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I want to continue growing, just replace fossil fuels with renewables or nuclear in all developed countries, and subsidize the same for poor countries who haven

I want to continue growing, just replace fossil fuels with renewables or nuclear in all developed countries, and subsidize the same for poor countries who haven't historically emitted much and don't have the wealth to transition themselves. There isn't this false dichotomy of degrowth vs growth. We can grow our economy without growing emissions. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/05/08/fatal-heat-humidity-emerging/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/05/08/fatal-heat-humi... The medium-term problem for these hot countries is that extreme heat negatively impacts education and economic productivity. Whenever there's a heatwave (which will become more frequent) they have to keep their kids home. Worker producitivity is negatively impacted. It's terrible for their economic development. The US and Australia and Canada continuing to pump more fossil fuels instead of simply building renewables does nothing help the average person in Sri Lanka living under 30+ degree heat. It is actively physically harming them in a very real way. It's an indirect, diffuse form of physical assault. The long-term problem for these hot countries is that wet bulb temperatures will make it literally uninhabitable unless you have electricity and aircon, which many don't. This is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. If we keep emitting, temperatures will keep rising, until the point that this becomes true. It is causality. I want conservatives to think about this latter point because the consequences are mass immigration to colder countries, primarily the US and in Europe. Then the side-effect of that will probably be a rise in authoritarianism in these colder countries as a reaction to the mass immigration. None of this benefits anyone.

thworp 3y ago
Thank you for the response and sorry if my comment was excessively snarky. I think we share the same concerns and have the same goals and even mostly agree on practical steps to get there. I've just seen and heard too many degrowth advocates (that really want to return to 19th century economy with 21st century populations) recently and it's really worrying me. > and subsidize the same for poor countries who haven't historically emitted much and don't have the wealth to transition themselves. Yes! With a fraction of the money sloshing around various "charities" and NGOs, mostly spent on salaries, you could build solar with storage for millions of people. Of course in practice it would be really complicated, you have to make sure the right people run the systems and there will be bad cases of corruption. But it really is the least we could do. > The US and Australia and Canada continuing to pump more fossil fuels The funny thing is that the market is turning even Australia and Texas into solar superpowers. Ever since solar became the cheapest form of generation both have seen an incredible boom in solar, with almost no policy incentives. This is a huge win for the planet, if people want to build solar because the incentives align they will just do it without costing larger society any (political) capital. > It is actively physically harming them in a very real way. It's an indirect, diffuse form of physical assault. I follow the logic and agree about the causality chain, but this is a road it's best not to go down. It quickly turns into personally blaming people for things they had no control over. That has never been a good way to persuade people. Imo it's also a lazy deflection, since humanity has never really paid any attention to its resource usage. The only difference is that Industrial societies gained the capability to affect the planet on such a large scale.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  > The funny thing is that the market is turning even Australia and Texas into solar superpowers. I think the market is too slow by itself. There's a technical reason for this. Externalities are mispriced, causing market failure. Markets may get there by themselves eventually, but not as quickly as they should. Australia is set to become a solar superpower partly because the center-left government got into power. The center-right is hostile to renewables even though Australia is perfectly situated. This wasn't always the case, the center-right used to be somewhat favorable to renewables until they got radicalized by the usual stuff. Likewise with the US, the IRA's renewables provisions only got passed because the center-left is in power. Renewables will still grow with Trump in power due to state-level subsidies, but far slower than what would otherwise happen. My primary concern with all this is this human, political side. Solving this problem is as much a persuasion exercise as a technology exercise. We need to somehow get the political right to drop their defenses. They are blinded by their dislike of lefties and Greta Thunberg and so on, that they are not thinking rationally about the objective market failure that needs to be corrected. Further on this, we need to present a new narrative to the degrowthers. The degrowth left sees a mutually exclusive trade between growth and climate change. Which is sort of true if conservatives get in power and don't change their belief system. What's needed is a sustainable growth narrative where you give conservatives their growth and you give the left their lower emissions. It is not that hard to implement if people could just stop being so politically radicalized.

thworp 3y ago

Thank you for the response and sorry if my comment was excessively snarky. I think we share the same concerns and have the same goals and even mostly agree on practical steps to get there. I've just seen and heard too many degrowth advocates (that really want to return to 19th century economy with 21st century populations) recently and it's really worrying me. > and subsidize the same for poor countries who haven't historically emitted much and don't have the wealth to transition themselves. Yes! With a fraction of the money sloshing around various "charities" and NGOs, mostly spent on salaries, you could build solar with storage for millions of people. Of course in practice it would be really complicated, you have to make sure the right people run the systems and there will be bad cases of corruption. But it really is the least we could do. > The US and Australia and Canada continuing to pump more fossil fuels The funny thing is that the market is turning even Australia and Texas into solar superpowers. Ever since solar became the cheapest form of generation both have seen an incredible boom in solar, with almost no policy incentives. This is a huge win for the planet, if people want to build solar because the incentives align they will just do it without costing larger society any (political) capital. > It is actively physically harming them in a very real way. It's an indirect, diffuse form of physical assault. I follow the logic and agree about the causality chain, but this is a road it's best not to go down. It quickly turns into personally blaming people for things they had no control over. That has never been a good way to persuade people. Imo it's also a lazy deflection, since humanity has never really paid any attention to its resource usage. The only difference is that Industrial societies gained the capability to affect the planet on such a large scale.

hackerlight 3y ago
> The funny thing is that the market is turning even Australia and Texas into solar superpowers. I think the market is too slow by itself. There's a technical reason for this. Externalities are mispriced, causing market failure. Markets may get there by themselves eventually, but not as quickly as they should. Australia is set to become a solar superpower partly because the center-left government got into power. The center-right is hostile to renewables even though Australia is perfectly situated. This wasn't always the case, the center-right used to be somewhat favorable to renewables until they got radicalized by the usual stuff. Likewise with the US, the IRA's renewables provisions only got passed because the center-left is in power. Renewables will still grow with Trump in power due to state-level subsidies, but far slower than what would otherwise happen. My primary concern with all this is this human, political side. Solving this problem is as much a persuasion exercise as a technology exercise. We need to somehow get the political right to drop their defenses. They are blinded by their dislike of lefties and Greta Thunberg and so on, that they are not thinking rationally about the objective market failure that needs to be corrected. Further on this, we need to present a new narrative to the degrowthers. The degrowth left sees a mutually exclusive trade between growth and climate change. Which is sort of true if conservatives get in power and don't change their belief system. What's needed is a sustainable growth narrative where you give conservatives their growth and you give the left their lower emissions. It is not that hard to implement if people could just stop being so politically radicalized.