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Currently, the richest 10% are responsible for half of all CO2 emissions [1], and you only need $93k be in the richest 10% [2], quite modest by HN standards. Hi
by Aunche 6y ago
Currently, the richest 10% are responsible for half of all CO2 emissions [1], and you only need $93k be in the richest 10% [2], quite modest by HN standards. Historically, the only way countries have been able to lift themselves out of poverty is by burning fossil fuels for energy. While alternative energy is rapidly advancing, Nigeria isn't going to wait decades to build a solar plant when they can build several coal power plants right now.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-richest-10-produce-half-of-global-carbon-emissions-says-oxfam https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-in-the-richest-10-percent-worldwide.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-b...
- tomjakubowski 6y agoAccording to the Oxfam report linked by that Gyardian article[1], the global top 1% (~ millionaires) produce 15% of emissions, "more than twice the poorest 50% (c.3.1 billion people), or more than the entire cumulative emissions of citizens in the EU." [1]: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621052/mb-confronting-carbon-inequality-210920-en.pdf https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Robotbeat 6y agoOld data. They used 2007/2008 data.
- blhack 6y agoDoes this mean the answer to global warming is to keep people in poverty?
- option 6y agono, the answer is to use nuclear - a scalable technology which we have spent decades developing and operating. France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear.
- anohito11235 6y agoPeople are too frighten of a nuclear meltdown like in Chernobyl or East coast Japan. Sure, we have been productively making nuclear plant to be safer but it takes time to convince the population, i guess.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoIs that even the issue any more? Most people probably don't remember Chernobyl, and forgot about Japan the instant it left the news. I think the real resistance, is the drug of indignation. Folks are manufacturing it all the time, latching onto anything they can find to get spun up about. With negligible attention to facts. Its the one constant in our brave new world.
- option 6y agoI actually grew up near Chernobyl and both my parents still work there. Pretty much anyone who knows even a little about nuclear energy and does not have a political position is very much pro-nuclear.
- vtail 6y agoAnd/or to have fewer people overall.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIt means we give away solar, wind, and energy storage to the poor, and build all of the above as fast as manufacturing allows. You make it economically untenable to burn fossil fuels. Global PV production capacity is ~170GW per year, current fossil generation capacity in Africa is about 135GW. Not outlandish to get that replaced in short order while accounting for growth. Want it done faster? Build more PV manufacturing capacity. The product is glass and silicon with a hint of rare earths. PV panels are almost 100% recyclable. Overbuilt renewables should be used to sequester atmospheric carbon instead of curtailing (throwing excess renewables away when unneeded). It’s going to take an incredible amount of energy to stick all of that burned carbon from the last 100 years back into the ground. TLDR “You must construct additional pylons.”
- Robotbeat 6y agoSo, the figures in that Oxfam report, when that Guardian article was published, was from 2007/2008. The report was written in 2015, but the data was already out of date. I mention that because from 2007 to 2019 (figures from 2020 aren't available yet), China's per capita emissions increased by 55% while those of the West have declined. China's per capita emissions have risen from 5.25 tCO2/capita in 2007 to 8.12t in 2019 while the UK's have dropped to now just 5.45tCO2. On the other hand, your point about solar vs coal is wrong. It takes less time now to build a solar power plant than a coal power plant. Especially for developing countries that don't already have substantial port and/or rail infrastructure. And this applies somewhat to natural gas, too. It's diesel that they tend to run for this reason. Solar, and now solar + storage, can compete just fine with diesel (and solar + storage + diesel is a pretty resilient combination that also can be built out super fast, is very cheap to build and operate, and also happens to get you to like 80-90% carbonfree... so there's decent hope out there).
- Aunche 6y agoThanks for the updated figures. It's worth noting that China does 28% of the world's manufacturing, much of which is exported to developed countries. As far as solar goes, clearly coal is cheaper than solar in Nigeria because that's what they're mostly building now. Regulations and subsidies are what make solar cheaper than coal in the US. Edit: To be clear, I'm completely in favor of coal being replaced by renewables. I'm just pointing this out to raise awareness of the economic realities that are incentivizing coal power in developing countries.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoThis is absolutely not true. Solar and wind, unsubsizded, are the cheapest forms of energy currently. I highly recommend reviewing both links below to better understand the economics. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2020/Jun/Renewables-Increasingly-Beat-Even-Cheapest-Coal-Competitors-on-Cost https://www.irena.org/newsroom/pressreleases/2020/Jun/Renewa...
- kumarvvr 6y ago>Historically, the only way countries have been able to lift themselves out of poverty is by burning fossil fuels for energy This is an interesting point, but I don't get the cause and effect scenario here. What bothers me is the ideological trap that fossil fuels are the only resources that can be exploited to bring people out of poverty. Are we so lacking in innovation that we cannot come up with sustainable development models?
- ip26 6y agoThey are not the only such resources. But they have been the cheapest, which means they have been the fastest track out of poverty.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoWe have the cheapest credit in human history, yet we can't fund renewable projects with positive ROI. Meanwhile people are 'investing' in bitcoin, and pumping meme stocks.
