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Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

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Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#941

Post by lutorm »

notJim wrote: post #890
habosa wrote: post #621

Just. Tax. It. We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let's use the same systems to fix this (or at least slow things down). As an individual my largest carbon impact is air travel. I like to go places, it's one of the main things I work to afford. Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon em…

Carbon taxes are political suicide in the US. In fact, we know that oil companies push for them exactly because they know how unpopular they are. In Washington state, one of the more progressive states, they've failed over and over again to pass a carbon tax. Nothing they can do makes it work politically. In France, a carbon tax kicked off the yellow vests movement. Like it or not, the Green New Deal framing works be…

It seems a strategy that might work is pairing the carbon tax with a universal refundable tax credit such that it's revenue-neutral. That way people can pocket the difference if they want to use less carbon.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#942

Post by bpodgursky »

varelse wrote: post #919
bpodgursky wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was actually code red, we would waive literally all safety regulations and environmental policy reviews, and break ground on new plants tomorrow. And cost would be no object.

I suspect you mean if the west believed it was actually code red... Good luck with that...

Yes. I do actually think it is critical, but it's clear that most people are using "code red" as a semantic device, not out of belief that we should act with _true_ urgency.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#943

Post by notJim »

lutorm wrote: post #941
notJim wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon taxes are political suicide in the US. In fact, we know that oil companies push for them exactly because they know how unpopular they are. In Washington state, one of the more progressive states, they've failed over and over again to pass a carbon tax. Nothing they can do makes it work politically. In France, a carbon tax kicked off the yellow vests movement. Like it or not, the Green New Deal framing works be…

It seems a strategy that might work is pairing the carbon tax with a universal refundable tax credit such that it's revenue-neutral. That way people can pocket the difference if they want to use less carbon.

One of the failed referenda in Washington included this feature. It lost 60-40.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#944

Post by munk-a »

eloff wrote: post #903
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Markets will allocate capital according to risks" Like you know, the risk to end organised civilisation through climate change. Haha, funny

Unfortunately markets are not good at accounting for those kinds of external risks (but they could be with the right incentives, like a carbon tax.) It's a tragedy of the commons scenario. I don't understand why politicians don't just do the hard/right thing. Supposedly that's why we have them. If they always just do the popular thing we could cut them out of the picture and go to direct democracy. I'm not advocating…

The way in which markets properly account for climate change is to suffer so much damage from the effect that the market collectively agrees to internalize the costs to the climate into prices of exchange - this price adjustment might not happen before cataclysmic levels of deaths or a tipping point that makes climate recovery infeasible and coping as our only recourse.

Additional taxes, in the US at least, as currently seen as being contrary to the American experiment by a large enough segment of the population that consensus won't be gained when, while driving on the highway, we see the bridge out ahead sign - nor when we see the cliff in the distance - nor even when we feel the front walls fall off into air. We'll reach consensus when we look out the front windshield and see the earth racing up to give us a kiss... At least that's my pessimistic opinion.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#945

Post by lutorm »

frankbreetz wrote: post #723
rebuilder wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, just taxing CO2 emissions doesn't let you control who gets hit by the price increases. It could very well lead to increases in food and transportation costs that would be disproportionately burdensome to the poorest part of the population. Raising the cost of those items is politically very unpopular since it tends to cause unrest. So I think what we'll get instead is some complex system of first taxi…

If you use carbon tax to fund ubi, it will only hit above average emitters, who will be incentivised to emit less.

I don't think that's true. No matter how much you emit, you can still end up with more money if you emit less.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#946

Post by andrekandre »

guilhas wrote: post #638
NumberWangMan wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think others have mentioned CCL already, but if you live in the USA want a specific, concrete, easy action you can take RIGHT NOW to move us toward a carbon tax & dividend, check this out: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ Right now we have the best chance in a long time to actually get a carbon tax passed, but it depends on lots of us calling and writing our senators to make sure they know we want one! If y…

Carbon tax is a scam. It is exactly what economists not worried about the environment would invent

  > Carbon tax is a scam.
why?

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#947

Post by gfodor »

leinadho wrote: post #76
gfodor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems fairly obvious that climate change is going to be solved before the bigger existential risks we face, which are for the most part unknowable or largely ignored. There are a lot of people working on climate change now, it's well established in the public's mind, and there are many incentives in place to accelerate solutions.

