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Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

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Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#461

Post by chadlavi »

rich_sasha wrote: post #170

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 yardstic…

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.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#462

Post by eganist »

bko wrote: post #447
jsonne wrote: post #360

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…

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 emiss…

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.

----

* https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/China-s-tech-cra...

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#463

Post by altdataseller »

the_lonely_road wrote: post #452
headmelted wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. 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 everythi…

Yeah, people should never say “we have no capital” when I see billions being used to buy bonds and prop up the stock market. It’s just ridiculous

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#464

Post by vlkr »

bko wrote: post #447
jsonne wrote: post #360

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…

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 emiss…

China is less troubling than US if you look at per capita numbers: US 15.52, China 7.38 tons of CO2

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#465

Post by lucb1e »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #177
gspr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We don't need more solutions

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.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#466

Post by oakfr »

jsonne wrote: post #360

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…

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.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#467

Post by youngtaff »

zthrowaway wrote: post #269
oliwarner wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

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 willi…

> 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…

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#468

Post by [deleted] »

winslett wrote: post #429
Chris2048 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#469

Post by TeMPOraL »

zabatuvajdka wrote: post #393
nosianu wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ha…

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 clima…

> 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.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#470

Post by jhrmnn »

chadlavi wrote: post #461
rich_sasha wrote: post #170

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 yardstic…

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.
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