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Looking into the numbers a couple if months ago I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change. On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roug

• richardwhiuk 2y ago
  Printing money wouldn't work - you just make all of the existing money less valuable.
  • Schiendelman 2y ago
    That doesn't mean the new money doesn't have value, just has a small percentage less value. It's a wealth transfer from people who currently have money to the new money. It works out well for people who have a negative net worth, as well!
    • kreetx 2y ago
      Yeah, the salaried folk who find out in hindsight will be really happy as well. /s
      • Schiendelman 2y ago
        I don't think sarcastic comments really help, people who aren't capable of having real conversations about this already bring enough of that. It is definitely worth talking openly about whether it's worth trading short term inflationary pain for long-term climate pain.
        • kreetx 2y ago
          I guess you're right. The parent speaks of inflation as if printing money is the new norm. If you are going to take money from your citizens then be upfront about it!
          • Schiendelman 2y ago
            All the money we have was printed. Printing money has always been the norm, it's just a matter of how much - at what rate.
            • kreetx 2y ago
              You can print but still have a cap, see Bitcoin.
              • Schiendelman 2y ago
                We do have a cap. It's not even clear to me that the federal government prints more slowly than bitcoin as a percentage of issued currency.
    • lotsofpulp 2y ago
      It is a wealth transfer from people who currently have cash and earn cash (workers, since increases in pay lag the rate at which currency loses purchasing power) to people who have assets and COLA adjusted annuities (wealthy people and old people).
      • Schiendelman 2y ago
        Assets and cola adjusted annuities also lag. They may lag less, but that's a discussion to have. Real median wages have gone up more than inflation has over the last few years. It's just not evenly distributed.
  • kelseyfrog 2y ago
    It actually would even if it made existing money less valuable. Econ 101
  • kylebenzle 2y ago
    Ever heard of quantitative easing?
    • baq 2y ago
      Look at Covid fiscal response causing permanent 30% inflation in the last 4 years. The climate+demographic response money printing operation will be way bigger than that.
      • czinck 2y ago
        Most of the inflation from the last 4 years is attributable to Russia invading Ukraine. You can't have the largest natural gas exporter and second largest oil exporter invade one of the largest grain exporters without causing basically everything in a supermarket or restaurant to be more expensive.
        • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
          Source? America is a natural gas exporter.
          • abenga 2y ago
            When the prices of fungible products rise in one place, they rise everywhere, otherwise there would be arbitrage opportunities everywhere.
        • therealdrag0 2y ago
          Also shipping interruptions and lockdowns. Giving people money to not work is goin to have a much larger inflationary effect than giving people money to build things we want.
        • switch007 2y ago
          > Most of the inflation from the last 4 years is attributable to Russia invading Ukraine Source? Other than media articles repeating "due to the war in Ukraine" Assuming you are talking about the USA, supposedly the USA is a net /exporter/ of grains [0] [0] Not loading for me but https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/agricultural-trade/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic... . Copilot said "The United States is a net grain exporter. According to the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), the U.S. typically exports more agricultural goods, including grains, than it imports1. In fiscal year 2023, the value of U.S. agricultural exports was $178.7 billion, despite a decline from the previous year. Grains and feeds are among the leading U.S. agricultural exports"
  • ajross 2y ago
    It wouldn't work linearly, but it still works. If you print 10% of your GDP in a year, you'll be sitting on only 1/11th of the GDP in cash at the end of the process.
  • jjallen 2y ago
    You are essentially forced borrowing from the cash holders of the printed currency. So yeah it would work. Wouldn’t necessarily be fair or popular; but it would work. Just have to account for the new money also being worth less because of the increase in the denominator of this equation.
• JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts There is a demographic conflict of interest between those who will be alive in 2050 and those who will not. The long-term gains are difficult to deny. The short-term costs, however, will be massive.
