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Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change. Did you know there are only 8500 coal power plants in the entire world, and they produce 20%

Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change. Did you know there are only 8500 coal power plants in the entire world, and they produce 20% of CO2 emissions? In fact it’s only a subset of those that are really bad. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-percent-power-plants-release-73-percent-global-electricity-production-emissions-180978355/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-percent-power... Decades and decades of “don’t eat meat”, “don’t fly”, … And all we had to do was stop using coal a couple decades ago.

eloff 4y ago
That’s not sufficient either, but it’s THE logical starting point. I feel like our politicians are too inept to deal with the issue of climate change. We need an engineering mindset.
- melling 4y ago
  I imagine reducing emissions by 20% tomorrow buys us a bit more time. Another decade of R&D… Wouldn’t it be better to be talking about 2060 instead of 2050? The longer we do “nothing”, the more miracles we need.
  - eloff 4y ago
    Or the longer we do ineffective things instead of tackling the low hanging fruit, the harder the problem will be.
nroets 4y ago
So a country like South Africa can just turn off their coal plants and continue as normal ? Of course not ! They will go bankrupt ! Solar+storage is still too expensive ! Whereas if the US consumer stop buying oversize trucks and stop flying cross country for social events, they will actually save money! It's simply not equatable to expect a poor country like South Africa to make sacrifices while the US (a rich country) refuse to levy a carbon tax.
- melling 4y ago
  100,000 flights every day of the year globally emit 2% of emissions. I’m not sure why everyone talks about flying. It’s a rounding error. I never realized South Africa was such a big emitter of CO2. It only has 15 coal power plants? https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africa-taken-court-over-plan-new-coal-power-2021-11-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africa-taken-cour...
  - nroets 4y ago
    Yes, flying is just another staw on the camel's back! Methane emission from the oil industry is another "rounding error". By your logic we should just ignore it. The solution is obvious: Just levy a carbon tax and let the markets sort it out.
    - melling 4y ago
      My logic says start with the biggest issues, and the low hanging fruit. Isn’t that the way it’s usually done? “Let’s get everyone in the world to ride a bicycle” What sort of solution is this?
    - nroets 4y ago
      Nationalists and communists have these grand top down views of their economies. The problem is that they ruin a lot of smaller industries in pursuit of their grand vision. Capitalism turned out be be a superior system and it's not top down! The best way to solve this "tragedy of the commons" problem is through a tax where a market system can determine what should be changed. Yes, the article is not a realistic solution, but neither is closing coal plants (without replacing them with something else).
      - eesmith 4y ago
        > through a tax Taxation is also a grand top down view of the economy. You've got to figure out the details of an equitable amount. Do different countries pay different amounts? Are there subsidizes for the poor? Are other greenhouse gases, like nitrous oxide, also included, and at what rate? If someone doesn't pay, how is the tax enforced? All those are part of a grand vision. Just like the grand top down view wherein "nationalists and communists" decided to ban most CFC emissions. And the "nationalists and communists" who decided to ban commercial whaling, outside of a few nations. How would the superior capitalistic system have solved those problems? It's not like the capitalistic system is doing that great a job of preserving commercial fishing. The "Tragedy of the Commons" was based on a fairy-tale interpretation of history. The far greater tragedy occurred due to the commons owners enclosing the land and breaking commoner's rights of use. A.k.a. "capitalism".
Tade0 4y ago
In the case of the featured Bełchatów the problem might solve itself earlier than the stated 2036 shutdown date - it's already not competitive economically and the lignite used to power it is running out anyway. I wonder what's the future of power generation in the region, because the planned replacement nuclear power plant still exists purely on paper after at least a decade of talks.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Vinnl 4y ago
> Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change. The idea here is infrastructure change — behavioural change will follow (and has more benefits than just reduced emissions). Proof that it's not crazy and silly is that this has actually been done in the Netherlands. Edit: which of course is not to say that other sources of emissions also need to be addressed.
- simonsarris 4y ago
  > Proof that it's not crazy and silly is that this has actually been done in the Netherlands. If something has been done in a country that's particularly compact, flat, and has mild winters, it may yet be crazy to think you can get the rest of the world to quickly follow suit.
  - scoofy 4y ago
    You realize snowy Norway and Sweden are near the top of the cycling countries. Pretending that snow has every stopped anyone from cycling is as myopic as pretending snow would stop people from walking around cities that have cold winters for the last 4000 years.
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    The entirety of the rest of the world, maybe. But there are plenty of locations with similar conditions, and way more that are only somewhat less amenable in those respects and potentially more amenable in others. I would also point out (as a general remark, not specifically aimed at you) that many of the arguments that have been made against better cycling infrastructure, could also have applied to the Netherlands a couple of decades ago. I think the idea is dismissed far more often than warranted, given how it was successful here anyway, which might indicate that gut instincts might need some calibration.
scoofy 4y ago
> Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change. > And all we had to do was stop using coal a couple decades ago. You realize this is a sunk cost, right? Imagine if we'd just started using nuclear in the 60's. And we all were hippies and there was no war. Imagine if we all held hands and sang kum-ba-ya. Pretty fun living in a fantasy world. We were always going to develop to a point where behavioral change was necessary. Whether it was us today, or our children tomorrow.
sifar 4y ago
>> Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change. Something the pandemic taught us is possible.
fulafel 4y ago
This is conflating advocacy for behaviour change and enacting policies to get it to happen. We haven't tried, crazily enough, reducing flying or meat eating with policy actions, for example. (edit: Ok, EU and some non eu countries just recently included flying in ETS, that's a little start.) We absolutely need behaviour change, excluding that would be a mega (giga?) death scale error in judgement. And we also need to move on all fronts, and can't afford to attack the biggest emission sources one by one serially (such as addressing coal plants first and transport after that). I think that's just obvious and this argument often seems like whataboutist rhetorical tactic.

