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U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#121

Post by Veluga »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #104
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US entrepreneurism kickstarted the electric vehicle transition (thx Elon1). Batteries prices are falling. PV is already incredibly cheap and getting cheaper. Coal is becoming increasingly uncompetitive. Nuclear is making a comeback, also thanks to US entrepreneurs. Science, Capitalism and entrepreneurship will be the unstoppable force that will solve our energy crisis, if western governments let them. Africa, India a…

Capitalism and enterpreneurship is how we got here in the first place. Elon and renewables are only becoming a thing because of economic incentives from governments - positive incentives in the form of subsidies on e.g. new EVs, solar panels, etc, and negative incentives in the form of carbon taxes. Take those away and the "green" companies would have NO incentive to push their work. They'd be working with people wan…

I'd actually argue that the lack of a carbon tax - not its existence - is an incentive, since you're not charging for the negative externality of trashing the atmosphere.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#122

Post by giantg2 »

bluGill wrote: post #99
giantg2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China may be on the accord, but they still have abysmal pollution right now. So currently, it would be a trade war with China too. This brings up something that I don't understand. How can there be candidates that say they support the environment, support worker rights, and support free trade with places such as China? Laborers are treated like crap and pollution is rampant in China. Promoting free trade seems to opp…

Free trade raises the standard for everyone. Today China has those issues, but free trade is raising their living standard. As standards of living raise people find pollution is negatively affecting them and so they solve the problem locally. Of course the downside free trade allows production to move to places where there are no controls because non-local pollution both less affects any individual, and because inter…

You are right that it basically just moves the pollution to the next developing country.

You are incorrect about your coal comment. You can see China spewing yellow smoke (it's an even dirtier type of coal than the two we have here). The cleaner tech only gets adopted if it's financially cheaper or has some other incentive like the government enforcing standard (which relies on the education/opinion of the people).

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#123

Post by whizzter »

api wrote: post #100
originalvichy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a deflection and a critical reason why progress isn’t happening fast enough. Your house is already messy, and the need to clean it up is now. Not when China and a couple billion other people mess their house up. My country’s ambitious plans are shot down by members of parliament going for the kneejern ”but India and China...” response, and the net result would be no action if they were in power. L…

Cleaning up the US would probably mean outsourcing more carbon emissions to the rest of the world. Outsourcing is the primary way the developed world has "cleaned up" so far. The only way we will substantially reduce CO2 emissions is to develop a source of energy that is carbon-free (or incredibly low carbon) and cheaper and easier to deploy than coal and gas . Reductions without that are politically impossible. Ther…

Nuclear, Solar, Wind and Wave energy are all there if we just were willing to do it (too bad about the Green lobby getting stuck up about Nuclear and the Coal/Oil lobby(+nimbyists) sabotaging everything else).

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#124

Post by neya »

roenxi wrote: post #13
originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

Here are some interesting graphs from arguably the most transformative economic miracle in human history [0]. The risk isn't the US doing nothing, it is India, Africa, etc, etc deciding that they seriously want a comfortable standard of living. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=~CHN

> The risk isn't the US doing nothing, it is India, Africa, etc, etc deciding that they seriously want a comfortable standard of living.

I can't believe that a country wanting to have a "comfortable standard of living" is seen as a "risk". Almost suggesting as if those countries don't deserve them and a comfortable standard of living should be reserved only for a select few countries.

I just can't fucking believe what I just read.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#125

Post by slowmotiony »

coffeefirst wrote: post #68
eznzt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main fear I have during this election is that Biden wins, he picks up where Obama left waging wars, and once again they flood Europe with "refugees".

You realize Obama didn’t start any wars and spent 8 years trying to close Pandora’s box?

That's the opposite of what happened, see Libya. We still get boats full of illegals pretty much on a daily basis in EU, partly thanks to President Obama.

In fact, even Obama seems to agree: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36013703

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#126

Post by SiempreViernes »

sampo wrote: post #115
originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%. Apply linear extrapolation, and USA would go below Germany in 20 years. Extrapolating with exponential decay, in 40 years. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/co…

Right that makes sense, also https://xkcd.com/605/

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#127

Post by posix_me_less »

onion2k wrote: post #75
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #62

On a related note, if all of the frozen ice goes melty melty, Paris will be underwater. It’s at 35m, and sea levels could rise by 70m if Earth goes full thaw.

This is quite a good tool to explore what would happen at different sea level rises - http://flood.firetree.net/ - it maxes out at 60m, but even there it's a very different world.

Don't show that to climate action skeptic. They will think, the world looks almost the same even for 60m. Each country is affected differently, most by a small percentage of land, some not at all. People will adapt.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#128

Post by est31 »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #62

On a related note, if all of the frozen ice goes melty melty, Paris will be underwater. It’s at 35m, and sea levels could rise by 70m if Earth goes full thaw.

It can absolutely happen, yes, but note that this is nothing that anyone alive today will witness (barring progress in life extension technology).

Sea level rise is projected to be around 2.4 meters by 2100 in the worst scenarios. Maybe it'll be a bit higher than that but not by much. And by the time the oceans do rise by that level, maybe we'll have reclaimed most of the continental shelves anyways by building dams, so we'll have a firm grip on the technology needed to build dams at scale.

There are far graver consequences of climate change that affect humans immediately, this decade, this year, this century.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#129

Post by bluGill »

Ygg2 wrote: post #48
sethammons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gives you that belief?

They have linked economies. What China makes for US they also use a version of that internally. So if US goes all electric car, China would follow suit, etc.

China is able to look at the rest of the world and see trends and where they want to be. Most oil people who really look see that electric cars will have a place in the future world (as oil people they want to minimize it, but they are forced to admit there is a place for it). China doesn't have the built up oil infrastructure that the rest of the world has, and is seeing the affects of pollution in their cities. Thus it makes sense for China to adopt electric cars faster than the rest of the world: if you don't have infrastructure in place it is easier to justify building electric over oil, as opposed to US/Europe which needs to justify replacing otherwise working find oil infrastructure. If you can't be confident that you can fill your gas car on a long trip anyway you are going to prefer a gas car for those rare long trips, and so lack of charging infrastructure doesn't mean as much. This of course means more demand for electric car charging stations over gas stations and the effect can snowball into gas not being viable to use for long trips in China.

The above is speculation of course. It seems reasonable, but only time will tell.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#130

Post by dannyw »

mola wrote: post #78
koheripbal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue with the Paris Accords is that China did not commit to begin any restrictions until 2030. ...and since they are both the world's largest CO2 emitter and world's fastest growing CO2 emitter, the Accords became a corporate strategy to just move more manufacturing to China (and other non-limited countries). Frankly, I think the Paris Accords does more harm than good by giving anyone the notion that we…

You cannot hinder developing countries from the comfort of living in a develop country. The fact that China agreed to a year is amazing. If the US would have kept part of that deal then maybe we would've seen improvements. But now that the US basically proven to be untrustworthy, even towards allies, these kind of deals are just undoable anymore. This will end in tears

The reality is that production just moved to China. It isn’t better for the planet.

It’s a deal that’s been hijacked by business interests; just like the Cali proposition written by Uber that’s “for drivers”.

You will never get a hundred countries to voluntarily agree to prioritising climate change over prioritising business interests.

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