4 ms·

Just realized this article was written in 2015. Because I feel the biggest problem to overcome now is politics. If we could magically rid the world of the toxi

by atonse 3y ago

Just realized this article was written in 2015. Because I feel the biggest problem to overcome now is politics. If we could magically rid the world of the toxic and addictive qualities of social media algorithms, (something technologists could do directly), and put more focus on fact finding and disseminating, it would have an impact.

omgCPhuture 3y ago
THIS. Politics, The big money drowns out even an enormous amount of citizens, hackers or not. 8 container ships cannot be a very massive income for the industries throwing money at politicians and would go a long way. Thorium reactors would create new jobs, deal with the problem om storing radioactive fuel rods for millions of years by making them a commodity for a new industry that makes use of them and reduces the millions of years needed to store those down to thousands of years and when we run out of nuclear waste we can continue fueling them with thorium, which is _everywhere_. The air would get cleaner & ther is money to be made. You would think not that much political will was needed for small, big impact things like that. Of course, ther eis always the chance I am insane and will wake up from this nightmare in a haze from forcefully administered anti-psychotics via injection
rayiner 3y ago
> Because I feel the biggest problem to overcome now is politics Politics is just a proxy for people’s desires and motivations and willingness to make trade offs. Polls show that most americans agree humans are causing climate change, but most won’t spend even $10 a month to combat climate change: https://apnorc.org/projects/is-the-public-willing-to-pay-to-help-fix-climate-change https://apnorc.org/projects/is-the-public-willing-to-pay-to-... (open the top line results pdf). Forget EVs. What’s it going to cost for people to replace their gas and oil heat with heat pumps? Way more than $10/month!
- atonse 3y ago
  But the article has a few examples where government action helped start a movement (like with financing large solar projects because private banks wouldn’t) So things like subsidies could just help nudge markets to go. So strong subsidies for heat pumps would incentivize more people to make that move. But to use your analogy, it’s also something mentioned in the article (or maybe I wanted to interpret it how I wanted to), we also don’t do a good job of communicating the risks. My eyes glaze over when I read 2 degrees, “metric tons of CO2” cuz I can’t imagine how to weigh a gas, and other similar figures that are simply harder to relate to. So we need to find better ways to communicate these things than very nerdy statistical model figures and such.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > So things like subsidies could just help nudge markets to go. So strong subsidies for heat pumps would incentivize more people to make that move Who is going to pay for the subsidies? In the US, we caused massive inflation because we had to print trillions of dollars just to handle Covid.
    - dv_dt 3y ago
      Casting this as a cost problem is part of the political problem. There is little discussion of sticking to narrow market solutions when it comes to war, yet we blithely put out billions dollars for various form of defense and really don’t ask how are we going to pay The cost of not fixing climate change is going to be a much higher financial impact than the cost of governments programs to shift our energy. It’s already fiscally prudent for our economy to take care of late change even if every dollar of that is deficit funded (which there is actually not a need to structure the fix that extremely). It’s only political lobbying of extremely wealthy fossil fuel corporations and billionaires that stands in the way.
      - rayiner 3y ago
        > Casting this as a cost problem is part of the political problem. It's inherently a cost problem. We have to replace a bunch of capital infrastructure with different capital infrastructure. That costs money. If you fund that with deficit spending, you will increase inflation, which is politically unpopular. In aggregate polling, Donald Trump is now tied with Biden among people 18-34: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16D9GSxqF5LFIRTcoVJlvWWefU_h-ZMzlomghgbvYRaM/edit#gid=226205122 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16D9GSxqF5LFIRTcoVJlv.... That is completely nuts, and it's because eggs are somewhat more expensive than they were a few years ago. What do you think is the political feasibility of financing climate change mitigation efforts through deficit spending? > There is little discussion of sticking to narrow market solutions when it comes to war, yet we blithely put out billions dollars for various form of defense and really don’t ask how are we going to pay Defense spending as a share of the economy has been shrinking for decades as the Cold War threat recedes into memory: https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/non-defense-consuming-more-gdp https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/non-defense-consumin.... If you can persuade Americans to open their pocket books for climate change the way they did for defense during the cold war, then that's great. But that's what it will take. > It’s only political lobbying of extremely wealthy fossil fuel corporations and billionaires that stands in the way. This sort of magical, ignorant thinking on the left is why we have no hope of doing anything to mitigate climate change.