  • pydry 2y ago
    There's a plutocratic incentive to blame plutocratic problems on demographics. It fits neatly into their divide and conquer strategy. That's why mass media is so keen to blame everything on your mom ("boomers"), along with immigrants, robots, woke mind viruses, etc.
  • tomjen3 2y ago
    Most of those not alive in 2050 will have children and grandchildren whom they expect to be alive by then.
  • marcosdumay 2y ago
    2% of the GDP is technically massive, but really, fuck anybody that wants to throw the future generations under the bus to save that. And no, I won't be around by 2050.
    • YetAnotherNick 2y ago
      GDP is a number without lot of meaning. Better thing to compare is the percentage of tax revenue. Total tax revenue of the world is $14.8T. So you need more than 30% relative increase in taxation.
      • Aachen 2y ago
        Keep in mind that most countries subsidise fossil fuels so that energy and transportation remains cheap and drives the economy — or at least that's the logic I hear, idk if it actually works that way By not doing that, you free up quite a bit of tax money. I can't imagine it's the whole 30% but it would bring it down. Emissions tax would be another way to fund this figure at the same time as having corporations find ways to reduce emissions
• ein0p 2y ago
  And the question is, then, what if you spend all those trillions (which we don't have, BTW), and it doesn't "stop". Who's going to be responsible, and in what way?
  • not_kurt_godel 2y ago
    Then we'll only have just eliminated air pollution that kills millions of people per year and established independent energy security
    • xyzzy4747 2y ago
      Air pollution and CO2 emissions are different things. One causes cancer and heart issues, the other causes global warming. Large amounts of particulate in the air (for example from a volcano) would probably cause global cooling since it blocks out the sun.
      • johnfernow 2y ago
        What you're saying is correct, but I can't think of many scenarios where it's relevant to human actions in the present, with the exception of freight ships' sulfur emissions. [1] For the most part, burning fossil fuels is leading to both air pollution and GHG emissions. Sometimes you can in theory choose an option that leads to less global warming than the status quo but is worse for human health (e.g. burning biomass for energy instead of natural gas, or using diesel instead of gasoline engines), but usually there's an another option where you can reduce both undesirable outcomes (wind, solar, hydro or nuclear energy, electric vehicles, etc.) Even from an economic standpoint I can't think of too many scenarios where clean energy isn't the better option long-term. An EV will have a higher up-front cost but definitely will be cheaper than a diesel vehicle across it's lifetime, and most areas I imagine solar or wind would be cheaper than biomass. Freight ships are the only thing in 2024 where I think we don't have an option that's better in both regards and cheaper -- there we do have to choose between more global warming or more particulate matter harmful for human health. But I think that's the exception more than the rule for human activities. 1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaned-up-shipping-emissions-have-revealed-additional-global-warming/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaned-up-shippi...
• colincooke 2y ago
  There is also a good case to be made that the prices being bandied around are actually much too high [1] TL;DR is three major factors: 1. The agencies that are doing the estimates are _very_ bad at exponential development curves (cough cough IEA estimating solar [2]) 2. Unfortunately much of the developing world's economy is not growing as fast as we previously thought it would (similar thing happening with birthrates) 3. Many costs are absolute and _not_ marginal, which is just wrong IMO. We are going to need the energy either way, we should be talking about the "green premium" (as far as it exists), not how much it'll cost to generate XX TWH of energy [1]: https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2024/11/14/the-energy-transition-will-be-much-cheaper-than-you-think https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2024/11/14/th... [2]: https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2024/11/14/the-energy-transition-will-be-much-cheaper-than-you-think/processed-images/1424/20241116_FBC783.png https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2024/11/14/th...
  • marcosdumay 2y ago
    > Many costs are absolute and _not_ marginal If you turn off your gas generator and replace it with solar + batteries, you will spend the entire cost of solar + batteries plus the decommissioning cost of gas (that may be negative if you can sell some parts) to go back to exactly the same point you were before. So, no the cost is only marginal if you accept you will follow the depreciation curve of you infrastructure. And that's way too slow to reach the goal.
