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It's not lecturing. It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. Even if e

by bko 5y ago

It's not lecturing. It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. Even if emissions went to zero, it would only push the timeline back a few years This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be on preventing that to happen rather than Monday morning quarterbacking the last 100 years of industrialization?

kumarvvr 5y ago
>This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be one preventing that to happen? Here is a better idea. How about developed nations, with their might of research, resources and human capital, put aside economic growth for a while and steer the world towards a sustainable future. Its not about moral victories. The approach of developed nations has been wrong. You see people like Trump and lose all hope for humanity. There is only so much a developing country can do when you have scenarios where India has 4 times the population of USA, yet per capita Carbon production is 7 times less. Still, it is the developing nations who have been most successful in meeting climate targets, be it in renewable energy or reduction in per capita carbon generation. Sure, I like to whine and point out the moral failures of the developed world, but it is rightly deserved so. Because developing countries also act on climate change, in spite of knowing the effects it has on their economies. But god forbid angering an American voter by talking about being responsible for climate change.
- ctdonath 5y ago
  As GP wrote: "western countries have reduced carbon emissions over the last ~15 years, in both absolute and per capita terms".
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    They've done so (at least partially) by moving the bulk of their industrial production into the 'developing' world.
    - lkbm 5y ago
      The US has dropped per-capita emissions even when you include the emissions from offshored production: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
      - soperj 5y ago
        To levels that are still much higher than India.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    This didn't happen purely because Western countries became more aware of their impact on the environment. As countries develop, their population growth rate slows. Their technology improves and they can spend energy more efficiently. In the US's case, there was a large gain from switching from coal to natural gas for power generation. Not because it was better environmentally, but because it was cheaper. It's disingenuous for the US to go "Look at all we've done" when half the country is in firm denial that there's even a problem.
  - ctdonath 5y ago
    Interesting how recognizing success in lowering carbon emissions gets downvoted. I'd like to know why.
- flyinglizard 5y ago
  The data shows that Western world growth reduces CO2 on both per capita and absolute levels. As things renew and develop they are cleaner and more efficient. I’m not sure why you’d want to stop that, unless you care more about moral victories than climate change itself.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    In fact it's just plain wrong to divide the world this way between 'developed' and 'developing'. There is no inherent progress towards 'development' and no natural staging of these things towards lower CO2 emissions or advancement generally. The reality is that the world economy is combined and uneven. Environmental laws and protections put in place in western countries are one of the many things that leads to the wholesale export of industries into places where regulations are laxer or unenforced. The dirty work is sent elsewhere. Considered as a whole, there is no "third wave" economy, and mass industrialism has never left us. The world's industrial working class is larger than it has ever been. Industrial production is bigger than it's ever been. Industrial pollution is larger than it has ever been, by far. And all of this is tied into a world economy facilitated by global trade. This should be entirely obvious to people who work in a tech sector where almost all hardware is produced in China. So it is nonsense to try to divide responsibilities between "developed" and the "developing" world. The whole world continues to be "developing." And the distribution of wealth itself isn't close to even either, there are areas within the "developed" world that look very similar to the "undeveloped" or "developing" world in terms of living standards.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arunkant 5y ago
Zero is not the limit, emissions can go negative. India has said it already [1] > Developed nations should not talk about Net Zero, but focus on removing carbon from the atmosphere they add. “Net negative is what they need to talk about,” Singh said. [1] https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/rich-nations-can-t-force-net-zero-emission-target-on-others-r-k-singh-121040100605_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/ri...
- adventured 5y ago
  No emissions can't go negative. It doesn't matter what India says. That's a comically unrealistic claim, especially given we're heading to 10 billion people. India, China and Africa's emissions expansion over the coming decades guarantee that if the popular climate scientist claims are correct, there is only a dire outcome possible at this point. You can take the developed countries to zero and the world (as we know it) still ends the same. The developed countries - which it's important to note are a small, nearly contracting minority share of global population - are never going to zero (much less negative). So the realistic scenario is actually far worse than any fantasy zero scenario would indicate. Just China and India alone will be enough to destroy the planet when it comes to emissions. In the next three decades, their emissions will not contract, they will expand massively. The developed countries as a whole will struggle to significantly reduce their emissions from where they are now. And that's that, the end. Everything else about how developed nations should immediately cut back while eg China pushes the planet off a cliff, is nothing more than virtue signaling on the way to the graveyard. And if you ask the virtue signalers for math to show how China can keep rapidly expanding its emissions and everything is going to work out fine, they will immediately turn tail and