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I'm starting to think that governments and people will be unable to fight CO2 emissions for several reasons: * Reducing living standards is counter intuitive w

by jokoon 5y ago

I'm starting to think that governments and people will be unable to fight CO2 emissions for several reasons: * Reducing living standards is counter intuitive when consumerism is the norm, in France the Yellow Vests movement showed that it's very difficult to tax carbon if it punish poor people. Inequality and carbon emissions are deeply intertwined. * People will just consume, feel guilty, maybe take some individual "steps", but there is too much behavior inertia and dependency. Nothing changes because everybody feels responsible and thus feel unable to protest since it would be hypocritical to do so. * Companies will keep causing emissions unless those companies disappear A french think tank called "Shift Project" is writing a public plan, hoping to attract attention during the 2022 presidential elections. It looks like that any real step would result in additional precarity and poverty, which makes it very difficult to act for other political reasons. Sometimes I think that convincing conservatives of taking action, disregarding inequality, would actually be good enough, considering the situation. I'm part of the poorest 20% in my country, and honestly I'd rather have more poverty and solve climate change. It's a price I'm willing to pay.

nickd2001 5y ago
For the reasons you state and more, I feel that developing a carbon capture technology that people have an incentive to install (e:g, end product from reacting something with CO2 is commercially useful in some way), is the best hope. People are just determined to maintain their lifestyles. Covid taught us how little quite a number of people are willing to moderate their daily life to save others' lives. So it seems to me if we can side-step this problem by making people want to extract existing CO2, then there's hope. But as for how realistically achievable that is... answers on a postcard please. I'm not a chemist. I do wonder is there a place for software experts to assist with this endeavour in some way, but how to do it is not yet obvious to me
- bavell 5y ago
  > I feel that developing a carbon capture technology that people have an incentive to install [...] is the best hope. People are just determined to maintain their lifestyles. I agree, trying to force change on people which they think is against their own comforts, interests or beliefs is almost always a losing proposition. Providing incentives for desirable outcomes and letting people choose is much more effective in the long run and doesn't breed nearly as much resentment (they feel they retain their agency). Our best hope is a play into people's own selfish desires and channel that into a productive outlet (e.g. "install this CO2 scrubber on your roof and make passive income!") Climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately but unfortunately it's an uphill battle with human nature and the status quo of our culture/society working against us.
Spooky23 5y ago
The argument against doing anything simple is already out there and will be more prominent when denial is unavoidable -- climate change is a natural cycle, or god's will. The chaos associated with this stuff is an opportunity for many.
mrob 5y ago
>it's very difficult to tax carbon if it punish poor people. Inequality and carbon emissions are deeply intertwined. The atmosphere belongs equally to everybody, so polluters should pay compensation to everybody. The only practicable implementation of this is a carbon tax and dividend. And rich people tend to pollute more, so it will make poor people better off.
- jokoon 5y ago
  > And rich people tend to pollute more, so it will make poor people better off. In the long term, poor people will be better off, yes, but not in the short term. I'm not convinced. Carbon improves the living standard of everybody. Even a fair and progressive carbon tax will hit poor people harder in relative terms. So even if it hits rich people harder, it will much unpleasant on poor people than it will be on poor people. To give an example, removing 5% of the income of poor people is much more unpleasant that removing 30% of the income of rich people, for plenty of reasons that are explained in studies on inequality. So I don't disagree that rich people pollute more and will be taxed a lot, but it doesn't change the fact that poor people having been benefitting from CO2 emissions, so the 30% of rich people, as individuals and not corporations, are not responsible for the majority of CO2 emissions. Cutting the emissions of corporations will also affect poor people in unpleasant ways.
  - mrob 5y ago
    >Even a fair and progressive carbon tax will hit poor people harder in relative terms. So even if it hits rich people harder, it will much unpleasant on poor people than it will be on poor people. The tax is redistributed equally as dividend, so your net tax is negative if you pollute less than average.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
IMO the focus on CO2 emissions is a distraction from the greater sin of ecosystem destruction. Science has a bias for finding single, measurable factors, and its easy to measure CO2 and the greenhouse effect is real. But on the other hand, the atmosphere and oceans storing more energy is not strictly what's causing our problems, but rather the severity and unpredictability of the weather. Charles Eisenstein's book "Climate - a new story" convinced me that biomass and large healthy ecosystems act as a buffer on weather, that forests change the atmosphere around them and attract rain fall, all kinds of complex interactions that we've taken for granted. The way I see it, the more life we wipe off the planet, the closer Earth gets to a primordial version of itself, firestorms and all. It's not the case that Earth's weather just calmed down enough for life to survive, but that the increased complexity of a planet covered in plants has a homeostatic effect. I think we have to be much more creative than 'reduce consumption', find a way to get the labor and energy of billions of people to go toward increasing biomass and biodiversity instead of merely harvesting it and taking the good weather for granted.
