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(disclaimer: I work in a Climate&Energy research group) I just want to remind everyone that there are solutions to climate change. We know how to produce clean

(disclaimer: I work in a Climate&Energy research group) I just want to remind everyone that there are solutions to climate change. We know how to produce clean energy and sequester CO2. The current free market does not make those solutions profitable for investors, though, and we will have to change that. Solving climate change can be as simple as getting a carbon price adopted. It needs to ramp up over time, allow a secondary market for offsets, and create a cross-border network effect (e.g. carbon free trade zone), but it can actually be that simple. A "carbon tax" may be infeasible given current political norms, but a revenue neutral "carbon dividend" would have the same effect while being more progressive. So, if you are curious what you can do to solve climate change, consider contacting your representative.

neiman 7y ago
I'm asking out of ignorance. You're using the word "solutions". Do we know those are really "solutions", and not guesses for solutions? Like, will those actions reduce temperatures? It seems that some of what already happened, like melting of icebergs, is not easy to be revert.
- superpermutat0r 7y ago
  It's all trial and error and models that are not proved empirically. I'm pretty sure we do not know what those interventions will do and what their impact will eventually be.
- lisper 7y ago
  The line between a "solution" and a "mitigation" is not sharply drawn. As mitigations become more and more effective they eventually become solutions. There's no point quibbling over terminology.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
phkahler 7y ago
>> Solving climate change can be as simple as getting a carbon price adopted. It needs to ramp up over time, allow a secondary market for offsets The simple solution to this big global catastrophe is my favorite money making scam. Here, just create this market for carbon credits. It makes my guys money while doing Jack shit. Seriously, if you think CO2 is the problem, the solution is to simply tax those that either take it out of the ground or import it. Any other solution is political. Not saying I agree with the premise, but if you do, that's the solution.
- empath75 7y ago
  That’s essentially what he’s arguing for no?
  - Someone 7y ago
    Not quite. Taking carbon out of the ground isn’t a problem; bringing carbon into the atmosphere is. It also doesn’t matter where the carbon comes from.
- martythemaniak 7y ago
  So one hand you're saying GP's opinion that pricing (taxing) carbon is a scam (?) that won't work. On the other hand you're saying we need to tax carbon? What exactly is it that you're saying?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - phkahler 7y ago
    Taxing it at the source until the market figures out an alternative will eliminate it. Other solutions are just politics and money making scams. That what I'm saying.
tito 7y ago
Great to see you here! I wonder how many HN people are actively working on Climate change research. Maybe we could have a meetup or something. Here's our meetup on pulling carbon from the air, mainly in the Bay Area but want to spread out: https://meetup.com/airminers https://meetup.com/airminers
standardUser 7y ago
One simple thing we can all do is never vote for a candidate if they are not for aggressive and immediate measures to combat global warming. If the roughly 60-75% of Americans who believe human activity is causing climate change were to stop voting for individuals who don't believe this, we'd have meaningful change coming from the federal government within 2 years.
- new2628 7y ago
  What people _believe_ is largely irrelevant in almost all situations, whether you mean the voters or the elected officials. Only actions matter. This is not just semantics, some who believe in global warming fly every month or week, some who don't believe in global warming have not flown their entire life (to pick just one example). The latter do more to mitigate it than the former.
  - rapind 7y ago
    This is the issue. What people believe can be influenced, especially as it becomes increasingly inconvenient. Consider how many people are aware of social network micro manipulation / nudging but couldn't be bothered to just stop using Facebook. It's an easy action, easier than voting even, but it's not worth the inconvenience for the vast majority (yet). Climate change has some really terrible consequences, but until it gets real for people they'll only suffer so much inconvenience. My own pet peeve is when recycling bins get thrown in with the garbage... Shitty solutions will regress us, but shitty solutions are necessary for iteration, so /shrug.
  - badfrog 7y ago
    > The latter do more to mitigate it than the former. Electing leaders who ignore the problem does way more harm than the lifestyles of average people.
  - jonbronson 7y ago
    Except individual actions pale in comparison to the impact of industry. The single most impactful action individuals can take to combat climate change is not fly less, or use less water. It's voting for politicians that actually enact meaningful policy. Without that, the number of flights we all take is irrelevant.
wdn 7y ago
Yes, Al Gore already has a solution. All he and his buddies need is $15 trillion dollars. Just give the man the money so he can save Mother Earth.
mattmaroon 7y ago
Right. If solving global warming is a matter of money (which it obviously is) then the cost of global warming would be capped at that amount of money if we just managed to figure out a way to align incentives. Unfortunately right now the groups that create the problem don't bear the cost of the problem.
chrisco255 7y ago
Before any tax is issued, I'd like to know the exact percentage breakdown between man-made climate change and natural climate cycles? Can anyone break the percentage down for me, between man-made CO2 and natural CO2 being outgassed by oceans, and then breakdown the difference between CO2 induced warming and variations in the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the cosmic ray flux and it's impact on cloud cover as a result of variations in solar magnetic cycles, volcanic activity, and the El Nino Southern Oscillation? Can anyone break that down by percentages for me?
- maxerickson 7y ago