eloff 4y ago

That’s not sufficient either, but it’s THE logical starting point. I feel like our politicians are too inept to deal with the issue of climate change. We need an engineering mindset.

melling 4y ago
I imagine reducing emissions by 20% tomorrow buys us a bit more time. Another decade of R&D… Wouldn’t it be better to be talking about 2060 instead of 2050? The longer we do “nothing”, the more miracles we need.
- eloff 4y ago
  Or the longer we do ineffective things instead of tackling the low hanging fruit, the harder the problem will be.

nroets 4y ago

So a country like South Africa can just turn off their coal plants and continue as normal ? Of course not ! They will go bankrupt ! Solar+storage is still too expensive ! Whereas if the US consumer stop buying oversize trucks and stop flying cross country for social events, they will actually save money! It's simply not equatable to expect a poor country like South Africa to make sacrifices while the US (a rich country) refuse to levy a carbon tax.

melling 4y ago
100,000 flights every day of the year globally emit 2% of emissions. I’m not sure why everyone talks about flying. It’s a rounding error. I never realized South Africa was such a big emitter of CO2. It only has 15 coal power plants? https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africa-taken-court-over-plan-new-coal-power-2021-11-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africa-taken-cour...
- nroets 4y ago
  Yes, flying is just another staw on the camel's back! Methane emission from the oil industry is another "rounding error". By your logic we should just ignore it. The solution is obvious: Just levy a carbon tax and let the markets sort it out.
  - melling 4y ago
    My logic says start with the biggest issues, and the low hanging fruit. Isn’t that the way it’s usually done? “Let’s get everyone in the world to ride a bicycle” What sort of solution is this?
  - nroets 4y ago
    Nationalists and communists have these grand top down views of their economies. The problem is that they ruin a lot of smaller industries in pursuit of their grand vision. Capitalism turned out be be a superior system and it's not top down! The best way to solve this "tragedy of the commons" problem is through a tax where a market system can determine what should be changed. Yes, the article is not a realistic solution, but neither is closing coal plants (without replacing them with something else).
    - eesmith 4y ago
      > through a tax Taxation is also a grand top down view of the economy. You've got to figure out the details of an equitable amount. Do different countries pay different amounts? Are there subsidizes for the poor? Are other greenhouse gases, like nitrous oxide, also included, and at what rate? If someone doesn't pay, how is the tax enforced? All those are part of a grand vision. Just like the grand top down view wherein "nationalists and communists" decided to ban most CFC emissions. And the "nationalists and communists" who decided to ban commercial whaling, outside of a few nations. How would the superior capitalistic system have solved those problems? It's not like the capitalistic system is doing that great a job of preserving commercial fishing. The "Tragedy of the Commons" was based on a fairy-tale interpretation of history. The far greater tragedy occurred due to the commons owners enclosing the land and breaking commoner's rights of use. A.k.a. "capitalism".

Tade0 4y ago

In the case of the featured Bełchatów the problem might solve itself earlier than the stated 2036 shutdown date - it's already not competitive economically and the lignite used to power it is running out anyway. I wonder what's the future of power generation in the region, because the planned replacement nuclear power plant still exists purely on paper after at least a decade of talks.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Vinnl 4y ago

> Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change. The idea here is infrastructure change — behavioural change will follow (and has more benefits than just reduced emissions). Proof that it's not crazy and silly is that this has actually been done in the Netherlands. Edit: which of course is not to say that other sources of emissions also need to be addressed.

simonsarris 4y ago
> Proof that it's not crazy and silly is that this has actually been done in the Netherlands. If something has been done in a country that's particularly compact, flat, and has mild winters, it may yet be crazy to think you can get the rest of the world to quickly follow suit.
- scoofy 4y ago
  You realize snowy Norway and Sweden are near the top of the cycling countries. Pretending that snow has every stopped anyone from cycling is as myopic as pretending snow would stop people from walking around cities that have cold winters for the last 4000 years.
- Vinnl 4y ago
  The entirety of the rest of the world, maybe. But there are plenty of locations with similar conditions, and way more that are only somewhat less amenable in those respects and potentially more amenable in others. I would also point out (as a general remark, not specifically aimed at you) that many of the arguments that have been made against better cycling infrastructure, could also have applied to the Netherlands a couple of decades ago. I think the idea is dismissed far more often than warranted, given how it was successful here anyway, which might indicate that gut instincts might need some calibration.

scoofy 4y ago

> Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change. > And all we had to do was stop using coal a couple decades ago. You realize this is a sunk cost, right? Imagine if we'd just started using nuclear in the 60's. And we all were hippies and there was no war. Imagine if we all held hands and sang kum-ba-ya. Pretty fun living in a fantasy world. We were always going to develop to a point where behavioral change was necessary. Whether it was us today, or our children tomorrow.

sifar 4y ago

>> Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change. Something the pandemic taught us is possible.

fulafel 4y ago

This is conflating advocacy for behaviour change and enacting policies to get it to happen. We haven't tried, crazily enough, reducing flying or meat eating with policy actions, for example. (edit: Ok, EU and some non eu countries just recently included flying in ETS, that's a little start.) We absolutely need behaviour change, excluding that would be a mega (giga?) death scale error in judgement. And we also need to move on all fronts, and can't afford to attack the biggest emission sources one by one serially (such as addressing coal plants first and transport after that). I think that's just obvious and this argument often seems like whataboutist rhetorical tactic.