as denialism. We need to make drastic drastic change, and I am doing so in my personal life, but personal action is no substitute for changing the system.
In response to this point, which is frequently brought up:
> The chart I linked is CO2 accounting based on consumption, not US production, it takes into account Chinese emissions for US consumption.
While it is certainly the case that measuring consumption is much better than measuring production, it fails to account for a lot emissions.
For example in the manufacture of solar PV, the solar panels themselves are counted, but since the companies manufacturing and processing the silicon need for these are in China selling to other Chinese companies, that is not counted even though all those fossil fuels used are used exclusively for the benefit of American companies.
That doesn't even address the issue of US companies bringing in capital for various foreign investments. If VCs make money in a Chinese company and then reinvest in your startup that money in our economy was generated with fossil fuels.
The best proxy to GHG emissions is still dollars, both on individual and nation state levels.
> Will you admit that we have cleaner energy sources ready to deploy that will replace fossil fuels, if we choose to do so?
This is not an issue of willing. "Green" energy has only been used to supplement fossil fuel usage.
We are building renewables as fast as we can and it's not enough because so far it's not replacing anything.
The only way to reduced GHG emission is to reduce fossil fuel usage, immediately. We've made tremendous expansion of renewable energy and it has not touched fossil fuel usage. If we stop fossil fuel usage today, or drastically reduce it, we will experience incredible global economic pangs.
> nihilism is as bad as denialism
There is an important form of Nihilism that many existentialists talk about which is the nihilism of pretending your action had meaning. Putting on a tie and going to work, pretending that work is real and meaningful when you know that ultimately your life is meaningless.
There's a great irony that if everyone collectively agreed we are doomed, our economic activity and emissions would likely also cool down. Our frenzied consumer activity is driven by an ideology that says tomorrow will always be better. If we let go of that we likely would live more relaxed lives in the developed world.
And, again, all I am saying is the only way to reduce GHG is to globally reduce emissions and we are not doing that at all. You can claim that the US is somehow separate from China's emissions, but you can see a global dip in emissions in 2008. I can think of no better experiment on the interconnected nature of emissions than to see how a housing crisis in the US becomes a global economic down turn which sees the most promising drop in emissions we have ever seen.
Arguably the only other solution is accelerationism, where we push economic systems to collapse faster... which is maybe what you're really going for.
> For example in the manufacture of solar PV, the solar panels themselves are counted, but since the companies manufacturing and processing the silicon need for these are in China selling to other Chinese companies, that is not counted even though all those fossil fuels used are used exclusively for the benefit of American companies.
This is simply inaccurate. US consumption CO2 numbers account for US purchase of solar panels.
Though I appreciate that there are some link here, you are still making backwards-looking statements rather than stating limitations about what could be. For example, this link:
Is of what was in terms of energy. Will it be that way in the future? Only if we let corruption and entrenched fossil fuel interests prevent cheaper options from being deployed.
Renewable expansion is just barely getting started. To declare "game over" already is fatalism and not founded by any sort of data.
Dollars are not CO2 emissions. CO2 is emissions. Our economic systems are constructed by law and convention, and technology is completely changeable.
I see lots of feelings and emotions in your post about frenzy, but we need all that frenzy. We need action and change, desperately. Economic collapse will not save us, because emitting 25% of our current emissions is not good enough.
The only solution is compete transition of the economy in all sectors. Massive change. I say get on board or get out of the way.
> US consumption CO2 numbers account for US purchase of solar panels.
That's what I said, but they don't account for the manufacture of raw materials produced and sold in China to aid in the manufacture of these panels, nor of the associated infrastructure causes. They therefore underestimate the export co2.
> Is of what was in terms of energy. Will it be that way in the future? Only if we let corruption and entrenched fossil fuel interests prevent cheaper options from being deployed.
Energy is effectively the same as economic activity. You are correct that if we could magically replace all of the fossil fuel usage with renewables we would be at zero emissions. But again, all sources of energy production have been rising.
> Dollars are not CO2 emissions. CO2 is emissions. Our economic systems are constructed by law and convention, and technology is completely changeable.
Again you are correct that dollars are not CO2 emissions, but dollars are a good proxy for energy (read Smil's Energy and Civilization if you need a reference for that), and currently the vast majority of our energy needs are met with CO2 emitting fuel sources.
> The only solution is compete transition of the economy in all sectors. Massive change. I say get on board or get out of the way.
Do you really not see the contradiction regarding the problem at hand and your solution? A complete transition of the economy is a incredibly destructive, insanely energy intensive process. Unless energy was already mostly renewable such a solution will only lead to the problem being worse.
I guess I'll get out of the way since this conversation has only further convinced me of how bleak our situation is.
> And, again, all I am saying is the only way to reduce GHG is to globally reduce emissions and we are not doing that at all. You can claim that the US is somehow separate from China's emissions, but you can see a global dip in emissions in 2008. I can think of no better experiment on the interconnected nature of emissions than to see how a housing crisis in the US becomes a global economic down turn which sees the most promising drop in emissions we have ever seen.
The underlying phenomenon here is not economic activity. It's that a decrease in economic activity is a proxy for a decrease in things such as pleasure transport, heating/cooling, food consumption, and other things. Decoupling these activities from emissions is what this entire thread is talking about; for example, taking a train and walking for a vacation requires much fewer emissions than flying to your destination and renting a car. It may be in vogue in environmental circles to decry growth and capitalism as two factors behind emissions, but there's nothing that precludes growth or capitalism to transition into a new lower-power regime. The problem has nothing to do with the economic systems as much as it has to do with entrenched economic actors that continue to aggressively lobby governments to convince them _not_ to pass the regulations necessary to spur innovation to decrease emissions.
To leave with a pithy saying: There's two ways to quiet a crowded room, either ask everyone to speak quietly or ask everyone to leave. Halting growth is similar to the latter option, decreasing emissions is similar to the former.
> Decoupling these activities from emissions is what this entire thread is talking about;
And my entire point, is that after 30+ years of trying to reduce emissions by adding renewables we have failed to see this happen. There is no evidence that we are getting any closer now. If any global fossil fuel usage had decline, we could say it might be being replaced with renewables, but all evidence we have shows that renewables just supplement our existing and growing needs for energy.
To go with your metaphor, we've been asking everyone to be quiet for 30+ years and the room is getting louder. If we need that room quiet or we'll get kicked out of the house for good, it's getting time to ask people to leave.
If it's this difficult to get folks to transition to lower energy-use regimes, I think it would be even more difficult to get folks to abandon growth-based economics. Unless the worst happens and our economic systems collapse due to climate events. That's what I would consider the worst case, though.
What does "growth based" economics even mean? I think it's an incoherent concept, and have never gotten the same answer from two different people on the matter. Growth of GDP? Growth of energy use? Growth of carbon emissions? Growth of population? These different types of "growth" get substituted in, silently, to move an argument forward, but if one looks at details and tries to be specific, everything falls apart.
I agree with you. In my last post I'm using "growth based" to represent the status quo, nothing more (I'm not trying to say anything about why it is growth based.) If I were writing more carefully I should have simply called it out as the status quo instead of calling it "growth based".
We haven't spent 30 years trying to reduce emissions with renewables, we've spent 3 years doing pilot projects to drive down their costs.
And we are, today, at the point where we can deploy them. Around 2016-2018, we passed an economic inflection point for new energy deployments, and in 2023 we will have been through the five year periods over which utilities typically plan, and hopefully we will have sued enough of them to force use of accurate and up to date data in their economic planning models.
Only then will we actually start to try to use renewables to decrease emissions in any sort of full force.
And with the tiny trial balloons up until now, and via increased energy efficiency, we have been increasing GDP per CO2 for years, despite your refusal to believe the data.
These are basic facts. If your conclusions requires rejecting basic facts, then the conclusions are not sound.
Zero is not the limit, emissions can go negative. India has said it already [1]
> Developed nations should not talk about Net Zero, but focus on removing carbon from the atmosphere they add. “Net negative is what they need to talk about,” Singh said.
No emissions can't go negative. It doesn't matter what India says. That's a comically unrealistic claim, especially given we're heading to 10 billion people.
India, China and Africa's emissions expansion over the coming decades guarantee that if the popular climate scientist claims are correct, there is only a dire outcome possible at this point. You can take the developed countries to zero and the world (as we know it) still ends the same.
The developed countries - which it's important to note are a small, nearly contracting minority share of global population - are never going to zero (much less negative). So the realistic scenario is actually far worse than any fantasy zero scenario would indicate.
Just China and India alone will be enough to destroy the planet when it comes to emissions. In the next three decades, their emissions will not contract, they will expand massively. The developed countries as a whole will struggle to significantly reduce their emissions from where they are now. And that's that, the end.
Everything else about how developed nations should immediately cut back while eg China pushes the planet off a cliff, is nothing more than virtue signaling on the way to the graveyard.
And if you ask the virtue signalers for math to show how China can keep rapidly expanding its emissions and everything is going to work out fine, they will immediately turn tail and run away as fast as they can, or otherwise desperately change the subject. I've been trying for years to get anyone to demonstrate how China can continue to expand so fast that it ends up having 3x or 4x the emissions of the US, and how that can be defeated as a problem. Nobody dares to engage the actual conversation, because they know what it means, they know the virtue signaling premise (the world can still be saved, if only the developed countries fall on the sword) is a giant lie.
The virtue signaling fake-save-the-world-go-to-zero premise is so laughably absurd at this point, that what we're going to see next will be extraordinary fantasy elements come into play. They'll start talking about increasingly dumb solutions, like that we'll magically warp China's emissions away using quantum AI buzz-word buzz-word buzz-word technology (and we'll do it within just a few decades). The years will keep sliding by, China's emissions will keep soaring higher, the save-the-world fantasy ideas will keep getting dumber.
If the climate scientists are right, the outcome is already set, short of utilizing a fantasy premise to get to zero or negative net for the entire globe very rapidly (none of which is feasible).
A wildly optimistic outcome would be for the developed nations overall to cut emissions by 1/3 in the next ~30 years. That's not going to happen, but let's do a little bit of pretending for fun. China is set to fill that in all by itself over those decades. Now add in the rest of the developing world and three billion additional people hungry for an affluent lifestyle.
But one might say: I'm not proposing any solutions! That's right, there aren't any. Unless China can be convinced (they can't be, see: coal power plant construction) to immediately stop its emissions climb, while everybody else in the developing world also immediately gives up chasing a first world lifestyle (which I also don't fault them for in the least, they should pursue that) and combined with somehow that magically the developed world instantly slashes its emissions output by an impossible amount in the span of a few decades. All of those things has to happen, you need three fantasy outcomes to happen simultaneously to avoid the dire outcome.
Unlike the climate hypocrites on both sides, I'm not asking the developing nations to not seek a developed lifestyle (as a solution). I'm not saying they should fall on the sword either. I'm not asking them to want anything less than what developed nations want. I'm recognizing reality for what it is: there is no positive outcome possible, if the climate scientists are right about their increasingly dire models.
I don't understand this. Your claim is that it's literally impossible to complete industrialization with non-polluting technologies? Why? Is there something inherent to the energy that fossil fuels provide beyond their cost and ease of access?
> they know the virtue signaling premise (the world can still be saved, if only the developed countries fall on the sword) is a giant lie.
If it's cost alone, the answer is straightforward, especially as your premise already includes the developed world "falling on its sword": countries that polluted their way through industrialization heavily subsidize the clean version of that economic process in countries that have yet to do so.
This is obviously devilishly complicated from a geopolitical perspective, and I'm not necessarily recommending it. But the idea that the developed world has no levers to pull here is nonsense.
If it comes to it, if we overcome the greedy capitalist and nationalistic, imperialistic hangups, we could do it at cost in our best self interest to educate and industrialize the global south cleanly. Prevents war there, poverty, hunger and all sorts of refugee problems.
With their own hands, them owning the fruits of their labor.
My optimistic side agree with you but my inner cynic thinks that’s equivalent to saying “if we just get past our human hangups we could do it”. While being technically true, it’s hard to see a likely path given the current state of human affairs.
Twitter would also stop being a cesspool and start betting a forum of enlightened discourse if we could just put aside out psychological flaws but I’m not holding my breath for that, either.
> It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels.
There is one scenario, which isn’t probable. That is for western countries to pay a retrospective “sin” tax that gets distributed to other countries to fund climate action programs with better oversight. After all, if some countries benefited a lot from polluting in the past, it would be fair to expect them to pay up too.
>After all, if some countries benefited a lot from polluting in the past, it would be fair to expect them to pay up too.
Largely the entire globe has benefited from the industrial revolution. If the west is obligated to pay a retrospective sin tax, does the west also then jack up the prices on every technology that comes from that development when exporting to developing countries? For example, should students from developing countries get to come to the US and learn the latest knowledge and take that home and then jumping their country forward through decades of technology research? Should every immigrant into western countries pay huge fees to buy into the modern world, since they are not descended from those who are paying the sin taxes?
Also, do these sin taxes require that developing countries that receive these fund then guarantee not to emit CO2?
I disagree. Imagine everything that goes into the manufacture of an Apple M1 SoC. You have to get the raw materials, the design tools, the invention of the transistor, likely hundreds of thousands of hours, if not millions of hours, of engineering time to go from vacuum tubes, to transistors, to fab design, to computer science, to chip design, etc. Sure, if you isolate just the inventions along the path from the invention of fire to Apple selling their M1 based systems, it seems modest. But you can't just arbitrarily claim that X invention happened in the absence of the world in which it was invented.
During the industrial revolution there were no clean alternatives and there wasn't a clear understanding of the consequences. While indirect, modern developing nations greatly benefit from the existence of modern technologies developed by those who have already gone through this, and they are capable of learning from the mistakes of the west.
I really think the idea, that as a species, we need to redo the entirety of the industrial revolution individually for every nation is completely ridiculous. It would be one thing if it was contextualized as just infrastructure ramp up, but that's not the reality of this. (also why is China, the worlds second largest economy, always bundled in with developing nations?)
> That is for western countries to pay a retrospective “sin” tax that gets distributed to other countries to fund climate action programs with better oversight
This line of thought is doomed for failure, geopolitical "oversight" doesn't mean anything, that money won't go to productive climate action programs, no matter how much people want them too. In my mind the only pragmatic way the west can influence developing nations CO2 output is by subsidizing clean energy technologies to be more competitive in an international market, or at least something to that effect.
Western countries can use some of the wealth they made by getting us into this situation in the first place [1] to pay for green energy projects in developing countries, so developing countries can develop without having to go the same massive CO2 emitting route that Western countries took.
[1] CO2 stays in the atmosphere for several hundred years or more. The US is the source of 25% of what is in there now, and the EU-28 another 22%.
Wealth is not gobs of gold that Western countries sit on. Wealth is the ability to produce energy and turn it into creature's comforts, on a massive scale.
There is no development without massive growth in energy consumption. Please point to a single developed country on this Earth that has CO2 emissions per capita smaller than what Paris accords call for, which, depending on the source, is somewhere between 1.5-2.5 CO2 t/year/capita.
To limit emissions all countries must converge to a low energy lifestyle. There is no more developing for poor countries, and there is harsh un-developing for erst rich countries.
then Western countries subsidizing developing countries sustainable energy should be on the table. If it is purely to stop climate change, and western countries have unfairly exploited the world for centuries, then they should share a larger portion of the burden of a solution
I think this is one thing that frustrates me about these conversations, they are still very Americentric. What matters is that we reduce atmospheric CO2. Every major country has the technical and economic means to invest and innovate on clean technology and CCS systems (because honestly we need negative production of CO2, not zero). You can't just rely on America to save everyone on the planet. I don't care if it comes from China, Germany, France, Australia, India, or wherever. It just matters that it gets done. We already know who's to blame. It's like a fire that's started and we're arguing about who's job it is to put out. This isn't spilt milk. The longer we wait the more damage is done and with compounding interest. We can talk about blame and solve the issue but this can't just dominate the conversation. Everyone needs to fix the issue. Full stop. This is because everyone is in danger.
I don't think the suggestion is that developing countries should get to pollute their way into modernity the way the West did. As you point out, the planet won't care whether the extra pollution comes from a place of historical "fairness". But acknowledgement of the fairness element here does imply a straightforward (though far from simple) solution: massive transfers from those who've already dumped their pollutants into the atmosphere to those who are still in the development phase where they need to. Ignoring geopolitical realities and playing the global benevolent optimizer for a minute, this is a pretty clear-cut way to make sure that the externalities and benefits of pollution-driven development are borne evenly, while not ignoring the realities of the planet's response to pollution.
I'm not necessarily endorsing this policy. Just pointing out that the dichotomy you're setting up is a false one.
> If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be on preventing that to happen rather than Monday morning quarterbacking the last 100 years of industrialization?
You have more responsibility for what you have agency to actually do. We have more ability to lower our emissions than to lower China's.
Beyond that, per-capita they still emit much less and may naturally level off to a level similar to ours depending on coal/gas mix in generation, etc. We don't need to focus only on right handed people's emissions just because left-handed people only emit 10% as much carbon in aggregate. Can you imagine a big campaign saying left-handed people should do anything they want, dump CFCs into the air etc., until right-handed people get their act together and achieve less or equal overall impact as left-handed people, and that only then it is ok to consider left-handed people?
> It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries
In my experience it's more about justifying the continued unfettered use of fossil fuels to drive progress in developing nations. Sure, it sounds like 1st world blaming, but I think it's more about defending the right of poorer peoples to advance their standard of living in the near term.
I'm not agreeing with it or defending it, but when I've encountered it in real life that is how it came across.
Going carbon negative unfortunately for us is very energy intensive. (The pie in the sky chemical ways to attack it such as simulating geology are likely bunk or too slow.)
So intensive that we could be lacking even uranium to do it in a century barring some huge discoveries (biotech, or maybe nanotechnology) or improvements in fusion power.
Can't do it on renewables in the reasonable timeframe - we don't have the production for it and that scale of production will certainly output more GHG.
So yeah, it's a bit hard to attack. Surviving the warming is just as tricky.
Current CCS rates are about $60/ton. Given that each PPM represents about 8 billion tons of atmospheric CO2, that's $480B for each PPM reduction. Obviously not great.
But what if that number drops to $30 per ton? $10? If we get the best minds in the world on it, it might be possible. At $10, a $1T investment takes us down 12.5 ppm. That's five years worth of emissions.
It's a monstrous challenge. But it's not completely unimaginable.
Followup. Your comment gave me a crazy idea. I've now thought about it enough to share.
To incentivize carbon removal, the US Treasury commits to spending 10 megabucks per year to buy carbon bricks synthesized via CCS.
Brick price is 10 megabucks / number produced.
Starting spot price (ceiling) is for bricks is somehow determined. Plus whatever sane market rules are deemed appropriate.
The provenance of these bricks is easily confirmed. By some combo of isotopes, inspections, and affidavits. So that sellers can't easily use non-atmospheric carbon.
Some kind of practical form factor is determined for the carbon bricks.
Carbon bricks become yet another currency.
--
Said another way:
US Treasury mints gold coins from gold bullion.
Compute farms mint bitcoin from electricity.
Carbon scrubbers will mint carbon bricks from atmospheric carbon.
Whereas bitcoin is inflationary, bricks are deflationary. Like US dollars.
Harness the Cobra Effect. Since all bricks produced will be bought, more production is incentivized.
Another aspect of this is that it could maybe exploit modern monetary policy. Price of bricks getting too high? Maybe 'ease' a few more into circulation by buying them with new dollars.
It is not all or nothing, and we are past several points of no-return. All of the countries need to act 10 years ago, 'but Bobby is peeing in the pool more than I do' is not going to cut it. It is stupid, misleading, and counter-productive.
How about this? All developing countries would welcome the "developed" nation's Trillion Dollar investments in future sustainability as an act of taking accountability for how they exploited other nations.
Per capita emissions from the US are still ludicrously high when compared to developing countries. Not a single one of those western countries is taking accountability for what they did and exploited over the last 2 centuries. If western countries really cared then they already would've worked with developing countries long time ago and they still can i.e. if they cared.
I'm not saying that developing countries should be allowed to do the same, but this "pointing out the data" indicates more towards "developing nation's work is done here, now we'll stay the same as it is and others do all the work" rather co-operation in my opinion.
>This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be one preventing that to happen?
Here is a better idea.
How about developed nations, with their might of research, resources and human capital, put aside economic growth for a while and steer the world towards a sustainable future.
Its not about moral victories.
The approach of developed nations has been wrong. You see people like Trump and lose all hope for humanity.
There is only so much a developing country can do when you have scenarios where India has 4 times the population of USA, yet per capita Carbon production is 7 times less.
Still, it is the developing nations who have been most successful in meeting climate targets, be it in renewable energy or reduction in per capita carbon generation.
Sure, I like to whine and point out the moral failures of the developed world, but it is rightly deserved so. Because developing countries also act on climate change, in spite of knowing the effects it has on their economies.
But god forbid angering an American voter by talking about being responsible for climate change.
The data shows that Western world growth reduces CO2 on both per capita and absolute levels. As things renew and develop they are cleaner and more efficient. I’m not sure why you’d want to stop that, unless you care more about moral victories than climate change itself.
In fact it's just plain wrong to divide the world this way between 'developed' and 'developing'. There is no inherent progress towards 'development' and no natural staging of these things towards lower CO2 emissions or advancement generally. The reality is that the world economy is combined and uneven.
Environmental laws and protections put in place in western countries are one of the many things that leads to the wholesale export of industries into places where regulations are laxer or unenforced. The dirty work is sent elsewhere.
Considered as a whole, there is no "third wave" economy, and mass industrialism has never left us. The world's industrial working class is larger than it has ever been. Industrial production is bigger than it's ever been. Industrial pollution is larger than it has ever been, by far. And all of this is tied into a world economy facilitated by global trade.
This should be entirely obvious to people who work in a tech sector where almost all hardware is produced in China.
So it is nonsense to try to divide responsibilities between "developed" and the "developing" world. The whole world continues to be "developing."
And the distribution of wealth itself isn't close to even either, there are areas within the "developed" world that look very similar to the "undeveloped" or "developing" world in terms of living standards.
This didn't happen purely because Western countries became more aware of their impact on the environment. As countries develop, their population growth rate slows. Their technology improves and they can spend energy more efficiently.
In the US's case, there was a large gain from switching from coal to natural gas for power generation. Not because it was better environmentally, but because it was cheaper. It's disingenuous for the US to go "Look at all we've done" when half the country is in firm denial that there's even a problem.
> They have failed to build systems and processess that enables sustainable living.
Mainly because they haven't tried. It simply wasn't a priority or necessity.
But looking forward, there's two options: (1) we invent new technology to sustain a high-energy civilisation - the only realistic scenario is that this invention comes from the developed world; (2) we revert to low-energy (pre 20th century) civilization.
When looking at the delayed and cost overruns of the California high speed rail, and the slow adoption solar and wind on the west coast USA, and the slow development of batter technology, and the reverted carbon tax in Australia. I would say we very much tried (1) and failed. In particular I would say politicians failed us because they were too busy handing out favorable legislation for the wealthy class, who very much relied on business as usual to keep their wealth growing.
I hold no hope that a new technology will save us, while the politicians act this way. Remember that the White house used to have solar water heaters, but they were removed under Regan.
You're trying to turn a practical problem into a moral problem. Blaming the United States' (or anyone else's) past involvement is only useful insofar as it reduces CO2.
Well, kind of. From their point of view, it sounds a bit like: "I got there first and I industrialized and got rich, oh, by the way, I made you give up resources I needed for that, for free or at reduced prices, through gunboat diplomacy or outright conquest. You don't get to do the same because you were slow (even better, actively stopped from doing so in many cases)".
Nuclear is more dense, but much more difficult. But generally yes, the density of hydrocarbons for their application is unbeatable and will continue to be until we find something else.
This is true, but also so what? I’m serious. So what? What’s your point? Fuck all y’all I want burn coal because you did? What’s next? Demanding to play with gasoline and open flames, because someone else did?
This is childish behavior that focuses more on trying to trying to score some sort of shame points rather than say… survival. I hate[+] to be the one tell you, but those very people you think you’re supporting, are the very ones least capable of protecting themselves from climate disruption.
Now that we know, it is better to help the next generation live better without giving a pass because “that’s not fair, you got to do it” which is more akin to children’s logic.
Both China and India are nuclear powers with massive industrial bases, high technology and advanced militaries. Especially China.
The "hobbit perspective" of ignoring the problem won't work. If China ends up in a lot of pain due to climate change, EVERYONE will feel their pain. They won't lie down and take it, and if that means pushing others down so they can stay up, they'll do it no questions asked.
When we're all under water and biodiversity drops like in the Permian extinction, will it matter if "they did it first"/"we were right - they were wrong"?
It seems like western countries are penalized for having birthrates and population under control when the "per capita" emissions numbers are used, vs absolute output (which is declining in West).
China and soon India are the two countries that make me feel hopeless about controlling CO2. I get that's not "fair", but the planet doesn't care about fairness.
No they are not. Birth rates have declined in India and China as well. However, all those people have to live ssomewhere. So, per capita emissions are more than fair and accurate. If that is not the right way to look at it then how about the US (second highest level of total CO2 emissions behind China) reduce it to the level of, say, Lichtenstein.
The planet may not care about fariness, but developed countries can do.
As a compensation for years of above average pollution, let them spend some decades in negative pollution (removing carbon from the atmosphere) to offset for all the suffering they have caused.
I am worried about China too, but as an Indian, I can assure you that everyone in India is climate conscious and the govt. is doing its best to reach its pledges and targets.
Statistically, China is leading the world in solar installations and EV car sales. Admittedly sales figures don't always align with political will/intent, but China seems pretty far along the path towards controlling CO2 adjusting for how much of their footprint is externalized carbon from producing goods for the West, and the "bootstrap factor" that they are on a far faster growth/adoption curve overall than most of the West.
For what it is worth, politically on the record, China has some very strong goals stated, and those installation/sales statistics indicate some aggression towards meeting them.
I think a lot of the worry about China is misplaced for one reason or another. (Especially with the shell game of especially US politics outsourcing so much industrial work to China and then directly blaming China for emissions that should rightfully be accounted for in US corporation bottom lines and blaming China for the outsourcing in the first place as if it weren't done precisely because of that carbon emissions shell game and the gross [fig., lol] profits on the bottom line.)
India seems to be one of the countries with most to lose from climate change. If the wheat growing belt migrates north sufficiently - as it may - India will have enormous problems feeding itself.
Problem is not with the belt, problem is with water storage (aka snow caps) in Himalayas. If they are gone, then desertification and mass starvation is pretty much assured
The US produces much more economic output per ton of CO2 created than China. Carbon efficiency of economic output is a key metric that we should be optimizing for. This allows us to grow the economy on a per capita basis while still reducing absolute carbon emissions.
"Economic output per ton of CO2" looks like a red herring to me. To borrow a phrase from elsewhere in this thread, the climate doesn't care about economic output.
I'm not saying we won't see costs from decarbonising. We will. I'm saying that worrying too much about the economics will significantly impede the necessary work (as it has done for the past 50 years). It's quite likely that the current financial system is the wrong tool for the job in fixing this problem, now.
Why does it matter? You should care about the absolute numbers. The amount of CO2 the earth can reasonably sustain doesn't go up as the global population grows...
China is more or less a single political body. If you're talking about large scale political coordination to prevent climate events, then it makes sense to focus on the largest autonomous contributor
A problem in which everyone is supposed to suffer a little to prevent greater collective suffering in the future.
It has one important characteristic: everyone would rather not suffer and let some else suffer. When problems are like that, there is need for coordination, for people to agree on what is a fair amount of suffering for each actor.
I happen to agree that CO2 per capita is a much better measure of what is fair, especially when comparing the US and China, both countries that are growing very little in population
Another important characteristic is that one tribe has already enjoyed (and continues to enjoy) significant quality of life enhancements due to much higher consumption of fossil fuel per capita.
Politically, you’re simply not going to get anywhere with asking everyone to suffer “a little”.
Also, the whole detached single family house with 2 car garage on quarter acre lot has to go, but Americans are not going to give it up, and other countries’ people aspiring for it are certainly not going to give it up.
Those comments about some economies going carbon negative are making more sense when you see it as a coordination problem with the fairness issue.
Its like, China should grow its carbon consumption by no more than X, and we will go 0 and capture. That is quite possibly a fair way, and still cooperation from all the parties
But how much of this is due to Western nations essentially outsourcing emissions to China by shifting manufacturing etc. there?
