15 ms·

Economic growth no longer requires rising emissions

150 points by edward 4y ago

perfunctory 4y ago
> A large and growing group of mostly rich countries has severed the link between economic growth and rising emissions of greenhouse gases so they outsourced production to the poor countries.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  From TFA: "Strikingly, consumption emissions, which include a measure of the carbon embedded in imports, have fallen by 15% over the same period."
  - h0l0cube 4y ago
    Also, here's a graph from Our World In Data using consumption-based accounting for CO2 emissions. Note that US, Europe, and even India are declining in consumption (and China seems to be plateauing) https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=CHN~USA~OWID_WRL~Europe~IND&Gas=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Consumption-based&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+capita https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=...
    - lm28469 4y ago
      per capita*
      - tonmoy 4y ago
        The population of all these places are stabilizing too.
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    In other words, China increased its nuclear power production
    - h0l0cube 4y ago
      Consumption-based accounting shows across-the-board drop in the rate of CO2 emissions (for every continent [0]). Consumption-based accounting is, to quote OWID: > production-based emissions minus emissions embedded in exports, plus emissions embedded in imports [0] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=Asia+%28excl.+China+and+India%29~Africa~Europe~USA~CHN~IND&Gas=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Consumption-based&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+capita https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=...
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      China has been increasing its wind+solar generation even more (in absolute terms): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#/media/File:China-electricity-prod-source-stacked.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#/m...
    - Retric 4y ago
      China gets dramatically more power from Hydro or wind than nuclear, even solar is about to pass nuclear. 2020 ultra low carbon sources GWh: Hydro: 1,355,200, Wind: 466,500, Nuclear: 366,200, Solar: 261,100 That’s an increase from 2019 of Wind: 15.1%, Solar: 16.6%, Hydro: 4.1%, Nuclear: 5% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China Coal is still king, but it fell from 81% of total electricity in 2007 down to 62% in 2020 mostly due to renewables not nuclear.
    - realusername 4y ago
      China is increasing everything right now. Coal, solar, wind, nuclear and others. They haven't started their transition yet.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    The USA still has 45x the emissions per capita of Nigeria, to give a sense of scale.
    - mlindner 4y ago
      No one said there isn't more work to do, but continuing to grow without growing emissions (or even better, also reducing emissions) is the point.
- querez 4y ago
  It seems like you didn't read the article thoroughly. Why the cheapshot remark?
- randomsearch 4y ago
  > so they outsourced production to the poor countries. You can't outsource domestic transport and, for the moment, most electricity generation.
  - eunos 4y ago
    Industry and Manufacturing, especially those arent high end products contribute a lot to pollution.
mjburgess 4y ago
Rather late for the Economist to discover that the west imports its manufactured goods.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  From TFA: "Strikingly, consumption emissions, which include a measure of the carbon embedded in imports, have fallen by 15% over the same period."
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    Unless there's a global GDP graph showing the same, we're not decoupled. Or, you could say, we're in an era of weak decoupling where high-tail QoL can be marginally improved without negative env. externalities. That isnt "strong decoupling" where the bulk of QoL improvements around the world lie. We're interested in GDP growth because it's highly correlated with QoL. Rich-world marginal QoL improvements aren't interesting, nor is their alleged decoupling. The economist here says the world can get rich from services... er, No. For 80% of the population they dont need more services to improve QoL.
fedeb95 4y ago
The real problem is that people are usually blind: almost nobody reasons about philosophic implications of induction. What I mean is this: can we know that in the portion of knowledge we don't know there isn't an even worse problem? In general we can't know the unknown, but we should at least try to look
- nathias 4y ago
  problems of induction are solved by the scientific method, bit by bit there is nothing better we can do except try to lean more, but on the side of what to do with information we have quite large leaps to go still ...
  - fedeb95 4y ago
    Solved isn't the exact word. It's something. It's the best we can do. That doesn't justify reckless behaviours in my opinion, just because we don't yet have scientific evidence that they are
    - themitigating 4y ago
      But not acting also has consequences, one's we know.
    - nathias 4y ago
      without evidence, how do we know what reckless is?
      - fedeb95 4y ago
        We can take time to evaluate things and study more. That's not usually the case: immediate profit is usually the driver