run away as fast as they can, or otherwise desperately change the subject. I've been trying for years to get anyone to demonstrate how China can continue to expand so fast that it ends up having 3x or 4x the emissions of the US, and how that can be defeated as a problem. Nobody dares to engage the actual conversation, because they know what it means, they know the virtue signaling premise (the world can still be saved, if only the developed countries fall on the sword) is a giant lie. The virtue signaling fake-save-the-world-go-to-zero premise is so laughably absurd at this point, that what we're going to see next will be extraordinary fantasy elements come into play. They'll start talking about increasingly dumb solutions, like that we'll magically warp China's emissions away using quantum AI buzz-word buzz-word buzz-word technology (and we'll do it within just a few decades). The years will keep sliding by, China's emissions will keep soaring higher, the save-the-world fantasy ideas will keep getting dumber. If the climate scientists are right, the outcome is already set, short of utilizing a fantasy premise to get to zero or negative net for the entire globe very rapidly (none of which is feasible). A wildly optimistic outcome would be for the developed nations overall to cut emissions by 1/3 in the next ~30 years. That's not going to happen, but let's do a little bit of pretending for fun. China is set to fill that in all by itself over those decades. Now add in the rest of the developing world and three billion additional people hungry for an affluent lifestyle. But one might say: I'm not proposing any solutions! That's right, there aren't any. Unless China can be convinced (they can't be, see: coal power plant construction) to immediately stop its emissions climb, while everybody else in the developing world also immediately gives up chasing a first world lifestyle (which I also don't fault them for in the least, they should pursue that) and combined with somehow that magically the developed world instantly slashes its emissions output by an impossible amount in the span of a few decades. All of those things has to happen, you need three fantasy outcomes to happen simultaneously to avoid the dire outcome. Unlike the climate hypocrites on both sides, I'm not asking the developing nations to not seek a developed lifestyle (as a solution). I'm not saying they should fall on the sword either. I'm not asking them to want anything less than what developed nations want. I'm recognizing reality for what it is: there is no positive outcome possible, if the climate scientists are right about their increasingly dire models.
emerged 5y ago
Politicization threw a wrench into COVID and it’s doing the same to climate change. Years of media gaslighting, fear mongering, and authoritarian tactics have left us in a social reality where nobody cares any longer what the talking heads in the media or shouting on social media have to say.
- Tarsul 5y ago
  and that's why "free speech" should never have meant "free reign to lie, fear monger and hate speech".
  - bumby 5y ago
    This may be country dependent. In the US, the Supreme Court has been clear that there is no hate speech limitation to the 1st amendment, for example. But there are limits to lying, as in perjury and libel cases.
  - dotnet00 5y ago
    The ministry of truth approves of this message.
  - mjevans 5y ago
    It's difficult to judge speech even by contemporary standards. There tend to be high bars for bad speech, clearly harmful, E.G. fire in a crowd when there isn't fire. How easy is it to prove something is a lie, rather than a very selective viewpoint or opinion? What if someone chooses to believe a set of sources biased to their preferred outcome? We should also be lucky to encounter and hopefully have laws against hate speech; the slippery slope stuff that's subjectively icky but not quite across that line is more insidious.
- epistasis 5y ago
  I would argue that the problem is that we care far to much about what the talking heads in the media and the shouting on social media. That's the source of misinformation and inaction on climate change.
gmadsen 5y ago
then Western countries subsidizing developing countries sustainable energy should be on the table. If it is purely to stop climate change, and western countries have unfairly exploited the world for centuries, then they should share a larger portion of the burden of a solution
wutbrodo 5y ago
I don't think the suggestion is that developing countries should get to pollute their way into modernity the way the West did. As you point out, the planet won't care whether the extra pollution comes from a place of historical "fairness". But acknowledgement of the fairness element here does imply a straightforward (though far from simple) solution: massive transfers from those who've already dumped their pollutants into the atmosphere to those who are still in the development phase where they need to. Ignoring geopolitical realities and playing the global benevolent optimizer for a minute, this is a pretty clear-cut way to make sure that the externalities and benefits of pollution-driven development are borne evenly, while not ignoring the realities of the planet's response to pollution. I'm not necessarily endorsing this policy. Just pointing out that the dichotomy you're setting up is a false one.
BurningFrog 5y ago
> Even if emissions went to zero, it would only push the timeline back a few years If this is true, I need an an explanation.
- specialist 5y ago
  From the hip: #1 half life of carbon already in the atmosphere means it'll continue to cause warming. #2 natural processes, like thawing tundra, are now in positive feedback loop where warming causes more warming. My takeaway has been that we'll need to be carbon negative asap to have any chance of reigning in warming.
  - AstralStorm 5y ago
    Going carbon negative unfortunately for us is very energy intensive. (The pie in the sky chemical ways to attack it such as simulating geology are likely bunk or too slow.) So intensive that we could be lacking even uranium to do it in a century barring some huge discoveries (biotech, or maybe nanotechnology) or improvements in fusion power. Can't do it on renewables in the reasonable timeframe - we don't have the production for it and that scale of production will certainly output more GHG. So yeah, it's a bit hard to attack. Surviving the warming is just as tricky.
    - selectodude 5y ago
