12 ms·

Climate talks break up with no agreement on carbon trading

95 points by chewz 7y ago

ianai 7y ago
Anyone have a non paywall source? Might be more of a conversation if we had something to read.
- chewz 7y ago
  > Longest-ever round of negotiations fails to make progress on key issue > The UN climate talks in Madrid ended in stalemate on Sunday, with the negotiations running two days overtime as countries squabbled over rules for a new global carbon trading market. > At 14 days the talks, known as COP25, set a record for the longest-ever climate negotiations, but failed to produce any agreement about the rules for trading in carbon credits. > Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said: “Governments need to completely rethink how they do this, because the outcome of COP25 is totally unacceptable.” [] > Geopolitical tension and the absence of leadership from the US and China, the world’s two biggest emitters, severely handicapped the negotiations, which descended into open bickering on the plenary floor during the final hours of the talks. > The Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C, has been signed by 197 countries in the world, but the US is in the process of withdrawing from it and will leave the pact next November. > The EU delegation said it was disappointed that the meetings failed to find agreement on carbon markets.
- LeftHandPath 7y ago
  Fair point. For the record, though, if you ever do decide to pay for news, FT is one of a few that are actually worth the money.
  - ddevault 7y ago
    It's actually part of the HN submission guidelines that any paywalled article has to have a known workaround: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html I flagged this submission for that reason.
leppr 7y ago
http://archive.is/qnLyL http://archive.is/qnLyL
perfunctory 7y ago
This is not very surprising, is it? How many more data points do we need to conclude that COPs never achieve anything? I think it’s time to acknowledge that our “leaders” have failed us.
- chewz 7y ago
  This is the thesis of Naomi Klein books. Current political system and pseudo-market solutions are incapable of solving the climate problem. And so far, unfortunately it is proven right. I do agree in principle (with some reservations perhaps). [] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21913812-this-changes-everything https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21913812-this-changes-ev...
  - ianai 7y ago
    Does the book offer alternatives?
    - martythemaniak 7y ago
      Her husband was mulling a run for leader of canada's left-wing party, so they tried to make this part of their official policy: https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/ https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/ Whether you think that's an alternative, or a <expletive deleted> is up to you.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    Except that if we instituted a simple carbon auction it's provably effective (not just theoretical, it very effective for NOx and SOx). I suppose that's not a pseudo market solution, that's a real market solution, unlike all of the trading proposals being put forth at the moment.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      An auction is a tax in disguise, the only difference is that if the government doesn't get the quantity exactly right it will either make the whole thing toothless or destroy its own economy. About NOx and SOx, those are local pollutants. Local problems are much easier to fix.
cryoshon 7y ago
high profile failures like this are exactly why i'm taking things into my own hands and starting a company dedicated to making the voluntary purchase of carbon credits/offsets accessible to the public and to small/mid-sized companies. we can't wait for the political leadership to get their game together any longer, and we can't wait for the part of the population that doesn't belive there is a crisis to come around either. we need to start financing the prevention or removal of carbon from the atmosphere today, using the voluntary carbon markets that we have. there aren't another five or ten years of indecision that we can afford to waste. and we don't have any better system for emissions reductions, yet. those of us who understand the gravity of our present climate situation have the burden of carrying everyone else on our backs to the extent that we are able. addressing our planet's health is not something that will be fair in terms of the responsibilities that we need to take. an idealistic few must come forth and create the means for our mutual salvation, and they can expect only to thanklessly toil in the short-term. it's a bitter pill to swallow, but we need to accept it and start moving forward rather than getting mired in spite towards those who won't help, or fatalism that we can't change our situation. taking action will be our protection against depression, and chipping away at our planet's climate crisis will inspire others to join our efforts. send me an email (it's in my profile) if you want to help/join me. i need anyone and everyone who wants to contribute. but be warned: if you want to join my effort, at present i can promise you nothing but my appreciation and the assurance that you're trying to be one of the good guys.
- azeirah 7y ago
  As I understand it, the voluntary purchase of carbon credits and offsets is already accessible to the public and to small to mid-sized companies, no? I am fully with you on the importance of acting now on any grounds we can, politically, financially, with business, etcetc, don't get me wrong. In what way will your business differ from other carbon offset businesses? I google, and I find terrapass. I donate to cotap on a monthly basis. All of these are very accessible, or am I missing something?
  - cryoshon 7y ago