  The oceans are absorbing CO₂. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification Also, no one knows the exact percentage breakdown. No one. We can't even say with any sort of certainty what the current climate is, because it's something that is only really available retrospectively.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Here is a video that adresses some of your points. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg
  - tito 7y ago
    Nice, the video addresses myths such as: "Climate Change -- Isn't it natural?" Made by a former geologist, science journalists for 25 years.
- jakeinspace 7y ago
  If the climate were a linear system then that might be answerable with certainty, but it is not.
- guelo 7y ago
  The climate scientists that have spent years studying these issues and are making the dire predictions already know the answers to these issues. If you want to know the answers you could read their blogs and papers and textbooks.
glitchc 7y ago
I’m familiar with the science and I’m afraid to say there are no easy solutions to climate change. Every meaningful systemic solution requires a dramatic curtailment of our current energy use, and would have tremendous negative socioeconomic impact. In short, all meaningful solutions rely on everyone’s life getting a bit worse, and in many cases, esp. in the western world, a lot worse. Furthermore, any systemic solution that does not enforce global compliance and population control (I went there) is guaranteed to fail.
- jonbronson 7y ago
  I've read assessments from climate scientists that don't paint nearly as dark a situation in terms of what we CAN do. The hard part is simply making it a political reality. But even ignoring that, it's important to define "worse". Worse than a year round fire season constantly threatening to burn down your home? Worse than 50 year floods every single year? As the impacts of climate change become more real to individuals, I think you'll find the "worse" situation is not doing anything.
  - glitchc 7y ago
    Will just share some brief points. As we pump more energy into the atmosphere, the climate will continue to change until a new equilibrium is reached. There will be winners and losers when that happens, recall that the Sahara was once a tropical jungle, or that CO2 ppm was higher during the jurassic era. Florida may be unhabitable but Wyoming may become a paradise. Any city, county, state, country that looks to be a winner does not benefit from contributing to climate change efforts and therefore will find little incentive in doing so. Shifting focus to alternatives is noble, but the technology is years from maturation. It took us a long time to master the steam that drives electricity generation whether the plant is coal, oil, natural gas or nuclear (hydroelectric being the lone exception). These sources are mature enough to be reliable. We often take for granted the level of engineering effort involved in building and deploying a stable power grid. Switching to alternatives before they are mature will introduce instabilities across the grid, rolling brownouts/blackouts will be prevalent. Subways will shutdown in major cities at arbitrary times etc. It will dramatically reduce the quality of life. This is what happens in third world countries with inadequate and unstable grids. If you wonder why cellphones outsell desktops and laptops in Africa, this is partly why. The energy density per unit volume that gasoline offers is unmatched by all other sources except nuclear. It’s stable and portable, and yes it definitely damages the environment when produced or consumed, but then every fuel source does. There’s certainly some great work on better batteries, but it’s years, potentially decades, away from production grade. It’s also unclear whether there won’t be other externalities from mining and transmuting rare earth metals at the scale required to replace gasoline. We may be trading one problem for another. The world is also slowly running out of potable water. A big problem like climate change requires big solutions. A complete rethink of transportation, energy infrastructure, food production, housing, etc. at a national scale. And any sustainable solution will have to address population limits. But nobody has the courage to talk in those terms. Thing is, even if one country manages to wean itself off of fossil fuels, other, poorer countries will be happy to absorb the excess supply in the form of lower prices. How do we stop that? Put a global price on carbon? Look above for why certain countries won’t agree to that. That requires a one world govt., and we’re probably not getting one of those until we face a mass extinction event (meteor, aliens). Climate change is the ultimate tragedy of the commons. And humanity has a terrible track record as far as the commons are concerned.
11235813213455 7y ago
I'm much more in favor of sequestering CO2 naturally (planting trees everywhere possible, it also has huge benefits in well-being, air quality, ..), and forcing people to reduce their excessive consumerism
- ip26 7y ago
  A carbon tax or carbon dividend could include payouts for planting & maintaining trees, and it would increase the price tag of excessive consumerism.
rfish 7y ago
Hitler's final solution is also a solution to climate change. Carbon pricing will cause certain individuals not to be able to afford the necessities of life. If the free market cannot come up with a cheaper solution than our current CO2 emitting solution, then it is not a solution. Lets not destroy the quality of life in the now when in the possible near term a new technology will be created that will make the CO2 emissions an easily solvable problem. The best approach may be to keep the current standard of living going so more minds will be able to tackle the problem in the right way.
Misdicorl 7y ago
To actually prevent further global warming we need active planetary scale solutions. You paint far too rosy a picture here. A carbon tax is preventative, not active. There is no viable path to scale current sequestration techniques to global scale. What we're talking about with a carbon tax is not 'solving climate change'. It is limiting the change to approximately what current models predict.
- DennisP 7y ago
  If a carbon fee system grants transferable credits for sequestering ambient carbon, then it would pay for that too.
  - Misdicorl 7y ago
    This ignores the fact that the resources to sequester carbon simply do not exist at the required scale.
    - ip26 7y ago
      The entire point of a carbon credit system would be to produce the funding to develop those resources.
      - Misdicorl 7y ago