maelito 4y ago
Of course some decoupling exists. But decoupling from CO2 only, and even then, not with a sufficient pace, by far.
jl6 4y ago
I believe this to be true to the extent that energy sources are decoupled from emissions. Energy is still the foundation of economic activity.
roenxi 4y ago
There are some big open questions there though - this may easily be the knell tolling for economic growth as an interesting measure of progress. We don't care about GDP because we really love indexes, but because it used to be a close proxy of energy availability. GDP doubling used to mean 2x as much energy and an almost unbelievable improvement in the median living standard. Doubling energy availability is huge! You can tell from the political pressures building that a lot of countries with positive GDP are missing that sort of comforting tailwind that keeps everyone happy and working together.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  You seem to be saying that energy growth should be what we're aiming for, not GDP growth? That consuming energy in and of itself is a positive good?
  - roenxi 4y ago
    I'm saying that GDP used to measure energy growth. Now it has decoupled. That brings GDP in to question, not energy growth. We know consuming energy leads to higher living standards. It is now quite possible for GDP to rise and living standards to fall - that used to be an impossible scenario when it was a measure of fossil fuel use.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Ok, you've confirmed to me you don't know what you're talking about. Living standards may be correlated with energy consumption, in a narrow sense, in some cases, but we don't consume energy, we consume things we can produce with energy. If we do that more efficiently, then our living standard increases even as our energy use decreases. You seem to be saying a 60W incandescent bulb indicates a higher standard of living than a 10W LED bulb -- even though the latter produces more light. You seem to think a house with less insulation indicates a higher standard of living than one with more insulation, since the former requires more energy use. And on and on.
      - 4y ago
127 4y ago
GDP is still very much almost exactly correlated to energy consumed. Current inflation is also almost directly caused by energy loss. At this point people should not read any narratives. Look at direct physical evidence and do the math.
- tonmoy 4y ago
  Energy may not equal emissions always and energy to GDP conversion ratio can change. Does a 100W incandescent bulb produce more value to GDP than a 14W LED bulb of same luminosity?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  I heard a quote once "quality of life is determined by how much energy you can waste"
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Unfortunately, a lot of climate activists’ primary goal is not stopping climate change but rather advocating for degrowth. They are thus vehemently opposed to any solutions that don’t involve massive reductions in consumption. This is not only politically untenable (it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions) but also alienates the majority of people from the cause, who might otherwise support it. Hopefully degrowth advocates’ voices will be drowned out by abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy.
- zztop44 4y ago
  I’ve got a horrid feeling you’re waiting for this precise question, but any source on degrowth being the aim of a “lot” of climate activists to the extent that it’s vaguely mainstream (as opposed to just being a minor current, which I’m aware exists)
  - practice9 4y ago
    It doesn’t help that most visible activists don’t have clear and measurable goals
    - esteth 4y ago
      I don’t know about that: the major activist groups in the uk which get news attention are just stop oil, who want the government to stop issuing new oil and gas licenses, and insulate Britain, who want the government to install insulation in all state-owned housing. Those are both concrete, measurable goals
    - collyw 4y ago
      How dare you! Listen to the scientists! No not those scientists!
      - philosopher1234 4y ago
        All those earth lovers are so lame. I’ll burn as much oil as I want
doubleg 4y ago
https://archive.ph/KDCxq https://archive.ph/KDCxq
leethargo 4y ago
The subtitle (or supertitle?) says "Debunking degrowth", implying that the idea of degrowth is that no decoupling is possible and that proponents of degrowth promote negative growth as measured in GDP per capita. From my limited understanding, degrowth actually stands for different ideas, such as: - GDP is not a relevant measure for wellbeing - reduced consumption can lean to higher wellbeing for the individual (reduced working hours, more time for family, gardening etc) - worth of policy should be measured by new, more holistic criteria
BlueTemplar 4y ago
There's a bunch of assumptions baked into the question itself, which might not hold or even become irrelevant over longer timescales : https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/07/limits-to-economic-growth/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/07/limits-to-economic-growth...
anemoiac 4y ago
