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I'm skeptical climate change will be stopped because of what we're seeing with the pandemic: many countries and individuals won't take preemptive action against

I'm skeptical climate change will be stopped because of what we're seeing with the pandemic: many countries and individuals won't take preemptive action against a threat we scientifically know is going to happen until the impact can literally be seen on their own doorsteps. With the pandemic: 1) deaths/impact directly from the pandemic can be relatively easily identified 2) deaths/impact happen in the space of weeks 3) the positive results of mitigations can be seen in weeks 4) countries can largely isolate the impact other countries have on them regarding the pandemic. None of these 4 points are true with climate change so it's going to be even worse in terms of getting people to take it seriously and act in time. We can't even get countries to agree that masks are a good idea.

adrianN 6y ago
Most countries managed to get the pandemic mostly under control. If we managed to do the same for climate change, we'd be pretty far along.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  It would be more accurate to say that it won’t be stopped because the US has demonstrated itself committed to the internal logic of its tribalisms over objective reality and scientific truth.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > Most countries managed to get the pandemic mostly under control. How much of this is because of the points I mentioned though? The US and the UK took their time going into lockdown for example. In contrast and largely because of the time scales of climate change, it would be even easier to deny the negative impact of climate change and deny the positive influence of preemptive action.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dragontamer 6y ago
I'd disagree with #1. A large amount of discussion has been around "what is a COVID19 death?" If someone dies with COVID19 in their system, does that count as a COVID19 death? There are the clear cut cases where someone dies on a ventilator while testing COVID19 positive. A straightforward COVID19 death. But there are clear negative cases: Consider someone who has COVID19, but gets into a car crash and dies. This ideally wouldn't be a COVID19 death, because it was clear that the car crash killed the person. But from here on out... cases get more complicated. But what about someone who tested COVID19 positive, but dies of a heart attack? COVID19 clearly stresses the body, going on oxygen or other treatment, has been proven to cause long term chronic issues. But do we know for sure that the heart attack was causally related to the COVID19 virus? There's also the case of long-term chronic issues. COVID19 causes kidney damage and lung damage. If (formerly COVID19 patients) people start dying of Kidney failure next year, it is probably COVID19 related, but with a year delay. This muddles the death count, and ultimately it comes down to individual medical opinions of thousands of doctors. In the case of the heart attack, we classify it as a COVID19 death if it is the opinion of the doctor. I'm not sure if there's a better solution, but that's how the US works.
- dave5104 6y ago
  Is there any evidence that someone dying in a car crash with COVID19 is being labeled as a COVID19 death? Your claims seem rather hypothetical otherwise.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    > Is there any evidence that someone dying in a car crash with COVID19 is being labeled as a COVID19 death? No. But that's why I bring it up as a hypothetical. This is the hypothetical everyone is supposed to agree with... Because the simple "COVID19 in the system when they die" is clearly not a proper definition. In practice: The big question is the consistency of the "heart attack" case. What each individual doctor determines to be a COVID19 death isn't really consistent in that situation. It can't be, every medical scenario is different.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
svara 6y ago
The pandemic was also a crisis of government. It made / makes it blatantly obvious that poor leadership in the wrong moment has a (potentially gigantic) cost. Optimistically, I'm coming to the opposite conclusion as you: Maybe more people will understand now that you can't ignore that just because it's politics.
kulahan 6y ago
I'm absolutely certain the only way we stop climate change is via innovation in the form of carbon capture technologies. There's no way humans are just gonna cut back on eating meat, demand a removal of single-use plastics, crack down on resource-intensive industries (almond milk is INCREDIBLY inefficient and only getting more popular, for instance), and fight to pass laws which force companies to get cleaner (thus increasing the cost of those products). I've met a handful of people in my life who care enough to live a greener lifestyle beyond making one or two relatively convenient changes in their life, let alone overhaul their entire lifestyle. It's absolutely down to the wizards working on green tech to solve the issue.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > There's no way humans are just gonna cut back on eating meat, You don't think taxing meat by its environmental cost will work? > crack down on resource-intensive industries (almond milk is INCREDIBLY inefficient and only getting more popular, for instance) Almond uses an order of magnitude less land, emissions and water than dairy so why not crack down on dairy if you feel this way? https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042 We already grow then feed soy to cows to get milk, why not just drink soy directly?