    • sokoloff 2y ago
      We have some crazy incentives to install new gas boilers in MA. I very specifically wanted to switch from gas to an air source heat pump and found there was only one company in the area who was willing to quote it (alongside their own, much cheaper, quote for a gas combi boiler) and their quote was outrageously non-competitive with local fossil fuel burning (in large part because our electricity is around $0.30/kWh, but also because they were the only supplier and even they didn't really want to do the work). Even if the ASHP lasted forever, required no maintenance ever, and you had to buy a new gas boiler every 10 years, it would literally never make economic sense even if there weren't $2500 incentives on the gas boiler, but the movement on electric rates is definitely in the wrong direction if one wishes to displace natural gas with electricity (even at 400% efficiency). Every year that things stay like this is pushing back the likely time to next re-evaluation for that property by another 20 years.
• Panino 2y ago
  > I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change. If you read Drawdown, you'll see that it doesn't cost money to stop climate change, it saves money. https://drawdown.org/the-book https://drawdown.org/the-book
  • baq 2y ago
    I don’t like that we’re even talking about money in this context. Money is almost fake, it’s right there in the ‘fiat’ name, yet that’s all most people care about.
    • spencerchubb 2y ago
      It's a strawman to say that money is fake because no serious economist argues that money is "real". Of course it is fake. We use money because it's a useful way to organize society
      • baq 2y ago
        My point is you need a society to use it and climate change will cause events which will make people question whether we still have one - which is enough for money to stop being useful. People in the west take a lot for granted.
        • therealdrag0 2y ago
          Even in disaster scenarios like hurricanes, where everyone is going to do nearly everything they can regardless of cost to survive, money is still used in practice and in discussions, evaluations, planning. In a practical sense money is real not fake, because what money is used for, limited resources, is real not fake.
    • derektank 2y ago
      Money isn't fake, it's a useful abstraction for describing the allocation of goods and services. We could describe the cost of transitioning from fossil fuels in terms of labor hours spent, miles not traveled in an ICE vehicle, tons of lithium mined, etc. But money lets us collapse all of that down into one number that we can get our heads around and which is useful for figuring out things like how much we need to raise taxes
• epolanski 2y ago
  If you're referring to he economist one, I've read it too, and I think it would be much cheaper. But anyway, I don't believe half the numbers out there. To cut emissions, we need to kill materialism, consumption economy and most importantly tell people that they should choose between what's good for them (eating a burger to make them happy) or the planet (not bringing the equivalent pollution of driving an SUV 50 miles+ by eating something much less polluting than beef). Governments will keep chasing the kind of changes that can only make more money, not less.
  • RandomThoughts3 2y ago
    > To cut emissions, we need to kill materialism, consumption economy That’s a moral statement not a factual one. To cut emissions, we need to do exactly that. Pricing in externalities (yes it means less beef but that’s not the same thing as an end to the world as we know it) and investing in cleaner means of production is enough. Most of the people pushing for large societal changes are doing it because it was their goal from the start and they are using climate change as a mean to an end.
    • spencerchubb 2y ago
      Pricing in externalities is probably the only way we can solve carbon emissions, and would still be very difficult. We would need global participation, otherwise carbon emissions can just be outsourced to other countries. Also, we need to decide the price of emitting carbon. Perhaps survey economists from every country and aggregate the answers somehow.
      • RandomThoughts3 2y ago
        > We would need global participation, otherwise carbon emissions can just be outsourced to other countries You can simply add a tax at entry to match your own carbon tax until evening rules are added into trade deals. The fact that such a tax is not in place in neither the USA nor the EU is proof enough to me that neither is serious about stopping global warming.
• baq 2y ago
  Worst part is 10x this money in real terms will be printed anyway and spent for exactly this purpose in the future, just way too late.
  • pbhjpbhj 2y ago
    I fear you're an optimist.
    • baq 2y ago
      I would be if I said it’ll work… at that point there won’t be anything to lose so might as well print.