        But the funding is backwards. We need genuine engineering genius and/or fundamental scientific breakthroughs to have more than a laughable impact with industrial sequestration techniques. The return on investment will be hugely negative for the vast vast vast majority of efforts. This is a problem that is very well suited to direct public funding (we all benefit if a solution is found) and poorly suited for private enterprise (privatizing the benefit is unlikely to offset the costs to develop it on an average basis).
alex_young 7y ago
No it is not this simple. The damage already done has a very long tail. Thermal expansion will continue to increase sea level rise for hundreds of years even if we stop emitting co2 now [0]. We need to think about mitigation of the impact of future climate change in addition to addressing the root cause. [0] https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/question-20/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-chan...
neves 7y ago
To really solve climate change we need the American population to take it seriously. Blasting China won't change it since a lot of China's pollution is due to the developed countries exporting their most polluting industries. Europe is seriously confronting the situation, America's denying it (starting by its president). Here is a good article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/25/lambasting-china-over-their-emissions-might-impress-the-us-but-it-could-be-costly-for-australia https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/25/lambas...
ciconia 7y ago
> Solving climate change can be as simple as getting a carbon price adopted. Such a solution cannot work, as long as we have a growth-based economy. The fact is that economists have long regarded natural resources as infinite, and their models are conceived accordingly. Infinite growth is by definition incompatible with a finite planet. Until we have come up with a new, finite economic model (which means also a profound change to our way of living), I'm afraid there's no easy solution to the climate crisis.
- jariel 7y ago
  "Such a solution cannot work, as long as we have a growth-based economy. The fact is that economists have long regarded natural resources as infinite" This is a canard: the vast majority of 'growth' does not depend on natural resource extraction, and economists are quite aware that some resources are theoretically finite - but technology not only makes previously 'useless' materials 'useful' but increases the 'yield' makes better use of current material, and discovers new ways to extract material. For example, we were supposed to hit 'peak Oil' in the 1970's but extraction methods have improved such that vastly more Oil is available. The 'tar sands' in Canada and Venezuela for example were 'useless' 40 years ago, but given some price point and prevalence of specific technologies, they represent massive pools of fossil fools, the largest on earth on par with Saudi. The most disconcerting part of 'growth' is not resource extraction really it's population growth and the net per capita impact each individual has on the Earth. We can have growth in the quality of so many goods without externalities, but when 5B previously poor people on planet earth want to burn as much fossil fuel as is done in the modern world ... then we have trouble.
- johnsimer 7y ago
  We can adapt to a green and infinite model - solar energy is effectively infinite - assuming we adapt before catastrophe
  - godelski 7y ago
    What do you mean by solar energy being infinite? There's a clear limit to how much energy the sun outputs. If we had high efficiency collection it would last us for awhile. But I think a lesson to learn from all this is that no resource is unlimited and it's better to recognize those limitations and prepare a mitigating well ahead of time rather than when we're in crisis. Though lack of sufficient solar energy (because high energy demands) is not likely to be catastrophic.
mtbch 7y ago
The carbon tax and tech solutions are a must but won't be enough, due to lack of time. The science tells us we don't have much to turn things around, not nearly enough. Based on our history of energy transitions, even rolling out commercially available tech for low/zero carbon generation left to market forces will take many decades, almost a century. Then there are hard problems we simply have no low/zero carbon solution for at scale. Manufacturing pig iron for primary steel, ammonia, cement, industrial agriculture, plastics, shipping, aviation, etc. Also, AFAIK there does not exist a demonstrated technology for CO2 sequestration that scales and has the required CO2 emission balance (needs energy to run). Storage is also unsolved. I'm curious if you have a link. It took a century to build out the global oil infrastructure with its millions of miles of pipelines, pumps, oil tankers, etc. We'll need to handle multiple times the material flow for CO2 sequestration. And overhaul/retrofit/upgrade the entire global energy system, industry, transportation, shipping, agriculture... Even allowing for existing sequestration tech - there's no time. We need a quick head start that only cutting back consumption can give us. 10% of the population is responsible for 50% of global anthropogenic emissions. If the top 1% of emitters or the ~75 million people at the top cut back their consumption to the level of the average European's, global emissions would decrease by 30%. The current economics paradigm (~growth is a must) guarantees we can't solve climate change as growth cannot be decoupled from CO2 increase. This is a physics problem. Physics doesn't care about ROI or discount rates or tactics. We were given a diagnosis of terminal cancer quite some time ago and we refused to do chemo or undergo surgery because it would have meant a drastic change in our lifestyle. Now we are stage three. We still meet with our oncologist team from time to time, only to actively sabotage all of their attempts to save us. In 1988 the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 31 years, after 51 IPCC sessions and 25 major conferences our yearly CO2 emissions increased by 60%. That's how much we care. In 2019, Energy companies are still set on fully realizing their extractions rights and are actively seeking new oil and gas fields to exploit, including in the thawing arctic. We're still buliding 1500+ new coal power plants and hundreds of airports. We're busy entrenching our fossil fuel dependence. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are still on the rise. There's just no political will.