The per-capita emissions are important because countries with high per-capita emissions likely have a lot of low-hanging fruit.
I mean reducing per-capita emissions in the USA could be done by improving public transport etc. whereas in China it would likely be condemning millions of people to poverty.
I always wonder where this belief comes from. The stuff we buy from China doesn't take that much energy to create compared to, say, driving 10 miles to the grocery store a few times a week.
Consumption-based CO2 inventories, that allocate emissions based on the country of the final end-user, are remarkably close to production-based inventories.
For the US, highly geographically resolved, consumption-based CO2 estimates show that most of our energy goes to suburban land use patterns: tons of transport fuel for lots of driving, and high heating/cooling costs due to detached, poorly insulated buildings. The typical city dweller has a carbon footprint 1/3 of the surrounding suburbanites, and the difference in consumption isn't about the things they buy from China:
There are actually industries which China dominates where the cost of energy is the main driving factor, like aluminium production. The thing is that as far as anyone can tell it makes zero economic sense for that to be made in China in such a polluting way - the only way that they could undercut countries with cheap green electricity to the extent they do is through massive Chinese government subsidies.
>tons of transport fuel for lots of driving, and high heating/cooling costs due to detached, poorly insulated buildings.
We have fixes for these don't we? Electric cars + solar panels could go a long way towards reducing this emissions source. I wonder if the government just aggressively subsidies solar + electric so much so that alternatives go out of business that we might just accelerate the solution to this problem.
The core issue is that people want the suburban lifestyle and they will not downgrade unless the government incentivizes them to or they are forced to due to climate disaster at their doorstep.
We need to drastically scale up battery production to make this happen on a quick enough time scale. Solar panel production is scaling at roughly the appropriate speed, but for cars we will need some people to lessen their driving needs if we want to keep pace with climate goals that are compatible with 1.5C of warming.
Which leads to my second point. I'm not convinced that as many people want the suburban lifestyle as are forced into it. My preference would be to have a non-suburban lifestyle, but it has been banned in most of the US. Our entire legal, tax, and governmental infrastructure is set up to prioritize and prefer suburbia, and it's been that way since WW2. My evidence that more people want alternatives to suburban lifestyles is that suburbia has to legislate its existence. Single family home owners fight super hard against allowing row houses or apartments, and that's the main impediment to their creation, not market forces.
An alternative to scaling battery production for cars is to electrify the highway system so that cars don't need huge batteries to go long distances. A side-benefit of that is it shifts energy use from overnight charging to daytime charging (since that's mostly when people drive around), which would be more compatible energy availability if we convert over to mostly-solar.
> The stuff we buy from China doesn't take that much energy to create compared to, say, driving 10 miles to the grocery store a few times a week.
Transporting the said item overseas, through customs, driven on a truck and a UPS van to my home is less than uhhh what?? Why are we comparing driving 10 miles to grocery store a few times a week?
If you want to objectively compare, you need to analyze kWh of energy spent in the entire supply chain per unit of production whether it is a USB cable from China or a tea pot from a local ceramic shop.
The biggest source of US emissions is driving. About a third. Transporting goods is a tiny tiny fraction of that, as overall transportation emissions account for only slightly more than that.
Driving really is the worst possible thing to do, and we have enshrined mandatory car use in the way that we have laid out our roads, where we allow housing and jobs to be placed, and by banning placement of daily needs next to homes.
EU emissions per capita are a fraction of US emissions, ans most of that comes from how we force people to live in the US.
Read the second part of my comment. It's about 10% from trade based manufacturing. Of course this is difficult to measure, but I think its safe to say the lion's share of CO2 emissions are from consumption.
> And it's not that China is producing emissions during manufacturing goods the entire world consumes. Take a look at "China: Consumption-based accounting: how do emissions compare when we adjust for trade?" and you'll see ~90% of their emissions are for consumption [2]
Still their per-capita emissions are lower, which is kind of what really matters given nations and borders are essentially a social construction, personal consumption/emissions are not.
As I mentioned previously, reducing China's total emissions would require reducing their per-capita emissions to such a low amount it would essentially be condemning much of the population to live in abject poverty (especially as large parts of the nation has not yet industrialised).
Given the far, far higher per-capita emissions of countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia etc. it wouldn't surprise me if China refused to slow economic development in order to reduce emissions.
This is a big factor. China for example has excellent fabrication and assembly services for PCBs. Does anyone know any services in the West that compete with the likes of JLCPCB?
I'm looking at how China's currently pummeling their tech sector for the sake of the party* and am hoping that they'll apply the same decisioning to their emissions-heavy industries as well.
Doubt it'll happen, but I can be wishful with my thoughts.
First of all, saying China's actions against tech sector is for the sake of the ccp, or that ccp simply felt they are too big is a narrow way to look at it. And makes the regulatory actions as a political game and not legitimate. You need to look at case by case. I argue each case has a legit issue, and in many of the cases, government is enforcing the laws that already exists but weren't enforced earlier. Chinese government didn't place any regulatory burden on tech sector earlier. But as the tech sector grew, there have been significant issues: 1) consolidation of power and use dominate market power to negatively affect the competition 2) Vast collection of personal data, commercializing personal data detriment to privacy 3) Use of algorithms and big data to detriment of consumers or workers. Ex: Tests shows that Didi chuxing show more expensive prices on a device you use to order multiple times before than a device you have not for the same trip. meituan's delivery algorithm drives delivery workers to the extreme. The delivery algorithm also gets harder if you work harder, resulting in ever intensive work condition, and they penalizes you each time you can't meet the algorithm.
I can present my points for supporting each of the regulatory actions but I won't go into details here. Overall, my view is that these regulatory actions are overdue. It doesn't mean we don't want tech sector. The society is a web of relationships between entities. Any time an entity that has a lot of advantage over another party, I argue that the red line should at least be that the more powerful entity shouldn't use its power to the detriment of the weaker party. The role of the government and laws should be to at least be to prevent that from happening. In terms of tech, the relationship is tech company vs its competitors, vs consumers, vs workers. In these relationships, a tech company can have significantly more advantaged because data it collected, characteristics of a digital business, network effects and capital. And if the weaker party is negatively affected because of the interaction between the powerful entity and the power difference, that should be a sign that public power should step in to either protect the weaker party or increase weaker party's power.
In regards to environment. I can list specific actions Chinese government took just recently: 1) A carbon credit and trading system is operational. The first batch of companies required to tally carbon credits and purchase credits include 2000 companies in the power generation sector, covering an emission of 4 billion tons of co2 annually. Steel, metal, cement, petro-chemical sectors will also be included as the plan progresses(https://www.reuters.com/article/china-carbon-market-0714-wed...) 2) Government is ordering more crude steel capacity reduction, can you imagine any country where the government is forcing businesses to reduce production and capacity 3) Aug 1, government removed export tax benefit for 23 types of steel, and placed export tariffs up to 40% on a few types of steel. Does any other country has self imposed export tariffs? The purpose looks like reduce exports of energy heavy, pollution heavy, and low margin metal products. Aiding steel capacity reduction. (http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0801/c1004-32177024.htm...) 4) Many state owned companies, such as state grid, petrochina now have even more green development tasks and initiatives. For example, more ultra high voltage DC powerlines are being built. This removes one of the primary adoption blocker for more renewables in china. One of the successful development model is villages in the western provinces are building solar farms, the revenue from power sales are dividend given to the local people, increasing renewables at the same time increasing people's income. And some villages in the dessert, have found its even possible to grow plants under solar panel's shade where before the sun was too strong. Now they have agriculture + solar energy development parks. Solar, wind, hydro installation are all increasing. In terms of industry and private sector, EV sales continue to grow, I believe EVs in China, given the quality of the products, market competition and gains in infrastructure, is starting to reach the consumer acceptance. Sales of Chinese companies in green sector, such as CATL is growing by a lot, stocks reaching all time high.
The natural gas industry in Russia emits a lot of CO2 by itself.
Generally the fossil fuel industry is one of the largest emitters if CO2 by itself. That is why countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia are among the top CO2 emitters in the world.
Chinese emissions are primarily because of a choice to exploit its thermal coal reserves for power generation instead of going nuclear. Probably was cheaper and faster to go that way - but it was definitely a choice.
As far as I can tell from an American perspective, the US has always done what was cheapest and fastest, and we still do. I sure wouldn’t expect China to do anything different.
China only recently has a 3G reactor design that is 100% Chinese IP. The state-owned enterprise that handles nuclear reactor construction is on the U.S. entity list.
Would having to curb CO2 emissions stunt Indian / African economic development more than the effects of climate change will? Those two areas are particularly vulnerable to the worst of the impacts as I understand it (extreme heat, food supply disruption, etc.)
Poverty and hunger are downstream of climate shocks, not separate from it. Drought and other extreme weather events are powerful historical causes of war and famine.
The GP question is whether that dynamic is canceled out by the economic benefits of polluting energy technologies.
> China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita.
You seem to have discovered that the lifestyle of western countries is unsustainable (and the US is particularly bad). It does not make it China's fault.
"China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita"
If you calculate emissions per capita (US 350m - China 1b) then the US still beats China handily...just saying.
This is a good point, and China has basically already risen to European levels of energy use and emissions. For the services available to the typical Chinese person, I wouldn't expect this to rise a ton more, unless China adopts US-style car-dependent land use for the majority of its population. Look at the difference in consumption between car-dependent city planning and the urban cores where cars are not a necessity:
That's a bigger difference than the US-China difference.
But even if China does decide to go that route, they have two other advantages over the US: 1) the housing growth will come from new builds that are far better insulated, and use heat pumps rather than fossil fuel heat, and 2) they will be able to grow the car fleet with EVs, rather than having a huge existing fleet of ICE.
Russia is one of the few countries building nuclear.
"A share of nuclear power plants (branches of Rosenergoatom Concern, part of ROSATOM’s Electric Power Division) in the energy mix of Russia was 20.28% in 2020. In 2019, this indicator was 19.04%."
"CO2 emissions decreased by -2.13% over the previous year (2015), representing a decrease by -36,108,200 tons over 2015, when CO2 emissions were 1,698,007,500 tons.
CO2 emissions per capita in the Russian Federation are equivalent to 11.44 tons per person (based on a population of 145,275,383 in 2016), a decrease by -0.27% over the figure of 11.71 CO2 tons per person registered in 2015; this represents a change of -2.3% in CO2 emissions per capita."
We have decreased ours and they have increased theirs but we are still buying more and more shit from them - their emissions are our emissions - while the demand side exists the supply will too - it will just be supplied from somewhere else...
Blaming China and India is the typical Republican talking point about climate change.
There is a reason Noam Chomsky has called the Republican party the most dangerous organization in the world because of how they promote Western inaction on climate change.
A "western country" can not "conveniently" cut their carbon emissions, and still buy shit manufactured overseas, and pretend everything is hunkey-dorey.
> China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita.
That is just providing proof that we cannot eradicate poverty on the planet without destroying it in the process with 8 billion human beings. And this is just CO2 emissions but the issue is with consumption of resources in general: What is happening is simply that consumption of resources increases when people are lifted out of poverty (quite obviously since that's pretty much poverty means).
The only sustainable way for human development is to bring global population down at the same time at global standard of living increases.
Not sure why you are being devoted. Having say, half our current population would have made this problem considerably easier.
People do seem to cut back their baby making as they move from agricultural to industrial, it’s just a much slower process than we would prefer to help with this issue.
Would make little difference. Majority of consumption is coming from small percentage of the world's population. If everyone on the planet consumed at the rate of the top 1% we'd need 10s of earths.
Plus it's also dog whistle. Who should decrease the population? Western white people?
You are talking about communities subsistence farming with large families, and trying to reduce the size of those families through pushing them to industrialise. but what does it matter? those current families no matter how large, don't consume anything.
> If everyone on the planet consumed at the rate of the top 1% we'd need 10s of earths.
But that's exactly the point. Although it's a bit more than the top 1%, more like top 10-15%.
What do you think eradicating poverty and global development means? Exactly that: A developed world means a world consuming the same as, say, Europeans do.
This only works if population is reduced, even drastically reduced because, quite obviously, it does not work with 8+ billion people.
> Who should decrease the population? Western white people?
Who should remain dirt poor? Brown people?
This is ridiculous.
This is a global issue. Poverty should be eradicated globally, the global population should reduce. Do not make it a racial, if not racist, issue.
I think the developed nations can learn a lot from those who currently consume orders of magnitude less. About values and worth and happiness. And equally can invest back much of what they took from them historically into helping them develop in a sustainable way. Not through some sort of white saviour nonsense or though some drive to sell them stuff in the long term, but though financial reparations and cancelling debt, coupled with releasing IP, patents and removing any other protectionist policies.
> Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program
Unfortunately, getting this proposed, passed without mutilation, and enforced is also a collective action problem.
Though I agree with your implied point that decentralized solutions should be the baseline, especially as they don't preclude coordinated action if that somehow becomes possible. To do otherwise is to pointlessly leave a powerful, relatively easy-to-deploy policy tool on the table for essentially religious reasons.
Unfortunately, there's a pretty powerful contingent of superstitious economic illiterates in our politics that see market-based solutions as automatically suspect, in the same way that there are powerful scientific illiterates that see nuclear as "unclean" (which is basically "unholy" laundered by modernity).
> I'm past hoping for people to do the right things en masse
What scares me is that there doesn't even seem to be a constituency for bold action on climate. I used to at least be comforted by the political left carrying the torch, but the most recent iteration of the party has a "climate policy" that just dresses up the same old unrelated economic wishlist in climate rhetoric like a skinsuit (again, any proposal that doesn't emphasize nuclear is unserious; the Green New Deal explicitly rejects it)
In the US, I expect solar and wind plus storage is cheaper than nuclear. It doesn’t really matter though, if you put high enough taxes on carbon the market will sort it out. The government shouldn’t be picking individual technologies, because they are likely to fuck it up.
I used to think as you do about nuclear, but I've become convinced that old nuclear technology is too expensive to compete with renewables OR fossil fuels, and new nuclear technology cannot scale up enough to matter before 2050 (when the worst effects of climate change will either have been averted or made inevitable).
I still absolutely believe it is worth investing in nuclear just in case I'm wrong, and it would be nice to explore the universe later using e.g. cold fusion if our civilization survives this crisis, but I do not think we should rely on or expect nuclear power to make any significant contribution to addressing the climate crisis on the very tight timeline necessary.
> What scares me is that there doesn't even seem to be a constituency for bold action on climate. I used to at least be comforted by the political left carrying the torch, but the most recent iteration of the party has a "climate policy" that just dresses up the same old unrelated economic wishlist in climate rhetoric like a skinsuit
The left != the party (by which I assume you mean the Democrats)
A sizeable fraction of the population understands that climate change is an enormous problem and when polled has said solving it should be a priority (no numbers or poll link offhand, sorry). They are also routinely told that they are terrible people if they don't support the party that at least acknowledges climate change in their rhetoric over the one that for all I can tell is 100% committed to turning the planet into one big oil spill.
Don't confuse the actions of the politicians with what the populace actually cares about. Something like 70% wants universal government-run healthcare (yeah, even the people who watch Fox news[1]) but even with Democratic majorities in congress the politicians can't seem to scrounge the two craps to even pretend like they want to make it happen.
> If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality.
If climate change plays out the way the pandemic has, I think we will have collective action, but it'll be uneven and fall short. We'll avoid the most dire outcomes, but blow right past acceptable outcomes. Many, many will die who could have been saved, the cost will be enormous, but we'll successfully avoid the absolute worst cases. I don't know if we call that a successful failure or a failed success.
It'll play out like the recycling/renewables industry. Some people will do things that are easy and catchy, there will be some net gains, but much of it will eventually turn to barely break-even or worse, like the unsustainable single-stream recycling or trendy-but-usually-fails-before-breaking-even things like reusable straws.
The world is just going to change and we'll either figure out how to live with it (probably) or we won't (if there's a mass biome collapse that leaves us foodless, unless we can generate 9B people's worth of food from bacteria or something).
If the pandemic is anything to go by, the collective action will harm the common people (especially the poor) while the elites get to play by entirely separate rules! While there's no doubt that sacrifices in quality of life are going to have to be made I think it's very important that the elites are seen to suffer as much as the common man otherwise the inevitable result will be increasingly ungovernable countries.
Absolutely -- inequality has brought us to this pass, continues to be an obstacle, and will make the consequences far worse. Should we, as individuals, eat less meat, drive more fuel efficient vehicles, fly less, and other such activities to reduce our carbon output? Yes, but as many have pointed out in this and other discussions, that doesn't come anywhere close to being enough. It's the dynamic of the rich scolding people for a Starbucks latte habit, writ large.
Should the elite aggressively pivot their companies to carbon neutral strategies, divest their substantial investments from greenhouse gas producing holdings, put their political muscle toward laws that will get us off our current disastrous path, and fund this change via taxes on their wealth? Yes, and this would do far, far more to change things for the better.
If you can figure out how to make this happen, well you'll be some kind of sociological and political genius.
In democratic nations, government actions are collective action, and so they have the same problem. In non-democratic nations those in charge are often the beneficiaries of the status quo. I'm not hopeful for government action either. People want a quick fix with little loss in living standard and few changes. That tells me that either we won't notice the incremental changes enough to act, and we'll ride this to the end, or we'll wake up and suddenly fund a massive but cheap climate engineering project that will work, but have unintended consequences, like iron fertilization of the oceans for albedo impacts. Worst case we go snowball earth and kill everything instead of just ourselves.
It’s great folly to think climate change can be solved by “waking people up” and that whole endeavor probably just makes things worse. It becomes a red/blue issue where nearly half the population take opposing sides, like mindless zombies. A solution, if we are to find one, will not come from the many but from the few, maybe just a single person or invention. Emerging economies pollute, necessarily. That’s the real problem. Surely it feels good to some people to say “I told you so!”, to see oneself on some noble crusade to enlighten the masses about the troubles that are to come. But it’s not at all productive in fact it’s the opposite. Not everyone has the ears to hear. The good side has to accept that sad truth and give up on the political squabbling. Spend energy thinking about solutions that don’t require building consensus with the guys in jack up trucks and the poor third world nations that pollute to survive.
> A solution, if we are to find one, will not come from the many but from the few, maybe just a single person or invention.
This is going to sound harsh, but to me this argument seems like a mental contortion to absolve yourself from doing anything and not feel bad about it.
In the past 20 years we have seen significant progress in slowing down, or even reducing for some countries, the emission of CO2. It is not enough, but it's definitely significant.
This happened thanks to the many, via awareness campaign and political pressure. And this bought us some precious time.
Even if you truly believe the solution will come from a Messiah appearing with a techno-miracle, you should still push to wake people up: The more people are truly aware of the problem, the more will be interested in working in climate-related tech, giving us more chance for "that single invention" to appear. And you also want the mass to be enlightened about this to continue trying to slow down the train, giving more time for technological breakthrough to appear before we are completely screwed.
> In the past 20 years we have seen significant progress in slowing down, or even reducing for some countries, the emission of CO2. It is not enough, but it's definitely significant. This happened thanks to the many, via awareness campaign and political pressure.
I’m guessing this has nothing to do with awareness campaigns and everything to do with the relative price of coal, natural gas, and renewables. People just did whatever was cheapest, and that meant switching away from coal.
The solution is not authoritarianism. We have plenty of that now and got here because of that. We have not just governmental authoritarianism, but also in business. In fact, business authoritarianism is arguably why we are here.
> The greatest hope I see for the future of humanity is the incentive for a brilliant mind/leader to become the next Bezos/Musk via climate change technology
> ...isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality.
I don't mean for this to sound too critical but how do you square these two concepts?
The idea of a great inventor/scientist/theorist is to me kind of obsolete. It existed in a time of much more low-hanging fruit but today most scientific/theoretic progress is slow and the collective result of many groups slow, focused, and methodical work. Even before, even the greats stood on the shoulders of myriad giants.
The idea of hoping for a "great leader" who is solely capable of "fixing" things is to my mind a very concerning and alarming idea.
Even if you may not think that... the idea that "one good idea" is enough to solve our problems immediately, or even just quickly enough, feels like escapism to me. No matter how good of an engineering solution is achieved there will be a slow and painful process of rolling it out fraught with cultural and political questions. It doesn't behoove us to push that off, even if the engineering questions feel more essential. It's an inevitable problem. We should consider it earlier rather than later.
Came here to say this. I also want to add that there are no solutions with the West's current consumption habits. If we all switch to electric cars today, oil might be doing okay, but we'll still be exploiting workers and raiding resources in environmentally costly lithium mines. This is not a technical issue. This is a political issue. The question we should be asking is how we reduce our consumption and how to increase our reciprocity with the environment, not at an individual level, but at a systemic and societal level. And here's the hard part: this isn't done through innovation. This is done through reducing the capitalist pressures to consume and produce. This is driven locally, slowly, and radically by pushing back against what capitalism has done.
Digging up lithium is nowhere near the same as mining fossil fuels. You're literally just washing rock with water and you can clean the water afterwards.
Isn't it funny how COVID has caused the government-inclined to want more government and the government-disinclined to want less government? Almost as if this complex issue about which we still don't have all the facts has just made people feel that their prior beliefs have been confirmed? I wonder if there's a phrase for a bias like that.
Are you saying that Covid has had zero net effect on people's political inclinations? That the stark lesson in the importance of coordinated action has only hit home amongst those who were already "government inclined"? Because I don't that's true.
I would put it more broadly. COVID was put in service of continuing culture wars and political infighting, like literally everything else. People hate each so much they would rather have death (for them or for themselves) than agree. It's crazy. Everything politicized, even goddamn PPE and vaccination.
> those who were already "government inclined"
It isn't so much "government inclined", or even left versus right, it's in-tribe vs out-tribe. Some tribes, clearly, have only become more entrenched and delusional.
Isn't it funny how the "government-disinclined" that don't want to wear masks generally support Florida laws that makes it illegal for businesses to mandate masks?
A 200% value-added tax on fossil fuels that rises by 10% every year would provide the capital.
EDIT: To clarify, this is not a suggestion to raise capital from the tax as much as it's to raise capital from the use of fossil fuels. It's a suggestion for an increasingly punitive financial cost to force behavioural changes.
We have an infinite money printing machine. We don't need access to any capital. That's not what the carbon tax is about. We need to change behavior. We need everyone that uses carbon to pay for its use (including the externalities) so that they stop using it as much as they are. This is why poor people can't be exempt. This is why the rich can't just pay for it. We all need a massive increase in the cost of everything that touches carbon (read everything) so we start driving to the next city once per year instead of every weekend, so that we start eating a BLT once a month instead of twice a week (a lot of heart issues down here in the south for a reason), and the list goes on.
A carbon tax is a non starter in democratic countries because we have seen over and over again that raising the price of motor fuel is political suicide. Canada had to back off on a program that offered a carbon tax back as a rebate. Similar outcome in France with Yellow vest protest movement. Many countries have tried to get rid of fuel subsidies only to spark middle class street protests. In the US the main election issue in 2022 will be "inflation" which for many voters is the price of gas. Carbon taxes simply do not work in the real world.
> We need to change behavior. We need everyone that uses carbon to pay for its use (including the externalities) so that they stop using it as much as they are. This is why poor people can't be exempt. This is why the rich can't just pay for it. We all need a massive increase in the cost of everything that touches carbon (read everything)
This is a pro-climate and anti-human policy. Do you care more about human beings or the amount of CO2 in the air?
There are still billions of people who have no electricity. Let's get them closer to our standard of living before we make everything more expensive for them.
Well, guess you want both eternal exponential growth for everybody, as well as a healthy planet to live on, but without any sort of compromise whatsoever.
I don't think you really understand what cost means in this case. Or a compromise.
Thinking that cost just means paying more -> bad is a very simplistic way to look at things.
Cost, especially via taxation, means setting aside a part of our productivity as a planet towards making sure we don't destroy ourselves. Everybody should contribute because everyone has skin in the game. By taxing CO2 specifically, you force people towards choosing more sustainable choices automatically.
Understand that you can't have a completely free market and an environment in which you want to live.
That's not going to work. A lot of people (and industries) rely on cars to do their jobs. It's a lot of low-income households who rely most on cars because they live in remote areas due to housing costs and have to commute to city centers to find work. Such a tax would cause a huge backlash in large parts of the population in any country and the government who enacts it would be quickly disbanded. We need subsidies to pay for the transitions (pay for changing people's heating, buying them electric cars, etc.). Financing this shouldn't be a problem for most developed countries at the current interest rates.
I'm all in favor of subsidies to help the disadvantaged, as a general matter of principle. But fundamentally, disrupting people's lifestyles is the point. Yes, it's going to radically shift the economics of all kinds of things, including commuting. That's exactly what needs to happen. There's got to be a big rebalancing, which is hopefully the sort of thing that the free market is good at. What we need to do is make sure there are enough safety nets and wealth redistribution so that no one gets left behind - again, as a general principle, not just over this one issue.
All change is going to disproportionately impact the disadvantaged. But I don't think we can let that be an argument against change in general.
You are right, a carbon tax without a fair and progressive redistribution is doomed to fail. This is partially why we had the "yellow vest" mouvement in France
We definitely need public financing — and especially things like HVAC should be table-stakes since it's also an effective jobs program — but we also need those ever-increasing taxes. Most of those people commuting in remote areas use high-emission, low-mileage vehicles for fashion reasons and they can afford to do so because the costs of that lifestyle have been heavily subsidized for decades.
If we instituted a vehicle weight / mileage tax (to fund road repair as EVs cut into the already wildly inadequate gas tax) and send a message that gas prices will never be cheaper in the future, that would change rapidly because there wouldn't be any way to fool yourself into thinking that you could afford that huge SUV which has been keeping you broke for years. It takes a lot to disturb a deeply-entrenched status quo and I think taxes are key, but I would ramp them in slower: set a floor on the cost for a barrel of oil and increase it annually so the writing is on the wall but there's time to make major capital expenditures.
The political backlash is a real problem, especially with the knowledge that the simple solutions like giving people financial assistance for replacing high-emissions vehicles would be met with a well-funded deluge of bad faith attacks (you can just hear the “why are they giving away Teslas to people who didn't earn them!” ads now). I suspect continued subsidies for things like EVs and solar would be possible but I wonder whether there could also be a low-rate loan subsidy program, especially for homeowners and businesses looking to electrify things like heaters, boilers, etc.
That's why to be politically viable any carbon emissions tax would have to be phased in gradually over many years. That would give people adequate time to adjust their lifestyles and purchase more efficient vehicles. The average car in the US is 12 years old so the phase in period has to be longer than that.
> That's not going to work. A lot of people (and industries) rely on cars to do their jobs
Unfortunately economic contraction is going to essential if we are going to reduce GHG emissions. We've tried the "full steam ahead, green energy will catch up!" approach for decades and it emissions have only gotten worse.
Don't forget those same people that would suffer from not having cars will suffer even more under the worse case climate scenarios.
Hence absent a miracle technology that had all the benefits of fossil fuels and more but none of the drawbacks was the only solution. But since that has not yet happened, the situation is kind of bleak.
We don't need to raise capital. We don't need taxes to pay for the renewable and adaptive work we need to do. Taxes are strictly punitive and saying we need to raise taxes to raise funds is not only wrong, but delays action.
Further, the global financial system is based on the notion of perpetual and steady (if volatile) growth. That's the core tenet of the entire system, underpinning everything from inflation to basic employment.
By implication, this requires an infinite human population on Earth on an infinite timescale.
The still very young global financial system and everything in it is and always has been a Ponzi scheme.
Exactly this. There needs to more understanding about the negative consequences of inflationary monetary system. Absolutely scarce money, i.e. bitcoin, is the only solution to this problem. Scarce money forces to innovate in order to grow.
I do see your point, and I've thought about this consequence a lot.
I sincerely don't think it would cause a financial collapse, as ridiculous as that might sound.
200% plus 10% compounding per annum is the lowest I think we could reasonably go in order to be in with a chance of reaching peak carbon by 2030.
It forces deeply painful changes on the world, but no more painful than is necessary to avoid the collapse of civilisation.
The problem until now is that people haven't been given the justification to go along with the astronomical task being asked (i.e. Stop burning fossil fuels immediately or we all die).
If COVID, and the 2008 crisis, have taught me anything it's that the economy is unbelievably fragile to shocks. Trying to levy huge taxes in a democracy is DOA for that reason. Most Americans will do just about anything to avoid another recession -- that's food off their tables.