    sure, offsets are technically purchaseable -- if you know what they are, where to buy them, which sellers are reputable, which type of offset/credit/other carbon instrument you want to buy, what's the difference between different types of carbon instrument, how retirement of an instrument works, etc. you are probably someone who cares about this stuff roughly a million times more than the average member of the public, but for most people, the actions you specified aren't on the radar. nobody i've spoken to has even known about offsets, nevermind what they do or how to access the markets as an individual. people do vaguely know about the idea of "cap and trade", but that's not exactly something they think of as being relevant to their lives or their efforts to mitigate climate change, even if it is. there's a huge gap between the public's willingness to participate in these type of carbon reduction plans and their knowledge about how to actually do so and how much they should actually be contributing to make up for their personal carbon footprint. i'm not proposing to do anything revolutionary. creating a new source of offsets is a non-starter. my idea is merely to close the gap. to inform people that they aren't powerless, and to reduce the friction of navigating the carbon markets at the scale they would prefer.
HocusLocus 7y ago
Brings to mind an absurd idea of software development companies gathering to discuss the international exchange of stack pointers.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
Given that a lot of the representatives flew to the climate talks, and did not reach any sort of climate deal, the COP25 resulted in a lot of CO2 production for no benefit.
- melling 7y ago
  The "...but they fly" comment comes up a lot. Flying results in 2% of global CO2 emissions a year. That's hundreds of thousands of flights a day over an entire year. Coal powered electricity results in an incredible amount of green house emissions, and it's just plain bad for the environment. How about we stop complaining about flying and stop using coal? Please, note I didn't say fossil fuels, I said coal: https://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-climate-change/ https://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-... We might actually buy ourselves some real time on climate change.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    “We” could stop using coal tomorrow and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. China’s out-of-control coal mine fires alone amount to more CO2 emissions than most countries and that is still a tiny fraction of their total. Flying is relevant because nothing undermines the message more than “you must curtail your lifestyle but I won’t mine”. Exactly how many climate summits have been held over videoconferencing? My employer has massively cut back on flying to meetings, we have a big screen in every meeting room instead, it works pretty well. Meanwhile politicians and celebrities refuse to cut back on private jets. There’s no truer form of climate denial than that!
    - melling 7y ago
      "We" ... that's why I wrote the blog so I can stop repeating myself: "Buy from companies, and countries, that don’t use electricity from coal. Certify with either “Made with Coal Free Electric” or a nice little logo." US and European consumer buying choices can make a difference.
    - kolinko 7y ago
roamerz 7y ago
From personal perspective - and I would definitely be classified here as a carbon tax obstructionist - thanks to the likes of Al Gore and all the tax happy socialist liberals - go after the visible pollutants. Diesel trucks and coal burning for example. When the politicians of my state (Oregon) start to restrict, tax and outlaw things like natural gas I fight them on everything they do whether it’s right or not because I now believe them to be liars snd idiots. Lets plant trees and harvest them for building. I like those ideas. Tax carbon? Promote something do-able to the common sense public at large or fail. This post is not meant to incite any discord but rather just give an honest viewpoint.
- imtringued 7y ago
  The obsolete technologies are artificially kept alive through direct and indirect government subsidies. The only thing that stops us from reducing carbon emissions is that we don't choose to reduce carbon emissions. Electric cars are too expensive? Just build more of them and the price will go down. Battery storage is too expensive? Just build more and the price will go down. Renewables are too expensive? Just build more and the price will go down. It's a matter of choosing the new technology and right now nobody is choosing. Lots of people are proud about polluting the environment and I don't think I can change their mind, the government can't. We all know what this means: nothing can.
acollins1331 7y ago
The cost of removing carbon from the atmosphere far outweighs the cost of not putting it there in the first place. We need bold leadership.
josho 7y ago
Carbon trading is a scheme for bankers to profit from climate change. The solution is simple —carbon tax. Additionally it is ideal for the carbon tax to be revenue neutral.
- konschubert 7y ago
  Carbon trading means no additional tax burden is placed on the economy, the biggest emitters simply pay to those that go green. By limiting the number of certificates, you can steer exactly how much CO2 will be emitted in any given year. And the cost of CO2 means that procedures that reduce CO2 emissions become financially viable, starting with the most effective ones. Assuming you can track CO2 emissions correctly, it’s a genius instrument.
  - mc32 7y ago
    A carbon tax would have similar incentives. Green producers and products get taxed less than brown producers. It also doesn’t matter if the product comes from Timbuktu or Savannah, it just matters how green or not green it is. Carbon trading would result in billionaires and large funds finding a new way to make more money at the expense of everyone else and solve little.
