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Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

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Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#461

Post by vitro »

JamesBarney wrote: post #433
hliyan wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fundamentally it is a political problem" -- Agreed. What if the whole problem is that of "growth"? Here's one possible chain of thought. I don't fully subscribe to this, so please feel free to poke holes in it: 1. The biggest polluters tend to be commercial enterprises 2. They are aware of the environmental impact of their actions, but are reluctant to stop 3. They are staffed by (mostly) normal human beings, but th…

As a stockholders my incentive is to increase my net worth. I do this by investing in companies that produce profits and grow. Now if inflation was to be lowered to 1% or 0% why would I stop being interested in growing companies and getting richer? And while increasing regulations on climate change would be costly, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of stopping GDP growth and would harms tons of individua…

Richer only for the sake of being rich? After certain threshold, more money doesn't change your lifestyle much, does it? Yes, you can get better, faster cars, but that is just greed in particular, ignorance in general. Hint, you don't NEED that.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#462

Post by pkrein »

For the past 40 years we've viewed climate change as a political problem (see "Losing Earth" from the NY Times for a history of this [1].) Like you, I no longer have any faith that politicians will be able to solve the problem. As the NYT research revealed, politicians generally only take on a cause when there is a viable solution... and frankly there isn't a great solution yet. Solar and wind help a good bit. Nuclear would be a fine option but as a society we are apparently uncomfortable with it... Our politicians don't really have a good enough, complete enough option.

At Charm Industrial [2] we started with a different question that at first seems silly: is it possible to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a profit? We assumed the answer would be no, but to our surprise we couldn't convince ourselves of that. We found a pathway (purpose-grown biomass --> gasification --> hydrocarbons + geological CO2 sequestration) that seems to have high-scale profit potential. And if you can be profitable, then effectively unlimited amounts of private capital are available.

If you're interested in following our progress, you can subscribe to our newsletter here: https://charmindustrial.us18.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=aaf...

And we'd love to see others tackle the problem from the perspective of high-scale, viable economics. Is it possible to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a profit?

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim... [2]: https://www.charmindustrial.com/

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#463

Post by crispinb »

jjeaff wrote: post #168
buro9 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you. If we care about the…

Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space, the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands. Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long time.

> Humans are the ultimate adapters.

Well yes, nearly ('extreme' perhaps: 'ultimate' sounds a bit magical), but that's the problem. Darwinian evolution has created a creature than can avoid most sources of population limits that permit ecosystem stability. This same creature has the flexibility to repeat the trick in all regions on the planet, crashing one after another.

And then although our species is (for better or worse) remarkably resilient, agricultural civilisation is far too new to be able to make similar claims about it. The 21st century signs aren't good. It's hard to imagine major climate collapse convulsions not resulting in ongoing wars, probably nuclear.

So yes, literal extinction of humans doesn't seem likely. Some people may enjoy the idea of a dystopic 'The Road' style rag-tag dog-eat-dog existence (though they're probably mostly pale wormy teens who in real life panic when out of reach of a screen). But the breakdown of a planetary society of 7-12 billion (depending on how far into this process we can jury rig nations to hold together) is going to be nothing but a litany of sorrow & pain.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#464

Post by mikeash »

ShriekBob wrote: post #395
dgudkov wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally, it's a consumer problem. Consumers don't want to pay more for using green power, or eat less meat, or use public transit instead of a car, buy an electric vehicle, or other things that restrict their comfort or degrade quality of life. Such restriction/degradation would be perceptible and short-term, while the climate threat is not perceptible and is long-term. Nobody really cares if the average temper…

I would argue that the only reason those none green things are cheaper is because of unpriced externalities. Externalities that industry isn't going to price in themselves, which means it becomes, again, a political problem

I think the only answer is for green tech to become cheaper, or at least better and more desirable, to an extent that it can overcome all those unpriced externalities.

Consider lighting. When efficient lighting started to take off, it sucked. CFLs were expensive and worked poorly. People avoided them unless they were forced into them or really wanted to be green.

Now, LEDs are awesome. They’re still more expensive up-front, but the breakeven period is really short. They look great. I use them everywhere, not for environmental reasons, but because they’re the best practical choice.

Electric cars are another example. Used to be they were a sacrifice, unless your driving needs fit into a really narrow niche. Now they’re really good. They’re still not cheap, but people who can’t afford them often wish they could, and the prices will come down. Similar to lighting, I don’t drive an electric car to be green (although it’s a nice bonus), I drive it because it’s practical and convenient.

