4 ms·

We have climate deniers, and we have another group of people who don't want to spend money to solve the problem; probably the Republican party. Global warming s

by melling 10y ago

We have climate deniers, and we have another group of people who don't want to spend money to solve the problem; probably the Republican party. Global warming simply isn't a priority. More important problems than global warming. Skip to minute 6: https://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities https://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_prioriti...

KirinDave 10y ago
Right, but they also want to _spend_ money to accelerate the problem. With just a dozen years of subsidy, we're now at a point where unsubsidized the solar and wind industries do better than the still heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry for everything but the midsized high-output applications (e.g., trucks & shipping) and some specific industrial cases. The first would could do commensurate good by spending its enormous resources accelerating the reliance on renewable resources. So this argument against Kyoto (which is indeed a proposal that is more a gesture than a solution) is basically used to dismiss other things. For example, Trump's proposed to wipe out the EV tax credit (please don't, I want my tax credit!) in the US. It'd reclaim less than a billion dollars but substantially deter the uptake of EV cars. Similarly, the US is facing a grim truth that even it cannot maintain its entire massive infrastructure in the face of modern economic challenges. Renewable resource generation offers an alternative, distributed power grid. Between this and modern manufacturing techniques, we see a glimpse of a future where socialists, centralists and anarchists all see a world resembling more of what they want, with regional control and generation of power resources and control over economics, but a framework left in place for a top down government to govern things that are advantageous overall (central planning for scarce resources & conservation, rights and health care, etc). Resistance to the topic on the grounds that Kyoto is bad is over-applied to all attempts to grapple with climate change, even when they actually have huge positive effects only tangentially related.
- melling 10y ago
  "Trump's proposed to wipe out the EV tax credit (please don't, I want my tax credit!) in the US. It'd reclaim less than a billion dollars but substantially deter the uptake of EV cars" Hmmm. I guess you don't understand that many Republicans don't like the idea of government subsidies. If it comes down to subsidies, we aren't going to solve the problem, according to this economist: https://youtu.be/pQSGuC9GF70 https://youtu.be/pQSGuC9GF70
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - treehau5 10y ago
    Then get rid of the oil and gas subsides first. Then cut the small fries.
    - KirinDave 10y ago
      Yes. Also: legacy subsidies for non-edible farming. Ethanol is a waste of time at scale.
  - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
    They like subsidies alright. Just subsidies that fit their doctrine. > the IMF says America is the world’s second biggest culprit, spending $669 billion this year—but mostly by “post-tax” systems which fail to factor the costs of environmental damage into prices. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/economist-explains-19 http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/ec...
    - mikeash 10y ago
      I really wish people would understand that allowing companies to pollute without compensating the people they poison is just as much of a subsidy as dropping a fat deposit into their bank account every month. That recent rule change where coal mining companies are once again allowed to dump their waste into streams? That was Republicans passing a subsidy for coal mining. Every time Republicans block or roll back environmental regulations, that's subsidizing polluting industries.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    Republicans have no problem subsidizing industries that they like. What they dislike is competition. Weirdly, the Democrats morphed into a weirdly lightweight party on regulation of markets and the Republicans continue to grow towards something that incrementally becomes a planned economy. And let's just reiterate: less than a decade of subsidizing renewables kicked it over an economic hump and we've accelerated it to the point where it's actually radically changing first world economies. So anyone saying that subsidies "don't solve problems" is clearly using a different definition of "solve", "problem", and maybe even "doesn't."
- hyperbovine 10y ago
  Even if we switched entirely to renewables tomorrow we'd still be ultrafucked by the mechanisms we have unleashed from the past 200 years of industrialization. That is what is so upsetting about the way politicians behave: we can't even get them to sign on to to the most minimal steps necessary to halt the progress of global warming. Discussing the steps needed to actually fix the problem, or in some way figure out how to live with it, (which is all people are going to be doing 50 years from now), is completely beyond the pale.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    > we'd still be ultrafucked by the mechanisms we have unleashed from the past 200 years of industrialization. Yes, which is why I am so keen to find a path to a decentralized infrastructure while retaining the key benefits of a centralized state (rights guarantees, pooling resources and scare resource management).
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  > Similarly, the US is facing a grim truth that even it cannot maintain its entire massive infrastructure in the face of modern economic challenges... The US could easily maintain its infrastructure; we just need to stop wasting our money on useless war equipnent. There are something like 2,000 tanks sitting in Arizona collecting dust for an outdated style of warfare. https://www.google.com/amp/www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/18/congress-again-buys-abrams-tanks-the-army-doesnt-want.html%3Fvariant%3Dmobile.amp https://www.google.com/amp/www.military.com/daily-news/2014/... Then on top of that we have the dumb F35 program, which is so clearly a waste of money as drones have become so much more important. It's so frustrating that congress wastes all this money to line the pockets of the military industrial complex. This money would be better used by investing directly in the US infrastructure and supporting the economy.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    We could continue to coast on a new negative proposition, but it turns out that doing so without considering how people might actually use said infrastructure results in perverse incentives. As in cities, where poor districts often subsidize rich district services.
digsmahler 10y ago
I wonder if this list comes out any differently today, 12 years later.
- melling 10y ago
  I doubt it, at least from an economist's point of view. They are making the same arguments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6UMniZqC7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6UMniZqC7k This guy's main argument is that the money would be better spent on research to make green energy cheaper.

