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> To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. First, that starts off with

> To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. First, that starts off with a false premise. You don't know that the government is going to regulate carbon. Second, ignoring the "climate change is a myth" crowd, there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await. That attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place in it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives that way is not worth the unknown outcome of attempting to save the current state of climate. This isn't even a "not my problem" situation. I've heard this from folks leaving in a coastal region that already suffers some amount of regular nuisance flooding. It's not as if rising tides will skip over them. Failing to understand that viewpoint is going to result in two sides yelling past each other. One side thinks we must do everything in our power to preserve nature's status-quo, the other is firmly of the mind that it is an impossibility and to try would be wasted effort with much risk and unclear gain. Your first task is convincing them of the horrors that await for them.

bryanlarsen 7y ago
To the second: even if stopping climate change is impossible, slowing it is tremendously valuable.
- chr1 7y ago
  If you want to better understand the argument take a look at Bjorn Lomborg's talks https://www.lomborg.com https://www.lomborg.com, basically the argument is that even the strictest regulations are going to have a very small effect on the climate in 100 years, and for every dollar spent now we save merely cents in the future. So instead of implementing economically non-profitable measures, it is better to invest much more into research, and into helping poor countries, which will allow us to find better technologies to fight with climate change. I am not sure what i think about this argument yet, but it seems like it may be reasonable.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    Yet Bjorn Lomborg is pro carbon tax.
    - Filligree 7y ago
      A carbon tax doesn't imply spending money, only moving it and changing the incentives. Money is only spent once it pays for some limited resource, whether that's human time or a truckload of ore.
    - chr1 7y ago
      There are many different ways to implement carbon tax. His proposal to replace other regulations with a small and uniform carbon tax, is bound to make both proponents and opponents of carbon tax unhappy (which may be a sign that it is a reasonable proposal:) https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/how-we-could-get-mired-in-the-political-pitfalls-of-carbon-taxes/article36683771/ https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-comm...
  - gregknicholson 7y ago
    > technologies to fight with climate change Climate change isn't a technical problem; it's a social problem. “Advanced” economies rely on otherwise-unnecessary consumption of resources, irrespective of environmental damage, because there's no effective social penalty for harming the environment. Clean energy won't help: demand always increases at least as fast as supply.
    - chr1 7y ago
      There is a social penalty. If you try to burn garbage in your yard your neighbours will not allow it. But the price cannot be larger than life, so when it is freezing outside and there is nothing else to burn, they won't mind the smoke, and will come to the warmth of fire instead. Even if we stopped all unnecessary consumption, and kept only the minimum necessary for life, we would not make significant impact on climate change, because with the current number of people CO2 will still accumulate, and would become problem some time later. If energy is clean, it simply will not cause global warming, independently of demand, but we do not even need to make it clean, we simply need to use the CO2 (e.g. by creating forests in deserts) or to use some other technology to gain fine grained control over the climate.
dmm 7y ago
> there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt Climate change is inevitable but the amount of change can still be affected. Preventing carbon emissions now will absolutely be cheaper that paying for mitigations in the future. The amount of warming is very important. An increase from 1.5C to 2.0C will kill an additional 100 million people from air pollution alone.
esotericn 7y ago
> there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await Pricing in externalities is a part of that adaptation. It literally is "getting on with it". It's unclear to me what you mean by this. If your farm is on fire, maybe you lose a room. OK, so you adapt. Perhaps you'll never earn enough again to rebuild it properly. You might be a bit traumatised - maybe you buy more smoke alarms, cameras, sprinklers, stuff like that. What you don't do is set the whole thing alight, burn it to hell, and adapt to the changes having contributed to your life savings going up in smoke. If a family member or close friend dies - you hang out with friends, you go to therapy. You certainly don't buy some weapons and decide to finish off the rest of your friends for good measure! A climate that continuously changes by a few degrees every decade is going to be impossible to adapt to properly. We will effectively never be able to build permanent structures again. What's the goal here? 800ppm? 1200? Literally just whack the thermostat up 10c and have every city in the world suddenly be in the wrong place? > attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place in it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives that way It's unclear to me why pricing in externalities would do this. Shifting consumption to more efficient "happiness/usefulness per damage" stuff wouldn't ruin anything. It's difficult for me to understand why people would think that carbon pricing pushing people towards different foods or smaller cars or cycling or whatever would "destroy the economy". I think they have a different definition of the word 'destroy'. Consuming a bit less is not destruction. Your hometown being underwater is a destroyed economy.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  > A climate that continuously changes by a few degrees every decade is going to be impossible to adapt to properly. We will effectively never be able to build permanent structures again. Why would we not be able to build permanent structures?
  - avisser 7y ago
    Because, eventually, the place they were built would become uninhabitable for humans.
peacetreefrog 7y ago
The government is already is regulating carbon. California has a cap and trade program, for example, and this court case in 2007 forced the EPA "to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) as pollutants." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._Environmental_Protection_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._Environmental...
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Very little has actually come out of that '07 case though. There were the Paris Climate Accords but those and the clean energy plan designed to actually achieve them were immediately ripped up so as much as they're legally required to there's not actually much being done at the EPA that isn't rolling back regulations.
FrojoS 7y ago
> are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await. This makes no sense at all. Climate change is not a binary effect, it's compounding.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