      There is enough uranium dissolved in the oceans to power humanity for a million years. That really isn't the issue.
    - alexose 5y ago
      Current CCS rates are about $60/ton. Given that each PPM represents about 8 billion tons of atmospheric CO2, that's $480B for each PPM reduction. Obviously not great. But what if that number drops to $30 per ton? $10? If we get the best minds in the world on it, it might be possible. At $10, a $1T investment takes us down 12.5 ppm. That's five years worth of emissions. It's a monstrous challenge. But it's not completely unimaginable.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I agree with you, and to add to your remarks, I suspect if most first world countries implemented a sufficiently strict border adjustment ("carbon tariff") for trade with China, etc it would probably do quite a lot to motivate developed nations to improve as well. Anyway, I find the criticisms of the West to be both ignorant and tiring. Tiring because the "blame the West for everything" meme is so worn out and ignorant because there's a pretty stark difference between pioneering industrialization centuries before mature climate science and China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences.
- triceratops 5y ago
  > China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences That if they didn't their population would remain poor, and lacking access to healthcare, food, and water? And in an even worse situation when climate change finally hit? Are you suggesting that if China hadn't concentrated on development, the developed countries would be currently falling over themselves to fix the problem?
  - samatman 5y ago
    China both leads the world in solar panel manufacture, and in new coal plants. That's a choice. No one is forcing their hand here. If it were the 90s I would have to agree with you, but, it isn't.
    - triceratops 5y ago
      You're suggesting they should go 100% solar for all new energy needs? I assume that they're taking an approach of using renewable energy where possible and fossil fuels when that's not enough.
      - AstralStorm 5y ago
        My recommendation which China is already seems to be taking is to go for nuclear power and solar in that order. Maybe add some hydropower to the mix but they have a plenty of it. The chief problem is that they're not ramping up nuclear quickly enough, and it's hard to deploy in desert west of the country. And thanks to our persistent self-sabotage there's civil unrest related to these power plants. The nuclear is to be used to ramp production of solar PV and batteries cleanly, then decommissioned. Timeframe would be 25 years. Decommissioning of current old reactors is a problem already but there's really no alternative - ramping solar PV with standard energy sources would be bad. A lot of reactors are expected to shut down by 2025...
tzs 5y ago
Western countries can use some of the wealth they made by getting us into this situation in the first place [1] to pay for green energy projects in developing countries, so developing countries can develop without having to go the same massive CO2 emitting route that Western countries took. [1] CO2 stays in the atmosphere for several hundred years or more. The US is the source of 25% of what is in there now, and the EU-28 another 22%.
- strictnein 5y ago
  That math doesn't pan out. We're at ~410ppm now. -47% puts us at 220ppm, a level hasn't existed for > 10,000 years. https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/
- angelzen 5y ago
  poor/developing => low energy use rich/developed => high energy use Wealth is not gobs of gold that Western countries sit on. Wealth is the ability to produce energy and turn it into creature's comforts, on a massive scale. There is no development without massive growth in energy consumption. Please point to a single developed country on this Earth that has CO2 emissions per capita smaller than what Paris accords call for, which, depending on the source, is somewhere between 1.5-2.5 CO2 t/year/capita. To limit emissions all countries must converge to a low energy lifestyle. There is no more developing for poor countries, and there is harsh un-developing for erst rich countries.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    The US has decreased emissions while undergoing massive growth in the last decade.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_analysis#/media/File:Normdist_regression.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_analysis#/media/Fil...
radmuzom 5y ago
> no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels In that case, Western nations should pay developing nations to make them more developed and reduce emissions.
Xplune13 5y ago
How about this? All developing countries would welcome the "developed" nation's Trillion Dollar investments in future sustainability as an act of taking accountability for how they exploited other nations. Per capita emissions from the US are still ludicrously high when compared to developing countries. Not a single one of those western countries is taking accountability for what they did and exploited over the last 2 centuries. If western countries really cared then they already would've worked with developing countries long time ago and they still can i.e. if they cared. I'm not saying that developing countries should be allowed to do the same, but this "pointing out the data" indicates more towards "developing nation's work is done here, now we'll stay the same as it is and others do all the work" rather co-operation in my opinion.
baron_harkonnen 5y ago
> It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. Sure there is. We've had two experiments where we saw this happen: April 2020 - for a very short time when Western economies took a major hit, emissions dipped quite substantially. In 2008 - The global financial crisis, which did impact the world, started in the US and again caused on of the only major notable dips in emissions we've seen. It's very clear that US consumption and economic activity is directly tied to GHG emissions globally. If just the US had decided to remain in our April 2020 depressed economic state, and cooled from there, we would have seen a downward trend in emissions. Maybe you would argue that economic shrinking is not "realistic" (in which case we are most certainly doomed, unless we run out of fossil fuels before we cross certain boundaries). The common argument is people won't tolerate a radical change in lifestyles... but that change is coming either way. However extreme the changes need to prevent catastrophic climate change, they are certainly less extreme then letting climate change run it's course. I personally believe we will not chose this path, but don't pretend that this path doesn't exist. As the center of the global economy the United States fully has the capability to reduce global emissions. Alternatively if we run into a economic crisis of unprecedented scale, which looks reasonably possible, we'll also see reduction in emissions without having to worry about "choosing" this path.
