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Ok, you spend your time and resources doing that, and I'll spend mine increasing my military and economic might. Now replace 'you' and 'me' with competing nati

Ok, you spend your time and resources doing that, and I'll spend mine increasing my military and economic might. Now replace 'you' and 'me' with competing nation states and super powers. It's a kind of geopolitical prisoner's dilemma. We're all screwed to different degrees if we do nothing, but everyone has an incentive to be a parasite, letting 90% of the world use their energy working on this problem that distributes the rewards of success (averting global climate disaster) equally to all people, while you use your energy on something that gives you direct and exclusive benefit, not globally diffused benefit. And even if you could somehow force everyone to participate, you run into the same problem that makes communism (in the "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" definition) not work well. When conscious beings don't get rewarded personally for working harder or smarter, and the fruits of their labor are always diffused equally across the population, everyone falls into a vicious downward spiral of trying to do the minimum work possible, therefore making everyone worse off in the long run.

jjcon 5y ago
I actually think if we had the technology to do that we probably would be, we spend billions on climate research and even on carbon sequestration tech but we just don't have a good scalable way to do it yet.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  It's going to cost significantly more energy than the aggregate energy output of all fossil fuel burning over the past 200 years to remove the carbon from the atmosphere that was added. Probably several multiples more because it's harder to undo chemical combustion than to do it. We're probably talking trillions of dollars, not billions. Much more likely is that we'd invest a few billion in pumping global coolants into the atmosphere, which could be simpler.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    My guess is, we'll do both...
robocat 5y ago
If the benefits to an individual country are high enough compared against the costs, then that country could decide to do it even if everyone else is freeloading. Also the problem should be solved depending on wealth: the richest countries cause/caused the majority of the problem, and they have the most incentive to fix the problem (e.g. NY, California, London), and they have the best resources to try and solve the problem. The EU shows that countries can work together, rather than your simplistic dystopian view. Let’s presume the EU and the US pull finger, then they alone could make a difference. Rope in other rich countries, and use trade restrictions to penalise or equivalently tax non-participants. Disclaimer: I live in a coastal city in a wealthy country: I very definitely have some skin in this game. However I expect to die ~2050, so perhaps I don’t care as much as someone who expects to die closer to 2100.

jjcon 5y ago

I actually think if we had the technology to do that we probably would be, we spend billions on climate research and even on carbon sequestration tech but we just don't have a good scalable way to do it yet.

anonporridge 5y ago
It's going to cost significantly more energy than the aggregate energy output of all fossil fuel burning over the past 200 years to remove the carbon from the atmosphere that was added. Probably several multiples more because it's harder to undo chemical combustion than to do it. We're probably talking trillions of dollars, not billions. Much more likely is that we'd invest a few billion in pumping global coolants into the atmosphere, which could be simpler.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  My guess is, we'll do both...

robocat 5y ago

If the benefits to an individual country are high enough compared against the costs, then that country could decide to do it even if everyone else is freeloading. Also the problem should be solved depending on wealth: the richest countries cause/caused the majority of the problem, and they have the most incentive to fix the problem (e.g. NY, California, London), and they have the best resources to try and solve the problem. The EU shows that countries can work together, rather than your simplistic dystopian view. Let’s presume the EU and the US pull finger, then they alone could make a difference. Rope in other rich countries, and use trade restrictions to penalise or equivalently tax non-participants. Disclaimer: I live in a coastal city in a wealthy country: I very definitely have some skin in this game. However I expect to die ~2050, so perhaps I don’t care as much as someone who expects to die closer to 2100.