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The proposed solutions are political. When someone tells me I need to stop eating meat, pave forests with solar panels and stop flying, I know they're talking p

by tomp 6y ago

The proposed solutions are political. When someone tells me I need to stop eating meat, pave forests with solar panels and stop flying, I know they're talking politics, not climate change. I hate ideologies trying to control my life. What happened to nuclear, geoengineering, fair revenue-neutral carbon taxes - those are reasonable solutions. Instead, I have to chew on a slimy paper straw...

triceratops 6y ago
> need to stop eating meat, stop flying That'll happen anyway with carbon taxes. Or at least it'll cost a lot more and many people will do less of it. Until we have carbon taxes, you could choose to do it voluntarily to help out. > pave forests with solar panels I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that. > What happened to nuclear Expensive and difficult to build. But if you like it, France, the UK and India are still doing it. And you're always free to advocate for it. "They oppose nuclear" isn't a great reason to stop working with people on solving the problem of climate change. Why be so prescriptive in solutions by saying "nukes or bust"? > geoengineering You mean the thing that's already gotten us into this mess? > fair revenue-neutral carbon taxes Cheers to that. A lot of the people you dislike politically support those. Work with them.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Agreeing with the rest of your comment, but: >> geoengineering > You mean the thing that's already gotten us into this mess? What got us into this mess is geo-moving-fast-and-breaking-things. Everyone chasing short-term profits and dumping externalities on everyone else. I don't get the hate for geoengineering - i.e. planned, large-scale interventions. Sure, it would be better to not need it, but the way things are heading, we very well might.
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    Given the huge uncertainty in all models of the climate, how can we be sure our large scale interventions don’t have large scale unintended consequences?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      We can't, but at some point in the near future, the consequences of our current course of action will be bad enough to risk it. Think of geoengineering as chemo for the planet - a very blunt treatment with bad, large-scale consequences, that we apply anyway, because the disease it fights is even worse.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > planned, large-scale interventions. Unintended consequences. Unless it's direct carbon capture, there is no guarantee we won't create worse problems.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Doesn't explain the hate any mention of geoengineering seems to be getting. "Unintended consequences" shouldn't be used as a generic counterargument/thought-terminating cliché. What particular consequences are we talking about, and how they stake against the problem we're sure to have?
      - triceratops 6y ago
        > "Unintended consequences" shouldn't be used as a generic counterargument/thought-terminating cliché. "Geoengineering" is itself a very generic term. > What particular consequences are we talking about, They would depend on the particular geoengineering technique we're talking about. The whole point of unintended consequences is they are not or could not be anticipated before the fact. Other than direct carbon capture i.e. geoengineering that's a direct inverse of the problem we have right now, I'm not confident we can predict everything that can go wrong with any given geoengineering solution. Even direct carbon capture is likely to have some serious downsides at scale we haven't yet considered.
- tomp 6y ago
  Exactly, the point of carbon taxes is that everybody gets a choice. You'll eat less meat, I'll drive around less. It's the least-ideological solution.
  - JauntTrooper 6y ago
    I think a carbon tax is one of the most efficient solutions available, but it's proven to be very ideological since the burden of consumption taxes tends to fall on people with lower income. They're very unpopular, and few countries have been able to implement them successfully. It's still worth trying to pursue a more popular version of a carbon tax because of how efficient they are, but we need to acknowledge their political shortcomings. Perhaps we could pair a carbon tax with an annual distribution of revenue raised to everyone - a carbon bonus - so people see a direct benefit too instead of just the tax. Regardless we need to explore other solutions too, since it's not going to be enough to stop the climate from destabilizing further.
    - tomp 6y ago
      Yeah that's why I wrote "revenue-neutral". I've no desire to finance even more corruption and wars. The only goal is to penalize carbon and incentivize less carbon.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > Perhaps we could pair a carbon tax with an annual distribution of revenue raised to everyone Pretty much this. Use it to fund UBI maybe. The Canadian province of British Columbia collects a carbon tax and reduces income taxes by a commensurate amount.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Agreed. I think we should all focus our energy on that instead of refusing to work together unless the other person supports our specific set of solutions (nuclear power, ending capitalism, whatever).
JauntTrooper 6y ago
Carbon taxes and more nuclear power are also political solutions. So are controlling emissions from meat producers, stricter emission standards on airplanes, and investments in infrastructure for renewable energy. Preventing climate change from getting worse requires coordinated action at the national and international levels. There are many proposed solutions, but so far none of them have been implemented and it's unclear our government systems are sophisticated enough to do so, to the detriment of us all. Incidentally, I think the primary driver of state-level bans on single use plastic straws was to reduce plastic waste, especially in the oceans.
porb121 6y ago
Incredible that some how a tax appears less political to you than suggested behavioral change
- tomp 6y ago
  If we want different results then we need to change behaviour, that's a given. But a ideological behavioral change ("eat less meat") enforced on everybody is much more political (ideological) than just implementing the required nudges/incentives (less carbon) and allowing everybody to adjust their behavior as they see fit.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Behaviour change is just a political. You are hammered every day with political advertising spread as astroturfing via social media and even the regular news. Everything involving money is political.
- andromeduck 6y ago
  Taxes change incentives which though affecting behavior in aggregate but each individual still gets to choose how they want to approach it. Trying to mandate behavior directly on the other hand is heavy handed and more politicial because it assumes that everyone has the same set of preferences. Carbon taxes also allow solutions to be arrived at organically vs via fiat which also reduces opportunity for corruption when the pricing is transparent.

