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The two major problems with the discussion on climate change: 1.) Right-leaning, free-market, anti-authoritarian types need to understand that climate change i

The two major problems with the discussion on climate change: 1.) Right-leaning, free-market, anti-authoritarian types need to understand that climate change is a negative third party externality, and there isn't a free market economist that wouldn't agree that the state has a role to play in ameliorating that. Focus on the strategies you think are best suited for that role, such as carbon taxes. 2.) Left-leaning climate advocates need to realistically prioritize objectives according to their tenability and impact. Airplanes contribute 2% of greenhouse emissions, how about we don't start there. Energy production constitutes by far the largest impact, how about we focus energy there, and not to beat a dead horse, but also seriously advocate on behalf of nuclear. They also forget that the other half of the equation, carbon capture, is almost unilaterally popular. Focusing efforts on where the most leeway can be achieved is a much better solution, particularly since carbon capture is capable of handling carbon emissions of states unwilling to regulate their own outputs. They also need to cool it with the catastrophizing. It is a bad strategy. All the opposition has to do is point out how incredibly off-base the predictions were in an An Inconvenient Truth, and they're done. Accurately identify where the feedback loops are that cause enormous leaps forward, and focus on those precise thresholds. Near linear progress in the way we've seen it creeping does not scare people, but that doesn't mean that we can just be wildly inaccurate with the predictions in order to scare people in to action. Lastly, don't shoehorn in other political policies alongside climate propositions. Green New Deal, for example, is first and foremost a bundle of socialist policies using climate activism as a vehicle. If this is truly the greatest threat to humanity, decouple it from adjacent political policy.