by melling 10y ago

KirinDave 10y ago

Right, but they also want to _spend_ money to accelerate the problem. With just a dozen years of subsidy, we're now at a point where unsubsidized the solar and wind industries do better than the still heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry for everything but the midsized high-output applications (e.g., trucks & shipping) and some specific industrial cases. The first would could do commensurate good by spending its enormous resources accelerating the reliance on renewable resources. So this argument against Kyoto (which is indeed a proposal that is more a gesture than a solution) is basically used to dismiss other things. For example, Trump's proposed to wipe out the EV tax credit (please don't, I want my tax credit!) in the US. It'd reclaim less than a billion dollars but substantially deter the uptake of EV cars. Similarly, the US is facing a grim truth that even it cannot maintain its entire massive infrastructure in the face of modern economic challenges. Renewable resource generation offers an alternative, distributed power grid. Between this and modern manufacturing techniques, we see a glimpse of a future where socialists, centralists and anarchists all see a world resembling more of what they want, with regional control and generation of power resources and control over economics, but a framework left in place for a top down government to govern things that are advantageous overall (central planning for scarce resources & conservation, rights and health care, etc). Resistance to the topic on the grounds that Kyoto is bad is over-applied to all attempts to grapple with climate change, even when they actually have huge positive effects only tangentially related.

melling 10y ago
"Trump's proposed to wipe out the EV tax credit (please don't, I want my tax credit!) in the US. It'd reclaim less than a billion dollars but substantially deter the uptake of EV cars" Hmmm. I guess you don't understand that many Republicans don't like the idea of government subsidies. If it comes down to subsidies, we aren't going to solve the problem, according to this economist: https://youtu.be/pQSGuC9GF70 https://youtu.be/pQSGuC9GF70
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- treehau5 10y ago
  Then get rid of the oil and gas subsides first. Then cut the small fries.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    Yes. Also: legacy subsidies for non-edible farming. Ethanol is a waste of time at scale.
- bjelkeman-again 10y ago
  They like subsidies alright. Just subsidies that fit their doctrine. > the IMF says America is the world’s second biggest culprit, spending $669 billion this year—but mostly by “post-tax” systems which fail to factor the costs of environmental damage into prices. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/economist-explains-19 http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/ec...
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I really wish people would understand that allowing companies to pollute without compensating the people they poison is just as much of a subsidy as dropping a fat deposit into their bank account every month. That recent rule change where coal mining companies are once again allowed to dump their waste into streams? That was Republicans passing a subsidy for coal mining. Every time Republicans block or roll back environmental regulations, that's subsidizing polluting industries.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  Republicans have no problem subsidizing industries that they like. What they dislike is competition. Weirdly, the Democrats morphed into a weirdly lightweight party on regulation of markets and the Republicans continue to grow towards something that incrementally becomes a planned economy. And let's just reiterate: less than a decade of subsidizing renewables kicked it over an economic hump and we've accelerated it to the point where it's actually radically changing first world economies. So anyone saying that subsidies "don't solve problems" is clearly using a different definition of "solve", "problem", and maybe even "doesn't."
hyperbovine 10y ago
Even if we switched entirely to renewables tomorrow we'd still be ultrafucked by the mechanisms we have unleashed from the past 200 years of industrialization. That is what is so upsetting about the way politicians behave: we can't even get them to sign on to to the most minimal steps necessary to halt the progress of global warming. Discussing the steps needed to actually fix the problem, or in some way figure out how to live with it, (which is all people are going to be doing 50 years from now), is completely beyond the pale.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  > we'd still be ultrafucked by the mechanisms we have unleashed from the past 200 years of industrialization. Yes, which is why I am so keen to find a path to a decentralized infrastructure while retaining the key benefits of a centralized state (rights guarantees, pooling resources and scare resource management).
bluejekyll 10y ago
> Similarly, the US is facing a grim truth that even it cannot maintain its entire massive infrastructure in the face of modern economic challenges... The US could easily maintain its infrastructure; we just need to stop wasting our money on useless war equipnent. There are something like 2,000 tanks sitting in Arizona collecting dust for an outdated style of warfare. https://www.google.com/amp/www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/18/congress-again-buys-abrams-tanks-the-army-doesnt-want.html%3Fvariant%3Dmobile.amp https://www.google.com/amp/www.military.com/daily-news/2014/... Then on top of that we have the dumb F35 program, which is so clearly a waste of money as drones have become so much more important. It's so frustrating that congress wastes all this money to line the pockets of the military industrial complex. This money would be better used by investing directly in the US infrastructure and supporting the economy.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  We could continue to coast on a new negative proposition, but it turns out that doing so without considering how people might actually use said infrastructure results in perverse incentives. As in cities, where poor districts often subsidize rich district services.

digsmahler 10y ago

I wonder if this list comes out any differently today, 12 years later.

melling 10y ago
I doubt it, at least from an economist's point of view. They are making the same arguments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6UMniZqC7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6UMniZqC7k This guy's main argument is that the money would be better spent on research to make green energy cheaper.