5 ms·

Has been done before, and can be done again.

by runarberg 3y ago

LatteLazy 3y ago
When have we ever gotten 8bn people to agree to painful, expensive changes simultaneously over a long term?
- runarberg 3y ago
  * Ban on leaded gazoline * Ban on non-indigenous whaling * Ban on ozone depleting gasses * Several human rights treaties * Nuclear non-proliferation * Ban on mineral extraction and military activities on Antractica * etc.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    None of those are painful or expensive though? Leaded petroleum was such an easy, local problem that solving it just happened at the national level, no need for binding international agreements. I actually think the smart approach to serious action to prevent global warming would be similar to that taken for Nuclear non-proliferation: The big, strong countries force the others to accept they cannot have emissions and anyone who doesn't agree gets (at least) sanctioned into poverty or maybe "liberated"... But most countries are much more interested in cheap energy (and meat and construction and other CO2e sources) than they ever were in nukes. Most citizens don't personally care if their leaders have nukes, but they care if they can afford meat and electricity. And of course, for this to work, we would need those strong countries to ALSO give up their CO2e, something no world power has done and which the US and China are actively headed in the OPPOSITE direction of. The ban on whaling is also a good example of a few bad actors ignoring the consensus and making the whole thing much less efficient. And that's (again) only for "whale meat", hardly as interesting a product as <almost everything that causes climate change>...
    - runarberg 3y ago
      As the international whaling ban has demonstrated, it doesn’t matter if one or two bad actors (even large and powerful ones like Japan and Norway) don’t comply, as long as the majority and the most powerful nations do. Many whale species became critically endangered and it looked for a moment like they all would and we would simply loose whales from our oceans. That didn’t happen because the world came together and made the decision to kill the whaling industry instead of the whales. With regards to global warming the responsibility of inaction lies solely on one bad actor, the USA, and only [initially] one political sub-faction in the USA. In 1997 all the world (including USA and China) came together and approved the Kyoto protocol, and made this painful discussion that would deeply affect our fossil fuel industry but save our climate. It was on its way to be ratified everywhere, public support was in its favor, so was the Clinton Administration, all European powers, and the Communist Party of China. Everybody agreed that the cost of climate change was greater than the benefits of cheap energy. However at some point the oil industry in the USA fought against it, it got stalled in the USA senate and finally killed by the George Bush administration, in order to save their fossil fuel industry. If the USA hadn’t killed it, and even if they would have only half-assed the implementation, and even though China would come to ignore it, we would still be much further along the way of reducing our emissions. You see, the world can come together and make painful decisions that affects all of us. It has done so multiple times in the past (even with respects to climate change) and it will in the future. It is really only because a certain industry has a disproportional hold over a certain country’s discourse that despite these agreements we have failed to act.
      - frumper 3y ago
        It's easy to say China, or even India, agreed to the Kyoto protocol when that didn't bind them to any goals. It just encouraged developing countries to adopt policies that encouraged reductions. Aside from that, the US is currently below its 1990 levels while China is 4x its 1990 levels and double the current US production. It doesn't seem to line up with what you're saying about the US not taking action. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions You can create a nice graph here and add counties to compare.
        3y ago

Has been done before, and can be done again.

LatteLazy 3y ago

When have we ever gotten 8bn people to agree to painful, expensive changes simultaneously over a long term?

runarberg 3y ago
* Ban on leaded gazoline * Ban on non-indigenous whaling * Ban on ozone depleting gasses * Several human rights treaties * Nuclear non-proliferation * Ban on mineral extraction and military activities on Antractica * etc.
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  None of those are painful or expensive though? Leaded petroleum was such an easy, local problem that solving it just happened at the national level, no need for binding international agreements. I actually think the smart approach to serious action to prevent global warming would be similar to that taken for Nuclear non-proliferation: The big, strong countries force the others to accept they cannot have emissions and anyone who doesn't agree gets (at least) sanctioned into poverty or maybe "liberated"... But most countries are much more interested in cheap energy (and meat and construction and other CO2e sources) than they ever were in nukes. Most citizens don't personally care if their leaders have nukes, but they care if they can afford meat and electricity. And of course, for this to work, we would need those strong countries to ALSO give up their CO2e, something no world power has done and which the US and China are actively headed in the OPPOSITE direction of. The ban on whaling is also a good example of a few bad actors ignoring the consensus and making the whole thing much less efficient. And that's (again) only for "whale meat", hardly as interesting a product as <almost everything that causes climate change>...
  - runarberg 3y ago
    As the international whaling ban has demonstrated, it doesn’t matter if one or two bad actors (even large and powerful ones like Japan and Norway) don’t comply, as long as the majority and the most powerful nations do. Many whale species became critically endangered and it looked for a moment like they all would and we would simply loose whales from our oceans. That didn’t happen because the world came together and made the decision to kill the whaling industry instead of the whales. With regards to global warming the responsibility of inaction lies solely on one bad actor, the USA, and only [initially] one political sub-faction in the USA. In 1997 all the world (including USA and China) came together and approved the Kyoto protocol, and made this painful discussion that would deeply affect our fossil fuel industry but save our climate. It was on its way to be ratified everywhere, public support was in its favor, so was the Clinton Administration, all European powers, and the Communist Party of China. Everybody agreed that the cost of climate change was greater than the benefits of cheap energy. However at some point the oil industry in the USA fought against it, it got stalled in the USA senate and finally killed by the George Bush administration, in order to save their fossil fuel industry. If the USA hadn’t killed it, and even if they would have only half-assed the implementation, and even though China would come to ignore it, we would still be much further along the way of reducing our emissions. You see, the world can come together and make painful decisions that affects all of us. It has done so multiple times in the past (even with respects to climate change) and it will in the future. It is really only because a certain industry has a disproportional hold over a certain country’s discourse that despite these agreements we have failed to act.
    - frumper 3y ago
      It's easy to say China, or even India, agreed to the Kyoto protocol when that didn't bind them to any goals. It just encouraged developing countries to adopt policies that encouraged reductions. Aside from that, the US is currently below its 1990 levels while China is 4x its 1990 levels and double the current US production. It doesn't seem to line up with what you're saying about the US not taking action. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions You can create a nice graph here and add counties to compare.
      - 3y ago