• tinco 2y ago
  Only 1% of GDP is agriculture, yet 100% of society relies on agriculture for survival. Because we don't have food shortages right now, GDP is heavily slanted towards things that don't really matter. You can't take that sort of monopoly money and try to influence the real world, if it were that easy then governments would be changing gas prices to win elections a lot more effectively. Not disagreeing that there should be a lot more funding of climate change reducing endeavors, I just don't think that GDP should/could be an anchor to base that on.
  • 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
    "Let them eat Credit Default Swaps."
  • marcosdumay 2y ago
    There's no immediate bottleneck for reducing fossil fuel consumption. More money will translate into more effect, at most delayed by some half of a decade for any foreseeable effort. At some point we will find a series of bottlenecks. But up to a 30% reduction (with ~100% clean electricity) it's obviously clear, and it looks doable up to ~90% (electricity, transportation, heating, and some industry converted).
    • tinco 2y ago
      Yeah that sounds right, I'm just wondering where the materials and the labor come from. We don't just have 5% of GDP worth of those laying around, they're currently allocated to other things. Not saying it's impossible, but it's hard to estimate the repercussions.
      • ClumsyPilot 2y ago
        > materials and the labor come from. We don't just have 5% of GDP worth of those laying around You have to make up your mind, if you are concerned about real resources or fictional ones. If we want to optimise for real resources we would round up all the people who’s job is to destroy real resources, like casino pit bosses and the managers of Prada and fast fashion that destroy clothing to create artificial scarcity. And we would kick them out in the rain to do tree planting. Climate change threatens a lot more than 5% of real reseouces - in fact what happens when the Middle East and American Midwest runs out of underground water reserves?
• yobbo 2y ago
  That is not how money and "work" functions. There is no way to "spend money" without spending energy and emitting CO2. Assuming there is validity to the numbers (and no new source of energy), it means you need to reduce GDP by 2-5% yearly until 2050. But GDP and money is a "sliding" scale so it might mean something different by next year.
  • AlphaEsponjosus 2y ago
    What are you talking about? If you take 2.5% to spend it on better infrastructure and existing technologies (that are more environmentally friendly) and develop new technologies, you are not reducing GDP. GDP just measures the ammount of money a country spends. Of course you need to spend money and energy (specially energy, everything in the universe is energy), but the solution is not to stop moving. We need to use energy and resources in order to switch to better technologies.
    • yobbo 2y ago
      A new energy source is not like a new technology that can be developed. It needs to be discovered - as in a scientific break-through. A plan can not assume that break-throughs occur. GDP measures the total production of an economy. That is mostly equivalent to energy_consumption * p_efficiency. Investing in new technologies that increase efficiency has always been a good decision. Maybe you can improve solar panels by a further 5% and batteries by 10%? Realistically, energy_consumption will need to decrease, but that isn't actually that terrible.
      • AlphaEsponjosus 2y ago
        No. The energy consumption does not need to decrease, the source must be more eficient. We have nuclear energy, despite the propaganda, nuclear energy (specially the Thorium reactors) produce very little waste and pollute less than fosil fuels or even solar panels. You do not need to discover a new source of energy to stop climate change. The problem is that people keep thinking in how much it will cost. Again, GDP measures how much money is spent within a country, if there are several intermediaries in a supply chain, the cost of products and services increases and the GDP tends to rise. If a country change direction and leans towards nuclear energy, the GDP (that is in fact a terrible measure) will increase cause the new expenditures.
• josefx 2y ago
  > I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change. Is that the cost for the duct tape needed to plug the airvents of data centers all over the world? The whole AI hype is driving energy consumption through the roof and when you see the companies behind the hype eye having their own nuclear power plants you know they are going to outscale cities housing millions in waste heat production.