To the second: even if stopping climate change is impossible, slowing it is tremendously valuable.

chr1 7y ago
If you want to better understand the argument take a look at Bjorn Lomborg's talks https://www.lomborg.com https://www.lomborg.com, basically the argument is that even the strictest regulations are going to have a very small effect on the climate in 100 years, and for every dollar spent now we save merely cents in the future. So instead of implementing economically non-profitable measures, it is better to invest much more into research, and into helping poor countries, which will allow us to find better technologies to fight with climate change. I am not sure what i think about this argument yet, but it seems like it may be reasonable.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Yet Bjorn Lomborg is pro carbon tax.
  - Filligree 7y ago
    A carbon tax doesn't imply spending money, only moving it and changing the incentives. Money is only spent once it pays for some limited resource, whether that's human time or a truckload of ore.
  - chr1 7y ago
    There are many different ways to implement carbon tax. His proposal to replace other regulations with a small and uniform carbon tax, is bound to make both proponents and opponents of carbon tax unhappy (which may be a sign that it is a reasonable proposal:) https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/how-we-could-get-mired-in-the-political-pitfalls-of-carbon-taxes/article36683771/ https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-comm...
- gregknicholson 7y ago
  > technologies to fight with climate change Climate change isn't a technical problem; it's a social problem. “Advanced” economies rely on otherwise-unnecessary consumption of resources, irrespective of environmental damage, because there's no effective social penalty for harming the environment. Clean energy won't help: demand always increases at least as fast as supply.
  - chr1 7y ago
    There is a social penalty. If you try to burn garbage in your yard your neighbours will not allow it. But the price cannot be larger than life, so when it is freezing outside and there is nothing else to burn, they won't mind the smoke, and will come to the warmth of fire instead. Even if we stopped all unnecessary consumption, and kept only the minimum necessary for life, we would not make significant impact on climate change, because with the current number of people CO2 will still accumulate, and would become problem some time later. If energy is clean, it simply will not cause global warming, independently of demand, but we do not even need to make it clean, we simply need to use the CO2 (e.g. by creating forests in deserts) or to use some other technology to gain fine grained control over the climate.

dmm 7y ago

> there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt Climate change is inevitable but the amount of change can still be affected. Preventing carbon emissions now will absolutely be cheaper that paying for mitigations in the future. The amount of warming is very important. An increase from 1.5C to 2.0C will kill an additional 100 million people from air pollution alone.

esotericn 7y ago

> there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await Pricing in externalities is a part of that adaptation. It literally is "getting on with it". It's unclear to me what you mean by this. If your farm is on fire, maybe you lose a room. OK, so you adapt. Perhaps you'll never earn enough again to rebuild it properly. You might be a bit traumatised - maybe you buy more smoke alarms, cameras, sprinklers, stuff like that. What you don't do is set the whole thing alight, burn it to hell, and adapt to the changes having contributed to your life savings going up in smoke. If a family member or close friend dies - you hang out with friends, you go to therapy. You certainly don't buy some weapons and decide to finish off the rest of your friends for good measure! A climate that continuously changes by a few degrees every decade is going to be impossible to adapt to properly. We will effectively never be able to build permanent structures again. What's the goal here? 800ppm? 1200? Literally just whack the thermostat up 10c and have every city in the world suddenly be in the wrong place? > attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place in it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives that way It's unclear to me why pricing in externalities would do this. Shifting consumption to more efficient "happiness/usefulness per damage" stuff wouldn't ruin anything. It's difficult for me to understand why people would think that carbon pricing pushing people towards different foods or smaller cars or cycling or whatever would "destroy the economy". I think they have a different definition of the word 'destroy'. Consuming a bit less is not destruction. Your hometown being underwater is a destroyed economy.

malvosenior 7y ago
> A climate that continuously changes by a few degrees every decade is going to be impossible to adapt to properly. We will effectively never be able to build permanent structures again. Why would we not be able to build permanent structures?
- avisser 7y ago
  Because, eventually, the place they were built would become uninhabitable for humans.

peacetreefrog 7y ago

The government is already is regulating carbon. California has a cap and trade program, for example, and this court case in 2007 forced the EPA "to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) as pollutants." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._Environmental_Protection_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._Environmental...

rtkwe 7y ago
Very little has actually come out of that '07 case though. There were the Paris Climate Accords but those and the clean energy plan designed to actually achieve them were immediately ripped up so as much as they're legally required to there's not actually much being done at the EPA that isn't rolling back regulations.

FrojoS 7y ago

> are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await. This makes no sense at all. Climate change is not a binary effect, it's compounding.