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    > Assuming you can track CO2 emissions Also assuming that you meaningfully enforce violations. Although this is also a problem for a tax.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Carbon trading is a huge subside to the current polluters at the expensive of future polluters, indifferent to future polluters polluting more or less than current ones. It is a great way to destroy a market (and a very important one), creating monopolies everywhere.
  - josho 7y ago
    It is not genius. It creates a new financial instrument for the mega banks to extract yet another rent from. A tax at CO2 origination is simpler, less opportunity to game, and more effective.
solarwind 7y ago
Carbon is not a synonym for carbon dioxide. https://www.cfact.org/2019/04/25/carbon-is-not-a-synonym-for-carbon-dioxide/ https://www.cfact.org/2019/04/25/carbon-is-not-a-synonym-for...
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  In common parlance it absolutely is.
- helloiamafish 7y ago
  Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I’m sure no one else in this largely well-educated crowd figured that out.
lowken10 7y ago
I just can’t believe what a bunch of morons you people are. You buy this climate change garbage? Wow!
rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
Who think we need carbon trading to fight climate change, except traders, their friends (e.g Financial Times) and their clients?
throwaway122378 7y ago
Corporate and consumerism waste needs to be addressed first. -Leasing new cars every 3 years -New iPhone every 2-4 years -New clothes every season -Corporate flights vs teleconferencing -Amazon should be there own investigation And so on.
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  Wouldn't bundling the costs of the negative externalities associated with the production of the new cars, iPhones, and clothes as a tax levied against the manufacturers "address" the "consumerism waste"? Manufacturers are very good at passing costs on to consumers, and innovating to drive costs down in the face of competition. If your goal really is to reduce environmental impact (and not just being "anti-consumerist") then it would seem like using the market to do that would make more sense vs. trying to change the habits of mass numbers of individuals.
- joeblow9999 7y ago
  What does new clothes have to do with climate change? In the scheme of things it's all about vehicle emission and coal fired power plants. Everything else pales in comparison so focus on those.
rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
There are hundreds of news articles about the COP 25 and somehow we chose the Financial Times as the article we should comment on. That says a lot about our bewilderment (cf. their self-serving focus on carbon trading).
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  What does it say to you? What it says to me: I know that climate change is an extremely serious problem we need to solve and I believe economics is the right place to look for the tools we'll need to incentive people to do better.
  - Joeri 7y ago
    Economics has already given us the solution long ago. Climate is an externality. You solve problems with externalities by pricing them into goods and services. That was clear for climate change back in the 90’s. Everything since then has not been in the realm of economics but of politics. If the climate change problem will be solved, the solution will have to be political.
LatteLazy 7y ago
Without the US, China and India, these programs are all pointless. The US, China, and India are not willing to commit. So the rest if us might as well go home. I know its encouraging to pretend things are working. But they're not. The time for non binding commitments ended in the 90s. Now is (and has long been) the time for cold hard facts.
- makerofspoons 7y ago
  Steep tariffs are needed on goods from countries that won't play ball.
  - LatteLazy 7y ago
    If it were the US OR China I might agree. But I don't think we can isolate both at the same time. Maybe with trump sabre rattling, the Chinese will get on board. Who knows
jandrewrogers 7y ago
Many years ago, I actively engaged the political discussion surrounding carbon markets, as I thought I might be able to help. I've been directly involved in similar types of international negotiations, albeit at a smaller scale and unrelated to carbon markets. Talking to people involved in the carbon market negotiation made it abundantly clear why there will never be a useful outcome. Most of the governments involved in negotiating a common international agreements on carbon markets unofficially represent for-profit interests seeking advantage in the structure of the carbon market. There is an enormous amount of profit that can be realized here, and the good faith actors are in the minority. This is quite normal even in small international agreements but it becomes exponentially harder to arrive at an agreement that is minimally corrupted with respect to its nominal purpose as the profit incentive to corrupt the agreement increases. The last time I looked in on the current state of the carbon market negotiations, it had been corrupted beyond redemption. I have no faith that something useful will result. This is why international agreements are unlikely to have a material impact on climate change. International agreements tend to only be effective when there is minimal profit or advantage to be gained by corrupting the purpose of the agreement. Climate change activities simply involve too much money for an international agreement to produce a credible outcome. It is the wrong tool for the job.
- vijaybritto 7y ago
  In short: capitalism
  - carapace 7y ago
    I disagree, I think it's just simple greed. Capitalists are more-or-less rational and not unintelligent. Greed explains why e.g. VW would cheat on emissions tests, etc.
    - vijaybritto 7y ago
      Capitalism inevitably leads to consolidation of power and greed.
- philips 7y ago
ars 7y ago
