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> As far as bending the warming curve towards 1.5° C is concerned, I think policy and regulatory reform is currently a larger source of leverage than technology

> As far as bending the warming curve towards 1.5° C is concerned, I think policy and regulatory reform is currently a larger source of leverage than technology. Refreshing to hear this from someone working in climate tech.

lorenzhs 7y ago
Absolutely. And before anyone claims that any such action would inevitably favour the well-off at the expense of the poor, let me point out that schemes like carbon fee and dividend exist that implement a carbon tax in a non-regressive way by returning the collected tax revenue to the population in form of a dividend paid equally to everyone. That way, people with carbon-intensive lifestyles (eg, lots of air travel), who tend to be well-off, pay more, and people who can't afford overseas vacations every year will more likely than not pay less carbon tax than the dividend they receive. This incentivises low individual carbon emissions without disproportionately affecting less well-off people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend
- zdragnar 7y ago
  If you think that pricing carbon externalities into all goods now and offering a dividend later (yearly? Quarterly? Monthly?) will not be regressive, ask anyone living paycheck to paycheck how they feel about it. It might balance out in the big scheme of things, but it isn't going to be doing any favors to people who are already precariously balanced and lack the savings to make personal adjustments. You can be sure there will be mass protests if the price of gas, food, and electricity double (esp food in northern climates where transportation and refrigeration add a lot to produce and frozen goods as well as meats).
  - WhompingWindows 7y ago
    There won't be mass protests, there will be vocal minority protests like we saw in France. For better or worse, vocal minorities can do a lot of damage to the policies we need.
  - ip26 7y ago
    Fwiw climate change itself is heavily regressive. Pick your poison.
  - nradov 7y ago
    For people living paycheck to paycheck that can be handled through adjustments to tax withholding. So less money would be withheld from each paycheck. We already handle numerous other taxes and tax credits / deductions the same way. Rapid price inflation for staple goods will likely cause civil unrest either way. The only way to make a carbon tax politically feasible will be to slowly phase it in over many years so that people have time to adjust.
  - zamfi 7y ago
    > pricing carbon externalities into all goods now and offering a dividend later Nothing prevents the dividend from being offered upfront. It would be trivial for most governments to finance this. Ask someone living paycheck to paycheck if they'd take $500 now in exchange for higher (but less than the $500 they get) costs on certain items. Most people living paycheck-to-paycheck are not the biggest consumers.
    - zdragnar 7y ago
      Certain items? everything is influenced by petroleum, whether transportation, manufacturing or fertilization. Our clothes are made from it. Machines are powered and lubricated by it. Food is cooled and packaged with it. I wouldn't be too hopeful that the cost of anything wouldn't be affected, unless those goods have externality costs excluded, in which case you aren't really pricing in externalities, you're just running another UBI scheme.
      - zamfi 7y ago
        Prices fluctuate all the time. How many tons of CO2 are consumed by the machine that spins yarn? Sure there’s an added cost, but of pennies — this strikes me as a weak counter argument. At a nominal price of $20/ton, a few things will go way up in price, but almost everything else will see at best a blip, with an added incentive to the producers to reduce the carbon content because that matters at industrial scale (company saves $3m over 30m units by switching to a non-petroleum glue whatever) not to an individual consumer (who would see a cost increase of 10¢).
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    Canada has a carbon tax and an end of year rebate. They have been introducing it step by step, it’s per province so numbers are hard to summarise. The Wikipedia page has plenty of info for you to rest assured: it works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada They are a northern climate. There are no mass protests. Carbon emissions are going down. Instead of asking people how they feel about a theoretical scenario, you can look at reality.
    - technicalbard 7y ago
      It is still debatable whether carbon emissions are falling. Most of the country hasn't got enough data under a carbon tax, and oil and gas pricing has swung more significantly over the last 10 years than the carbon tax impact, and that didn't impact consumption very much.
beefield 7y ago
You have to be a bit careful here, though. If you think that "policy and regulatory reform" means international agreements limiting greenhouse gases are the way to go, unfortunately I am afraid you are in for a really long wait. On the other hand, policies that push for new technologies, then kind of yes, but then it is more difficult to distinguish which one, the policies or technologies are the more important source of leverage (personally I do no think that it is even a feasible comparison). For example, "everyone" is laughing at Germany's super Energiewende that it is a expensive failure that has not managed to reduce Germany's dependence for coal at all. But then, if you have a look when Germany has built solar, it's share of the global new capacity at that time and compare that tho the learning curve and price development of solar, it is a bit difficult to conclude anything but Germany's policies have pretty much singlehandedly brought solar from laughably expensive novelty to something that actually can be competitive in certain markets. Then China continued from there, and now we are extremely close (if not already over) a tipping point where solar just keeps getting cheaper subsidized or not.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  Germanys problem is, that nuclear is supposed to be banned long before coal. Now while I agree, that in the long term all energy should be from renewable sources, in the short term it is much more important to get those coal plants off the grid. Instead there were new ones being opened.
  - ergothus 7y ago
    In the late 80s early 90s I was against nuclear power, because I saw no reason people/govt would want to off of it until the collected problems were disastrous. In the late aughts I changed my tune because coal is just too disastrous and indeed, people/govts werent motivated enough. So while I understand the simple practicality of going nuke to get off coal, I also expect that most of the potential downsides of nuclear will become reality before people will be motivated enough to do anything about it.
aaron695 7y ago
> Refreshing to hear this from someone working in climate tech. Someone in climate tech supporting forcing their tech onto consumers is refreshing? Seems absolutely normal. People in climate tech are more about fundamentalist morality than improving the world through actual advances.
- incangold 7y ago
  Straw man arguments do not belong on hacker news
bernardlunn 7y ago
Keep it simple: unless Trump is kicked out of power any meaningful change is unlikely
- lazyjones 7y ago
  Under Trump, the US implemented record / word-leading carbon reductions. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/25/donald-trump-denied-credit-us-emissions-decline/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/25/donald-trum...
  - wffurr 7y ago
    The US government implemented no such thing. It happened under Trump's tenure due to the economics of coal power and wind, despite his campaign promises to prop up coal and the phase out of wind power subsidies. The reduction isn't even close to the scale of the cuts required to make meaningful progress on climate. As someone earlier in the thread said, look how much progress has been made under a hostile policy regime. Imagine if there was actually a carbon tax and oil subsidies were transferred to clean tech.
    - corebit 7y ago
      > It happened under Trump's tenure due to the economics Which let's be real is his only platform, so I'm willing to grant it
  - Brakenshire 7y ago
    The US is the largest developed economy and has some of the high per person emissions in the world. It’s hardly going to be possible for another country to have a larger fall if it’s five times smaller with half the per person emissions. The other point is this relies on fracking, and the carbon intensity of fracking depends on the level of escaped Methane. It can actually be worse than coal. And Trump has just reversed a lot of the regulation which prevented venting of Methane from fracking sites.
  - jayd16 7y ago

