Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like you should move before it's too late.
That doesn't make the problem go away it just pushes it onto some other unsuspecting person
Unsuspecting? That’s the entire point of a buyer’s agent.
Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
81–90 of 101 posts
Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
If by "we" you mean "the first world as it devolves into wealth inequality", sure, but it's clear there's nearly 8 billion people, so a 2.4 fertility rate not projected to turn til the end of the century probably still leaves us with 9 billion people by 2070 don't you think? And indeed, it is a massive problem that we face, but do you truly think proposing regulation-free unhampered-by-policy capital-c Capitalism - i…
Imposing population limits in the developed world won’t change anything other than make population decrease problems occur faster. If this rate of birth decline continues, we’ll have a super healthy green planet, and no humans to inhabit it. This isn’t an argument against solar technologies et. al. It’s just the next problem that we don’t have an Al Gore for trumpeting it as an issue before it was widely known.
> Imposing population limits in the developed world
It is hard to read this and mention of "Al Gore" as anything other than arguing in bad faith. No one would propose to introduce population control in a place where that is not a problem.
Instead, reasonable actors would propose that we work to dismantle the global inequality that incentivizes impoverished families in the exploited third-world to birth many children by reigning in the ability for corporations to act as slavers in the third world and simultaneously pretend to be beacons of progress in the first. Wealth inequality, or maybe more precisely poverty, is a top driver of population growth, as children are cheaper to acquire than labor so those who need currency desperately are incentivized to birth children (and into horrendous conditions at that).
Reforming the nature of globalist capitalism would surely both help to curb population growth in these places as they became less impoverished and greatly improve our ethics.
Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Carbon tax gets proposed often, but it does not work on its own as a singular policy. Existing implementations of this see the money raised by the carbon tax diverted to equally environmentally costly ventures. There really is no easy way to incentivize a society driven by capital to be environmentally responsible because capitalism necessitates a near-sighted and self-centered approach to these things. Take the focu…
https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ Carbon tax is not being proposed on its own, it's meant to be combined with: - Paying out ~100% of the take equally per-person to make it so it helps rather than hurts the poorest, a "carbon dividend". Poor people use less carbon on average (directly+indirectly) than wealthy people, so they will usually be net beneficiaries. - Applying an equivalent tax on imports from coun…
> Applying an equivalent tax on imports from countries that don't impose a similar tax, called a Border Carbon Adjustment, to prevent domestic manufacturing from being disadvantaged ... to encourage companies to audit their supply chain
Not that I'm opposed to the cause or aligning incentives in general, but practically, this just seems flat out impossible to implement in any way that has teeth.
Do we punish poor countries to not destroy our local business, or do we let them pollute to not further impoverish them (in which case they will just start doing carbon tax arbitrage)? Both solutions suck, but with different US demographics which makes the local politics tricky even when everyone agrees on terminal values.
Of course, the real elephant in the room is China! China will never let auditors hurt a local business besides occasionally destroying a Jack Ma. The company doing the manufacturing has an enormous incentive to lie since they get to pocket the difference (minus payoffs), the auditor has an incentive to lie as otherwise they would be fired/imprisoned/social-decredited, and the government has and will continue to lie/cheat/steal to protect domestic business. When we inevitably have incontrovertible, unignorable proof they are lying and lied for the last N years, do we start a trade war after local manufacturing has been destroyed and we are fully reliant on their goods? Do we just start a trade war up front to price in the lying from the get go which looks indistinguishable from massive tariffs... in any case, China won't retaliate for what reason?
> ...the maximally pessimistic value can be applied
Consider how truly feckless the US/WHO has been in addressing China on the now probably probable lab leak! There have been no consequences for refusing to cooperate in the investigation of the origins of a disease that has done trillions of dollars in damages and killed 5 million people (China threatened to withhold medical supplies at the start of the pandemic, so it goes, and its probably not within the interests of our own elites, either). Even if you think China has the same goal of reducing climate change, they will still keep two sets of books (or more!).