One interesting question: say we tried that MIT economist's plan where you have a hefty carbon tax but give the entire thing back as a tax rebate[1]. That'd get a direct deposit/check arriving (hopefully frequently) and send a message that the faster you lower your emissions, the more other people are giving you free money. People don't like paying taxes but they allow love to get the better side of a deal.
This is exactly how Canada's federal carbon tax is structured.
Citizens get rebates based on income, so poorer individuals get larger rebates as a percent of income and can actually come out ahead even with rising prices due to the carbon tax.
More wealthy citizens will (due to lifestyle differences) pay more in taxes than they get back, but they also have the means to change their lifestyles/make different choices, so they could end up in a spot where they use less carbon and so also come out ahead.
It's a very simple mechanism to modify behaviour and does do in a relatively equitable way.
Quite frankly, that is why democracy will fail us. Most Americans will do just about anything to avoid their income falling for 10-20 years but do just about nothing to avoid the global climate from torpedoing the world's biomes, food production systems, weather patterns, coastlines and coastal cities, decimating species diversity, etc. over 10-100 years.
We could be saved by technological or business breakthrough from an individual, or we could be saved by authoritarianism, but the preference you just described is why we're probably fucked if we hope for a political solution in western democracies (at least the US).
The so-called "invisible hand" has already gotten the US on the right trajectory, with the government nudging it along. That's all we can hope for, along with 330 million people making better decisions.
> collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality
I understand that is a popular worry these days (and I understand why some might feel that way, given how troubling recent history is) but I think the news from history is much better than that - it's actually very good: In just the last half-century: Civil rights, women's rights, the overthrow of non-democratic regimes worldwide (E. Europe, S. Africa, S. Korea, etc. etc.), etc. In fact, the current reactionary (for lack of a better word) movement - the one that obstructs progress on Covid and climate change, among other things - is collective action to a significant extent.
It's interesting to me that as the tools for collective action have improved by orders of magnitude (i.e., the Internet and its applications), those tools are instead used to spread a message to depress action. More interesting is that the message only spreads on one side of the political world - the reactionaries aren't telling each other how useless and impossible their goals are.
Whatever the reason, it's very convenient for the status quo, for the people in power, that the public disavows their own ability to challenge them.
> The greatest hope I see for the future of humanity is the incentive for a brilliant mind/leader to become the next Bezos/Musk
From my perspective, what a depressing and self-demeaning outlook. We don't need some 'great person' to do it for us; we can do it. We can do it, right now, which means to first stop telling each other that we can't. Nothing can stop us, literally, except us not trying.
For centuries, the American story has been that we can accomplish anything together, that any person can make a difference. It's the faith behind Silicon Valley startups too. We've revolutionized politics, government, freedom, prosperity, technology ...
> collective action isn't something we can rely on
> Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side
Getting the government to do anything that impacts the profits of powerful companies will itself require heroic amounts of well-organized collective action.
> the incentive for a brilliant mind/leader to become the next Bezos/Musk via climate change technology
The problem is political, not technical. Moreover, people who become billionaires are averse to questioning the economic systems that prevent us from being able to take collective action to tackle climate change (and other systemic problems), because it has served them so well. That's why they build bunkers and space ships in the hope of personal salvation. They ain't going to fix this for us. It's collective action or apocalypse.
Interestingly, covid seems to have taught me the opposite. When covid hit, the time-to-market of a new vaccine was 10-15 years. The collective action of governments divided this number literally by ten. Despite all the bad words we've heard about bad policies and mistakes done by governments, I think we should be proud of what humankind has achieved during covid (granted, some governments have done and still do very poorly but let's not enter this kind of discussion).
As a consequence, I am quite optimistic about what we could do if the effects of climate chang were as obvious as those of covid (which unfortunately is not the case). And in that respect, I believe in both government action and the intervention of brilliant minds/leaders. We'll need (and have) both.
The collective actions of governments did nothing there. What happened is we got exceedingly lucky the research was already there for 30-odd years and interested parties pumped money into it like there was no tomorrow.
Most governments since COVID started faffed about endlessly and took really poor measures all around for what it looked like eternity (with a few notable exceptions). Eventually they got around getting it half-right and here we are, massive death tolls that could have probably been avoided with earlier lockdowns, properly enforced mask wearing and so on.
At the same time a lot of countries where education has been and is poor are full with people who eschieve vaccination for the dumbest reasons possible and see in this manifestations of their freedoms (of spreading further a potentially deadly disease).
This pandemic brought the worst out of people and in a few situations the best.
No, human kind cannot rely on collective actions because human beings are way too selfish to do something for the greater good. And we can see it because we are in this point in time with climate change, the final hour - and still there are a LOT of people denying climate change just as there are people denying COVID is a problem.
I don't share your vision. Things are always obvious in the hindsight, but in reality, at least in Western Europe we did quite well. The challenges that governments faced were huge and numerous (if you account for social, economical, technical and political aspects).
Of course we can always do better, but the reality is that today, we have dozens of millions of people double-vaxxed here, and we're making progress.
Even looking within western EU, things could have been done so much better - remember how poorly Italy handled the start of the pandemic? But the true disaster is in Eastern and to a lesser degree central EU, as well as India, Pakistan, etc. Not to mention the trainwreck that was in the USA and to a lesser degree South America.
Try to look outside the box, the world is more than just western EU.
In particular Operation Warp Speed significantly accelerated the pace of vaccine mass production by removing the financial risk for pharmaceutical companies.
The efficacy of the vaccines is really being called into question though. Gibraltar and Iceland are getting more cases after being 99 and 75% respectively. Iceland is actually getting record cases.
The government did very little to protect the most vulnerable and chose actions that massively disrupted people's lives. Shutting down schools was probably the most egregious of the many mistakes.
One of the major things government did to get the covid vaccine out faster was... wait for it .... be LESS involved and not apply rules and regulations they normally do.
> collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions
I fully agree, but if history has taught me anything about Western politics, it's that power and money reign supreme. The term of politicians only lasts a few years, and many will do everything they can to feather their cap during that time, doing the bidding of big business. And the top priority for many is to stay in power - changes to help the climate are expensive, and indeed getting more expensive the longer we delay, so few have what it takes to be bold and put policies in place that may be unpopular with a large segment of their constituents.
And then there is the economic arms race that is characteristic of our modern, divided world. Countries don't want to make hard decisions, because they know some others won't.
Honestly, it looks very, very grim. To have any hope of mitigating what's going to come, we need massive global action that is going to be to the short to medium-term detriment of many politicians, corporations, lobbying groups, and of course regular citizens too. I strongly hope I'm wrong, but I just can't see any future where any of that happens :(
As a programmer, I empathize with the impulse to go with the elegant, unified solution of carbon taxes.
The problem is that everybody gets hurt, in at least a short-term sense, by a carbon tax. And yes, a lot of people will understand that this is a necessary pain. But all the worst carbon offenders that might campaign against a climate policy would get hurt by the same thing at the same time, so they would provide a large lobbying voice to weaken or destroy what's hurting them (this example is about carbon taxes, but really any sort of universal punitive measure) as a policy.
Politically, punishments will remain effective for longer if they are targeted so that the opposition to them remains divided. It _might_ help if carbon taxes could be adopted on a per-industry basis, because polluters are nothing if not keen to avoid thinking about anything that they perceive as not their problem- it should be possible to avoid triggering any sort of sense of polluter-solidarity on their part.
Another possibility is offering positive financial incentives to stopping fossil fuel activity. The government could directly give cash to companies that stop pulling coal and oil out of the ground, or stop burning it. Fracking companies in particular should be given a ton of money if they convert to geothermal.
Ecologically sustainable changes will happen when it's cheap and/or comfortable to do, period.
Increasing the costs of carbon-based choices will just lead to civil unrest. I think this is already part of where recent problems in the US are coming from.
Carbon taxes and similar solutions implicitly assume that the individual making the carbon-positive choice is the one who should bear the cost. I feel a bit like it's you have decades of individuals and groups insulating themselves from real costs, through deception and ignorance, and then us deciding to pass those costs onto those who can't or don't want it anyway. Socialized risk, capitalized gain all over again.
You might say that nature is going to extract those costs one way or another, but this is one case where I think the moral responsibility is in spreading those costs out in ways that can be borne realistically.
Better for the average person worldwide to make the sustainable choices cheaper rather than increase the costs of the unsustainable choices, because then that's implicitly just increasing costs for everything in many situations.
The history of humanity is filled with stories where technologies require a full adherence to a set of rules to avoid externaliies. And since this cannot be done, it explains much of what's happening in the world today.
COVID-19 was a program of systemic action. The US had lockdowns, mask mandates and even soft vaccine mandates. None of this was enough to crush the virus. Why? Because systems are made of individuals who will decide whether or not they want to collaborate on solving a problem.
> None of this was enough to crush the virus. Why? Because systems are made of individuals who will decide whether or not they want to collaborate on solving a problem.
Many of the individuals currently refusing vaccines in the US didn't just decide, there was an active effort made to convince them not to get one:
> Had the US continued to vaccinate in the summer at the same rate as in the spring, the US would be near herd immunity by now. It took a lot of work by powerful people and institutions to prevent that outcome. It didn't just *happen.* It was *done.*
> COVID vaccine refusal was not some unprompted, spontaneous reaction among pro-Trump Americans. It was manufactured: first as part of a larger program of denial to cover for Trump's pandemic failures; then after Trump lost, in order to stoke feelings of victimhood and persecution.
> Had the US continued to vaccinate in the summer at the same rate as in the spring, the US would be near herd immunity by now.
This obsession in the media with herd immunity is strange. It's not even clear herd immunity with Delta and our current vaccines is attainable. Just look at Iceland where 65+% of cases are fully vaccinated (https://www.covid.is/data). UK has had high vaccination rates and is still surging (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/).
We can certainly make the pandemic manageable - I'm not worried about hospitals toppling over in the Bay Area with its 80+% 12+ fully vaccinated rate, but covid is still on the upswing.
> People think that either (a) COVID itself is a hoax or not that bad, or (b) that the vaccines are a hoax
Granted this is the Bay Area I'm in but the folks I know that refuse to take a vaccine don't see it as a hoax. They are some combination of unconvinced of a low risk of long-term vaccine side-effects (by virtue of us having no actual long-term observations) and concluding P(risk_of_getting_covid) * expected_cost(covid | infected) < expected_cost(side_effects)
For some other analysis that this is more than just politics:
You have to admit that those unconvinced people doing that equation are unbelievably selfish, as they are certainly not including the cost of spreading COVID to an immunocompromised person in that last term.
The question being asked is "would you take a vaccine to save a neighbor's life?" and these people are answering no.
There was an effort to convince people not to vaccinate, but I think the bigger cause of anti-vaccination sentiment was contrarianism against and distrust of the effort to convince people to vaccinate. Years of government and media lies ranging from the Iraq War to distorted and propagandistic reporting of things that Trump had said resulted in millions of people justifiably feeling that the mainstream media, the government establishment, and the supposed "experts" that the media and government often trot out are all to be distrusted. It is a boy who cried wolf scenario.
That's why individuals should not have the freedom of choice. China's actions against the virus proved rather effective because the government actually has authority there. Western democracy is clearly weak when it comes to dealing with crisis of any kind.
Individuals always have the freedom of choice. Authoritarian governments only work when people choose to tolerate them. If the Chinese people lose faith in their government, we'll see how effectively it can manage a crisis...
In the US, many people don't have faith in strong centralized authorities. Becoming more authoritarian will only make that worse, not better. It is not a problem of political systems, it is a deeper cultural phenomenon.
>Western democracy is clearly weak when it comes to dealing with crisis of any kind.
Sounds like a feature to me. They're also "rather effective" at setting up reeducation camps in xijiang to deal with the "crisis" of "extremism and terrorism by Uygurs"[1]
> I'm past hoping for people to do the right things en masse.
This isn't either or: we can heavily incentivize creating climate change tech AND drive for a systemic change. It is IMO immoral to just give up on a sustainable political solution because it is hard: huge changes have happened in the past and can happen again.
>> collective action isn't something we can rely on
hmmm
>>Governments need to
You do understand that government is collective action, and you should not rely on it right?
> tax CO2 emissions on the business side
I am still opposed to Co2 taxation in most of the implementations proposed. it ends up just creating perverse incentives for companies to game the system, Just look at how destructive ewaste regulations have been for the environment were you have companies preventing the repair of their products to ensure they get "credit" for the destruction (aka recycle) of reparable electrics that then simply end up in some 3rd world nation for children to pick through
I just cation that you need to fully look at the unintended consequences of taxation and government regulation, the road to hell is paves with good intentions. If you think the world has problems, what until you see government solutions to those problems...
Bingo. Carbon taxes in Canada really function as yet another power grab, with the federal government promising to rebate the taxes back to Canadians.
In effect it's a case of "Just trust us with the money... we promise we'll give it back", which will obviously change as soon as more money is needed to fuel their insatiable appetite for spending. It's not even a question of "if", it's "when".
In practice, this means much higher home heating costs in areas where there aren't practical alternatives, higher transportation costs, higher costs for food production, and pretty much price inflation on any consumer goods that are transported by road, rail, or air... which is all of them.
It makes Canadian industry less competitive than ever at a time when GDP per capita is lagging badly behind the US.
Too much of a good thing... I can picture a scenario, admittedly science fiction for now, when carbon capture is so lucrative it's removed to an extent plants don't have enough of it. Not to say carbon capture is bad, just that humans + greed = unintended consequences, every time.
What technology has the convenience and cheapness of fossil fuels? The versatility and strength of plastics, the power of diesel, and the portability and ease of use of all the fossil fuels?
> I'm past hoping for people to do the right things en masse.
Getting people behind goals with long timelines is pretty much impossible. As you said, the pandemic demonstrated (and continues to demonstrate) how we behave and think.
> Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology
No. Sorry. You are buying into propaganda.
Put simply: We (humanity) cannot do a thing about atmospheric CO2 concentration.
This is a planetary-scale problem requiring resources and energy over tens of thousands of years, not a few dozen. It is unreasonable to think we can actually affect a planetary-scale problem in anything approaching a human time scale. Yet this is exactly what we are being sold. We are far more likely to kill all life on earth than to fix atmospheric CO2 concentration.
This is NOT a guess on my part. This conclusion is well supported by data going back 800,000 years. The science is there and this conclusion has already been reached. The problem is that the issue of climate change has been politicized to the point where --much as is the case with certain aspects of the pandemic-- the scientific truth does not matter.
Most intelligent people with a modicum of science coursework are perfectly equipped to understand this conclusion. The problem is in pulling people away from what has effectively become indoctrination to have them take a few minutes to actually exercise critical thinking.
What if I told you a high school kid with basic math skill could understand this conclusion?
How many of those reading this would be open-minded enough to say: "OK. Show me. I am willing to do the work in the interest of learning if what I am have been led to believe is wrong.". In my experience people would rather stick to their beliefs, punitively issue a down-vote and move on rather than understand. In this way one is no different from anti-vaxers.
OK, so a few of you are interested in confirming this claim. Good news. It's easy.
Here's the first and simplest claim to confirm:
If all of humanity left the planet today and all of our technology was shutdown, it would take somewhere in the order of 50,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to drop 100 ppm.
How do you confirm this?
What if we had atmospheric CO2 data from before humanity industrialized to the point of being relevant?
We do! We have 800,000 years of very accurate atmospheric CO2 data extracted from ice core samples. Here it is:
You then fit straight lines to the graph in order to determine the rate of change of both atmospheric CO2 accumulation and decline. Here are my lines for the decline portion of the data:
Looking at it in rough strokes, it looks like it took, on average, somewhere around 25,000 years for a 100 ppm increase and, say, 50,000 years for a corresponding 100 ppm decrease. In some cases it took twice that time, I am just trying to generalize.
The planet did this entirely on its own...because we were not around or we were insignificant during this time period.
This is extremely valuable data and an equally valuable conclusion because it establishes an important baseline:
BASELINE: If humanity LEFT THE PLANET tomorrow, it would take about 50,000 years for a reduction of about 100 ppm in atmospheric CO2.
I'll repeat that: If we left the planet and all of our technology was shut down, you are looking at a minimum of 50,000 years for a meaningful "save the planet" change in CO2 concentration.
At this point the question becomes glaringly obvious:
How does anything LESS than leaving the planet even make a dent on CO2 at a human time scale?
Because of the baseline revealed by this data we know, without any doubt, that anything less than leaving the planet cannot possibly delivery a faster rate of change, a faster decline than 100 ppm in 50,000 years. It's a planetary-scale problem that requires planetary-scale time.
Any solution proposed by anyone must pass the simplest test: How is that more than humanity leaving the planet?
Solar panels all over the planet? How is that MORE than leaving the planet?
A billion electric vehicles? Same question.
No more fossil fuels? Nope.
In fact, Google Research boldly set out to show the world that a full migration to renewable energy sources could address the issue. To their credit, when they discovered just how wrong they were, they published the data. In this charged environment these researchers deserve a ton of respect. They went in --and say so themselves-- with a position of believing that renewables could save the planet. What they discovered instead was precisely what I understood through the simple exercise on this graph, that this is an impossibility. Their methodology was different from mine, the result was the same.
"we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope"
"Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work"
"if all power plants and industrial facilities switch over to zero-carbon energy sources right now, we’ll still be left with a ruinous amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It would take centuries for atmospheric levels to return to normal"
"<snip> to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise. Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use."
"Suppose for a moment that <snip> we had found cheap renewable energy technologies that could gradually replace all the world’s coal plants <snip> Even if that dream had come to pass, it still wouldn’t have solved climate change. This realization was frankly shocking"
Well worth reading. Like I said, these guys deserve a ton of respect for effectively saying "we were wrong, and here's why".
Why aren't we talking about this AT ALL?
This is reality. Not what we are being told by politicians and zealots.
Climate change has become a religion or a cult and science has been left far behind. Here are two ways to come to the same general conclusion. One uses a super-simple look at 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 data. The other took a detailed look at mathematical climate and other models. The conclusion was the same: We can cover the planet with renewable energy sources and do NOTHING to atmospheric CO2, or worse.
I've been trying to elevate this to some level of consciousness here on HN any time the topic comes-up. It is often met with a pile of downvotes and attacks. Because, of course, they "know", even though none of the detractors bothered to devote even 1% of the time I have trying to understand reality in a sea of nonsense.
Frankly, I am not sure what else to do. In this charged political climate it is actually dangerous to stick your neck out too far. I am not denying climate change, I am simply saying "the emperor has no clothes" to all the nonsense we seem to be told to focus on.
I think we need to learn to live with whatever is coming. We can't do a thing about it. New industries will sprout to help us manage it. The planet will deal (and is dealing) with CO2 as it has for millions of years.
And that's the other set of questions that the graphs and some research can answer:
How did CO2 increase when humanity was not around to muck it up?
Continental scale forest fires burning for 25,000 years as well as other sources of CO2. The fires in CA right now are contributing more CO2 than (informed conjecture) the entire fleet of internal combustion vehicles in California, if not the country. It is hubris to think we can counter this and "save the planet". Truly laughable in some sense.
How did the planet bring it down?
Rain, storms, cyclones, hurricanes, and the regrowth of vegetation over 50,000+ years.
So, we have to learn to deal with changing weather patterns and perhaps start helping the planet a tiny bit by planting trees. Judiciously though, because more trees could also mean more fuel to burn. In other words, we could, if not careful, actually increase CO2 if we plant a billion trees and create the conditions for the mother of all forest fires.
Please push for promoting an understanding of the reality we are living rather than a the fantasy of thinking we can actually affect planetary-scale problems. We need to apply our minds, investment and effort towards transitioning into a high CO2 future rather than a fantasy that says we can control how an entire planetary ecosystem works in 50 years. It would be like believing we can "install" an atmosphere on Mars in 50 years. Yeah. Pretty crazy if you ask me.
This is a really poor take. At no point in our history is there anything approaching a sudden cessation of human industry and activity that is core to your thought experiment. You are comparing geologic, astronomical, and evolutionary changes that are incredibly gradual for the most part when compared to human activity. By using your exact same logic I can easily "prove" that the massive increase in CO2 that has happened in the past 150 years is impossible.
Your analogy is exactly like saying that since the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Tunnel_State_Park took a million years to form, it's impossible for humanity to create 1000 foot tunnel in less than a million years.
> By using your exact same logic I can easily "prove" that the massive increase in CO2 that has happened in the past 150 years is impossible.
No. You cannot. You see, you are not asking the right questions and are giving in to folklore.
This is a fair question, yes:
How were we able to screw this up so badly in just 150 years? How is that even possible when we've only been significant, at an industrial scale, for just a few centuries?
This is an excellent question and one that should lead to further inquiry rather than dismissal. Well, I asked myself this very question years ago, as I begun my attempt to understand what was real and what was not.
The answer first requires that we understand how it is that atmospheric CO2 fluctuated by about 100 ppm on a roughly 100K year cycle when humanity was virtually insignificant.
The answer to this question is brutally simple:
Massive continental scale fires burning without any artificial controls, well, forever.
Over somewhere in the range of 25,000 years they provided enough CO2 to increase atmospheric concentration by 100 ppm.
This is a reality today. For all the political bullshit floating around, nobody is talking about the elephant in the room, in the form of wildfires.
Globally, wildfires today consume about 450 millions hectares of forest and other plant life. This translates into about 13.5 billion metric tonnes of carbon.
The entire industrial base of the world today produces about 10 billion tonnes of carbon a year.
Keep in mind that this is with humanity actively fighting forest fires to contain them to the extent possible. Right this minute we have a massive fire in northern CA, where an army of firefighters is battling the flames to gain control.
Not too many centuries ago humanity lacked the capability to go up against forest fires at any significant scale. And so, they burned and burned and burned. And, over tens of thousands of years, they regularly produced a 100 ppm increase in CO2 concentration.
And yet, this does not answer the question. Right? How did we do it so quickly?
Again, simple: We burned entire forests (and more) at a rate never before seen in the history of this planet. Except, this time, the forests came in the form of highly dense oil, petroleum. Petroleum is the result of millions of years of brewing dead plants, dead animals and other chemicals with an unimaginable amount of energy. The same is true of coal, peat and natural gas.
When we burn a gallon of oil we are, in effect burning an end product that is the result of compacting millions of trees and other biomass into the thick black good.
We were able to do in a few hundred years what it would normally take nature a lot longer. In fact, without us burning "forests" this way, it would have taken nature about 25,000 years for a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
OK, then, why can't we reverse it just as fast then?
For one thing, Conservation of Energy and the realities of the task at hand.
Simple thought experiment:
You are on a spacecraft the size of a large modern warehouse, like a Home Depot. The idea is that there are no external inputs other than solar and other radiation. The air you have is it.
You make a pile of wood in the center of this space and light it up.
How much energy did it take you to start this fire? Very little. The energy it releases is in the wood. All you had to do is ignite it.
So now you have smoke, particulate matter and all kinds of gasses spreading all over your very large spacecraft. The particulate matter is coating everything. The gases are going everywhere.
You are now tasked with reversing your ecosystem to where it was before you burned the pile of wood.
Will it take more or less energy than that which the wood pile released when ignited?
More. A lot more. Ten times more. A hundred times more. A thousand times more. It is actually hard to even begin to calculate how much energy this cleansing this simple ecosystem would require. I can walk around your house spreading flour all over the place with very little effort. Removing that sugar requires far more energy and effort than what was expended causing the mess in the first place.
In super simple terms, that's the problem with CO2.
It is easy to create a mess by burning stuff. It takes no effort. If you light-up the entire Amazon forest and just let it burn you will generate more CO2 than likely generations of humans could possibly produce. Taking back that CO2, cleaning the mess, is a far more difficult, resource intensive task that requires an unimaginable amount of energy. To put it simply, it would likely be impossible.
So, no, my conclusion and the observations that led to this realization are not incongruent with how we contributed to the problem. It is really important to apply just a little bit of science to this before voicing opinion. If one is observant enough and understands natural processes, it really isn't that difficult to understand how we got here and the fact that we do not have the ability to get out. We have to live with it. Which is where we should be focusing, not on the "save the planet" bullshit that will lead to nothing good.
> It is really important to apply just a little bit of science to this before voicing opinion.
That is what you have done, as opposed to thousands of scientists and engineers and others that are applying a lot of science to this. Hence your generally poor conclusion from poor rigor and understanding.
There is no arguing that reducing and "fixing" anthropocentric climate change will require more energy expenditure than creating it in the first place. But that doesn't mean it is a priori impossible, and doesn't mean it will take 50,000 years to do so. This isn't a binary situation. It isn't "do nothing" or "repair all the damage done in a short amount of time". Those aren't the only options. This is hideously complex situation and problem and we likewise need a complex, multi-pronged approach going forward. CO2 reduction, mitigation, and fixation to start. Ecosystem collapse prevention and mitigation. Handling population. Massive education to handle people like you (and worse).
Just because we already have flour spread around the room, doesn't mean we can't clean it up, and certainly doesn't mean we should continue to spread more flour around the room (let alone at an increasing rate!)
You make a bunch of generalized comments and no argument whatsoever to counter anything I have claimed at all.
For example:
We know that, if we all left the planet today it would take somewhere in the order of 50K years for a 100 ppm drop in atmospheric CO2. That is impossible to dispute. We have the data going back 800,000 years. In other words, we know how this planet, as a system without significant human input, behaves.
That rate of change corresponds to 0.002 ppm per year, or 1 ppm every 500 years, which might be easier to visualize.
What we have out there being pushed from every angle is that we can achieve a 100 ppm reduction in atmospheric CO2 in, pick a number, 30 to 50 years.
OK. Let's take the longer timeline because it makes for easier math. 50 years for 100 ppm reduction in average atmospheric CO2 concentration.
That means we are claiming that we can achieve a rate of change that is ONE THOUSAND TIMES FASTER than if we all left the planet tomorrow.
Sorry, that is preposterous. It's silly without even doing any math. We are saying we can affect a planetary-scale metric at a rate that is 1000 times greater than if we were not around at all.
It is impossible.
One might say: Well, we added 100 ppm in just a few hundred years. Yes, of course, sure, but that is a very different process. You cannot compare burning millions of barrels of oil per day with what it would take to go and capture what that process produced and negate our influence. Physics just doesn't work that way.
Saying that thousands of scientists and engineers are working on this is also a misrepresentation. What people are working on is what governments and politics is funding. Nobody wants to stick their necks out because doing so would be career-ending. I mean, imagine someone in a funded research path coming out and basically saying that the entire narrative being pushed by our government is a fantasy. That's a sure way to go from scientist to full time Uber driver.
You need to understand that reality doesn't work in clear altruistic black and white terms. I mean, look at what happened with COVID and the vaccine and the craziness surrounding all of it. Science isn't this pure thing where the truth is always driving the narrative. There are people who realized how wrong they were about the vaccine in the hospital bed just days before they stopped breathing.
It is sometimes important to consider that you are not being told the truth. I don't mean this as a conspiracy or cover-up. Not at all. Things can derail simply because of the fact that, at the end of the day, money and power drives everything. If a university wants a hundred million dollar grant from politicians pushing the "sky is falling" narrative, they better fall in line. You won't find that in any contract, but it is very much a part of reality. In this way we have, sadly, corrupted science.
Don't take my word for it. Take the time to read this paper and then come back. Stop insulting me and using the "shoot the messenger" approach, this approach does not negate the validity or soundness of any of my arguments.
Read this. You will recognize the reputable source. Real science, not quackery. Then think about what you've been told and what you believe. Think about that this paper came out in 2014 and we have wasted at least that much time promoting absolute bullshit. Think about what we could have done instead.
I read that article back when it came out, and I read it again, and I don't think it supports you like you think it does.
"Research by James Hansen shows that reducing global CO2 levels requires both a drastic cut in emissions and some way of pulling CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it."
CO2 does take a long time to get pulled out by natural processes. The paper you keep linking literally talks about needing to finds ways to pull it out via other methods. That's what we need to find.
You are saying, "nope, can't do it", a very black-and-white term you claim to avoid.
You are picking a short sentence that does not at all represent the shocking conclusion these researchers reached. You missed the entire point of the article. I am not saying it supports my conclusion. This is not what they were trying to prove. At all.
Let's assume absolutely everything I said is complete and utter nonsense. What is this article good for? Why am I bringing it up?
Because, for decades, we have been told that renewable energy is the secret to gaining control of atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate change. We are STILL being told this is the case. We have thrown silly amounts of money at it based on this "truth" parroted by anyone and everyone who bought the hook, line and sinker.