I'll be casting my vote with the skeptics for this one. That said, even if economic activity was fully decoupled from emissions, Earth's environmental problems would remain overwhelming. Biodiversity loss, deforestation, aquifer depletion, desertification, etc. are just as concerning for most people here as rising global temperatures. My inner cynic sees headlines like the above and assumes that A) the writer/publisher wants people to think everything is OK, and B) the writer/publisher wants people to narrowly focus on global warming as opposed to the greater health of the natural environment. While obviously not easy, transitioning to lower-emissions energy sources is far,far easier than fully acknowledging the material basis of our economy and factoring in actually sufficient environmental protections to our systems of production and distribution. If we suddenly weren't allowed to replace old-growth forests with mono-culture, pollute our groundwater, fill the earth with plastic, kill off a majority of animal species, and so forth, how much would the economy shrink? More than anyone published in The Economist would ever admit, I suspect.
- lettergram 4y ago
  > That said, even if economic activity was fully decoupled from emissions, Earth's environmental problems would remain overwhelming. Biodiversity loss, deforestation, aquifer depletion, desertification, etc. are just as concerning for most people here as rising global temperatures. The issue I take with the “Global warming” crowd is that there’s a lot inaccurate predictions (nearly all of them thus far) and the evidence misrepresented and questionable. Personally, this makes the “warming” tied to “emissions” just seem like a red herring. If I was a company producing forever chemicals, but low “carbon emissions” and I could afford the carbon tax, and extra carbon reducing infrastructure. Of course I’d promote the “green agenda”. It’s a barrier to new comers and it distracts people from the poison I’m adding to the environment. If it becomes too burdensome the whole “carbon reduction” crowd just moves to a different country. One that slows higher level of pollutants. These policies, to me, are really just business decisions.
  - collyw 4y ago
    It amazes me that climate activists never seem to push for nuclear, the most obvious solution.
perfunctory 4y ago
For me personally, the only climate metric worth paying attention to is this one: https://www.climate.gov/media/13611 https://www.climate.gov/media/13611 All other "Good news" and "reason(s) for optimism" I consider to be accounting tricks.
- randomsearch 4y ago
  Do you know how much the ppm measure varies by location or altitude?
bryanlarsen 4y ago
Isn't Hacker News the home of "software eats the world"? That's a massive part of the de-correlation of economic growth and emissions. Except for AI training and proof of work, software is a low carbon activity. And it's massively cumulative -- it's not consumed, the software produced 20 years ago still has value. Some other examples: would anybody deny the iPhone 12 is better than the iPhone 11? It's smaller and presumably has a lower carbon footprint. How about the F-150 Lightning? Each one of those that replaces a standard pickup eliminates demand for about 50,000 pounds of gasoline. The aluminum frame was likely produced using hydro-power so much fewer emissions than the traditional steel frame. The 100 pounds or so of lithium in the vehicle is highly recyclable.
- Comevius 4y ago
  Software needs hardware to create economic growth, namely data centers and disposable computers (smartphones, notebooks, smart watches, routers and so on). It doesn't matter if they are more energy efficient either if you keep making more and more of them. Just the environmental impact of making them is unsustainable. Similarly it doesn't matter how much value new paradigms like Bitcoin or AI adds to the economy, it's just more environmental impact. Replacing hundreds of millions of cars with electric cars is just more impact too.
  - realusername 4y ago
    Those are negligeable compared to their physical counterpart they are replacing though, they so replace a lot of car trips and expensive manufacturing which is now unneeded
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Demand for cars is higher than ever, so is the manufacturing of almost all goods, as proven by the supply chain bottleneck in the last 2-3 years. The demand is still there, and is growing thanks to millions of people in places like India, China and Africa getting out of poverty. What exactly have smartphones been replacing lately? Other than PC computers, which ironically also saw a comeback thanks to WFH? You're probably seeing things only from your own tiny bubble, not from the global perspective.
Proven 4y ago
LatteLazy 4y ago
If we can grow while reducing emissions 5% a year, we will be at a sustainable emissions rate in just 19 years. It's a pity that will be 35 years too late.
djschnei 4y ago
"Degrowth" aka the poor will have to deal with it. aka lots of death and suffering in places I can't see so it doesn't matter.
cfhhgtyg 4y ago
Well, if you grow by outsourcing and don't include the rising emissions of countries outsourced to, you are deluding yourself
thelastgallon 4y ago
Health spending accounts for nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy [1]. Between 2000 to 2020 health expenditure tripled from 1.4 trillion to 4 trillion, at a 4.2% annual growth rate. This is projected to accelerate, grow at 5.3% and reach 6.8 trillion by 2030. [3] Happening in other countries as well. Health spending set to outpace GDP growth to 2030 [2] This shows up as economic growth (GDP), but really nothing has changed, does not require more emissions. [1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-healthcare-changed-time/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe... [2] https://www.oecd.org/health/health-spending-set-to-outpace-gdp-growth-to-2030.htm https://www.oecd.org/health/health-spending-set-to-outpace-g... [3] https://www.cms.gov/files/document/nhe-projections-forecast-summary.pdf https://www.cms.gov/files/document/nhe-projections-forecast-...