neiman 7y ago

I'm asking out of ignorance. You're using the word "solutions". Do we know those are really "solutions", and not guesses for solutions? Like, will those actions reduce temperatures? It seems that some of what already happened, like melting of icebergs, is not easy to be revert.

superpermutat0r 7y ago
It's all trial and error and models that are not proved empirically. I'm pretty sure we do not know what those interventions will do and what their impact will eventually be.
lisper 7y ago
The line between a "solution" and a "mitigation" is not sharply drawn. As mitigations become more and more effective they eventually become solutions. There's no point quibbling over terminology.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

phkahler 7y ago

>> Solving climate change can be as simple as getting a carbon price adopted. It needs to ramp up over time, allow a secondary market for offsets The simple solution to this big global catastrophe is my favorite money making scam. Here, just create this market for carbon credits. It makes my guys money while doing Jack shit. Seriously, if you think CO2 is the problem, the solution is to simply tax those that either take it out of the ground or import it. Any other solution is political. Not saying I agree with the premise, but if you do, that's the solution.

empath75 7y ago
That’s essentially what he’s arguing for no?
- Someone 7y ago
  Not quite. Taking carbon out of the ground isn’t a problem; bringing carbon into the atmosphere is. It also doesn’t matter where the carbon comes from.
martythemaniak 7y ago
So one hand you're saying GP's opinion that pricing (taxing) carbon is a scam (?) that won't work. On the other hand you're saying we need to tax carbon? What exactly is it that you're saying?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- phkahler 7y ago
  Taxing it at the source until the market figures out an alternative will eliminate it. Other solutions are just politics and money making scams. That what I'm saying.

