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> when you start considering the revenue saved by mitigating the projected costs of climate change According to Nat Geo, it costs us billions per year. However

> when you start considering the revenue saved by mitigating the projected costs of climate change According to Nat Geo, it costs us billions per year. However those “billions” include damage from storms, and suggesting that damage from storms is because of human caused climate change is very disingenuous— that’s suggesting that “stopping” climate change will also stop expensive storms, which is completely denying that destructive storms existed for as long as there has been an earth. So which storms are CO2 caused, and which aren’t? Which highly destructive storms would have occurred anyway but their dollar costs are high because of where people choose to live as opposed to the actual intensity of the storm. My point is that attributing storm costs to human-caused climate change is simplistic and misleading because we would need some baseline to determine which storms would not have existed if it weren’t for human CO2. That delta is what the real savings would be, not just the raw number. But getting that number is almost impossible because we would have to accept the argument that the climate has always changed so when would we start measuring to get our “pre-CO2” storm destruction baseline. The article is assuming facts not entered into evidence. The problem with climate activism is that it has become economic activism of a certain political stripe rather than actual environmentalism. Otherwise why try to move the mountain of capitalism and instead focus on attainable and politically non-controversial (mostly) goals such as keeping benzene out of the water, preventing of overfishing, or ending toxic waste dumping. When climate activists suggest solutions and nuclear power isn’t one of them, then I stop listening — because it becomes clear it isn’t about the climate anymore. When climate activists suggesting taxing Americans and Europeans more but never mention tariffs against China or India or other highly polluting countries, then it’s clear they aren’t after fixing the problem of climate, but fixing what they perceive to be a problem with capitalism. They’ll tax some car driver in California, but ignore the container ships of goods at the Port of Long Beach filled with Chinese goods made under some of the most polluting conditions on earth. Want to reduce CO2? Start creating policies that favor domestic businesses and reduce reliance on places like China or India for consumer goods. But let’s not try to argue fiscal conservatism using “savings” based on misleading economic costs that aren’t legitimately quantified. They are either “projected” or just completely made up.

to11mtm 7y ago
> Want to reduce CO2? Start creating policies that favor domestic businesses and reduce reliance on places like China or India for consumer goods. Ding ding ding! There's like 15 ships that produce more emissions than every car out there per year. The counterargument is that these are very efficient by volume. This is true. But... do we still need that? In my neck of the woods (middle of USA) You're still going to need to transport the car over land... If it was built more locally we wouldn't need nearly as much shipping in the equation. An interesting question I've had: What about the supply chain itself? As an absurdist example are we shipping raw iron from the US to China by boat for them to refine, only for them to then build it into a car and ship it right back to us? That one probably is not true, but... I wonder what cases we have where raw materials are being shipped to countries where labor is cheaper, lengthening the distance from raw to product, thus increasing emissions.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  What you describe is a system that values the generation of wealth, and uses seemingly-logistically-foolhardly supply chains to exploit cost-of-labor imbalances to maximize profit. And likely as long as it is profitable to do this, we will, at massive non-financial costs.
  - brmgb 7y ago
    > And likely as long as it is profitable to do this, we will, at massive non-financial costs. Note that there is a simple solution to this. You just need to price in the generated externality. That's what a carbon tax does. The fact that basicaly no country has one tells you a lot about what governments really think of the climate crisis.

to11mtm 7y ago

> Want to reduce CO2? Start creating policies that favor domestic businesses and reduce reliance on places like China or India for consumer goods. Ding ding ding! There's like 15 ships that produce more emissions than every car out there per year. The counterargument is that these are very efficient by volume. This is true. But... do we still need that? In my neck of the woods (middle of USA) You're still going to need to transport the car over land... If it was built more locally we wouldn't need nearly as much shipping in the equation. An interesting question I've had: What about the supply chain itself? As an absurdist example are we shipping raw iron from the US to China by boat for them to refine, only for them to then build it into a car and ship it right back to us? That one probably is not true, but... I wonder what cases we have where raw materials are being shipped to countries where labor is cheaper, lengthening the distance from raw to product, thus increasing emissions.

jvanderbot 7y ago
What you describe is a system that values the generation of wealth, and uses seemingly-logistically-foolhardly supply chains to exploit cost-of-labor imbalances to maximize profit. And likely as long as it is profitable to do this, we will, at massive non-financial costs.
- brmgb 7y ago
  > And likely as long as it is profitable to do this, we will, at massive non-financial costs. Note that there is a simple solution to this. You just need to price in the generated externality. That's what a carbon tax does. The fact that basicaly no country has one tells you a lot about what governments really think of the climate crisis.