wongarsu 7y ago
> Energy production constitutes by far the largest impact Globally agriculture and lifestock has an impact as large as the entire electricity production. Eating less meat (no need for full vegan, just less) is probably the easiest and most impactful change we can do. Electricity is also important, but market forces are acutally doing fairly well in that area. The price of solar+storage in on track to drop below natural gas in a decade.
jkingsbery 7y ago
Thank you for making the Internet a more rational place today.
- julienreszka 7y ago
  How is this rational in any way? His whole argument is a straw man, which fyi is a fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
  - dx87 7y ago
    You're making a straw man by saying that his entire argument is a straw man and isn't rational in any way.
    - julienreszka 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
  - calgaryeng 7y ago
    If I could downvote this comment, I would.
  - zarro 7y ago
    They didn't get your next level satire of straw-manning a straw-man argument.
    - julienreszka 7y ago
      Frankly I'm used to it. <3
jacobolus 7y ago
> Right-leaning, free-market, anti-authoritarian There is nothing “anti-authoritarian” about the modern American right, except as a euphemism for “I don’t want to pay taxes”. Not much “free market” either, except as a euphemism for “corporations should have no accountability or oversight”.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Your worldview is incredibly distorted my friend. OP is trying to bridge the divide.
  - wgerard 7y ago
    Uh, he's not wrong. You have to jump through some serious mental hoops to avoid classifying the current American right as Populist. They clearly have no qualms about using government to control social norms (e.g. abortion, marriage). There's not much anti-authoritarian about that. If you don't understand the other side, or worse mischaracterize them, how can you possibly hope to bridge the divide?
    - CapricornNoble 7y ago
      >>>If you don't understand the other side, or worse mischaracterize them, how can you possibly hope to bridge the divide? An excellent question to pose to those left-of-center... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/democrats-republicans-political-beliefs-national-survey-poll https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/democr...
      - wgerard 7y ago
        > An excellent question to pose to those left-of-center This is literally what the OP was about.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - deleted 7y ago
cameronbrown 7y ago
My only issue with a carbon tax is how severely it'll impact the poor. If we had a system where using carbon costs $X in tax and saving carbon/using green energy netted you $X from the government, I think that'd be a great way to create incentives to go green while accurately pricing in externalities. Basically a redistributive tax.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  Your issue with carbon taxes is misplaced. It's very easy to come up with a bi-partisan approach where low-middle income people are refunded for their gasoline/heating carbon tax, and thus have a revenue-neutral carbon tax. This could be reduced sales tax, decrease in income tax for lower brackets, or straight rebates to everyone each year. There's actually some evidence that this revenue-neutral approach is less palatable to those on the US political left, though (WA's failed carbon tax ballot initiative). It may be more attractive to those on the left to use revenues from carbon taxation to provide climate-equity solutions, like higher paying green-tech jobs in low-income areas, cheaper electricity for those in low income communities, climate resiliency, buyback programs for older/inefficient cars, subsidized EVs and public transport, etc. Personally, I'm for either approach, as long as it gets done quickly.
  - socialist_coder 7y ago
    This is my understanding of the Left's argument against carbon taxes. Energy (heating, car fuel, etc) is required to live in our society. If you add more taxes on it, people aren't really going to change their behavior and do less of it. In every case of these taxes, the energy companies will pass 100% of the taxes onto the consumer. If you can afford the taxes, you won't change your behavior. If you can't afford the taxes, the govt pays you back. Just not effective in reducing CO2 or encouraging alternative energies.
    - Aunche 7y ago
      Consumers don't need to change their behavior. Companies would have more incentive to make greener products and use green energy, so their prices would be competitive.
onion2k 7y ago
Airplanes contribute 2% of greenhouse emissions, how about we don't start there. We can ground flights immediately. Literally today. Building new nuclear power stations takes a long time. If you believe we have 15 years left you do the first one in order to give yourself time to do the second one.
- jkp56 7y ago
  Grounding airplanes looks a lot like chopping off your own fingers because losing weight in a more systematic way is hard.
_bxg1 7y ago
In short: reactionism poisons opportunities for real change. Unfortunately, the internet is the most efficient breeding ground for reactionism the world has ever seen.
undersuit 7y ago
I don't think we can let the airlines off, remember you don't just fly to a place and then immediately for back. When taking about the 2% that airlines contribute we should also talk about the number that people that took airlines contribute to Greenhouse emissions while they are on their vacation or business trip. Right?
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Do those people contribute significantly more than they would have had they stayed home, though? If a person would have emitted X at home, but instead flew somewhere and emitted X there, I don't think it makes sense to blame the airlines for that X. (But blame them for the emissions related to the travel, sure)
  - undersuit 7y ago
    Yes? Who takes a vacation and lives the entire week as a stoic? Just the stoics. Vacations are times of excess. > I don't think it makes sense to blame the airlines for that... I think that's along that same line of thinking where we blame the consumer for using the services. It's a great way to turn the conversation to some nonstarter ideas.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      I've certainly gone on vacation and spent the entire time walking around to museums or lounging around on the beach - is that really higher carbon than driving around in SoCal?
      - undersuit 7y ago
        Maybe. Where was it? Were you staying in a beach resort built entirely to serve tourists? Was the food local, or shipped in to provide the similar comfort levels to tourists? I'd contend you could take a vacation in Alaska with the activities you mention and yes your consumption would exceed your normal life in SoCal even if you walked everywhere in Alaska. And look it's great that you walked everywhere, I find that the best way to enjoy a vacation. I traveled to Calgary this summer and once I got there I tried my best to walk and bike around despite objections from my traveling buddies. But your one example vacation and my example vacation are not the norm.
option_greek 7y ago
To add to (2), stop brain washing kids to advocate their views: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/sep/23/greta-thunberg-to-world-leaders-how-dare-you-you-have-stolen-my-dreams-and-my-childhood-video https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/sep/23/gr... It was quite sad to watch the above kid without a well formed world view burst into tears over stolen childhoods while million of childhoods are taken away every year due to lack of opportunities (including electricity of any kind) in developing countries.
- lumberjack 7y ago
  She said nothing that is incorrect nor did she do anything that is incorrect. Funny to see all the crazy people who raise their children with crazy superstitions and crazier worldviews talking about children being brainwashed.
  - Grue3 7y ago
    She is incredibly privileged and does not acknowledge her privilege. Her home country has literally zero risks or downsides from global warming. Her crocodile tears convince nobody because most people don't have rich parents and own a fucking boat.
    - JetSpiegel 7y ago
      She has said many times she's not even the worst affected by climate change, and that she is privileged to have a voice being heard. Greta Thunberg doesn't own the boat she went to the US with.
rayiner 7y ago
