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>Tomorrow the government could shut down the oil wells and say "nobody may emit any CO2 unless they pay $1000/ton of CO2 emitted.". And it would not change any

>Tomorrow the government could shut down the oil wells and say "nobody may emit any CO2 unless they pay $1000/ton of CO2 emitted.". And it would not change anything at planet scale, because on the other side of the world China is going to "pick up any slack" of CO2 generation we may not do. It shouldn't stop us from trying to increase efficiency, but panic and insane ideas of the sort of "no one can emit a ton of CO2 without paying $1k" are not the way to improve things. The biggest fight in the world today is not for "the climate", but for the freedom to live in a non-autocratic country. We would have to win the second to have the slightest shot at cooperating well enough to have a shot at mitigating the first for those of us in places that will be hit the worst. Do you think a communist-by-name party of China (or Russian mafia-state) gives a damn about the climate and how it affects people in places like subsaharan Africa, Bangladesh etc? Not in the slightest, but they'll gladly use every bit of it to promote panic and industry killing policies in places like the US, EU while pretending to "be green". If we win the fight not to be ruled by corrupt dictators we can have a shot of improving the lives of people who will suffer due to climate change.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> And it would not change anything at planet scale, because on the other side of the world China is going to "pick up any slack" of CO2 generation we may not do. Even if that was true in the short term (and reducing global supply by shutting down oil wells makes ir unlikely) the relative incentive for alternatives created here would lead to global improvements over the medium and longer term. (That said, the time to apply solutions with medium-to-longer term payoff was 50 years ago.)
chimprich 3y ago
> And it would not change anything at planet scale, because on the other side of the world China is going to "pick up any slack" of CO2 generation we may not do. We're still far better off decarbonising because (rest of the world CO2 + China CO2) > China CO2.
- NoGravitas 3y ago
  China's per capita carbon emissions are half those of the US (8 metric tons vs 16 metric tons, 2018 figures). Mote, beam, etc.
  - Roark66 3y ago
    And you believe any numbers that come out of China? If they are reporting half they are probably emitting 3x in reality. China has been approving a new coal fired power plant every 2 weeks for years.
xorcist 3y ago
I may have posted this several times before, but China is not the problem. We know how to deal with that: international trade agreements. The problem is that it requires the US to be on board with it. Each one alone couldn't, but the EU and US together would have the economic force required to solve this problem, if they acted with decisiveness.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  What does the USA get out of it? The USA is the #1 producer of oil and the commodity is traded in her currency globally. This makes the USA energy independent and keeps demand for dollars extremely high. The EU on the other hand has virtually no ability to produce oil and gas and is dependent on outside suppliers. So of course they have a lot of incentive to move off of it and that’s much easier if everyone else does too. American hegemony is at stake if oil demand is dramatically reduced quickly. Where as the EU stands to gain influence. So again, why would the USA weaken herself to the benefit of the EU?
  - xorcist 3y ago
    There's no way to know if this question is sarcasm or not; but it's a good one. The EU is not uniform in this. Some countries face the same question, the UK and Norway comes to mind. Our history era is pretty much defined by oil, both directly and indirectly, but we don't know how long this era is. Perhaps it would make economic sense to squeeze the market to the last drop? This is also why peak oil is an important concept. The price will certainly increase over the long term and this is a tempting opportunity. However, this is also how empires fall. There will be technological change, and it will decrease our dependency on oil, not increase it. The economic impetus for this change is clear. Companies resisting change will be irrelevant in the future and the same is true for whole countries. Economies which isn't dominated by oil will be the first to change and master the next economic era. Countries like Russia are not likely to keep up with the technological change, they are much too invested in the old system. So the answer is that given a long enough outlook, economies gain from this transformation. The US specifically also should have every incentive to keep trade with China under control, given that geopolitical situation. Aligning with the EU would be a strategical move against China, while keeping the European trade partners close. It's a move that would make both economic and political sense. That's separate from the moral reasons. We know what carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere leads to. Over geological time scales it is abundantly clear. We may not want that for our children, but that's unfortunately too late to change now. Economic and political reasons are what remains.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> And it would not change anything at planet scale, because on the other side of the world China is going to "pick up any slack" of CO2 generation we may not do. Even if that was true in the short term (and reducing global supply by shutting down oil wells makes ir unlikely) the relative incentive for alternatives created here would lead to global improvements over the medium and longer term. (That said, the time to apply solutions with medium-to-longer term payoff was 50 years ago.)

chimprich 3y ago

> And it would not change anything at planet scale, because on the other side of the world China is going to "pick up any slack" of CO2 generation we may not do. We're still far better off decarbonising because (rest of the world CO2 + China CO2) > China CO2.

NoGravitas 3y ago
China's per capita carbon emissions are half those of the US (8 metric tons vs 16 metric tons, 2018 figures). Mote, beam, etc.
- Roark66 3y ago
  And you believe any numbers that come out of China? If they are reporting half they are probably emitting 3x in reality. China has been approving a new coal fired power plant every 2 weeks for years.

xorcist 3y ago

I may have posted this several times before, but China is not the problem. We know how to deal with that: international trade agreements. The problem is that it requires the US to be on board with it. Each one alone couldn't, but the EU and US together would have the economic force required to solve this problem, if they acted with decisiveness.

nemo44x 3y ago
What does the USA get out of it? The USA is the #1 producer of oil and the commodity is traded in her currency globally. This makes the USA energy independent and keeps demand for dollars extremely high. The EU on the other hand has virtually no ability to produce oil and gas and is dependent on outside suppliers. So of course they have a lot of incentive to move off of it and that’s much easier if everyone else does too. American hegemony is at stake if oil demand is dramatically reduced quickly. Where as the EU stands to gain influence. So again, why would the USA weaken herself to the benefit of the EU?
- xorcist 3y ago
  There's no way to know if this question is sarcasm or not; but it's a good one. The EU is not uniform in this. Some countries face the same question, the UK and Norway comes to mind. Our history era is pretty much defined by oil, both directly and indirectly, but we don't know how long this era is. Perhaps it would make economic sense to squeeze the market to the last drop? This is also why peak oil is an important concept. The price will certainly increase over the long term and this is a tempting opportunity. However, this is also how empires fall. There will be technological change, and it will decrease our dependency on oil, not increase it. The economic impetus for this change is clear. Companies resisting change will be irrelevant in the future and the same is true for whole countries. Economies which isn't dominated by oil will be the first to change and master the next economic era. Countries like Russia are not likely to keep up with the technological change, they are much too invested in the old system. So the answer is that given a long enough outlook, economies gain from this transformation. The US specifically also should have every incentive to keep trade with China under control, given that geopolitical situation. Aligning with the EU would be a strategical move against China, while keeping the European trade partners close. It's a move that would make both economic and political sense. That's separate from the moral reasons. We know what carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere leads to. Over geological time scales it is abundantly clear. We may not want that for our children, but that's unfortunately too late to change now. Economic and political reasons are what remains.