This doesn't surprise me one bit. Government is 100% of the wrong place to solve this. And that's because they can't no matter what they do it's impossible for them to do that. This can only be solved in the research field with better energy sources. And it can be solved in the finance field with cheaper energy sources. Government regulation cannot solve this.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I agree with you that government regulation can't solve the problem, but I think that government has to be a part of solving the problem. They have to make solving the problem financially reasonable. We will need money to be spent on taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Companies aren't going to do that without a financial incentive.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I'm not convinced technology is going to help us. We have had amazing efficiency gains for aircraft but increased air travel has eaten all the gains and a lot more. We have built more efficient cars but wasted that by building bigger cars and driving them further. Insulation standards in homes have increased but we build bigger homes further from the centres. The list goes on and on. The only thing that has made a real difference is switching from coal to gas in places like the UK. But even then gas heating in our homes is emitting more CO2 than any other sector. Wind and solar are too intermittent to replace base load, there isn't enough cobalt in the world to build enough storage, there probably isn't enough uranium to switch everyone to nuclear. I can't see people accepting a shift from an energy system based on stocks to one based on flow and the intermittency that comes with that. My neighbours go a bit bananas when the power is off for thirty minutes. We really are fucked.
- imtringued 7y ago
  >And it can be solved in the finance field with cheaper energy sources. In Germany the market prices for electricity go down but at the same time the residential rates go up massively. There are two reasons for that. Firstly coal plants can't throttle down but PV and wind farms get paid anyway through a surcharge. Secondly large industrial consumers are exempt from the surcharge. This means residential users are paying the electric bills of aluminum smelters, etc. In other words. The cheaper the electricity in Germany the higher the final price. Isn't that absurd? The surcharge wouldn't be needed if there was a working CO2 tax or carbon trade system because all coal plants would be shut down and replaced by load following natural gas plants which only run when truly necessary.
seaghost 7y ago
Greed will kill us all.
einpoklum 7y ago
Carbon trading is when a polluting economy/state throws its weight around to keep polluting. It's that simple and that wrong. There should be no such "credits", just emissions reduction plans - and the states which should be required to reduce the most and the fastest are those which pollute the most per capita, and the most period. Of course, this won't happen because the largest polluters are also the most politically powerful, so they rig things in their favor. Let's name the names: China, US, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Iran, South Korea, Canada, Brazil. https://www.countryaah.com/top-10-countries-that-contribute-most-to-global-warming/ https://www.countryaah.com/top-10-countries-that-contribute-... What should be negotiable IMHO is: * How to account for the unfairness in the fact that some countries got to pollute freely for a couple of centuries while others didn't get this "free pass" and are still behind in grid development. * The question of whether absolute pollution should count more than pollution per capita or the other way around. * The extent and the form of aid by richer/more industrially-developed economies should be committed to help with technology to poorer economies which already pollute a lot and will have difficulties adjusting independently.
plutonorm 7y ago
The only way this is getting sorted is if a benevolent AI takes the world by force. And that's not going to happen on this timeline. So we are pretty much assured to be descending into resource wars, mass migration and civil unrest. Trump, Boris and Brexit are the first signs of the developed world pulling up the drawbridges. It's kind of like an emotional response within the brain. We feel trouble significantly before we can reason about it. The emotional response is the fast, unthinking systems of the mind which respond to danger. People on the ground are feeling the danger even though they can't quite put their finger on the reason. And so we get polarisation and isolationist policies.
imtringued 7y ago
There won't be a carbon tax in Germany. People are allergic to anything that has tax in the name. Instead Angela Merkel has chosen to strengthen the CO2 certificate trade in Germany which is known to be ineffective by design [0]. So if international carbon trading doesn't work either then that means there is no effective policy that will allow us to reach our CO2 goals. The only hope that we have left is that speculative investors drive up the price. The more middlemen the better. If everyone bought 100€ worth of certificates every year and only sold when the price goes up it and keep them forever if the price goes down then this would at least simulate the effects of a CO2 tax because the effects would ripple through the entire economy without requiring action from politicians. Paying directly for your own carbon sequestration doesn't work because it only has local effects, doesn't encourage prevention of emissions and it is effectively a letter of indulgence ("I'm free of my sin"). [0] many sectors are exempt, a base amount of certificates is handed out for free, the price is always low because there are too many CO2 certificates
skitout 7y ago
By the way, IMF says that globally, fossil fuel subsidies represent $4.7 trillion / year... https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo...

