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A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

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Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#111

Post by AnthonyMouse »

WorldMaker wrote: post #107
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue here is that there is a natural market replacement rate. You sell a million cars a year even though there are 25 million of your cars on the road. That means it will take 25 years to replace all of the cars even if you switch 100% to the new type. If you want to replace them all in 15 years then you would have to sell below cost in order to induce more than the typical amount of demand for new cars. So…

I think that's part of what I was getting it: that precisely because it would be a useful challenge for our somewhat complacent heavy industries, it may be something useful to force their hands, because they probably aren't likely to do it until it is too late unless forced. Because it would be a challenge isn't a reason not to force it. It's a "Moon shot" problem, we can go to the moon this decade, but we need to be…

The problem right now is that carbon isn't priced and there consequently isn't much incentive for individual companies to do it at all, much less right away. Change that and there is suddenly much more demand for new vehicles that don't burn carbon, at which point industry knows perfectly well how to manufacture to meet market demand.

Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#112

Post by tzs »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #77
tzs wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your second chart shows China appears to be leveling off, at a total level that is a little less that twice the total US emissions. Since they have more than 4x the US population, that means they have quite a bit lower per capita emission, which is a more useful metric than total emissions when assessing how well a country is addressing the issue, since the atmosphere doesn't care about arbitrary political boundaries…

China also produces much less per capita for that emission. A better metric is productive output per unit of emissions. The metric that matters isn't the per capita emissions but the amount of value generated relative to emissions.

Productive output by what measure? Probably the most immediately obvious choice would be GDP, but upon closer examination I don't think that works.

By that measure, using a given amount of emissions running a factory that builds expensive, fossil fuel burning luxury boats for rich playboys is better than using that same emissions to provide winter heat for public schools.

Another problem with using a measure of productive output is that it screws developing counties. As I said earlier, the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary political boundaries.

There is some global maximum emissions per year that we can allow if we want to keep climate change from getting out of hand. If we make each country's share of that global pool proportional to their productive output, we are in effect saying that the rich countries get to continue to take advantage of cheap high emission things (like coal), and the poor counties have to forego that for clean but more expensive things, because there is a pretty good correlation between the wealth of a country and its productivity.

Since the rich countries are, to a large extent, rich because they exploited those cheap but dirty resources before we knew how harmful that was, it seems to make more moral sense for the rich countries to have to clean up first and/or subsidize the costs to poor countries of going clean.

Probably what would be better would be to figure out the total worldwide emissions allowed per year, allocate that among countries on an equal per capita basis, and allow countries to trade their shares.

Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#114

Post by WorldMaker »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #111
WorldMaker wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's part of what I was getting it: that precisely because it would be a useful challenge for our somewhat complacent heavy industries, it may be something useful to force their hands, because they probably aren't likely to do it until it is too late unless forced. Because it would be a challenge isn't a reason not to force it. It's a "Moon shot" problem, we can go to the moon this decade, but we need to be…

The problem right now is that carbon isn't priced and there consequently isn't much incentive for individual companies to do it at all , much less right away. Change that and there is suddenly much more demand for new vehicles that don't burn carbon, at which point industry knows perfectly well how to manufacture to meet market demand.

I agree. We should have been taxing carbon as far back as at least the 70s around when the idea was first proposed. Establish cap and trade then too if we are asking for ponies that were PRed to death by business men to avoid externalities.

Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#115

Post by Retra »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108
Retra wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also can't just move out of cold climates and buy high-efficiency windows whenever they like. And many of them live in rural places where they do drive inefficient vehicles and have almost no public transportation.

> They also can't just move out of cold climates and buy high-efficiency windows whenever they like. And many of them live in rural places where they do drive inefficient vehicles and have almost no public transportation. Except that they get a big tax credit with which they can buy high-efficiency windows and a more efficient vehicle. Which then saves them even more in the long run because it remains more efficient…

>Except that they get a big tax credit with which they can buy high-efficiency windows and a more efficient vehicle.

They will? It sounded like people with less efficient vehicles/heating would get smaller tax credits, not larger. So why would they get a big tax credit? It seems to me that the people getting a big tax credit would be those who have no children, live in warm climates, and have modern high-efficiency homes and vehicles. Not sure why anyone would think that includes poor people...

>Moreover, the argument you're making is that regions that use more carbon will be impacted more by measures to reduce carbon emissions.

The argument that I am making is that knowing a person is 'poor' is not sufficient to predict their emissions or amenities, and extrapolating the lifestyle of one poor straw person onto all of them is stupid.

>If anything it's the opposite -- there are more affluent people in cold places like the Northeast and suburbs with poor mass transit, and more poor people in the South and Southwest where it's warmer and commutes are shorter for the poor because real estate costs less so people can live closer to their jobs.