> Right-leaning, free-market, anti-authoritarian Maybe the right-leaning types correctly realize that the left-leaning types can't take "yes" for an answer, and that addressing climate change is not an end in itself, but a means for rehabilitating socialism: https://peoplesclimate.org/platform/ https://peoplesclimate.org/platform/. > Every new job created to address the climate crisis must be unionized or have the right to unionize without interference and pay a family-sustaining wage. If they agree to carbon taxes, is that it? Or does the battlefront just move to things like this: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aocs-top-aide-admits-green-new-deal-about-the-economy-not-the-climate https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aocs-top-aide-admits-green-... > “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti then asked. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” Because this is a real, and serious risk. The defeat of socialism as a competitor to market capitalism in the late 1980s has seen the greatest improvement in the plight of the world's most vulnerable people in the history of the world. Places like Bangladesh, my home country, have enjoyed 5-7% GDP growth annually for three decades. (Polls show Bangladesh second only to Vietnam in support for the free market.) If it was just a matter of carbon taxes, or investing the IPCC-recommended 2.5% of GDP on mitigation efforts, I'd wholeheartedly agree with you. But if it's carbon taxes as a first step toward radical transformation of the economy--toward ideas that have been tried and failed--then no thank you.
- pcwalton 7y ago
  I'm a center-left social democrat and believe in mitigating climate change for its own sake. If anthropogenic climate change weren't occurring, there would be no need for climate-oriented conservation. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people with political leanings similar to mine would agree with that statement. For most proponents, the purpose of climate mitigation measures is in fact to mitigate climate change. Assuming otherwise is plainly not to ascribe good faith to one's opponents.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    It’s not a matter of ascribing good faith to any particular person’s arguments, but considering the trajectory of a movement as a whole. If you asked someone who supported the ACLU’s challenges Establishment Clause challenges in the 1950s whether the wanted to see a systematic erasure of religion from every aspect of public life, they wouldn’t necessarily have agreed with that outcome. But that was the result. This is not an abstract concern about slippery slopes. It’s the fact that now only a minority of Democrats have a positive view of capitalism, and a majority view socialism positively. It’s the actual stated principles of climate justice leaders who have launched a broadside attack on capitalism, trying to associate it with everything from climate change to racism to colonialism. It’s based on things like the Green New Deal concededly using climate change as a pretext for massive economic restructuring. Regardless of your views, you can’t help whose driving the bus you’re on.
zarro 7y ago
"There isn't a free market economist that wouldn't agree that the state has a role to play in ameliorating [negative third party externalities]" Actually there are plenty of free market economists that would argue that negative externalities are the result of poorly defined property rights.
- julienreszka 7y ago
  true
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  There would still be externalities, it's just that there would be a property owner who could sue.
- edanm 7y ago
  Better defining property rights is a role that the state has to play. Property rights don't come out of thin air.
codingdave 7y ago
> how about we don't start there. How about we start everywhere that can help? This trope that goes around that we should only focus on the biggest problem, and let everything else slide... that is why nobody does anything. So how about we improve everything that we personally can, large or small, and drive a cultural change that shows big business/energy that the world does care about this, and they should, too.
- ch4s3 7y ago
  > How about we start everywhere that can help? Some things just aren’t worth the effort, in terms of outcomes. Additionally, doing useless things gives people moral license, and absolves them of feeling like they need to do more. If we pay attention to both outcomes and psychology, then it makes sense to focus on big things.
  - cj 7y ago
    > Some things just aren’t worth the effort This is a false dichotomy. Government (and industry) is not a single-threaded organization incapable of doing more than 1 thing at a time. It's absolutely possible to do BOTH high impact and low impact things at the same time. Whether or not airlines adopt better emmission standards does not affect whether bigger ticket items get addressed, too. (Yes, if you're talking about the media or politicians, they of course are much more single-threaded in the sense that they may need to pick their battles, but generalizing that to absolutely everything doesn't make sense) Edit: Perhaps our difference in viewpoint is that you're looking at it from the perspective of "what can the consumer do" versus "what can government / regulators / industry do". If you're talking about strictly what consumers can do to help, then I agree, reducing personal air travel probably won't make a difference for most people.
    - ch4s3 7y ago
      >> Some things just aren’t worth the effort > This is a false dichotomy. I don't think it's a false dichotomy at all, because some things just aren't worth the effort. For example, straw bans are pretty worthless, hurt disabled people, and allow people to feel like they've done their part when they haven't. With respect to airlines, yes sure they can and should improve efficiency and emission standards. However, lobbying dollars and hours that can be mustered by environmentalists are finite and should be directed towards more useful things like power generation to have the greatest per dollar/hour effect on climate change. In terms of what consumers can do, from a consumer perspective there's not a lot other than perhaps ratcheting down energy consumption. However as citizens they can agitate for better energy policy, which is probably a better use of time than thinking of workarounds for low impact high visibility issues. We could in short order feasibly end coal power generation if the environmental movement got focused on that. However instead, people busy themselves with concerns about air travel, straws, organic food productions, etc.
kiloatl 7y ago
I agree with these points. If we are to consider the effectiveness of getting climate deniers on the path towards change, then we should use a thoughtful strategy that gets them on board.
ant6n 7y ago
Energy production is slowly moving towards being a solved problem, with emissions going down - thanks to renewables, not nuclear. Mobility's co2 contributions are still increasing, and in particular flying doesn't seem to have feasible solutions in any reasonable time frame. Yes it's not a low hanging fruit in terms of reducing emissions, but it's a hard nut - and the global effects of it are increasing (and already larger than 2% due to radiative forcing). Incidentally it's also a way in which individuals can blow their individual carbon budget very quickly, and thus can also mitigate it very easily. Carbon sequestration is not a low hanging fruit, arguably it's even less feasible, less economical at the scale required than fossil-free aviation. I think young people's gloom is reasonable when constantly being confronted with climate change deniers, and even those who believe reality will fight tooth and nail against changing the economy towards being more sustainable, citing magical, non-existing or uneconomical technologies that would allow everybody to just continue like today. It's frustrating to talk to people who don't want to make small adjustments today, willingly accepting that everybody has to make larger and more radical changes later as society keeps kicking down the can.
yarg 7y ago
One problem with nuclear is that we've spent decades of R&D time ignoring the possibility of low space, low waste reactors that we have very little time to complete development on them. The risk of catastrophic failure has been shown repeatedly to be something that arse-covering bureaucrats are incapable of handling. The passive shutdown of the LFTR design, coupled with low area utilisation and the reduced risk of proliferation would have made it an ideal olive branch to the world. But there's not much money to be made from ubiquitous energy.
chc 7y ago
The idea that climate activists don't focus on energy production seems kind of detached from reality. Climate activism has pushed heavily on renewable energy. They're not advocating for nuclear, but that makes sense at the moment even if you're very bullish on nuclear — pushing for more nuclear power will result in no reduction in emissions for over a decade, and we need to come down a lot before then. Nuclear is possibly a viable long-term strategy, but in order to get to the long term, we need to move to renewables in the short term.