- darkerside 5y ago
  Maybe we can't terraform Mars into Earth, but we sure can try to terraform Earth into Mars
pif 5y ago
I've been saying this for several years now: global warming is here to stay. Let's stop wasting time talking about giving up comfort in the hope that maybe the whole world will follow and the 2° will maybe become 1.5°. Stop it! Climate is changing: it's a fact, let's stop whining, let's accept it and especially let's face it. The question must not be: "what can we all do do mitigate the problem?" The question must be: "what can I do to enjoy life as much as possible within the current framework and without stealing from my neighbor?"
- realityking 5y ago
  > The question must be: "what can I do to enjoy life as much as possible within the current framework and without stealing from my neighbor?" And what about the next generation(s)? Climate change might have disastrous consequences in my life time (I’m early 30s) but it’ll pale in comparison to what coming generations have to face. Whatever we can do today to give them a leg up is valuable.
  - pif 5y ago
    > Whatever we can do You need too large a we to able to do anything at a global scale. Much better to start facing it: install AC, move to fresher countries, accept that a big change is already happening and do whatever you can to cope with it.
nradov 5y ago
Progressive elitists cruise overhead in private jets, then tell the common people to stop driving cars. Naturally that message doesn't go over well. A carbon emissions tax could be politically viable if it was coupled with an income tax reduction so as to be revenue neutral. That way most people wouldn't be worse off.
- brandmeyer 5y ago
  > A carbon emissions tax could be politically viable if it was coupled with an income tax reduction so as to be revenue neutral. That way most people wouldn't be worse off. Even better: Couple the carbon tax to a flat tax credit which is revenue-neutral to the government. Such a tax would be naturally progressive. It also avoids a perverse incentive to keep polluting to maintain the tax base.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  Most people would be worse off under such a scheme, because such a tax would be regressive, or at least less progressive than income tax.
snarf21 5y ago
I agree. We as humans won't take it serious until some really bad happens. Right now is just inconvenient. Even though you, me and others are willing to take hard steps to allow the problem to get solved, most people are not. It is so externalized that they don't really get it yet. Not to mention the people who don't think it is even a real thing.
bserge 5y ago
Meanwhile the EU exempted private jets (including the use for "leisure") from fuel tax, to be "phased in" later. Yeah, OK, if they can fly private jets for leisure, why should I bother recycling a mountain of materials to offset that? Honestly, the wealthy act with such impunity that it looks like some heads are going to roll when people realize the changes to climate and nature are here to stay.
iso1631 5y ago
1) Ensure all carbon emissions is taxed equally - be that burning fuel in a car, buying a double-avocado latte, importing some plastic shit from China etc 2) Distribute the revenue from the carbon tax directly to the population via a UBI, reverse income tax, or something similar. This gives an incentive to reduce individual carbon use but makes sure that average people don't lose out in general
qayxc 5y ago
The primary reason is that every organisation focuses on their own personal gains (mostly: power and influence). Carbon taxes are stupid because it's just another metric that can and will simply be gamed by the industry without any net positive effect. It would be sufficient to just price goods and services according to their environmental impact. Example: most Spanish vegetables and citrus fruit should be priced at least 3-4x higher. Why? Because environmental costs aren't priced into the products and current irrigation practices are unsustainable [0]: > In any case, it is apparent that if the full cost recovery principle is applied to intensively used aquifers, many existing uses would not be economically viable. This applies to most industries today. Crabs caught in the North Sea are shipped from Germany all the way to Morocco for shelling and then shipped back to Germany for sale. Same with fruit produced in Argentina that is shipped to Thailand for packaging and then back to continental US for sale. This wouldn't be economically viable if it wasn't for huge discrepancies in cost of labour combined with heavily subsidised fuel costs. Take away subsidies, stop nationalising environmental costs (that's what a carbon tax is) and make manufacturers take responsibility for the entire product lifecycle. The latter is especially important: you cannot just start pumping out millions of car batteries per year without a solid plan for reuse and recycling. Same goes for wind turbine blades, IoT devices, etc. Want to sell millions of phones in my country? No problem, as long as you also provide a way to reuse and recycle them and make up for the environmental damage caused in the production process. This alone could be sufficient to steer things into a more sustainable direction and away from self-destructive behaviour. Taxation is not the way. [0] https://easac.eu/fileadmin/PDF_s/reports_statements/Spain_Groundwater_country_report.pdf https://easac.eu/fileadmin/PDF_s/reports_statements/Spain_Gr...
- jokoon 5y ago
  It is the way, because it allows for the accounting of carbon.

