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The general Western game plan right now seems to be: (1) shut down the whole nonessential part of the economy, (2) buy time to not overwhelm medical systems, (3

The general Western game plan right now seems to be: (1) shut down the whole nonessential part of the economy, (2) buy time to not overwhelm medical systems, (3) gradually turn the economy back on where safe. For part (3) the general idea of "safe" has meant, allow people who are medically low-risk to return to the workplace and retail establishments. But we could see that could be expanded to also factor in carbon impact. In other words, we prioritize turning back on the low-carbon parts of the economy first, and maybe leave some high-carbon parts (international vacations) turned off or reduced for good.

baggy_trough 7y ago
I assure you that people will be so desperate for jobs that carbon management will not enter their thoughts even one iota.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  It would be nice to think that a lot of the new jobs would be in carbon and environment management. I'd like to see the government pay anybody who wants a job to plant trees.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    With what new revenue? Are you also proposing a new tax burden for a recently slammed economy? That’s gonna be a hard sell.
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      There have been long periods of higher taxes and economic growth. If the private sector can't keep people economically active then the state will step in.
      - jay_kyburz 7y ago
        It's called a stimulus package!
  - ailideex 7y ago
    > It would be nice to think that [...] It sure would ... wouldn't it.
creato 7y ago
In the minds of people opposed to controlling CO2 emissions, your comment here justifies all of their worst fears of CO2 emission regulation as a means of social control.
- miketery 7y ago
  Being a part of society implies a social contract and some social control, it’s not black and white. Right now environmental impacts are not priced into many of our products (e.g. meat) and services (e.g. travel).
  - creato 7y ago
    I agree. But tying the recovery from this pandemic to an attempt to regulate CO2 emission would be an absolutely atrocious way to accomplish either pandemic response or CO2 emissions response.
    - pm90 7y ago
      Disagree. Crises are the best time to make political change. You have the attention of the whole country; rally them into making changes that can affect longer term gains. I feel somewhat strange writing that as someone who buys into the systems philosophy of "fix whats broken immediately, enhance it later". While that's true in computer systems, it doesn't seem uncommon in the realm of politics that periods of disasters are taken as opportunities to experiment with different ideas.
      - kortilla 7y ago
        > You have the attention of the whole country; rally them into making changes that can affect longer term gains. That’s not how politics works. You can’t abuse a crisis to ram something unrelated down the opposing party’s throat. You end up alienating everyone including the moderates. This never works with even something as simple as a government shutdown over budget considerations.
chrisco255 7y ago
No one is dying from global warming. It's still much cooler than it was in the early Holocene (the Neolithic, or stone age era of humanity) and this was a time of abundance and expansion for farming and agriculture. Even the Sahara was richly farmed at the time. Plants not only thrive under warm temperatures, they also thrive with high levels of CO2. The world is greening: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...
- comicjk 7y ago
  There is an asymmetric risk, though. Due to feedback loops like methane release, we don't know at what temperature the warming will stop, or how fast it will go. The upper-range estimates are well beyond any temperature from the last 10 million years.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    A lot of methane is coming from deep sea hydrothermal sources. You cannot stop that. But methane itself is unstable in the atmosphere and only accounts for less than 2 parts per million. If the climate were so sensitive to CO2 levels, where we've seen it go from 250 to over 400 ppm...we would see much more dramatic warming than we have. It was not that much cooler 100 years ago. So far, we have yet to have a year significantly warmer than 1998. It's been 22 years and the CO2 has been rising all that time. In spite of billions of people coming out of poverty. Minimal difference in maximum temps. Antarctica had record sea ice extent in 2014. Antarctica has been trending positive for sea ice over the past 30 years: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/sea_ice_south.php https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/sea_ice_so... There's never ever been a geologic extinction event associated with high levels of CO2. In fact quite the opposite: the abundant and biodiverse periods in Earth's history are associated with high CO2. Plants literally suffocate at 150ppm. We are near historical lows for the planet Earth.
    - dbingham 7y ago
      There has been a geological extinction event associated with high levels of atmospheric carbon - it was the biggest one of all time, and it nearly wiped out all life on Earth. Look up the Permian Extinction. (Yes there are multiple theories of cause, but one of which - and perhaps the most likely - is run away global warming.) And stop reading bad science.
millstone 7y ago