- lancewiggs 7y ago
  Nuclear is a red herring introduced by climate crisis opponents - the plants take decades to get away, are intrinsically dangerous and nobody wants one near them. Meanwhile solar and wind are far cheaper, much much faster to build and can be accompanied by batteries to smooth demand.
  - Agustus 7y ago
    Nuclear is far safer than any other power generation method. Nuclear reactors, when not made like Cherynobl’s reactor are safe. There is no intrinsic danger at a nuclear power plant because it is engineered away through fail safes. If we are going to get serious about the climate change, we need to think long term. Solar and wind is a red herring for base loads; they handle peak events very well when properly placed. Batteries are no where now or in the future production ready to smooth demand at the scale you are talking.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- agitator 7y ago
  I agree that nuclear is a very viable option, but how viable will it be if it takes decades to get a reactor design approved, a location approved, multiple lawsuits over "I don't want that in my backyard", approval over funding, funding will for sure run out, and we will be stuck with wasted time and money. It's a contentious topic. Alternatively, solar panels are proven, and can be strapped to every roof top right now. Battery storage has been show to stabilize the grid. It's something we can do right now by incentivizing individual building owners
alistproducer2 7y ago
But here's the thing: the reality of current power in western countries is that it has been completely captured by large corporations and capital. Anything that causes disruption to the flow if money and growth will not be considered. Any real action will only come as a result of revolution. Revolutions are never fought with middle of the road ideologies as the catalyst and they aren't fought by populations as comfortable as those of successful western societies. However you're kidding yourself if you the primary danger if climate change is the climate itself, at least to western societies. Look no further than the most existential threat to thd EU posed by a mere million migrants. Fascism js suddenly back in fashion all over the continent and the Brits want to self immolate and leave the EU. The failing of major crops due to seasons becoming unstable has already happened and will only accelerate in the coming years. The American corn crop was dangerojsly close to failing this year. Are these young people being hyperbolic in believing extinction is right around the corner? A bit, but their sentiment is correct. The civilization that they are accustomed to could very well be completely distroyed or in a state of disintegration in 15 years.
- rayiner 7y ago
  > But here's the thing: the reality of current power in western countries is that it has been completely captured by large corporations and capital. The economies in non-western countries aren't any different, often just less perfect versions of western market economies. (And sometimes, like with Taiwan or Singapore, more perfect versions.) The important point there, though, is that even imperfect market economies have led to enormous increases in prosperity for non-western countries. Market reforms in countries like India meant that GDP per capita more than quadrupled from 1999-2019, while it less than doubled from 1979-1999. The climate justice folks, by contrast, want people from the developing world to rely on "endogenous and indigenous technologies and innovations in addressing climate change" so they can "develop, access, and transfer environmentally sound, socially acceptable, gender responsive and equitable climate technologies." https://www.peoplesdemands.org https://www.peoplesdemands.org. (Luckily, countries like India are going with Thorium reactors instead: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/wolak1 http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/wolak1. And that will be the ironic outcome of climate justice efforts. It will be essential to get India and China on board to address climate change, but those countries are too smart to jump on that bandwagon.) Ironically, it is precisely the dichotomy you mention that justifies the hard-line opposition of the right-wingers. If tweaking market economies is not the solution, and the alternative to the status quo is "revolution," then it is utterly rational to seek to protect the status quo.
Symmetry 7y ago
I mostly agree with you but there's little chance that we're going to figure out for sure where climate tipping points might be before we hit them. The climate is very very complex.
notadoc 7y ago
You could simplify it even more by saying that the politicization of the discussion is the major problem. It's worth remembering that often something becomes politicized for the benefit of the politics, not the actual issue.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
> Green New Deal, for example, is first and foremost a bundle of socialist policies using climate activism as a vehicle. If this is truly the greatest threat to humanity, decouple it from adjacent political policy. Sorry, that's impossible. Anytime you're doing anything with a direct or indirect price tag in the trillion dollar range, you're having a huge impact on the economy and jobs. You're picking winners and losers. So either you need to be explicit about it like the Green New Deal is, or you're hiding it, and you get the huge distortions caused by people like Senator Shelby giving NASA's SLS huge amounts of money because they spend it in Alabama. What we need is a sensible alternative proposal from Republicans, and then a negotiated middle ground. That's the way we used to do things. It wasn't perfect, but it worked a lot better than just shouting at each other like we do now.
agitator 7y ago
These are great points. To add to these I think the roll of government is to legislate in the best interest of the people, whereas companies act in the best interest of their shareholders. This effectively is a check/balance for companies when they do things that go against the interest of the people (Without mentioning corruption). Nothing really happens unless there is an economic motivator or widespread fear. But with the climate changing gradually, we will most likely go the way of the ol' lobster in the pot and boil to death by the time we realize. So we need the gov. to step in and legislate some stuff. When we first started producing plastics, running everything on petroleum, and burning things for energy, the scale was small and insignificant and we didn't know any better. But now that we can measure the impact and the cost of cleanup we can exactly say how much of a product, despite our best efforts, ends up in the environment and will need to be cleaned up. So if a company wants to produce plastics, fine. And if a company wants to run their fleets on diesel, fine. Lets just factor in the cost of the cleanup. You can't go around producing and using whatever you want and expecting others to pay for the cleanup or consequences. We are going to have to pay for it at some point, so factor that in. The increased costs will incentivise alternatives, and for the things that don't have alternatives, at least we will have a fund for the cleanup and mitigation of the effects.
azepoi 7y ago
The aviation industry is growing rapidely and if left unchecked those 2% will soon become 5%. Governments can tackle several problems at the same time. And taxing air travel is a big deal for the social acceptation of other taxations for the masses.
- ralusek 7y ago
  Just do a carbon tax. It covers it.
  - azepoi 7y ago
    Yes we should aim for a carbon tax, it's the most effective way. But sometimes the political momentum is not there, and politicians compromise for less optimal taxes. It's still progress imho.
littlestymaar 7y ago
> Lastly, don't shoehorn in other political policies alongside climate propositions. Green New Deal, for example, is first and foremost a bundle of socialist policies using climate activism as a vehicle. If this is truly the greatest threat to humanity, decouple it from adjacent political policy. It's not about shoehorning anything, it's about how you diagnose the problem. You can see the climate problem in isolation, and try to fix it as such, or you can see the big picture: worldwide the biodiversity is collapsing, there's more plastic than fish in the oceans, we're destroying fertile lands to build malls or with terrible agricultural practices, and so on. Climate change is probably the most threatening one, but far from the only systemic environmental problem we're facing. All theses issues have one root cause: industrial productivism, which, in today's world, is a key consequence of Capitalism[1]. [1] don't get me wrong, Capitalism isn't the only system leading to an ever-growing industrial production. And soviet Socialism has its shares of environmental catastrophes.