lorenzhs 7y ago

Absolutely. And before anyone claims that any such action would inevitably favour the well-off at the expense of the poor, let me point out that schemes like carbon fee and dividend exist that implement a carbon tax in a non-regressive way by returning the collected tax revenue to the population in form of a dividend paid equally to everyone. That way, people with carbon-intensive lifestyles (eg, lots of air travel), who tend to be well-off, pay more, and people who can't afford overseas vacations every year will more likely than not pay less carbon tax than the dividend they receive. This incentivises low individual carbon emissions without disproportionately affecting less well-off people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend

zdragnar 7y ago
If you think that pricing carbon externalities into all goods now and offering a dividend later (yearly? Quarterly? Monthly?) will not be regressive, ask anyone living paycheck to paycheck how they feel about it. It might balance out in the big scheme of things, but it isn't going to be doing any favors to people who are already precariously balanced and lack the savings to make personal adjustments. You can be sure there will be mass protests if the price of gas, food, and electricity double (esp food in northern climates where transportation and refrigeration add a lot to produce and frozen goods as well as meats).
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  There won't be mass protests, there will be vocal minority protests like we saw in France. For better or worse, vocal minorities can do a lot of damage to the policies we need.
- ip26 7y ago
  Fwiw climate change itself is heavily regressive. Pick your poison.
- nradov 7y ago
  For people living paycheck to paycheck that can be handled through adjustments to tax withholding. So less money would be withheld from each paycheck. We already handle numerous other taxes and tax credits / deductions the same way. Rapid price inflation for staple goods will likely cause civil unrest either way. The only way to make a carbon tax politically feasible will be to slowly phase it in over many years so that people have time to adjust.
- zamfi 7y ago
  > pricing carbon externalities into all goods now and offering a dividend later Nothing prevents the dividend from being offered upfront. It would be trivial for most governments to finance this. Ask someone living paycheck to paycheck if they'd take $500 now in exchange for higher (but less than the $500 they get) costs on certain items. Most people living paycheck-to-paycheck are not the biggest consumers.
  - zdragnar 7y ago
    Certain items? everything is influenced by petroleum, whether transportation, manufacturing or fertilization. Our clothes are made from it. Machines are powered and lubricated by it. Food is cooled and packaged with it. I wouldn't be too hopeful that the cost of anything wouldn't be affected, unless those goods have externality costs excluded, in which case you aren't really pricing in externalities, you're just running another UBI scheme.
    - zamfi 7y ago
      Prices fluctuate all the time. How many tons of CO2 are consumed by the machine that spins yarn? Sure there’s an added cost, but of pennies — this strikes me as a weak counter argument. At a nominal price of $20/ton, a few things will go way up in price, but almost everything else will see at best a blip, with an added incentive to the producers to reduce the carbon content because that matters at industrial scale (company saves $3m over 30m units by switching to a non-petroleum glue whatever) not to an individual consumer (who would see a cost increase of 10¢).
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  Canada has a carbon tax and an end of year rebate. They have been introducing it step by step, it’s per province so numbers are hard to summarise. The Wikipedia page has plenty of info for you to rest assured: it works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada They are a northern climate. There are no mass protests. Carbon emissions are going down. Instead of asking people how they feel about a theoretical scenario, you can look at reality.
  - technicalbard 7y ago
    It is still debatable whether carbon emissions are falling. Most of the country hasn't got enough data under a carbon tax, and oil and gas pricing has swung more significantly over the last 10 years than the carbon tax impact, and that didn't impact consumption very much.

