5 ms·
> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players. No, global warming has a
by runeks 7y ago
> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players.
No, global warming has a very different dynamic. With a virus, if you do the right thing and protect yourself, you’re more likely to survive. With global warming, if you get a lot of people to emit less CO2, you might just end up making CO2 emissions cheaper for everyone else.
- VWWHFSfQ 7y agoThat's a very reductive and defeatist way to view the problem, and potential solution. The reality is there is no silver bullet. Emissions have to be reduced by means of an energy revolution. Sure, some will benefit in the short term. But everyone will benefit in the long term.
- hanoz 7y agoIt's not reductive and defeatist to point out that the global warming issue has a tragedy of the commons aspect, on both personal and national levels, which could hardly be more different to the current pandemic.
- cortesoft 7y agoSo what should we do?
- vkou 7y agoCarbon taxes, and protectionist trade tariffs against countries who don't adopt carbon taxes. Make non-compliance painful enough, and the defectors will fall in line.
- banads 7y ago>Make non-compliance painful enough, and the defectors will fall in line. Maybe they don't, or maybe in the end that's all too little too late, which is why I'd suggest adding adaptation initiatives to your list.
- vkou 7y agoWe're going to have to turn to adaptation initiatives even if we go net-zero-carbon tomorrow - that's kind of baked into our future planning at this point.
- mirimir 7y agoWhat if the defectors have more nukes than you do?
- e9 7y agoFor a lot of countries it’s either emit pollution and feed people or don’t and let lots of people starve. Do you think your privileged life worth more than someone from third world who can barely afford to eat?
- jfrankamp 7y agoThe United States military could best be used to fight this by destroying (with warning) global fossil fuel infrastructure that wasn't voluntarily closed, bit by bit with a decade long schedule. The announcement alone would prompt a massive shift in energy production, use, investment etc. Our own legacy infrastructure would also have to be on the list. Call it a Paris accord with teeth. It will never happen, because collectively we don't believe the cost of climate change is greater than the cost of leveling the landscape of incentives to reduce emissions + reducing emissions. The US could unilaterally leverage its remaining military lead to enact global change.
- tlrobinson 7y agoThat sounds like a good way to start World War III. The top oil producing countries after the US are: Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, China, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Iran, Kuwait https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoNuclear winter would solve global warming though it still would count as climate change, so maybe it's a wash.
- mirimir 7y agoWell, Russia doesn't seem so happy about global warming. I gather that melting permafrost screws up gas production. So maybe they'd want to work with the US.
- jchook 7y agoThe US is well versed in "the lesser of two evils"
- jfrankamp 7y agoAll signatories of the Paris accord. All are nominally thought to be rapidly transforming their economies in response to an existential crisis. "including high polluters such as China, the US, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Indonesia and Mexico, which generate more than half the world's greenhouse gas emissions, will somehow drive down their carbon pollution voluntarily and assiduously without any binding enforcement mechanism" What is the binding enforcement mechanism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement
- Rexxar 7y agoBuy carbon and store it somewhere.
- marcosdumay 7y agoHum... The GP seems to be talking about Global Warming denialists, and the dynamics of how they communicate with people. This one is the same. But yes, Global Warming has the bad quality that it is completely not obvious how to solve it. There is an entirely different dynamic at the side that accepts it for settling on a solution... and what is more disturbing, R&D and science are mostly neglected there too, even by the academics so prone on applying science to predict the problem.
- sjg007 7y agoUmm it is pretty obvious how you “solve” global warming and that is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- dagurp 7y agoIt's not obvious how to do that
- mwarkentin 7y agoApparently with a global pandemic. /s
- hanspeter 7y agoNot on a global scale but on a national it's very obvious.
- marcosdumay 7y agoThe only thing that matters is the global result, and the only policies that we know how they work at global scale are the ones that we know that they do not work. There is an incredible lack of actual social and political scientists discussing those policies, and the few economists that are there seem focused on hitting known bad policies (what is easy to understand, since politicians keep pushing them).
- lutorm 7y ago
- smichel17 7y agoIf I do the right thing and protect myself, I reduce strain on hospitals, allowing the careless to receive better care. But enough people being careless will overload the healthcare system all the same, reducing its ability to serve me.
- hedora 7y agoIf you catch coronavirus, you’re roughly twice as likely to die this year as if you didn’t (this is true for most age groups). Most people have a vanishingly low probability of dying in the next 12 months. They shouldn’t care much if they get it or not, unless they’re worried about the welfare of others. This seems very similar to CO2 to me, except that global warming affects younger people more, and coronavirus primarily affects older people. It saddens me that our leaders won’t act to prevent a planetary disaster that will that affect their children and all future generations, but are willing many more times the resources on a comparatively minor crisis that will last at most a year.
- Tepix 7y agoThat‘s statistics. In reality there are many factors that make COVID-19 much more dangerous for a lot of people. Besides, i don‘t feel like taking an extea 2 in 1000 chance of dying, thank you very much.