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We have built our society on a lot of incentives that are bad for the planet unfortunately so we now have some conflicting requirements for tackling climate cha
by 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
We have built our society on a lot of incentives that are bad for the planet unfortunately so we now have some conflicting requirements for tackling climate change.
1. Cut back on emissions
2. Nobody anywhere is allowed to lose money
How can this possibly work? How do you cut emissions which are a proxy for consumption/production without anybody losing out?
- vkou 3y agoWe can't, we won't, and we'll regret it.
- kranke155 3y agoIt's as if human civilization is reaching adulthood, late 20s early 30s, where the errors of being young and foolish start catching up to you.
- vkou 3y agoThose errors don't really catch up to you until your late 40s, when your health is shot, your bank account is empty, and you don't really have enough time left to dig your way out of the hole you're in. That's about the stage we're at.
- kranke155 3y agoI certainly hope not!
- bumby 3y agoI maybe be misremembering, but I think one of Carl Sagan’s characters in the book Contact was asked what she would want to ask extra terrestrials if given the opportunity. Her answer was along the lines of “how did you manage to survive this technological adolescence we are currently experiencing?”
- Workaccount2 3y agoEfficiency, which is what we have been (sort of) doing and why things are moving so slowly. For instance, efficiency is what has made solar panels both effective enough to use, and cheap enough to install.
- ben_w 3y agoFortunately #2 isn't correct – any given person is absolutely allowed to lose money, just so long as "society as a whole" is making more. How you draw the bounds of society, that's hard; Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia may well hate the idea of the world turning away from oil and towards renewables, but have no power to stop it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoFair point. I suppose I meant no Americans are allowed to lose money. I am not an expert but what springs to mind (for me) is the oil/gas industry. If the cost of fuel increases for any reason that's it- your next election will not go well. So we usually end up keeping subsidies, tax cuts, etc. but adding more incentives to something else such as green energy- or at least it seems that way. You can't take a thumb off of the scale but you can always add more thumbs. Because nobody is allowed to lose money.
- blooalien 3y agoNo filthy rich people are allowed to lose money. The rest of us are expendable.
- ben_w 3y agoEven then, Musk is allowed to bankrupt Twitter, Trump is allowed to be fined half a billion or whatever it was, and Epstein died in prison. Big Oil was, past-tense, considered identical with national interest. Now, even though they're still useful, that value is not at anything close to the same level, and it's adapt-or-disappear time for all of them.