wongarsu 7y ago

> Energy production constitutes by far the largest impact Globally agriculture and lifestock has an impact as large as the entire electricity production. Eating less meat (no need for full vegan, just less) is probably the easiest and most impactful change we can do. Electricity is also important, but market forces are acutally doing fairly well in that area. The price of solar+storage in on track to drop below natural gas in a decade.

jkingsbery 7y ago

Thank you for making the Internet a more rational place today.

julienreszka 7y ago
How is this rational in any way? His whole argument is a straw man, which fyi is a fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
- dx87 7y ago
  You're making a straw man by saying that his entire argument is a straw man and isn't rational in any way.
  - julienreszka 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
- calgaryeng 7y ago
  If I could downvote this comment, I would.
- zarro 7y ago
  They didn't get your next level satire of straw-manning a straw-man argument.
  - julienreszka 7y ago
    Frankly I'm used to it. <3

jacobolus 7y ago

> Right-leaning, free-market, anti-authoritarian There is nothing “anti-authoritarian” about the modern American right, except as a euphemism for “I don’t want to pay taxes”. Not much “free market” either, except as a euphemism for “corporations should have no accountability or oversight”.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Your worldview is incredibly distorted my friend. OP is trying to bridge the divide.
- wgerard 7y ago
  Uh, he's not wrong. You have to jump through some serious mental hoops to avoid classifying the current American right as Populist. They clearly have no qualms about using government to control social norms (e.g. abortion, marriage). There's not much anti-authoritarian about that. If you don't understand the other side, or worse mischaracterize them, how can you possibly hope to bridge the divide?
  - CapricornNoble 7y ago
    >>>If you don't understand the other side, or worse mischaracterize them, how can you possibly hope to bridge the divide? An excellent question to pose to those left-of-center... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/democrats-republicans-political-beliefs-national-survey-poll https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/democr...
    - wgerard 7y ago
      > An excellent question to pose to those left-of-center This is literally what the OP was about.
- deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago

cameronbrown 7y ago

My only issue with a carbon tax is how severely it'll impact the poor. If we had a system where using carbon costs $X in tax and saving carbon/using green energy netted you $X from the government, I think that'd be a great way to create incentives to go green while accurately pricing in externalities. Basically a redistributive tax.

WhompingWindows 7y ago
Your issue with carbon taxes is misplaced. It's very easy to come up with a bi-partisan approach where low-middle income people are refunded for their gasoline/heating carbon tax, and thus have a revenue-neutral carbon tax. This could be reduced sales tax, decrease in income tax for lower brackets, or straight rebates to everyone each year. There's actually some evidence that this revenue-neutral approach is less palatable to those on the US political left, though (WA's failed carbon tax ballot initiative). It may be more attractive to those on the left to use revenues from carbon taxation to provide climate-equity solutions, like higher paying green-tech jobs in low-income areas, cheaper electricity for those in low income communities, climate resiliency, buyback programs for older/inefficient cars, subsidized EVs and public transport, etc. Personally, I'm for either approach, as long as it gets done quickly.
- socialist_coder 7y ago
  This is my understanding of the Left's argument against carbon taxes. Energy (heating, car fuel, etc) is required to live in our society. If you add more taxes on it, people aren't really going to change their behavior and do less of it. In every case of these taxes, the energy companies will pass 100% of the taxes onto the consumer. If you can afford the taxes, you won't change your behavior. If you can't afford the taxes, the govt pays you back. Just not effective in reducing CO2 or encouraging alternative energies.
  - Aunche 7y ago
    Consumers don't need to change their behavior. Companies would have more incentive to make greener products and use green energy, so their prices would be competitive.

onion2k 7y ago

Airplanes contribute 2% of greenhouse emissions, how about we don't start there. We can ground flights immediately. Literally today. Building new nuclear power stations takes a long time. If you believe we have 15 years left you do the first one in order to give yourself time to do the second one.

jkp56 7y ago
Grounding airplanes looks a lot like chopping off your own fingers because losing weight in a more systematic way is hard.

_bxg1 7y ago

In short: reactionism poisons opportunities for real change. Unfortunately, the internet is the most efficient breeding ground for reactionism the world has ever seen.

undersuit 7y ago

I don't think we can let the airlines off, remember you don't just fly to a place and then immediately for back. When taking about the 2% that airlines contribute we should also talk about the number that people that took airlines contribute to Greenhouse emissions while they are on their vacation or business trip. Right?