- jgeada 3y ago
  People is such a vague term. You and I largely have nearly zero influence on these decisions because a handful of extremely large (aka too large to fail) corporations, billionaires and their lobbyists yield sufficient influence over most governments to almost always get their way. We've legalized bribery and then are surprised at the consequences.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    That attitude is just as bad as climate change denialism. The AP-NORC poll I cited didn't survey "corporations, billionaires, and their lobbyists," it surveyed regular people. The same people who throw out the party in power when gas goes above $4/gallon. People like my immigrant family members, who all bought a McMansion in the suburbs and an SUV soon as they achieved economic success. If folks on the left can't confront the reality that they need to persuade my mom to care about climate change before they even get to "billionaires," then they deserve the 4C temperature rise that's coming.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jnxx 3y ago
  > Politics is just a proxy for people’s desires and motivations and willingness to make trade offs. It is not people as in "a democratic majority" which want to destroy the habitable state of the Earths atmosphere, ecosystems and our own food chain for very little short-term gain. People have children and younger relatives, and we do care about them. It is a very small minority of very greedy individuals, and there are also massive amounts of disinformation going on so that the democratic majority confounds the interests of these with their own.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > It is a very small minority of very greedy individuals, and there are also massive amounts of disinformation going on so that the democratic majority confounds the interests of these with their own. No, it’s my mom, my siblings, probably your mom, the guy who does my tile work, etc. You’re framing this in your head as a “good versus evil” problem, which forces you to then assign blame to a “small minority of very greedy individuals.” But instead it’s a problem of humans putting short term individual comfort ahead of long term collective interests. My brother and my sister in law have STEM degrees from Yale and MIT. They’re well-meaning democrats. But they take several international trips every year, each of which emits about as much CO2 as driving an SUV around all year. Most people I know don’t do that—but only because they don’t have the money. Heck, I have progressive activists friends who don’t really care about climate change because their particular focus is racial issues or abortion. They obviously don’t want to affirmatively destroy anything, they’re just the same people who wouldn’t pay more than $10/month to address it. They assume there will be some deus ex machina that resolves the problem. (Get to work CO2 capture nerds!) Look—people eat like crap and don’t exercise, taking years off their own lives. They take drugs that could kill them. People still smoke. They know better but they do it anyway. You think those same people are going to make non-trivial sacrifices for environmental problems that might affect their kids or grandkids?
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  > Forget EVs. What’s it going to cost for people to replace their gas and oil heat with heat pumps? Way more than $10/month! People will save money by transitioning to EVs and heat pumps. Often the big barrier is an upfront cost that makes them just continually pay a higher monthly cost, or a long payoff time. There's various ways to financially engineer that and unlock the savings and government often plays a vital role in that since the switch has various other benefits, like less death and disease.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    They probably will, but do we have an effective way of subsidizing the up-front cost? In Maryland it cost me $16,000 to install heat pumps in our 2 story home a few years ago. Since then, the infrastructure act’s 30% subsidy has come into effect, but that has been more than eaten up by increasing costs. Contractors can just jack up the price to capture the full value of the subsidy because of the lack of licensed hvac installers. A few thousand dollars worth of made-in-China equipment turns into a $10,000 install. Do we have a way of dealing with that?