- epistasis 5y ago
  > It's very clear that US consumption and economic activity is directly tied to GHG emissions globally. This is true today, but it will not be true in the future. In the past and today, it was the contention both of fossil fuel interests and of degrowthers that emissions and economic activity are inseparable. However, we are showing that that's not true. If you look back since 2008, sure, the big economic contractions showed big drops in emissions. But also, with economic expansion, we are lowering emissions, just at a lower rate. And in fact, the true decoupling of GHG and GDP will involve a spectacular amount of economic activity. A huge number of jobs for everything from the obvious like deploying wind turbines and batteries and solar panels and expanding grid distribution and transmission, to less obvious stuff like insulating homes and installing heat pumps in place of natural gas. There is another path, with massive economic growth, that results in complete decoupling of GHG and GDP. This is the easiest path in terms of lifestyle changes, but the most difficult path in terms of upsetting entrenched powerful interests.
AnonHP 5y ago
> It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. There is one scenario, which isn’t probable. That is for western countries to pay a retrospective “sin” tax that gets distributed to other countries to fund climate action programs with better oversight. After all, if some countries benefited a lot from polluting in the past, it would be fair to expect them to pay up too.
- wang_li 5y ago
  >After all, if some countries benefited a lot from polluting in the past, it would be fair to expect them to pay up too. Largely the entire globe has benefited from the industrial revolution. If the west is obligated to pay a retrospective sin tax, does the west also then jack up the prices on every technology that comes from that development when exporting to developing countries? For example, should students from developing countries get to come to the US and learn the latest knowledge and take that home and then jumping their country forward through decades of technology research? Should every immigrant into western countries pay huge fees to buy into the modern world, since they are not descended from those who are paying the sin taxes? Also, do these sin taxes require that developing countries that receive these fund then guarantee not to emit CO2?
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    The development of modern computing, for instance, did not actually require that much GHG emissions.
    - wang_li 5y ago
      I disagree. Imagine everything that goes into the manufacture of an Apple M1 SoC. You have to get the raw materials, the design tools, the invention of the transistor, likely hundreds of thousands of hours, if not millions of hours, of engineering time to go from vacuum tubes, to transistors, to fab design, to computer science, to chip design, etc. Sure, if you isolate just the inventions along the path from the invention of fire to Apple selling their M1 based systems, it seems modest. But you can't just arbitrarily claim that X invention happened in the absence of the world in which it was invented.
01100011 5y ago
> It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries In my experience it's more about justifying the continued unfettered use of fossil fuels to drive progress in developing nations. Sure, it sounds like 1st world blaming, but I think it's more about defending the right of poorer peoples to advance their standard of living in the near term. I'm not agreeing with it or defending it, but when I've encountered it in real life that is how it came across.
alexose 5y ago
> there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels This is not necessarily true. There's a scenario in which the West invents viable carbon capture technology.
cma 5y ago
> If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be on preventing that to happen rather than Monday morning quarterbacking the last 100 years of industrialization? You have more responsibility for what you have agency to actually do. We have more ability to lower our emissions than to lower China's. Beyond that, per-capita they still emit much less and may naturally level off to a level similar to ours depending on coal/gas mix in generation, etc. We don't need to focus only on right handed people's emissions just because left-handed people only emit 10% as much carbon in aggregate. Can you imagine a big campaign saying left-handed people should do anything they want, dump CFCs into the air etc., until right-handed people get their act together and achieve less or equal overall impact as left-handed people, and that only then it is ok to consider left-handed people?
godelski 5y ago
I think this is one thing that frustrates me about these conversations, they are still very Americentric. What matters is that we reduce atmospheric CO2. Every major country has the technical and economic means to invest and innovate on clean technology and CCS systems (because honestly we need negative production of CO2, not zero). You can't just rely on America to save everyone on the planet. I don't care if it comes from China, Germany, France, Australia, India, or wherever. It just matters that it gets done. We already know who's to blame. It's like a fire that's started and we're arguing about who's job it is to put out. This isn't spilt milk. The longer we wait the more damage is done and with compounding interest. We can talk about blame and solve the issue but this can't just dominate the conversation. Everyone needs to fix the issue. Full stop. This is because everyone is in danger.
kergonath 5y ago
It is pointless finger-pointing. It is not all or nothing, and we are past several points of no-return. All of the countries need to act 10 years ago, 'but Bobby is peeing in the pool more than I do' is not going to cut it. It is stupid, misleading, and counter-productive.