95 points by chewz 7y ago

ianai 7y ago

Anyone have a non paywall source? Might be more of a conversation if we had something to read.

chewz 7y ago
> Longest-ever round of negotiations fails to make progress on key issue > The UN climate talks in Madrid ended in stalemate on Sunday, with the negotiations running two days overtime as countries squabbled over rules for a new global carbon trading market. > At 14 days the talks, known as COP25, set a record for the longest-ever climate negotiations, but failed to produce any agreement about the rules for trading in carbon credits. > Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said: “Governments need to completely rethink how they do this, because the outcome of COP25 is totally unacceptable.” [] > Geopolitical tension and the absence of leadership from the US and China, the world’s two biggest emitters, severely handicapped the negotiations, which descended into open bickering on the plenary floor during the final hours of the talks. > The Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C, has been signed by 197 countries in the world, but the US is in the process of withdrawing from it and will leave the pact next November. > The EU delegation said it was disappointed that the meetings failed to find agreement on carbon markets.
LeftHandPath 7y ago
Fair point. For the record, though, if you ever do decide to pay for news, FT is one of a few that are actually worth the money.
- ddevault 7y ago
  It's actually part of the HN submission guidelines that any paywalled article has to have a known workaround: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html I flagged this submission for that reason.

leppr 7y ago

http://archive.is/qnLyL http://archive.is/qnLyL

perfunctory 7y ago

This is not very surprising, is it? How many more data points do we need to conclude that COPs never achieve anything? I think it’s time to acknowledge that our “leaders” have failed us.

chewz 7y ago
This is the thesis of Naomi Klein books. Current political system and pseudo-market solutions are incapable of solving the climate problem. And so far, unfortunately it is proven right. I do agree in principle (with some reservations perhaps). [] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21913812-this-changes-everything https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21913812-this-changes-ev...
- ianai 7y ago
  Does the book offer alternatives?
  - martythemaniak 7y ago
    Her husband was mulling a run for leader of canada's left-wing party, so they tried to make this part of their official policy: https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/ https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/ Whether you think that's an alternative, or a <expletive deleted> is up to you.
- dnautics 7y ago
  Except that if we instituted a simple carbon auction it's provably effective (not just theoretical, it very effective for NOx and SOx). I suppose that's not a pseudo market solution, that's a real market solution, unlike all of the trading proposals being put forth at the moment.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    An auction is a tax in disguise, the only difference is that if the government doesn't get the quantity exactly right it will either make the whole thing toothless or destroy its own economy. About NOx and SOx, those are local pollutants. Local problems are much easier to fix.

cryoshon 7y ago

high profile failures like this are exactly why i'm taking things into my own hands and starting a company dedicated to making the voluntary purchase of carbon credits/offsets accessible to the public and to small/mid-sized companies. we can't wait for the political leadership to get their game together any longer, and we can't wait for the part of the population that doesn't belive there is a crisis to come around either. we need to start financing the prevention or removal of carbon from the atmosphere today, using the voluntary carbon markets that we have. there aren't another five or ten years of indecision that we can afford to waste. and we don't have any better system for emissions reductions, yet. those of us who understand the gravity of our present climate situation have the burden of carrying everyone else on our backs to the extent that we are able. addressing our planet's health is not something that will be fair in terms of the responsibilities that we need to take. an idealistic few must come forth and create the means for our mutual salvation, and they can expect only to thanklessly toil in the short-term. it's a bitter pill to swallow, but we need to accept it and start moving forward rather than getting mired in spite towards those who won't help, or fatalism that we can't change our situation. taking action will be our protection against depression, and chipping away at our planet's climate crisis will inspire others to join our efforts. send me an email (it's in my profile) if you want to help/join me. i need anyone and everyone who wants to contribute. but be warned: if you want to join my effort, at present i can promise you nothing but my appreciation and the assurance that you're trying to be one of the good guys.

