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Until we include the cost on the environment within the cost of our goods things will not change. When we do we will encourage a wave of environmentally friendl

Until we include the cost on the environment within the cost of our goods things will not change. When we do we will encourage a wave of environmentally friendly innovation. It will take a lot of courage for any government to do this. I’ve started the seed of a small political party in the UK which will push for Envionmental Economics - https://weOptimise.it https://weOptimise.it / https://twitter.com/weoptimiseit https://twitter.com/weoptimiseit

kuzehanka 8y ago
I don't think any kind of consumer driven environmental activism is even close to enough to stem the tide. To really drive home the severity of the situation, understand that if we ceased all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the global mean temperature would continue to rise for another century before hitting equilibrium. We are past the point of no return. The only way civilisation continues existing as we know it, is if over the next decade we roll out a heap of nuclear power and dedicate a significant portion of it to carbon sequestration. Fusion would be great but even fission is sufficient. Anything less, including geoengineering projects like space based mirrors or albedo boosting aerosols, are at best a 50/50 gamble on the outcome. Feel-good activism like using less plastic straws or rolling out renewable power at meaningless scales is a distraction from the real and only course we have left. I am really worried that a large number of people still believe that renewables can unfuck this situation and so put their guard down after watching some feel-good news segment about Germany hitting an arbitrary target. It's not Europe or USA you need to worry about, it's China India and Afrtica. Renewables would have helped 20-30 years ago. Today we are so far gone that we need to greatly exceed our total energy demand and channel the excess into sequestration. I strongly suggest that everyone read the 2018 IPCC report. It should be mandatory reading material at all schools universities and workplaces. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
- house_atr 8y ago
  Nuclear power is a meme. To replace our current energy expenditure we would need 15,000 fission plants. Not only is that not possible, but unsustainable. Neutron embrittlelmen and a ton of other problems means thousands of plants would need to be constantly torn down and replaced every few years. Or one somewhere in the world every single day. Currently, it takes 6-12 years to build a nuclear station, and up to 20 years to decommission one, making this rate of replacement unrealistic. We only have about 80 years left of viable uranium. With 15000 new plants, do the math. We definitely do not have enough exotic metals for even building that many plants. We need a lot of stuff to protect the plant from radiation. The efficiency of nuclear power, fission and fusion isn't that great. After all, it's just heat energy transferred to mechanical to electric energy. Which means, it would take a tremendous amount of oil (yup fossil fuels are still needed) to lubricate the mechanical parts. No oil, no power regardless of what's doing the pushing. The trade off in power generated isn't that great for nuclear compared to traditional plants. There are a number of other issues. Nuclear Utopia was never tried for a reason. The current model of civilization is just simply unsustainable. Billions of people and everyone needs a car and a plane and a drone and a hundred appliances and gadgets and exorbitant food waste is just NOT SUSTAINABLE.
- vixen99 8y ago
  You are right. As Judith Curry has pointed out. 'even if all the states respected (the current commitments) —an unlikely prospect—the temperature reduction in 2100 would be an insignificant two-tenths of a degree. And this assumes that climate-model predictions are correct.'. No one would even be able to sense a difference. She also points out the fact that “almost half of the warming observed in the twentieth century came about in the first half of the century, before carbon-dioxide emissions became large.”. Natural factors thus had to be the cause. None of the climate models used by scientists now working for the United Nations can explain this older trend. Nor can these models explain why the climate suddenly cooled between 1950 and 1970, giving rise to widespread warnings about the onset of a new ice age.".
  - kuzehanka 8y ago
    Your post conveys confusion and suggests a bad actor. Let me try to clear up a few points in good faith: 1: The impact of the united states and Europe is now negligible. They have undergone their transition and have emitted most of the greenhouse gases they were going to. There was a time delay between those emissions and the associated global temperature rise. The incoming transition of China/India/Africa dwarfs that. 2: Atmospheric CO2 is not the only and not the most potent greenhouse gas we are emitting. It is just the most abundant. 3: We are in fact overdue for an ice age. We are experiencing a relatively extremely young climate period called the Holocene[1]. It is a warm gap in the middle of an ice age. This warm gap for the last few thousand years is what allowed civilisations to form. Given what we know about historical trends, we should have plunged back into the ice age right about now. It is entirely possible that anthropogenic climate change is the only reason we are not in an ice age today. 4: We are uncovering new positive feedback effects in the greenhouse loop on a monthly basis now. Whatever climate models exist, no matter how alarmist, are actually turning out to be conservative due to all the new feedback mechanisms we're discovering. 5: We face a double threat. Either a runaway greenhouse effect that turns earth into Venus 2.0, or a natural reversion to the ice age which brings an end to civilisation. The only way we continue to thrive as a species is if we get good at predicting and manipulating the climate of our host planet. One way or another, it will end us if left unchecked. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene
tim333 8y ago
A big part of the problem it needs more than "any government" but really an agreement between all governments to go along with something like a carbon tax or carbon pricing. I think it's possible though. You'd have to get the major blocks on board - at least the US and the EU and then probably use the trade system to arm twist the others - free trade with us if you implement the carbon stuff or high tariffs otherwise. There also quite a few questions as to how to do the accounting as illustrated in a recent HN discussion on Norway paying Indonesia not to cut down rainforests. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19215934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19215934 I think it should be possible though and is probably the way to go in the present situation.
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
This just doesn't fit with political reality. When has "you all need to sacrifice deeply for the greater good" ever gotten a politician elected outside of wartime? Even then, it's often not a winning strategy. And as destructive as climate change is, it's far too abstract and distant in the future for most voters to voluntarily sacrifice for it. Especially if someone else running for office is telling them they don't have to. The only real hope here is innovation.