by bko 5y ago

kumarvvr 5y ago

>This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be one preventing that to happen? Here is a better idea. How about developed nations, with their might of research, resources and human capital, put aside economic growth for a while and steer the world towards a sustainable future. Its not about moral victories. The approach of developed nations has been wrong. You see people like Trump and lose all hope for humanity. There is only so much a developing country can do when you have scenarios where India has 4 times the population of USA, yet per capita Carbon production is 7 times less. Still, it is the developing nations who have been most successful in meeting climate targets, be it in renewable energy or reduction in per capita carbon generation. Sure, I like to whine and point out the moral failures of the developed world, but it is rightly deserved so. Because developing countries also act on climate change, in spite of knowing the effects it has on their economies. But god forbid angering an American voter by talking about being responsible for climate change.

ctdonath 5y ago
As GP wrote: "western countries have reduced carbon emissions over the last ~15 years, in both absolute and per capita terms".
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  They've done so (at least partially) by moving the bulk of their industrial production into the 'developing' world.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    The US has dropped per-capita emissions even when you include the emissions from offshored production: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
    - soperj 5y ago
      To levels that are still much higher than India.
- triceratops 5y ago
  This didn't happen purely because Western countries became more aware of their impact on the environment. As countries develop, their population growth rate slows. Their technology improves and they can spend energy more efficiently. In the US's case, there was a large gain from switching from coal to natural gas for power generation. Not because it was better environmentally, but because it was cheaper. It's disingenuous for the US to go "Look at all we've done" when half the country is in firm denial that there's even a problem.
- ctdonath 5y ago
  Interesting how recognizing success in lowering carbon emissions gets downvoted. I'd like to know why.
flyinglizard 5y ago
The data shows that Western world growth reduces CO2 on both per capita and absolute levels. As things renew and develop they are cleaner and more efficient. I’m not sure why you’d want to stop that, unless you care more about moral victories than climate change itself.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  In fact it's just plain wrong to divide the world this way between 'developed' and 'developing'. There is no inherent progress towards 'development' and no natural staging of these things towards lower CO2 emissions or advancement generally. The reality is that the world economy is combined and uneven. Environmental laws and protections put in place in western countries are one of the many things that leads to the wholesale export of industries into places where regulations are laxer or unenforced. The dirty work is sent elsewhere. Considered as a whole, there is no "third wave" economy, and mass industrialism has never left us. The world's industrial working class is larger than it has ever been. Industrial production is bigger than it's ever been. Industrial pollution is larger than it has ever been, by far. And all of this is tied into a world economy facilitated by global trade. This should be entirely obvious to people who work in a tech sector where almost all hardware is produced in China. So it is nonsense to try to divide responsibilities between "developed" and the "developing" world. The whole world continues to be "developing." And the distribution of wealth itself isn't close to even either, there are areas within the "developed" world that look very similar to the "undeveloped" or "developing" world in terms of living standards.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

arunkant 5y ago

Zero is not the limit, emissions can go negative. India has said it already [1] > Developed nations should not talk about Net Zero, but focus on removing carbon from the atmosphere they add. “Net negative is what they need to talk about,” Singh said. [1] https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/rich-nations-can-t-force-net-zero-emission-target-on-others-r-k-singh-121040100605_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/ri...