azeirah 7y ago
As I understand it, the voluntary purchase of carbon credits and offsets is already accessible to the public and to small to mid-sized companies, no? I am fully with you on the importance of acting now on any grounds we can, politically, financially, with business, etcetc, don't get me wrong. In what way will your business differ from other carbon offset businesses? I google, and I find terrapass. I donate to cotap on a monthly basis. All of these are very accessible, or am I missing something?
- cryoshon 7y ago
  sure, offsets are technically purchaseable -- if you know what they are, where to buy them, which sellers are reputable, which type of offset/credit/other carbon instrument you want to buy, what's the difference between different types of carbon instrument, how retirement of an instrument works, etc. you are probably someone who cares about this stuff roughly a million times more than the average member of the public, but for most people, the actions you specified aren't on the radar. nobody i've spoken to has even known about offsets, nevermind what they do or how to access the markets as an individual. people do vaguely know about the idea of "cap and trade", but that's not exactly something they think of as being relevant to their lives or their efforts to mitigate climate change, even if it is. there's a huge gap between the public's willingness to participate in these type of carbon reduction plans and their knowledge about how to actually do so and how much they should actually be contributing to make up for their personal carbon footprint. i'm not proposing to do anything revolutionary. creating a new source of offsets is a non-starter. my idea is merely to close the gap. to inform people that they aren't powerless, and to reduce the friction of navigating the carbon markets at the scale they would prefer.

HocusLocus 7y ago

Brings to mind an absurd idea of software development companies gathering to discuss the international exchange of stack pointers.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

Given that a lot of the representatives flew to the climate talks, and did not reach any sort of climate deal, the COP25 resulted in a lot of CO2 production for no benefit.

melling 7y ago
The "...but they fly" comment comes up a lot. Flying results in 2% of global CO2 emissions a year. That's hundreds of thousands of flights a day over an entire year. Coal powered electricity results in an incredible amount of green house emissions, and it's just plain bad for the environment. How about we stop complaining about flying and stop using coal? Please, note I didn't say fossil fuels, I said coal: https://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-climate-change/ https://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-... We might actually buy ourselves some real time on climate change.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  “We” could stop using coal tomorrow and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. China’s out-of-control coal mine fires alone amount to more CO2 emissions than most countries and that is still a tiny fraction of their total. Flying is relevant because nothing undermines the message more than “you must curtail your lifestyle but I won’t mine”. Exactly how many climate summits have been held over videoconferencing? My employer has massively cut back on flying to meetings, we have a big screen in every meeting room instead, it works pretty well. Meanwhile politicians and celebrities refuse to cut back on private jets. There’s no truer form of climate denial than that!
  - melling 7y ago
    "We" ... that's why I wrote the blog so I can stop repeating myself: "Buy from companies, and countries, that don’t use electricity from coal. Certify with either “Made with Coal Free Electric” or a nice little logo." US and European consumer buying choices can make a difference.
  - kolinko 7y ago

roamerz 7y ago

From personal perspective - and I would definitely be classified here as a carbon tax obstructionist - thanks to the likes of Al Gore and all the tax happy socialist liberals - go after the visible pollutants. Diesel trucks and coal burning for example. When the politicians of my state (Oregon) start to restrict, tax and outlaw things like natural gas I fight them on everything they do whether it’s right or not because I now believe them to be liars snd idiots. Lets plant trees and harvest them for building. I like those ideas. Tax carbon? Promote something do-able to the common sense public at large or fail. This post is not meant to incite any discord but rather just give an honest viewpoint.

imtringued 7y ago
The obsolete technologies are artificially kept alive through direct and indirect government subsidies. The only thing that stops us from reducing carbon emissions is that we don't choose to reduce carbon emissions. Electric cars are too expensive? Just build more of them and the price will go down. Battery storage is too expensive? Just build more and the price will go down. Renewables are too expensive? Just build more and the price will go down. It's a matter of choosing the new technology and right now nobody is choosing. Lots of people are proud about polluting the environment and I don't think I can change their mind, the government can't. We all know what this means: nothing can.

acollins1331 7y ago

The cost of removing carbon from the atmosphere far outweighs the cost of not putting it there in the first place. We need bold leadership.

josho 7y ago

Carbon trading is a scheme for bankers to profit from climate change. The solution is simple —carbon tax. Additionally it is ideal for the carbon tax to be revenue neutral.

konschubert 7y ago
Carbon trading means no additional tax burden is placed on the economy, the biggest emitters simply pay to those that go green. By limiting the number of certificates, you can steer exactly how much CO2 will be emitted in any given year. And the cost of CO2 means that procedures that reduce CO2 emissions become financially viable, starting with the most effective ones. Assuming you can track CO2 emissions correctly, it’s a genius instrument.
- mc32 7y ago
  A carbon tax would have similar incentives. Green producers and products get taxed less than brown producers. It also doesn’t matter if the product comes from Timbuktu or Savannah, it just matters how green or not green it is. Carbon trading would result in billionaires and large funds finding a new way to make more money at the expense of everyone else and solve little.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  > Assuming you can track CO2 emissions Also assuming that you meaningfully enforce violations. Although this is also a problem for a tax.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Carbon trading is a huge subside to the current polluters at the expensive of future polluters, indifferent to future polluters polluting more or less than current ones. It is a great way to destroy a market (and a very important one), creating monopolies everywhere.
- josho 7y ago
  It is not genius. It creates a new financial instrument for the mega banks to extract yet another rent from. A tax at CO2 origination is simpler, less opportunity to game, and more effective.

