5 ms·

The political climate is just an obfuscation. The electorate perceives the change to be too costly* and the climate risks to be too remote to justify this cost.

The political climate is just an obfuscation. The electorate perceives the change to be too costly* and the climate risks to be too remote to justify this cost. The problem with reports such as these is that they always give you the big picture but do not directly relate it back to the individual. If people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000% due to recalculated natural disaster risks, that would suddenly make people rethink their positions. * I am actually not convinced either way. Some people believe it is so expensive it will necessitate degrowth, while others think that so much economic change will almost certainly spur economic growth. Either way I think that people who push the degrowth narrative are further reinforcing the view that climate action is too costly. Nonetheless it could be that they are right.

sofixa 3y ago
> I am actually not convinced either way. Some people believe it is so expensive it will necessitate degrowth, while others think that so much economic change will almost certainly spur economic growth. Either way I think that people who push the degrowth narrative are further reinforcing the view that climate action is too costly. Nonetheless it could be that they are right. Whatever your view on that is, it doesn't really matter because the costs if climate change goes unchecked are going to be catastrophically high - direct in terms of e.g. having to rebuild burned down/flooded/etc. areas, more electricity for AC, etc. or indirect such as having to accommodate mass migration from climate refugees.
- Filligree 3y ago
  The price of unchecked climate change is the destruction of civilisation. It might as well be infinity.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    Or zero - it's sort of a weird thing to think about, but I think at this point it is the likely outcome.
    - throw0101a 3y ago
      >> The price of unchecked climate change is the destruction of civilisation. > Or zero According to insurance companies, it is already not-zero: * https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html * https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-research/Climate-risks-report https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-rese... * https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is-destabilizing-insurance-industry/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is... * https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-canadian-insurance/ https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-cana... And it's probably a fairly safe assumption that it's only going to get more expensive.
- mustafa_pasi 3y ago
  That is however one of the the two unknowns in the equation: Unknown one: how expensive is the green transition. Unknown two: how expensive is climate change. The issue is further complicated by the fact that both of these costs are variable, depending on the individual, not easily predictable and time dependent. It is all very complicated, when you think about it. If you search the literature there are some people attempting to calculate such costs but the task is almost insurmountable. I do not want to give the wrong impression. For whatever its worth, I am convinced that climate change will impact us people living today, negatively.
throw0101a 3y ago
> The electorate perceives the change to be too costly […] I am actually not convinced either way. The insurance companies are convinced: * https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html * https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-research/Climate-risks-report https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-rese... * https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is-destabilizing-insurance-industry/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is... * https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-canadian-insurance/ https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-cana... They regularly have to pay out for what happens, and they're not happy about the direction things are going and are passing the cost along. Just ask anyone living in Florida: * https://www.newsweek.com/florida-insurance-crisis-explained-1812418 https://www.newsweek.com/florida-insurance-crisis-explained-... * https://www.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance-crisis-farmers-insurance-home-insurance-what-to-know/70407302007/ https://www.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance...
lelanthran 3y ago
> If people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000% due to recalculated natural disaster risks, that would suddenly make people rethink their positions. Insurance costs what it does due to the risk of paying out. Changing risks makes the price of the insurance change as well. If insurance companies aren't changing their prices, then the risk isn't changing either. By asking to inflate the cost of insurance artificially, you're really only pointing out that natural disasters have not yet increased enough to notice.
acdha 3y ago
> The political climate is just an obfuscation. The electorate perceives the change to be too costly* and the climate risks to be too remote to justify this cost This is true but it’s really important to remember that’s not some historical accident but the result of decades of anti-science messaging and political campaigning by the fossil fuel industry after their internal scientists confirmed the problem was significant. In the absence of that huge amount of distortion most people would have an accurate understanding of the risks. We should remember those companies in the same light as the tobacco companies, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, etc. Unfortunately as we can see even in a relatively educated community like HN there are a lot of people willing to parrot that propaganda because the alternative is not just making lifestyle changes but now also having to admit that they have been repeating falsehoods for a long time.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  And that anti-climate-change narrative changed to blaming indviduals for climate change when they couldn't deny it any longer: the slogan “carbon footprint” is a British Petroleum invention. Of course now people use that propaganda line and say that the anti-science crowd are the only mind-programmed group in this debate.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    The only winning move (in the blame/distraction game) is not to play (the blame/distraction game). I don't care who's fault it is. Let's fix it.
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      In order to fix something you need to know who holds the levers of power. Pretty elementary stuff.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        We all do if we all agree that we do.
avgcorrection 3y ago
What does this even matter? Seriously. Consumers aren't the architects of consumer capitalism. They aren't the ones who decided that economic growth must continue forever, in part by the middle class “consumers” who have to spend most of their money on commodities that ideally last so short that they will eventually have to buy the same thing again. Imagine if most people could buy all their appliances and get their needs met within a few years by things that are of good quality (which means more second-hand resale). Imagine if society was built for mass transit instead of (especially in America) urban sprawl, which would mean that far fewer families would need 1–2 cars. (And the US road network was designed top-down: you don't build a car-dependent society based on consumer actions.) But that would be bad for the economy: less money in circulation, less growth. If consumers (as citizens) got mad because “people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000%“. Then they would do protests... so what? Protests can change things but it's a very low form of power.
- myrmidon 3y ago
  This matters because consumers are the ones that vote. Sure, we could tax Co2 right now, but the main problem is that people don't want to sacrifice their vacation travel or pay a premium for non-regional goods/personal travel/energy, just to "save the climate". This applies even more strongly to older voters. If you implemented actually effective Co2 mitigation policies (i.e. policies aiming to reduce Co2/capita/year to under 4 tons within a decade) in pretty much ANY western industrialized democracy, you would get thrown out of office even before your term was over. PS: This is not my position-- I believe that drastic action is very urgently required, but I don't think it is some "corporate interests" or "lobbyism conspiracy" that prevents it-- simply democracy in action.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > This matters because consumers are the ones that vote. Show me evidence that this matters in the slightest. The policy preferences of 90% of Americans are irrelevant, i.e have no correlation with implemented policy.[1][2] Sure. Let's say that every green-eyed person gets to vote on what everyone has to eat: a pear or an apple. To the naive onlooker it looks like the green-eyed people have the ultimate power. But they neglect to notice that the two choices are filtered down from thousands of options by the brown-eyed people. > PS: This is not my position-- I believe that drastic action is very urgently required, but I don't think it is some "corporate interests" or "lobbyism conspiracy" that prevents it-- simply democracy in action. Of course. It's just a coincidence that implemented policy tracks better with “corporate interests”—dismissive quotation marks or not—than with the policy preferences of citizens. [1] Media discussion: https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-... [2] Paper: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