adventured 5y ago
No emissions can't go negative. It doesn't matter what India says. That's a comically unrealistic claim, especially given we're heading to 10 billion people. India, China and Africa's emissions expansion over the coming decades guarantee that if the popular climate scientist claims are correct, there is only a dire outcome possible at this point. You can take the developed countries to zero and the world (as we know it) still ends the same. The developed countries - which it's important to note are a small, nearly contracting minority share of global population - are never going to zero (much less negative). So the realistic scenario is actually far worse than any fantasy zero scenario would indicate. Just China and India alone will be enough to destroy the planet when it comes to emissions. In the next three decades, their emissions will not contract, they will expand massively. The developed countries as a whole will struggle to significantly reduce their emissions from where they are now. And that's that, the end. Everything else about how developed nations should immediately cut back while eg China pushes the planet off a cliff, is nothing more than virtue signaling on the way to the graveyard. And if you ask the virtue signalers for math to show how China can keep rapidly expanding its emissions and everything is going to work out fine, they will immediately turn tail and run away as fast as they can, or otherwise desperately change the subject. I've been trying for years to get anyone to demonstrate how China can continue to expand so fast that it ends up having 3x or 4x the emissions of the US, and how that can be defeated as a problem. Nobody dares to engage the actual conversation, because they know what it means, they know the virtue signaling premise (the world can still be saved, if only the developed countries fall on the sword) is a giant lie. The virtue signaling fake-save-the-world-go-to-zero premise is so laughably absurd at this point, that what we're going to see next will be extraordinary fantasy elements come into play. They'll start talking about increasingly dumb solutions, like that we'll magically warp China's emissions away using quantum AI buzz-word buzz-word buzz-word technology (and we'll do it within just a few decades). The years will keep sliding by, China's emissions will keep soaring higher, the save-the-world fantasy ideas will keep getting dumber. If the climate scientists are right, the outcome is already set, short of utilizing a fantasy premise to get to zero or negative net for the entire globe very rapidly (none of which is feasible). A wildly optimistic outcome would be for the developed nations overall to cut emissions by 1/3 in the next ~30 years. That's not going to happen, but let's do a little bit of pretending for fun. China is set to fill that in all by itself over those decades. Now add in the rest of the developing world and three billion additional people hungry for an affluent lifestyle. But one might say: I'm not proposing any solutions! That's right, there aren't any. Unless China can be convinced (they can't be, see: coal power plant construction) to immediately stop its emissions climb, while everybody else in the developing world also immediately gives up chasing a first world lifestyle (which I also don't fault them for in the least, they should pursue that) and combined with somehow that magically the developed world instantly slashes its emissions output by an impossible amount in the span of a few decades. All of those things has to happen, you need three fantasy outcomes to happen simultaneously to avoid the dire outcome. Unlike the climate hypocrites on both sides, I'm not asking the developing nations to not seek a developed lifestyle (as a solution). I'm not saying they should fall on the sword either. I'm not asking them to want anything less than what developed nations want. I'm recognizing reality for what it is: there is no positive outcome possible, if the climate scientists are right about their increasingly dire models.

emerged 5y ago

Politicization threw a wrench into COVID and it’s doing the same to climate change. Years of media gaslighting, fear mongering, and authoritarian tactics have left us in a social reality where nobody cares any longer what the talking heads in the media or shouting on social media have to say.

Tarsul 5y ago
and that's why "free speech" should never have meant "free reign to lie, fear monger and hate speech".
- bumby 5y ago
  This may be country dependent. In the US, the Supreme Court has been clear that there is no hate speech limitation to the 1st amendment, for example. But there are limits to lying, as in perjury and libel cases.
- dotnet00 5y ago
  The ministry of truth approves of this message.
- mjevans 5y ago
  It's difficult to judge speech even by contemporary standards. There tend to be high bars for bad speech, clearly harmful, E.G. fire in a crowd when there isn't fire. How easy is it to prove something is a lie, rather than a very selective viewpoint or opinion? What if someone chooses to believe a set of sources biased to their preferred outcome? We should also be lucky to encounter and hopefully have laws against hate speech; the slippery slope stuff that's subjectively icky but not quite across that line is more insidious.
epistasis 5y ago
I would argue that the problem is that we care far to much about what the talking heads in the media and the shouting on social media. That's the source of misinformation and inaction on climate change.

gmadsen 5y ago

then Western countries subsidizing developing countries sustainable energy should be on the table. If it is purely to stop climate change, and western countries have unfairly exploited the world for centuries, then they should share a larger portion of the burden of a solution

wutbrodo 5y ago

I don't think the suggestion is that developing countries should get to pollute their way into modernity the way the West did. As you point out, the planet won't care whether the extra pollution comes from a place of historical "fairness". But acknowledgement of the fairness element here does imply a straightforward (though far from simple) solution: massive transfers from those who've already dumped their pollutants into the atmosphere to those who are still in the development phase where they need to. Ignoring geopolitical realities and playing the global benevolent optimizer for a minute, this is a pretty clear-cut way to make sure that the externalities and benefits of pollution-driven development are borne evenly, while not ignoring the realities of the planet's response to pollution. I'm not necessarily endorsing this policy. Just pointing out that the dichotomy you're setting up is a false one.

BurningFrog 5y ago

> Even if emissions went to zero, it would only push the timeline back a few years If this is true, I need an an explanation.

specialist 5y ago
From the hip: #1 half life of carbon already in the atmosphere means it'll continue to cause warming. #2 natural processes, like thawing tundra, are now in positive feedback loop where warming causes more warming. My takeaway has been that we'll need to be carbon negative asap to have any chance of reigning in warming.
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  Going carbon negative unfortunately for us is very energy intensive. (The pie in the sky chemical ways to attack it such as simulating geology are likely bunk or too slow.) So intensive that we could be lacking even uranium to do it in a century barring some huge discoveries (biotech, or maybe nanotechnology) or improvements in fusion power. Can't do it on renewables in the reasonable timeframe - we don't have the production for it and that scale of production will certainly output more GHG. So yeah, it's a bit hard to attack. Surviving the warming is just as tricky.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    There is enough uranium dissolved in the oceans to power humanity for a million years. That really isn't the issue.
  - alexose 5y ago
    Current CCS rates are about $60/ton. Given that each PPM represents about 8 billion tons of atmospheric CO2, that's $480B for each PPM reduction. Obviously not great. But what if that number drops to $30 per ton? $10? If we get the best minds in the world on it, it might be possible. At $10, a $1T investment takes us down 12.5 ppm. That's five years worth of emissions. It's a monstrous challenge. But it's not completely unimaginable.

