Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 1001 posts

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

#481

Post by sumeno »

1337shadow wrote: post #424
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…

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…

Everyone always forgets the good part of mass extinction events

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

#482

Post by Cosmin_C »

oakfr wrote: post #466
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…

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.

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

#483

Post by zelos »

aivisol wrote: post #379
belorn wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a study done in Sweden a few years ago that looked at the question about an individuals actions and the corresponding CO2 production. No car > skipping flight > buy green energy > Get a electric car > diet. https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/four-lifestyle-choi...

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? [0] https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/drimage/1120/630/4832/fourc...

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).

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

#484

Post by lovemenot »

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…

>> The bad news is, they're China.

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.

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

#485

Post by namelessoracle »

oakfr wrote: post #466
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…

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.

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

#486

Post by helsinkiandrew »

polote wrote: post #59
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #23

> 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 deserv…

> 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…

> 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.

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

#487

Post by realce »

_meqs wrote: post #455
1propionyl wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/scienti…

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 incr…

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.

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

#488

Post by kumarvvr »

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…

> 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.

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

#489

Post by jcfrei »

headmelted wrote: post #421
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…

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.

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.

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

#490

Post by rich_sasha »

pjerem wrote: post #221
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…

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.

This is good, but ultimately opt-in. I think you need something much wider-ranging than this.
Post reply on HN