thiago_fm 4y ago
That's so wrong. Many industry chains that are the basis for renewable energy(which many countries will need to transition to), generating wind, hydro and solar power equipment are responsible for a good load of emissions, like the steel industry. It is close to impossible to grow an emerging economy without producing more energy, as more of the population would want to drive cars, have lights, sanitation etc. Because of that, as almost all the economist articles, this is mostly centered around developed economies and even those that are developed have a big deficit in energy generation. And I'm giving the simplest example ever. Imagine if we get into consumer habits and spending... The truth is that many countries need to grow and need to raise emissions before lowering them. Not every country is Germany with a big industry and influx of cash to support its environment plans. The "third world" doesn't need to accept living in the wood and shitting in a bucket while americans live in a house of the size of a football field with AC on. If they have nothing to win by caring about emissions, they shouldn't. Raise emissions if you must, to grow. Rich countries that need to set the example, but most of them just don't.
dhfbshfbu4u3 4y ago
Good news, everyone! Capital no longer requires human activity for growth!
adverbly 4y ago
I'd love to see some metrics on GDP growth that are not connected to increasing population/resource extraction/inflation/housing. In places like Canada and Australia it feels like the entire economic engine is built around population growth, housing, and resource extraction. It makes me sort of nervous about if these countries are actually making real progress.
abeppu 4y ago
The claim that countries that do manufacturing for export have decarbonized faster than the rest of the economy is interesting. Prior to the pandemic, one sometimes heard that even if you had a desire to do a particular manufacturing step outside of China, the advantages of being in a manufacturing region that was set up for scale, that had so many of your suppliers etc made it much faster and cheaper to set up production for a new product, iterate and change the parts you needed etc. Was some portion of decarbonizing manufacturing exports the sheer concentration of manufacturing steps in the area? Parts don't need to be shipped as far between steps etc? In 2020/2021 people began talking about the need to make supply chains more robust by spreading out and replicating production capabilities more. Will that re-carbonize some of that manufacturing process?
gandalfian 4y ago
Whats remarkable in the UK is how the huge rise in fossil fuel prices has suddenly revealed how many business's are basically converting fossil fuels into goods and services. I mean people understood that putting petrol in the car is fossil fuels but buying a pint in the pub? But suddenly the pubs, and a host of other business's are saying that without the cheap energy their business isn't viable. It's all rather a wake up call.
- was_a_dev 4y ago
  I really don't think it is that remarkable? The UK's history with domestic coal and then the global oil crisis in the 1970s are clear examples of an economic reliance on fossil fuels. Both of those historic events are way before my lifetime, yet the concept of the UK economy being highly dependent on fossil fuels and their pricing seems like common sense to me.
  - gandalfian 4y ago
    Something like a Steel Mill sure. But the idea that something like a Pub is an energy intensive industry surprised me. I think of most businesses these days as being deindustrialized light industry things that only really need a trickle of energy for some led lights and computers. That so many are actually still quite energy intensive disguised by low energy prices surprised me at least.
dig1 4y ago
A large and growing group of mostly rich countries has severed the link between economic growth and rising emissions of greenhouse gases Because they outsourced heavy and polluting industries to poorer countries. And I'm not taking into account the greenhouse gases market, were a rich country A can sell it's "consumption level" to poor country B, by selling/donating cheap solar panels or cheap "efficient" wooden stoves, and show in their books that they are more green now.
perrygeo 4y ago
Seriously? Analyzing data at the country level and claiming to have achieved decoupling is an egregious logical error that ignores our global trade network. Yes the US economy can grow without burning fossil fuels because someone else burns it for us. Decoupling can only be analyzed at a global scale and anyone who claims otherwise is trying to fool you.
dirtyid 4y ago
Growth drives consumption which will increase emissions. For poorer countries this means more physical goods / energy intensive infra like air conditioning. Maybe less emission services for wealthy countries but they're already consuming at relatively unsustainable rates already.
RGamma 4y ago
So much Dunning Kruger in the discussions about nuclear energy again. What a feast!