throwaway894345 5y ago

I agree with you, and to add to your remarks, I suspect if most first world countries implemented a sufficiently strict border adjustment ("carbon tariff") for trade with China, etc it would probably do quite a lot to motivate developed nations to improve as well. Anyway, I find the criticisms of the West to be both ignorant and tiring. Tiring because the "blame the West for everything" meme is so worn out and ignorant because there's a pretty stark difference between pioneering industrialization centuries before mature climate science and China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences.

triceratops 5y ago
> China's ratcheting up pollution knowing full-well the consequences That if they didn't their population would remain poor, and lacking access to healthcare, food, and water? And in an even worse situation when climate change finally hit? Are you suggesting that if China hadn't concentrated on development, the developed countries would be currently falling over themselves to fix the problem?
- samatman 5y ago
  China both leads the world in solar panel manufacture, and in new coal plants. That's a choice. No one is forcing their hand here. If it were the 90s I would have to agree with you, but, it isn't.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    You're suggesting they should go 100% solar for all new energy needs? I assume that they're taking an approach of using renewable energy where possible and fossil fuels when that's not enough.
    - AstralStorm 5y ago
      My recommendation which China is already seems to be taking is to go for nuclear power and solar in that order. Maybe add some hydropower to the mix but they have a plenty of it. The chief problem is that they're not ramping up nuclear quickly enough, and it's hard to deploy in desert west of the country. And thanks to our persistent self-sabotage there's civil unrest related to these power plants. The nuclear is to be used to ramp production of solar PV and batteries cleanly, then decommissioned. Timeframe would be 25 years. Decommissioning of current old reactors is a problem already but there's really no alternative - ramping solar PV with standard energy sources would be bad. A lot of reactors are expected to shut down by 2025...

tzs 5y ago

Western countries can use some of the wealth they made by getting us into this situation in the first place [1] to pay for green energy projects in developing countries, so developing countries can develop without having to go the same massive CO2 emitting route that Western countries took. [1] CO2 stays in the atmosphere for several hundred years or more. The US is the source of 25% of what is in there now, and the EU-28 another 22%.

strictnein 5y ago
That math doesn't pan out. We're at ~410ppm now. -47% puts us at 220ppm, a level hasn't existed for > 10,000 years. https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/
angelzen 5y ago
poor/developing => low energy use rich/developed => high energy use Wealth is not gobs of gold that Western countries sit on. Wealth is the ability to produce energy and turn it into creature's comforts, on a massive scale. There is no development without massive growth in energy consumption. Please point to a single developed country on this Earth that has CO2 emissions per capita smaller than what Paris accords call for, which, depending on the source, is somewhere between 1.5-2.5 CO2 t/year/capita. To limit emissions all countries must converge to a low energy lifestyle. There is no more developing for poor countries, and there is harsh un-developing for erst rich countries.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  The US has decreased emissions while undergoing massive growth in the last decade.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_analysis#/media/File:Normdist_regression.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_analysis#/media/Fil...

radmuzom 5y ago

> no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels In that case, Western nations should pay developing nations to make them more developed and reduce emissions.

Xplune13 5y ago

How about this? All developing countries would welcome the "developed" nation's Trillion Dollar investments in future sustainability as an act of taking accountability for how they exploited other nations. Per capita emissions from the US are still ludicrously high when compared to developing countries. Not a single one of those western countries is taking accountability for what they did and exploited over the last 2 centuries. If western countries really cared then they already would've worked with developing countries long time ago and they still can i.e. if they cared. I'm not saying that developing countries should be allowed to do the same, but this "pointing out the data" indicates more towards "developing nation's work is done here, now we'll stay the same as it is and others do all the work" rather co-operation in my opinion.

baron_harkonnen 5y ago

> It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. Sure there is. We've had two experiments where we saw this happen: April 2020 - for a very short time when Western economies took a major hit, emissions dipped quite substantially. In 2008 - The global financial crisis, which did impact the world, started in the US and again caused on of the only major notable dips in emissions we've seen. It's very clear that US consumption and economic activity is directly tied to GHG emissions globally. If just the US had decided to remain in our April 2020 depressed economic state, and cooled from there, we would have seen a downward trend in emissions. Maybe you would argue that economic shrinking is not "realistic" (in which case we are most certainly doomed, unless we run out of fossil fuels before we cross certain boundaries). The common argument is people won't tolerate a radical change in lifestyles... but that change is coming either way. However extreme the changes need to prevent catastrophic climate change, they are certainly less extreme then letting climate change run it's course. I personally believe we will not chose this path, but don't pretend that this path doesn't exist. As the center of the global economy the United States fully has the capability to reduce global emissions. Alternatively if we run into a economic crisis of unprecedented scale, which looks reasonably possible, we'll also see reduction in emissions without having to worry about "choosing" this path.