And yet, at least since 2014, we have known that this is completely false. Quoting:
"Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use.
So our best-case scenario, which was based on our most optimistic forecasts for renewable energy, would still result in severe climate change, with all its dire consequences: shifting climatic zones, freshwater shortages, eroding coasts, and
ocean acidification, among others. Our reckoning showed that reversing the trend would require both radical technological advances in cheap zero-carbon energy, as well as a method of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon.
Those calculations cast our work at Google’s RE<C program in a sobering new light. Suppose for a moment that it
had achieved the most extraordinary success possible, and that we had found cheap renewable energy technologies that
could gradually replace all the world’s coal plants—a situation roughly equivalent to the energy innovation study’s best-case scenario. Even if that dream had come to pass, it still wouldn’t have solved climate change. This realization was frankly shocking"
That's the conclusion. That's where they stopped. The business that is magic pixie dust is the next step, carbon sequestration. Their research, and this paper, did not go into that part of it.
In other words, to paraphrase, they said "We can't fix it unless we can go out and grab the carbon out of the atmosphere".
When I read that, years ago, I went into a mode any good engineer knows well: Problem solving. The revelation was that the "save the planet with renewable energy" plan was nothing but lies. That was shocking to me. I installed a 13 kW solar array on my property thinking that I was going to be part of a solution. It turned out to be a shocking lie.
And so, I started to dig. And dig I did, for over a year. I can't possibly lay out everything in detail here, I've been thinking of organizing it and putting it up on a website. And this isn't pull-out-of-my-ass conclusions. Math, physics, chemistry, science, reliable data from the most reliable universities, government organizations and researchers.
The problem is that everyone is on the bandwagon.
Anyone who took basic college physics can understand that what we are being sold is complete and utter nonsense. Thinking we can control the planet is hubris at best, a delusion. We can muck it up, sure, but going into the atmosphere to capture CO2 at a planetary scale to do in 50 years when powerful natural processes require a thousand times more is just silly.
And yes, I am saying, no, it can't be done. I have seen nothing that suggests this is possible. Not even remotely. And everyone who argues with me will spend time on personal attacks and very conveniently ignores the science. I have yet to run into someone who can present a single viable technique or technology, along with the science and math to support it, that can "save the planet". When you look at these "solution" as an engineer what you discover, 100% of the time, is that the scale and breath of resources and energy they would require could very well dwarf all the energy we produce on the planet. You generally discover these "solutions" will require burning so much fuel that we would likely double our CO2 output trying to fix the problem. In other words, the very definition of an exercise in futility. Chemical solutions require destroying entire ecosystems to mine pixie dust that has to be processed, transported and then distributed at a planetary scale. Please. This is ridiculous.
And then there's the doomsday scenarios. The planet isn't going anywhere. The planet knows how to fix balance things, it has been doing that for billions of years. We need to stop talking about saving it and start talking about adapting to it.
Not to go too far, here in California we are dealing with an absolutely massive forest fire. If I read correctly, it is the largest fire ever recorded in this state (or something like that). The carbon output of this fire alone is likely to exceed all emissions of all ground transportation in the US for the entire year.
And we think we can control the planet? C'mon.
One of the solutions that has been proposed is massive reforestation. Plant billions, trillions of trees. Let's ignore the energy and resource analysis for a moment (this would require burning massive amounts of fuel as well as equally massive amounts of water, nutrients, etc.). Yes, trees take CO2 and make tree parts out of it. Sounds like a great idea. Not a new idea at all, this is precisely what one of the ways the planet reacts to increased CO2. We would be doing more of it.
What's the problem?
Imagine we had a billion new trees in California (no sure that's possible). What you would have would be a billion more fuel sticks. And, probabilistically speaking, a far greater possibility of an hellish fire we cannot even imagine. We could wake up, twenty years from now, proud of having a billion new trees, only to live the reality of having created a horrific ecological disaster for having the hubris to think we can actually control the environment to our liking.
If I were to summarize my intent in wanting to have this conversation it is that we need to start talking about the reality of this problem rather than fantastic pixie-dust solutions. Only when we do that will we create an environment where it could just be possible to gain the understanding necessary to benefit both the planet and humanity. We are just passengers on this spacecraft. We just shit all over it. Sadly cleaning it isn't going to be that simple. And the nonsense we are talking about --like the idea that renewable energy will stop global warming, hence referencing the paper-- is between lies and pointless. We need to release our scientists from political pressure and start talking about the real problem we are facing.
If you read this paper when it came out and did not immediately understand we have been lied to mercilessly, well, I can only conclude you didn't in fact read it or you chose to read into it a conclusion that does not exist.
None of what you have said is new to people that know anything about climate change (which, isn't as nearly many as I'd like!). A switch to renewables isn't fixing anything, it is merely stopping even worse damage, and giving us a way to have energy that doesn't increase carbon. On top of that, we must sequester carbon. This isn't a question of adaptation, but survival. Sure, the planet is going to be fine, and life will be fine. Humanity? Not so much. Definitely not civilization. At +12C or so, humans, without physical adaptations, are pretty much goners. Civilization is going to struggle this century, how bad it is depends on the solutions we can figure out.
Planting trees is just the first step, the second is to use them to keep their carbon locked away, because whether they burn or rot they put their carbon back in the atmosphere unless we do something to prevent that. Build with wood, build lots of things with wood! And then plant more!
The problems are insanely difficult, and that's why we've been screaming for decades to start doing something. I'm glad you, at least, have finally listened. Of course, you came to the opposite conclusion of "oh well, nothing to be done!"
> None of what you have said is new to people that know anything about climate change
And yet we keep talking about solar panels and wind.
> A switch to renewables isn't fixing anything, it is merely stopping even worse damage, and giving us a way to have energy that doesn't increase carbon.
No. That is precisely the point. The Google researchers went into their project CONVINCED of what you just said and came out of it shocked when they realized they were 100% wrong.
The conclusion was that, even if we use the most optimal forms of renewable energy (something that is likely ten years away, BTW) at a global scale, not only will we not stop atmospheric CO2 concentration increases, it will continue to rise exponentially.
Again (not yelling, just emphasis):
IF WE COVER THE WORLD WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES AND STOP USING FOSSIL SOURCES ATMOSPHERIC CO2 WILL CONTINUE TO RISE EXPONENTIALLY.
This is a massive finding. And one that is being summarily ignored by politicians and anyone pushing fake solutions.
Look, I am not saying that we should not cleanup our act. We definitely have to. All I am saying is that we should not lie about why we should do this. After all, I installed a 13 kW solar array and will likely expand it to 20 kW next year, with capacity for more beyond that. I will, once more options become available and it makes sense, switch to electric vehicles.
So, yes, we should be cleaner. Yet, we need to understand that this is not going to save the planet. It isn't even going to dent the rate of atmospheric CO2 growth.
> Civilization is going to struggle this century, how bad it is depends on the solutions we can figure out.
I'll argue humanity might struggle with this for centuries. If I am right in my conclusion that it is impossible to bend down the the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 much below the natural "no humans on earth" scenario, well, it's 1 ppm every 500 years or so --only if we all leave the planet.
That's the key value of the analysis I did on historical ice core data. It reveals the planet can, at best, bring it down 1 ppm every 500 years if, and only if, we are not burning a hundred million barrels of oil per day worldwide (roughly what we consume). That's what I mean by "a time when humanity was not significant". During those 800,000 years humans on earth did not number in the billions and we certainly did not burn 100M barrels of oil or anything equivalent to that each and every day.
And so, any purported solution must explain and prove how it will push down the curve, the slope, from 1 ppm in 500 years to 100 ppm in 50 years. A factor of a thousand. And, one must not forget, the scale is planetary. It is easy to conduct experiments in a lab or warehouse and achieve results. Quite a
different scenario when these experiments have contact with reality.
> The problems are insanely difficult
Yes!
> that's why we've been screaming for decades to start doing something.
Yes! And at least since the Google paper we have known we have been screaming about a false solution. If we invested trillions of dollars on renewables the Titanic would still sink. That's my point. We have been having the wrong conversation.
> I'm glad you, at least, have finally listened. Of course, you came to the opposite conclusion of "oh well, nothing to be done!"
I think you are completely misinterpreting my conclusion and my intent. Also my position on this.
This last statement makes it sound like I was a denier and I finally listened. Not so at all. I was pushing the same kinds of agendas as most until the Google paper compelled me to devote over a year to reading piles of papers and actually doing the math to verify claims.
This did not turn me into a climate change denier. That would be impossible. My life is about science and engineering. The data clearly shows what's going on.
I am NOT saying "oh well, nothing to be done!". I don't think you'll find one quotable sentence where I say this.
I am saying we can't do anything about the rate of change, bending the curve, if you will. We do not have the technology, energy and resources to affect a thousand-fold improvement in rate of change (from 1 ppm in 500 years to 100 ppm in 50 years).
I am also saying we need to stop wasting time and money on fake solutions. We could bankrupt our nation or multiple nations going after full-out renewable energy everywhere and we would, most definitely, come out of the other side of that with a collective "Oh, shit! What have we done!" as we discover that atmospheric CO2 continues to rise exponentially and we blew our resources --and decades-- on a non-solution.
I am saying we need to start having the right conversation. Part of which must include the idea that it is delusional to think we are going to have control of a planetary scale problem on anything even close to a human time scale. We made a mess. It will take a massive amount of time to clean it.
This isn't about denying climate change or proposing we do nothing. This is about desperately wanting to start having the right conversation because the one we are having is based on a delusion.
Here's what I don't know (and hope to be true): If we stopped the delusion and threw our resources at research aimed at coming up with a viable carbon capture technology --I mean billions of dollars. Could we come up with something that help? It this even possible?
There's some basic science and math that can be applied to proving whether or not this is even realistically possible or attainable. I keep referring to the principle of conservation of energy because it is the single most "lets get real" heartless lesson in Physics.
Take the idea you floated about planting trees and building a lot more stuff from wood. Sounds good.
Have you done the math on what this actually means as a process? What I mean by this are things like:
- How many trees do we need to actually make a difference?
- It is even possible to plant these many trees?
- How much does the forest fire risk increase if we were to plant that many trees?
- What would be the consequences of adding fuel to the existing forest population?
- How much fuel do we need to burn plant trees?
- How much fuel do we need to support and maintain these new forests as they grow?
- How much fuel do we need to burn to make sure the forests don't burn?
- How much carbon do we produce when we harvest?
- How much carbon do we produce when we process the lumber (not a trivial amount, BTW)?
- How much carbon do we produce in all of the ancillary processes (manufacturing nails, brackets, etc.)?
- How much carbon do we produce building stuff from wood?
- What are the ecosystem effects of all of the above, to include other flora and fauna?
- etc?
This is the kind of analysis that is lacking when anyone makes simple statements like "lets plant more trees" or "lets seed the oceans with magic beads" or "lets build city-scale HEPA filters". All fine and wonderful, but the math is the math and, at the end of the day, what is being proposed must pass physics. I have yet to find ONE case where the physics makes any sense at all. Laboratory scale? Sure. Planetary scale? Not one. Can't find one. I looked, believe me.
That's what I mean when I ask if it is even possible. We don't need to dump trillions of dollars into something to determine if it is possible. We know enough science to be able to estimate basic outcomes. We don't need calculations that are correct within 5% to confirm if something works.
What I would want to see is something that, for example, can capture twice as much carbon as the solutions entire process will produce. We can't make anything without producing carbon and other substances, so that's inescapable. The process, then, has to capture its own "new" carbon and, at the same time, double that in order to actually claim to make a dent on the 1 ppm / 500 year natural rate of change. If it only captures 10% more than it produces it isn't a solution at all in that this will not even dent the 1 ppm/500 year slope. A forest fire alone can take out the effect of a 10% solution.
That is a very difficult hurdle. And, as far as I know, nobody has shown this to be possible.
I don't know the answers. I do not claim to know them. All I am saying is the emperor has no clothes and we are delusional. We need to start talking about reality and hold everyone accountable.
What we are doing is almost the equivalent of saying we can take a bus full of people from Los Angeles to New York City on a single 20 gallon tank of gas without refueling. Everyone gets on the bus and nobody bothers to ask anyone to do the math and prove this to be possible. And 200 miles later everyone learns they have to walk home.
So, no it isn't "oh well, nothing to be done!". It's "WAKE THE FUCK UP! WE ARE NOT HAVING THE RIGHT DISCUSSIONS AT ALL! THIS IS DELUSIONAL. WE ARE ON THE WRONG PATH!". Yes, in that case I would be yelling.
I don't think we are too far apart. I have a feeling you might understand where I am coming from if you took the time to fire-up Excel and do the math --as I have-- on various purported solutions. Things break down very quickly once to demand solutions that actually pass the laws of physics.
For example, replacing our entire fleet of vehicles with electrics sounds wonderful...until you run the numbers for the entire process and realize we need to build somewhere between 50 to hundreds of 1 GW class nuclear power plants to be able to do this. And, if we don't go nuclear, the CO2 we would produce to power these cars might be shocking.
I appreciate the conversation. And, despite what it might sound like at times, I do want to be challenged. What I hate are personal attacks, which is what happens most of the time in these threads. Attackers don't do a single bit of reading, math and expend no effort to understand. Their world view on this subject amounts to just repeating the mantra rather than someone like me, who devoted over a year to actually trying to understand. In that sense they are purely religious believers, drones, if you will. And deniers? They are the worst. They truly have no clue and refuse to learn anything at all.
What I would LOVE is for someone to show me what I am missing and how I am wrong with math and physics. I truly want to understand what I might be missing. We already know that the renewable story is delusional. Fine. How about the other stuff? Am I wrong? How? Please! I want to know. No hand-wavy stuff. Science.
Math. Physics. This has never happened in the many years I have been having these conversations. I have had private discussions with PhD-level scientists in Physics and other disciplines, who, after reflection, end-up having the same questions I have. The most fundamental one being: Why are we doing this? Have we gone mad?
(can't reply to your other comment, for some reason - too deep for Hacker News? :) )
You keep saying "Why are we doing this?" I guess I don't understand what "this" is. You sound like you are being nihilistic.
The problem isn't "lets drive across the US on 20 gallons of gas", but rather "lets get across the US somehow". The math is brutal, yep, that's what we've been saying for decades. I happen to like civilization (mostly!), so I think I want to try to save it somehow.
Switching to zero emissions doesn't fix it, it stops the blood loss, but we still have the massive wound to deal with.
I can't help but feel that you are being condescending. Not sure how to react. Statements like "Glad you have caught up to the reality of the situation." are uncalled for. For now, I'll ignore it.
> You keep saying "Why are we doing this?" I guess I don't understand what "this" is.
"This" is many things. The simplest of which is an almost religious attachment to renewable energy as a savior. That is the way it is being sold. The mantra is that we need to switch to renewables as far and wide as possible and as quickly as possible to "save the planet".
So, yeah, why are we doing this when we know it will do absolutely nothing. It's a waste of money, time and resources.
I have no problem with pushing renewables to cleanup our act. Claiming that this will save the planet --which is how this is being sold-- is delusional at best.
> The problem isn't "lets drive across the US on 20 gallons of gas"
No, it is. Because when you do the math and check the purported solutions to see if they pass physics, what you discover it that they are ALL the equivalent of claiming we can drive a bus across the US with only 20 gallons in the tank.
That's the problem. That's another one of the meanings of "this". We are accepting lies as facts. We are making big decisions without demanding that the numbers pass basic process scrutiny. This --that-- is a problem.
> I happen to like civilization (mostly!), so I think I want to try to save it somehow.
Well, then demand that we stop focusing on the wrong thing. You are doing it yourself. You said:
> Switching to zero emissions doesn't fix it, it stops the blood loss
No, it does not. Not even close. When you look at the problem from a larger perspective you quickly realize these single variable "solutions" are false.
I am assuming you are speaking of vehicles, if you mean everything, even industrial processes, well, if there is such a thing as "more impossible" then that is "more impossible".
That's the problem. We are reducing everything to single variable magical solutions when reality is a complex multivariate problem.
Take a moment to list everything that has to happen to switch to zero emissions and quantify it all to the extent possible.
Then go back to my very original observation and answer the simplest question I asked:
How is going to zero emissions --which is impossible-- better than humanity leaving the planet today?
Any solution has to be OVER A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER than humanity leaving the planet. We know this. The natural rate of change is 1 ppm in 500 years. If we want to fix it in 50 years you have to be 1000 times better (actually, far more than that).
The problem keeps coming back to a very uncomfortable baseline. It's like Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. It takes a certain amount of energy to break away from earth's gravitational pull with a rocket. That's the baseline. Any solution that claims to be able to do it faster (in a rocket) either uses insanely more energy or is impossible (I also work in aerospace, helped get astronauts to the International Space Station and, with some luck, will have hardware on the moon in a few years --so, yeah, math and physics are kind of what I do). The baseline when it comes to atmospheric CO2 concentration the no-humans-on-earth scenarios. Anything that claims to be able to do better than that has to answer serious questions and show the math and physics will work on a planetary scale.
I don't know what your background might be. Maybe what I am saying is difficult to process because of this. Not a dig. I just don't know where you are coming from and if things like "Conservation of Energy" mean anything to you at all beyond a google search. I am trying to keep it super simple because I can't make the assumption that readers have the scientific background required for a different approach.
This one is current. It points to the dangers of massive reforestation and, in many ways, the hubris of thinking we can actually control (reduce) atmospheric CO2 concentration in anything approaching a human time scale:
"At Germany's Brennender Berg—literally "Burning Mountain" in German—the coal has been on fire since 1688. "
1688.
It is said that Chinese seam fires alone contribute over 1% of the total annual atmospheric CO2 generated.
This points to the hubris and danger of thinking we can actually control something at a planetary scale. Can you imagine if we planted a trillion trees and accidentally created more fires? Think back to my "if we left earth" observation.
I have looked at this from every angle, scientifically, not hand-wavy crap. I have a lot more than what can possibly be communicated in comments on HN. I should organize it and publish it on a website so it can be challenged by anyone who might care to do so.
This is not a single variable problem. "Magic pixie dust -> Less CO2" is the usual type of "solution" we are given and nobody bothers to ask about the other hundred or thousand variables that remain without published analysis. And yet everyone gets behind the pixie dust.
As you said. Not a simple problem at all. The sooner we start talking about this in real terms the better.
1. Humans have managed to fundamentally alter the global climate on a timescale of about 150 years.
2. Humans are incapable of fundamentally altering the climate on any significant scale compared to natural processes.
Pick one.
Yes, feedbacks can outpace what we're already emitting. Yes, we're in a dire situation that is going to take radical innovation and a huge surplus of zero carbon energy to basically reverse the exothermic process we used to burn millions of years of stored carbon with an endothermic process to draw it back down. But this doomer stuff isn't helpful. Anything we do to mitigate the rise of greenhouse gases, even if it is not a complete reversal (that's pretty much off the table) will give us time to innovate and change the outcome from extinction-level catastrophic to merely a drastic change in our way of life. Every bit counts. Trees, BECCs, direct air carbon capture, lowering emissions, albedo alteration, etc. The sad thing is I don't think you've researched that thoroughly, you're only got the parade of some scary facts. Indulging in overwhelming doom is just another emotional coping strategy to avoid responsibility, the same as outright denial.
Superlatively, humans have the capacity to instantly stop global warming by causing a nuclear winter. We already have the capability of kicking up enough dust that surface temperatures drop a dangerous amount.
We shouldn't do this, but humans can certainly do things much faster than "leave the earth alone for 50k years"
> Superlatively, humans have the capacity to instantly stop global warming by causing a nuclear winter. We already have the capability of kicking up enough dust that surface temperatures drop a dangerous amount.
Who's talking about global warming? This is about atmospheric CO2 concentration. It is related, yes, but reality isn't a single variable problem.
Stop global warming using a nuclear winter? Sure, that's a solution. And kill everything on the planet in the process. Brilliant.
> 1. Humans have managed to fundamentally alter the global climate on a timescale of about 150 years.
> 2. Humans are incapable of fundamentally altering the climate on any significant scale compared to natural processes.
> Pick one.
Please refer to my answer here, it addresses your question:
I hope you understand that it is impossible to provide a full treatment of this subject in a single comment. The comment you replied to did not answer your question. Fair enough. Thanks for raising the question. I address it in the above-linked answer to someone else.
The TLDR is simple:
We were able to do this in a few hundred years because we burned fuels (oil, coal, peat, natural gas) far more dense than the historically natural source of atmospheric CO2 increases: Forests.
The amount of biomatter that goes into making just one gallon of oil is hard to imagine. In fact, it is hard to imagine the time scale, pressure, heat and energy that goes into the process. Plants, animals, insects, all type of biomatter compressed and mutated into a black goo.
We came about and started to burn this black goo at a massive scale. Far more so than the other major CO2 producer, forest fires. And so, yes, in a few years we were able to pump an incredible amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, far more so than the natural order of things is able to deal with. And so CO2 ppm concentration increased rapidly.
On an annual basis, forest fires contribute over 13 billion tonnes of carbon, which is more our industrial processes produce. So, yes, burning stuff is what makes CO2. That's how the planet did it when we were insignificant and that's how we did it when we started to use incredibly dense fuels and burning it.
It is critically important to understand scale here. The world consumes somewhere in the order of 40 billion barrels of oil per year. If you were to translate that in to the equivalent biomass that went into creating it the number would be like fully burning every forest on the planet many once a day every day of the year, if not more.
Why is it that we cannot fix it in 150 years?
Because that process is massively more difficult.
First, it cannot be done with less energy than that which created the problem in the first place. It will be some fraction of the energy content of 40 billion barrels of oil per year.
Where is this energy going to come from? Not solar. Not wind. No way. This has already been proven. I am happy to provide you with a paper that discusses this fallacy if you are willing to read it.
Second, simple common sense. Grab several bags of flour, walk around Home Depot and fling flour everywhere. Now the manager demands to remove what you introduced into their building, shelves, products, etc. You would need a thousand people to accomplish that in anywhere near the time it took you to create the mess in the first place. You would need to expend far more energy doing so. You would also need far more resources (bags, shovels, vacuum cleaners, brushes, etc.) than the bags the flour came out of.
In other words, cleaning a mess is far more difficult than creating it.
We cannot clean this mess.
We have to talk about living with it.
To that point. Do you own a CO2 meter? You don't? Buy one and walk around with it. I have several. You are going to be surprised by what you learn.
We are being told that the sky will fall if we reach <pick a number> ppm. Your home and office environments are likely somewhere in the 650 ppm range and have been so for years, decades. Inside your car, 1,000 ppm isn't out of the question (no, not breathing into the meter). My point is that humanity has been living in >600ppm environments for decades, maybe even centuries (where old living and working conditions cleaner than today?). Guess what? We have not turned to mush. Not even close. This sky-is-falling thing, once you start to get analytical and step away from the sales pitches quickly starts to look like a huge red herring to benefit business or political objectives. Get a CO2 meter and tell me I am wrong. I am not.
To understand this subject you have to be willing to do some work. You can't just repeat what you are being told. You have to think and, yes, do a little bit of high school math. It really isn't that hard to get there. We are being manipulated and lied to. We need to focus on living with this, not be delusional and think we can save the planet, that's preposterous.
BTW, vertical farming is likely the future of mass food production. Do you know what they do in vertical farms to promote plant growth? They bring in canisters of compressed CO2 and release it into the farm environment. It turns out plants eat CO2 and make, well, plant matter out of it (again, high school science). One could very well argue that an increase in atmospheric CO2 might bring with it a boost in global plant-based food production and help end hunger world wide.
You see, these things are not single variable problems or solutions. That's the main thing to focus on. There's always more to the story. Think.
Your entire diatribe here is not really responding to me, it's just more monologuing. Frankly, what you're pushing here is the next talking point after climate denial, which is sowing messages of futility. Anything to avoid doing something about the problem. Anything to protect the existing industries from change. Just sinking into comfortable fatalism. And you're using common denier-turned-fatalist talking points like talking about plant food, and little "appeal to the common man" bits like talking about high school math repeatedly. It sounds like PR talk. You obviously have not researched this thoroughly. Vertical farms are not cost effective compared to many, many other options. Plants are less nutritious under high CO2 conditions, becoming more empty carbohydrates by mass[1]. Plants also have an ideal range they're adapted to, and any CO2 fertilization effects tend to drop off rapidly past that threshold[2]. This is very easy information to find if you're actually tuned into the climate science, even casually. You are either reading bad sources and need to find better ones, or you're posting this kind of nonsense in bad faith.
As my wife is fond of saying "Your google search is not a substitute for my medical degree".
I really don't know where to go with your comment. You misrepresent everything I said and make claims that could only have come from a superficial google search and equally superficial reading.
Prime example, the second paper you link states, quoting:
"Most plants generally benefit from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration through the “CO2 fertilization effect”, which boosts growth and yield [19, 23, 46, 52]. However, this positive CO2 fertilization effect strongly depends on the plant functional groups and species [7, 22, 53,54,55,56]. Even within the same species of winter wheat, the results from previous studies are inconsistent [22, 50, 57,58,59,60]. These contradictory results suggest that different plants and/or species may have different optimal CO2 concentrations for their growth.
Our results showed that the optimal CO2 concentrations occurred at 945, 915, and 1151 ppm for the aboveground biomass and at 915, 1178, and 1386 ppm for the total biomass of tall fescue, perennial ryegrass, and Kentucky bluegrass (Fig. 1), suggesting that a strong CO2 fertilization effect occurred at different optimal CO2 concentrations for these three perennial grasses."
They found optimal CO2 concentrations that are easily twice our current average atmospheric CO2 concentration. Your own link.
This is why massive indoor farms use CO2 injection.
> Vertical farms are not cost effective compared to many, many other options.
You clearly are not informed. Among other things, I have been developing technology for indoor farming, or more accurately, CEA (Controlled Environment Agriculture). I have many friends who own and run various kinds of CEA facilities. No, not everyone is growing weed. For example, one of my good friends runs one of the most successful indoor farm operations in Asia. We also have relationships in the Middle East, where certain geographies are absolutely hostile to growing food and indoor farming is the only path to food independence. During the pandemic countries like Singapore quickly discovered their dependence on the outside world for food was extreme, they quickly set national objectives to use technologies such as CEA to become far more independent.
You seem to be drawing no distinction between the following two possible outcomes:
1. Slow carbon emissions now despite the incredible amount we've already added and hope that the damage we've done is not enough to completely ruin the planet.
2. Do nothing and let emissions accelerate even further, create an even bigger problem than we've already created. Gamble to an even greater extent with our future.
Where in your incredibly long essay have you provided any reason to believe option 2 is better than option 1?
As far as I can tell, all you've done is prove we can't get back to pre-industrial levels quickly just by stopping emissions today. So what?
Who ever said the goal was to get back to pre-industrial levels? I think all climate science believers aim to do is reduce the extent of this incredible gamble and unintended experiment humanity has undertaken. Instead of gambling on a 1% odds of survival slot machine, climate scientists want to slow down and gamble on a 10% odds of survival slot machine. No one ever said we could move that probability back to 100% odds of survival slot machine.
To me your post comes across like someone on the Titanic saying 'Hey guys, we've looked at the data and situation, stop thinking these 20 lifeboats will be able to rescue us. Just give up.' when there are some people arguing that the ship isn't sinking at all, and others trying to quickly come up with ways to create more impromptu lifeboats, trying to figure out how to stop the ship from sinking, or trying to urge those that they can to get in the lifeboats, despite the fact some will still die. At the end of the day your post just encourages those who don't think the ship is sinking or those that think there's no point to try getting in a lifeboat or creating a new one out of furniture to just go back down below deck and listen to the violinists for another hour before drowning.
The problem is that you have not done any real research on the subject and you are trying to argue with someone who has devoted a non-trivial amount of time to truly trying to understand this and, more importantly, understand how I might be wrong. I want to be wrong, yet NOBODY has ever come up with an intelligent observation that invalidates this conclusion. Advance math and science are not required here.
First of all, where did I ever claim we need to get back to pre-industrial levels? Please don't put words in my mouth. The consensus seems to be that the objective should be a 100 ppm reduction from --roughly-- current levels. That will take 50,000 years, give or take a few tens of thousands of years. We can't fix it. Why? Because we can't fix it faster than leaving the planet. Any other imaginary 50-year solution will require planetary scale energy and resources we do not have. We are far more likely to kill all life on earth by trying some dumb "save the planet" solution than to fix a thing.