by tomp 6y ago

triceratops 6y ago

> need to stop eating meat, stop flying That'll happen anyway with carbon taxes. Or at least it'll cost a lot more and many people will do less of it. Until we have carbon taxes, you could choose to do it voluntarily to help out. > pave forests with solar panels I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that. > What happened to nuclear Expensive and difficult to build. But if you like it, France, the UK and India are still doing it. And you're always free to advocate for it. "They oppose nuclear" isn't a great reason to stop working with people on solving the problem of climate change. Why be so prescriptive in solutions by saying "nukes or bust"? > geoengineering You mean the thing that's already gotten us into this mess? > fair revenue-neutral carbon taxes Cheers to that. A lot of the people you dislike politically support those. Work with them.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Agreeing with the rest of your comment, but: >> geoengineering > You mean the thing that's already gotten us into this mess? What got us into this mess is geo-moving-fast-and-breaking-things. Everyone chasing short-term profits and dumping externalities on everyone else. I don't get the hate for geoengineering - i.e. planned, large-scale interventions. Sure, it would be better to not need it, but the way things are heading, we very well might.
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  Given the huge uncertainty in all models of the climate, how can we be sure our large scale interventions don’t have large scale unintended consequences?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    We can't, but at some point in the near future, the consequences of our current course of action will be bad enough to risk it. Think of geoengineering as chemo for the planet - a very blunt treatment with bad, large-scale consequences, that we apply anyway, because the disease it fights is even worse.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > planned, large-scale interventions. Unintended consequences. Unless it's direct carbon capture, there is no guarantee we won't create worse problems.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Doesn't explain the hate any mention of geoengineering seems to be getting. "Unintended consequences" shouldn't be used as a generic counterargument/thought-terminating cliché. What particular consequences are we talking about, and how they stake against the problem we're sure to have?
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > "Unintended consequences" shouldn't be used as a generic counterargument/thought-terminating cliché. "Geoengineering" is itself a very generic term. > What particular consequences are we talking about, They would depend on the particular geoengineering technique we're talking about. The whole point of unintended consequences is they are not or could not be anticipated before the fact. Other than direct carbon capture i.e. geoengineering that's a direct inverse of the problem we have right now, I'm not confident we can predict everything that can go wrong with any given geoengineering solution. Even direct carbon capture is likely to have some serious downsides at scale we haven't yet considered.
tomp 6y ago
Exactly, the point of carbon taxes is that everybody gets a choice. You'll eat less meat, I'll drive around less. It's the least-ideological solution.
- JauntTrooper 6y ago
  I think a carbon tax is one of the most efficient solutions available, but it's proven to be very ideological since the burden of consumption taxes tends to fall on people with lower income. They're very unpopular, and few countries have been able to implement them successfully. It's still worth trying to pursue a more popular version of a carbon tax because of how efficient they are, but we need to acknowledge their political shortcomings. Perhaps we could pair a carbon tax with an annual distribution of revenue raised to everyone - a carbon bonus - so people see a direct benefit too instead of just the tax. Regardless we need to explore other solutions too, since it's not going to be enough to stop the climate from destabilizing further.
  - tomp 6y ago
    Yeah that's why I wrote "revenue-neutral". I've no desire to finance even more corruption and wars. The only goal is to penalize carbon and incentivize less carbon.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > Perhaps we could pair a carbon tax with an annual distribution of revenue raised to everyone Pretty much this. Use it to fund UBI maybe. The Canadian province of British Columbia collects a carbon tax and reduces income taxes by a commensurate amount.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax
- triceratops 6y ago
  Agreed. I think we should all focus our energy on that instead of refusing to work together unless the other person supports our specific set of solutions (nuclear power, ending capitalism, whatever).

JauntTrooper 6y ago

Carbon taxes and more nuclear power are also political solutions. So are controlling emissions from meat producers, stricter emission standards on airplanes, and investments in infrastructure for renewable energy. Preventing climate change from getting worse requires coordinated action at the national and international levels. There are many proposed solutions, but so far none of them have been implemented and it's unclear our government systems are sophisticated enough to do so, to the detriment of us all. Incidentally, I think the primary driver of state-level bans on single use plastic straws was to reduce plastic waste, especially in the oceans.

porb121 6y ago

Incredible that some how a tax appears less political to you than suggested behavioral change

tomp 6y ago
If we want different results then we need to change behaviour, that's a given. But a ideological behavioral change ("eat less meat") enforced on everybody is much more political (ideological) than just implementing the required nudges/incentives (less carbon) and allowing everybody to adjust their behavior as they see fit.
pixl97 6y ago
Behaviour change is just a political. You are hammered every day with political advertising spread as astroturfing via social media and even the regular news. Everything involving money is political.
andromeduck 6y ago
Taxes change incentives which though affecting behavior in aggregate but each individual still gets to choose how they want to approach it. Trying to mandate behavior directly on the other hand is heavy handed and more politicial because it assumes that everyone has the same set of preferences. Carbon taxes also allow solutions to be arrived at organically vs via fiat which also reduces opportunity for corruption when the pricing is transparent.