kuzehanka 8y ago

I don't think any kind of consumer driven environmental activism is even close to enough to stem the tide. To really drive home the severity of the situation, understand that if we ceased all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the global mean temperature would continue to rise for another century before hitting equilibrium. We are past the point of no return. The only way civilisation continues existing as we know it, is if over the next decade we roll out a heap of nuclear power and dedicate a significant portion of it to carbon sequestration. Fusion would be great but even fission is sufficient. Anything less, including geoengineering projects like space based mirrors or albedo boosting aerosols, are at best a 50/50 gamble on the outcome. Feel-good activism like using less plastic straws or rolling out renewable power at meaningless scales is a distraction from the real and only course we have left. I am really worried that a large number of people still believe that renewables can unfuck this situation and so put their guard down after watching some feel-good news segment about Germany hitting an arbitrary target. It's not Europe or USA you need to worry about, it's China India and Afrtica. Renewables would have helped 20-30 years ago. Today we are so far gone that we need to greatly exceed our total energy demand and channel the excess into sequestration. I strongly suggest that everyone read the 2018 IPCC report. It should be mandatory reading material at all schools universities and workplaces. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

house_atr 8y ago
Nuclear power is a meme. To replace our current energy expenditure we would need 15,000 fission plants. Not only is that not possible, but unsustainable. Neutron embrittlelmen and a ton of other problems means thousands of plants would need to be constantly torn down and replaced every few years. Or one somewhere in the world every single day. Currently, it takes 6-12 years to build a nuclear station, and up to 20 years to decommission one, making this rate of replacement unrealistic. We only have about 80 years left of viable uranium. With 15000 new plants, do the math. We definitely do not have enough exotic metals for even building that many plants. We need a lot of stuff to protect the plant from radiation. The efficiency of nuclear power, fission and fusion isn't that great. After all, it's just heat energy transferred to mechanical to electric energy. Which means, it would take a tremendous amount of oil (yup fossil fuels are still needed) to lubricate the mechanical parts. No oil, no power regardless of what's doing the pushing. The trade off in power generated isn't that great for nuclear compared to traditional plants. There are a number of other issues. Nuclear Utopia was never tried for a reason. The current model of civilization is just simply unsustainable. Billions of people and everyone needs a car and a plane and a drone and a hundred appliances and gadgets and exorbitant food waste is just NOT SUSTAINABLE.
vixen99 8y ago
You are right. As Judith Curry has pointed out. 'even if all the states respected (the current commitments) —an unlikely prospect—the temperature reduction in 2100 would be an insignificant two-tenths of a degree. And this assumes that climate-model predictions are correct.'. No one would even be able to sense a difference. She also points out the fact that “almost half of the warming observed in the twentieth century came about in the first half of the century, before carbon-dioxide emissions became large.”. Natural factors thus had to be the cause. None of the climate models used by scientists now working for the United Nations can explain this older trend. Nor can these models explain why the climate suddenly cooled between 1950 and 1970, giving rise to widespread warnings about the onset of a new ice age.".
- kuzehanka 8y ago
  Your post conveys confusion and suggests a bad actor. Let me try to clear up a few points in good faith: 1: The impact of the united states and Europe is now negligible. They have undergone their transition and have emitted most of the greenhouse gases they were going to. There was a time delay between those emissions and the associated global temperature rise. The incoming transition of China/India/Africa dwarfs that. 2: Atmospheric CO2 is not the only and not the most potent greenhouse gas we are emitting. It is just the most abundant. 3: We are in fact overdue for an ice age. We are experiencing a relatively extremely young climate period called the Holocene[1]. It is a warm gap in the middle of an ice age. This warm gap for the last few thousand years is what allowed civilisations to form. Given what we know about historical trends, we should have plunged back into the ice age right about now. It is entirely possible that anthropogenic climate change is the only reason we are not in an ice age today. 4: We are uncovering new positive feedback effects in the greenhouse loop on a monthly basis now. Whatever climate models exist, no matter how alarmist, are actually turning out to be conservative due to all the new feedback mechanisms we're discovering. 5: We face a double threat. Either a runaway greenhouse effect that turns earth into Venus 2.0, or a natural reversion to the ice age which brings an end to civilisation. The only way we continue to thrive as a species is if we get good at predicting and manipulating the climate of our host planet. One way or another, it will end us if left unchecked. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene

tim333 8y ago

A big part of the problem it needs more than "any government" but really an agreement between all governments to go along with something like a carbon tax or carbon pricing. I think it's possible though. You'd have to get the major blocks on board - at least the US and the EU and then probably use the trade system to arm twist the others - free trade with us if you implement the carbon stuff or high tariffs otherwise. There also quite a few questions as to how to do the accounting as illustrated in a recent HN discussion on Norway paying Indonesia not to cut down rainforests. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19215934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19215934 I think it should be possible though and is probably the way to go in the present situation.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

This just doesn't fit with political reality. When has "you all need to sacrifice deeply for the greater good" ever gotten a politician elected outside of wartime? Even then, it's often not a winning strategy. And as destructive as climate change is, it's far too abstract and distant in the future for most voters to voluntarily sacrifice for it. Especially if someone else running for office is telling them they don't have to. The only real hope here is innovation.