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These are all good ideas, but the ferocity of change worries me. And I'm the sort of person who thinks climate change is the single biggest policy issue facing

• yokaze 7y ago
  Funny, that you say that. I actually think, policy based deprecation is the biggest possible boost the economy could get. Think CDs Vs Vinyl, VHS to DVD. Or more on point: Catalytic converters. Having to buy new stuff drives the economy, being content with "what works" throttles it (e.g. mobile devices, laptops). Sure, there might be a backlash, but it's not like there isn't any opposition now. Being to cautious (i.e. slow) bears the risk that people resist change because you are slowly (ergo constantly) changing things, and they don't see the benefit of the policy change. (Assuming that it is indeed the case) Edit: missing verb
  • NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    To add to this, which I think is entirely correct, it took the effects of spending on arming for WW2 that finally brought the world out of the Great Depression. Unemployment went down and the economy surged. The US New Deal helped but it wasn't nearly enough. Edit: Is this controversial somehow? I thought it pretty standard and well known history.
    • graycat 7y ago
      There's an old remark: "Recession and depression are the easiest things in the world to cure -- just print money.". The cause of our recessions and depressions was suddenly too little money. That is, a lot of money was destroyed. How? When the banks, etc. got in trouble, the multiplier effect enormously reduced the money supply. Soooooo, have some new regulations on reserve ratios, etc. for banks and then print the missing money. The new regulations will keep the banks, etc. from using the newly printed money and the multiplier effect to create too much money and inflation. Many millions of people died before these ideas were accepted. How to print money? One way is for the Federal Reserve to buy bonds from the US Treasury. Then the Treasury has the money and the Federal Government can spend it, e.g., on roads, bridges, dams, etc. Another way is for the Federal Reserve to loan money to the member banks, and the banks loan the money to people who want to buy houses, cars, commercial buildings, etc. How did WWII get us out of the Depression? Once people started shooting at us, we were willing to print money for the war. But we printed about the right amount since after the war we didn't have massive inflation.
      • blackflame7000 7y ago
        The US Government started printing money as you say for government projects as early as 1930, 12 years before the war. Hoover dam for example. So are you saying it takes 12+ years for your theory to work? Also, how many millions more have died due to over-printing of money? MMT is a disaster waiting to happen because at the end of the day Credit=Trust and you can only borrow so much before you lose that trust. Trust is everything and debt is an incursion.
        • graycat 7y ago
          They printed money starting in 1930? Yup, the dam. But they didn't print enough. And Bernanke didn't print enough fast enough -- we were in the Great Depression for about 12 years and nearly that long in the Great Recession. Bummer. You are correct about the threat of inflation. But we know how to stop inflation: Reduce the money supply, e.g., by raising interest rates. Then the member banks will return their loans from the Fed. So MMT stands for <i>modern monetary theory</i>? Uh, I tend to avoid any theories from economists and stay with simple observations.
  • sxates 7y ago
    I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure it's analogous. Lets say the cost of gasoline triples in the next 5 years because we're killing all subsidies, ending federal leases, etc., enough to justify everyone to make investments in electric cars. We literally can't make them fast enough. Making a million CDs was easy, but our heavy industries take a lot longer to tool up. Tesla is struggling to scale their supply chain, and they're consuming almost half the world's battery supplies right now to make a few hundred thousand cars per year. And that's just cars - not including semi-trucks, farm equipment, buses, trains, shipping, etc. Best case we need a decade to start manufacturing those things at scale and two decades to manufacture them at a pace that can start replacing all the existing vehicles. That's a long time for anyone stuck paying for gas. And it's a similar situation for the Electricity sector, Cement and construction, and dozens of other industries that emit carbon. It's a really complicated transition - far more than switching media formats.
    • WorldMaker 7y ago
      Making a million CDs involved building entire new factories to meet demand. Making a lot more electric vehicles could reuse a lot more existing factories (and/or recently shuttered factories) if demand shifted enough away from internal combustion to retool a lot of existing lines in place. The difference between an EV and an ICE car on the factory floor are fewer than between a cassette tape and CD. Whether or not, say, Detroit is still capable of making a rapid shift to such a demand change is certainly a new question, and indeed supply chains would have to follow. On the other hand, again, the supply chains are a lot closer between EVs and ICE Vehicles, and if anything EV supply chains are simpler on paper with one big exception (batteries). But that big exception is one that is already busy scaling drastically and generally seems to know how to scale to demand (because it touches so many other industries such as computing). It's a chicken-and-egg nightmare, certainly, that heavy industries aren't going to scale it unless they have no other choice, and the reasons to give them no other choice may have some transitional hiccups. That said, the capability to make that rapid shift is theoretically in a really strong place, we have the technology and wherewithal if we made it a priority.
      • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  • sxates 7y ago
    Separate thought related to this-- I've personally made the following investments to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide I'm directly emitting -- and these are the sorts of things we'll need millions of people to do in the coming years: * 6kw of solar panels (no A/C): $22,000 * Powerwall batteries to power house when not sunny: $18,000 * Whole house insulation as part of remodel: $15,000 * Conversion of all kitchen appliances from gas to electric: $5000 * Replace gas water heater with electric heat pump: $3-4000 * Electric car: $30k+ (mine was $50+) The remaining gas-powered appliance in the house in our furnace, which I'll get to replacing in the next few years (est $15k) - at which point we'll probably also have a second electric car, and need to increase our solar production as well to keep up. How many people can afford the above list for their homes? In 10 years if the above items cost half what they do now, how many can afford it then? How many landlords are going to make these investments for rental properties? The transition we face is potentially economically stimulating (there's a lot of stuff to replace!), but also has really high up-front costs (and sunk costs) that will have to be managed. This goes both for national infrastructure all the way down to people's homes.
    • wmf 7y ago
      Pretty much nobody can afford to do that. At best you could stop selling new gas appliances and gas cars at some point and then wait 20 years for the old ones to naturally fall out of use. But a corollary is that you have to slowly ramp up carbon prices over 20 years.
    • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      I wonder how much carbon was emitted from all your investments.
      • truckerbill 7y ago
        Short term thinking
        • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
          As someone who doesn’t own a car or fly anywhere because of climate change I don’t think you can accuse me of short term thinking.
• Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > People can't switch from fossil-dependent careers to renewable-dependent careers in a week, or even a year. Or ever, perhaps. I can no longer remember where, but I recently read an article about a backlash by California Democrats against Green New Deal-type ideas. What stood out was someone saying that the idea of retraining workers for other types of jobs was offensive. If people in the oil and gas industry liked their job, then they ought to be allowed to keep it until they retired.
  • steve_adams_86 7y ago
    That's a tough thing. Imagine someone was telling you that you had to change your career because people decided it's no good. What will you do? Put your life on hold and go retrain for something you never intended to train for? Possibly (probably) earn less? Potentially need to move for work? It's complicated. I think it needs to happen. The US and Canada both spend major subsidies on oil and gas, and that money would do wonders in supporting and retraining these works. However, we'd need a very good plan and very good acceptance of it amongst the work force and tax payers. This would all be incredibly expensive. People would resent the retraining because it would cost tax payers to benefit a small subset of people, while less oil production equals higher prices for... Everything. People would be very upset, both workers and citizens. It's going to be so hard to get people on the same page. I hope the disasters that push us to act aren't too awful.
    • greglindahl 7y ago
      It’s already happened for almost everyone employed mining coal, because of automation. No climate change needed.
      • mikeash 7y ago
        Just for perspective, coal mining employs about half as many Americans as Whole Foods. That’s one specialty grocery chain. The amount of attention given to coal miners is absurd.
• ForHackernews 7y ago
  This right here is why nothing will happen and we're hosed. > It takes time to make big shifts like this. We have 11 years to cut global CO2 emissions by 50%, and even that may not be enough. > Maybe it's not possible to tackle this without great pain to a lot of people. That might have been possible if we'd started in earnest 30 years ago. Now, we have a choice between serious lifestyle discomfort in the short term or famine and death in the long term. I expect we'll opt for our grandchildren's generation to starve.
  • derp_dee_derp 7y ago
    > Now, we have a choice between serious lifestyle discomfort in the short term or famine and death in the long term. I expect we'll opt for our grandchildren's generation to starve It's statements like this, which are completely absurd, which are hindering our progress of making meaningful change. Please stop using armegeddon like language to describe climate change. It doesn't help if you sound like a crazed cultist.