150 points by edward 4y ago

> A large and growing group of mostly rich countries has severed the link between economic growth and rising emissions of greenhouse gases so they outsourced production to the poor countries.

mpweiher 4y ago
From TFA: "Strikingly, consumption emissions, which include a measure of the carbon embedded in imports, have fallen by 15% over the same period."
- h0l0cube 4y ago
  Also, here's a graph from Our World In Data using consumption-based accounting for CO2 emissions. Note that US, Europe, and even India are declining in consumption (and China seems to be plateauing) https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=CHN~USA~OWID_WRL~Europe~IND&Gas=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Consumption-based&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+capita https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=...
  - lm28469 4y ago
    per capita*
    - tonmoy 4y ago
      The population of all these places are stabilizing too.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  In other words, China increased its nuclear power production
  - h0l0cube 4y ago
    Consumption-based accounting shows across-the-board drop in the rate of CO2 emissions (for every continent [0]). Consumption-based accounting is, to quote OWID: > production-based emissions minus emissions embedded in exports, plus emissions embedded in imports [0] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=Asia+%28excl.+China+and+India%29~Africa~Europe~USA~CHN~IND&Gas=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Consumption-based&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+capita https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=...
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    China has been increasing its wind+solar generation even more (in absolute terms): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#/media/File:China-electricity-prod-source-stacked.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#/m...
  - Retric 4y ago
    China gets dramatically more power from Hydro or wind than nuclear, even solar is about to pass nuclear. 2020 ultra low carbon sources GWh: Hydro: 1,355,200, Wind: 466,500, Nuclear: 366,200, Solar: 261,100 That’s an increase from 2019 of Wind: 15.1%, Solar: 16.6%, Hydro: 4.1%, Nuclear: 5% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China Coal is still king, but it fell from 81% of total electricity in 2007 down to 62% in 2020 mostly due to renewables not nuclear.
  - realusername 4y ago
    China is increasing everything right now. Coal, solar, wind, nuclear and others. They haven't started their transition yet.
- andrepd 4y ago
  The USA still has 45x the emissions per capita of Nigeria, to give a sense of scale.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    No one said there isn't more work to do, but continuing to grow without growing emissions (or even better, also reducing emissions) is the point.
querez 4y ago
It seems like you didn't read the article thoroughly. Why the cheapshot remark?
randomsearch 4y ago
> so they outsourced production to the poor countries. You can't outsource domestic transport and, for the moment, most electricity generation.
- eunos 4y ago
  Industry and Manufacturing, especially those arent high end products contribute a lot to pollution.

mjburgess 4y ago

Rather late for the Economist to discover that the west imports its manufactured goods.

mpweiher 4y ago
From TFA: "Strikingly, consumption emissions, which include a measure of the carbon embedded in imports, have fallen by 15% over the same period."
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Unless there's a global GDP graph showing the same, we're not decoupled. Or, you could say, we're in an era of weak decoupling where high-tail QoL can be marginally improved without negative env. externalities. That isnt "strong decoupling" where the bulk of QoL improvements around the world lie. We're interested in GDP growth because it's highly correlated with QoL. Rich-world marginal QoL improvements aren't interesting, nor is their alleged decoupling. The economist here says the world can get rich from services... er, No. For 80% of the population they dont need more services to improve QoL.

fedeb95 4y ago

The real problem is that people are usually blind: almost nobody reasons about philosophic implications of induction. What I mean is this: can we know that in the portion of knowledge we don't know there isn't an even worse problem? In general we can't know the unknown, but we should at least try to look

nathias 4y ago
problems of induction are solved by the scientific method, bit by bit there is nothing better we can do except try to lean more, but on the side of what to do with information we have quite large leaps to go still ...
- fedeb95 4y ago
  Solved isn't the exact word. It's something. It's the best we can do. That doesn't justify reckless behaviours in my opinion, just because we don't yet have scientific evidence that they are
  - themitigating 4y ago
    But not acting also has consequences, one's we know.
  - nathias 4y ago
    without evidence, how do we know what reckless is?
    - fedeb95 4y ago
      We can take time to evaluate things and study more. That's not usually the case: immediate profit is usually the driver

maelito 4y ago

Of course some decoupling exists. But decoupling from CO2 only, and even then, not with a sufficient pace, by far.

jl6 4y ago

I believe this to be true to the extent that energy sources are decoupled from emissions. Energy is still the foundation of economic activity.