tito 7y ago

Great to see you here! I wonder how many HN people are actively working on Climate change research. Maybe we could have a meetup or something. Here's our meetup on pulling carbon from the air, mainly in the Bay Area but want to spread out: https://meetup.com/airminers https://meetup.com/airminers

standardUser 7y ago

One simple thing we can all do is never vote for a candidate if they are not for aggressive and immediate measures to combat global warming. If the roughly 60-75% of Americans who believe human activity is causing climate change were to stop voting for individuals who don't believe this, we'd have meaningful change coming from the federal government within 2 years.

new2628 7y ago
What people _believe_ is largely irrelevant in almost all situations, whether you mean the voters or the elected officials. Only actions matter. This is not just semantics, some who believe in global warming fly every month or week, some who don't believe in global warming have not flown their entire life (to pick just one example). The latter do more to mitigate it than the former.
- rapind 7y ago
  This is the issue. What people believe can be influenced, especially as it becomes increasingly inconvenient. Consider how many people are aware of social network micro manipulation / nudging but couldn't be bothered to just stop using Facebook. It's an easy action, easier than voting even, but it's not worth the inconvenience for the vast majority (yet). Climate change has some really terrible consequences, but until it gets real for people they'll only suffer so much inconvenience. My own pet peeve is when recycling bins get thrown in with the garbage... Shitty solutions will regress us, but shitty solutions are necessary for iteration, so /shrug.
- badfrog 7y ago
  > The latter do more to mitigate it than the former. Electing leaders who ignore the problem does way more harm than the lifestyles of average people.
- jonbronson 7y ago
  Except individual actions pale in comparison to the impact of industry. The single most impactful action individuals can take to combat climate change is not fly less, or use less water. It's voting for politicians that actually enact meaningful policy. Without that, the number of flights we all take is irrelevant.

wdn 7y ago

Yes, Al Gore already has a solution. All he and his buddies need is $15 trillion dollars. Just give the man the money so he can save Mother Earth.

mattmaroon 7y ago

Right. If solving global warming is a matter of money (which it obviously is) then the cost of global warming would be capped at that amount of money if we just managed to figure out a way to align incentives. Unfortunately right now the groups that create the problem don't bear the cost of the problem.

chrisco255 7y ago

Before any tax is issued, I'd like to know the exact percentage breakdown between man-made climate change and natural climate cycles? Can anyone break the percentage down for me, between man-made CO2 and natural CO2 being outgassed by oceans, and then breakdown the difference between CO2 induced warming and variations in the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the cosmic ray flux and it's impact on cloud cover as a result of variations in solar magnetic cycles, volcanic activity, and the El Nino Southern Oscillation? Can anyone break that down by percentages for me?

maxerickson 7y ago
The oceans are absorbing CO₂. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification Also, no one knows the exact percentage breakdown. No one. We can't even say with any sort of certainty what the current climate is, because it's something that is only really available retrospectively.
imtringued 7y ago
Here is a video that adresses some of your points. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg
- tito 7y ago
  Nice, the video addresses myths such as: "Climate Change -- Isn't it natural?" Made by a former geologist, science journalists for 25 years.
jakeinspace 7y ago
If the climate were a linear system then that might be answerable with certainty, but it is not.
guelo 7y ago
The climate scientists that have spent years studying these issues and are making the dire predictions already know the answers to these issues. If you want to know the answers you could read their blogs and papers and textbooks.

glitchc 7y ago

I’m familiar with the science and I’m afraid to say there are no easy solutions to climate change. Every meaningful systemic solution requires a dramatic curtailment of our current energy use, and would have tremendous negative socioeconomic impact. In short, all meaningful solutions rely on everyone’s life getting a bit worse, and in many cases, esp. in the western world, a lot worse. Furthermore, any systemic solution that does not enforce global compliance and population control (I went there) is guaranteed to fail.

