The world is losing the war against climate change • Hacker News Board

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#301

Post by leereeves » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #298

leereeves wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a large number of Americans think they personally could afford to pay a carbon tax and are happy to place the burden on poor people who cannot.

The money has to come from somewhere. If I have to pay a tax on carbon, I have to spend less money on something else. Regardless of whether or not I can afford a carbon tax, it still has to result in lower consumption.

That's only true if you live hand-to-mouth and spend every penny on consumption.

The poor would be forced to reduce consumption; the wealthy already have more money than they can spend.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#302

Post by RestlessMind » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 12:29 AM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #265

atlantic wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war is perfectly winnable, but not within the context of a democracy. Here you would need the equivalent of a state of emergency, lasting for perhaps a century, to force the necessary changes upon an unwilling public, who are quite happy to sort trash into three piles, stop using straws, or engage in other such cargo-cult behaviours, but not to give up their iPhones, 2nd cars or annual vacations. Ironically, a co…

A large majority of Americans support adding a revenue-neutral carbon tax, which demonstrates a willingness to reduce consumption as long as it is part of a concerted action and not just an insignificant choice by a single person that will make no noticeable difference to climate change. We need "leaders" to catch up with the general public's views on this matter, not the other way around.

> A large majority of Americans support adding a revenue-neutral carbon tax

Citation please? And how much of that is "stated preference" vs "revealed preference"? I might say a lot of idealistic things if those are never going to pan out.

Luckily, USA allows this type of experimentation by allowing carbon tax to be introduced at state-level. So if a state (eg. New York or California) can demonstrate that revenue neutral carbon tax is palatable to the populace while reducing carbon emissions, that would be a realistic political path to introduce it to wider population.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#303

Post by Tade0 » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 1:16 AM UTC

atlantic wrote: post #211

rb808 wrote: post #151

The war is unwinnable. Global warming can only be reversed if we stop all Co2 and methane emissions, and then start net carbon capture to reduce current co2 levels. Its just not going to happen. No one ever says that out loud. There is noise about reducing carbon emissions - in reality this is a lot of argument about reducing carbon emissions in wealthy countries. We can't even do that. Meanwhile even my greeny-lefty…

The war is perfectly winnable, but not within the context of a democracy. Here you would need the equivalent of a state of emergency, lasting for perhaps a century, to force the necessary changes upon an unwilling public, who are quite happy to sort trash into three piles, stop using straws, or engage in other such cargo-cult behaviours, but not to give up their iPhones, 2nd cars or annual vacations. Ironically, a co…

I can't agree and I think the problems you're describing concern mostly the US.

European emmisions are not only lower than the ones generated in the US despite the larger population of the former but also until last year have been consistently falling since at least 1990 contrary to what was happening in the latter.

My take is that there has to be less involvement of private entities in shaping regulations in the US. Once that's out it will be possible to e.g. make people drive smaller, more fuel efficient cars by raising taxes on fuel.

Currently driving a Ford F150 is as cheap in the US as driving a compact hybrid in most European countries- this is ridiculous and needs to stop.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#304

Post by sjwright » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

craftyguy wrote: post #194

sjwright wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not just planting the tree, right? It's taking land that currently has no tree, reserving it for the tree, and guaranteeing that the land & tree will remain intact for a nominal period of time, possibly indefinitely? Trees are cheap. Fertile tree-growing land not currently used for trees: not so much.

Here in the (western) US, millions (billions?) of trees are burning up every year due to forest fires. So to add to your list, we also need a way to facilitate healthy forests without completely destroying them and re-releasing nearly all of their stored carbon back into the atmosphere within a couple of weeks. Controlled burns is one way, but that requires an investment in firefighters and other specialists.. who ar…

Here in Australia, fire is an essential part of the life cycle of our bushland (our virgin forests of primarily eucalyptus trees).

https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/parks-reserves-and...

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#305

Post by reitanqild » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 4:31 AM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #276

reitanqild wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it certainly would signal something the day these government leaders stop flying private jet planes to climate conferences or even start having video conferences. That should help. History has a number of examples of how far people will go if their leaders go first. But as long as leaders say one thing and do something completely different? I say no wonder uneducated people don't buy it. Note: this is not to be…

The leaders aren't even going to these conferences. They deny climate change is even happening. With leadership like that, I certainly won't be making any sacrifices.

True for for Trump and a few others, but there are plenty others who go.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#306

Post by Bachoglider » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:35 AM UTC

Hey guys,

Let me present the project our team have created for tree planting https://treespond.com/

- treespond is a web platform where one can offset Trump's ignorant Twitter quotes by planting trees.

- the twist is simple: the more ignorant the phrase, the more trees are treesponded.

Your feedback is huuugly helpful

Thanks!

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#307

Post by bmarkovic » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:35 AM UTC

sparkling wrote: post #110

Merad wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the US. The majority of the country isn't to the point of believing that climate change poses a serious threat, and among non-Democrats attitudes towards climate change are actually regressing: https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-s...

Weather or not the majority believes in climate change is irrelevant. The simple fact is: while the US reduced its total carbon footprint by ~0,4% in 2017, it increased in the EU and China. No reason to point fingers at the US.

Except that EU has been doing it's job since the 90s and China has been doing it as well in recent years. They both slipped the last 12 months and a lot of it, at least in Europe is combination of side-effects of the post-Fukushima nuclear scare and increase in greeny renewables (like solar and wind) that actually cause more methane and coal to burn because they cannot work as reliable base supply.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#308

Post by bmarkovic » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:41 AM UTC

tripplethrendo wrote: post #158

steego wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but think that picking apart a magazine's headline is a huge distraction from an important issue, but I also can't help myself in pointing out how off the mark you with such a superficial observation. As far as global poverty is concerned, between 1990-2013 more than a billion people were lifted out of poverty according to the World Bank. I'm sure you can point to local and anecdotal evidence that does n…

A billion people consuming more is surely bad for climate change though, no? Millions of people pouring into 1st world countries and consuming more is surely bad for climate change.

So you're arguing that the third world doesn't deserve washing machines and clean water, so that you can have one person per SUV in the states?

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#309

Post by bmarkovic » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

sykhic wrote: post #230

vowelless wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> effective action is to greatly reduce the number of births worldwide. Unbelievable.

You don't believe that having fewer people in the world would lead to less pollution and less harm to the environment due to human activities? Or you don't believe someone is suggesting that there needs to be fewer people? It seems clear to me that if there were only 5 million people in the world then human caused climate change wouldn't be an issue. Isn't that obvious? I'm not advocating that we get to that level. I…

Given how most polution comes from places where people generally have very little children, I doubt that reducing births in the third world would be an effective measure.

We need to solve for different variables: energy source (we need more nuclear), transportation (we need people to utilize public transportation and drive less cars), and we'd need to work on carbon capture (which is a technological problem).

Solving all these requires policy shift and government enforcement.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#310

Post by bmarkovic » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 6:59 AM UTC

aurailious wrote: post #79

317070 wrote: post #2

Legitimate question: will there be a point where we speak about this war in the past tense, as in `The world lost the war against climate change'? How do we determine that turning point?

We have almost certainly already lost. The challenge now is to adapt to the change. Paris was not about bringing global temp change to 0C, just limiting it to 2C. Fortunately planet Earth won't be bothered by us too much. The cycles of ice ages we are in will "correct" most anything we do. The loss of biodiversity will probably be our only legacy.

Biodiversity will recover on a planetary timescale. Our civilization will probably be lost tho.