DuskStar 7y ago
Do those people contribute significantly more than they would have had they stayed home, though? If a person would have emitted X at home, but instead flew somewhere and emitted X there, I don't think it makes sense to blame the airlines for that X. (But blame them for the emissions related to the travel, sure)
- undersuit 7y ago
  Yes? Who takes a vacation and lives the entire week as a stoic? Just the stoics. Vacations are times of excess. > I don't think it makes sense to blame the airlines for that... I think that's along that same line of thinking where we blame the consumer for using the services. It's a great way to turn the conversation to some nonstarter ideas.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    I've certainly gone on vacation and spent the entire time walking around to museums or lounging around on the beach - is that really higher carbon than driving around in SoCal?
    - undersuit 7y ago
      Maybe. Where was it? Were you staying in a beach resort built entirely to serve tourists? Was the food local, or shipped in to provide the similar comfort levels to tourists? I'd contend you could take a vacation in Alaska with the activities you mention and yes your consumption would exceed your normal life in SoCal even if you walked everywhere in Alaska. And look it's great that you walked everywhere, I find that the best way to enjoy a vacation. I traveled to Calgary this summer and once I got there I tried my best to walk and bike around despite objections from my traveling buddies. But your one example vacation and my example vacation are not the norm.

option_greek 7y ago

To add to (2), stop brain washing kids to advocate their views: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/sep/23/greta-thunberg-to-world-leaders-how-dare-you-you-have-stolen-my-dreams-and-my-childhood-video https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/sep/23/gr... It was quite sad to watch the above kid without a well formed world view burst into tears over stolen childhoods while million of childhoods are taken away every year due to lack of opportunities (including electricity of any kind) in developing countries.

lumberjack 7y ago
She said nothing that is incorrect nor did she do anything that is incorrect. Funny to see all the crazy people who raise their children with crazy superstitions and crazier worldviews talking about children being brainwashed.
- Grue3 7y ago
  She is incredibly privileged and does not acknowledge her privilege. Her home country has literally zero risks or downsides from global warming. Her crocodile tears convince nobody because most people don't have rich parents and own a fucking boat.
  - JetSpiegel 7y ago
    She has said many times she's not even the worst affected by climate change, and that she is privileged to have a voice being heard. Greta Thunberg doesn't own the boat she went to the US with.

rayiner 7y ago

> Right-leaning, free-market, anti-authoritarian Maybe the right-leaning types correctly realize that the left-leaning types can't take "yes" for an answer, and that addressing climate change is not an end in itself, but a means for rehabilitating socialism: https://peoplesclimate.org/platform/ https://peoplesclimate.org/platform/. > Every new job created to address the climate crisis must be unionized or have the right to unionize without interference and pay a family-sustaining wage. If they agree to carbon taxes, is that it? Or does the battlefront just move to things like this: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aocs-top-aide-admits-green-new-deal-about-the-economy-not-the-climate https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aocs-top-aide-admits-green-... > “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti then asked. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” Because this is a real, and serious risk. The defeat of socialism as a competitor to market capitalism in the late 1980s has seen the greatest improvement in the plight of the world's most vulnerable people in the history of the world. Places like Bangladesh, my home country, have enjoyed 5-7% GDP growth annually for three decades. (Polls show Bangladesh second only to Vietnam in support for the free market.) If it was just a matter of carbon taxes, or investing the IPCC-recommended 2.5% of GDP on mitigation efforts, I'd wholeheartedly agree with you. But if it's carbon taxes as a first step toward radical transformation of the economy--toward ideas that have been tried and failed--then no thank you.

pcwalton 7y ago
I'm a center-left social democrat and believe in mitigating climate change for its own sake. If anthropogenic climate change weren't occurring, there would be no need for climate-oriented conservation. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people with political leanings similar to mine would agree with that statement. For most proponents, the purpose of climate mitigation measures is in fact to mitigate climate change. Assuming otherwise is plainly not to ascribe good faith to one's opponents.
- rayiner 7y ago
  It’s not a matter of ascribing good faith to any particular person’s arguments, but considering the trajectory of a movement as a whole. If you asked someone who supported the ACLU’s challenges Establishment Clause challenges in the 1950s whether the wanted to see a systematic erasure of religion from every aspect of public life, they wouldn’t necessarily have agreed with that outcome. But that was the result. This is not an abstract concern about slippery slopes. It’s the fact that now only a minority of Democrats have a positive view of capitalism, and a majority view socialism positively. It’s the actual stated principles of climate justice leaders who have launched a broadside attack on capitalism, trying to associate it with everything from climate change to racism to colonialism. It’s based on things like the Green New Deal concededly using climate change as a pretext for massive economic restructuring. Regardless of your views, you can’t help whose driving the bus you’re on.

zarro 7y ago

"There isn't a free market economist that wouldn't agree that the state has a role to play in ameliorating [negative third party externalities]" Actually there are plenty of free market economists that would argue that negative externalities are the result of poorly defined property rights.

julienreszka 7y ago
true
amanaplanacanal 7y ago
There would still be externalities, it's just that there would be a property owner who could sue.
edanm 7y ago
Better defining property rights is a role that the state has to play. Property rights don't come out of thin air.

codingdave 7y ago

> how about we don't start there. How about we start everywhere that can help? This trope that goes around that we should only focus on the biggest problem, and let everything else slide... that is why nobody does anything. So how about we improve everything that we personally can, large or small, and drive a cultural change that shows big business/energy that the world does care about this, and they should, too.

