4 ms·

Lots of people don't believe it's a problem or even claim it will be a benefit and no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise.

lukifer 7y ago
I'm reminded of Kubrick's quote about the atom bomb[0]: "People react primarily to direct experience and not to abstractions; it is very rare to find anyone who can become emotionally involved with an abstraction. The longer the bomb is around without anything happening, the better the job that people do in psychologically denying its existence. It has become as abstract as the fact that we are all going to die someday, which we usually do an excellent job of denying." A disturbing corollary: the same challenge of processing an abstraction exists amongst most non-experts who accept AGW (and I'm among them). Hence symbolic gestures (banning straws), conflation with other sacred-cow political issues (corporate capitalism), belief in looming extinction (unlikely; the threat is to civilization, not homo sapiens), all generally filtered through a "purity" moral matrix (to put it in Haidt-ian terms). As the complex reality becomes filtered through moralizing and politicizing, the other side digs in their heels for predictable tribalist and game-theoretic reasons. It's a truly wicked problem. [0]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/11/12/how-about-a-little-game https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/11/12/how-about-a-li...
imtringued 7y ago
I don't understand this sentiment. After years of stagnation at around 911 million tons of CO2 Germany managed to reduce carbon emissions by 40 million tons in 2019 alone. The only thing that changed was a spike in the price of EU CO2 certificates which resulted in less electricity being produced from coal. It's absurd that this incredible progress is held back by the fear of losing 20k coal jobs when the reality is that those 20k coal jobs prevented the creation of hundreds of thousands in the renewable energy sector. Even if you think the whole thing is a scam you see that having a grand mission to invest in modern technology is an incredibly effective jobs program just like sending people to the moon. Nobody has gone to the moon again but we still benefit from all the research from that era.
- orangecat 7y ago
  After years of stagnation at around 911 million tons of CO2 Germany managed to reduce carbon emissions by 40 million tons in 2019 alone. Meanwhile, France has consistently had around half the per-capita CO2 emissions as Germany due to not giving in to the fearmongering over nuclear power. It's absurd that this incredible progress is held back by the fear of losing 20k coal jobs when the reality is that those 20k coal jobs prevented the creation of hundreds of thousands in the renewable energy sector. It's true that preserving jobs is a terrible justification for keeping coal around. But similarly "it takes a lot more green jobs to produce the same amount of energy" is not good; it is bad. We should switch to cleaner energy despite that, not because of it.

lukifer 7y ago

I'm reminded of Kubrick's quote about the atom bomb[0]: "People react primarily to direct experience and not to abstractions; it is very rare to find anyone who can become emotionally involved with an abstraction. The longer the bomb is around without anything happening, the better the job that people do in psychologically denying its existence. It has become as abstract as the fact that we are all going to die someday, which we usually do an excellent job of denying." A disturbing corollary: the same challenge of processing an abstraction exists amongst most non-experts who accept AGW (and I'm among them). Hence symbolic gestures (banning straws), conflation with other sacred-cow political issues (corporate capitalism), belief in looming extinction (unlikely; the threat is to civilization, not homo sapiens), all generally filtered through a "purity" moral matrix (to put it in Haidt-ian terms). As the complex reality becomes filtered through moralizing and politicizing, the other side digs in their heels for predictable tribalist and game-theoretic reasons. It's a truly wicked problem. [0]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/11/12/how-about-a-little-game https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/11/12/how-about-a-li...

imtringued 7y ago

I don't understand this sentiment. After years of stagnation at around 911 million tons of CO2 Germany managed to reduce carbon emissions by 40 million tons in 2019 alone. The only thing that changed was a spike in the price of EU CO2 certificates which resulted in less electricity being produced from coal. It's absurd that this incredible progress is held back by the fear of losing 20k coal jobs when the reality is that those 20k coal jobs prevented the creation of hundreds of thousands in the renewable energy sector. Even if you think the whole thing is a scam you see that having a grand mission to invest in modern technology is an incredibly effective jobs program just like sending people to the moon. Nobody has gone to the moon again but we still benefit from all the research from that era.

orangecat 7y ago
After years of stagnation at around 911 million tons of CO2 Germany managed to reduce carbon emissions by 40 million tons in 2019 alone. Meanwhile, France has consistently had around half the per-capita CO2 emissions as Germany due to not giving in to the fearmongering over nuclear power. It's absurd that this incredible progress is held back by the fear of losing 20k coal jobs when the reality is that those 20k coal jobs prevented the creation of hundreds of thousands in the renewable energy sector. It's true that preserving jobs is a terrible justification for keeping coal around. But similarly "it takes a lot more green jobs to produce the same amount of energy" is not good; it is bad. We should switch to cleaner energy despite that, not because of it.