solarwind 7y ago

Carbon is not a synonym for carbon dioxide. https://www.cfact.org/2019/04/25/carbon-is-not-a-synonym-for-carbon-dioxide/ https://www.cfact.org/2019/04/25/carbon-is-not-a-synonym-for...

iamaelephant 7y ago
In common parlance it absolutely is.
helloiamafish 7y ago
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I’m sure no one else in this largely well-educated crowd figured that out.

lowken10 7y ago

I just can’t believe what a bunch of morons you people are. You buy this climate change garbage? Wow!

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago

Who think we need carbon trading to fight climate change, except traders, their friends (e.g Financial Times) and their clients?

throwaway122378 7y ago

Corporate and consumerism waste needs to be addressed first. -Leasing new cars every 3 years -New iPhone every 2-4 years -New clothes every season -Corporate flights vs teleconferencing -Amazon should be there own investigation And so on.

EvanAnderson 7y ago
Wouldn't bundling the costs of the negative externalities associated with the production of the new cars, iPhones, and clothes as a tax levied against the manufacturers "address" the "consumerism waste"? Manufacturers are very good at passing costs on to consumers, and innovating to drive costs down in the face of competition. If your goal really is to reduce environmental impact (and not just being "anti-consumerist") then it would seem like using the market to do that would make more sense vs. trying to change the habits of mass numbers of individuals.
joeblow9999 7y ago
What does new clothes have to do with climate change? In the scheme of things it's all about vehicle emission and coal fired power plants. Everything else pales in comparison so focus on those.

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago

There are hundreds of news articles about the COP 25 and somehow we chose the Financial Times as the article we should comment on. That says a lot about our bewilderment (cf. their self-serving focus on carbon trading).

iudqnolq 7y ago
What does it say to you? What it says to me: I know that climate change is an extremely serious problem we need to solve and I believe economics is the right place to look for the tools we'll need to incentive people to do better.
- Joeri 7y ago
  Economics has already given us the solution long ago. Climate is an externality. You solve problems with externalities by pricing them into goods and services. That was clear for climate change back in the 90’s. Everything since then has not been in the realm of economics but of politics. If the climate change problem will be solved, the solution will have to be political.

LatteLazy 7y ago

Without the US, China and India, these programs are all pointless. The US, China, and India are not willing to commit. So the rest if us might as well go home. I know its encouraging to pretend things are working. But they're not. The time for non binding commitments ended in the 90s. Now is (and has long been) the time for cold hard facts.

makerofspoons 7y ago
Steep tariffs are needed on goods from countries that won't play ball.
- LatteLazy 7y ago
  If it were the US OR China I might agree. But I don't think we can isolate both at the same time. Maybe with trump sabre rattling, the Chinese will get on board. Who knows

jandrewrogers 7y ago

Many years ago, I actively engaged the political discussion surrounding carbon markets, as I thought I might be able to help. I've been directly involved in similar types of international negotiations, albeit at a smaller scale and unrelated to carbon markets. Talking to people involved in the carbon market negotiation made it abundantly clear why there will never be a useful outcome. Most of the governments involved in negotiating a common international agreements on carbon markets unofficially represent for-profit interests seeking advantage in the structure of the carbon market. There is an enormous amount of profit that can be realized here, and the good faith actors are in the minority. This is quite normal even in small international agreements but it becomes exponentially harder to arrive at an agreement that is minimally corrupted with respect to its nominal purpose as the profit incentive to corrupt the agreement increases. The last time I looked in on the current state of the carbon market negotiations, it had been corrupted beyond redemption. I have no faith that something useful will result. This is why international agreements are unlikely to have a material impact on climate change. International agreements tend to only be effective when there is minimal profit or advantage to be gained by corrupting the purpose of the agreement. Climate change activities simply involve too much money for an international agreement to produce a credible outcome. It is the wrong tool for the job.

vijaybritto 7y ago
In short: capitalism
- carapace 7y ago
  I disagree, I think it's just simple greed. Capitalists are more-or-less rational and not unintelligent. Greed explains why e.g. VW would cheat on emissions tests, etc.
  - vijaybritto 7y ago
    Capitalism inevitably leads to consolidation of power and greed.
philips 7y ago

ars 7y ago

This doesn't surprise me one bit. Government is 100% of the wrong place to solve this. And that's because they can't no matter what they do it's impossible for them to do that. This can only be solved in the research field with better energy sources. And it can be solved in the finance field with cheaper energy sources. Government regulation cannot solve this.