  - rhino369 6y ago
    >You don't think taxing meat by its environmental cost will work? Economically, it would work. Politically? At least in the US, people would vote out any party that installed taxes that reduced meat consumption by an significant amount. We don't even have the political willpower to make energy slightly more expensive.
  - kulahan 6y ago
    As the other user said, I don't believe we could get the political muster necessary to pass a law taxing meat heavily any time soon. Meat is popular! Nobody wants to give that up. Also, you're absolutely correct that dairy milk is less efficient by a long-shot, I was just pointing to it because I know a lot of people I personally know are moving to it and away from dairy as though it's a quality alternative. It's better, but still not great.
rakoo 6y ago
I'm also skeptical climate change will be stopped (or, rather, slowed down) because this pandemic has shown us something else: A large part of the world has basically stopped functioning for a few months. People stayed home, industries didn't produce anything, restaurants stopped serving people, and so on. It was a huge stress on everyone and now that we're reopening up the overall sentiment is that never should the world halt like that again. Governments everywhere are mentioning the idea that maybe we should change something, but the real mindset is to start like before, and work even more for lower wages to compensate for the loss. It is estimated that over the whole year, the emissions of CO2-equivalent will have gone down by 4% in 2020. There are only 2 years in the 20th century when this happened: 1929, the Great Depression, and 1945, because the industrial powerhouses that Germany and Japan were are not producing anything anymore. We've had the same this year. But the other fun stats is that if we want to achieve the +2C goal of 2100, that is directly correlated to the amount of CO2-equivalent that has been emitted since the beginning of the industrial revolution; the quota we have until 2100 is such that we need to reduce our emissions every year, and this reduction must be 4% compared to the year before. In other words, we need an additional lockdown every year, until 2100. That's the scale of the change, and when I see what happens after a single one, it is clear to me we will never reach that +2C in 2100.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > In other words, we need an additional lockdown every year, until 2100. That's the scale of the change, and when I see what happens after a single one, it is clear to me we will never reach that +2C in 2100. I've seen people point out that emissions haven't dropped much during lockdown but isn't that because manufacturing, mining, shipping, animal farming etc. and everything else that supports our personal unsustainable lifestyles would have largely been continuing as normal ready for things to restart? E.g. maybe you're not going to launch a cruise ship during lockdown or go on a cruise, but cruise ships are still getting designed, ordered and built during lockdown.
  - orwin 6y ago
    Growth is based on productivity gains. Productivity gains only come marginally from optimization. Most productivity gains are from bigger machines (that eat more energy than smaller ones). 80% of our energy is from carbon, we have to cut 4% of this every year starting last year to have a chance to barely stay below 2C. This mean cutting what's feeding our machines by ~3% per year. So productivity losses. By cutting less productive sectors first we might manage that without entering recession for a few year, but even with that, thousands of people will be left over.
burlesona 6y ago
I came here to share largely the same observation. Human nature is such that people (in aggregate) don’t take a threat seriously until it’s affecting people they know or places they care about. And when the government tries to force the issue it generates serious backlash. Case in point, look at Texas pandemic response. The state adopted a lockdown and restrictions pretty early on because they saw what was happening in Europe and New York. But those places are very far away, and Texas is a very big state. No city had more than a dozen or so cases at that time, and a heavy test and trace policy might have been viable for slowing things down for another week or two. But ironically, because the government locked down before the crisis was acute locally, there was a huge backlash and they lifted the lockdown prematurely - which I think psychologically reinforced the idea that the disease “wasn’t going to be a problem in TX.” Now cases are skyrocketing, they’re rolling back the reopening, but compliance with the restrictions is very low. In short, I don’t think the majority cares about risks until their own neighborhood is burning. Thus the effective solution to societal problems must be (1) easy, (2) cheap, and/or (3) come with exciting benefits right now. You can see this in action with Elon Musk and Tesla. His stated vision is to eliminate the combustion automobile. His approach is to make a “way cooler car” that people really want and that is seen as superior to the old cars, and then over time figure out how to drive the price down to where there’s no reason to buy combustion anymore. It takes a really long time, but it seems to be working.
- GateCrasher 6y ago
  Let's hope his next endeavor is a way cooler public transport.

