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Whenever I see someone say "We have to do X to prevent Y because of the great potential costs of Y", I rarely see a discussion of the costs of X in comparison.

Whenever I see someone say "We have to do X to prevent Y because of the great potential costs of Y", I rarely see a discussion of the costs of X in comparison. Fixing the climate is going to be expensive. It's going to decrease the cost of living for everyone in similar ways that letting Miami flood will. I'm not advocating for ignoring it but this isn't just a one way street. There is always this urge to DO SOMETHING. Pass a new law, bring in a new process, take a new pill, whatever. But those things also have costs, costs that are almost never analyzed and compared because they are "Free costs", e.g. we are protected in many ways from the costs because they are difficult to ascertain. If I don't take Lipitor and die of a heart attack, my doctor will say "see, there was a very visible cost." But if I take it for 30 years and find out that it causes memory loss and muscle problems and less efficient exercise adoption, none of that is measured (or possibly even possibly measured). Fixing the climate is in a similar position. We need to do something because Miami will flood and people will default and the government may have to bail them out. But if we drastically reduce our carbon footprint, people will lose jobs, prices will be higher, standard of living will go down, etc. And none of that is discussed. Because it's hard and it might involve saying "It's best not to do something in this case." Which is hard for us to accept for some reason.

ctoth 9y ago
It's interesting to observe the patterns of those who advocate lack of action on the climate. Twenty years ago, global warming was absurd and "weren't they just saying we were going to go through global cooling 10 years ago?" Ten years ago, it was, climate change? that's not happening and even if it were people have nothing to do with it. Now that evidence becomes less disputable, the fallback becomes, well even if humans were responsible it will cost too much/change our living conditions so much that it won't be worthwhile to do anything about. I'm not really sure where this leads, or why it's happening, but I do think it's worth noticing.
- sxates 9y ago
  Accepting responsibility for trashing the planet implies that you must make lifestyle changes as a result. If you take responsibility, you can't justify driving a large SUV, or buying a large house, or buying lots of stuff, or paying low taxes, or eating a hamburger guilt free, etc. etc. People hate change, and will fight to resist it, including fighting against the idea that change is necessary.
epistasis 9y ago
There's a huge number of estimates of X and Y out there. Except that some people, or rather some politicians, are denying that Y is even possible despite all evidence pointing that it does. They also assume, without evidence, that X will be so high that it's not worth doing. Therefore, that justifies their public denial of Y being possible. It should be possible to have a news article like this one without criticism that it doesn't deal with the large space of projections of future potential mitigations, their costs, and the costs of not doing anything. As usual, starting with Wikipedia is a good place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation#Costs_and_benefits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation#Cost... For example, the costs are estimated from -1% to 3.5%. For the US, the worst case cost is about the cost of our military budget.

ctoth 9y ago

It's interesting to observe the patterns of those who advocate lack of action on the climate. Twenty years ago, global warming was absurd and "weren't they just saying we were going to go through global cooling 10 years ago?" Ten years ago, it was, climate change? that's not happening and even if it were people have nothing to do with it. Now that evidence becomes less disputable, the fallback becomes, well even if humans were responsible it will cost too much/change our living conditions so much that it won't be worthwhile to do anything about. I'm not really sure where this leads, or why it's happening, but I do think it's worth noticing.

sxates 9y ago
Accepting responsibility for trashing the planet implies that you must make lifestyle changes as a result. If you take responsibility, you can't justify driving a large SUV, or buying a large house, or buying lots of stuff, or paying low taxes, or eating a hamburger guilt free, etc. etc. People hate change, and will fight to resist it, including fighting against the idea that change is necessary.

epistasis 9y ago

There's a huge number of estimates of X and Y out there. Except that some people, or rather some politicians, are denying that Y is even possible despite all evidence pointing that it does. They also assume, without evidence, that X will be so high that it's not worth doing. Therefore, that justifies their public denial of Y being possible. It should be possible to have a news article like this one without criticism that it doesn't deal with the large space of projections of future potential mitigations, their costs, and the costs of not doing anything. As usual, starting with Wikipedia is a good place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation#Costs_and_benefits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation#Cost... For example, the costs are estimated from -1% to 3.5%. For the US, the worst case cost is about the cost of our military budget.