Live data from Hacker News

Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

norway.no

41–50 of 234 posts

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And buy products from where instead? Is everything made in China uniformally disastrous for the environment? I was under the impression the easiest way for people, who live in developed nations, to reduce emissions is to eat less meat?

China is fastracking to being a developed nation faster than anyone before, and missing out many of the developed world's mistakes. They'll have poisonous air for a shorter time than the US or Europe did. They'll have the least obsolete infrastructure of anyone. Making stuff in China isn't necessarily disastrous. Making huge amounts of overly cheap shite that doesn't last, or do the job properly is especially disastr…

Even if they assembled them elsewhere, most of the parts and raw materials would have to come from China these days.

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#42
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And buy products from where instead? Buy less products overall. > I was under the impression the easiest way for people, who live in developed nations, to reduce emissions is to eat less meat? The most effective thing is probably less carbon intensive transport (that means first and foremost flying). But less meat (or better no meat) is still among the more impactful things.

Airliners get better fuel efficiency per mile per passenger than most single-occupant cars. The majority of people do not fly multiple times per week. Having said that, I do agree with the main thrust of your comment: consume less.

> *Airliners get better fuel efficiency per mile per passenger than most single-

http://www.greenrationbook.org.uk/resources/footprints-air-t... seems to disagee. In fact, driving a typical car for one year produces less CO2 than one long-distance flight per passenger.

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#43
post #2

> In 2010, Norway pledged to support Indonesia with up to 1 billion USD depending on results. It's easy to sit in a developed western country, buying products from other countries, and then complain about their emissions. I'm glad that we're trying to be responsible. It may not be enough or not the right way to do it (some thoughts on this?), but it's something.

This is exactly what most Westerners do not get about China. If you want to reduce emissions stop buying their products.

People do get that, but waiting for people to spontaneously start doing the right thing is just not a very good strategy.

That's why we need a carbon tax. To force people to.

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#44
post #28
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst culprit for many people I know is flying. You can eat a lot of meat for the emissions of just one long-haul flight. (Which is sad because flying is great.)

Reference: http://www.kimnicholas.com/uploads/2/5/7/6/25766487/fig1full...

I find this difficult to believe! One transatlantic round trip flight is about 60% as bad as living car free? Assuming you do not travel at all - right? But you will travel. You will cycle to work, and you will burn more calories, and you will therefore eat more food, ending up contributing just as much too increasing emissions!

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let me fix that for you: if you want to reduce emissions stop consuming

Institute a carbon tax that fully captures the externalities of releasing CO2 in the air and people will be forced to.

Institute a carbon tax and it'll vanish into someone's pocket while the manufactured goods still have the same emissions.

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#46
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Western developed nation inhabitant, you and indeed most HN readers benefit enormously for your rich lifestyle on past carbon emissions by your predecessors, which those in that country have not benefitted from. This is a good way to incentivise those countries who - quite reasonably - feel it's unfair that they don't get to use up any of that carbon to develop their nation towards a rich modern lifestyles. So,…

Norway did not contribute all that much to carbon emissions directly. The electric grid historically been and still is hydro, and the country was never really industrialized in the first place.

Norway's wealth comes from exporting oil and gas. That's not very indirect.

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is fastracking to being a developed nation faster than anyone before, and missing out many of the developed world's mistakes. They'll have poisonous air for a shorter time than the US or Europe did. They'll have the least obsolete infrastructure of anyone. Making stuff in China isn't necessarily disastrous. Making huge amounts of overly cheap shite that doesn't last, or do the job properly is especially disastr…

Even if they assembled them elsewhere, most of the parts and raw materials would have to come from China these days.

In the early days of Chinese manufacturing they would have been importing most.

Suppliers tend to cluster where manufacturers are, and import specialist parts. Of course as you just posted in the other comment, CO2 taxes reflecting the full environmental costs would tend to encourage more clustering, more local production, and generally buying less wastefully.

As popular as plague no doubt, but stuff needs to get expensive again. Perhaps better to say "expensive enough".

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let me fix that for you: if you want to reduce emissions stop consuming

Institute a carbon tax that fully captures the externalities of releasing CO2 in the air and people will be forced to.

I also like the idea of paying out the proceeds of the tax as a dividend per capita. This would help prevent the tax from being regressive. Maybe also cap emissions instead of just taxing so that we can control the total amount of emissions.

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#49
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less beef, specifically. On a practical level cutting out meat entirely can actually increase emissions because you can raise farm animals off of human inedible parts of plants like stems and other marginal food (i.e. parts we don't get any nutrition from). Beef however is one of the worst conversion methods in this regard, but animals like chickens and goats are quite efficient.

Insects are most efficient btw, but there are cultural reservations about them in the west.

They could grow insects to process into unrecognisable "filler", right?

Re: Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway

#50
post #23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insects are most efficient btw, but there are cultural reservations about them in the west.

If Silicon Valley can propel nutrient sludge like Soylent into notoriety, then I'm sure it can do the same for cricket nuggets. :P

Doesn't require Silicon Valley.

Pink slime can now be sold as beef mince in the US. How hard do you think it would be to get powdered cricket labelled as 'protein enhancer' or some such?

Plus people will happily eat things with cochineal [1] in it, so I can't see highly processed insect additives being a problem. Won't be called Cricket nuggets though.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal

Post reply on HN