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UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#341

Post by ericmay »

benj111 wrote: post #331
ericmay wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by construct, but capitalism is an economic system that is regulated and enabled by the government because in order to own private property either you have to defend it yourself or you have the government set rules and act as the enforcement mechanism. Capitalism is one type of economic system that operates with the blessing of the government but there are others. Soviet Russia is an exampl…

>I think you are confusing a market pricing mechanic which is a feature of capitalism with the core tenet of capitalism which is the existence of the private ownership of the means of production. Well you could argue that one means nothing without the other. But anyway, what bearing does private ownership have this context? I accept I used loose words but in this context the relevant part of capitalism is its pricing…

Part of the reason I mention the private ownership of the means of production here is because you wouldn't get very far suggesting that people shouldn't be able to start businesses or give money to startups or anything like that. That's what capitalism is. I don't recall how we got onto that tangent (sorry).

But I think as I'm reading your comment again we get back to this core idea of "responsibility" or perhaps expectations. I do not have an expectation for a capitalist market to price something that nobody is buying or selling.

To your point, I don't think capitalism has gotten there on its own. But the fault does not lie with corporations and this economic model, but in our failure to mitigate its flaws through regulation. Emissions are strictly a regulatory problem that needs to be addressed and if you continue to blame corporations and capitalism you'll just never make any progress on climate change. In my mind it's just a crutch people use to avoid changing their lifestyle or demanding that their government take action. It's much easier to just blame corporations for anything bad instead of reducing consumption. Certainly they bare responsibility and need to be contributors and all, but we need to change our government and our own habits too. A model where you buy Ford F-150 trucks, then protest outside of a Ford factory for selling you the truck is simply not a model that will address climate change.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#342

Post by greenhearth »

ericmay wrote: post #340
greenhearth wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I agree that it's people's fault. But "the government" is also an ephemeral entity, as you put it. It is not a monolith, but a sometimes loosely connected collection of organs of power and ideology. Is the president "government?" Are teachers or cops who are government employees "government?" Are the contractors, or air force pilots "government?" If so, how could all these individuals collectively be held respo…

I think you're trying to have your cake and eat it too here where you are tossing up government and government employees as ephemeral but not giving the same consideration to corporate entities. Is a janitor at Exxon Mobile responsible for climate change? How long do they have to work there before they're at fault? A day? A year? If they're not at fault and it's just the executives, why would we also not place the sa…

I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) Nor did I not blame any janitors, as they are not usually capitalists. They usually do not have any capital, nor do they make any decision on how to increase profits, etc. And besides, this is a false analogy - janitors that work at office buildings are different from government employees, such as teachers who disseminate state ideology and cops who enforce state laws with threat of violence.

What you're saying is capitalist entities are blameless because there is no moral obligation for them to stop polluting, and as long as someone pays them and consumes their products/services this is ok. This falls completely within theory - as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#343

Post by Nomentatus »

clairity wrote: post #277
timr wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be perfectly clear: the projection you are citing is on the extreme end of a spectrum. Other projections differ. Per the (non-headline) part of the article: > The estimate stands in sharp contrast to optimistic forecasts published last week that suggested heating could be held to 1.9C or 1.8C, thanks to commitments announced at the talks, now in their second week and scheduled to end this weekend. > Those estim…

> "It's sad, but we've gotten to the point where you simply cannot trust major news organizations to report on science without ridiculous levels of clickbait spin." news may have waxed and waned on reputability but it's never really been highly reputable. we had a blip from the 70s-90s where it was contextually limited enough that our national narrative was fairly aligned and unchallenged. but that exposed the natura…

Science reporting could be skewed on some issues in the old days (floridation, marijuana) but it was rarely as hasty and sloppy as it gets now, frequently. The business model and technology then didn't support the same volume of publication, but it supported reporters well enough to allow them more time to investigate and write.

Headline writing was another matter back then, though. It was bad; just some dude trying to fit the space under time pressure because the ads were carefully planned, then the articles were quickly chopped to fit around them. Truncated headlines often reversed the meaning of the story or just went off the rails.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#344

Post by Nomentatus »

greenhearth wrote: post #123
ericmay wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> focus on pivoting to renewables and developing reliable fusion energy... You know that this would be accomplished through capitalism right? The more we rail against capitalism and free markets (which every successful country from Denmark to Australia uses) the less likely we'll ever be to solve any problems. The market is an unwieldy force that can be generally shaped in a direction by the people (purchasing decisi…

Baudrillard wrote a while ago that "capital has never been linked by a contract to the society it dominates." It follows no social contract and is not at any moral obligation. He goes on to explain that asking it to follow some rules is laughable and absurd.

This was also Marx's argument, of the "don't blame the player, blame the game," ilk.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#345

Post by w0de0 »

colpabar wrote: post #238
w0de0 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s sad, but we will simply never get past the point of rearranging the furniture while we argue about the accuracy of estimates of the iceberg’s size. Why is this the font of your passion, rather than the desperate situation of our planet?