by atonse 3y ago

omgCPhuture 3y ago

THIS. Politics, The big money drowns out even an enormous amount of citizens, hackers or not. 8 container ships cannot be a very massive income for the industries throwing money at politicians and would go a long way. Thorium reactors would create new jobs, deal with the problem om storing radioactive fuel rods for millions of years by making them a commodity for a new industry that makes use of them and reduces the millions of years needed to store those down to thousands of years and when we run out of nuclear waste we can continue fueling them with thorium, which is _everywhere_. The air would get cleaner & ther is money to be made. You would think not that much political will was needed for small, big impact things like that. Of course, ther eis always the chance I am insane and will wake up from this nightmare in a haze from forcefully administered anti-psychotics via injection

rayiner 3y ago

> Because I feel the biggest problem to overcome now is politics Politics is just a proxy for people’s desires and motivations and willingness to make trade offs. Polls show that most americans agree humans are causing climate change, but most won’t spend even $10 a month to combat climate change: https://apnorc.org/projects/is-the-public-willing-to-pay-to-help-fix-climate-change https://apnorc.org/projects/is-the-public-willing-to-pay-to-... (open the top line results pdf). Forget EVs. What’s it going to cost for people to replace their gas and oil heat with heat pumps? Way more than $10/month!

atonse 3y ago
But the article has a few examples where government action helped start a movement (like with financing large solar projects because private banks wouldn’t) So things like subsidies could just help nudge markets to go. So strong subsidies for heat pumps would incentivize more people to make that move. But to use your analogy, it’s also something mentioned in the article (or maybe I wanted to interpret it how I wanted to), we also don’t do a good job of communicating the risks. My eyes glaze over when I read 2 degrees, “metric tons of CO2” cuz I can’t imagine how to weigh a gas, and other similar figures that are simply harder to relate to. So we need to find better ways to communicate these things than very nerdy statistical model figures and such.
- rayiner 3y ago
  > So things like subsidies could just help nudge markets to go. So strong subsidies for heat pumps would incentivize more people to make that move Who is going to pay for the subsidies? In the US, we caused massive inflation because we had to print trillions of dollars just to handle Covid.
  - dv_dt 3y ago
    Casting this as a cost problem is part of the political problem. There is little discussion of sticking to narrow market solutions when it comes to war, yet we blithely put out billions dollars for various form of defense and really don’t ask how are we going to pay The cost of not fixing climate change is going to be a much higher financial impact than the cost of governments programs to shift our energy. It’s already fiscally prudent for our economy to take care of late change even if every dollar of that is deficit funded (which there is actually not a need to structure the fix that extremely). It’s only political lobbying of extremely wealthy fossil fuel corporations and billionaires that stands in the way.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      > Casting this as a cost problem is part of the political problem. It's inherently a cost problem. We have to replace a bunch of capital infrastructure with different capital infrastructure. That costs money. If you fund that with deficit spending, you will increase inflation, which is politically unpopular. In aggregate polling, Donald Trump is now tied with Biden among people 18-34: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16D9GSxqF5LFIRTcoVJlvWWefU_h-ZMzlomghgbvYRaM/edit#gid=226205122 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16D9GSxqF5LFIRTcoVJlv.... That is completely nuts, and it's because eggs are somewhat more expensive than they were a few years ago. What do you think is the political feasibility of financing climate change mitigation efforts through deficit spending? > There is little discussion of sticking to narrow market solutions when it comes to war, yet we blithely put out billions dollars for various form of defense and really don’t ask how are we going to pay Defense spending as a share of the economy has been shrinking for decades as the Cold War threat recedes into memory: https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/non-defense-consuming-more-gdp https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/non-defense-consumin.... If you can persuade Americans to open their pocket books for climate change the way they did for defense during the cold war, then that's great. But that's what it will take. > It’s only political lobbying of extremely wealthy fossil fuel corporations and billionaires that stands in the way. This sort of magical, ignorant thinking on the left is why we have no hope of doing anything to mitigate climate change.
jgeada 3y ago
People is such a vague term. You and I largely have nearly zero influence on these decisions because a handful of extremely large (aka too large to fail) corporations, billionaires and their lobbyists yield sufficient influence over most governments to almost always get their way. We've legalized bribery and then are surprised at the consequences.
- rayiner 3y ago
  That attitude is just as bad as climate change denialism. The AP-NORC poll I cited didn't survey "corporations, billionaires, and their lobbyists," it surveyed regular people. The same people who throw out the party in power when gas goes above $4/gallon. People like my immigrant family members, who all bought a McMansion in the suburbs and an SUV soon as they achieved economic success. If folks on the left can't confront the reality that they need to persuade my mom to care about climate change before they even get to "billionaires," then they deserve the 4C temperature rise that's coming.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jnxx 3y ago
> Politics is just a proxy for people’s desires and motivations and willingness to make trade offs. It is not people as in "a democratic majority" which want to destroy the habitable state of the Earths atmosphere, ecosystems and our own food chain for very little short-term gain. People have children and younger relatives, and we do care about them. It is a very small minority of very greedy individuals, and there are also massive amounts of disinformation going on so that the democratic majority confounds the interests of these with their own.
- rayiner 3y ago
  > It is a very small minority of very greedy individuals, and there are also massive amounts of disinformation going on so that the democratic majority confounds the interests of these with their own. No, it’s my mom, my siblings, probably your mom, the guy who does my tile work, etc. You’re framing this in your head as a “good versus evil” problem, which forces you to then assign blame to a “small minority of very greedy individuals.” But instead it’s a problem of humans putting short term individual comfort ahead of long term collective interests. My brother and my sister in law have STEM degrees from Yale and MIT. They’re well-meaning democrats. But they take several international trips every year, each of which emits about as much CO2 as driving an SUV around all year. Most people I know don’t do that—but only because they don’t have the money. Heck, I have progressive activists friends who don’t really care about climate change because their particular focus is racial issues or abortion. They obviously don’t want to affirmatively destroy anything, they’re just the same people who wouldn’t pay more than $10/month to address it. They assume there will be some deus ex machina that resolves the problem. (Get to work CO2 capture nerds!) Look—people eat like crap and don’t exercise, taking years off their own lives. They take drugs that could kill them. People still smoke. They know better but they do it anyway. You think those same people are going to make non-trivial sacrifices for environmental problems that might affect their kids or grandkids?
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
> Forget EVs. What’s it going to cost for people to replace their gas and oil heat with heat pumps? Way more than $10/month! People will save money by transitioning to EVs and heat pumps. Often the big barrier is an upfront cost that makes them just continually pay a higher monthly cost, or a long payoff time. There's various ways to financially engineer that and unlock the savings and government often plays a vital role in that since the switch has various other benefits, like less death and disease.
- rayiner 3y ago
  They probably will, but do we have an effective way of subsidizing the up-front cost? In Maryland it cost me $16,000 to install heat pumps in our 2 story home a few years ago. Since then, the infrastructure act’s 30% subsidy has come into effect, but that has been more than eaten up by increasing costs. Contractors can just jack up the price to capture the full value of the subsidy because of the lack of licensed hvac installers. A few thousand dollars worth of made-in-China equipment turns into a $10,000 install. Do we have a way of dealing with that?