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I've given up hope that this will be solved. The buried lede is that, if the prophets of climate doom are correct, you need to substantially reduce your standa

I've given up hope that this will be solved. The buried lede is that, if the prophets of climate doom are correct, you need to substantially reduce your standard of living. And all those third-worlders that are trying to improve their standard of living? They need to stop doing so, yesterday, and learn to accept their impoverished standard of living. But do it cleaner! But they won't want to do that, predictably. And to get them to do so will require enforcement. And enforcement will require coercive power - so violence. And that will result in war that has the potential to be more destructive than the doom being predicted. If the problem is as significant as alarmists predict, the only palatable solution is technological. So if you feel so motivated, concentrate your effort there. Because the data says everything else you can do is inconsequential and is mostly virtue signaling. I'm not making any claim about the legitimacy or seriousness of global climate change. Just pointing out that the medicine we choose can destroy as much or more than the disease.

jmcgough 5y ago
The problem would be solved if we had cleaner sources of energy. Get rid of coal and you're most of the way there. None of that requires us to change our way of living, it just makes certain rich people less wealthy. No scientist is arguing that we need to live in poverty, please keep the straw man arguments out of this.
betterunix2 5y ago
You do not need to reduce your standard of living, you need to alter your lifestyle to achieve the same standard of living in a more energy-efficient way. Many American cities are set up to encourage car use; we can change that. Many Americans live in detached homes that require more energy to heat or cool; we can change that, and in fact we would likely reduce the need to drive a car everywhere in the process, while also reducing the amount of coal being burned to power all those ACs. Really though, "alarmists?" You might have been able to accuse scientists of being alarmist 30 years ago, but they predicted increasingly frequent extreme weather events, and for the past decade we have watched the trend do exactly what was predicted. Now instead of talking about how we can avoid this outcome we are sitting here talking about how to not make things worse while we learn to live with floods, hurricanes, heat domes, and polar vortexes.
Nursie 5y ago
This has always been nonsense, I’ve seen it get trotted out for 20 years now. We have technology, we can work on reducing carbon output without sending ourselves back to the Stone Age. We just need the political will to actually drive it.
wahern 5y ago
> you need to substantially reduce your standard of living California's per capita electricity consumption has stayed flat since 1970. That's in part due to strict energy efficiency standards. By contrast, per capita electricity consumption in the rest of the country has increased 50%, and that's despite California's standards indirectly improving efficiency elsewhere. Today per capita consumption in California is nearly half that of the rest of the country, but the standard of living (modern conveniences, etc) is hardly less than elsewhere. Note that California's temperate climate does not explain this away. Home heating is still largely fossil fuel based in most of the U.S., including in California. And most of the population growth in California since the 1970s has been in the Central Valley and Southern California, places where air conditioning is as ubiquitous as anywhere else. Shifts in industrial makeup helped some, but the same industrial sectors also became more energy efficient. In general, most of the relative improvements are a product of better energy efficiency. And that was accomplished primarily through non-politicized regulators quietly and steadily mandating marginal efficiency improvements over the decades. See https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ca-success-story-FS.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ca-success-story-FS... and https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/5/31/18646906/climate-change-california-energy-efficiency https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/5/31/1864690... Suffice it to say that there's alot of pandering to the environmental lobby among Californian politicians. And lots of tension about the cost and viability of various environmental efforts. But as with politics anywhere, the importance of the objects of these fights is usually blown way out of proportion. The most consequential and productive regulations were quietly working in the background for decades, and didn't come with huge price tags. EDIT: Apropos HN, one of the key personalities working behind the scenes to improve energy efficiency standards was physicist Arthur Rosenfeld. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_H._Rosenfeld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_H._Rosenfeld and https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/the-california-experiment/307666/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/the-cal.... His research work gave rise to the eponymous Rosenfeld Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld_Effect) and Rosenfeld's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld%27s_law). The latter states that "From 1845 to the present, the amount of energy required to produce the same amount of gross national product has steadily decreased at the rate of about 1 percent per year".

jmcgough 5y ago

The problem would be solved if we had cleaner sources of energy. Get rid of coal and you're most of the way there. None of that requires us to change our way of living, it just makes certain rich people less wealthy. No scientist is arguing that we need to live in poverty, please keep the straw man arguments out of this.

betterunix2 5y ago

You do not need to reduce your standard of living, you need to alter your lifestyle to achieve the same standard of living in a more energy-efficient way. Many American cities are set up to encourage car use; we can change that. Many Americans live in detached homes that require more energy to heat or cool; we can change that, and in fact we would likely reduce the need to drive a car everywhere in the process, while also reducing the amount of coal being burned to power all those ACs. Really though, "alarmists?" You might have been able to accuse scientists of being alarmist 30 years ago, but they predicted increasingly frequent extreme weather events, and for the past decade we have watched the trend do exactly what was predicted. Now instead of talking about how we can avoid this outcome we are sitting here talking about how to not make things worse while we learn to live with floods, hurricanes, heat domes, and polar vortexes.

Nursie 5y ago

This has always been nonsense, I’ve seen it get trotted out for 20 years now. We have technology, we can work on reducing carbon output without sending ourselves back to the Stone Age. We just need the political will to actually drive it.

wahern 5y ago

> you need to substantially reduce your standard of living California's per capita electricity consumption has stayed flat since 1970. That's in part due to strict energy efficiency standards. By contrast, per capita electricity consumption in the rest of the country has increased 50%, and that's despite California's standards indirectly improving efficiency elsewhere. Today per capita consumption in California is nearly half that of the rest of the country, but the standard of living (modern conveniences, etc) is hardly less than elsewhere. Note that California's temperate climate does not explain this away. Home heating is still largely fossil fuel based in most of the U.S., including in California. And most of the population growth in California since the 1970s has been in the Central Valley and Southern California, places where air conditioning is as ubiquitous as anywhere else. Shifts in industrial makeup helped some, but the same industrial sectors also became more energy efficient. In general, most of the relative improvements are a product of better energy efficiency. And that was accomplished primarily through non-politicized regulators quietly and steadily mandating marginal efficiency improvements over the decades. See https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ca-success-story-FS.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ca-success-story-FS... and https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/5/31/18646906/climate-change-california-energy-efficiency https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/5/31/1864690... Suffice it to say that there's alot of pandering to the environmental lobby among Californian politicians. And lots of tension about the cost and viability of various environmental efforts. But as with politics anywhere, the importance of the objects of these fights is usually blown way out of proportion. The most consequential and productive regulations were quietly working in the background for decades, and didn't come with huge price tags. EDIT: Apropos HN, one of the key personalities working behind the scenes to improve energy efficiency standards was physicist Arthur Rosenfeld. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_H._Rosenfeld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_H._Rosenfeld and https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/the-california-experiment/307666/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/the-cal.... His research work gave rise to the eponymous Rosenfeld Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld_Effect) and Rosenfeld's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld%27s_law). The latter states that "From 1845 to the present, the amount of energy required to produce the same amount of gross national product has steadily decreased at the rate of about 1 percent per year".