  • boulos 2y ago
    While people are excited about AI and datacenter use, it's still tiny in comparison to global energy consumption (1-2%) though that excludes all the crypto folks who are another 100 TWh per year or so: > Estimated global data centre electricity consumption in 2022 was 240-340 TWh1, or around 1-1.3% of global final electricity demand. This excludes energy used for cryptocurrency mining, which was estimated to be around 110 TWh in 2022, accounting for 0.4% of annual global electricity demand. You're hearing about the potential for a Gigwatt site, but a Gigwatt full out is less than 10 TWh per year (8960 hours/year). These things make the news, but they're pretty efficient electrically. The question is whether they have utility. https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and...
• jjtheblunt 2y ago
  > Looking into the numbers a couple if months ago I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change. Do you account for unpredictable, but climate changing, events like solar flare activity and volcanic activity, which also can contribute?
  • oezi 2y ago
    I recall the numbers are about reducing the man-made emissions to net-zero by 2050. I believe this must include some measures which counteract emissions which can't be reduced.
• patrickhogan1 2y ago
  how do you spend it?
  • oezi 2y ago
    This is about spending to replace CO2 emitting technologies in electricity production, transport and housing to net-zero sources. I recall the report mentioned that societies already spend more in GDP per year to adapt to climate change (e.g. building more AC units) than it would cost to mitigate climate change.
    • patrickhogan1 2y ago
      Replacing CO₂-emitting technologies is already happening. To argue for this plan would require proving at least the following: 1. Spending Wisely: Invest in technologies that work and also do not introduce more problems. 2. Trusting Who Spends: Governments or others must use funds on solving the issue (not just giving money to cronies). 3. Global Cooperation: Countries working together (does Russia who sees warming as helpful comply). 4. Dealing With Inflation: The plan should address the inflation it causes, as it will raise living costs for people already struggling. 5. Better Use of Funds: Proving this use of funds is better than spending on other global issues.
• yieldcrv 2y ago
  Although a useful metric about the size of economy, I dont think this gives any metric of the level of liquidity, or size of investment, or austerity measure necessary to change it It doesnt give any indication about the level of debasement of currency to accomplish it to that scale, to pay for what? to whom? and even if you identified some answers to those questions, this is where the disagreements are, ranging from cordial disagreement to outright denial of a problem but most of it comes down to who is paying, for what, why are we paying, will it change anything, and how do we make a return on it
• jiggawatts 2y ago
  This is a fantasy. Trump just won an election in a very large part because -- and I quote -- "Prices are high!" People were talking about gas prices, food prices, etc... Any politician that would raise prices deliberately for any reason will be immediately voted out and replaced by literally anybody that doesn't do so, even someone like Trump. The evidence for this should be fresh in your collective minds right now.
  • deprecative 2y ago
    "Prices are high!" came with both a lack of counter narrative from the Democratic candidate AND a scapegoated narrative that blames the government and migrants for the prices. If you give the masses a narrative they'll buy in. All you need to do is provide a meaningful narrative that accurately describes the situation and builds solidarity/class consciousness.
    • gruez 2y ago
      >and builds solidarity/class consciousness. Likely Trump voters are about the least likely to be receptive to terms like "solidarity/class consciousness", and implying that they're rubes that can't think for themselves is the exact sort of rhetoric that caused the Democrats to lose the election.
• llsf 2y ago
  "...2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050" Estimate is COVID in 2020 cost 3.4% of GDP (source: https://www.statista.com/topics/6139/covid-19-impact-on-the-global-economy/ https://www.statista.com/topics/6139/covid-19-impact-on-the-...) We are talking about one new COVID (2020 style), every single year for 25 years. That is significant enough to not spontaneously do it.
  • Mizza 2y ago
    There's a big difference between printing money to trick people into continuing to buy stuff while production is halted during a pandemic and massive investments in new energy sources and technology development and deployment.
    • alwayslikethis 2y ago
      Any large expenditure is going to cause inflation since it competes with the rest of market for materials, labor, or any other limited resource. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do it but we can't just ignore the consequences.
      • Aachen 2y ago
        I think that last sentence captures the whole reason we're having this discussion