jonbronson 7y ago
I've read assessments from climate scientists that don't paint nearly as dark a situation in terms of what we CAN do. The hard part is simply making it a political reality. But even ignoring that, it's important to define "worse". Worse than a year round fire season constantly threatening to burn down your home? Worse than 50 year floods every single year? As the impacts of climate change become more real to individuals, I think you'll find the "worse" situation is not doing anything.
- glitchc 7y ago
  Will just share some brief points. As we pump more energy into the atmosphere, the climate will continue to change until a new equilibrium is reached. There will be winners and losers when that happens, recall that the Sahara was once a tropical jungle, or that CO2 ppm was higher during the jurassic era. Florida may be unhabitable but Wyoming may become a paradise. Any city, county, state, country that looks to be a winner does not benefit from contributing to climate change efforts and therefore will find little incentive in doing so. Shifting focus to alternatives is noble, but the technology is years from maturation. It took us a long time to master the steam that drives electricity generation whether the plant is coal, oil, natural gas or nuclear (hydroelectric being the lone exception). These sources are mature enough to be reliable. We often take for granted the level of engineering effort involved in building and deploying a stable power grid. Switching to alternatives before they are mature will introduce instabilities across the grid, rolling brownouts/blackouts will be prevalent. Subways will shutdown in major cities at arbitrary times etc. It will dramatically reduce the quality of life. This is what happens in third world countries with inadequate and unstable grids. If you wonder why cellphones outsell desktops and laptops in Africa, this is partly why. The energy density per unit volume that gasoline offers is unmatched by all other sources except nuclear. It’s stable and portable, and yes it definitely damages the environment when produced or consumed, but then every fuel source does. There’s certainly some great work on better batteries, but it’s years, potentially decades, away from production grade. It’s also unclear whether there won’t be other externalities from mining and transmuting rare earth metals at the scale required to replace gasoline. We may be trading one problem for another. The world is also slowly running out of potable water. A big problem like climate change requires big solutions. A complete rethink of transportation, energy infrastructure, food production, housing, etc. at a national scale. And any sustainable solution will have to address population limits. But nobody has the courage to talk in those terms. Thing is, even if one country manages to wean itself off of fossil fuels, other, poorer countries will be happy to absorb the excess supply in the form of lower prices. How do we stop that? Put a global price on carbon? Look above for why certain countries won’t agree to that. That requires a one world govt., and we’re probably not getting one of those until we face a mass extinction event (meteor, aliens). Climate change is the ultimate tragedy of the commons. And humanity has a terrible track record as far as the commons are concerned.

11235813213455 7y ago

I'm much more in favor of sequestering CO2 naturally (planting trees everywhere possible, it also has huge benefits in well-being, air quality, ..), and forcing people to reduce their excessive consumerism

ip26 7y ago
A carbon tax or carbon dividend could include payouts for planting & maintaining trees, and it would increase the price tag of excessive consumerism.

rfish 7y ago

Hitler's final solution is also a solution to climate change. Carbon pricing will cause certain individuals not to be able to afford the necessities of life. If the free market cannot come up with a cheaper solution than our current CO2 emitting solution, then it is not a solution. Lets not destroy the quality of life in the now when in the possible near term a new technology will be created that will make the CO2 emissions an easily solvable problem. The best approach may be to keep the current standard of living going so more minds will be able to tackle the problem in the right way.

Misdicorl 7y ago

To actually prevent further global warming we need active planetary scale solutions. You paint far too rosy a picture here. A carbon tax is preventative, not active. There is no viable path to scale current sequestration techniques to global scale. What we're talking about with a carbon tax is not 'solving climate change'. It is limiting the change to approximately what current models predict.

DennisP 7y ago
If a carbon fee system grants transferable credits for sequestering ambient carbon, then it would pay for that too.
- Misdicorl 7y ago
  This ignores the fact that the resources to sequester carbon simply do not exist at the required scale.
  - ip26 7y ago
    The entire point of a carbon credit system would be to produce the funding to develop those resources.
    - Misdicorl 7y ago
      But the funding is backwards. We need genuine engineering genius and/or fundamental scientific breakthroughs to have more than a laughable impact with industrial sequestration techniques. The return on investment will be hugely negative for the vast vast vast majority of efforts. This is a problem that is very well suited to direct public funding (we all benefit if a solution is found) and poorly suited for private enterprise (privatizing the benefit is unlikely to offset the costs to develop it on an average basis).

alex_young 7y ago

No it is not this simple. The damage already done has a very long tail. Thermal expansion will continue to increase sea level rise for hundreds of years even if we stop emitting co2 now [0]. We need to think about mitigation of the impact of future climate change in addition to addressing the root cause. [0] https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/question-20/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-chan...