The virus is certain to push the US and many other economies into recession, which becomes self-sustaining. After the health crisis has passed, we will be left with this economic crisis. Monetary policy is maxed already, so we will need fiscal stimulus. This will be the opportunity to invest in green infrastructure. We will need the government to step up and provide jobs and spending, and it should direct both with wisdom to prepare for the climate challenge.
- Aloha 7y ago
  The economy is pretty easy to restart with cash injections as you mentioned with infrastructure projects - be it trump or biden, one of them will do it.
  - riffic 7y ago
    Gentle reminder that the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee is slightly less than 4 months away, and Biden is not the nominee yet.
    - Aloha 7y ago
      The math currently does not work in Sanders Favor
    - ethagnawl 7y ago
      _Anything_ could happen between now and the convention/election. Surprisingly, I haven't seen this mentioned explicitly, but all of the remaining (major) candidates are squarely in the Covid-19 "danger zone". Some are known to have complicating health factors and there's a non-zero possibility that others do (despite what their doctors' notes say), which _doubles_ the risk.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    There may also be spending on bootstrapping a return of industries that had been moved overseas that we now know are a huge risk to not have at home.
nerdponx 7y ago
Western? Isn't this literally what China did back in January?
- hermitdev 7y ago
  Yes, but that isn't a good optic for domestic propaganda. Instead, the COVID-19 virus is being branded as a US Army bioweapon by Chinese state media. They've even published a book about it, already.
  - Udik 7y ago
    Source?
    - hokumguru 7y ago
      Quick google search: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us-lijian-zhao-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us-lij...
      - Udik 7y ago
        This is not an official position of the Chinese government, is just a tweet by someone. And the tweet doesn't say that the coronavirus is a US biological weapon, only that patient 0 might have come from the US- and specifically in the army, and have brought the virus to China during some internal military athletic competition. "Hundreds of athletes from the US military were in Wuhan for the Military World Games in October 2019."
rubber_duck 7y ago
The economy is going to get more broken each day this is affecting us, supply chains are going to break down, demand is going to sink, investment will grind to a halt. Huge amounts of wealth is going to be destroyed and people are going to suffer. Development is going to slow down further limiting our ability to respond to those problems. Meanwhile you are cheering for an emission rate blip and suggest it's worth hurting us even further ? That's going to do what exactly ? I'm surprised at how regressive the popular opinion is around here - I wouldn't expect it from people who are in the filed of problem solving with technology.
- Fricken 7y ago
  The consequences of not responding proactively to the environmental crisis is orders of magnitude more serious than the pandemic. I can't think of anything more regressive than willfully destroying the planet.
  - rubber_duck 7y ago
    What does that mean ? Are you saying that the climate change issue is going to be fixed if we slow down emission rampup over the next year ? Mind sharing that analysis ? I don't think you realise how bad things are going to get as this panic drags on, think unemployment and poverty waves 2008 levels. I'm not saying climate change is irrelevant - I'm saying proposing to slow down economic activity to reduce emissions has no quantifiable or tangible benefit - it's basically wishful thinking - and the downsides are going to be very harsh
    - Fricken 7y ago
      I think you're measuring how bad things are relative to what is considered normal. Relative to normal, absolutely, the pandemic is terrible. I'm measuring how bad things are relative to how rightly fucked things can be, and climate change offers up a whole wenu of awesome things. Widespread crop failures, Ecosystem collapse, Food supply shortages, violent uprisings, Mass human migrations, Famines, the collapse of the global supply chain and upheavals in the global balance of power. How bad can it get, and when? I don't know exactly but 2020 is off to a very exciting start. 2 months ago The pandemic felt unreal to North America, even though the warnings were easy to read. Now it's real, and hopefully it's waking us up, as people, as governments, and as businesses as to how quickly, suddenly, and shockingly the unreal can become real. And I agree with you, the economic fallout is going to be terrible. There are many things to worry about, and one of the things I worry about is that thousands of small businesses are going to go under, and their employees, who are often young and living paycheck to paycheck won't have a job to go back to after this blows over. If this pandemic causes an economic heart attack, I'll see it like a middle aged guy keeling over trying to climb 2 flights of stairs. As in: hopefully that heart attack will scare you into a greater appreciation for taking care of yourself, and it is in fact a blessing in disguise. Or maybe all those businesses will go under and Gen-Z will have to work at the Amazon warehouses until they're 30. Difficult choices need to be made.
pfdietz 7y ago
There's a good argument, I think, for allowing the low risk to get infected. They have a low chance of needing hospital care, so best to get them through this (and not propagating the disease) as quickly as possible.