> Do nothing and let emissions accelerate even further, create an even bigger problem than we've already created. Gamble to an even greater extent with our future.
OK, how about not taking my word for it. Please read this paper. Really read it. Then come back to your statement.
I won't ruin the conclusion for you. I give huge credit to these researchers for daring to speak the truth. They actually say they went into this to prove, once and for all, to the entire world, that their renewable energy vision --one shared and still promoted globally-- was our savior. What they discovered is interesting and very much parallels my conclusion, yet they come at it from a very different perspective. If you are honestly open-minded and want to understand the subject, this is your starting point. This is the paper that launched me into a year-long quest to understand what's going on. Read it and come back to me.
> To me your post comes across like someone on the Titanic saying 'Hey guys, we've looked at the data and situation, stop thinking these 20 lifeboats will be able to rescue us. Just give up.'
Exactly the opposite. I am the guy saying: We can't save everyone. We don't have enough boats. We need to figure out if we can build more.
What zealots are saying is: We can save the Titanic with this magical cork.
That's the difference.
Read the paper. Please. It's from a very reputable source you will recognize and respect. No quackery. Real science.
We need to build more boats and stop this nonsense about saving the Titanic.
I think Musk deserves credit for recognizing that the USA is so car-centric that any effort to get people to use trains and busses would be met with enormous resistance, whereas popularizing electric variants of the most dominant form of transport can actually be impactful.
I would certainly like to see a marketing-savvy billionaire start a sustained campaign of "ride the train/bus." I've wondered for some time, both what that would look like and whether it could have a meaningful impact in any given metropolitan area.
(And rinse and repeat for other vital public goods, like parks, libraries, public health, and so on.)
He gives electric transportation and storage with one hand, and takes away with the promise of literally thousand of ultra-low-efficiency fuel (methane) burning rocket launches with the other.
Musk's main climate sin is sabotaging real mass transit with ridiculous low-throughout pipe-dreams: his cars in small tunnels.
This is as much a sin against functional cities as it is against the climate.
Rocket launches really aren't bad at all in comparison. He could take one every single day without the same level of damage as stopping a single new transit line.
Politicians and NIMBYs killed mass transit in the US long before Musk entered the picture. In fact, Boring Co is a direct reaction to mass transit projects routinely being turned to boondoggles by politics, corruption, mismanagement, and obstructionism — building mass transit via the traditional means is practically impossible.
I won't pretend that the Boring Co's loops are efficient or a real solution but I don't believe that pinning the blame on it is quite right.
General Motors did, with help from others in automobile, oil, and tyre industries:
The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to convictions of General Motors (GM) and other companies that were involved in monopolizing the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries, and to allegations that the defendants conspired to own or control transit systems, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The suit created lingering suspicions that the defendants had in fact plotted to dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation.
Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities.[3] Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry.
Musk is proposing to make an expensive part, boring tunnels, cheaper. But then he also proposes a fundamentally boneheaded change that makes any improved efficiency there much worse: individual vehicles which are fundamentally unscalable.
So I wish he would keep the good part, cheaper tunnels, but not sabotage those tunnels with an unworkable vehicle proposal. It also gives a ton of power to the obstructionists to sabotage real transit projects and increase their costs, because they can say "let's try what Musk is proposing".
How are rocket launches "ultra low efficiency"? Compared to what? I mean, no one is putting stuff into orbit with any other technology.
Rocket engines are the most efficient heat engines in existence, and the energy efficiency of a rocket (in the sense of fraction of jet kinetic energy that ends up in the kinetic + change in potential energy of the thing put in orbit) can be very high.
It takes a lot of propellant to get to orbit. That isn't because rockets are ultra low efficiency, it's because it takes a lot of energy to get to orbit.
Whether we should include Mars as a distination for transport, or indeed incrementally faster broadband as good uses for energy are up for debate. But Elon does, so here we are. Light 'er up and let the hippies argue amongst themselves!
SpaceX may have the absolute bee's knees in rocket engine, but that assumes that leaving the atmosphere is what we need to do, and need to do now. People are mumbling 'mass transit' and 'intercontinental travel' with respect to Starship for crying out loud. It's completely insane.
High specific impulse can actually reduce efficiency, though. Consider: a rocket is most efficient at converting jet kinetic energy into the kinetic energy of the vehicle if the exhaust velocity = - vehicle velocity (so the jet is left stationary in the chosen frame of reference). An ideal (and unrealizable) rocket would have Isp that increases during the launch. It should initially be very low, then increase with time. Efficiency can (ideally) approach 100%.
But I wonder what you mean by efficiency of conversion of fuel "to transportation". Do you mean the irreducible minimum energy needed to achieve a given transportation task? Because the latter can be ZERO here on Earth: the energy needed to go from one place to another at the same elevation and latitude is zero: there is no change in kinetic and potential energy before and after. By your criterion, a terrestrial transportation system has 0% efficiency in this case (and extremely low efficiency in many more cases.)
> SpaceX may have the absolute bee's knees in rocket engine, but that assumes that leaving the atmosphere
Yes, tell me about what can be done in space without leaving the atmosphere. You seem to have written a veiled screed against space travel itself. It's not about efficiency at all.
Tough luck everyone, OP said he already pays too many taxes, so unfortunately climate action has to go on the back burner. But good news, at least while we are still alive he won’t feel like the government is taking took much.
You’re mocking a useful data point: governments operate by the consent of the governed - if you put too much pressure on people, they will replace you democratically or otherwise.
I am painfully aware. The person I replied to is obviously not the only one with that mindset, which is what makes this such a tough sell. At the same time, this is an absurdly shortsighted way of looking at the problem. I get that paying taxes suck, but if the consequence is unmitigated climate change, then maybe taxes are the lesser evil?
To me this whole thing is absolutely absurd, most everyone agrees that we need to do something about climate change, as long as it isn’t them having to change. This isn’t going to get us out of this, at some point we’ll have to realize that “it’s only the big corporations at fault and I’m just a humble innocent cog in the machine” isn’t true and we are all complicit in this. That we all have to do something about this. But hey, finding a scapegoat is always the nice and easy solution. Now we can lean back, pat ourselves on the shoulder because we have identified the problem.
We, collectively as humans, are borderline insane.
For example, even if the greens get majority in Germany, they'll be in a very tough spot. Their core electorate will think they're underdelivering. But their proposed measures won't be accepted by others.
And if a country doesn't, are we willing/able to go to war? Given that some countries will burn down forests that pollute their airspace, and the airspace of their neighbours it's pretty likely there will be those that refuse the tax.
You smack import taxes on them that correspond to the carbon tax that should have been + 10%. Then they can either do the carbon tax or have their exports made much, much more expensive.
If you can smack a tax on their imports, why not already do it? This only works if you are a union/trading-block/superpower with the leverage to do so - and as the world gets globally competitive morally punishing taxes will require more and more "fighting the invisible hand" i.e working against the interests of free trade.
To re-iterate the point that probably got my original post downvoted: It helps to have a large military-industrial complex to enforce embargos.
That was basically already lost in the 1990s, right after the Tienanmen Square massacre, when the US continued to treat China as WTO good guy (Most Favoured Nation), instead of acting swiftly to connect the negative economic consequences of human rights abuses to. (But US big farm lobbied against it, and eventually no one with power really gave a shit. Just like nowadays with Hong Kong or Xinjiang.)
On the other hand the embargo against Cuba, Russia, North Korea, Iran are pretty devastating for their economy. (Which might help absolutely zero percent in terms of human rights, but if the goal is to reduce GHG emissions, probably a lot of countries are willing to make pragmatic deals about technology to benefit from free trade than countries that are willing to change their whole political system.)
Exactly. He said “collective action” won’t work, then called for “collective action” among governments. In these thought analysis, an self-serving person is a good proxy for how any government will behave.
Seeing the Apple thing and the Australis thing and the EU thing, I'm happy humanity will kill itself by Climate Change.
We have built systems that make it impossible for evil to fail, it will always succeed. You can see it popping up everywhere - loss of privacy, climate change denialism, covid denialism, fascism everywhere, chinese extermination camps, ...
We will all die out and it is a good thing. We will all suffer terribly and that's good, we deserve that too.
Even assuming your take is right and humanity deserves the fate we're actively constructing, it's not just our fate. We're a hardy and clever species - by the time we are extinct from climate change, it'll be a hard environment for mammals in general. Even if you believe we deserve to go, it's still worth trying to fix things for those who can't.
We already have an ideal carbon capture technology optimized by Nature Inc. through a state of the art evolutionary algorithm running trillions of parallel processes for billions of years. It's called Trees (TM). With Trees (TM) the CO2 emissions problem has a simple two step solution that anyone can accomplish with ease:
If a whole forest grows and the whole forest dies, you’re right, no carbon is captured.
But if a whole forest is created and maintained, even as trees die and rot they build the biomass of the soil and undergrowth: every ton of life is carbon and heat energy captured - individuals live and die, but the overall biomass can increase, capturing carbon and energy in the form of healthy ecosystems.
As another commenter pointed out, if humanity just left earth tomorrow, it would take eons for CO2 ppm to fall, so we should be doing something proactive. Plus, planting and caring for trees is something everyone can do and gets us away from the “wait for a super villain billionaire to solve it” mentality.
Edit: thanks for the link to Azolla, hadn’t heard of that
The nasty thing about global warming is that it's weakening the jet stream. This causes places to one year have crazy amounts of years and the next drought. The rainy years, things grow like crazy! Lots of growth. On drought all that new growth dries up and is tinder for forest fires.
We need more trees for sure, but at the same time would would need to put huge efforts in forest fire prevention otherwise poof, all that hard work trees do sequestering CO2 literally goes up in smoke.
To offset our entire current greenhouse gas emissions with trees alone, we would have to increase earth's total plant biomass by 10% each year.
Given how slow most types of trees grow that seems completely unfeasible unless we give up most meat (taking space that we now use for growing animal feed).
(Yes, we have a lot of space in the desert, but studies show limited effect on global warming from planting anything there once you account for how well sand reflects heat back into space).
I'll save you the time (though you should watch it).
1. Much of the animal feed comes from agricultural byproducts. As an example, we eat corn on the cob, but much of the corn stalk is inedible to humans, but can be made into products for animals.
2. Much of the land used for animals is not suitable for growing crops. Some is, but it's not a 1:1 swapability factor.
What did Musk or Bezos build? What did they invent? Nothing. Everything built and invented was by their workers. The success of Amazon and SpaceX/Tesla is a form of collective action. The collective action of employees, and the collective action of government policy which provided the playground that Bezos and Musk play in.
If you've ever tried to organise a group lunch for a party of more than two, you've got some sense of how difficult it is to orchestrate group activities.
Whatever you think of Musk and Bezos, and I'm not much of a fan of either, they've both led organisations to transformational accomplishments.
That in itself is something, notable, and has been recognised throughout history.
The question of whether those accomplishements are good or worthwhile, or how reward and profit should be allocated, are separate ones.
Each human being emits 25 tons of CO2 per year just by breathing, should the businesses also be taxed based on their number of employees? People often forget the good parts about the little CO2 increase from the past century, I care a lot about environment (I'm a countryside person) but CO2 - many people forget it is the food of the plants that we need to eat - just takes all the place in the environmental debate and what I think are more important matters such as waste reduction, ocean cleaning, recycling, durable/fixable hardware... I'm hoping for people to do a cost/benefit analysis of the CO2 situation and start thinking rationally and work on what is actually bad for us, not just CO2 greenwhashing bs.
I feel we need a new, completely separate word for "net emissions", because too often the discussion gets confused around this point.
> Each human being emits 25 tons of CO2 per year just by breathing
In almost all cases we care about net emissions. Breathing is net carbon neutral.
What we really need is to tax the net carbon that's added to the "fast carbon loop" (the biosphere). That is, carbon that's being dug up from the ground.
Yes. Of course, the business would also receive a tax credit for all the CO2 being sequestered by employees eating food. /s
Also, your 25 tons number is wildly wrong. It's simple to work it out on the back of an envelope:
CO2 is a produced from O2 and sources of carbon in your food. C + O2 = CO2
The molecular mass of the Carbon in CO2 is 12, the total molelcular weight of CO2 is 44. So, 27% of the mass of the CO2 you breath out ultimately comes from your food.
25 tonnes of CO2 being breathed out a year would imply 18.5kg of Carbon being consumed per day.
Indeed, I feel developed countries have grown far too fond of brigades that end in legislation that no one understands but it placates the loudest people enough that no one actually checks to see if legislation even worked.
The vocal dissidents will attach their reputation to said legislation and become an apologist regardless of the legislation's efficacy - so we end up with a legislative body that doesn't have to fix anything, they just have to do something noticeable.
Reminds me of when there was legislation put out that blended gas and biofuel would get tax credits in order to increase biofuel (the greener energy) usage - instead paper plants that used exclusively biofuel started adding gasoline to their biofuel just to get the tax credit and no one cared.
It's my understanding that they attempted to close the loophole in 2009, (4 years after the credit was created), but it wasn't actually closed and no one cares anymore.
Obviously there are many other big issues, but the things you've listed don't have a (direct) impact on climate change specifically. There's lots of things going on that damage the environment in various ways and I agree that we should work on those too, but if we can't take action on climate change all that other stuff will sort of take care of itself when society as we know it ceases to exist.
Googling this number gives different answers for respiratory CO2 emissions per person. Various forms of wildlife obviously also emits CO2 and historically, this has not contributed to climate change prior to the last century. This is a moot point.
Maybe you believe that the temperature is going to rise infinitely because of CO2 emissions, I believe it's going to top at 2.5C degrees and that we can not only manage it but benefit from it.
> Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'
What almost alarms me more than the thought of a climate apocalypse is that I don't think this (a UN report) is going to have any effect on the opinions of 40% of the public who see climate change as some kind of job destroying conspiracy.
Nothing short of Florida disappearing under the sea is going to make any difference, perhaps we (as a species) don't deserve to continue.
> 40% of the public who see climate change as some kind of job destroying conspiracy.
These people are not the ones who need to take action, so who cares?
Policy makers are the ones who need to act, and they are already well aware for most of the consequences of global warming. The issue is that a lot of big corporations (The ones which really control police makers) are not going to be advantaged by transforming the society to a more respectful one regarding nature. So things move slowly, until things are getting really bad and day to day activities are drastically affected by global warming
Blaming "big corporations" for our woes looks pretty unconstructive to me. Most big corporations got big by giving consumers what they want. Trying to reduce emissions through big corporations (AFAICT the focus will be largely on energy, transport and construction) means making their products more expensive, which always triggers responses of regressiveness / inequality, short-circuiting the whole debate.
Put in another way: regardless whether execs at the oil and flight companies are to blame, or their flying and driving customers, a solution must involve large reductions in the amount of fuel burnt (which inevitably requires making that much more expensive than it is now).
General public will understand the problem when first country ceases to exist (there are multiple candidates that will completely become uninhabitable in a few decades).
> These people are not the ones who need to take action, so who cares?
Yes they are - big corporations and governments only do things when the public goes along with them, otherwise they go bust or get voted out.
It will take people making choices, changing the way they live, travel, eat, and buy things and using the products of companies that support that to make any change.
Well, the 40% are certainly not going be convinced if the "first United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate" flew on his private jet 16 times to places like Martha's Vineyard since January. Can the leaders of climate action actually live up to their own standards?
Without going into the religious bits and more spectacular bits of it there is an extremely interesting story going on in the last part of the book of Jonah in Nevi'im (in Christianity this is part of the old testament):
As Jonah tells the inhabitants of Nineveh about the impending doom they repent and the king of Nineveh puts on sackcloth, sits in ashes and makes a proclamation which decrees fasting, the wearing of sackcloth, prayer, and repentance.
Again, without going fully religious, this is an excellent example. When people see their "king" actually doing the thing themselves that they ask others to do, change happens. There is nothing religious about this. Here in Norway, former King Olav V was famous for, among other things, taking the tram during gas rationing in the 70ies.
Old people could still tell me back in the 80ies and 90ies that prince Olav and his siblings had actual porridge for breakfast like other kids.
Today royalty plays less of a role I guess compared to influencers and thought leaders of all kinds, but I still guess it would make a massive difference if next years Davos meeting was announced to be virtual because of climate concerns.
Or if a few tik tok/Instagram stars came out and showed their 2 generation old iPhones saying: I can get a new anytime I want but I actually do care about the environment.
> Well, the 40% are certainly not going be convinced if the "first United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate" flew on his private jet 16 times to places like Martha's Vineyard since January.
Why?
I mean, okay, getting angry about hypocrisy is fun. But why would you allow someone else's hypocrisy to sway your view of what is or is not objectively true? That is not critical thinking.
Disclaimer: I'm not defending their point of you, just reasoning through it.
My naive take is that it calls into question if the supposed catastrophe (from the 40%'s point of view) is real if the leaders aren't taking it seriously themselves. "objectively true" only works if you understand the problem without, from your point of view, suspicious people explaining it to you. In this case, the suspicious people would be the primary ones telling you that you have to pay this tax while they are mysteriously exempt.
Do you not think that "code red" fatigue is part of this? Ordinary people are bombarded with messages predicting doom at some distant point in the future for one reason or another on an almost daily basis, and yet life rolls on.
I can't remember the last time Miami Beach wasn't going to be underwater '{X} years from now'. When everything is a Code Red, nothing is. Happens at work all the time too
Nah, people dismissed these warnings when they were new in 50s, applied at best patches that made them feel good when problems became apparent in 90s and so on.
It's not fatigue, it's ostrich politics. "If I don't look at it, it will go away." But it's not a predator, it's essentially a force of nature. We had this kind of (then social) problems being ignored lead to huge revolutions in the past. But this time, getting the head of a few lords abd ladies will be insufficient.
I don't know the extent to which that's true. If even one of the many big and worsening storms causes enough damage to breach on a single occasion then the whole city floods to whatever level it would have otherwise and your efforts are for nothing.
There was a huge flood in the Netherlands in 1953 which killed thousands and as a result a big barricade of walls was built around the whole area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works . There's been not even the slightest chance of flooding in that area since. Smart things with segmentation can also be done.
I think it is possible to hold this off for the richest cities. It'll cost a lot to build, maintain and perhaps even upgrade it, for sure. The Netherlands had the big benefit of a major natural gas find in that time that gave a huge boost to the economy, otherwise this wouldn't have been possible. Also, there were less environmental restrictions back then. All that will make it more expensive today.
On the other hand, the levee broke during Katrina in a first world country. Infrastructure needs to be improved and maintained continually and that's a huge problem and cost sink even in first world countries. Have you seen the price to build a mile of subway in NYC? The engineering marvel that will be required to save Manhattan will inevitably be the most costly thing ever built in the US.
It seems fairly obvious that climate change is going to be solved before the bigger existential risks we face, which are for the most part unknowable or largely ignored. There are a lot of people working on climate change now, it's well established in the public's mind, and there are many incentives in place to accelerate solutions.
there are many incentives in place to accelerate solutions
I don't believe this to be true. If you look at the incentives currently in place they're well short of what could be considered the minimum recommendations of any of the previous reports.
This is not an indicator of a world that takes climate change seriously:
But that's part of the problem - there isn't going to be a magic solution to climate change - it involves lots of changes to the way we do things, some small and some big (the way we travel, and build and consume things), most of which we already know about - but often they'll be economically damaging or a change in the way people live.
The reason you are wrong is that stopping (or even slowing down) climate change goes directly against the way the world economic system is set up.
Basically, to stop climate change in the next decade (which is already far too late to stop catastrophic effects, which are already beginning and will only get worse) we must significantly reduce the global economy. There is simply no way to keep growing growing the economy without also growing CO2 emissions in the near future.
And of course, global economic recession is not going to be acceptable, in an economic system predicated entirely on eternal growth (where "growing too slow" is already considered unacceptable). So, climate change action will be slow, small, and entirely too little to avoid the most catastrophic scenarios.
Better to see 10 more years of economic growth before a massive collapse, instead of 20-40 years of slow economic shrinking to a more manageable, carbon neutral world, right?
No, the economic system doesn't inherently rely upon fossil fuels. It relies upon cheap and abundant energy. If we snapped our fingers and had free clean energy on tap, that would sign the death warrant of climate change, although there may be lots of collateral damage if we don't also try to rewind the clock too.
Sure, but right now, the only source of clean and abundant energy is fossil fuels. Everything else is either much more expensive up-front (hydro, nuclear) or is extremely variable (solar, wind). Nothing other than fossil fuels can travel well (electric cars are nice, but electric trucks are unlikely to be economical, and electric cargo bots are even worse).
So, the only current solution to climate change is global economic contraction - especially in the richest nations.
I like your attitude, and would love to hear more about why you think this. It doesn't seem obvious to me that it's something we'll actually "solve" while maintaining our current population/civilization, but maybe I just read too many doom and gloom articles?
I'm looking at this as if I am a historian from the future. From first principles, humanity has the pre-requisites in my mind to solve the problem. This doesn't mean it will be easy or obvious in predicting exactly how it is done. It's just much more likely to me that we solve it over the next several decades than not. We may take a hit along the way. Fusion energy seems relatively imminent, the economics for solar are in a positive feedback loop, and X Prizes for carbon capture are well underway. If we just get practically limitless clean energy (possible given the existence proof of stars) and figure out a way to relocate the carbon in the air at scale ("just" moving a lot of atoms) we have a lot of slack to resolve things. Again: this is just first principles analysis, not a claim it will be easy or that we won't see major consequences along the way.
The things that keep me up at night are not climate change, but runaway feedback loops that yield existential civilizational risk on the order of weeks not decades. For example, a COVID-like R0 virus that is highly fatal but spreads asymptomatically for months before killing hosts. Engineering and deploying such a virus seems plausible for a psychopathic individual over the next several decades. Basically anything where a lone actor can unleash a chain reaction to take out civilization are things we should be very concerned about, since they are total random variables. Getting various hedges in place like physical boundaries between cohesive populations (eg, a Martian colony) seem important to clear before one of these tripwires are hit.
It also seems companies are moving faster than politics. E.g. deprecating ICEs by 2030/35, without any policies forcing them. The mere discussion about increasing CO2 prices triggered coal power plant operators to think about phasing those put before any policy enforced coal exit.
The pessimist in me will only believe any of that, and any positive impact, once it happened. Not sooner.
I think the biggest way we could screw this up is if our governments pick winner technology stacks now, and don't keep the doors open (and ideally fund) paths to breakthrough tech. The panic over climate change (which, arguably, has merit) may lead us to making this kind of error, since we feel we have to put all our chips in now on 2020s era solutions. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that our existing tech stacks just need to be scaled up to solve the problem. We need to keep turning the crank of innovation.
2030/35 is a trojan horse because it is far too late. That's 15 years from now, and vehicles easily live for 20 years, so when people born today will be 35, there still be ICE cars around.
Thats not a measure to help, thats a fake measure to stop goverments from actually doing something effective.
Let's optimistically assume you are correct. If you could flip a magic switch right now and stop releasing carbon and fix all the other related problems, you would still have a massive delay of many decades (40 or more years) in bringing down air temperatures. The problem then becomes how do you survive the climate interregnum? This is why governments and private industry need to be working closely together, and nations with other nations. On the one hand, this will probably be the greatest job creation sector in human history, but on the other hand, we aren't all going to make it.
The delay you mention is only the case if you do not presume humans can intervene with counterforces. Yes, we are not Gods, but I think any analysis which does not incorporate the various tech curves that are going vertical right now are falling into the "future is like the past" fallacy. I think that if we got the first set of miracles you hypothesize, we wouldn't just sit on our hands as the 40 year delay unfolds. We'll keep working the problem, and leverage would increase over time to close the gap.
No matter what we do, the delay is inevitable, but the time is variable. A lot of PR optimistically claims we won't have to wait more than 20 years, but from what I understand it's more like 40-50 in the scientific literature, and up to 100-200 years with worst case estimates. I'm not an atmospheric physicist, however.
> When you emit carbon dioxide, the climate stays altered for a long time," says Solomon Hsiang, a climate scientist who is the co-director at the Climate Impact Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. "And so we kind of have to deal with that baggage no matter what."
> Today's adults will be dealing with climate-driven extreme weather for decades to come. But if countries transform their economies to cut heat-trapping emissions sharply, today's kindergartners could inherit a safer world when they reach middle age.
> "It's kind of like you're driving a giant train that's very heavy. You slam on the brakes. The train keeps going for a while," Hsiang explains. "There's some amount of heating that we would continue to experience," even with dramatic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. It will take decades for forests, oceans and other natural systems to soak up all the excess greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere.
The train analogy reveals the bad mental model. Thinking we cannot apply a counterforce to the "train" only comes from assuming it's too hard to do so. If we had infinite technological capabilities, we could remove all the excess carbon from the atmosphere relatively quickly. There's nothing, based on physics, preventing this possibility. That doesn't mean it's easy or knowable how it can be done, only that it could be done given sufficient technological means. Which we'll surely be incentivized to develop vs just sitting around and waiting for nature to take its course.
Go back and read predictions about the future from a century ago that failed to imagine simple things we take for granted today like telecomms or high speed travel. They're hilarious in grasping with bad analogies to come to strong conclusions like this. This doesn't mean the person is wrong, just that we ought to not take their beliefs as being factual, particularly if we can identify they've failed to try to incorporate technological breakouts grounded in known physics and our expected collective incentives.
> Nothing short of Florida disappearing under the sea is going to make any difference
You think that would be enough? Don't underestimate how many people would be willing to shrug off mass death and destruction of others if their tribe asked them to ignore it.
Are these simulations public? Can I run see and run the code? Are all aspects taken into account that can affect the outcome, such as, Earth's magnetic field strength, activity of the Sun, shifting of magnetic poles?
If you have a spare supercomputer I'm sure the scientists would be happy to help you run their stuff. The IPCC report cites its sources, you can go and check who the authors are and what the models take into account.
As far as I know, the code is secret and the data that it runs on is secret, i.e., it is not science, and it is not really even attempting to appear to be science to anyone who knows what science is. Not reproducible even in theory due to secrecy means it cannot be science. It's not even wrong.
Besides being secret and likely buggy, any simulation of the climate necessarily incomplete, i.e. it omits quite a lot of phenomena. Complex systems are fundamentally non-amenable to simulation, but in this case, the results of the "simulation" are garbage squared, because they're "simulations" of some system that doesn't even exist.
This is the kind of stuff being passed off as science these days.
They see it as a socialist ploy. The best solution is to propose a revenue neutral carbon tax and promise not to use it to increase total revenue. Offer to cut other taxes by a proportional amount and have that as a central part of the pitch. It'll get more political support.
Fortunately it’s a lot less than 40% unless you only count the US. The EU is a climate leader. China is not a democracy. Even in the US economical realities are already more important than the cries of rednecks.
> Nothing short of Florida disappearing under the sea is going to make any difference
That won't make a difference; Liberals will blame the Floridians themselves for being conservative, and Conservatives will say it was an inevitable part of God's Plan, that saying it shouldn't have happened is a criticism of His Judgment, and that saying that it was caused by humans is claiming the type of power that only belongs to God.
The article, and many like it, does a poor job of explaining the consequences we will face. 1.5°C doesn't mean much to the lay man. Explain that uncertain harvests, tied to speculation on risks, will much likely lead to an increase in the price of bread. Add to that an increase in oil will also lead to a price increase.
Heatwave in Greece ? Greece is usually hot in summer so one doesn't care. Now explain how many houses were burnt in fire, how many people died, how much it costs to rebuild houses, where that money will be taken from, etc.
Consequences... Not prediction. Interestingly, my kids have hard time understanding the word "consequence". It's a difficult concept to get.
Yes, and it's not a topic they like to talk about. I have yet to meet a person from Germany that isn't outright in favor of abolishing nuclear, the best I've gotten out of one is to agree that it might have been better to do it after shutting down coal plants.
I dearly hope the Greens will not win. Reducing consumption is an extremely tricky problem, and likely unfeasible without creating large amounts of poverty. I'd rather live in a rich, powerful nation with strong workforce and military rebuilding after each storm than being stripped my last rights and eating worms while a tiny elite still enjoying the freedoms we once had. Please do not fall for the propaganda.
Find smarter Greens and replace your current feel-good Greens with them. For all our sakes.
A strong nation the size of EU nation does not have the resources to fix it. Maybe fight it a bit and try to not make it worse but alone that will not be enough.