It shouldn’t have to be this way, but I think it does. Maybe it’ll work out anyway. It’s looking possible.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#465

Post by aoner »

aoner wrote: post #321
lozenge wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you look at the recent IPCC reports, people are heavily betting on putting carbon back into the stable form" This is more due to its political palatibility than its scientific value. It allows conclusions like "12 years to save the world" (not actually what the report says, but what the media was able to spin it as, and OP's interpretation) instead of a more honest assessment. As for the EU's carbon trading schem…

In all scenario's we need negative emissions. If you're interested in the topic, there is a really cool stanford seminar by Brentz Constantz (Cofounder of BluePlanet LTD) about viable ways to do negative emissions that are cost effective without carbon trading schemes. It gives you a very good idea of the amount of carbon that is already in the air and needs to be taken out. What's your solution for/take on all of th…

Sorry forgot the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvtHPF1ng0s

If you're interested in carbon sequestration this is super interesting

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#466

Post by aoner »

pauldjohnston wrote: post #221

Well, having done some research into this recently, the tech world has something it can do right now. Switch to sustainably powered Cloud and move to renewably powered/offset Data Centres. e.g. Google (100% carbon neutral), Azure (100% offset), AWS (Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Frankfurt regions are 100% carbon neutral) Cloud/Data Centres emit around 2% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (bet you didn't know that). There is a…

Thanks! Just read the white paper. Super interesting. Just signed the petition

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#467

Post by [deleted] »

lolsal wrote: post #411
jonstewart wrote: post #16

Give money to Democratic candidates challenging Republican incumbents, right now. If we believe in evidence-based science, then all evidence points to Republicans being anti-science. You don't have to be a committed lifelong Democrat to see that the current Republican party is fighting climate change efforts at every turn and needs to be displaced in order for political progress on the issue to happen.

> If we believe in evidence-based science, then all evidence points to Republicans being anti-science. I am conservative and tend to lean-republican. I am not anti-science. Please stop generalizing.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#468

Post by xupybd »

adrianN wrote: post #204
xupybd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the result would be good. All that would do is destabilise the world crash our economies and set back our green tech.

Crashing the economy has historically been the most efficient way of reducing CO2 production.

I'm not sure. It might wind things back a bit for a short time. But during a time of economic down turn the environment becomes a low priority for a lot of people. Then when things recover there is no guarantee that things will be done any better. I'm of the opinion that we need stable governments and economies to tackle this problem.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#469

Post by JamesBarney »

vitro wrote: post #461
JamesBarney wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a stockholders my incentive is to increase my net worth. I do this by investing in companies that produce profits and grow. Now if inflation was to be lowered to 1% or 0% why would I stop being interested in growing companies and getting richer? And while increasing regulations on climate change would be costly, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of stopping GDP growth and would harms tons of individua…

Richer only for the sake of being rich? After certain threshold, more money doesn't change your lifestyle much, does it? Yes, you can get better, faster cars, but that is just greed in particular, ignorance in general. Hint, you don't NEED that.

I think you misread my comment. It was not about need but about incentives. Specifically that changing inflation doesn't change incentives. And removing growth from an economy is far more expensive way to prevent climate change than something like a carbon tax.

If you are arguing the easiest fix to climate change is to convince everyone to stop being interested in increasing their material wealth. That seems like a hell of an uphill battle. Orders of magnitude harder than passing a really high carbon tax.

P.S. getting rich is usually not the terminal goal, but a means to financial security for the middle class, and status for the upper class.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#470

Post by PeterisP »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #194
buro9 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you. If we care about the…

> The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. Humans will be fine, as a species. But the human and economic costs will be large. Compare it to the Hurricane Katrina: most people in New Orleans weathered it fine (i.e. by evacuating the city). The city itself also survived mostly okay (it's still there). But the economic cost of cleanup was huge; and while most people s…

If the main argument is economic costs, then this turns the discussion from a global to a localized problem, whether the required actions or sacrifices justify the local risks.

For example, is it worth for some country to "invest", say, $100 billion in reducing emissions - which, at least unilaterally, won't be sufficient to prevent the effects of climate change but just mitigate them - or can they achieve better mitigation by a comparable investment in reinforcing their shoreline, updating or relocating buildings, etc?

If USA had to vote on whether to spend (or lose by restricting growth) $1 trillion of USA resources to prevent $10 trillion of future losses in SE Asia, then I'd assume that such proposals would be swiftly declined; spending our resources on other things now and having someone else pay a huge price later would be considered a quite good deal by many governments, as the countries that most need to take action are not the same countries that will bear the harshest consequences.

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