ch4s3 7y ago
> How about we start everywhere that can help? Some things just aren’t worth the effort, in terms of outcomes. Additionally, doing useless things gives people moral license, and absolves them of feeling like they need to do more. If we pay attention to both outcomes and psychology, then it makes sense to focus on big things.
- cj 7y ago
  > Some things just aren’t worth the effort This is a false dichotomy. Government (and industry) is not a single-threaded organization incapable of doing more than 1 thing at a time. It's absolutely possible to do BOTH high impact and low impact things at the same time. Whether or not airlines adopt better emmission standards does not affect whether bigger ticket items get addressed, too. (Yes, if you're talking about the media or politicians, they of course are much more single-threaded in the sense that they may need to pick their battles, but generalizing that to absolutely everything doesn't make sense) Edit: Perhaps our difference in viewpoint is that you're looking at it from the perspective of "what can the consumer do" versus "what can government / regulators / industry do". If you're talking about strictly what consumers can do to help, then I agree, reducing personal air travel probably won't make a difference for most people.
  - ch4s3 7y ago
    >> Some things just aren’t worth the effort > This is a false dichotomy. I don't think it's a false dichotomy at all, because some things just aren't worth the effort. For example, straw bans are pretty worthless, hurt disabled people, and allow people to feel like they've done their part when they haven't. With respect to airlines, yes sure they can and should improve efficiency and emission standards. However, lobbying dollars and hours that can be mustered by environmentalists are finite and should be directed towards more useful things like power generation to have the greatest per dollar/hour effect on climate change. In terms of what consumers can do, from a consumer perspective there's not a lot other than perhaps ratcheting down energy consumption. However as citizens they can agitate for better energy policy, which is probably a better use of time than thinking of workarounds for low impact high visibility issues. We could in short order feasibly end coal power generation if the environmental movement got focused on that. However instead, people busy themselves with concerns about air travel, straws, organic food productions, etc.

kiloatl 7y ago

I agree with these points. If we are to consider the effectiveness of getting climate deniers on the path towards change, then we should use a thoughtful strategy that gets them on board.

ant6n 7y ago

Energy production is slowly moving towards being a solved problem, with emissions going down - thanks to renewables, not nuclear. Mobility's co2 contributions are still increasing, and in particular flying doesn't seem to have feasible solutions in any reasonable time frame. Yes it's not a low hanging fruit in terms of reducing emissions, but it's a hard nut - and the global effects of it are increasing (and already larger than 2% due to radiative forcing). Incidentally it's also a way in which individuals can blow their individual carbon budget very quickly, and thus can also mitigate it very easily. Carbon sequestration is not a low hanging fruit, arguably it's even less feasible, less economical at the scale required than fossil-free aviation. I think young people's gloom is reasonable when constantly being confronted with climate change deniers, and even those who believe reality will fight tooth and nail against changing the economy towards being more sustainable, citing magical, non-existing or uneconomical technologies that would allow everybody to just continue like today. It's frustrating to talk to people who don't want to make small adjustments today, willingly accepting that everybody has to make larger and more radical changes later as society keeps kicking down the can.

yarg 7y ago

One problem with nuclear is that we've spent decades of R&D time ignoring the possibility of low space, low waste reactors that we have very little time to complete development on them. The risk of catastrophic failure has been shown repeatedly to be something that arse-covering bureaucrats are incapable of handling. The passive shutdown of the LFTR design, coupled with low area utilisation and the reduced risk of proliferation would have made it an ideal olive branch to the world. But there's not much money to be made from ubiquitous energy.

chc 7y ago

The idea that climate activists don't focus on energy production seems kind of detached from reality. Climate activism has pushed heavily on renewable energy. They're not advocating for nuclear, but that makes sense at the moment even if you're very bullish on nuclear — pushing for more nuclear power will result in no reduction in emissions for over a decade, and we need to come down a lot before then. Nuclear is possibly a viable long-term strategy, but in order to get to the long term, we need to move to renewables in the short term.

lancewiggs 7y ago
Nuclear is a red herring introduced by climate crisis opponents - the plants take decades to get away, are intrinsically dangerous and nobody wants one near them. Meanwhile solar and wind are far cheaper, much much faster to build and can be accompanied by batteries to smooth demand.
- Agustus 7y ago
  Nuclear is far safer than any other power generation method. Nuclear reactors, when not made like Cherynobl’s reactor are safe. There is no intrinsic danger at a nuclear power plant because it is engineered away through fail safes. If we are going to get serious about the climate change, we need to think long term. Solar and wind is a red herring for base loads; they handle peak events very well when properly placed. Batteries are no where now or in the future production ready to smooth demand at the scale you are talking.
  - deleted 7y ago
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agitator 7y ago
I agree that nuclear is a very viable option, but how viable will it be if it takes decades to get a reactor design approved, a location approved, multiple lawsuits over "I don't want that in my backyard", approval over funding, funding will for sure run out, and we will be stuck with wasted time and money. It's a contentious topic. Alternatively, solar panels are proven, and can be strapped to every roof top right now. Battery storage has been show to stabilize the grid. It's something we can do right now by incentivizing individual building owners

alistproducer2 7y ago

But here's the thing: the reality of current power in western countries is that it has been completely captured by large corporations and capital. Anything that causes disruption to the flow if money and growth will not be considered. Any real action will only come as a result of revolution. Revolutions are never fought with middle of the road ideologies as the catalyst and they aren't fought by populations as comfortable as those of successful western societies. However you're kidding yourself if you the primary danger if climate change is the climate itself, at least to western societies. Look no further than the most existential threat to thd EU posed by a mere million migrants. Fascism js suddenly back in fashion all over the continent and the Brits want to self immolate and leave the EU. The failing of major crops due to seasons becoming unstable has already happened and will only accelerate in the coming years. The American corn crop was dangerojsly close to failing this year. Are these young people being hyperbolic in believing extinction is right around the corner? A bit, but their sentiment is correct. The civilization that they are accustomed to could very well be completely distroyed or in a state of disintegration in 15 years.