I like your attitude, and would love to hear more about why you think this. It doesn't seem obvious to me that it's something we'll actually "solve" while maintaining our current population/civilization, but maybe I just read too many doom and gloom articles?

I'm looking at this as if I am a historian from the future. From first principles, humanity has the pre-requisites in my mind to solve the problem. This doesn't mean it will be easy or obvious in predicting exactly how it is done. It's just much more likely to me that we solve it over the next several decades than not. We may take a hit along the way. Fusion energy seems relatively imminent, the economics for solar are in a positive feedback loop, and X Prizes for carbon capture are well underway. If we just get practically limitless clean energy (possible given the existence proof of stars) and figure out a way to relocate the carbon in the air at scale ("just" moving a lot of atoms) we have a lot of slack to resolve things. Again: this is just first principles analysis, not a claim it will be easy or that we won't see major consequences along the way.

The things that keep me up at night are not climate change, but runaway feedback loops that yield existential civilizational risk on the order of weeks not decades. For example, a COVID-like R0 virus that is highly fatal but spreads asymptomatically for months before killing hosts. Engineering and deploying such a virus seems plausible for a psychopathic individual over the next several decades. Basically anything where a lone actor can unleash a chain reaction to take out civilization are things we should be very concerned about, since they are total random variables. Getting various hedges in place like physical boundaries between cohesive populations (eg, a Martian colony) seem important to clear before one of these tripwires are hit.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#948

Post by sammalloy »

kebman wrote: post #270
rich_sasha wrote: post #170

It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc). For that if for no other reason, I’d rather if consumer prices included an explicit CO2 tax. The here can be a rebate for poorer people, or personal allowance, whatever, but there would be a fixed yardstic…

The emphasis many countries take is to focus on car owners and drivers by taxing private commuters to death, with dubious environmental gains outside of increasing state income. Meanwhile one cargo ship or cruise liner arguably pollutes way more than millions(!) of cars. I'm not sure that's a great route to take politically, no pun intended. They seem to go for the lowest hanging cash grab before going after those wh…

> The emphasis many countries take is to focus on car owners and drivers by taxing private commuters to death, with dubious environmental gains outside of increasing state income.

There was a study that came out a while ago that showed the majority of pollution in Los Angeles came from commercial trucks, likely involved in shipping and delivery. I think I also read that those trucks and the type involved in construction have extremely loose pollution controls and requirements. Many of them might be exempt or grandfathered in to current regulations.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#949

Post by gfodor »

tsimionescu wrote: post #126
gfodor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems fairly obvious that climate change is going to be solved before the bigger existential risks we face, which are for the most part unknowable or largely ignored. There are a lot of people working on climate change now, it's well established in the public's mind, and there are many incentives in place to accelerate solutions.

The reason you are wrong is that stopping (or even slowing down) climate change goes directly against the way the world economic system is set up. Basically, to stop climate change in the next decade (which is already far too late to stop catastrophic effects, which are already beginning and will only get worse) we must significantly reduce the global economy. There is simply no way to keep growing growing the econom…

No, the economic system doesn't inherently rely upon fossil fuels. It relies upon cheap and abundant energy. If we snapped our fingers and had free clean energy on tap, that would sign the death warrant of climate change, although there may be lots of collateral damage if we don't also try to rewind the clock too.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#950

Post by Aerroon »

malwarebytess wrote: post #933
Aerroon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And do what? Cause even more human suffering by preventing others from reaching a better standard of living? What do we ramp down? Electronics? Clothes? Food? Transport?

Yes. We managed before mass production and we will manage again. It's either the inevitable collapse of civilization or a deliberate controlled ramp down, globally. There will not be some magic technology to fix this and we clearly are not going to be able to finesse this. It's time to start considering and planning for a global slowdown of production and a radical shift in the way we live. If we don't do it the bios…

>Yes. We managed before mass production and we will manage again.

Sure we did. We managed 10,000 years ago as well. But I would bet that going back to live like people did 200 years ago would cause more harm to humanity than unabated climate change in the next 100 years.

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