baggy_trough 7y ago

I assure you that people will be so desperate for jobs that carbon management will not enter their thoughts even one iota.

jay_kyburz 7y ago
It would be nice to think that a lot of the new jobs would be in carbon and environment management. I'd like to see the government pay anybody who wants a job to plant trees.
- kortilla 7y ago
  With what new revenue? Are you also proposing a new tax burden for a recently slammed economy? That’s gonna be a hard sell.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    There have been long periods of higher taxes and economic growth. If the private sector can't keep people economically active then the state will step in.
    - jay_kyburz 7y ago
      It's called a stimulus package!
- ailideex 7y ago
  > It would be nice to think that [...] It sure would ... wouldn't it.

creato 7y ago

In the minds of people opposed to controlling CO2 emissions, your comment here justifies all of their worst fears of CO2 emission regulation as a means of social control.

miketery 7y ago
Being a part of society implies a social contract and some social control, it’s not black and white. Right now environmental impacts are not priced into many of our products (e.g. meat) and services (e.g. travel).
- creato 7y ago
  I agree. But tying the recovery from this pandemic to an attempt to regulate CO2 emission would be an absolutely atrocious way to accomplish either pandemic response or CO2 emissions response.
  - pm90 7y ago
    Disagree. Crises are the best time to make political change. You have the attention of the whole country; rally them into making changes that can affect longer term gains. I feel somewhat strange writing that as someone who buys into the systems philosophy of "fix whats broken immediately, enhance it later". While that's true in computer systems, it doesn't seem uncommon in the realm of politics that periods of disasters are taken as opportunities to experiment with different ideas.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      > You have the attention of the whole country; rally them into making changes that can affect longer term gains. That’s not how politics works. You can’t abuse a crisis to ram something unrelated down the opposing party’s throat. You end up alienating everyone including the moderates. This never works with even something as simple as a government shutdown over budget considerations.

chrisco255 7y ago

No one is dying from global warming. It's still much cooler than it was in the early Holocene (the Neolithic, or stone age era of humanity) and this was a time of abundance and expansion for farming and agriculture. Even the Sahara was richly farmed at the time. Plants not only thrive under warm temperatures, they also thrive with high levels of CO2. The world is greening: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

comicjk 7y ago
There is an asymmetric risk, though. Due to feedback loops like methane release, we don't know at what temperature the warming will stop, or how fast it will go. The upper-range estimates are well beyond any temperature from the last 10 million years.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  A lot of methane is coming from deep sea hydrothermal sources. You cannot stop that. But methane itself is unstable in the atmosphere and only accounts for less than 2 parts per million. If the climate were so sensitive to CO2 levels, where we've seen it go from 250 to over 400 ppm...we would see much more dramatic warming than we have. It was not that much cooler 100 years ago. So far, we have yet to have a year significantly warmer than 1998. It's been 22 years and the CO2 has been rising all that time. In spite of billions of people coming out of poverty. Minimal difference in maximum temps. Antarctica had record sea ice extent in 2014. Antarctica has been trending positive for sea ice over the past 30 years: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/sea_ice_south.php https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/sea_ice_so... There's never ever been a geologic extinction event associated with high levels of CO2. In fact quite the opposite: the abundant and biodiverse periods in Earth's history are associated with high CO2. Plants literally suffocate at 150ppm. We are near historical lows for the planet Earth.
  - dbingham 7y ago
    There has been a geological extinction event associated with high levels of atmospheric carbon - it was the biggest one of all time, and it nearly wiped out all life on Earth. Look up the Permian Extinction. (Yes there are multiple theories of cause, but one of which - and perhaps the most likely - is run away global warming.) And stop reading bad science.

millstone 7y ago

The virus is certain to push the US and many other economies into recession, which becomes self-sustaining. After the health crisis has passed, we will be left with this economic crisis. Monetary policy is maxed already, so we will need fiscal stimulus. This will be the opportunity to invest in green infrastructure. We will need the government to step up and provide jobs and spending, and it should direct both with wisdom to prepare for the climate challenge.