US or China might have these sorts of resources, but as we know politicians prefer patches and blame redirection and status quo.
EU's and Germany's emissions are negligible anyhow (9% and 2%, respectively). It's all about the U.S. and China (and maybe India) at this point, especially the latter two that have the strongest increase in emissions. There is no point in inflicting arguably some of the worst politicians in history on these relatively small European nations. They should rather be investing in building a strong workforce and military that can rebuild after storms. The fact that this is not being discussed openly is deeply suspicious.
Germany's per-capita emissions are significantly higher than other Western European nations like the UK and Spain though (9.44 vs 5.55 and 5.40)[1] and pro-nuclear France manages even lower per-capita emissions than those (5.13).
Wildfires in Greece are common since several decades, fires are usually laid or started out of negligence.
There is no sign of "uncertain harvests" in all the years people have been speculating about this as a potential consequence of global warming. Crop yields are breaking one record after another: https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/record-high-world-...
I'm still very skeptical how the measures will take into effect if they ever happen. In france the yellow vests protest was caused by a planned carbon tax increase on gas. Car dependent citizens rioted.
A carbon tax will reduce the living standard of everyone, and it will take time for society to readjust. I really think the economy will tank and take a lot of time to adjust to a green economy, as it's not only electricity, transportation and meat: it's also the production of cement and steel, landfills, chemical production, crop burning and deforestation, rice. There are tens of little things that once combined, emit a lot of CO2.
Road transport is only 12% of co2 emissions. So to be clear, electric cars are nice, but they're solving almost nothing.
Since humans generally compete against each other for everything, and since we live in an age of individualism and not collectivism, I'm quite pessimistic about humanity reducing their emissions, because the air is the single thing that is collectivized.
> In france the yellow vests protest was caused by a planned carbon tax increase on gas. Car dependent citizens rioted.
It's reductive. The protest was not just on the carbon tax, but that the carbon tax was used to finance the cancellation of the wealth tax (aka ISF for "Impot sur la Fortune"). Source: https://wikileaks.org/macron-emails/emailid/50207
I'm French and I've had my tax rate almost cut in half since Macron has become President... because I gained millions on the stock markets. The more I earn from capital gains, the less I'm taxed (relative to my wealth). Each extra € is taxed at 30% (all included), which is less than my far-less-rich coworkers (who only earn salaries, which can be taxed at 45%... 1.5x my tax rate!). And this is wihout even talking about the ISF!
This is soooo unfair and the Gilets Jaunes are simply aware of that, even if they don't know all the little details, and despite the media not describing what's really going on.
> Only 12% of ROAD TRANSPORT emits co2. So to be clear, electric cars are nice, but they're solving almost nothing.
I just want to add, that so many people buy in to the idea that the solution to gas powered cars is electric cars. But I feel like the significantly climate friendlier solution is bicycles and trains. The latter requires us to really go outside of our comfort zones (in the USA anyway) and we just don't want to do that. Which is too bad because I would find a bicycle friendly city to be much more livable. I lived in silicon valley for 15 years and it was remarkable how hostile it felt to bicycles for how flat it all is.
But I wonder what are the other problems like this. Where we think the solution is an electric car (and lithium mining, and working long hours to pay off the price tag, and emissions when manufacturing it) when a better solution would be adapting to a bicycle-focused world. I think plastic pollution is one area where we think bioplastics or recycling are the solution, but a better one would be standardized glass bottles with municipal washing systems. And zero waste grocery stores. We really need those. I have collected so many jars to reuse and its amazing what we keep buying and throwing away with every container of food.
> I just want to add, that so many people buy in to the idea that the solution to gas powered cars is electric cars. But I feel like the significantly climate friendlier solution is bicycles and trains.
And I want to say: yes. Everyone knows that. I don't get why this point has to be raised every time the topic of EVs and climate intersect.
EVs aren't competing with bicycles and trains, they're competing with ICE cars. Both for market and attention. If bicycles could work instead of EVs where people want to introduce EVs, they would've already replaced ICEs in that role.
To use a software analogy, bringing up bikes and trains here reads like, "You all talk about replacing this legacy component with an API-compatible alternative that's an order of magnitude faster -- but you know what would be even better? Rewriting the whole codebase so that we don't need that component anymore."
> EVs aren't competing with bicycles and trains, they're competing with ICE cars. Both for market and attention. If bicycles could work instead of EVs where people want to introduce EVs, they would've already replaced ICEs in that role.
This feels like a free market fallacy. “No one is buying it therefore it is not useful.” Well actually we have to plan our cities as we build, expand, and improve upon them. So we could decide to make them more bike friendly and then bikes would be a viable alternative to cars. But since the US doesn’t have a lot of bike friendly cities, that hasn’t happened.
But it is our choice whether or not to build those cities. We have to exercise foresight to find the best solution. Otherwise we’re just making incremental changes which may not be best in the broader picture.
Bicycle and trains are an "ideal solution" that works for abandoning this Save File and starting a New Game. Since we're building on top of already existing society, in the U.S. it's not tenable. We'd need to rebuild 98% of what's already been built around cars, in order to support populations living in walkable cities getting around by train. And obviously, re-building that much infrastructure would require counterproductive amounts of energy.
Also "only 12%" as if that's nothing. If other things are both easier to tackle and make up >50% then there might be a point ignoring this eight of the problem for now, but it's not.
A recent strategy is to add a carbon tax on imports in the form of tariffs. I don't think the yellow vests protest will go up in arms over it, especially since the second effect of tariffs is to encourage national production. It will effect french farmers that rely on exports, but since those tariffs are import taxes that reside in other countries there is not much point to protesting to the french government.
What the yellow vests protest demonstrated is that carbon taxes need to be designed so that individual voters are less impacted directly. Add a carbon tax on power plants and energy prices might go up, but if you already have 50% wind or nuclear, the effect will be quite damped. If energy prices is already quite unstable with huge spike and dips, the effect might not even be noticed in the noise, and the critical application of blame can be directed to the weather when the price do go up.
This is flawed reasoning. The figure only applies to the _continuous_ CO2 emissions of road traffic. It's ignoring the CO2 emissions caused by building the vehicles, building and maintaining infrastructure and the consequences of car-centric urban planning (urban sprawl, unliveable city centres, wasted space for parking, lots of sealed ground, traffic problems, poor air quality, etc.).
This kind of reasoning also is the cause that nothing will change in the near future, because no one has the courage to price goods and services according to their true impact. A car on the road is more than just a CO2 emitter - it has to be built, scrapped, requires roads, causes traffic problems, reduces air quality, causes health issues from noise and pollutants, generates micro-particles (from tyres), seals ground (parking spaces),
reduces the efficiency and liveability of cities and so on.
Debates about climate and environment need to stop focussing on CO2 emissions and start taking into account the broader impact. That's why EVs are nothing but greenwashing. That's why car traffic as a whole has to be reduced dramatically. Emissions only tell a very small part of the story (here: 12%).
For all the carbon capture that the Devonian/Carboniferous period did over 100 million years, humanity undid a large part of it in 150 or so years. And now to preserve human civilisation in some form, the most direct way is probably to rebuild that carbon sink within a much shorter time. Much shorter than 150 years, not 100 million.
Current carbon emissions are over 10 billion tonnes per year, so the capture speed will have to exceed that by however much required, probably something like 10x as much. If a process could be scaled to capture 100 billions tonnes of carbon per year, it could be a viable way out of the mess.
Is it even possible with current technology given unlimited funding and political will? For example, if insoluble carbonates could be synthesised from atmospheric carbon dioxide, that could be a form of long-term carbon storage.
In theory, a sink large enough to bring the Earth back to carbon neutral would be possible if the Sahara were reforested[0]:
> The team's calculations suggest the forested deserts could draw down around 8bn tonnes of carbon a year, about the same as emitted from fossil fuels and deforestation today.
> if insoluble carbonates could be synthesised from atmospheric carbon dioxide
indeed, if only there was a highly efficient process that could convert the carbon in the atmosphere into hydrocarbons, using energy purely from the sun...
Trees with their own conversion capacity are indeed a good interim solution, but in the long term this form of carbon storage isn't as permanent as rocks, especially given how prone trees are to dying and decaying in the biosphere of today. The Devonian didn't have that problem. For example, parts of the Amazon have become greenhouse gas emitters even when human-caused deforestation is discounted.
There's also the very real possibility of forest fires releasing huge amounts of carbon at once. Even dead trees preserved in peat bogs could burn and release carbon in this manner.
Rocks have their own weaknesses such as ocean acidification, but relatively speaking they're much more stable.
Overall, we are actually very terrible at understanding global consequences. Earth as a dynamic system is just too big and interdependent. Yet Earth's biosphere has recovered from cataclysm after cataclysm. Usually at the expense of 90%+ extinction. A big reason the carboniferous period happened is because fungi had not yet developed the capacity to digest cellulose. We're in a different regime now, and there is no telling what will happen. But one thing I think is pretty clear: we aren't going to tech our way out of this and make up some magic carbon sink. So the Earth is probably headed for a really hot period with lots of carbon in the cycle, until it stumbles on a new way to sink it. Either that, or it will head towards a semi-permanent desert planet.
According to a video I watched, reforesting the sahara comes with its own huge problems. Dust clouds from the sahara travel the atlantic to the Amazon rain forest, where it allegedly plays an important role in sustaining the Amazon.
In short, green Sahara would turn the Amazon Rainforest in the new Sahara. And that will then have its own massive implications etc...
In a sense, ecological engineering _is_ tech. But trees are the most perfect tool for the job of carbon capture. They don't even require much maintenance!
I've thought about it myself and the best answer that comes to mind is clear-cutting entire forests, tossing that biomass down a mineshaft, and replanting to start the process over again. All this talk of planting trees removes atmospheric carbon, but until it's out of the system entirely we're one forest fire away from wiping out decades of carbon removal.
You might be interested to learn of Climeworks if you're looking for a more reliable way to remove emissions than planting trees (which is, indeed, mostly not really working as well as too slow).
This looks a lot like what I was thinking of. They don't provide much information about their extracting filter, but after the CO2 is extracted it is compressed into water creating carbonic acid, then injected it into a suitable basalt formation with an impermeable cap so that carbonate salts could form[1]. They claim all the injected CO2 could become carbonates in under 10 years[2].
If this works like they say, then it's cause for hope.
I've seen those designs but never looked too deep into them. Maybe I've seen too many of the 'collect water from thin air' devices and become cynical. If their 90% efficiency is counting manufacturing and power costs then it could be worthwhile in cities and other areas with high atmospheric carbon levels. Same problem as the trees though, if we leave them out or use them for something they'll break down and be back in the carbon cycle. However we collect the carbon we need to lock it in place.
I would guess that 90% does not include R&D and is only about the general production costs like from manufacturing and building. So with scaling up (if they don't do R&D but just add a plant) it should be 90%.
It's a good question though, perhaps worth asking them.
10 Gigatonnes a year at a stable rate with an initial large bonus amount for the first decade or so. More if you bury more than the core logs. Burial isn't as bad as needing old mineshafts either, a small, deep pit something like 25m square is enough to bury 1km square of logged materials.
There are still issues with this proposal such as the potential for land degradation and biodiversity loss but good potential for mitigating these things as well. The main sells to me are that a) all the tech to get started today exist and are widely deployed and b) it results in carbon being re-interred in a fairly direct reversal of what we've been doing to dig it out.
Do not clear-cut forests. You will obliterate the biome that is the understory. It's like giving yourself a haircut and removing your scalp down to the skull.
Okay, good point. Maybe turning the entire Amazon into a reverse coal mine would do more harm than good. I still think we need long-term carbon storage and using pre-existing timber seems like a good first step. If there's a better capture solution in terms of tonnes/KWH/year go with that, but tossing trees down a hole is a good example.
I’ve been doing a lot of research in the space and the most damning part of it all is that our civilization’s carbon capture capacity is not there yet. We don’t have the technology to do that — yet. That’s why one of the most impactful things we can do is support the technology companies in developing this technology.
There are 7 billion people on the planet. Couldn't we just... have everyone plant a few trees? Trees weigh something like a quarter of a ton+ when fully grown, and pull directly from the atmosphere. Even if we remove the 50% of people who live in cities without yards, if every rural human planted 5 trees a year we'd end up sequestering a lot of that carbon, right? I know it's not permanent but if you just keep planting trees you can easily buy yourself 20 years with the open space we have.
Planting a tree won't do much on its own. It must survive and grow. The thing is, a lot of places where trees thrive are already covered with forest. With 7 billion people, you cannot sacrifice much of the arable land either.
Israelis have been reforesting their country for about 100 years and they have the best results on Earth (at least percentage-wise), but even they face bad odds in really dry places like the Negev desert.
I really liked Bill Gates new Book: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster[1].
I liked that it shows what we have to do to get to 0 greenhouse gas emissions. What's the current state of technology and what's still left to do to get there.
I often find suggestions like "Meatless Monday" or "Only fly when really necessary" etc, while probably good, not really useful advice.
In Gates book he talks about that transportation and "building things" is good and we should not stop it, but instead find a way to make it emission free.
What I also like about the book is that it speaks very practically: Gates doesn't put the onus on developing countries to reduce emissions. Instead, he shows how the developed nations need to allow people in developing nations to reach the status of developed nations while reducing their own emissions.
I very much agree, and as a bonus, these more optimistic solutions – solutions where we do something instead of (just) stopping doing something – seem easier for people to swallow too.
We have the means to stop the catastrophe. We don't need more solutions, just to comprehend that our behavior is destroying our ecosystems and pick the right solutions for the right behavior. We just need to act on it.
Also, no one pretended that violence can be annihilated when we collectively decided to swallow that killing one another is not a right and we outlaw it (except in some context that is defined by laws and treaties).
Ah, I see you have not read the book. No no my friend, we are not all there yet.
Some things are easy like energy production (mixed sources including nuclear) and transportation (batteries and electrofuels, though the latter is still too expensive for poorer countries so we'll need to improve those even if we technically could do it). But for example steel and concrete, things we need insane amounts of to house a few more billion people until 2100 and to build those nuclear/wind/etc facilities with, we don't really have solutions for those yet. I would recommend checking out the book.
The notion that humanity would go extinct from any of this is absolutely unrealistic.
What we are talking about is at worst massive economic damage and loss of life, similar to a very serious war.
Which is horrible, but really not the threat it is made out to be.
Moreover, since these changes happen relatively slowly (compared to bombs and such) much of the loss of life can be mitigated.
So we are talking economic damage and loss of property and infrastructure. Primarily.
Let’s be honest that the most likely course through all this is to adapt to the changing planet. I think that would be so much more refreshing than all the hand wringing.
The instabilities that come from it may very well put us into a full blown dark age, the economic & societal stresses may bring dialogue to a halt, civil & military conflicts most certainly will rise along with it and with it the world would accelerate in the way of catastrophe instead of moving towards adapting or fixing. It won't go down well, you're deluding yourself if you think it won't propagate to the rest of reality. It would be a self-reinforcing loop of tragedies, downward spiraling.
I'm not sure you'd take the same position if you were one of the people who was going to be immediately and directly affected by the change that's coming. I expect at some point some change will happen which does affect you and you won't like it. That moment has already come for some people, spare a thought for them.
Its not that humanity will go extinct with 1.5 degree rise in average temperature. However this will likely directly kill 10s/100s of millions of people and destroy ecosystems and weather patterns that humans depend on, which in turn can create a lot of political instability which could increase the chances of a extinction threatening event (like nuclear war for example). The other path to extinction is the world where we open up some feedback loops which are currently unaware of , runaway heating is an example of that, where each degree of heating causes the rate of heating to rise.
I think there's a reasonable chance of that. We'll figure out different crops to grow, we'll move away from deserts, etc. It may be hard, life expectancy may fall steeply, but we'll adapt largely intact, and then we'll eventually run out of fossil fuels anyway.
But if you look at what's happening in the Great Barrier Reef. It's dying. The ecosystem is dying from the bottom, and nothing on top can survive either. I think this is a very real possibility too.
Oh, I agree with you that humanity probably won't go extinct in the next 100 or maybe even 200 years. We're pretty adaptable.
But if you think the global oceans being completely empty of fish--I mean, nothing larger than your hand is alive--entire continents reverting to first savannah, then desert, and parts currently desert literally becoming uninhabitable, then yeah, sure, it's some economic damage and a small war.
This isn't "adapting to a changing planet". It's more like "adapting to life without the leg I am currently hacking at with a dull rusty blade--oh look, bone! can't quit now...".
>The notion that humanity would go extinct from any of this is absolutely unrealistic
Why not?
With the current societal focus on materialism and luxury, perpetuation of greed and glorification of power, climate need not do much. Wipe out some fraction of the population is all it needs to do.
The rest will be done by us.
The last two people will fire bombs at each other and kill each other for sure.
> The last two people will fire bombs at each other and kill each other for sure.
We've had nuclear bombs for 70 years now and yet we're still alive. This doesn't seem to support this stance. I also don't see everyone on earth rolling over the second it gets a little hotter. Sure some people will but the vast majority will want to survive
Possibly-relatedly, I'm in the process of getting some retrofit work done on my house to improve its insulation and reduce the carbon costs of heating it. I absolutely had not appreciated that a place like this, an 80s brick-built terraced house in southern England, could be responsible for 3.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year in heating costs alone.
The necessary retrofit work is expensive, on the order of £50'000 over the next ten years, which makes it pretty much out of reach for the huge majority of people in the UK, but will take that down to 0.2 tonnes/year (narrowly missing net-zero because of the concrete-slab construction of the floor). We really need to be subsidising retrofit work like this, so that ordinary people can afford to have it done, because it makes a huge difference to what must be millions of similar houses in the UK alone.
I think it will be more feasible to decarbonize the heating instead. If feasible heat storage technology can mature and lower the cost of electric heating then it becomes financially viable.
* Full external-wall-insulation (180mm thick) with brick slip dressing so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb amidst all the brick houses in the road.
* Triple-glazed windows and doors throughout, replacing single-glazed original units which are at end-of-life.
* 300mm deep loft insulation, replacing poor-quality and patchy 80-100mm insulation.
* Full airtightness sealing (i.e. the house should leak almost no warm air to the outside world), ...with heat-recovering mechanical ventilation so we don't all suffocate.
* Air-source heat pump to replace the gas boiler, driving underfloor heating in place of the wet-circuit radiators.
* 12-panel solar photovoltaic install on the roof (plus batteries etc).
Fully agreed on decarbonizing heating, but it's not an either/or thing, both approaches work and are to some extent necessary. Any heat you're not losing to the outside world doesn't need to be replaced by the heating system, is the theory. Here in the UK, I'm working to AECB (Association of Eco-Conscious Builders) standards: we cant quite hit PassiveHaus without knocking the whole thing down and rebuilding, but we can get pretty close.
There's a whole separate argument to be had about subsidy of electric heating vs subsidy of gas heating, if I recall correctly. A good electric heating system should be just as effective as a gas system, but in the UK it can cost up to four times as much to run because of the current mess of subsidies. That needs sorting out, as well, as telling people they have to pay much more for a somewhat more eco-conscious system isn't going to fly with the general population.
That's an impressive list! Hats off to you. It would be really interesting to know which gives you the greatest benefit/cost ratio. I live in flats built in 1969 and they're generally fairly warm. However I'd really like to push for improved insulation, so any info on what works best would help me argue my case.
Also it might be worth looking at the following trial:
I'm not sure if they're still accepting participants but if you want to help push the boundaries on decarbonising heat it would be a good thing to get involved in.
Looks like that trial's currently not accepting new participants, but thanks for the link - I'll keep an eye on it in case that changes.
The retrofit plan that an eco-retrofit architect is currently drawing up for me indicates that the biggest benefits are on the "windows=>triple-glazing" (3->2 tonnes Co2e/year) and "external-wall-insulation" (2->1.1 tonnes CO2e/year) steps, but I don't have cost data to establish a cost-benefit ratio for them yet. I'd always suggest that someone who's looking to make their house slightly more efficient start with good triple-glazed windows, though - single glazing and some types of older double glazing can be really surprisingly lossy. The airtightness and MVHR work is spread out among several stages, so is harder to analyse, but older houses leak like sieves and anywhere you can feel a breeze in the winter you can be fairly sure that you're paying to heat air that's escaping the house.
"What works best" is really a bit of a rabbithole. The standards I'm working to are here: https://aecb.net/aecb-retrofit-standard/ and the AECB site in general is full of information though it can be quite dense and jargonized. You may also find https://passivhaustrust.org.uk/news/detail/?nId=867 interesting - it's a report on retrofitting an entire block of flats by stripping and rebuilding the interior using /Internal/ Wall Insulation instead of the more common EWI - it's less popular because it can be a pest to do electrical and plumbing work around, but it's an option. The three strong pillars of eco-retrofit, at least as I've seen them to be so far, are airtightness (and ventilation!), wall insulation and triple-glazing, and competently made and installed glazing will be the easiest sell to the management company I imagine (if you don't already have it). The other two are more involved.
Thanks for the very comprehensive info. I think external wall insulation would be a hard one to get all the tenants to sign up for, but we're definitely due replacement windows in the next few years, so I'll push for triple glazing. Good luck with your retrofit!
Are there publications and articles or studies etc about how the rich are preparing for the impact of climate change?
Are there large swaths of Alaska being bought up? Farms in California being sold cheap? Mega security mansions popping up in New Zealand? Fresh water supply chains suddenly being consolidated under the same biz? Is this part of the reason why China is getting half of Africa in debt? To secure a food bowl and have a legitimate reason to deploy force when needed?
The propaganda and media cooptation is just staggering. It's extremely suspicious that very little attention is paid to the fact that reducing consumption will likely increase poverty.
If you trace, for example, the supply chain of some medicine you might use, or might depend on in future: The machinery, chemical refinery, transport, sourcing or resources, management, markets, and infrastructure below all that.
All of this will get orders of magnitude more expensive if we reduce carbon emissions. You will not be able to afford medicine if you need it, and possibly die of a horrible death, e.g. from an infection and without painkillers.
In the meanwhile, anyone raising these issues is defamed as climate change denier.
You have a kernel of truth there which isn't talked about enough (the fact that CO2 consumption brings advantages which reduce death and misery AND potentially reduce further CO2 consumption as well, in a "you gotta spend money to make money" way).
Unfortunately you are wrapping it in delusional hysteria such as "you will die of a horrible death from an infection without painkillers". So you're getting down voted because you are completely ignoring how things such as subsidies work.
> Unfortunately you are wrapping it in delusional hysteria such as "you will die of a horrible death from an infection without painkillers". So you're getting down voted because you are completely ignoring how things such as subsidies work.
Are you denying that reducing consumption drastically increase the chances of such a scenario? Of course what I wrote is only an illustrating, but likely plausible scenario, one of many ways in which it will increase ecological harshness.
Drastically increasing is meaningless if it's still an insignificant chance before and after. This is just not how things work and it's not a "plausible scenario", simply because we wouldn't let that happen.
We are barely able to give up pure leisure and convenience when faced with doomsday scenarios. You're under the impression the first thing that would go in such a scenario would be the life-saving stuff?
Production of eg. healthcare would absolutely be affected but that would just mean it would be more expensive for governments. Good example: your vaccine is free because governments invested collectively trillions of dollars into their production. It's free despite being one of the most expensive things we've done lately.
> You're under the impression the first thing that would go in such a scenario would be the life-saving stuff?
I think once we admit nature to be more important than humans, we will quickly slip on the slope and reduce consumption too far. Politics is largely dumb, so the risk is there. What you call leisure and dispensable is someone else's existence (e.g. the tourism industry). Central redistribution is hard and mostly does not work and gets abused. There are few historical examples in which it worked well and many in which it has failed.
Isn't it time to block the sun's radiant energy? What is the real disadvantage to trying to lift a giant solar umbrella that blocks light from hitting the Earth? It may be pricy but we spend billions per climate disaster, if we could use a few falcon heavy launches and reduce incoming energy by 1 or 2%, we could buy ourselves the time to fix our emissions and ramp up carbon capture.
The other alternative could be increasing cloud cover by releasing aerosols into the upper atmosphere. This would be like an artificial volcanic eruption, a purposeful but temporary hazing which would buy us a little time and let the planet cool off for 50 years before we're ready to go au natural again.
Can someone give me the critiques of these? They seem much simpler than crying about disasters and reports to GOP foot-draggers and all those who don't care about science. The sad reality is around 10,000 government and business officials have 90% of the power on climate, I don't see convincing all these power brokers to help the biosphere, they want profits not environmental restoration. So, let's have them block the sun's energy until we've transitioned our energy system.
Sure, I'll take a crack at the first one, involving 'a few' Falcon Heavy launches. Falcon Heavy can get (very roughly) 16 tonnes to L1. Ignoring critical station-keeping and rigidity issues entirely for the sake of simplicity, and assuming the sail is a single sheet of aluminized mylar at 10 g/m^2, that's 1.6 square kilometers of coverage. To put the planet in shadow would require about 100 million such shades.
More importantly, people who won't do anything about the problem now while it's getting worse will not do anything if we had a temporary fix in place. This should be obvious from human nature, if it's not obvious, you can observe those temporary fixes permanently installed as infrastructure and business operations all over. We don't need more time to think about it, we just need to get started.
How about the multitude of life on the planet that relies on photosynthesis?
And our own bodies? We get most of our vitamin D from a biosynthesis pathway that requires UVB exposure. Systematically depriving all of humanity of vitamin D could be disastrous.
And our circadian rhythms? The human circadian rhythm is mediated by two processes, denoted "S" and "C", of which C has evolved to rely on daily exposure to sunlight. The circadian rhythm affects almost all parts of our humanity.
Neither of these reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and I'd be concerned that rather than being used as an extremely short-term fix while we reduce emissions they would just become a band-aid to continue business as usual.
The problem is that once we go down that path we'd have to do it permanently, and if we were ever unable to keep up the release of aerosols or the maintenance of the solar umbrella etc. then the temperature would rapidly soar to wherever it would have been in their absence.
It just seems incredibly high-risk and avoids actually solving the root problem. I saw such geo-engineering described as "a band-aid on a bullet wound" which seemed quite apt.
The good (and bad) news is this will solve itself: if we don't act, humanity will die off substantially and technologically regress. Without dense and easily extractible energy source like hydrocarbons we're unlikely to achieve this level of technology again, and famine, war, and disease will take their natural courses when we can't fertilize our crops like we have in the past, are fighting new weather patterns, and don't have the research base to create sophisticated medicines. We can avoid it and become a post hydrocarbon energy based world, but given the last 5 years, I don't think collectively people are intelligent enough to pull it off. It is a shame, it would have been nice to discover more secrets of the universe and to colonize the solar system.
If some things "are irreversible on timescales of centuries to millennia" then really just going carbon neutral etc. sounds like a pretty weak approach as it would create costs now and large benefits only far in the future. Maybe this really needs geoengineering (and more spending on mitigation)?
Has any means of geoengineering been demonstrated as feasable?
Given our track record, it would probably be best for us to scale back our consumption while promoting re-forestation. Nature can likely heal itself far better than our wildest geoengineering ambitions.
Yes, but it doesn’t mean carbon capture. The Netherlands cannot exist without geoengineering and more and more places are going to have to be building dikes and sea walls as flooding becomes a problem.
Desalination would become more and more prevalent as we are dealing with droughts and we will likely have to engineer forests to be more resilient to forest fires by creating more and more clearings and other barriers to serve as firebreaks as well as planting new forests that may be less inducive to forest fires.
Those examples are more conventionally considered "engineering" or "forest management." They are smaller-scale projects typically involving regional adaptation to adverse weather/climate.
Geoengineering is a bit different, typically on a larger scale:
> Climate engineering or commonly geoengineering, is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system.[1] The main categories of climate engineering are solar geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal.
When you’ll need to do things on a global scale such as a sea wall that would say protect the eastern coast of the US it would definitely fit into geoengineering.
By this definition a small scale carbon capture process that is borderline effective is considered climate engineering but managing 1000’s of km of dams and dikes isn’t.
I am just asking whether geoengineering has been demonstrated as a feasible solution to reverse trends of global warming and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Geoengineering proposals typically aim to reduce the global greenhouse effect through several hypothetical means (like increasing cloud albedo.)
Dykes and dams that curtail flooding of coastal regions can be monumental undertakings but aren't typically referred to as "geoengineering." Hydropower from a dam could be a good way to reduce carbon emissions, but again wouldn't be considered geoengineering.