by jokoon 5y ago

nickd2001 5y ago

For the reasons you state and more, I feel that developing a carbon capture technology that people have an incentive to install (e:g, end product from reacting something with CO2 is commercially useful in some way), is the best hope. People are just determined to maintain their lifestyles. Covid taught us how little quite a number of people are willing to moderate their daily life to save others' lives. So it seems to me if we can side-step this problem by making people want to extract existing CO2, then there's hope. But as for how realistically achievable that is... answers on a postcard please. I'm not a chemist. I do wonder is there a place for software experts to assist with this endeavour in some way, but how to do it is not yet obvious to me

bavell 5y ago
> I feel that developing a carbon capture technology that people have an incentive to install [...] is the best hope. People are just determined to maintain their lifestyles. I agree, trying to force change on people which they think is against their own comforts, interests or beliefs is almost always a losing proposition. Providing incentives for desirable outcomes and letting people choose is much more effective in the long run and doesn't breed nearly as much resentment (they feel they retain their agency). Our best hope is a play into people's own selfish desires and channel that into a productive outlet (e.g. "install this CO2 scrubber on your roof and make passive income!") Climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately but unfortunately it's an uphill battle with human nature and the status quo of our culture/society working against us.

Spooky23 5y ago

The argument against doing anything simple is already out there and will be more prominent when denial is unavoidable -- climate change is a natural cycle, or god's will. The chaos associated with this stuff is an opportunity for many.

mrob 5y ago

>it's very difficult to tax carbon if it punish poor people. Inequality and carbon emissions are deeply intertwined. The atmosphere belongs equally to everybody, so polluters should pay compensation to everybody. The only practicable implementation of this is a carbon tax and dividend. And rich people tend to pollute more, so it will make poor people better off.

jokoon 5y ago
> And rich people tend to pollute more, so it will make poor people better off. In the long term, poor people will be better off, yes, but not in the short term. I'm not convinced. Carbon improves the living standard of everybody. Even a fair and progressive carbon tax will hit poor people harder in relative terms. So even if it hits rich people harder, it will much unpleasant on poor people than it will be on poor people. To give an example, removing 5% of the income of poor people is much more unpleasant that removing 30% of the income of rich people, for plenty of reasons that are explained in studies on inequality. So I don't disagree that rich people pollute more and will be taxed a lot, but it doesn't change the fact that poor people having been benefitting from CO2 emissions, so the 30% of rich people, as individuals and not corporations, are not responsible for the majority of CO2 emissions. Cutting the emissions of corporations will also affect poor people in unpleasant ways.
- mrob 5y ago
  >Even a fair and progressive carbon tax will hit poor people harder in relative terms. So even if it hits rich people harder, it will much unpleasant on poor people than it will be on poor people. The tax is redistributed equally as dividend, so your net tax is negative if you pollute less than average.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

IMO the focus on CO2 emissions is a distraction from the greater sin of ecosystem destruction. Science has a bias for finding single, measurable factors, and its easy to measure CO2 and the greenhouse effect is real. But on the other hand, the atmosphere and oceans storing more energy is not strictly what's causing our problems, but rather the severity and unpredictability of the weather. Charles Eisenstein's book "Climate - a new story" convinced me that biomass and large healthy ecosystems act as a buffer on weather, that forests change the atmosphere around them and attract rain fall, all kinds of complex interactions that we've taken for granted. The way I see it, the more life we wipe off the planet, the closer Earth gets to a primordial version of itself, firestorms and all. It's not the case that Earth's weather just calmed down enough for life to survive, but that the increased complexity of a planet covered in plants has a homeostatic effect. I think we have to be much more creative than 'reduce consumption', find a way to get the labor and energy of billions of people to go toward increasing biomass and biodiversity instead of merely harvesting it and taking the good weather for granted.