epistasis 5y ago
> It's very clear that US consumption and economic activity is directly tied to GHG emissions globally. This is true today, but it will not be true in the future. In the past and today, it was the contention both of fossil fuel interests and of degrowthers that emissions and economic activity are inseparable. However, we are showing that that's not true. If you look back since 2008, sure, the big economic contractions showed big drops in emissions. But also, with economic expansion, we are lowering emissions, just at a lower rate. And in fact, the true decoupling of GHG and GDP will involve a spectacular amount of economic activity. A huge number of jobs for everything from the obvious like deploying wind turbines and batteries and solar panels and expanding grid distribution and transmission, to less obvious stuff like insulating homes and installing heat pumps in place of natural gas. There is another path, with massive economic growth, that results in complete decoupling of GHG and GDP. This is the easiest path in terms of lifestyle changes, but the most difficult path in terms of upsetting entrenched powerful interests.

AnonHP 5y ago

> It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. There is one scenario, which isn’t probable. That is for western countries to pay a retrospective “sin” tax that gets distributed to other countries to fund climate action programs with better oversight. After all, if some countries benefited a lot from polluting in the past, it would be fair to expect them to pay up too.

wang_li 5y ago
>After all, if some countries benefited a lot from polluting in the past, it would be fair to expect them to pay up too. Largely the entire globe has benefited from the industrial revolution. If the west is obligated to pay a retrospective sin tax, does the west also then jack up the prices on every technology that comes from that development when exporting to developing countries? For example, should students from developing countries get to come to the US and learn the latest knowledge and take that home and then jumping their country forward through decades of technology research? Should every immigrant into western countries pay huge fees to buy into the modern world, since they are not descended from those who are paying the sin taxes? Also, do these sin taxes require that developing countries that receive these fund then guarantee not to emit CO2?
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  The development of modern computing, for instance, did not actually require that much GHG emissions.
  - wang_li 5y ago
    I disagree. Imagine everything that goes into the manufacture of an Apple M1 SoC. You have to get the raw materials, the design tools, the invention of the transistor, likely hundreds of thousands of hours, if not millions of hours, of engineering time to go from vacuum tubes, to transistors, to fab design, to computer science, to chip design, etc. Sure, if you isolate just the inventions along the path from the invention of fire to Apple selling their M1 based systems, it seems modest. But you can't just arbitrarily claim that X invention happened in the absence of the world in which it was invented.

01100011 5y ago

> It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries In my experience it's more about justifying the continued unfettered use of fossil fuels to drive progress in developing nations. Sure, it sounds like 1st world blaming, but I think it's more about defending the right of poorer peoples to advance their standard of living in the near term. I'm not agreeing with it or defending it, but when I've encountered it in real life that is how it came across.

alexose 5y ago

> there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels This is not necessarily true. There's a scenario in which the West invents viable carbon capture technology.

cma 5y ago

> If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be on preventing that to happen rather than Monday morning quarterbacking the last 100 years of industrialization? You have more responsibility for what you have agency to actually do. We have more ability to lower our emissions than to lower China's. Beyond that, per-capita they still emit much less and may naturally level off to a level similar to ours depending on coal/gas mix in generation, etc. We don't need to focus only on right handed people's emissions just because left-handed people only emit 10% as much carbon in aggregate. Can you imagine a big campaign saying left-handed people should do anything they want, dump CFCs into the air etc., until right-handed people get their act together and achieve less or equal overall impact as left-handed people, and that only then it is ok to consider left-handed people?

godelski 5y ago

I think this is one thing that frustrates me about these conversations, they are still very Americentric. What matters is that we reduce atmospheric CO2. Every major country has the technical and economic means to invest and innovate on clean technology and CCS systems (because honestly we need negative production of CO2, not zero). You can't just rely on America to save everyone on the planet. I don't care if it comes from China, Germany, France, Australia, India, or wherever. It just matters that it gets done. We already know who's to blame. It's like a fire that's started and we're arguing about who's job it is to put out. This isn't spilt milk. The longer we wait the more damage is done and with compounding interest. We can talk about blame and solve the issue but this can't just dominate the conversation. Everyone needs to fix the issue. Full stop. This is because everyone is in danger.

kergonath 5y ago

It is pointless finger-pointing. It is not all or nothing, and we are past several points of no-return. All of the countries need to act 10 years ago, 'but Bobby is peeing in the pool more than I do' is not going to cut it. It is stupid, misleading, and counter-productive.