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(disclaimer: I'm part of a climate&energy research group) While climate change seems like a daunting and unsolvable problem at an individual level, to be hones

(disclaimer: I'm part of a climate&energy research group) While climate change seems like a daunting and unsolvable problem at an individual level, to be honest it is fairly easy to solve with political solutions provided you could unblock the political machinery. I used to be fairly pessimistic about this, as a researcher, but now I think it's mostly a matter of getting political interest to align at the same time. In our society, the simplest and most effective way to get something done is to just make it profitable. You can try to do things by fiat, but if you make something profitable it tends to encourage massive innovation and is usually faster. For climate change, the easiest thing would be to just add a carbon tax that ramps up over time (or cap+trade, they have the same economic outcome, though cap+trade is a lot more complex to manage). You can even make it revenue neutral, though you do need tariffs on any goods not meeting the standard (which eventually encourages other countries to follow suit when the tax increases past a certain point). Anyway, this gives you price discovery, as it eventually becomes cheaper to pay someone to take the carbon instead of emitting it. From a climate perspective, I do not really care if natural gas+sequestration wins over PV+batteries, but with a ramping price we can be confident that at least one of those will win over dumping Co2 into the atmosphere. There was actually a bill this year (DOA, presumably due to republican distaste) that would have done exactly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_Dividend_Act_of_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_D... ... that basically would have solved the problem.

selimthegrim 7y ago
Canada tried that with a rebate to boot at the federal level. Look at what’s happening in Alberta and Ontario.
- chris_va 7y ago
  That's a great start, but from my understanding that legislation stops at $50/ton, which is a problem. You really need it to keep ramping up to get the price discovery. It's possible that at $51/ton the problem would solve itself (e.g. someone sells a way to pull Co2 out of a flue-gas stack, which then becomes profitable and marches down the learning curve), but wouldn't occur at $50. By itself, $50/ton would make a huge difference in the PV learning curve in the US, but since Canada has such a terrible generation profile it doesn't even help that much. You might get lucky, but most analysis I've seen puts the initial price point optimistically at $70-80/ton (flue-gas), and $130/ton for the walk-away and be happy knowing you saved the earth solution (DAC). Before that point, it mostly just shifts around accounting.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    Well no, I meant those provinces have opposing governments which might use the notwithstanding clause or some legal gambit to overturn it
    - chris_va 7y ago
      Yeah, that sort of thing can make a climate scientist sad :/
drcode 7y ago
I claim no expertise on this issue, but it seems pretty obvious to me (perhaps wrongly, I'll admit) that the only reason carbon taxes are popular as a solution is PRECISELY because they don't work- i.e. they allow oil companies to continue extracting oil and sell it to people who then burn it into CO2. The idea that carbon taxes are a meaningful economic incentive seems mostly like wishful thinking- It seems obvious to me that it just introduces an additional layer of perverse incentives for lobbyists to exploit. The only meaningful "free market" solution that I can see that could work is limiting supply (but nobody want to do that because it would be painful and most people care more about doing things that feel good instead of doing things that actually work)
- chris_va 7y ago
  I think you maybe (or not, couldn't tell) misunderstand the point of the tax. The point is to build a profitable market they can buy from to avoid paying the tax. With my climate hat on (not to be confused with the environmentalist hat), I have no problem with oil companies continuing to pump out oil as long as they put the Co2 back into the ground. If they prefer to pay a $100/ton tax to pump it out over paying someone else $80/ton offset/sequester the emissions, then they'll quickly go out of business to their competitors. But, they need an incentive to pay that $80/ton. And the companies that want to put the Co2 back underground need the $80/ton to make it profitable. Right now they have none, but if the alternative is a $100/ton tax, then you can be fairly confident that the net emissions will converge towards zero.
  - drcode 7y ago
    You have more authority on this subject than I do, given your background, but I remain convinced that any "solution" in which the oil companies take combustible carbon molecules from "below ground" to "above ground" is doomed, even if reasonable carbon sequestration tech is developed.
    - chris_va 7y ago
      You are right that getting every last mole of Co2 in a controlled manner is doomed, but fortunately that is not required. What you really want is for net emissions to go to zero or even negative. If you are just pulling Co2 out of flue gas, that's very difficult (without BECCS, which is a separate thing). However, Direct Air Capture is also economical at some price point (optimistically around $130/ton). At that point, you don't have to nab every last mole of Co2 that the oil companies pump up because you can always pull it back out of the air. You just need a profitable market to make it economical to spend that money.

selimthegrim 7y ago

Canada tried that with a rebate to boot at the federal level. Look at what’s happening in Alberta and Ontario.

chris_va 7y ago
That's a great start, but from my understanding that legislation stops at $50/ton, which is a problem. You really need it to keep ramping up to get the price discovery. It's possible that at $51/ton the problem would solve itself (e.g. someone sells a way to pull Co2 out of a flue-gas stack, which then becomes profitable and marches down the learning curve), but wouldn't occur at $50. By itself, $50/ton would make a huge difference in the PV learning curve in the US, but since Canada has such a terrible generation profile it doesn't even help that much. You might get lucky, but most analysis I've seen puts the initial price point optimistically at $70-80/ton (flue-gas), and $130/ton for the walk-away and be happy knowing you saved the earth solution (DAC). Before that point, it mostly just shifts around accounting.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Well no, I meant those provinces have opposing governments which might use the notwithstanding clause or some legal gambit to overturn it
  - chris_va 7y ago
    Yeah, that sort of thing can make a climate scientist sad :/

drcode 7y ago

I claim no expertise on this issue, but it seems pretty obvious to me (perhaps wrongly, I'll admit) that the only reason carbon taxes are popular as a solution is PRECISELY because they don't work- i.e. they allow oil companies to continue extracting oil and sell it to people who then burn it into CO2. The idea that carbon taxes are a meaningful economic incentive seems mostly like wishful thinking- It seems obvious to me that it just introduces an additional layer of perverse incentives for lobbyists to exploit. The only meaningful "free market" solution that I can see that could work is limiting supply (but nobody want to do that because it would be painful and most people care more about doing things that feel good instead of doing things that actually work)

chris_va 7y ago
I think you maybe (or not, couldn't tell) misunderstand the point of the tax. The point is to build a profitable market they can buy from to avoid paying the tax. With my climate hat on (not to be confused with the environmentalist hat), I have no problem with oil companies continuing to pump out oil as long as they put the Co2 back into the ground. If they prefer to pay a $100/ton tax to pump it out over paying someone else $80/ton offset/sequester the emissions, then they'll quickly go out of business to their competitors. But, they need an incentive to pay that $80/ton. And the companies that want to put the Co2 back underground need the $80/ton to make it profitable. Right now they have none, but if the alternative is a $100/ton tax, then you can be fairly confident that the net emissions will converge towards zero.
- drcode 7y ago
  You have more authority on this subject than I do, given your background, but I remain convinced that any "solution" in which the oil companies take combustible carbon molecules from "below ground" to "above ground" is doomed, even if reasonable carbon sequestration tech is developed.
  - chris_va 7y ago
    You are right that getting every last mole of Co2 in a controlled manner is doomed, but fortunately that is not required. What you really want is for net emissions to go to zero or even negative. If you are just pulling Co2 out of flue gas, that's very difficult (without BECCS, which is a separate thing). However, Direct Air Capture is also economical at some price point (optimistically around $130/ton). At that point, you don't have to nab every last mole of Co2 that the oil companies pump up because you can always pull it back out of the air. You just need a profitable market to make it economical to spend that money.