neves 7y ago

To really solve climate change we need the American population to take it seriously. Blasting China won't change it since a lot of China's pollution is due to the developed countries exporting their most polluting industries. Europe is seriously confronting the situation, America's denying it (starting by its president). Here is a good article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/25/lambasting-china-over-their-emissions-might-impress-the-us-but-it-could-be-costly-for-australia https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/25/lambas...

ciconia 7y ago

> Solving climate change can be as simple as getting a carbon price adopted. Such a solution cannot work, as long as we have a growth-based economy. The fact is that economists have long regarded natural resources as infinite, and their models are conceived accordingly. Infinite growth is by definition incompatible with a finite planet. Until we have come up with a new, finite economic model (which means also a profound change to our way of living), I'm afraid there's no easy solution to the climate crisis.

jariel 7y ago
"Such a solution cannot work, as long as we have a growth-based economy. The fact is that economists have long regarded natural resources as infinite" This is a canard: the vast majority of 'growth' does not depend on natural resource extraction, and economists are quite aware that some resources are theoretically finite - but technology not only makes previously 'useless' materials 'useful' but increases the 'yield' makes better use of current material, and discovers new ways to extract material. For example, we were supposed to hit 'peak Oil' in the 1970's but extraction methods have improved such that vastly more Oil is available. The 'tar sands' in Canada and Venezuela for example were 'useless' 40 years ago, but given some price point and prevalence of specific technologies, they represent massive pools of fossil fools, the largest on earth on par with Saudi. The most disconcerting part of 'growth' is not resource extraction really it's population growth and the net per capita impact each individual has on the Earth. We can have growth in the quality of so many goods without externalities, but when 5B previously poor people on planet earth want to burn as much fossil fuel as is done in the modern world ... then we have trouble.
johnsimer 7y ago
We can adapt to a green and infinite model - solar energy is effectively infinite - assuming we adapt before catastrophe
- godelski 7y ago
  What do you mean by solar energy being infinite? There's a clear limit to how much energy the sun outputs. If we had high efficiency collection it would last us for awhile. But I think a lesson to learn from all this is that no resource is unlimited and it's better to recognize those limitations and prepare a mitigating well ahead of time rather than when we're in crisis. Though lack of sufficient solar energy (because high energy demands) is not likely to be catastrophic.

mtbch 7y ago

The carbon tax and tech solutions are a must but won't be enough, due to lack of time. The science tells us we don't have much to turn things around, not nearly enough. Based on our history of energy transitions, even rolling out commercially available tech for low/zero carbon generation left to market forces will take many decades, almost a century. Then there are hard problems we simply have no low/zero carbon solution for at scale. Manufacturing pig iron for primary steel, ammonia, cement, industrial agriculture, plastics, shipping, aviation, etc. Also, AFAIK there does not exist a demonstrated technology for CO2 sequestration that scales and has the required CO2 emission balance (needs energy to run). Storage is also unsolved. I'm curious if you have a link. It took a century to build out the global oil infrastructure with its millions of miles of pipelines, pumps, oil tankers, etc. We'll need to handle multiple times the material flow for CO2 sequestration. And overhaul/retrofit/upgrade the entire global energy system, industry, transportation, shipping, agriculture... Even allowing for existing sequestration tech - there's no time. We need a quick head start that only cutting back consumption can give us. 10% of the population is responsible for 50% of global anthropogenic emissions. If the top 1% of emitters or the ~75 million people at the top cut back their consumption to the level of the average European's, global emissions would decrease by 30%. The current economics paradigm (~growth is a must) guarantees we can't solve climate change as growth cannot be decoupled from CO2 increase. This is a physics problem. Physics doesn't care about ROI or discount rates or tactics. We were given a diagnosis of terminal cancer quite some time ago and we refused to do chemo or undergo surgery because it would have meant a drastic change in our lifestyle. Now we are stage three. We still meet with our oncologist team from time to time, only to actively sabotage all of their attempts to save us. In 1988 the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 31 years, after 51 IPCC sessions and 25 major conferences our yearly CO2 emissions increased by 60%. That's how much we care. In 2019, Energy companies are still set on fully realizing their extractions rights and are actively seeking new oil and gas fields to exploit, including in the thawing arctic. We're still buliding 1500+ new coal power plants and hundreds of airports. We're busy entrenching our fossil fuel dependence. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are still on the rise. There's just no political will.