rayiner 7y ago
> But here's the thing: the reality of current power in western countries is that it has been completely captured by large corporations and capital. The economies in non-western countries aren't any different, often just less perfect versions of western market economies. (And sometimes, like with Taiwan or Singapore, more perfect versions.) The important point there, though, is that even imperfect market economies have led to enormous increases in prosperity for non-western countries. Market reforms in countries like India meant that GDP per capita more than quadrupled from 1999-2019, while it less than doubled from 1979-1999. The climate justice folks, by contrast, want people from the developing world to rely on "endogenous and indigenous technologies and innovations in addressing climate change" so they can "develop, access, and transfer environmentally sound, socially acceptable, gender responsive and equitable climate technologies." https://www.peoplesdemands.org https://www.peoplesdemands.org. (Luckily, countries like India are going with Thorium reactors instead: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/wolak1 http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/wolak1. And that will be the ironic outcome of climate justice efforts. It will be essential to get India and China on board to address climate change, but those countries are too smart to jump on that bandwagon.) Ironically, it is precisely the dichotomy you mention that justifies the hard-line opposition of the right-wingers. If tweaking market economies is not the solution, and the alternative to the status quo is "revolution," then it is utterly rational to seek to protect the status quo.

Symmetry 7y ago

I mostly agree with you but there's little chance that we're going to figure out for sure where climate tipping points might be before we hit them. The climate is very very complex.

notadoc 7y ago

You could simplify it even more by saying that the politicization of the discussion is the major problem. It's worth remembering that often something becomes politicized for the benefit of the politics, not the actual issue.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

> Green New Deal, for example, is first and foremost a bundle of socialist policies using climate activism as a vehicle. If this is truly the greatest threat to humanity, decouple it from adjacent political policy. Sorry, that's impossible. Anytime you're doing anything with a direct or indirect price tag in the trillion dollar range, you're having a huge impact on the economy and jobs. You're picking winners and losers. So either you need to be explicit about it like the Green New Deal is, or you're hiding it, and you get the huge distortions caused by people like Senator Shelby giving NASA's SLS huge amounts of money because they spend it in Alabama. What we need is a sensible alternative proposal from Republicans, and then a negotiated middle ground. That's the way we used to do things. It wasn't perfect, but it worked a lot better than just shouting at each other like we do now.

agitator 7y ago

These are great points. To add to these I think the roll of government is to legislate in the best interest of the people, whereas companies act in the best interest of their shareholders. This effectively is a check/balance for companies when they do things that go against the interest of the people (Without mentioning corruption). Nothing really happens unless there is an economic motivator or widespread fear. But with the climate changing gradually, we will most likely go the way of the ol' lobster in the pot and boil to death by the time we realize. So we need the gov. to step in and legislate some stuff. When we first started producing plastics, running everything on petroleum, and burning things for energy, the scale was small and insignificant and we didn't know any better. But now that we can measure the impact and the cost of cleanup we can exactly say how much of a product, despite our best efforts, ends up in the environment and will need to be cleaned up. So if a company wants to produce plastics, fine. And if a company wants to run their fleets on diesel, fine. Lets just factor in the cost of the cleanup. You can't go around producing and using whatever you want and expecting others to pay for the cleanup or consequences. We are going to have to pay for it at some point, so factor that in. The increased costs will incentivise alternatives, and for the things that don't have alternatives, at least we will have a fund for the cleanup and mitigation of the effects.

azepoi 7y ago

The aviation industry is growing rapidely and if left unchecked those 2% will soon become 5%. Governments can tackle several problems at the same time. And taxing air travel is a big deal for the social acceptation of other taxations for the masses.

ralusek 7y ago
Just do a carbon tax. It covers it.
- azepoi 7y ago
  Yes we should aim for a carbon tax, it's the most effective way. But sometimes the political momentum is not there, and politicians compromise for less optimal taxes. It's still progress imho.

littlestymaar 7y ago

> Lastly, don't shoehorn in other political policies alongside climate propositions. Green New Deal, for example, is first and foremost a bundle of socialist policies using climate activism as a vehicle. If this is truly the greatest threat to humanity, decouple it from adjacent political policy. It's not about shoehorning anything, it's about how you diagnose the problem. You can see the climate problem in isolation, and try to fix it as such, or you can see the big picture: worldwide the biodiversity is collapsing, there's more plastic than fish in the oceans, we're destroying fertile lands to build malls or with terrible agricultural practices, and so on. Climate change is probably the most threatening one, but far from the only systemic environmental problem we're facing. All theses issues have one root cause: industrial productivism, which, in today's world, is a key consequence of Capitalism[1]. [1] don't get me wrong, Capitalism isn't the only system leading to an ever-growing industrial production. And soviet Socialism has its shares of environmental catastrophes.