sofixa 3y ago

> I am actually not convinced either way. Some people believe it is so expensive it will necessitate degrowth, while others think that so much economic change will almost certainly spur economic growth. Either way I think that people who push the degrowth narrative are further reinforcing the view that climate action is too costly. Nonetheless it could be that they are right. Whatever your view on that is, it doesn't really matter because the costs if climate change goes unchecked are going to be catastrophically high - direct in terms of e.g. having to rebuild burned down/flooded/etc. areas, more electricity for AC, etc. or indirect such as having to accommodate mass migration from climate refugees.

Filligree 3y ago
The price of unchecked climate change is the destruction of civilisation. It might as well be infinity.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Or zero - it's sort of a weird thing to think about, but I think at this point it is the likely outcome.
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    >> The price of unchecked climate change is the destruction of civilisation. > Or zero According to insurance companies, it is already not-zero: * https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html * https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-research/Climate-risks-report https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-rese... * https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is-destabilizing-insurance-industry/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is... * https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-canadian-insurance/ https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-cana... And it's probably a fairly safe assumption that it's only going to get more expensive.
mustafa_pasi 3y ago
That is however one of the the two unknowns in the equation: Unknown one: how expensive is the green transition. Unknown two: how expensive is climate change. The issue is further complicated by the fact that both of these costs are variable, depending on the individual, not easily predictable and time dependent. It is all very complicated, when you think about it. If you search the literature there are some people attempting to calculate such costs but the task is almost insurmountable. I do not want to give the wrong impression. For whatever its worth, I am convinced that climate change will impact us people living today, negatively.