roenxi 4y ago

There are some big open questions there though - this may easily be the knell tolling for economic growth as an interesting measure of progress. We don't care about GDP because we really love indexes, but because it used to be a close proxy of energy availability. GDP doubling used to mean 2x as much energy and an almost unbelievable improvement in the median living standard. Doubling energy availability is huge! You can tell from the political pressures building that a lot of countries with positive GDP are missing that sort of comforting tailwind that keeps everyone happy and working together.

pfdietz 4y ago
You seem to be saying that energy growth should be what we're aiming for, not GDP growth? That consuming energy in and of itself is a positive good?
- roenxi 4y ago
  I'm saying that GDP used to measure energy growth. Now it has decoupled. That brings GDP in to question, not energy growth. We know consuming energy leads to higher living standards. It is now quite possible for GDP to rise and living standards to fall - that used to be an impossible scenario when it was a measure of fossil fuel use.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Ok, you've confirmed to me you don't know what you're talking about. Living standards may be correlated with energy consumption, in a narrow sense, in some cases, but we don't consume energy, we consume things we can produce with energy. If we do that more efficiently, then our living standard increases even as our energy use decreases. You seem to be saying a 60W incandescent bulb indicates a higher standard of living than a 10W LED bulb -- even though the latter produces more light. You seem to think a house with less insulation indicates a higher standard of living than one with more insulation, since the former requires more energy use. And on and on.
    - 4y ago

127 4y ago

GDP is still very much almost exactly correlated to energy consumed. Current inflation is also almost directly caused by energy loss. At this point people should not read any narratives. Look at direct physical evidence and do the math.

tonmoy 4y ago
Energy may not equal emissions always and energy to GDP conversion ratio can change. Does a 100W incandescent bulb produce more value to GDP than a 14W LED bulb of same luminosity?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
algoatecorn 4y ago
I heard a quote once "quality of life is determined by how much energy you can waste"

MontyCarloHall 4y ago

Unfortunately, a lot of climate activists’ primary goal is not stopping climate change but rather advocating for degrowth. They are thus vehemently opposed to any solutions that don’t involve massive reductions in consumption. This is not only politically untenable (it is impossible to convince societies to take massive quality-of-life reductions) but also alienates the majority of people from the cause, who might otherwise support it. Hopefully degrowth advocates’ voices will be drowned out by abundant supplies of cheap GHG emission-free energy.

zztop44 4y ago
I’ve got a horrid feeling you’re waiting for this precise question, but any source on degrowth being the aim of a “lot” of climate activists to the extent that it’s vaguely mainstream (as opposed to just being a minor current, which I’m aware exists)
- practice9 4y ago
  It doesn’t help that most visible activists don’t have clear and measurable goals
  - esteth 4y ago
    I don’t know about that: the major activist groups in the uk which get news attention are just stop oil, who want the government to stop issuing new oil and gas licenses, and insulate Britain, who want the government to install insulation in all state-owned housing. Those are both concrete, measurable goals
  - collyw 4y ago
    How dare you! Listen to the scientists! No not those scientists!
    - philosopher1234 4y ago
      All those earth lovers are so lame. I’ll burn as much oil as I want

doubleg 4y ago

https://archive.ph/KDCxq https://archive.ph/KDCxq

leethargo 4y ago

The subtitle (or supertitle?) says "Debunking degrowth", implying that the idea of degrowth is that no decoupling is possible and that proponents of degrowth promote negative growth as measured in GDP per capita. From my limited understanding, degrowth actually stands for different ideas, such as: - GDP is not a relevant measure for wellbeing - reduced consumption can lean to higher wellbeing for the individual (reduced working hours, more time for family, gardening etc) - worth of policy should be measured by new, more holistic criteria

BlueTemplar 4y ago

There's a bunch of assumptions baked into the question itself, which might not hold or even become irrelevant over longer timescales : https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/07/limits-to-economic-growth/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/07/limits-to-economic-growth...