Anyway, this is a sort of visibility/legibility problem into other countries that feels really hard to solve politically. Every local actor is strongly incentivized to defect which makes the system untenable locally. It reminds me of tax collectors in medieval Europe, except, you know, it would be for the whole world.
Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#84Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#85Someone submitted this a few posts earlier: "The Amazon is turning into savannah – we have 5 years to save it", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29540946 Two sides of the same coin but the groundwater problem seems easier to solve. Not because it is technically easier but because the incentives for (rich countries) seem to be a lot stronger. Preventing the own area from flooding is way less abstract than indirect…
Population control. There is no way that we can fit 9-10 billion people on earth and are still able to be sustainable.
The problem is more nuanced than that and just throwing out "Population control." is completely meaningless.
You could cull three billion people of the lowest emitters and it would have as much of an effect as halving the CO2 emissions of the top 1% of emitters.[1] And considering that to avoid the worst of the climate crisis we need action immediately or as close to it as possible, waiting for people to die away will not help us. If the entire planet stopped having babies today we would wait 65 years to get to half the current population, and half the emissions.
At best, and I would argue even that is a stretch, population control is one small part of a long term strategy. But it is by no means a solution, so throwing it out there every time people talk about sustainability does nothing but derail the conversation.
What we really need is to to make consumption as sustainable as possible and reduce it where possible, especially for the top consumers. That is not only more feasible in the short term, it is probably more ethical as well.
[1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-ric...
Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most septic tanks are not in coastal properties. The water table isn't going to change for a property unless you're right on the water or living on wide low lying march/delta type areas.
In Florida and much of the Gulf Coast though... Check out this map of population density: https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/metropolita... All those dense spots in Florida and along the Gulf are also more likely than most US urban areas to use septic tanks. That's a lot of brackish poop, clogged toilets, and environmental contamination coming in the next few decades.
Given the high water table in Florida, only people living in the countryside have septic tanks. None on the coast would have a septic tank
Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Population control. There is no way that we can fit 9-10 billion people on earth and are still able to be sustainable.
This is a done deal for developed countries. All of them are below the 2% replacement rate (many very far below). The places where the replacement rate is at or above 2% (often very far above 2%) are places where non-white people primarily live. Suggesting that they need to stop having so many children smacks of racism so it is politically and socially not something that people are willing to talk about.
You’re neglecting per capita resource usage. Population control in low-usage high-birth rate countries has insignificant effects. Reducing usage in high-usage countries has outsized effects, and a low replacement rate is not enough to mitigate them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_...
Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose you can just schedule a cron to submit in 10 years the same post with updated number to say 12B :) Even with population control (suppose we found a way to do it and managed to avoid the large negative consequences of it which would be plenty) the uncontested growing consumption by the current population would do the planet anyway. Speaking about solutions - until significant part of Sahara desert and the li…
> Speaking about solutions - until significant part of Sahara desert and the likes aren't covered by solar panels, i wouldn't believe that anybody (who matters) is taking the climate change seriously I think it is harder than we think, at least for the goals that Europe wants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o The caveat about population control, is different than how we, humans, do with all other wild-life…
> I think it is harder than we think, at least for the goals that Europe wants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o
it seems that the main issue is that some invested in concentrated solar while photovoltaics energy cost fell from being 2x expensive to being 4x cheaper of the concentrated and just beating everything out at $0.03/KWh. As i said - cover the desert in solar panels. Transmission is only 7% loss to Berlin.
Instead Europe is building gas pipelines from Russia and others. Again, money talk, and that clearly shows that nobody takes climate change seriously.
Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#89My gosh! Someone tell Obama!
Re: Rising groundwater caused by climate change could devastate coastal communities
#90Either side of the coin, it's still pretty wild to watch it happen. We live on a point in Baltimore harbor and had the perfect storm of both water being pushed up the harbor, big tides and sheets of rain. By the time the tide came in the second time, we started seeing water pushing up through the sump pumps in our basements. The pressure from the water table underneath our home was so great that water was pushing it'…
The entire Inner Harbor is within a floodplain, with the southernmost areas being within the 100yr FP. What you are describing is not unheard of, but simply not common.
Don’t buy or build in a floodplain?