adrianN 6y ago

Most countries managed to get the pandemic mostly under control. If we managed to do the same for climate change, we'd be pretty far along.

claudeganon 6y ago
It would be more accurate to say that it won’t be stopped because the US has demonstrated itself committed to the internal logic of its tribalisms over objective reality and scientific truth.
seanwilson 6y ago
> Most countries managed to get the pandemic mostly under control. How much of this is because of the points I mentioned though? The US and the UK took their time going into lockdown for example. In contrast and largely because of the time scales of climate change, it would be even easier to deny the negative impact of climate change and deny the positive influence of preemptive action.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dragontamer 6y ago

I'd disagree with #1. A large amount of discussion has been around "what is a COVID19 death?" If someone dies with COVID19 in their system, does that count as a COVID19 death? There are the clear cut cases where someone dies on a ventilator while testing COVID19 positive. A straightforward COVID19 death. But there are clear negative cases: Consider someone who has COVID19, but gets into a car crash and dies. This ideally wouldn't be a COVID19 death, because it was clear that the car crash killed the person. But from here on out... cases get more complicated. But what about someone who tested COVID19 positive, but dies of a heart attack? COVID19 clearly stresses the body, going on oxygen or other treatment, has been proven to cause long term chronic issues. But do we know for sure that the heart attack was causally related to the COVID19 virus? There's also the case of long-term chronic issues. COVID19 causes kidney damage and lung damage. If (formerly COVID19 patients) people start dying of Kidney failure next year, it is probably COVID19 related, but with a year delay. This muddles the death count, and ultimately it comes down to individual medical opinions of thousands of doctors. In the case of the heart attack, we classify it as a COVID19 death if it is the opinion of the doctor. I'm not sure if there's a better solution, but that's how the US works.

dave5104 6y ago
Is there any evidence that someone dying in a car crash with COVID19 is being labeled as a COVID19 death? Your claims seem rather hypothetical otherwise.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  > Is there any evidence that someone dying in a car crash with COVID19 is being labeled as a COVID19 death? No. But that's why I bring it up as a hypothetical. This is the hypothetical everyone is supposed to agree with... Because the simple "COVID19 in the system when they die" is clearly not a proper definition. In practice: The big question is the consistency of the "heart attack" case. What each individual doctor determines to be a COVID19 death isn't really consistent in that situation. It can't be, every medical scenario is different.
- germinalphrase 6y ago

svara 6y ago

The pandemic was also a crisis of government. It made / makes it blatantly obvious that poor leadership in the wrong moment has a (potentially gigantic) cost. Optimistically, I'm coming to the opposite conclusion as you: Maybe more people will understand now that you can't ignore that just because it's politics.

kulahan 6y ago

I'm absolutely certain the only way we stop climate change is via innovation in the form of carbon capture technologies. There's no way humans are just gonna cut back on eating meat, demand a removal of single-use plastics, crack down on resource-intensive industries (almond milk is INCREDIBLY inefficient and only getting more popular, for instance), and fight to pass laws which force companies to get cleaner (thus increasing the cost of those products). I've met a handful of people in my life who care enough to live a greener lifestyle beyond making one or two relatively convenient changes in their life, let alone overhaul their entire lifestyle. It's absolutely down to the wizards working on green tech to solve the issue.

seanwilson 6y ago
> There's no way humans are just gonna cut back on eating meat, You don't think taxing meat by its environmental cost will work? > crack down on resource-intensive industries (almond milk is INCREDIBLY inefficient and only getting more popular, for instance) Almond uses an order of magnitude less land, emissions and water than dairy so why not crack down on dairy if you feel this way? https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042 We already grow then feed soy to cows to get milk, why not just drink soy directly?
- rhino369 6y ago
  >You don't think taxing meat by its environmental cost will work? Economically, it would work. Politically? At least in the US, people would vote out any party that installed taxes that reduced meat consumption by an significant amount. We don't even have the political willpower to make energy slightly more expensive.
- kulahan 6y ago
  As the other user said, I don't believe we could get the political muster necessary to pass a law taxing meat heavily any time soon. Meat is popular! Nobody wants to give that up. Also, you're absolutely correct that dairy milk is less efficient by a long-shot, I was just pointing to it because I know a lot of people I personally know are moving to it and away from dairy as though it's a quality alternative. It's better, but still not great.