Lol. Maybe facts are actually important here.

Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#116

Post by mikeash »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #113
mikeash wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s right now.

Post automation numerical comparisons are not that useful then?

Why not? The point is that there are very few coal miners left and the amount of attention they get is all out of proportion.

Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#117

Post by sxates »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #98
sxates wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Separate thought related to this-- I've personally made the following investments to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide I'm directly emitting -- and these are the sorts of things we'll need millions of people to do in the coming years: * 6kw of solar panels (no A/C): $22,000 * Powerwall batteries to power house when not sunny: $18,000 * Whole house insulation as part of remodel: $15,000 * Conversion of all kitchen a…

I wonder how much carbon was emitted from all your investments.

More than 0, hopefully less than will be offset.

But I think part of why you were accused of short term thinking here is that if we don't spend the carbon to build things like solar panels now, we'll never move off a carbon economy. We have to accept that manufacturing of anything isn't entirely green right now, but the solar panels we make now will enable the next solar panels to be built with less carbon, which will enable the next batch to be built with less carbon, etc.

Carbon will power the innovations that get us off carbon - no way around that. But we still have to do it so we can get to that end state where entire supply chains are electrified with renewable energy.

Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#118

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Retra wrote: post #115
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also can't just move out of cold climates and buy high-efficiency windows whenever they like. And many of them live in rural places where they do drive inefficient vehicles and have almost no public transportation. Except that they get a big tax credit with which they can buy high-efficiency windows and a more efficient vehicle. Which then saves them even more in the long run because it remains more efficient…

>Except that they get a big tax credit with which they can buy high-efficiency windows and a more efficient vehicle. They will? It sounded like people with less efficient vehicles/heating would get smaller tax credits, not larger. So why would they get a big tax credit? It seems to me that the people getting a big tax credit would be those who have no children, live in warm climates, and have modern high-efficiency h…

> They will? It sounded like people with less efficient vehicles/heating would get smaller tax credits, not larger.

Everyone gets the same tax credit. It's the people who burn more carbon that pay more taxes. But if you use your tax credit to reduce your carbon footprint to below average, or if it already was, then you're receiving more than you're paying. And buying those things save you money in general (nobody gains from losing heat to poor insulation), so you come out ahead twice, at the expense of Richie Rich now paying twice as much to fly around in a private jet without changing his behavior.

> have no children

You're assuming the children (or their parents) don't get the tax credit. There is no reason that would have to be the case. It should be a fixed amount per-person and children are people.

> The argument that I am making is that knowing a person is 'poor' is not sufficient to predict their emissions or amenities, and extrapolating the lifestyle of one poor straw person onto all of them is stupid.

Then the argument you're making has nothing to do with whether a carbon tax is regressive or not. Finding one poor person with a high carbon footprint doesn't tell you anything about the average. And poor people in general do not consume more resources in absolute terms than more affluent people -- that's nearly the definition of being poor.

> Lol. Maybe facts are actually important here.

Indeed. So who burns more carbon per capita in actual fact, people with more money or people with less money? It would be quite surprising to discover it was the latter. But it isn't:

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/1671884...

Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#119

Post by steve_adams_86 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #89
greglindahl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s already happened for almost everyone employed mining coal, because of automation. No climate change needed.

The UK had a million people working in the coal industry at the start of the last century, it’s effectively zero now. However it was painful for many of the communities that depended on it, you could argue some have never recovered.

It's much the same here in BC, Canada. Mines, forestry, fishing - different resource extraction jobs have fluctuated enormously over the last century and we effectively have ghost towns all over. Some places look absolutely dead and you wonder why anyone lives there. At one point, most of them were booming. The gold rush was probably the original boom, and from there many others stemmed. Forestry is probably the most tragic, long-tailed bust in this province though.

Re: A plan to phase out fossil fuel production in the US

#120

Post by dang »

imtringued wrote: post #94
godelski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but I'm a scientist and I do interact with climate scientists. I specifically addressed your storage capacity comment. Be realistic, we just aren't there YET. We're close, but not there as of the writing of this comment. Energy is extremely complex. There is no easy solution like you're suggesting. Solar thermal won't work everywhere in the US. Wind doesn't work everywhere either. I'm tired of people that count…

You're so dumb here is a multitude of technologies that will work in concert that'll solve all those problems: lithium batteries, polymer and vanadium based flow batteries, thermal storage, compressed air storage (both offshore and onshore), power2gas(hydrogen and methane), not burning natural natural gas until needed(oh a classic!), hydro dams, conventional pumped hydro and hydraulic hydro, gravity battery cranes. Y…

Commenting like this will get you banned here. No more of this please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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