The Swerve

>Those places would have come out better if we all did this.

If we all did what, exactly?

I live in Canada. We shut down our economy, spent vast amounts of money on social supports, had wide vaccine and booster adoption...and had similar results to many countries that did far less than that.

Our smallest province had, literally, zero deaths and a handful of hospitalizations for over a year into the pandemic. It was an example to the world. Then Omicron hit and that province had one of the worst infection rates in the world. Almost like nothing they did mattered and it was just a matter of time...

>In this case the dissidents even use this argument to show that the better choices didn't work

And the conformists keep moving the goalposts, claiming we didn't do enough. You need to tell people what they need to do, and for how long, and then you're kinda hemmed in. We were told vaccines would get us "back to normal" (even that they prevented the spread). It turned out they were remotely as effective as claimed. How long can normal people be offered that carrot, then have to backtrack, before they revolt?

I agree that global coordination would be fantastic, but probably impossible.

> Incredibly, climate denial still festers. “There’s no cliff,” they insist. “This bus is on a smooth road that goes all the way to the promised land. Only a fool would swerve now.”

I think I get the main theme, but I don't think "climate cliff" is a useful analogy. It makes one picture a scene of relative calm until suddenly (and abruptly) the shit hits the fan, when the reality is going to be far more messy. (Just look at all those historians who could never agree on exactly what year the Roman Empire fell.)

If anything, it will make people argue "Well, we haven't hit the cliff yet, which means we still have time," or, worse, "They've preached that we will hit the cliff by 2020, a bunch of liars!"

I think the fictional "denialist" in the sentence is actually half right. Instead of a cliff, we will have a smooth ride... to hell. We will never have one glorious catastrophe where we get to say "I told you so" five seconds before dying. Instead, half of the passengers will still be arguing that we're fine while we're slowly dying.

The whole global economy is built around cheap energy sources that also happen to be at least 100 times more efficient than solar, wind, or even nuclear. Petroleum is BY FAR the most efficient way of storing energy.

Wind and solar power are both intermittent. That's fine if you live in a coastal city in a temperate zone, but most people in the world do not. So efficient energy storage becomes a huge problem. And we have two main timecycles for which we have to store energy: capturing it during the day and releasing it at night (to charge all those EVs) and also capturing it during the summer and releasing it over the winter. That would require longer-term storage AND while we can capture the most energy during the summer, that's also the highest period of use because the world is now also air-conditioned.

If you end petroleum production, that also ends all plastic production. So all the cheap gewgaws from China disappear.

Also, did you know that solar panels are made from firing coal and quartz together at high temperatures? Do you know why they're all made in China? Because of much less strict environmental regulations there. Did you also know that solar panels have a lifespan of only 15-20 years, and that they're not recyclable?

I could go on and on, but there's no magic "alternative energy source" that even comes close to being able to provide stable power at a cost that comes anywhere close to petroleum, not to mention how portable petroleum is as an energy source. Nuclear power is the only thing that even comes close, but it's fraught with trouble as well.

You think there will be solar-powered shipping vessels? Trains are electric, but you know what runs the electric motors on them? The on-board diesel generators!

The global economy is based on cheap energy sources. Increase the cost and reduce the availability of the energy sources and yeah, you'll destroy the economy.

It doesn't really matter, does it? As analogies go it's pretty clear what the message is and for that purpose this metaphor is good enough. Any arguing over the shape of the metaphor is essentially pointless, if you didn't get it then it doesn't matter because you are clearly not the target audience, and if you did get it you realize that it is a leaky abstraction, but a useful one nonetheless.

... and the first class passengers simply exit and fly off in their jetpacks.