rakoo 6y ago

I'm also skeptical climate change will be stopped (or, rather, slowed down) because this pandemic has shown us something else: A large part of the world has basically stopped functioning for a few months. People stayed home, industries didn't produce anything, restaurants stopped serving people, and so on. It was a huge stress on everyone and now that we're reopening up the overall sentiment is that never should the world halt like that again. Governments everywhere are mentioning the idea that maybe we should change something, but the real mindset is to start like before, and work even more for lower wages to compensate for the loss. It is estimated that over the whole year, the emissions of CO2-equivalent will have gone down by 4% in 2020. There are only 2 years in the 20th century when this happened: 1929, the Great Depression, and 1945, because the industrial powerhouses that Germany and Japan were are not producing anything anymore. We've had the same this year. But the other fun stats is that if we want to achieve the +2C goal of 2100, that is directly correlated to the amount of CO2-equivalent that has been emitted since the beginning of the industrial revolution; the quota we have until 2100 is such that we need to reduce our emissions every year, and this reduction must be 4% compared to the year before. In other words, we need an additional lockdown every year, until 2100. That's the scale of the change, and when I see what happens after a single one, it is clear to me we will never reach that +2C in 2100.

seanwilson 6y ago
> In other words, we need an additional lockdown every year, until 2100. That's the scale of the change, and when I see what happens after a single one, it is clear to me we will never reach that +2C in 2100. I've seen people point out that emissions haven't dropped much during lockdown but isn't that because manufacturing, mining, shipping, animal farming etc. and everything else that supports our personal unsustainable lifestyles would have largely been continuing as normal ready for things to restart? E.g. maybe you're not going to launch a cruise ship during lockdown or go on a cruise, but cruise ships are still getting designed, ordered and built during lockdown.
- orwin 6y ago
  Growth is based on productivity gains. Productivity gains only come marginally from optimization. Most productivity gains are from bigger machines (that eat more energy than smaller ones). 80% of our energy is from carbon, we have to cut 4% of this every year starting last year to have a chance to barely stay below 2C. This mean cutting what's feeding our machines by ~3% per year. So productivity losses. By cutting less productive sectors first we might manage that without entering recession for a few year, but even with that, thousands of people will be left over.

burlesona 6y ago

I came here to share largely the same observation. Human nature is such that people (in aggregate) don’t take a threat seriously until it’s affecting people they know or places they care about. And when the government tries to force the issue it generates serious backlash. Case in point, look at Texas pandemic response. The state adopted a lockdown and restrictions pretty early on because they saw what was happening in Europe and New York. But those places are very far away, and Texas is a very big state. No city had more than a dozen or so cases at that time, and a heavy test and trace policy might have been viable for slowing things down for another week or two. But ironically, because the government locked down before the crisis was acute locally, there was a huge backlash and they lifted the lockdown prematurely - which I think psychologically reinforced the idea that the disease “wasn’t going to be a problem in TX.” Now cases are skyrocketing, they’re rolling back the reopening, but compliance with the restrictions is very low. In short, I don’t think the majority cares about risks until their own neighborhood is burning. Thus the effective solution to societal problems must be (1) easy, (2) cheap, and/or (3) come with exciting benefits right now. You can see this in action with Elon Musk and Tesla. His stated vision is to eliminate the combustion automobile. His approach is to make a “way cooler car” that people really want and that is seen as superior to the old cars, and then over time figure out how to drive the price down to where there’s no reason to buy combustion anymore. It takes a really long time, but it seems to be working.

GateCrasher 6y ago
Let's hope his next endeavor is a way cooler public transport.