Clearly feasible, as demonstrated by anthropogenic climate change. Going back to a different life style is an option, but will be strongly opposed by a lot of people (and not without justification).
Planet was much hotter, much colder etc. So as a species we need to learn to cope and tackle this anyway, why not start now?
Almost everything humans do at scale interacts with the environment. The perspective of just not interacting with the environment anymore is a fantasy. We need to learn to wield the environment skillfully, instead of clumsily waving it around. We cannot just "stop" having an effect on the environment.
Nobody is proposing we "not interact with the environment anymore." That is a straw man.
The idea is to mitigate our impact on ourselves and the environment by reducing consumption. We already have widespread understanding that reduction of resource usage is the most environmentally beneficial change we can make.
I didn't mean it as an attack specifically on the parent comment, sorry if it came across that way. What I mean about the perspective "not interact with the environment anymore" is that many/most people describe the environment as something that exists above and around us. Something that is best left undisturbed and interacted with as minimally as possible by human life.
I am proposing that this perspective has run its course. It is clear that human behavior can have a very broad impact, so we should aim to learn to work with the environment for the better.
This means learning how to intervene on "natural" (whatever that means) environmental processes such that they tip in our favor (ecological engineering).
That depends. Is it too unnatural to go and plant millions of trees? What about culling populations of deer (as we do here in Scotland) to prevent the erosion of forestry (deer love to graze on saplings)? What about the introduction of new species to restore ecological balance? These things work when we get them right. I'm proposing that we get better at it, instead of giving up.
Weather should be very controlable by how much sun hits the earth. Which then causes heat, wind, water evaporation etc etc.
Large sun screen satelites (very simple ones that can fold out foil origami style) could block out a lot of sun at places according to stabilization weather models. Same for reflector sattelites, which could add more sun in specific places.
The difficulty is that we cannot send a hundred thousand sattelites out of our gravity well. We would need to setup basic mining and manufacturing on the moon for this plan to work (you can send sattelites into earth orbit at almost zero cost).
The time it would take to setup a factory on the moon should also be used to develop the necessary weather models, which should then be tested out very slowly with the first few thousands of sattelites.
Altering albedo alone still leaves us with ocean acidification problem, but I'm not up-to-date with the risks of that (other than coral reef dying out, which is absolutely tragic).
Mitigation spending will happen anyway, the focus rightfully should be on minimizing the need for mitigation. By all accounts mitigation costs more than carbon reduction, it is just spent later on. I suppose it all comes down to how much of the problem our generation wants to kick down the road.
As for geoengineering. If you mean adding particles to cool the atmosphere, then this is a mitigation strategy (it doesn’t reduce carbon, just compensates for it). I think we need to research this to have a plan B, but it is kind of a desperation move, and quite risky, so I wouldn’t consider it smart to have it as plan A.
Not sure I understand your mitigation point: If it is already too hot in some areas or flooding gets extreme, people living there would probably want mitigation now, not later. And if this just happens in ten years, also need to start thinking about mitigation now.
Pretty much all the solutions to making a greener web would make the web better in general.
- Send less data (efficient video, images, fonts, etc)
- Make fewer requests
- Use a CDN (the greenest one you can)
- Stop collecting vast amounts of personal data
- Better bot blocking
- Use PWAs when appropriate
- Change the culture, foster competition for doing the above.
I'm sure there's a thousand more items you could add to the list.
Where's that internet @ 5% of global emissions number from? It sounds suspiciously high. Networking is not that energy intensive compared to stuff that goes on in data centers and end user devices. Mobile network base stations are pretty power hungry though.
edit: there's a near 5% number in here, but it's not about internet or global emissions: https://internethealthreport.org/2018/the-internet-uses-more... - was linked from your https://sustainablewebdesign.org/ page. It's a 2017 estimate from Greenpeace about how much energy ICT sector as a whole will use as a percentage of electricity consumption by now. So it didn't predict the 'net would produce 5% of global emissions, it predicted all of global ICT would use 5% of all electricity - a much wider slice of a much smaller pie that also includes a lot of renewables and nuclear.
Something that almost the entire population uses all day is only using 5%? Sounds incredibly efficient. Repacking fonts to be smaller sounds about as useful as plugging a hand crank generator in to the power point.
Solutions to the climate crisis can all be broken down into smaller and smaller parts — small enough to be ignored — or small enough to be easily fixed.
For web developers that 5% is our responsibility, and we have the means to change it in ways many people cannot.
As for fonts — yes I'm sure it would make a big impact. Font files are a decent chunk of average page weight.
You're pretty much guaranteed to make an immeasurably larger impact by spending your time researching and donating to climate charities, action groups, and politicians than you are doing any of the things you listed. Put your effort and money towards things that actually make a difference, not these tiny drops in a vast ocean.
The internet causes much more. It facilitates turning millions of houses to hotels, cheap flights, cheap rides, high speed intercontinental trade and a relentless behavioral treadmill of selfies in exotic backgrounds. The internet is the biggest driver of consumerism and its biggest beneficiary as attested by the exorbitant valuations of related companies
This is why I left and denounce green movements. It's always (on an individual activist up to organization level), a front for completely unrelated ideological agendas.
Edit: 'A front' is too strong - a convenient vector. But you poison the well by failing to restrain yourself from slipping that stuff in.
Most of the activists I know are not developers, they don't have tech savvy people in their groups. And as far as I can tell developers will just add a million tracking scripts to anything without much thought.
I don't think this makes green movements fake. it just means that they don't understand security and privacy.
I couldn't even join my local group during lockdown because they only opperate on facebook.
The nuclear solution has been there this whole time.
Too many solar / wind dummies getting in the way of this being a viable replacement claiming 'oh yeah these green sources can cleanly swap into coal/gas plants' while completely ignoring base load / growth requirements which nuclear can fill without being dependent on external variables.
> The nuclear solution has been there this whole time.
Yes, but it's more subtle than that.
Despite the naysayers, and those that don't accept science and fact, nuclear, is clean, is safe, and is available right now. Deaths due to nuclear power station (construction, accidents,
Amongst the many problems with uranium-based nuclear power is: government legislation and control, government obsession with also producing weapons grade fuel, preventing other countries (Iran, North Korea) from having it, and lastly cost, as a consequence of all of these things.
And because of the weapons grade part, and other reasons, thorium has never been pursued. But China is, https://www.livescience.com/china-creates-new-thorium-reacto..., and it seems like the West is going to be in China's pocket again, if it is successful.
As for fusion. That's still 30 years away as usual.
Fusion isn't a commercially viable solution I agree.
The focus should be on traditional nuclear fission reactions. Indeed China are leading the development, but the USA still remains the number 1 producer in nuclear power followed by France.
While you do mention governments, it's really a popularity issue that prevents widespread acceptance and adoption.
Similar to COVID vaccinations, people need more education on Nuclear as a safe and real solution to replace carbon based energy generation technologies.
My country Australia is an example of how ineffective governments are in educating people on what the right thing to do is.
You mention cost as an issue, but it's only an issue due to man-made red tape and systems put in place by interest groups to force nuclear out of the public and make it so difficult to attain. People pandered on the same rhetoric about lithium batteries and look where we are now. The economics will work themselves out once things are placed into motion in that direction.
At the end of the day, we should be willing to pay rather than being cheap about the environment and letting natural disaster after natural disaster continue.
The world's population was at around 5.3 bn in 1990 and is now approaching 7.7 bn. This ain't a popular opinion on HN, but I think a key factor to getting climate change under control (whatever that means), is to reduce the growth and to stabilize the population.
For some definitions of best nuclear war is the best way of reducing the population. I think improving education and empowering women is the (or one of the) ethically most defensible ways of reducing population growth.
Yes, it's likely one of the most effective methods that basically no one (in the west) would have a moral objection to. But there is some middle ground between that and nuclear annihilation.
Making free, widespread birth control and sterilization available in areas with high population growth is one option that would likely be more immediately effective than education, but less morally objectionable than bombs.
I believe I remember that free birth control is not as effective as one would like because it's often women who don't want to have so many children, but men who decide whether or not to use birth control. Empowering women helps with that problem.
Of course! I guess my point is-- we should be doing any and all of these things, and the west should be investing as much as it takes, because the long-term payoff is worth it ten times over.
Yes absolutely. But then again any kind of these comments gets downvoted immediately here as well. The perception of this topic is: "Nothing to worry about, growth is decreasing anyway. Also, don't blame other people, just start reducing your own CO2 footprint. Which is sad."
Growth is already projected to peak at around 10-11 billion, though. The general trend is for countries going towards replacement rate, or even below, as they become wealthier.
It's stabilising. Look at the curve. Increasing wealth in Africa and Asia correlates strongly to a drop in birthrate. The problem isn't unconstrained population growth, it's the energy budget inherent in the population we have already, as standards of living rise worldwide.
30y and we didn't double. We probably won't hit 10b
10b would be just over 25% more people - therefore even if we manage to reduce per-capita environmental impact by 25% (which is evidently no mean feat), we'd still just be treading water.
- There are a number of technical solutions for climate change.
- There are a number of technical entrepreneurs who would love to implement those solutions.
... there is no market to pay for it.
I will echo other folks in this thread in calling for a carbon tax (or Carbon Dividend, possibly the most politically feasible option) to create such a market. Please call your representative! The number of people that have asked me how they can help, but haven't called their representative is driving me crazy!
Such legislation is not intrinsically complicated. If we can just get that passed, I would go to bed at night knowing that the majority of the problem is basically solved.
Still, it is so sad to see companies who could avoid their employees commuting and polluting, fighting to get their employees back to the office!
This shows how overall businesses and people don’t really care for climate change.
I do find it odd that, given the reported reduction in carbon emissions from covid, that governments are not outright mandating work from home for compatible jobs as an easy win to this problem.
Exactly! It annoys me so much reading about big tech co, pledging on becoming carbon negative, produce zero waste, etc ... but still force thousands of people everyday to commute and pollute just for the sake of it.
I still don't see how our individual actions can have a widespread impact regarding climate change, sure, it will have some effect, but I'm willing to bet it would add up to fractions in the end. Pushing political and economic leaders to take action by tackling just the top mega polluters on the other hand seems like it would have significant impact https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac13f1
More science doesn't hurt, but we lack leadership. Scientists are trained to research, report, and expand knowledge, but not the social and emotional skills to influence behavior.
If we want other people to change, we have to recognize that information, however accurate and valuable, and telling people what to do is of limited effect. If we want different outcomes we have to do different things.
Yes, still research, but don't expect it to change people's behavior. There are things that do, more like listening, role models, vision, empathy, stories, images, and what leaders do. I work on creating role models, stories, and vision.
Can air-conditioners capture CO2, collect fuel while keeping you cool as the world heats up? [1,2,3]
Humans added fossile fuels into the atmosphere and oceans already. This won't disappear completely for a thousand years [4], so we need to find ways to remove it.
1. That the planet is warming and we can accurately measure that
2. That we can accurately model the effect of CO2 on temperature and sea levels
3. That we can accurately model increasing levels of 'bad weather' and disasters based on temperature increase
4. That we can translate these climate forecasts into socioeconomic repercussions well enough to make global policy decisions that should be enforced at great cost
My credulity decreases with each successive layer.
I don't understand the underlying argumentation. Going "net zero" would require changing the live of every human on the planet, that's just not going to happen in a controlled manner. How about some achievable goals like not building new coal plants? And slightly less BS along the lines of replacing (houses, cars, whatever) with new slightly more efficient variations.
Is there any sign something will happen at COP26? Or will we just carry on with the same? Can you imagine what the anti-vax nut jobs will do when confronted with the reality of extremely expensive everything and less of it? For example moving the food system over to local produce with very little meat would help a lot but there is no political ability to make such a change.
If you are looking for an overview of future climate scenarios of each country worldwide: https://www.howhotwillitget.com. The coming months I am going to update the website with the new data and fix some running issues. Follow my Twitter if you want to stay updated.
This has been my pet theory for a while. What if the actual great filter for an intelligent species is the difficulty of escaping your home planet _before_ you've consumed all of its resources? I will — naturally — have a human-centric view of this, but it does seem like a very hard thing to do, given the physical and technical challenges of getting out of the gravity well, and actually surviving for extended periods in the harshness of space. Not to mention the travel time of getting anywhere worthwhile!
It seems pretty clear to me now that we're not going to make it. We need to cut global emissions by 15% a year, every year, starting in 2020[1]. As a species, we aren't capable of the kind of global organisation and foresight it will take to achieve this. I'll suspect we'll continue hurtling headlong towards the edge of the cliff (although there's a good chance we're already over it, and currently hanging in the air like Wile E. Coyote) until there's a war over the last dwindling resources, or a simultaneous worldwide failure of food production.
I've wondered a few times that if we were to go back in time to the start of human civilisation, knowing what we know now, would we be able to direct our energies more appropriately, and make it off earth in sufficient numbers to enable us to become a spacefaring species? Then I remember that science predicted all of this back in the 19th century[2]. We did nothing then, and we're doing nothing now. Alok Sharma says it's a catastrophe, but "also insisted the UK could carry on with fossil-fuel projects."[3] We're in real trouble.
This is why I think escaping from a ruined Earth is fruitless if the tendency to grow and consume everything in sight is baked into our genes. We'd just ruin Mars, too.
We can't seem to escape from our own deeply ingrained instincts, only transplant them to every inch of untouched soil we can reach. I tend to see the overwhelming evolutionary success of humans as similar to a virus that is too powerful and kills the host.
My belief is that we will have to suffer the consequences first before the death instinct is ingrained politically and socially in every person in power who contributes to the destruction of Earth. We can continue feeling fine doing what we are doing right now because not enough people have died off yet to make the drastic changes worth it. Societies will be forced to become places where optimism is extinguished in favor of pragmatism. They will only become those places because the scale of death and destruction will cross an unwritten threshold that needed to be crossed first before that change in mindset could take place.
I believe this opportunity to save the Earth that's being proposed right now will not happen because no amount of hypotheticals or climate science fiction that warns of this will be heeded, because they have to remain just that by their own nature - hypothetical, instead of actual, lived human history. That includes what I am writing right now. Our imagination is an innovative evolutionary advantage, but it has ultimately failed us. Our instincts for growth have won out against any scenario of global collapse and catastrophe and heartbreak we can think of. That is just our nature as a species, and it is a sad thing to consider, but as a result, pretty soon everyone will have to hope that they're not going to be one of the billions of people that will soon die off from climate-driven warfare or famine or any other catastrophe that's about take place. But after the dust settles, we will gain the one precious, irrevocable thing whose absence is preventing us from taking action right now - history.
At that point, if we still don't have a better way of thinking of the environmental issues figured out, then I would consider our curious experiment in biological fitness finished, once and for all.
The Energy Transition Show podcast is a resource that should receive more attention. It is subscription based, but a free-as-in-beer "best of" episode was released recently.
I shared many of the attitudes popular on HN regarding technology and climate change. ETS has convinced me that:
1. We don’t need to utilize nuclear power to account for the intermittency of solar and wind.
2. Carbon capture and storage technology doesn't need to exist in order achieve decarbonization.
I used to despair about climate change. I'm still quite worried about displacing the centralized incumbent interests. This podcast and its associated resources has gotten me off the couch and thinking about how to apply myself to be part of the solution.
As someone else pointed out, this is a huge collective action problem that we don't seem to have the institutions and social structures to solve this. Some people are willing to make sacrifices to solve this but many are not. We don't have means or willingness to force the non-cooperating people to cooperate. I'm surprised we haven't seen more terrorism targeted at carbon emitters. But then I see that recently a huge pipeline and a beef processing plant got hacked. That got blamed on Chinese or Russian hackers. It makes me wonder though, if those had been hacks by climate activists would the government tell us? The public discussion sparked by that would be quite different and might lead to an increase in that type of activity. This also is straight up a plot line from The Ministry for the Future which.
How about building more nuclear electric stations? The nuclear energy production hasn't increased in the US for past 30 years, while oil and gas have exploded. Retards. Saame thing in EU - closing down the plants in Germany and Spain
I recently learned about the idea of the "global carbon reward", which is an idea to create a monetary (meaning not fiscal) incentive to reduce or capture carbon emissions. Kind of like a gold backed currency is based on gold mined from the ground but based in carbon "mined" from the air. And through the monetary route it doesn't create any direct expenditure or debt on govt balance sheets, a bit like quantitative easing that is happening anyway.
My gut feeling is that a combination of naturally recurring chaotic weather cycles, together with human produced damage will either be fatal to humanity, or cause huge problems.
I also believe that the Universe is teaming with life, intelligence, and love, and in the grand scheme of things, how important really is human life on this one planet. As individuals people tend to over emphasize their own importance, and I would argue that as wonderful as human culture is, an asteroid or weather knocking us out is sad, but that is about it.
We have been talking in circles for the last three decades and nobody has done anything to address the corporations who represent the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions.
And every time I talk to my parents or meet someone new who is my age: "so are you planning to have kids? No? Why not?" I am so tired of living at the end of the world.
At this point the question is not "is it going to get bad?" It is "how bad will it get?" Mass deaths from famine, drought, and plague do not seem out-of the question.
There's a chart in the article from the IPCC report showing observed vs simulated global average temperature changes. How are the scientists making these models guarding against overfitting?
I am not a climate change skeptic - I am simply asking an honest question that I don't know the answer to (which will be useful for dispelling the common argument that I hear some of my friends make). I also shouldn't have to place this kind of disclaimer in my post in the first place.
In principle, these models can be run a la 'ab initio' (from first principles) so no fitting is required. Of course, there are subtleties and unknowns, so some fitting is needed, but overfitting can be checked in the usual ways.
Interestingly, if we add an offset tax to gasoline it'd only be 30 cents a gallon for inefficient capture (a lot, politically, but not harsher than living in your house for a year). With newer capture technologies it could be closer to 4 cents a gallon, which is less than the price difference between gas stations.
The second-order effects are that once you build thousands of these capture stations there's huge financial upside to making them even better.
I see a future where Carbon Capture Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS) will allow the transition to renewables and sustainability (without nuclear). There are significant advancements in CO2 Capture and when there is a commitment to innovation (R&D$s) to develop new commodities that permanently sequester the captured CO2, we will learn how to integrate the environment with profit motivation. The Green Industrial Carbon Cycle will enable the transition.
The corporations do bad things because you give them money. Your lifestyles are horribly wasteful because you buy too much stuff that you don't need, and for the wrong reasons. Then you throw it away.
You buy new clothes not because you need them but because it makes you feel better about yourself and because you think the other monkeys will be impressed.
In turn, the other monkeys feel like they have to buy new clothing.
Then you throw it all out when fashion changes and you buy more.
The end result is that tonnes of clothing are discarded annually in my small neighbourhood.
I gather so much of this for my clothing bank that the homeless people don't want it any more. They are overwhelmed with clothing.
We run a clothing exchange for everyone and we still can't get rid of it. We try to ship it to other countries but they already have mountains of it. It has to be sent for industrial re-processing or put into landfills.
Your consumer goods last about one month after their already-short warranties expire and then you throw those out, too. Over 80% of what comes into my e-waste program is working or can be easily repaired. You don't even bother; you just throw it out.
Several groups in my neighbourhood have active campaigns against me because they feel like it is beneath their dignity to repair and recycle what they call "garbage". These people are defective monkeys who feel that they are better than others because they can afford to waste more and destroy the planet faster than everyone else.
Then you reproduce unrestrictedly and teach your little monkey babies the same ridiculously wasteful lifestyle. "You're a princess; you're a beautiful and unique snowflake; everything revolves around you. Go out and destroy the animals and pollute the oceans and kill the insects and wipe out the wetlands because you're worth it!"
No, you are monkeys who have gotten uppity. You have a few successes in technology, but you are actually horrible monsters who care only about themselves and maintaining your idiot social order by force.
You need to control your own numbers and stop the horrific waste of your idiot monkey lifestyles before you choke on your own exhaust and drown in your plastic refuse.
Climate engineering is obviously incredibly fraught for a variety of reasons (unintended consequences/etc) but at what point do we start to consider it ? start developing and evaluating technologies related to it ? it seems like it would be something we want in the toolbox since its a solution orthogonal to consumption of carbon
Given how impossible it is achieve global consensus on policy, I'm pretty inclined to believe that a technological breakthrough is the only solution. Maybe a series of them.
In the best case, carbon removal and sequestration tech.
In the neutral case, clean and efficient energy tech.
In the worst case, climate-catastrophe coping tech.
If you're in the US, now is the time to contact your representative and senators. This is possibly our last chance at real climate action for a decade:
Climate science has advanced quite a bit since the last IPCC assessment in 2014. We're also seeing far more impact in the real world in terms of more frequent storms, floods, droughts and wildfires. Previously it was more difficult to prove these were related to climate change as there are natural variations.
Humanity has basically evolved with the innovation in technology in the last 50 years. Of course there's gonna be a 2 degree change in climate. I cant believe the author of the article is trying to compare the last 50 years with every other 50 year period in 2000 years lol.
Was there anything about food supply? I see that as the biggest concern. We can deal with heat and floods and such. But when the world's bio ecosystem starts looking like the Great Barrier Reef's, then that's when we start talking about collapse or extinction.
A.E. Currie's Utopia 5 series of books are well worth a read. They are speculative fiction, describing how the world burns over the second quarter of the 21st century. But frankly terrifying as each year passes and they align with reality.
Brilliant minds of HN, serious question: what needs to happen for us to be able to extract CO2 from the air and place it in containers somewhere? What's the root problem there?
(I'm guessing off-planet, but that can come later).
For direct emissions: Stop burning stuff. Do you call it fuel? Stop burning it. Or at least burn it as little as possible.
EVs and heat pumps solve two of biggest personal direct emissions sources: transportation and heating living spaces.
Beyond that, if you own a roof, get solar panels. Those are a modern miracle at capturing 20% of the Sun's energy, when photosynthesis for crop plants is about 1% to 2%.
This drives so much existential angst for me. We utterly and abysmally failed at collective action with COVID-19. How can I anticipate that we achieve anything when people are left to their own devices?
While it is important to be good stewards and not pollute etc, and I respect & admire the scientists and others working to help us do better -- I don't think we are competent to solve climate issues as a whole, when we can't trust each other to keep our word (so much of the time), and especially when we have rejected much specific advice of the planet's Creator.
At the same time, things can be OK for us in the long run, if we really try to learn what we should do, and do that. I would include praying, honesty, kindness and humility (willingness to learn) among those things. Really there is good reason for hope for the best; these problems are expected now.
(Edit: thoughtful comments appreciated, with any downvotes; thank you.)
We still cannot be sure if it is anthropocentric climate chance but that doesn't really matter. If we want to "return to baseline conditions" - what we try to show on graphs, then we need to cool down the atmosphere using aerosols: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160519120731.h...
Realistically there is not and there isn't going to be in the current decade an agreement between nations on CO2 reduction. Whatever we change in EU China and India is going to undo by mining coal. So geo-engineering negotiations should start now.
So why I am still manipulating html documents forty hours a week. I guess I should be getting involved in activism or just plain disaster prepping. Time to bone up on gardening
This is not only a question of transitioning to "green" energy. It's also a question of values. For me, humanity is at a cross roads, all possibilities are open, and we need to choose, individually and collectively: short term growth or long term sustainability, consumerist delirium or happy sobriety [1], mission-to-mars escapism or this-planet-is-our-only-home realism.
The only way to stop this catastrophe is global population reduction and consumption limitations.
Nothing so far. No effort by anyone has flattened the curve. CO2, CH4, SF6, and N20 are all consistently growing linearly with human consumption.
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
We have to do everything possible to flatten the curve and that will take sacrifice and changes today.
I fail to see the same climate-related apocalyptic messages coming from the mainstream media exactly one year ago. It's either the situation has gotten exponentially worse in this last year (unlikely) or that the focus has turned from one apocalypse (covid in the wealthy countries) to another one (climate change). At this rate only a big regional war can shift the focus again from this specific subject.
Have been doing a lot of the right things for a couple of decades already, mostly because it is also the smart thing to do from a personal economic perspective though.
why is the main focus on CO2 and not sulphides and nitrogenous gasses that cause a helluvalot more greenhouse effect than CO2 and are released by industries all around? am I missing something or is this fact ignored?( not saying that nothing should be done about CO2 tho)
Some gases containing sulfur and nitrogen are far more potent per molecule than CO2, but they are emitted in much smaller volumes. They collectively account for less than 10% of warming emissions.
It's hard for me to believe humanity will get it's act together. Shit will hit the fan and then every man for themselves. Due to luck of the draw some will get hit much harder than others
Yes. We managed before mass production and we will manage again.
It's either the inevitable collapse of civilization or a deliberate controlled ramp down, globally. There will not be some magic technology to fix this and we clearly are not going to be able to finesse this.
It's time to start considering and planning for a global slowdown of production and a radical shift in the way we live.
If we don't do it the biosphere is going to do it for us.
>Yes. We managed before mass production and we will manage again.
Sure we did. We managed 10,000 years ago as well. But I would bet that going back to live like people did 200 years ago would cause more harm to humanity than unabated climate change in the next 100 years.
Mass production and deployment of clean technology is the only realistic way to get out if this.
It's not like there are not options available, many states are not exactly poor and past experience has shown we can scale production insanely fast if there is an important reason for it.
In Canada our so called environmentalist parties BC/AB NDP and Fed Liberals are still insisting we can meet our climate goals while expanding the oil sands and developing liquified natural gas for export.
It's like they're conducting the train, saying that only they can stop it, while continuing to shovel coal in the furnace.
We need someone that has the strength to pull that emergency brake instead.
What's 'code red' mean? Did we pass amber? Is purple the next stage? I love our obsession with coloring our alarms. I wanna see indigo on there next if you're listening designer.
I was recently thinking about why bitcoin shouldn't just be banned to help mitigate the ongoing climate catastrophe which led to my recent article [0] which equated banning bitcoin to banning ice cream, which I hope helps to illustrate the absurdity of picking and choosing versus just charging for carbon more directly.
Your analysis has one major flaw: It would only make sense if ice cream had as severe a climate impact as bitcoin. I have no reason to believe that it does.
You would have to find a list of things that people enjoy but don't bring societal benefit that add up to bitcoin's climate impact. I assume that list will then either:
• contain things that should actually be banned or
• add up to way more utility for way more people than bitcoin
The idea of societal benefit is very nebulous. It sounds like your idea of it is very different to mine by the fact that you believe in an absolute answer to it.
How do you measure something like societal benefit?
I'm sure we could agree that eradicating disease is very beneficial, but would we disagree about the entire tourism and entertainment industry as a whole?
I can guarantee we have different opinions about the value of things. That's why we should be free to make our own choices. We don't need everyone in the world to help define what "societal benefit" is for them, they can do it every time they pay for something out of their own pocket.
(There is one thing that I think fulfills your criteria though, flights for holidays. They contribute more, and increasingly more, carbon emissions than bitcoin does while delivery little "societal benefit" - whatever that means. However, I'm not arguing anything here because I think it's morally wrong to focus on specific activities that affect a minority of people. And yes, banning taking flights for holidays would only affect a small minority of people globally.)
> The idea of societal benefit is very nebulous. [...] How do you measure something like societal benefit?
That is indeed a very hard problem and one of the mayor challenges of any society. But that doesn't mean that any endeavor that includes this notion is to be avoided. You gave the example of eradicating disease.
> I can guarantee we have different opinions about the value of things. That's why we should be free to make our own choices. We don't need everyone in the world to help define what "societal benefit" is for them, they can do it every time they pay for something out of their own pocket.
But now you are not arguing about ice cream anymore. You seem to be just generally skeptical of a strong centralized government. And you can of course argue that and there are no simple answers here. I was just pointing out that your ice cream argument doesn't hold water.
Unless it is "Any kind of government interference is bad. This is why we shouldn't ban ice cream. Therefore we also shouldn't ban bitcoin." If that is your stance, then ice cream and bitcoin are indeed equivalent for your. But that is probably not the worldview of the people asking for bitcoin to be banned. Then your post does not argue against their view, but against your version of their view.
Economics 101, like all Science 101 courses, is simply wrong and doesn't reflect the world except vaguely from afar. Trying to understand the economy through the lens of economy 101 is like trying to launch a rocket to the moon using only Newton's laws of motion.
Successful governments pick economic winners and losers all the time, and don't let chaotic market forces decide if they need an agriculture sector or R&D.
For a simple example of just how misleading econ 101 is, look at the effect of a minimum wage: by all accounts, it slightly increases employment, the very opposite of econ 101's prediction.