throw0101a 3y ago

> The electorate perceives the change to be too costly […] I am actually not convinced either way. The insurance companies are convinced: * https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html * https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-research/Climate-risks-report https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-rese... * https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is-destabilizing-insurance-industry/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is... * https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-canadian-insurance/ https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-cana... They regularly have to pay out for what happens, and they're not happy about the direction things are going and are passing the cost along. Just ask anyone living in Florida: * https://www.newsweek.com/florida-insurance-crisis-explained-1812418 https://www.newsweek.com/florida-insurance-crisis-explained-... * https://www.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance-crisis-farmers-insurance-home-insurance-what-to-know/70407302007/ https://www.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance...

lelanthran 3y ago

> If people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000% due to recalculated natural disaster risks, that would suddenly make people rethink their positions. Insurance costs what it does due to the risk of paying out. Changing risks makes the price of the insurance change as well. If insurance companies aren't changing their prices, then the risk isn't changing either. By asking to inflate the cost of insurance artificially, you're really only pointing out that natural disasters have not yet increased enough to notice.

acdha 3y ago

> The political climate is just an obfuscation. The electorate perceives the change to be too costly* and the climate risks to be too remote to justify this cost This is true but it’s really important to remember that’s not some historical accident but the result of decades of anti-science messaging and political campaigning by the fossil fuel industry after their internal scientists confirmed the problem was significant. In the absence of that huge amount of distortion most people would have an accurate understanding of the risks. We should remember those companies in the same light as the tobacco companies, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, etc. Unfortunately as we can see even in a relatively educated community like HN there are a lot of people willing to parrot that propaganda because the alternative is not just making lifestyle changes but now also having to admit that they have been repeating falsehoods for a long time.

avgcorrection 3y ago
And that anti-climate-change narrative changed to blaming indviduals for climate change when they couldn't deny it any longer: the slogan “carbon footprint” is a British Petroleum invention. Of course now people use that propaganda line and say that the anti-science crowd are the only mind-programmed group in this debate.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  The only winning move (in the blame/distraction game) is not to play (the blame/distraction game). I don't care who's fault it is. Let's fix it.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    In order to fix something you need to know who holds the levers of power. Pretty elementary stuff.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      We all do if we all agree that we do.

avgcorrection 3y ago

What does this even matter? Seriously. Consumers aren't the architects of consumer capitalism. They aren't the ones who decided that economic growth must continue forever, in part by the middle class “consumers” who have to spend most of their money on commodities that ideally last so short that they will eventually have to buy the same thing again. Imagine if most people could buy all their appliances and get their needs met within a few years by things that are of good quality (which means more second-hand resale). Imagine if society was built for mass transit instead of (especially in America) urban sprawl, which would mean that far fewer families would need 1–2 cars. (And the US road network was designed top-down: you don't build a car-dependent society based on consumer actions.) But that would be bad for the economy: less money in circulation, less growth. If consumers (as citizens) got mad because “people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000%“. Then they would do protests... so what? Protests can change things but it's a very low form of power.

myrmidon 3y ago
This matters because consumers are the ones that vote. Sure, we could tax Co2 right now, but the main problem is that people don't want to sacrifice their vacation travel or pay a premium for non-regional goods/personal travel/energy, just to "save the climate". This applies even more strongly to older voters. If you implemented actually effective Co2 mitigation policies (i.e. policies aiming to reduce Co2/capita/year to under 4 tons within a decade) in pretty much ANY western industrialized democracy, you would get thrown out of office even before your term was over. PS: This is not my position-- I believe that drastic action is very urgently required, but I don't think it is some "corporate interests" or "lobbyism conspiracy" that prevents it-- simply democracy in action.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  > This matters because consumers are the ones that vote. Show me evidence that this matters in the slightest. The policy preferences of 90% of Americans are irrelevant, i.e have no correlation with implemented policy.[1][2] Sure. Let's say that every green-eyed person gets to vote on what everyone has to eat: a pear or an apple. To the naive onlooker it looks like the green-eyed people have the ultimate power. But they neglect to notice that the two choices are filtered down from thousands of options by the brown-eyed people. > PS: This is not my position-- I believe that drastic action is very urgently required, but I don't think it is some "corporate interests" or "lobbyism conspiracy" that prevents it-- simply democracy in action. Of course. It's just a coincidence that implemented policy tracks better with “corporate interests”—dismissive quotation marks or not—than with the policy preferences of citizens. [1] Media discussion: https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-... [2] Paper: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...