darkerside 5y ago
Maybe we can't terraform Mars into Earth, but we sure can try to terraform Earth into Mars

pif 5y ago

I've been saying this for several years now: global warming is here to stay. Let's stop wasting time talking about giving up comfort in the hope that maybe the whole world will follow and the 2° will maybe become 1.5°. Stop it! Climate is changing: it's a fact, let's stop whining, let's accept it and especially let's face it. The question must not be: "what can we all do do mitigate the problem?" The question must be: "what can I do to enjoy life as much as possible within the current framework and without stealing from my neighbor?"

realityking 5y ago
> The question must be: "what can I do to enjoy life as much as possible within the current framework and without stealing from my neighbor?" And what about the next generation(s)? Climate change might have disastrous consequences in my life time (I’m early 30s) but it’ll pale in comparison to what coming generations have to face. Whatever we can do today to give them a leg up is valuable.
- pif 5y ago
  > Whatever we can do You need too large a we to able to do anything at a global scale. Much better to start facing it: install AC, move to fresher countries, accept that a big change is already happening and do whatever you can to cope with it.

nradov 5y ago

Progressive elitists cruise overhead in private jets, then tell the common people to stop driving cars. Naturally that message doesn't go over well. A carbon emissions tax could be politically viable if it was coupled with an income tax reduction so as to be revenue neutral. That way most people wouldn't be worse off.

brandmeyer 5y ago
> A carbon emissions tax could be politically viable if it was coupled with an income tax reduction so as to be revenue neutral. That way most people wouldn't be worse off. Even better: Couple the carbon tax to a flat tax credit which is revenue-neutral to the government. Such a tax would be naturally progressive. It also avoids a perverse incentive to keep polluting to maintain the tax base.
umanwizard 5y ago
Most people would be worse off under such a scheme, because such a tax would be regressive, or at least less progressive than income tax.

snarf21 5y ago

I agree. We as humans won't take it serious until some really bad happens. Right now is just inconvenient. Even though you, me and others are willing to take hard steps to allow the problem to get solved, most people are not. It is so externalized that they don't really get it yet. Not to mention the people who don't think it is even a real thing.

bserge 5y ago

Meanwhile the EU exempted private jets (including the use for "leisure") from fuel tax, to be "phased in" later. Yeah, OK, if they can fly private jets for leisure, why should I bother recycling a mountain of materials to offset that? Honestly, the wealthy act with such impunity that it looks like some heads are going to roll when people realize the changes to climate and nature are here to stay.

iso1631 5y ago

1) Ensure all carbon emissions is taxed equally - be that burning fuel in a car, buying a double-avocado latte, importing some plastic shit from China etc 2) Distribute the revenue from the carbon tax directly to the population via a UBI, reverse income tax, or something similar. This gives an incentive to reduce individual carbon use but makes sure that average people don't lose out in general

qayxc 5y ago

The primary reason is that every organisation focuses on their own personal gains (mostly: power and influence). Carbon taxes are stupid because it's just another metric that can and will simply be gamed by the industry without any net positive effect. It would be sufficient to just price goods and services according to their environmental impact. Example: most Spanish vegetables and citrus fruit should be priced at least 3-4x higher. Why? Because environmental costs aren't priced into the products and current irrigation practices are unsustainable [0]: > In any case, it is apparent that if the full cost recovery principle is applied to intensively used aquifers, many existing uses would not be economically viable. This applies to most industries today. Crabs caught in the North Sea are shipped from Germany all the way to Morocco for shelling and then shipped back to Germany for sale. Same with fruit produced in Argentina that is shipped to Thailand for packaging and then back to continental US for sale. This wouldn't be economically viable if it wasn't for huge discrepancies in cost of labour combined with heavily subsidised fuel costs. Take away subsidies, stop nationalising environmental costs (that's what a carbon tax is) and make manufacturers take responsibility for the entire product lifecycle. The latter is especially important: you cannot just start pumping out millions of car batteries per year without a solid plan for reuse and recycling. Same goes for wind turbine blades, IoT devices, etc. Want to sell millions of phones in my country? No problem, as long as you also provide a way to reuse and recycle them and make up for the environmental damage caused in the production process. This alone could be sufficient to steer things into a more sustainable direction and away from self-destructive behaviour. Taxation is not the way. [0] https://easac.eu/fileadmin/PDF_s/reports_statements/Spain_Groundwater_country_report.pdf https://easac.eu/fileadmin/PDF_s/reports_statements/Spain_Gr...

jokoon 5y ago
It is the way, because it allows for the accounting of carbon.