What are they supposed to do? They said they don't trust the guardian for scientific news because they have read the actual scientific literature and noticed that the guardian engages in clickbait and hyperbole. They seem to understand the situation, they just don't like this particular outlet because in their experience it doesn't do a good job. Should they be typing in all caps about how we're all going to die inst…

A fair question.

I feel much of the mourning of lost trust in media comes down to crocodile tears (“concern trolling” - though I don’t cast that label on any comment here). The well meant and often needed pedantry of the informed serves the disingenuous demagogue readily. And the informed themselves are often distracted from a moral urgency by ambiguity.

Ambiguity is kin to science but alien to modern and popular modes of ethical judgement. This failure of critical moral thinking is the crux of media’s challenge when reporting on climate change. I don’t believe the hoi polloi distrust journalists because they too are current with the latest studies.

In our present crises, there seems to me a choice between hyperbole and bikeshedding. The latter suits the present powers, the former all the possibility of a future.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#346

Post by timr »

w0de0 wrote: post #345
colpabar wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they supposed to do? They said they don't trust the guardian for scientific news because they have read the actual scientific literature and noticed that the guardian engages in clickbait and hyperbole. They seem to understand the situation, they just don't like this particular outlet because in their experience it doesn't do a good job. Should they be typing in all caps about how we're all going to die inst…

A fair question. I feel much of the mourning of lost trust in media comes down to crocodile tears (“concern trolling” - though I don’t cast that label on any comment here). The well meant and often needed pedantry of the informed serves the disingenuous demagogue readily. And the informed themselves are often distracted from a moral urgency by ambiguity. Ambiguity is kin to science but alien to modern and popular mod…

> I feel much of the mourning of lost trust in media comes down to crocodile tears

In other words, anyone who questions a media narrative -- however obviously thoughtless or ridiculous -- is "concern trolling", and therefore worth dismissing.

> In our present crises, there seems to me a choice between hyperbole and bikeshedding.

We have to stop this black and white thinking. There's absolutely a wide area of reasonable disagreement possible here: we can agree that climate is a problem, but disagree on the costs / benefit tradeoffs of any proposed solution. Science and policy are two very different things, but one side of the political spectrum seems devoted to turning "science" into a political bludgeon for their preferred policies.

If you'd stop short of returning humanity to the stone age to stop climate change, then you, too, believe in reasonable tradeoffs. You can be a scientist and hold both things in your head at the same time.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#347

Post by ericmay »

greenhearth wrote: post #342
ericmay wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're trying to have your cake and eat it too here where you are tossing up government and government employees as ephemeral but not giving the same consideration to corporate entities. Is a janitor at Exxon Mobile responsible for climate change? How long do they have to work there before they're at fault? A day? A year? If they're not at fault and it's just the executives, why would we also not place the sa…

I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) Nor did I not blame any janitors, as they are not usually capitalists. They usually do not have any capital, nor do they make any decision on how to increase profits, etc. And besides, this is a false analogy - janitors that work at office buildings are different from government employees, such as teachers who disseminate state ideology and cops who enforce…

> I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :)

But as you know I’m not speaking about you specifically so your preferences are irrelevant at the individual level here. Most people want to fly and so they demand corporations serve their need.

> janitors

Eh they just disseminate corporate ideology so no difference there. Does the janitor that works for the government not disseminate ideology?

> as I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, it has already been established that capital has no moral obligation and no social contract with the society that it subjugates.

If you deprive capital of agency such that it has no moral or social obligations the idea that it subjugates anything doesn’t make sense either. It’s a force so you have to treat it like one. Do rocks, and air, and grass subjugate society too? If not, well. If so, then I’m not going to be outraged by that because it’s just physics.

This hospitality toward capitalism results in no progress toward climate change because even if you sat down one day and made the case that climate change is 100% attributable to corporate actions you’d still have to regulate them and keep a capitalist system and so the failure of regulation would continue to rest with the government.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#348

Post by kolinko »

anton96 wrote: post #292
kolinko wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing efficiency with some other metrics. Solar is 20%, but there is no point comparing it to efficiency of gas or nuclear - it's apples to oranges.

It totally makes sense because you always compare price of installation against a certain installed capacity in TW. I was not speaking of the efficiency of transforming 20% of the sun energy into electricity.

So what that 20% means in case of solar? Utilisation factor also doesn’t make sense - what matters is how many GWh you van get per dollar of installation, but you don’t measure this in %.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#349

Post by greenhearth »

ericmay wrote: post #347
greenhearth wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) Nor did I not blame any janitors, as they are not usually capitalists. They usually do not have any capital, nor do they make any decision on how to increase profits, etc. And besides, this is a false analogy - janitors that work at office buildings are different from government employees, such as teachers who disseminate state ideology and cops who enforce…

> I am perfectly fine with not flying anywhere, my friend. :) But as you know I’m not speaking about you specifically so your preferences are irrelevant at the individual level here. Most people want to fly and so they demand corporations serve their need. > janitors Eh they just disseminate corporate ideology so no difference there. Does the janitor that works for the government not disseminate ideology? > as I ment…

No, a janitor doesn't disseminate ideology. This is.. ridiculous. Anyway, obviously this has spiraled into a farce, so all the best!
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