anemoiac 4y ago

I'll be casting my vote with the skeptics for this one. That said, even if economic activity was fully decoupled from emissions, Earth's environmental problems would remain overwhelming. Biodiversity loss, deforestation, aquifer depletion, desertification, etc. are just as concerning for most people here as rising global temperatures. My inner cynic sees headlines like the above and assumes that A) the writer/publisher wants people to think everything is OK, and B) the writer/publisher wants people to narrowly focus on global warming as opposed to the greater health of the natural environment. While obviously not easy, transitioning to lower-emissions energy sources is far,far easier than fully acknowledging the material basis of our economy and factoring in actually sufficient environmental protections to our systems of production and distribution. If we suddenly weren't allowed to replace old-growth forests with mono-culture, pollute our groundwater, fill the earth with plastic, kill off a majority of animal species, and so forth, how much would the economy shrink? More than anyone published in The Economist would ever admit, I suspect.

lettergram 4y ago
> That said, even if economic activity was fully decoupled from emissions, Earth's environmental problems would remain overwhelming. Biodiversity loss, deforestation, aquifer depletion, desertification, etc. are just as concerning for most people here as rising global temperatures. The issue I take with the “Global warming” crowd is that there’s a lot inaccurate predictions (nearly all of them thus far) and the evidence misrepresented and questionable. Personally, this makes the “warming” tied to “emissions” just seem like a red herring. If I was a company producing forever chemicals, but low “carbon emissions” and I could afford the carbon tax, and extra carbon reducing infrastructure. Of course I’d promote the “green agenda”. It’s a barrier to new comers and it distracts people from the poison I’m adding to the environment. If it becomes too burdensome the whole “carbon reduction” crowd just moves to a different country. One that slows higher level of pollutants. These policies, to me, are really just business decisions.
- collyw 4y ago
  It amazes me that climate activists never seem to push for nuclear, the most obvious solution.

perfunctory 4y ago

For me personally, the only climate metric worth paying attention to is this one: https://www.climate.gov/media/13611 https://www.climate.gov/media/13611 All other "Good news" and "reason(s) for optimism" I consider to be accounting tricks.

randomsearch 4y ago
Do you know how much the ppm measure varies by location or altitude?

bryanlarsen 4y ago

Isn't Hacker News the home of "software eats the world"? That's a massive part of the de-correlation of economic growth and emissions. Except for AI training and proof of work, software is a low carbon activity. And it's massively cumulative -- it's not consumed, the software produced 20 years ago still has value. Some other examples: would anybody deny the iPhone 12 is better than the iPhone 11? It's smaller and presumably has a lower carbon footprint. How about the F-150 Lightning? Each one of those that replaces a standard pickup eliminates demand for about 50,000 pounds of gasoline. The aluminum frame was likely produced using hydro-power so much fewer emissions than the traditional steel frame. The 100 pounds or so of lithium in the vehicle is highly recyclable.

Comevius 4y ago
Software needs hardware to create economic growth, namely data centers and disposable computers (smartphones, notebooks, smart watches, routers and so on). It doesn't matter if they are more energy efficient either if you keep making more and more of them. Just the environmental impact of making them is unsustainable. Similarly it doesn't matter how much value new paradigms like Bitcoin or AI adds to the economy, it's just more environmental impact. Replacing hundreds of millions of cars with electric cars is just more impact too.
- realusername 4y ago
  Those are negligeable compared to their physical counterpart they are replacing though, they so replace a lot of car trips and expensive manufacturing which is now unneeded
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Demand for cars is higher than ever, so is the manufacturing of almost all goods, as proven by the supply chain bottleneck in the last 2-3 years. The demand is still there, and is growing thanks to millions of people in places like India, China and Africa getting out of poverty. What exactly have smartphones been replacing lately? Other than PC computers, which ironically also saw a comeback thanks to WFH? You're probably seeing things only from your own tiny bubble, not from the global perspective.

Proven 4y ago

LatteLazy 4y ago

If we can grow while reducing emissions 5% a year, we will be at a sustainable emissions rate in just 19 years. It's a pity that will be 35 years too late.

djschnei 4y ago

"Degrowth" aka the poor will have to deal with it. aka lots of death and suffering in places I can't see so it doesn't matter.

cfhhgtyg 4y ago

Well, if you grow by outsourcing and don't include the rising emissions of countries outsourced to, you are deluding yourself

thelastgallon 4y ago

Health spending accounts for nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy [1]. Between 2000 to 2020 health expenditure tripled from 1.4 trillion to 4 trillion, at a 4.2% annual growth rate. This is projected to accelerate, grow at 5.3% and reach 6.8 trillion by 2030. [3] Happening in other countries as well. Health spending set to outpace GDP growth to 2030 [2] This shows up as economic growth (GDP), but really nothing has changed, does not require more emissions. [1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-healthcare-changed-time/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe... [2] https://www.oecd.org/health/health-spending-set-to-outpace-gdp-growth-to-2030.htm https://www.oecd.org/health/health-spending-set-to-outpace-g... [3] https://www.cms.gov/files/document/nhe-projections-forecast-summary.pdf https://www.cms.gov/files/document/nhe-projections-forecast-...