Mirioron 7y ago
I agree with you that government regulation can't solve the problem, but I think that government has to be a part of solving the problem. They have to make solving the problem financially reasonable. We will need money to be spent on taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Companies aren't going to do that without a financial incentive.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I'm not convinced technology is going to help us. We have had amazing efficiency gains for aircraft but increased air travel has eaten all the gains and a lot more. We have built more efficient cars but wasted that by building bigger cars and driving them further. Insulation standards in homes have increased but we build bigger homes further from the centres. The list goes on and on. The only thing that has made a real difference is switching from coal to gas in places like the UK. But even then gas heating in our homes is emitting more CO2 than any other sector. Wind and solar are too intermittent to replace base load, there isn't enough cobalt in the world to build enough storage, there probably isn't enough uranium to switch everyone to nuclear. I can't see people accepting a shift from an energy system based on stocks to one based on flow and the intermittency that comes with that. My neighbours go a bit bananas when the power is off for thirty minutes. We really are fucked.
imtringued 7y ago
>And it can be solved in the finance field with cheaper energy sources. In Germany the market prices for electricity go down but at the same time the residential rates go up massively. There are two reasons for that. Firstly coal plants can't throttle down but PV and wind farms get paid anyway through a surcharge. Secondly large industrial consumers are exempt from the surcharge. This means residential users are paying the electric bills of aluminum smelters, etc. In other words. The cheaper the electricity in Germany the higher the final price. Isn't that absurd? The surcharge wouldn't be needed if there was a working CO2 tax or carbon trade system because all coal plants would be shut down and replaced by load following natural gas plants which only run when truly necessary.

seaghost 7y ago

Greed will kill us all.

einpoklum 7y ago

Carbon trading is when a polluting economy/state throws its weight around to keep polluting. It's that simple and that wrong. There should be no such "credits", just emissions reduction plans - and the states which should be required to reduce the most and the fastest are those which pollute the most per capita, and the most period. Of course, this won't happen because the largest polluters are also the most politically powerful, so they rig things in their favor. Let's name the names: China, US, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Iran, South Korea, Canada, Brazil. https://www.countryaah.com/top-10-countries-that-contribute-most-to-global-warming/ https://www.countryaah.com/top-10-countries-that-contribute-... What should be negotiable IMHO is: * How to account for the unfairness in the fact that some countries got to pollute freely for a couple of centuries while others didn't get this "free pass" and are still behind in grid development. * The question of whether absolute pollution should count more than pollution per capita or the other way around. * The extent and the form of aid by richer/more industrially-developed economies should be committed to help with technology to poorer economies which already pollute a lot and will have difficulties adjusting independently.

plutonorm 7y ago

The only way this is getting sorted is if a benevolent AI takes the world by force. And that's not going to happen on this timeline. So we are pretty much assured to be descending into resource wars, mass migration and civil unrest. Trump, Boris and Brexit are the first signs of the developed world pulling up the drawbridges. It's kind of like an emotional response within the brain. We feel trouble significantly before we can reason about it. The emotional response is the fast, unthinking systems of the mind which respond to danger. People on the ground are feeling the danger even though they can't quite put their finger on the reason. And so we get polarisation and isolationist policies.

imtringued 7y ago

There won't be a carbon tax in Germany. People are allergic to anything that has tax in the name. Instead Angela Merkel has chosen to strengthen the CO2 certificate trade in Germany which is known to be ineffective by design [0]. So if international carbon trading doesn't work either then that means there is no effective policy that will allow us to reach our CO2 goals. The only hope that we have left is that speculative investors drive up the price. The more middlemen the better. If everyone bought 100€ worth of certificates every year and only sold when the price goes up it and keep them forever if the price goes down then this would at least simulate the effects of a CO2 tax because the effects would ripple through the entire economy without requiring action from politicians. Paying directly for your own carbon sequestration doesn't work because it only has local effects, doesn't encourage prevention of emissions and it is effectively a letter of indulgence ("I'm free of my sin"). [0] many sectors are exempt, a base amount of certificates is handed out for free, the price is always low because there are too many CO2 certificates

skitout 7y ago

By the way, IMF says that globally, fossil fuel subsidies represent $4.7 trillion / year... https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo...