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also note that CSR (corporate social responsibility) is public relations, not a moral or ethical position, part and parcel to the term 'greenwashing'. in the s

also note that CSR (corporate social responsibility) is public relations, not a moral or ethical position, part and parcel to the term 'greenwashing'. in the same vein as the article, we should stop talking about climate change in favor of pollution. climate change is vague, pollution is not. we can see and feel the effects of pollution, which makes it more likely that we can create a coalition to address it rather than this unspecific notion of temperatures rising. pollution affected us yesterday, affects us today, and will continue to affect us into the foreseeable future. in the 80s this framing was used effectively against acid rain (sulfur dioxide) and CFC/HFCs. coal plants are among the most impactful in terms of pollution, so if instead of arguing about 1 or 2 or however many degrees of temperature rise, we pour all that effort into getting rid of coal plants (principally with nuclear right now, some gas at the margin, and renewables gradually, as storage and transmission tech improve), we'd be able to make meaningful impact in the next few years, with a byproduct of also reducing carbon emissions.

tracker1 4y ago
Agreed... in the end, the "climate change" message is really about pollution... so should just talk about what can be its' own isolated issue that everyone sees, recognizes and cares about. Doom spreaders sound like quacks in general. It doesn't matter if it's Satan or Climate change... it just breeds skepticism. Keep the message on message. This is why a lot of people stopped/don't support the EPA and the Green movements. You can see, smell, taste and feel pollution. It's bad.. and even then, it's really bad in places that we frankly don't control. And we're shipping our waste overseas to be dealt with corruptly or worse, not at all. In my lifetime, the Grand Canyon went from being able to see across well on any given day... to a haze the obscures the other side... rolling in from California.
- clairity 4y ago
  climate change has become a culture war meme topic, which is why it's time to change the perspective and leave that inanity behind, so that we can make meaningful change in our lifetimes (lest our lifetimes and those coming behind us become shorter and more painful). framing matters, and we the people need to grab the mediopolitical bull (who try to do all the pre-thinking for us) by its horns before we get gored.
WalterBright 4y ago
The easiest way to get rid of coal plants is to tax the carbon content of fuel. Natural gas has twice the energy per C atom, so this would naturally(!) favor gas power generation over coal power. Tax it, and let the market sort it out.
- clairity 4y ago
  carbon taxes are the exact kind of roundabout measure that creates distortions and unintended consequences[0] rather than directly tackling the core issue. we need to tax pollution directly, as happened with CFCs in the 80s, because what we want to get rid of is pollution and that's how you directly internalize externalities while minimizing gaming potential (and we should use the funds for further clean-up efforts). carbon by itself is not a pollutant[1], but rather an essential component of life. things like dioxins, lead and other heavy metals, particulate matter, ammonium, radon, microplastics, pesticides, VOCs, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, radiation (coal/fly ash surpasses nuclear waste, but both are relatively small), and yes, even a number of hydrocarbons, are directly pollutants, so let's target those things directly. [0]: cap-and-trade is another oft-mentioned approach, but suffers from the same gaming potential as carbon taxes. in the ideal, it should work, but practically they've been shown to become regulatorily captured, just like most bureaucratic measures. [1]: you could even argue that carbon dioxide is not necessarily a pollutant because it's essential to the cycle of life on earth. it becomes a critical problem when we have something like an order of magnitude more of it than we do currently, but so can anything be poisonous in high enough doses.
  - bseidensticker 4y ago
    We must be thinking of different things because imo carbon taxes are the most direct way to internalize the externality. Crude oil, coal, and natural gas now cost more, proportional to their GHG potential, and the free market figures out how to minimize the cost. It gets tricky when importing finished goods and with non-fuel sources of GHG, but it's way less complicated and more effective than any of the other proposals.
    - 4y ago

tracker1 4y ago

Agreed... in the end, the "climate change" message is really about pollution... so should just talk about what can be its' own isolated issue that everyone sees, recognizes and cares about. Doom spreaders sound like quacks in general. It doesn't matter if it's Satan or Climate change... it just breeds skepticism. Keep the message on message. This is why a lot of people stopped/don't support the EPA and the Green movements. You can see, smell, taste and feel pollution. It's bad.. and even then, it's really bad in places that we frankly don't control. And we're shipping our waste overseas to be dealt with corruptly or worse, not at all. In my lifetime, the Grand Canyon went from being able to see across well on any given day... to a haze the obscures the other side... rolling in from California.

clairity 4y ago
climate change has become a culture war meme topic, which is why it's time to change the perspective and leave that inanity behind, so that we can make meaningful change in our lifetimes (lest our lifetimes and those coming behind us become shorter and more painful). framing matters, and we the people need to grab the mediopolitical bull (who try to do all the pre-thinking for us) by its horns before we get gored.

WalterBright 4y ago

The easiest way to get rid of coal plants is to tax the carbon content of fuel. Natural gas has twice the energy per C atom, so this would naturally(!) favor gas power generation over coal power. Tax it, and let the market sort it out.

clairity 4y ago
carbon taxes are the exact kind of roundabout measure that creates distortions and unintended consequences[0] rather than directly tackling the core issue. we need to tax pollution directly, as happened with CFCs in the 80s, because what we want to get rid of is pollution and that's how you directly internalize externalities while minimizing gaming potential (and we should use the funds for further clean-up efforts). carbon by itself is not a pollutant[1], but rather an essential component of life. things like dioxins, lead and other heavy metals, particulate matter, ammonium, radon, microplastics, pesticides, VOCs, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, radiation (coal/fly ash surpasses nuclear waste, but both are relatively small), and yes, even a number of hydrocarbons, are directly pollutants, so let's target those things directly. [0]: cap-and-trade is another oft-mentioned approach, but suffers from the same gaming potential as carbon taxes. in the ideal, it should work, but practically they've been shown to become regulatorily captured, just like most bureaucratic measures. [1]: you could even argue that carbon dioxide is not necessarily a pollutant because it's essential to the cycle of life on earth. it becomes a critical problem when we have something like an order of magnitude more of it than we do currently, but so can anything be poisonous in high enough doses.
- bseidensticker 4y ago
  We must be thinking of different things because imo carbon taxes are the most direct way to internalize the externality. Crude oil, coal, and natural gas now cost more, proportional to their GHG potential, and the free market figures out how to minimize the cost. It gets tricky when importing finished goods and with non-fuel sources of GHG, but it's way less complicated and more effective than any of the other proposals.
  - 4y ago