thiago_fm 4y ago

That's so wrong. Many industry chains that are the basis for renewable energy(which many countries will need to transition to), generating wind, hydro and solar power equipment are responsible for a good load of emissions, like the steel industry. It is close to impossible to grow an emerging economy without producing more energy, as more of the population would want to drive cars, have lights, sanitation etc. Because of that, as almost all the economist articles, this is mostly centered around developed economies and even those that are developed have a big deficit in energy generation. And I'm giving the simplest example ever. Imagine if we get into consumer habits and spending... The truth is that many countries need to grow and need to raise emissions before lowering them. Not every country is Germany with a big industry and influx of cash to support its environment plans. The "third world" doesn't need to accept living in the wood and shitting in a bucket while americans live in a house of the size of a football field with AC on. If they have nothing to win by caring about emissions, they shouldn't. Raise emissions if you must, to grow. Rich countries that need to set the example, but most of them just don't.

dhfbshfbu4u3 4y ago

Good news, everyone! Capital no longer requires human activity for growth!

adverbly 4y ago

I'd love to see some metrics on GDP growth that are not connected to increasing population/resource extraction/inflation/housing. In places like Canada and Australia it feels like the entire economic engine is built around population growth, housing, and resource extraction. It makes me sort of nervous about if these countries are actually making real progress.

abeppu 4y ago

The claim that countries that do manufacturing for export have decarbonized faster than the rest of the economy is interesting. Prior to the pandemic, one sometimes heard that even if you had a desire to do a particular manufacturing step outside of China, the advantages of being in a manufacturing region that was set up for scale, that had so many of your suppliers etc made it much faster and cheaper to set up production for a new product, iterate and change the parts you needed etc. Was some portion of decarbonizing manufacturing exports the sheer concentration of manufacturing steps in the area? Parts don't need to be shipped as far between steps etc? In 2020/2021 people began talking about the need to make supply chains more robust by spreading out and replicating production capabilities more. Will that re-carbonize some of that manufacturing process?

gandalfian 4y ago

Whats remarkable in the UK is how the huge rise in fossil fuel prices has suddenly revealed how many business's are basically converting fossil fuels into goods and services. I mean people understood that putting petrol in the car is fossil fuels but buying a pint in the pub? But suddenly the pubs, and a host of other business's are saying that without the cheap energy their business isn't viable. It's all rather a wake up call.

was_a_dev 4y ago
I really don't think it is that remarkable? The UK's history with domestic coal and then the global oil crisis in the 1970s are clear examples of an economic reliance on fossil fuels. Both of those historic events are way before my lifetime, yet the concept of the UK economy being highly dependent on fossil fuels and their pricing seems like common sense to me.
- gandalfian 4y ago
  Something like a Steel Mill sure. But the idea that something like a Pub is an energy intensive industry surprised me. I think of most businesses these days as being deindustrialized light industry things that only really need a trickle of energy for some led lights and computers. That so many are actually still quite energy intensive disguised by low energy prices surprised me at least.

dig1 4y ago

A large and growing group of mostly rich countries has severed the link between economic growth and rising emissions of greenhouse gases Because they outsourced heavy and polluting industries to poorer countries. And I'm not taking into account the greenhouse gases market, were a rich country A can sell it's "consumption level" to poor country B, by selling/donating cheap solar panels or cheap "efficient" wooden stoves, and show in their books that they are more green now.

perrygeo 4y ago

Seriously? Analyzing data at the country level and claiming to have achieved decoupling is an egregious logical error that ignores our global trade network. Yes the US economy can grow without burning fossil fuels because someone else burns it for us. Decoupling can only be analyzed at a global scale and anyone who claims otherwise is trying to fool you.

dirtyid 4y ago

Growth drives consumption which will increase emissions. For poorer countries this means more physical goods / energy intensive infra like air conditioning. Maybe less emission services for wealthy countries but they're already consuming at relatively unsustainable rates already.

RGamma 4y ago

So much Dunning Kruger in the discussions about nuclear energy again. What a feast!