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U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#201

Post by yiyus »

abyssin wrote: post #162
macspoofing wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. But that's not the case. America is reducing its emissions greatly by shifting from coal to natural gas (which mirrors what Germany is doing, for example). Coal is ostensibly dead in US. If you look at the charts from Wikipedia [1][2], you'll see the US has cut emissions at about the same rate (o…

Next step is to reduce energy consumption. It's so obvious I wonder why it isn't talked about more. I'm not saying it's easy. We either choose to reduce energy consumption, or the consequences of climate change will force us to do it. The difference is in the first case, we have more control over it, and it might cause less human suffering.

There is some low hanging fruit in that department. To begin with, properly isolating old buildings would make a huge difference. But I agree it won't be easy.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#202

Post by hokkos »

panpanna wrote: post #4

Question: should countries be able to tax imports from countries with more lax environmental laws? Because that would address the argument about cost and staying competitive.

The EU is stating public consultations on energy taxation and a carbon border adjustment mechanism :

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/news/commission-launch...

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#203

Post by hackerNoose »

Sharlin wrote: post #8
arethuza wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you would be entering into a "trade war" with the United States - which most countries aren't going to be able to do.

China and the EU can, and should. "Polluter pays" should become the standard policy in international trade in numerous other ways, too.

China is the biggest polluter and they plan to increase their co2 emissions to at least 2030 so I don't think you'll find an ally there.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#204

Post by DFHippie »

bluGill wrote: post #99
giantg2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China may be on the accord, but they still have abysmal pollution right now. So currently, it would be a trade war with China too. This brings up something that I don't understand. How can there be candidates that say they support the environment, support worker rights, and support free trade with places such as China? Laborers are treated like crap and pollution is rampant in China. Promoting free trade seems to opp…

Free trade raises the standard for everyone. Today China has those issues, but free trade is raising their living standard. As standards of living raise people find pollution is negatively affecting them and so they solve the problem locally. Of course the downside free trade allows production to move to places where there are no controls because non-local pollution both less affects any individual, and because inter…

> As standards of living raise people find pollution is negatively affecting them and so they solve the problem locally.

This works if the problem is local and bothersome to the locals -- rusting drums leaking poison or heaps of trash. Carbon dioxide and methane are invisible and odorless and instantly become everyone's problem, so we can't expect this mechanism to induce people to solve the problem locally.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#205

Post by apexalpha »

sampo wrote: post #156
koheripbal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue with the Paris Accords is that China did not commit to begin any restrictions until 2030. ...and since they are both the world's largest CO2 emitter and world's fastest growing CO2 emitter, the Accords became a corporate strategy to just move more manufacturing to China (and other non-limited countries). Frankly, I think the Paris Accords does more harm than good by giving anyone the notion that we…

> China [...] world's fastest growing CO2 emitter This is not true. From 2001 to 2011 China almost tripled their emissions, but after 2011 they haven't grown almost at all. It's stable. Maybe you haven't looked at the data in the past 10 years? https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=~CHN

Plus, to be fair, they make all our stuff. Or at least a lot of it. So a big part of their CO2 is YOUR stuff being made.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#206

Post by giantg2 »

flurdy wrote: post #198
giantg2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Tesla is being built in China? That's not what I've heard. In fact Tesla has shipped cars to China. Just look at the recent recall. China has their own versions of electric cars (see NIO as an example).

Erm, yes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Shanghai

Thanks, I didn't see that. I had only heard of the cars being shipped over (in the recent recall).

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#207

Post by tw04 »

pg_bot wrote: post #165
tw04 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%. Which is primarily due to Obama era regulations that Trump has done everything he can to roll back. Had the price of gas not skyrocketed and the mortgage c…

Emissions have gone down because of the fracking boom. Coal power plants are being replaced with natural gas which releases half as much carbon dioxide. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... .

The fracking boom has released massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere so we basically went from something we actively track (coal emissions) to something we don't track and thus aren't regulating or controlling (methane leaking from fracking wells). This is a net negative for planet earth...

That didn't reduce emissions and may have actually increased them.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#208

Post by wwright »

mathh wrote: post #140
wwright wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really not sure this is the case. For example, we know that we have far more than enough capacity to produce food for the entire world, we just simply don’t do it. Of course, Americans are very wasteful, and we can’t scale that amount of wastefulness to the entire planet.

Is it so hard on HN to use specific and appropriate verbs other than “to scale” for any idea related to something expanding or getting bigger ?

I’m not aware of what specific or appropriate verb I should have used. Happy to edit the post if you can educate me :)

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#209

Post by 7thaccount »

alehul wrote: post #192
7thaccount wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has majorly been transitioning to both natural gas AND renewables. In fact, practically the only facilities being built for the last decade have been wind and solar and in massive quantities. If you look in the generation queues of the various RTO/ISOs (organizations that manage which units run and at what level for large parts of the grid) the only thing expected to be built is even more wind and solar along…

> A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway I don’t think any of these solutions are viable…

I agree it would be unpopular, but it's what the US has been pushing towards for a long time with deregulation and it's the dream of the economists as the prices should be more transparent and optimal.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#210

Post by zo1 »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #170
astura wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like that because unlike most states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania didn't start counting their mail-in votes until after in person votes. Mail in votes will almost certainly heavily skew blue and there's substantial numbers of them this year. Not saying Biden will definitely win, just we can't tell yet. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/04/whats-behind-trumps-leads-in...

> Mail in votes will almost certainly heavily skew blue. Is there a good explanation for that assertion? I've seen it being said in many places but never any reason for it. Why would mail in votes skew in a particular direction?

The going conspiracy reason is that it's because the "Left" is using mail-in ballots to commit election fraud. To be fair, I still don't understand how we can have such manual, potentially-manipulated and mistrusted voting systems in 2020.

Like, how difficult would it be for everyone to vote in a secure, cryptographically hidden and verified manner, using some sort booth/app/device/website with proper identity verification linked to your government identification databases? It's beyond scary and infuriating that with all this technology and really smart people around that we still have to have papers, mails and random fallible/corruptible volunteers doing the counting.

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