Aloha 7y ago
The economy is pretty easy to restart with cash injections as you mentioned with infrastructure projects - be it trump or biden, one of them will do it.
- riffic 7y ago
  Gentle reminder that the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee is slightly less than 4 months away, and Biden is not the nominee yet.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    The math currently does not work in Sanders Favor
  - ethagnawl 7y ago
    _Anything_ could happen between now and the convention/election. Surprisingly, I haven't seen this mentioned explicitly, but all of the remaining (major) candidates are squarely in the Covid-19 "danger zone". Some are known to have complicating health factors and there's a non-zero possibility that others do (despite what their doctors' notes say), which _doubles_ the risk.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  There may also be spending on bootstrapping a return of industries that had been moved overseas that we now know are a huge risk to not have at home.

nerdponx 7y ago

Western? Isn't this literally what China did back in January?

hermitdev 7y ago
Yes, but that isn't a good optic for domestic propaganda. Instead, the COVID-19 virus is being branded as a US Army bioweapon by Chinese state media. They've even published a book about it, already.
- Udik 7y ago
  Source?
  - hokumguru 7y ago
    Quick google search: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us-lijian-zhao-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us-lij...
    - Udik 7y ago
      This is not an official position of the Chinese government, is just a tweet by someone. And the tweet doesn't say that the coronavirus is a US biological weapon, only that patient 0 might have come from the US- and specifically in the army, and have brought the virus to China during some internal military athletic competition. "Hundreds of athletes from the US military were in Wuhan for the Military World Games in October 2019."

rubber_duck 7y ago

The economy is going to get more broken each day this is affecting us, supply chains are going to break down, demand is going to sink, investment will grind to a halt. Huge amounts of wealth is going to be destroyed and people are going to suffer. Development is going to slow down further limiting our ability to respond to those problems. Meanwhile you are cheering for an emission rate blip and suggest it's worth hurting us even further ? That's going to do what exactly ? I'm surprised at how regressive the popular opinion is around here - I wouldn't expect it from people who are in the filed of problem solving with technology.

Fricken 7y ago
The consequences of not responding proactively to the environmental crisis is orders of magnitude more serious than the pandemic. I can't think of anything more regressive than willfully destroying the planet.
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  What does that mean ? Are you saying that the climate change issue is going to be fixed if we slow down emission rampup over the next year ? Mind sharing that analysis ? I don't think you realise how bad things are going to get as this panic drags on, think unemployment and poverty waves 2008 levels. I'm not saying climate change is irrelevant - I'm saying proposing to slow down economic activity to reduce emissions has no quantifiable or tangible benefit - it's basically wishful thinking - and the downsides are going to be very harsh
  - Fricken 7y ago
    I think you're measuring how bad things are relative to what is considered normal. Relative to normal, absolutely, the pandemic is terrible. I'm measuring how bad things are relative to how rightly fucked things can be, and climate change offers up a whole wenu of awesome things. Widespread crop failures, Ecosystem collapse, Food supply shortages, violent uprisings, Mass human migrations, Famines, the collapse of the global supply chain and upheavals in the global balance of power. How bad can it get, and when? I don't know exactly but 2020 is off to a very exciting start. 2 months ago The pandemic felt unreal to North America, even though the warnings were easy to read. Now it's real, and hopefully it's waking us up, as people, as governments, and as businesses as to how quickly, suddenly, and shockingly the unreal can become real. And I agree with you, the economic fallout is going to be terrible. There are many things to worry about, and one of the things I worry about is that thousands of small businesses are going to go under, and their employees, who are often young and living paycheck to paycheck won't have a job to go back to after this blows over. If this pandemic causes an economic heart attack, I'll see it like a middle aged guy keeling over trying to climb 2 flights of stairs. As in: hopefully that heart attack will scare you into a greater appreciation for taking care of yourself, and it is in fact a blessing in disguise. Or maybe all those businesses will go under and Gen-Z will have to work at the Amazon warehouses until they're 30. Difficult choices need to be made.

pfdietz 7y ago

There's a good argument, I think, for allowing the low risk to get infected. They have a low chance of needing hospital care, so best to get them through this (and not propagating the disease) as quickly as possible.