Market forces are not fully understood in complex systems but it does not mean they do not work.
Forcing employers to give more money to employees (rising wages through regulation) may cause some unexpected/unaccounted things (more consumption etc.).
Taxing something (like CO2) will definitely do not help that thing. Solving just Bitcoin problem is both hard (how do you prevent making certain computation while connected to the network, or how do you prevent buying certain digital goods) and is only part of the problem (it does not mean that fixing part of the problem is not worthwhile, but they are easier ways to solve bigger part of the CO2 problem).
They subsidize R&D because there's a public benefit to things like pure math that's difficult to internalize which leads to under supply from the market.
They subsidize agriculture because of lobbying and self-defense considerations.
In both cases, the government identified an under supply due to a market failure, and they judged that the externalized benefit was sufficiently large and so they stepped in to fix it.
In the case of crypto, the market failure is simply that carbon is too cheap. So why not address the actual market failure with a tax. If crypto miners want to keep mining after compensating society for their pollution, more power to them. It's hubris and risky to outright ban something because you just know there's no value there and all the people who ascribe value are wrong. Doing that isn't even analogous to government actions in the two examples you raised. A carbon tax is more analogous (it's sort of like an inverse-subsidiy as per your Ag example).
I like the carbon tax avenue for other reasons too. It's a broad, one shot thing that will roughly aligns incentives across all industries at once. Not perfect but a very good correction that broadly applies.
"by all accounts, it slightly increases employment"
Not by all accounts. The literature is not straight forward in this way. If it is a null effect, I don't see that as an invalidation of econ 101, either. It could just be very inelastic for small changes in the minimum wage with elasticity picking up for larger changes (which nobody doubts would happen).
In practice, there are behaviours which provide no net social benefit, exact tremendous costs, and yet are inherently self-perpetuating. Legal prohibitions can help in this case. It's a form of demand-dampening.
It's only your opinion that there's no social benefit. Which is a problem, because your opinion might be wrong. If you charge people appropriately for their carbon use such that it's no skin off your back if they continue consumption, then you don't risk destroying value in places where your opinion turns out wrong.
I think you're on the wrong side of caution here, if we stop activities and so help to solve climate change, then we can look later at whether those activities people thought were just empty carbon producing were actually supremely beneficial. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, as the saying goes. Bitcoin/altcoins are certainly not vital to survival.
Cut carbon, then make a case for bringing back heavy carbon producing activities that seem to be of little use.
I see you're getting downvoted but maybe "get rid of" isn't the best approach. Certainly taxing air travel at a chunky rate would reduce unnecessary flights.
I mean, if you ignore cargo, sure. If you don't ignore it nor that more fuel is being burned by an average cargo flight (due to more weight compared to a commercial flight), it'd inconvenience everyone.
Expect cargo flight are responsible for a fraction of CO2 emissions from commercial aviation[1].
If you really want to push there are solutions:
Packages just take longer over sea (10-15 days) until we switch to an air ship (2-3) based transport system which doesn't have to pay so much energy of lifting.
Taxing it means : the rich will be able to continue to fly while the poor, not being able to travel anymore because of the tax, will support the burden of climate adaptation. That's not justice.
And that's the issue : climate change requires a global effort and if we want to have the masses to adapt, then we must have the elite to adapt equally.
A frequent flyer tax would help here. Everyone gets a tax-free flight, then a low tax for the next one, and it keeps increasing for more flying. ~23 minutes in this podcast describes it and explains how it'd make a huge impact: https://www.cheerfulpodcast.com/rtbc-episodes/fair-miles
The key stat is it'd be enough to reach the UK's target on carbon emissions from flying by 2050, at a cost of 0% for the first flight and 9% on the second (going up steeply from there). Of course, other countries may have different data but the principle should be the same.
The rich will support the burden of climate adaptation because the income from the tax can be used directly to help mitigate climate change.
The vast majority of flights are taken by a small minority of people; they're taken by the richest. Take the United Kingdom as an example: 70% of all flights were taken by 15% of people [0]. It certainly isn't the poorest taking these flights.
So taxing flights will have less direct impact on the poorest than one might think.
Having said that, I think a charge on carbon is more fair than taxing flights directly.
>A carbon fee and dividend or climate income is a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address global warming. The system imposes a carbon tax on the sale of fossil fuels, and then distributes the revenue of this tax over the entire population (equally, on a per-person basis) as a monthly income or regular payment.
They literally said “Let's instead get rid of private air travel”, which I interpreted (reasonably I think) to mean private aviation (where you know the other passengers) not public airline (Delta, KLM, British Air, etc.)
Because private planes are relevant travel amounts to "cause a pandemic", and "People can go on vacation by train instead" makes sense when talking about private planes (vs "can fly commercial"?)?
I agree their conclusion was ridiculous. However, it seems equally ridiculous to conclude “even though they specifically said white, they must have meant black, and for you to read white into their argument is a willful misconstruing of their argument.”
The emissions from aviation are increasing every year, the majority of flights are for holidays rather than business, and only a very small minority of people globally actually take flights.
However, I belive the parent commenter was more pointing out the unfairness of picking and choosing what to ban rather than imposing a blanket charge on carbon.
This seems to have been missed by most, even when considering that the parent is likely correct that flights have a greater, and increasingly greater, impact on climate change than bitcoin does.
I frankly don't think this would make sense. Imagine explaining the people of a country, that they aren't allowed to fly to e.g. Mallorca anymore. The acceptance would be somewhere between low and zero.
Maybe private air travel in one country, e.g. from Munich to Berlin could be reduced, but not international flights without any resistance
I know people making changes in their lives but it does appear hopeless right now.
I drive much less and will look at solar panels eventually an electric car. I know some who already did move in that direction.
I can plant some trees in my yard and make better choices with consumption however, what's to stop countries who still build coal power plants or coal still being mined?
I despair. Many ppl are switching to electric cars thinking they did good, and yet they charge those same cars using energy supplied by burning fossil fuel.
I'm not completely convinced solar panels or electric cars are produced cleanly. More needs to be done about that.
How do we know for sure the energy used to make these are not adding to the problem. Even worse is that old petrol cars will usually be onsold to other countries, so emissions can't be falling?
An individual can only do so much.
Most people will bury their head in the sand. Those who take action may be pissing in the wind without realizing it.
"The vast majority of Bitcoin’s energy consumption happens during the mining process. Once coins have been issued, the energy required to validate transactions is minimal."
Honestly, that doesn't seem particularly well-informed. I wonder how this person thinks transactions are committed to the blockchain, and how this is separate from the mining process?
Unless they literally mean "the energy required to consult the ledger of previous transactions", which doesn't seem a useful metric.
The quote you referenced makes the distinction between committing (mining) transactions and validating. The energy used to validate transactions is indeed minimal.
The energy used for validation is a useful metric because it's how the bitcoin network can afford to stay decentralized.
The confusion comes from how the miners are compensated for their energy burning. Currently, it's mostly by the block subsidy, which is independent of the amount of transactions in a block. But in a decade or two, that will be dominated by transaction fees, and we can actually attribute the energy cost to the transaction amount.
> World crisis! Quick! Give your money to or help elect these people! Save the world! Do it for the children.
Stupid. Nothing about this is quick. Climate scientists have told us for > 20 years. But sure let's post stupid bullshit on the internet and continue to do nothing.
Yes, I didn't want to spread false information because I'm no expert either. ~20 years is the time span I consciously remember reading & hearing about it but I'm sure scientists have warned us for much longer.
If the Sahara and Grand Canyon once flowed with water before civilization
What makes a paper straw the solution so our polar ice caps have less thaw?
This is a serious question and not denying climate change. What’s our ultimate end goal after everything has gone green if we cannot change the planet’s cycles?
* Plastic pollution is orthogonal to climate change
* It sounds like you are implying that there is no man-made climate change, only natural cycles. This is 100% false. We are facing extinction as a species, and it's due to greenhouse gases we emit.
I’m not denying man made climate change. I’m challenging the status quo and looking for a response with our solution when the climate will, evidentially, change.
You are right, but your premise is probably different. They were indeed wrong. They were too conservative.
Some historical perspective:
1990: 1st Assessment
Little observational evidence for a detectable human influence on climate
1995: 2nd Assessment
The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate
2000: 3rd Assessment
Most of the observed warming over the last fifty years is likely* to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations
* > 66% chance
2007: 4th Assessment
Most of the observed increase in global average temeratures since the mid-20th century is very likely* to to the observed increase in anthopogenic greenhouse concentrations
* > 90% chance
2016
It is extremely likely** that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
** > 95% chance
2021:
It is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change, making extreme climate events, including heat waves, heavy rainfall, and droughts, more frequent and severe.
Can someone please explain why should a middle class, middle aged blue collar worker care about this? How does any of this make his life better or worse?
Does he care about anyone but himself? Does he have children or grandchildren? Nephews or nieces? Does he care about their safety and welfare, and want them to have good lives?
One of the biggest problems I've come across are older people who say or think "I've got mine, I won't be alive when the shit hits the fan, so I don't care." If you can address that aspect of the problem, then you're probably half way there to solving it.
I'd say that a reduction of systemic issues to personal responsibility is a much bigger problem than that. Global warming is a problem of externalities and can only be solved as such.
To me it looks more that people from rich countries got theirs, but people from poorer countries aren't allowed to have theirs. The people from rich countries will stop them because of climate change.
It's easy to demand that others change their behavior.
Sure, climate change will have a worse effect on poorer countries. But what's going to lead to greater suffering: climate change in the next few decades to a century or 10-15 years lower average life expectancy in India? And not only a shorter life - a worse quality of life too.
The US has a GDP of $65k per capita. India has $2.1k per capita. If we took the US GDP, add India's GDP and then divide the sum by the sum of India's and US's populations we get a GDP per capita of $14.3k. That would be a drop of almost 80% for the average American. You can imagine what they would lose in their quality of life over that.
I believe that the potential number of jobs created on behalf of climate change mitigation would increase wages and income for millions of people and minimize poverty, and figures are often cited for renewables alone showing just this. What we need is a massive form of economic conversion (redefined as decarbonization) on a planet wide scale, and this requires close cooperation between existing companies in the energy extraction sector and the governments of every nation. I believe this project could also force competing nations to work together and promote peaceful relations and encourage new growth and trade. It requires changing hearts and minds.
A million deaths assuming they reduce carbon emissions equally would only be 0.0125%. In reality considering that vaccines are unevenly distributed in favor of countries with high CO2 emissions, it's likely much less than that.
Most deaths are of old people who had few years to live. They were also not consuming much. And they would not have more children. The CO2 impact of these deaths is negligible if not positive (in the bad sense) because the disruption of Covid will end up emitting more CO2 than business as usual (a lot of investment could have been used to fight climate change but were diverted to fight Covid and to support the industries that are the most in troubles (which are the most polluting ones).
Covid-19 deaths have been all but invisible in the larger scheme, at least to date.
Far more signficant has been the global economic shutdown imposed by quarantine and containment efforts. That's somewhat reduced fossil fuel usage, though that effect has also been limited. It was enough to show up in BP's annual review of global energy usage though, released about a month ago in July:
Your question was what the impact of Covid on population (and hence climate) might be. As I said, it is minimal, effectively nonexistant.
To date, 4 million deaths have been reported. There's been substantial undercounting, that total might be low by as much as a factor of ten (at an extreme case), or 40 millions out of a total population of slightly under 8 billions. That's 0.5% of world human population, on the high side.
Most of the dead were elderly, and would likely have died relatively soon regardless, though I don't have figures for estimated life-years lost. A human tragedy in many cases yes. But not something that shifts the baseline on global warming threats.
It's possible that Covid might flare up again, that there will be new (a) new variant(s) with vastly greater infectivity and lethality. I suspect this is unlikely, though the pandemic is likely to be with us for a number of years more. (I'm not an expert, some have suggested another several years, I'm thinking 2--3 is likely, and perhaps as many as 5, given the spectacularly bungled response to date.) Both deaths and lockdowns as well as voluntary withdrawal from economic activity (something that's been seen even in the absence of government-ordered quarantines) ... could extend further.
Consider that that 4.5% might be repeated for another few years, possibly at a greater or lesser extent (e.g., 2.25% or 5%). It's still less than a ten-percent impact on global energy consumption, likely a short-term effect, and would have little impact on long-term energy usage patterns. So long as energy usage is growing (as it has, typically at about 2--3% annually IIRC), it will double given time (in 25--35 years at those rates, using the rule of 72).
I can't give you a hard answer, but can give you the outline parameters of what will effect the response:
- Covid net population effects are effectively nil.
- Energy impacts are measurable, but small and likely temporary.
- The overall impact of COVID-19 on global warming patterns is detectable, but insignificant in the big picture, especially against longer-term trends.
If this was really "code red for humanity", the global elite jetsetters, China, & military should set the example & drastically reduce their emissions to be in line with the average population. Otherwise, it's another case of "rules for thee but not for me".
> But there is new hope that deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases could stabilise rising temperatures.
How is this possible when you have water vapor in a positive feedback loop, which is a far more potent, prevalent ghg that increases with any rise in temperature.
"Water vapor reduction" has to be part of the message at this stage, not just carbon reduction.
Water vapour has a short residence time in the atmosphere, is self-limiting (excess water precipitates out as rain or snow), and is already at equilibrium given ambient conditions.
The one variable that could drive additional water vapour is CO2, which by warming the atmosphere further increases the ability to hold water, and the amount of water vapour present.
If you want to reduce water vapour as a greenhouse-gas component of the atmosphere, reduce CO2 levels.
Just to be clear water vapor capacity increases due to temperature, for example, relative humidity measures how much water vapor is in the air for a given temperature. Any sort of increase in temperature will increase water vapor.
Yes, CO2 raises the temperature, you get a massive increase in water vapor, which again, is a more potent ghg. Reversing that same amount of CO2 does not magically reverse all of that water vapor. This is the crux of the problem, why water vapor is now also a problem that needs to be addressed.
I don't really see how this is possible for humanity at a scale that affects global warming. Most water vapour by far is generated by nature itself. We couldn't make a dent in that.
The CO2 is what upset the balance and we are by far the biggest contributor there so it makes sense to address that.
The point is reversing the CO2 does not reverse all that proportionally much larger increase in water vapor... eg. we have no choice but to address water vapor as well as CO2 if we want to have any chance in fixing global warming.
It's both, actually. Water vapor is positive no matter what. Clouds can be both positive and negative at the same time, depending on cloud type, altitude etc.
This is one of the things that are hard to model. Get this wrong and you can swing from a mere +1 global warming (what CO2 alone would do in 100 years) to +3 or more.
There's a lot of nonsense in these comments that doesn't hold up to the most basic scrutiny.
>Humanity is going to go extinct
There's no evidence for that. A temperature rise of 2 degrees celsius is by no means a threat to the human race. It is a problem, but not an extinction event.
>We should invest in nuclear
Nuclear is extremely expensive and prone to going wrong. It's not a valid argument to state that "nuclear has improved and now it's safe" because nothing is 100% safe and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster is a perfect demonstration of how even recent iterations of the technology with multiple redundancies can go wrong.
>Wind/solar doesn't work because it's intermittent
There's no reason we can't have a distributed network of wind and solar farms around the world that can fulfill demand at all times.
>We should tax carbon
Taxing carbon could reduce output, sure, but the fact is that humanity is dependent on fossil fuels right now. How can you possibly suggest we start punishing consumers for their carbon footprint when there is no viable alternative? Besides, reducing output at this scale won't have any impact now, it's too late for that. We need to be reversing output.
>We need to stop eating meat on Mondays
Sorry but these schemes have no purpose other than to make one feel good about themselves. Most people are not interested in giving up meat at all, let alone for one day a week, so the demand for meat isn't budging. Meat alternatives are promising but won't take hold unless the consumer has an incentive to switch.
>We need to capture carbon from the atmosphere
This kind of technology has been debunked by Thunderf00t and many others. To grab that carbon you need to spend at least as much energy as you got from the combustion. So, effectively we need AT LEAST as much energy as we have used since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Trees are good at gathering carbon but they're not good as a long-term carbon sink.
>We need to use electric cars
...this solves nothing. The energy still needs to come from somewhere, the carbon is still in the atmosphere, and moreover we need to build everybody a new car which is a carbon-heavy and environmentally unfriendly process in itself.
Yeah, this is about as fact-based as "there is no global warming"
> ...this solves nothing. The energy still needs to come from somewhere
It can come from renewables, unlike with combustion engine
> There's no reason we can't have a distributed network of wind and solar farms around the world that can fulfill demand at all times.
cost, energy losses, political issues (nothing making it impossible but I would not describe it as "no reason")
And power loses from Africa to say Poland would be quite unfun.
> because nothing is 100% safe
Duh.
> Nuclear is extremely expensive
Waive nearly all regulation and it would be cheaper.
(yes, we would get some meltdowns - but if people actually believed "extinction threat to humanity", "red alert" etc then it would be preferable. And likely still less radioactive than carbon power.)
People aren't worried about the climate or the environment changing enough to directly cause humans to go extinct. More like climate change (plus our huge population) leading to increased resource contention, leading to increased conflict, leading to a superweapons conflict, ergo it's an existential threat.
> Nuclear is extremely expensive and prone to going wrong.
This has been debunked in this thread and countless others. It's a solvable problem, but we in the US lack the will.
> To grab that carbon you need to spend at least as much energy as you got from the combustion.
Eh. See solutions involving olivine. It's best to not release it in the first place. Which is why...
>>We need to use electric cars
>...this solves nothing.
... is bupkis. The fewer ICEs releasing carbon, the better. EVs can be powered by renewables. ICEs cannot (economically) be powered by renewables. EtOH is trash, biobutanol and Fischer-Tropsch gasoline are too expensive and likely will stay so.
Addendum on nuclear since it keeps coming up. Five tips from HN's favorite lightning rod mogul would dramatically improve the nuclear industry:
1. Make your requirements less dumb. How much design and regulatory cruft and holdover do we have from the beginning of the atomic age? Not suggesting "move fast and break things" but I am suggesting iterate at the small scale and never stop trying to improve safety, cost, and speed, in that order.
2. Try to delete processes and steps. Smaller, more modular reactors. Use fewer parts, and more off the shelf for what you need.
3. Simplify.
4. Accelerate cycle time. This goes hand-in-hand with Simplify.
5. Try to automate it. This is least essential, and doesn't mean just robots, but more jigwork and assembly line, vs nonrecurring engineering, the better.
We should reduce pollution, not panic about weather. Seas are full of plastic and organic waste, dry land too, rain forests are burned down to make more field. I don't claim that human would not affect to climate, but it is extremely difficult to prove statistically when the data we have is something like 100 years from the full 5 billion years of existence of earth. How can you take all factors into account in this kind of statistical analysis?
I suspect that bad-faith-social-actors will attempt, as always, to undermine this report and minimize the obvious need to act in reality on Earth circa 2021.
I suspect that we must come up with social and economic mechanisms for making ALL pollution the problem of the polluter, versus an externality for everyone to absorb.
I suspect that we had better find such mechanisms NOW, vs a later that is too late.
The official report the original BBC article is based on is available here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6.... Definitions are inside, but the big ones he mentions are Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), AR6 (Annual Report 6), and WGI (Working Group I).
Essentially what he's saying is that the conclusions in the report are based heavily on the more-extreme, though less-likely outcomes (i.e., exaggerating the truth of the impact of climate change based on observational data by using extreme models/predictions). The report also ignores his (Roger's) own heavily-cited research in favor of a less-cited resource that confirms their biases.
Edit: this is problematic because it generates headlines like the one this article is using and sends people into a panic spiral (as opposed to focusing on long-term solutions and actual science).
> "We will see even more intense and more frequent heatwaves," said Dr Friederike Otto, from the University of Oxford, UK, and one of the IPCC report's authors.
> "And we will also see an increase in heavy rainfall events on a global scale, and also increases in some types of droughts in some regions of the world."
According to TFA these are the consequences to expect if 1.5 degrees rise occurs. Doesn't sound like "code red" to me.
As usual the elephant in the room is the global population.
We can't eradicate poverty, protect the environment, and maintain the human population we currently have.
Bikeshedding is always easier than facing hard issues so people focus on marginal things, like air travel or plastic cups, rather than facing the root cause of it all.
Do we want all humans to have a good life with high living standards among a thriving natural world? If the answer is yes then we need to be lucid enough to realise that this is not doable on this planet if we are 8+ billions.
> As usual the elephant in the room is the global population.
No. Thankfully, the global population is more or less levelling off. We know the recipe by now: lift people out of abject poverty (wherein children are the only ones providing for you at old age), combat child mortality (under which people have far more children to be sure that at least some grow up), and give women control of their own bodies and education (so that they no longer have to be child-bearing machines).
We've seen this work again and again, most strikingly in Asia. We know it works. If the same process happens for Africa, the world population will certainly level off.
There's plenty of problems ahead for humanity, but it seems that we don't have to panic about the global population anymore!
I don't think that's true. We know how to produce all the energy we need with almost no GHG emissions. Do that, and put greenhouses everywhere, switch everyone to a purely plant-based diet.
In itself that's a sign that we live in a world where our consumption of resources has to be restricted. This is a lowering of quality of life.
Of course food is only one type of resources. We consume many more and if we need to have such restrictions on everything then we only survive at the expense of our quality of live.
So, we can only eat plant-based food. We cannot travel. We need to live in small flats in megacities. We can only use mass transit, etc. This ends up being 1984 meets The Matrix as I commented somewhere else.
Shouldn't the objective be that every human enjoy life while preserving the environment? Have a large garden, have pets (someone commented that they should be banned), travel to see the world? I think it's better to have fewer of us with better quality of life and able to enjoy a thriving environment.
> In itself that's a sign that we live in a world where our consumption of resources has to be restricted. This is a lowering of quality of life.
Yes. The point is that the lost quality of life some experience by going vegetarian (full disclosure: I have not managed to, I've only cut my meat consumption in half) is far smaller than the one everyone will experience if this climate change runs amok.
> So, we can only eat plant-based food. We cannot travel. We need to live in small flats in megacities. We can only use mass transit, etc. This ends up being 1984 meets The Matrix as I commented somewhere else.
I didn't say this. Yes, travel needs to be shifted to renewables. And yes, cities are probably better than rural living.
> Shouldn't the objective be that every human enjoy life while preserving the environment? Have a large garden, have pets (someone commented that they should be banned), travel to see the world? I think it's better to have fewer of us with better quality of life and able to enjoy a thriving environment.
Great secondary objective! We need to find a way to do it that doesn't make us miss our primary one: prevent catastrophic climate change. I think we can do it.
This is false. Only a minority of the population is responsible for the catastrophe. Take Africa, a continent with over 1.2 billion inhabitants: their carbon footprint, *all import included*, is below what our ecosystems can support. The way of live of the majority of human beings is sustainable.
Why force countries that are sustainable overall (at least in terms of C02 emissions) to not have children because the richest are destroying the climate.
Yeah, how do you think planning the largest genocide in history sounds to people? Do you even hear yourself? Do you want to go to 6 out of 7 people and tell them they cannot breed? What will be the punishment if they do? Or will you forcibly sterilise them?
The one who seems to be hearing voices in his head is you. I never suggested such a thing as genocide or forced sterilization.
I'm simply pointing out what I believe to be the root cause of the problem, and that if you keep applying ointment to wooden legs, you aren't going to achieve much.
But then talking about overpopulation is taboo, so let's just dig our heads in the sand and wait to get properly baked.
World population will decline in any case if/when climate catastrophe happens. People will drown, drop dead from heats, die from starvation, etc. It's the Lotka-Volterra model where the predator is the environment.
Climate catastrophe is created by humans. Climate catastrophe kills humans. Conclusion: Humans kill humans. The genocide (mass scale murder) is already here (assuming climate change will be as bad as worst predictions are)
Only the strongest will survive. That is the cornerstone of Nazi ethics. That will also be the reality of everyone when food and water gets scarce. Damned if you sterilise 6B people, damned if you don't and they die from heat or fighting each other for food.
Moral theoretisising aside, population will decline before the total climate collapse. The current ethical beliefs of feminism, harsh economic conditions for young people (inequality and foreseeable end of growth), depressing reality how we will die horribly from ISIS, China or Climate Change. All of them bring about to less pairs creating children.
But humans will survive. We are worse than cockroaches. Nothing can destroy us. Mars might happen. Singularity maybe. But human race will persist in any case as long as earth persists in any livable state (-60 to +60 degrees C, somewhat fresh Air and uncontaminated water). Humans will downscale to a couple millions but will remain.
In every discussion of environmental problems, someone says this like it’s some sort of obvious solution that everyone’s too afraid to discuss. But I want specifics from you — what would the actual policy be, and how would you implement it?
Are you talking about the genocide of billions for people? I mean, that’s far worse than the crisis we face!
Or are you talking about birth control? That would have to be radical and start right now to have much of an effect, and how on earth would you get everyone to agree with it?
Both these “solutions” seem utterly absurd on their face, and WAY harder to implement that even to most radical non-genocidal environmental policies.
I do not claim to have a solution, I'm simply pointing out where the focus of the conversation should be.
All of the "be friendly to the environment" type solutions to global warning I'm hearing about are all completely naive and simply ignoring human nature and the basic desire humans have for comfort and improvement to their lives.
Barring an amazing technological advance that'll let us control CO2 levels in our environment at planet scale, I believe it's time to be honest about the correlation between population size and global warming and to discuss what we can do about it.
>Are you talking about the genocide of billions for people?
Obviously not.
>I mean, that’s far worse than the crisis we face!
That remains to be seen. The number of people that might suffer to the point of loss of life because of climate change is something that - as another comment pointed out - no one can properly estimate.
>Or are you talking about birth control?
This is an avenue that needs to be discussed indeed. Perhaps not the way China did it, but something more along the lines of what the US did with educating people about tobacco. And also discussing the far reaching economic impact slow population decrease would have on the economy and infrastructures.
That was my point. Environmental policies are IMO completely useless in the face of what the population wants. The problem is most acute in democracies where e.g. raising taxes on gas is a surefire way for a politician to commit political suicide. But even in tyrannies like China, I doubt they'll be able to restrain the wants and needs of their people to the point where we'll solve global warming.
You can also turn the logic around with this. Many of the globalist institutions promoting climate apocalypse have a historical background in 'population control'. Globalists do openly discuss limiting population growth. What is difficult to discuss is the link between eugenicist population control schemes and the climate scare.
People, it's easy. If we are having difficulties to reduce our consumption because the lack of preparation let's first reduce how many people are living in the world with a worldwide One Child policy.
Obviously this will produce future issues that will have to be addressed but it's a necessary step (temporally?) to gain some time.
That would not work. Ignoring the mass revolt that would occur in most western nations, it would also be wildly insufficient, destroy the economy, and take a very long time to make an impact. There are much better uses for such a massive amount of political capital.
Anyone who claims to be "following the science" knows that there is no such thing as "code red" in science and lo and behold it's not what the IPCC report says but a UN representative. This is a media and ideologically driven narrative and have absolutely nothing to do with reality yet it's used to scare people who can do absolutely nothing and will only be used to push draconian and anti-human decisions on the energy front.
Anyone who wants to actually understand what the IPCC is finding should go read the actual report and they will find just like all the other IPCC reports that things are not even close to what the media and environmental organizations want you to believe, in fact, the IPCC reports are getting less concerned not more and you will find there is a lot more uncertainty with a lot of metrics.
There is no scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change we don't know how to deal with today let alone in 80 years from now. Yes the use of fossil fuel have externalities, some of them negative luckily most of them positive.
I saw the IPCC press conference this morning. I don't recall the scientists getting less concerned, in fact, it was quite the opposite. I am interested in where in the conference or in the report where they claim thing are less severe than they thought.
Also the positive sides seem interesting, could you also link the section in the IPCC report?
Yeah? Tell me how you deal with displacement of millions of hungry people and I'll give you a Nobel peace prize. Well, the monetary amount of, we'll do a Fig or something.
For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind capacity and number one per capita. But throughout a day wind power can very from nearly zero to close to max capacity. Those periods of near zero production can last non-trivial amounts of time no realistic battery could provide for.
The only solutions are continue with our gas turbine/wind power mix where we build enough gas turbines to handle 100% of the load for when the wind production is bottoming out, or replace everything with nuclear.
Nuclear gets us to net carbon zero fastest and with technology easy to export to developing countries in desperate need of plentiful, reliable, cheap electricity.