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> Having said that, just tax the externalities That policy would not produce green energy that would replace the existing energy that we're now using at a soci

> Having said that, just tax the externalities That policy would not produce green energy that would replace the existing energy that we're now using at a societal level, it would just stop economic growth as we now understand it (mostly meaning more stuff being made, among other things). Yours is a call for more global poverty, plain and simple, which comes with its share of externalities. Case in point: make natural gas more expensive or harder to get a hold of -> price of fertilisers increases -> less agro stuff being produced -> a lot more people in the developing world getting under the extreme poverty threshold and, in the end, a lot more people dying.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I think we're on different sides of a weird political split. We both want to help poor people in the developing world, but you're only interested in doing so if it involves giving money to fossil fuel interests. Whereas, I believe (like basically all economists do) that increasing the price of fossil fuels would actually help the world, by increasing efficiency and incentivizing better alternatives, many of which are already better than the alternatives and a net win. At least we can agree that we both want to help people, and we also agree that one of us is tragically misinformed and actively hurting the people they claim to be helping by promoting counterproductive actions. Our only point of disagreement seems to be whether it's me that's accidentally hurting people by suggesting we burn less fossil fuels, or if it's you that's hurting people by advocating for burning more fossil fuels.
- paganel 4y ago
  > We both want to help poor people in the developing world, but you're only interested in doing so if it involves giving money to fossil fuel interests. No, it's a matter of physics, you can't produce more agro stuff without fertilisers, that's what the Green Revolution has been based on. There's nothing to be "tragically misinformed" about when it comes to this simple fact. You need more agro stuff in order to feed 8 billion people and counting. > by increasing efficiency and incentivizing better alternatives, How does that help with producing enough fertilisers? Do those "better alternatives" produce the same amount of agro stuff as fertilisers do? Do they produce it now? If the answers to any of those answers is "NO" then those economists will have the deaths of tens of millions of people on their conscience. Again, there's no politics in this, it's just how physics works, you need energy to produce energy (which is what fertilisers are, in a way), nice and fancy words just won't cut it.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Fertilizers aren't made from hydrocarbons, they extract hydrogen from hydrocarbons, venting the carbon as carbon dioxide, then use that hydrogen to make fertilizer. If your big thing is fertilizers, then you'd want a really cheap way of making fertilizers, which some people do actually want and they think that Green Hydrogen is already cheaper for this when you include externalities. And even if you're the kind of person that really can't cope with the idea that externalities are a thing and just want to pretend they don't, then they'll be so much cheaper when we scale them up, that they'll still be cheaper even if you ignore all the misery and death that those externalities cause. https://www.yara.com/crop-nutrition/products-and-solutions/green-fertilizers/what-you-need-to-know-about-green-fertilizers/ https://www.yara.com/crop-nutrition/products-and-solutions/g... Weirdly, you seem to already know this, since you added in that bit about "Do they produce it now?". Maybe you're not accidentally killing people because you're misinformed after all.
    - paganel 4y ago
      > Fertilizers aren't made from hydrocarbons, they extract hydrogen from hydrocarbons Granted, I’m not a native English speaker, but this looks like a plain contradiction to me. Again, and to re-iterate, fertilizers is not “my” thing, is not anyone’s in particular thing, in a political manner, because you keep mentioning politics, it’s our 8-billion people thing, without fertilizers we cannot feed us, without fertilizers many more of us will die. You’re putting words into my mouth when it comes to externalities, I did acknowledge them, I was just saying that the externalities that you mentioned (presumably higher CO2 concentrations from using fossil fuels, granted, you didn’t get into much details) are different than the externalities that I explicitly mentioned, i.e. that putting taxes on things like natural gas will lead to increased mass poverty and hence to increased (mass) deaths. And to end on a positive note, glad the getting fertilizers out of hydrogen is getting cheaper, that means we won’t need taxes on natural gas, the simple law of supply and demand will do its thing.
      - photochemsyn 4y ago
        There are several fertilizers required to maintain current global agricultural productivity. Phosphate and potassium are mostly from mineral (mined) sources today, but the one that is captured from the air is nitrogen, and to be used by plants it must be reduced from N2 to NH3 (ammonia) at which point it can also be converted to NO3 (nitrate). Since the early 20th century this has been accomplished by the Bosch-Haber process which utilizes natural gas as the source of the hydrogen to convert N2 to NH3. The point is that you can make H2 via the electrolysis of water at scale, eliminating the need for the natural gas, and feed that H2 into the existing Haber-Bosch plants. Since sunlight and water are available basically everywhere, this eliminates a lot of the geopolitical and supply chain problems that are currently plagueing countries around the world with respect to nitrogen fertilizers (mined fertilizers are another story, of course).

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I think we're on different sides of a weird political split. We both want to help poor people in the developing world, but you're only interested in doing so if it involves giving money to fossil fuel interests. Whereas, I believe (like basically all economists do) that increasing the price of fossil fuels would actually help the world, by increasing efficiency and incentivizing better alternatives, many of which are already better than the alternatives and a net win. At least we can agree that we both want to help people, and we also agree that one of us is tragically misinformed and actively hurting the people they claim to be helping by promoting counterproductive actions. Our only point of disagreement seems to be whether it's me that's accidentally hurting people by suggesting we burn less fossil fuels, or if it's you that's hurting people by advocating for burning more fossil fuels.

paganel 4y ago
> We both want to help poor people in the developing world, but you're only interested in doing so if it involves giving money to fossil fuel interests. No, it's a matter of physics, you can't produce more agro stuff without fertilisers, that's what the Green Revolution has been based on. There's nothing to be "tragically misinformed" about when it comes to this simple fact. You need more agro stuff in order to feed 8 billion people and counting. > by increasing efficiency and incentivizing better alternatives, How does that help with producing enough fertilisers? Do those "better alternatives" produce the same amount of agro stuff as fertilisers do? Do they produce it now? If the answers to any of those answers is "NO" then those economists will have the deaths of tens of millions of people on their conscience. Again, there's no politics in this, it's just how physics works, you need energy to produce energy (which is what fertilisers are, in a way), nice and fancy words just won't cut it.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Fertilizers aren't made from hydrocarbons, they extract hydrogen from hydrocarbons, venting the carbon as carbon dioxide, then use that hydrogen to make fertilizer. If your big thing is fertilizers, then you'd want a really cheap way of making fertilizers, which some people do actually want and they think that Green Hydrogen is already cheaper for this when you include externalities. And even if you're the kind of person that really can't cope with the idea that externalities are a thing and just want to pretend they don't, then they'll be so much cheaper when we scale them up, that they'll still be cheaper even if you ignore all the misery and death that those externalities cause. https://www.yara.com/crop-nutrition/products-and-solutions/green-fertilizers/what-you-need-to-know-about-green-fertilizers/ https://www.yara.com/crop-nutrition/products-and-solutions/g... Weirdly, you seem to already know this, since you added in that bit about "Do they produce it now?". Maybe you're not accidentally killing people because you're misinformed after all.
  - paganel 4y ago
    > Fertilizers aren't made from hydrocarbons, they extract hydrogen from hydrocarbons Granted, I’m not a native English speaker, but this looks like a plain contradiction to me. Again, and to re-iterate, fertilizers is not “my” thing, is not anyone’s in particular thing, in a political manner, because you keep mentioning politics, it’s our 8-billion people thing, without fertilizers we cannot feed us, without fertilizers many more of us will die. You’re putting words into my mouth when it comes to externalities, I did acknowledge them, I was just saying that the externalities that you mentioned (presumably higher CO2 concentrations from using fossil fuels, granted, you didn’t get into much details) are different than the externalities that I explicitly mentioned, i.e. that putting taxes on things like natural gas will lead to increased mass poverty and hence to increased (mass) deaths. And to end on a positive note, glad the getting fertilizers out of hydrogen is getting cheaper, that means we won’t need taxes on natural gas, the simple law of supply and demand will do its thing.
    - photochemsyn 4y ago
      There are several fertilizers required to maintain current global agricultural productivity. Phosphate and potassium are mostly from mineral (mined) sources today, but the one that is captured from the air is nitrogen, and to be used by plants it must be reduced from N2 to NH3 (ammonia) at which point it can also be converted to NO3 (nitrate). Since the early 20th century this has been accomplished by the Bosch-Haber process which utilizes natural gas as the source of the hydrogen to convert N2 to NH3. The point is that you can make H2 via the electrolysis of water at scale, eliminating the need for the natural gas, and feed that H2 into the existing Haber-Bosch plants. Since sunlight and water are available basically everywhere, this eliminates a lot of the geopolitical and supply chain problems that are currently plagueing countries around the world with respect to nitrogen fertilizers (mined fertilizers are another story, of course).