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There are two ways around this: either tax the buy/sale transaction of petrol vehicles, which would severely harm the poor and the ones not living in megacities

There are two ways around this: either tax the buy/sale transaction of petrol vehicles, which would severely harm the poor and the ones not living in megacities; or tax the fuel itself, which would make current inflation look like fun and games, as all countries logistics run on fuel. The proper environmental solution would be going "fuck it, let's do it anyway", yet unfortunately, there is a whole planet outside of Sweden/Norway/Denmark, and they'd be more than happy to burn all of the fuel to pick up the economic opportunities that opened up. Politics is hard.

cultureswitch 4y ago
Good point not often mentioned. The entire EU could be CO2 neutral by 2030, destroying itself in the process, and yet the net climate impact would be around 0.1C of average temperature reduction by 2100. The thing with fighting climate change is that it isn't actually an emergency. We're way past that. It is also not a disaster like a flood that would cause damage so abruptly that only preventive measures make sense. For a human timescale, climate change has been slow to set in and will be slow to slow down. The upswing of that is that we truly have time to adapt. Other species don't, unless we specifically protect them. It's a disaster in slow motion, and like everything else happening in slow motion, we'll outscale it by a large factor. With human development, our ability to minimize damage from natural disasters vastly outpaces any (experimentally uncertain so far, but should happen according to predictions) growth in the amount and severity of disasters such as hurricanes and droughts. Well that was a wild tangent. Anyway, main point is, unless all BRICS countries are involved in anti-emissions measures so drastic they will never agree to them, there's nothing that can be done to meaningfully prevent temperatures to climb at least 2C by the end of the century. Sorry, there's geoengineering too but we should also avoid that if possible.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Also we really aren't only talking about BRICS, but all other countries in South America, Africa and Asia as well. With sizable populations who certainly want to increase their quality of living by most means possible. I think the number of countries ready to limit their increase of living standards if not already high are only those that are truly impacted. For everyone else they will try to find some other way around issues. And probably anyway end up better of than they are now.

cultureswitch 4y ago

Good point not often mentioned. The entire EU could be CO2 neutral by 2030, destroying itself in the process, and yet the net climate impact would be around 0.1C of average temperature reduction by 2100. The thing with fighting climate change is that it isn't actually an emergency. We're way past that. It is also not a disaster like a flood that would cause damage so abruptly that only preventive measures make sense. For a human timescale, climate change has been slow to set in and will be slow to slow down. The upswing of that is that we truly have time to adapt. Other species don't, unless we specifically protect them. It's a disaster in slow motion, and like everything else happening in slow motion, we'll outscale it by a large factor. With human development, our ability to minimize damage from natural disasters vastly outpaces any (experimentally uncertain so far, but should happen according to predictions) growth in the amount and severity of disasters such as hurricanes and droughts. Well that was a wild tangent. Anyway, main point is, unless all BRICS countries are involved in anti-emissions measures so drastic they will never agree to them, there's nothing that can be done to meaningfully prevent temperatures to climb at least 2C by the end of the century. Sorry, there's geoengineering too but we should also avoid that if possible.

Ekaros 4y ago
Also we really aren't only talking about BRICS, but all other countries in South America, Africa and Asia as well. With sizable populations who certainly want to increase their quality of living by most means possible. I think the number of countries ready to limit their increase of living standards if not already high are only those that are truly impacted. For everyone else they will try to find some other way around issues. And probably anyway end up better of than they are now.