beefield 7y ago

You have to be a bit careful here, though. If you think that "policy and regulatory reform" means international agreements limiting greenhouse gases are the way to go, unfortunately I am afraid you are in for a really long wait. On the other hand, policies that push for new technologies, then kind of yes, but then it is more difficult to distinguish which one, the policies or technologies are the more important source of leverage (personally I do no think that it is even a feasible comparison). For example, "everyone" is laughing at Germany's super Energiewende that it is a expensive failure that has not managed to reduce Germany's dependence for coal at all. But then, if you have a look when Germany has built solar, it's share of the global new capacity at that time and compare that tho the learning curve and price development of solar, it is a bit difficult to conclude anything but Germany's policies have pretty much singlehandedly brought solar from laughably expensive novelty to something that actually can be competitive in certain markets. Then China continued from there, and now we are extremely close (if not already over) a tipping point where solar just keeps getting cheaper subsidized or not.

hutzlibu 7y ago
Germanys problem is, that nuclear is supposed to be banned long before coal. Now while I agree, that in the long term all energy should be from renewable sources, in the short term it is much more important to get those coal plants off the grid. Instead there were new ones being opened.
- ergothus 7y ago
  In the late 80s early 90s I was against nuclear power, because I saw no reason people/govt would want to off of it until the collected problems were disastrous. In the late aughts I changed my tune because coal is just too disastrous and indeed, people/govts werent motivated enough. So while I understand the simple practicality of going nuke to get off coal, I also expect that most of the potential downsides of nuclear will become reality before people will be motivated enough to do anything about it.

aaron695 7y ago

> Refreshing to hear this from someone working in climate tech. Someone in climate tech supporting forcing their tech onto consumers is refreshing? Seems absolutely normal. People in climate tech are more about fundamentalist morality than improving the world through actual advances.

incangold 7y ago
Straw man arguments do not belong on hacker news

bernardlunn 7y ago

Keep it simple: unless Trump is kicked out of power any meaningful change is unlikely

lazyjones 7y ago
Under Trump, the US implemented record / word-leading carbon reductions. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/25/donald-trump-denied-credit-us-emissions-decline/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/25/donald-trum...
- wffurr 7y ago
  The US government implemented no such thing. It happened under Trump's tenure due to the economics of coal power and wind, despite his campaign promises to prop up coal and the phase out of wind power subsidies. The reduction isn't even close to the scale of the cuts required to make meaningful progress on climate. As someone earlier in the thread said, look how much progress has been made under a hostile policy regime. Imagine if there was actually a carbon tax and oil subsidies were transferred to clean tech.
  - corebit 7y ago
    > It happened under Trump's tenure due to the economics Which let's be real is his only platform, so I'm willing to grant it
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  The US is the largest developed economy and has some of the high per person emissions in the world. It’s hardly going to be possible for another country to have a larger fall if it’s five times smaller with half the per person emissions. The other point is this relies on fracking, and the carbon intensity of fracking depends on the level of escaped Methane. It can actually be worse than coal. And Trump has just reversed a lot of the regulation which prevented venting of Methane from fracking sites.
- jayd16 7y ago