    • crispinb 7y ago
      > It's statements like this, which are completely absurd, which are hindering our progress of making meaningful change. Only the degree of certainty of the statement is exaggerated. The content is well within any reasonable scenario-planning approach. Near-term catastrophe may not be the most likely outcome, but on all accounts it is likely enough to be the most genuinely alarming threat we've yet faced. You may not like the tone, but surely you can muster the courage to set aside your personal taste with regard to something so important?
      • derp_dee_derp 7y ago
        > You may not like the tone, but surely you can muster the courage to set aside your personal taste with regard to something so important? You sound exactly like a Jehovah's witness or a Mormon missionary.
        • deleted 7y ago
• bryanlarsen 7y ago
  The plan looks feasible to me. Certainly much more feasible than Kennedy's pledge to land on the moon before the end of the decade...
  • hanniabu 7y ago
    Certainly much more feasible than stopping manufacturing of all non-military steel products and asking people to donate steel for manufacturing tools, weapons, and vehicles for WW2. The issue isn't that it's a huge task. The issue is that the current industries and governments are dragging their feet trying to mik every penny they can from their current dynasty.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• just_myles 7y ago
  I see your point. You don't want to wallop an entire industry but at some point it kind of has to happen. "The second piece is phasing out fossil fuel production more broadly. Inslee would establish a “Presidential Commission on Energy Transition” (including the secretaries of several federal agencies) that will be “tasked with identifying and setting in motion the implementation of federal policies to phase out domestic fossil fuel production.” The commission will have a special focus on a “just transition” for fossil fuel workers and communities." My biggest concern here. Hope it is more comprehensive than this vox outline.
• mikeash 7y ago
  Thirty years is a long time. Think about how different the economy was in, say, 1930 compared to 1900. Or 1840 to 1870. How much fossil fuel infrastructure lasts for thirty years? We could almost do it by just using the natural replacement cycle.
• AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > My fear is that we take a big sledgehammer to the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure, and in so doing also take a big sledgehammer to our entire economy. So big in fact that we face a generational backlash against de-carbonizing. It still seems like the best solution is a revenue-neutral carbon tax, i.e. a carbon tax which is merely refunded to everyone in the form of a fixed tax credit. Then the average person pays e.g. $5000 in carbon tax but receives a $5000 tax credit. But the person who burns a disproportionate amount of carbon pays $7000 and still only receives the $5000 credit, meanwhile someone who burns less carbon pays only $2000 and actually turns a profit after the tax credit. Then we don't need all of this command and control. People have the right incentives, so they buy electric cars and heat pumps and solar panels, and the problem solves itself. The only real thing you have to tweak is the amount of the tax/credit, to adjust the trade off between being too fast/disruptive and too slow/ineffective.
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    > It still seems like the best solution is a revenue-neutral carbon tax, i.e. a carbon tax which is merely refunded to everyone in the form of a fixed tax credit. A revenue neutral carbon tax means that government is dependent for funding for operations (or, if you follow MMP, “is dependent for extracting sufficient money from the economy for the current degree of inflation control”) on continued carbon emissions at the present level.
    • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      > A revenue neutral carbon tax means that government is dependent for funding for operations (or, if you follow MMP, “is dependent for extracting sufficient money from the economy for the current degree of inflation control”) on continued carbon emissions at the present level. Not if the amount of the tax credit in a given year is tied to the amount of revenue the tax generates, i.e. it remains revenue-neutral. Then it automatically phases itself out as less carbon is burned.
  • cavisne 7y ago
    Revenue neutral carbon taxes are a fantasy, because they are pushed by progressive politicians, yet are deeply regressive in their impact. Inslee admits this, and simply wants to add a new tax, and refund it selectively to people who he thinks deserve the money/access to electricity, and outlaw the use cases which don't. Purely coincidentally this is the same effect as making the tax system more progressive, but actually it's all about climate change.
• kevingadd 7y ago
  Incrementalism is definitely safer, but it also doesn't work because every 4-8 years, global warming fans take over and unwind all the incremental improvements that have been made and kick us further down the slope towards complete disaster. Observe how in the US renewables investments and climate progress are being undone while the current political leaders are talking about bringing back coal. No amount of incremental progress will help if that stuff happens repeatedly. We have to fix it soon and fix it thoroughly so that our incremental progress doesn't just get undone in 4-8 years while the rest of the world is still sorting out their part of the climate crisis.