- imtringued 6y agoChristine Lagarde (head of ECB) also got a lot of flak for announcing that the european central bank will keep reducing it's exposure to CO2 intensive companies. At this point the amount of self harm in the population is so great that there is nothing to be done. Is this the curse of right wing populism? Why do disenfranchised people love voting for people that don't care about them? Trump didn't win the election but he still had lots of support even though he was only looking out for himself (and others like him) during his presidency. Green investments are such an incredibly easy way to implement jobs programs yet people hate on them because they believe not subsidizing anything is more important than solving real problems like domestic underemployment. Yes, when I talk about green investments I am not even considering how you are doing something for the planet, I'm just talking about the economic impact of building up a domestic industry. For all intents and purposes you could also have spent money on maintaining roads or building lots of houses for all I care but when you listen to someone like Trump he would spend it on useless crap like coal. There are very little employment opportunities (if you ignore the work needed to undo the CO2 emissions) in a dying industry. But hey, it's got high visibility and is an emotional topic so lets shoot renewables down in favor of it even though you had more to benefit from the "green scam" (hyperbole) than coal. China is doing an extreme amount of jobs programs. All those ghost cities are there to employ construction workers first, sell capital to wealthy individuals and eventually be populated by immigrants. They also loan money to developing countries and build infrastructure for them.
- dheera 6y agoThat is, unless we put actual scientists in political power who understand that helping fund solar in Nigeria and elsewhere will be a net positive for your own economy by simple aversion of several economic disasters due to climate change.
- javajosh 6y agoI wonder if they've done that analysis and found that it wouldn't actually be worth it. My concern is that those threat models might not be great at factoring in the cost of the end times.
- carlmr 6y ago>helping fund solar in Nigeria and elsewhere will be a net positive for your own economy The issue here is probably that there are so many people on earth you'd have to invest in so many places that you'd be a poor country before getting any returns.
- imtringued 6y agoWell, in theory that would be the case. In practice as long as you invest printed central bank money carefully you can actually make a nice return. However I don't see why any country would have an obligation to invest into foreign infrastructure. It would be more politically acceptable to solve domestic problems first.
- dflock 6y ago> Nigeria isn't going to wait decades to build a solar plant when they can build several coal power plants right now. Solar is cheaper & quicker to build & run than coal plants. And it can be built incrementally and start generating power and profits very quickly, compared to traditional power plants, which are large construction projects that don't generate power or profit until after they're completed.
- konjin 6y agoAnd without grid scale storage, which doesn't exist, solar at noon is about as useful as coal in the middle of Australia. Renewable only is a pipe dream and is distracting from the fact that we need to build nuclear plants if we want to have a planet by the end of the century.
- kolinko 6y agoWith solar+hydrogen you have a higher stability than nuclear. When solar process fall by additional 50%, this setup will be even cheaper than coal.
- konjin 6y agoSo on the one hand we have a technology that works, on the other we have a pipe dream. I sure know which one I want to bet the future of the planet on.
- Hypx 6y agoNeither one's really a pipe dream anymore. Solar+wind+hydrogen is at the point where it can replace all fossil fuels. This doesn't mean you can't have nuclear, but it's no longer necessarily.
- adrianN 6y agoYou can do 50% renewables without any storage. The world is pretty far away from that.
- shakna 6y ago> While alternative energy is rapidly advancing, Nigeria isn't going to wait decades to build a solar plant when they can build several coal power plants right now. It is _faster_ and _cheaper_ for Nigeria to build a solar plant right now. [0] We've crossed over that line. [0] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a34372005/solar-cheapest-energy-ever/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a34372005/solar-che...
- melling 6y agoLet me restate that for you. The richest 760 million people are responsible for half of all CO2 emissions. I am imagine that includes the cars, big homes, the electricity, and all the products that we buy from China. I’m not sure what you want us to do with that information. There’s nothing actionable in that observation. We should’ve stopped using coal two decades ago. I’m sure we can spend all night talking about this, but it’s all been said before.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoemissions are being produced by people wealthy enough to invest in renewables / offset / etc.
- melling 6y agoI’m not sure where we stand on solar panels on everyone’s homes. Doesn’t seem to be replacing power plants, which is what we need. Making sure my manufacturered imports are carbon neutral will be difficult. All the other indirect emissions will also be hard to account for.
- dehrmann 6y ago> all the products that we buy from China Not sure why you're calling this out. Container shipping is very efficient.
- fulafel 6y agoIt's actionable. Maybe it takes a lot of rehashing to get through, but still. Lots of these people voluntarily give up cars, big houses etc already, and more are partial to making carbon caps / policies that result in carbon neutrality.
- eloff 6y agoNew coal plants are not economical compared to solar in any sunny location, Nigeria definitely included. It's cheaper in many places to build new solar compared to operating existing coal plants - that's how bad it's got for coal. Coal is on the way out and nothing can stop that now.
- asdff 6y ago>Historically, the only way countries have been able to lift themselves out of poverty is by burning fossil fuels for energy I think this is only because historically, the only realistic way to produce energy for a lot of nations was by burning fossil fuels. No poor nation 70 years ago would be able to construct a nuclear plant or build a massive dam. Now, we have renewable sources available for a much lower upfront cost than what was available historically.
- bamboozled 6y agoThey will all die from it, so it's not going to matter what they do.
- LatteLazy 6y agoAre the richest 10% responsible for half because each percentile generates 5% or because the 1% generates 49% and the other 9% basically generate nothing?
- iridium_core 6y agoAnd what % of economic, scientific, and cultural output is that 10% responsible for?
- lenkite 6y agoPlease go by sovereign nation. China is the world's largest contributing country to CO2 emissions—a trend that has steadily risen over the years—now producing 10.06 billion metric tons of CO2 (and increasing). US is half of that and falling further. India is at #3 with half of US emissions.