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We’re going to lose economic growth because of climate change, “Staying under the 2C threshold could limit average regional income loss to 20 percent compared t

We’re going to lose economic growth because of climate change, “Staying under the 2C threshold could limit average regional income loss to 20 percent compared to 60 percent" [1]. Whether it will be significant amount, or a devastating amount is still to be determined. US GDP is $20T, and the difference between low warming and high warming is 40% loss! This means we could spend up to $8T a year to address climate change and it would still make economic sense. The Inflation Reduction Act authorized $370B of spending over 10 years on climate and energy [2]. This is about 0.1% of annual GDP and about 0.4% of what we could be investing to address this. If we spent even a fraction more, we could rapidly convert housing and transportation to electric, make electrical grids renewable, and decarbonization manufacturing, we have the technology to do this. We can do this, the most important thing is to tell others we can, and particularly people with power and influence. [1] https://phys.org/news/2024-04-climate-impacts-global-gdp.html https://phys.org/news/2024-04-climate-impacts-global-gdp.htm... [2] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/27/manchin-schumer-senate-deal-energy-taxes-00048325 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/27/manchin-schumer-sen...

Voultapher 2y ago
As much as I'm in favor of moving towards renewables, we are still destroying our biosphere, and the resources needed for renewables are not renewable ... > Energy transition aspirations are similar. The goal is powering modernity, not addressing the sixth mass extinction. Sure, it could mitigate the CO2 threat (to modernity), but why does the fox care when its decline ultimately traces primarily to things like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, agricultural runoff, pollution, pesticides, mining, manufacturing, or in short: modernity. Pursuit of a giant energy infrastructure replacement requires tremendous material extraction—directly driving many of these ills—only to then provide the energetic means to keep doing all these same things that abundant evidence warns is a prescription for termination of the community of life. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/ Humanity needs to let go of the fantasy of endless growth, which permeates through our cultures, economies and politics. Life on this earth is a co-op, you can't win by being the last species alive, or at least your wining will look very sad and be short lived. If you think endless growth is a viable strategy, go and ask your neighborhood slime mold in a petri dish what it thinks.
- nazgul17 2y ago
  Before growth became a thing, it was a zero sum game. Nasty setup for harmonious living.
  - bwestergard 2y ago
    Do you mean that "Before [economic] growth became a thing, [life] was a zero sum game?". I'm genuinely unsure what you mean by that. By any measure, the history of life on earth has seen many ups and downs in biodiversity. So the flourishing of one species often coincided with the flourishing of many other related species. A well-known example would be various pollinating insects and birds and the flowers they pollinated in the early cretaceous.
  - gsf_emergency_2 2y ago
    Yes! Nonrenewables+greenhouse gases. Are a zero-sum game with Earth. Problem is, locally, a zero-sum game can look quite non-zero-sum (as opposed to globally). And perhaps vice versa too (in time scales, eg universally) I'm all in on renewables+albedo driven globally pos-sum games :) (Until heat death of solar system)
  - fch42 2y ago
    If you mean "eat or get eaten", then there's a few early red flags that the pursuit of growth and decarbonisation concurrently may well lead us back to that idea. There's a strong correlation in politics worldwide of extreme xenophobia with climate change denial, and growth-focus with "others pollute more than us". If you think "carbon budget" then it's compelling to grow yours at the expense of others.
- ETH_start 2y ago
  We are not confined to Earth. Currently something like 99.9999999% of the energy radiated by the sun is emitted into empty space, where it is completely wasted. That can all be harvested. To put that into perspective, our civilization could use 20 trillion times more energy than it does now if it harvested the sun's entire output.
adamsch 2y ago
precisely, fossil fuels are ruining the economy
User23 2y ago
What do you mean "we?" China has not just indicated but incontrovertibly demonstrated that they do not care about carbon dioxide emission targets. They are massively ramping up their oxidative energy production. So as I see it there are two choices. One: deindustrialize and let China control all industrial production while having massive carbon dioxide emissions or, Two: reindustrialize and challenge China's industrial production advantage while having massive carbon dioxide emissions. Low emissions aren't on the table. They're not a possibility. So at this point I'm deeply suspicious of anyone peddling that fantasy. They are, most likely, spreading Chinese misinformation, wittingly or unwittingly.
- bokoharambe 2y ago
  Much sillier to think "reindustrialization" is possible. It is a problem of social metabolism, not a policy issue. Industrialization was a particular historical phenomenon that has now fully passed in the West. China "won" before the game even began for the simple fact of them being a very late developer. Development is not even guaranteed as a consequence of industrialization anymore; see premature deindustrialization. No misinformation needed, just cold hard historical laws.
- rtsil 2y ago
  Reindustrialization isn't possible because you cannot reduce your costs to China levels, particularly if you clamp down on immigration as well. The best you can hope for is to diversify the supply by industrializing other, geographically and/or ideologically closer countries that can produce at reduced costs and are also more dependent on your economy or your military might. A suite of vassal countries, if you will.
  - vimy 2y ago
    The humanoid robots will make reindustrialization very cheap.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Do humanoid robots in America have any economic benefit over the exact same robots in, say, Mexico? Or on a lights-out factory on the ocean floor in international waters? Or on the moon? Even if they're physically in the US, are these robots driven by AI, or remote control? If the former, does this re-industrialisation create any jobs? If the latter, why hire Americans to control the robots rather than much cheaper Cubans or Vietnamese or Salvadorans?
ETH_start 2y ago
CO2 massively increases farm yields so I find your claims to be tenuous at best: https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/ https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_fertilization_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_fertilization_effect
- ch0wn 2y ago
  No, it is not and the idea that extreme weather would somehow result in more food is laughable on its face. Higher CO2 concentrations also reduce the nutrients in food. https://skepticalscience.com/fact-brief-plant.html https://skepticalscience.com/fact-brief-plant.html
  - ETH_start 2y ago
    It accelerates plant growth, reducing nutrient concentration per cubic centimeter of food, but increasing the total nutrient yield because the overall boost in biomass outweighs the dilution effect. This is why greenhouse farms pump CO2 into their environments. Your reaction though really demonstrates a close-mindedness about your belief that CO2 is harmful that is anti-science.
    - BytesAndGears 2y ago
      But an individual human eats a fixed amount of food. So that fact seems pointless, since people will get less nutrition overall- unless we should all only eat ultra-processed snacks and reserve fresh food for the wealthy?
      - ETH_start 2y ago
        On what basis do you claim that an individual eats a fixed amount of food? If you're worried about how artificially elevated CO2 levels affect agricultural products, then you should start taking issue with commercial greenhouses, which regularly pump CO2 in to increase yields. This is a common practice, and only now is it being viewed as something bad or strange because it's not convenient for the climate change narrative that presents industrial emission of CO2 as the apex threat that requires government-enforced collective action to solve.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
User23 2y ago
You're only off by an order of magnitude. $370B is around 1.25% of $30T
_bin_ 2y ago
cool theory. McKinsey estimates a transition like that would cost $275 trillion and take until 2050. that's a lot of money. not only that, we all know the global south will, true to form, come calling with their hands out, demanding that we pay for their stuff too. which would essentially bankrupt America. we're already tens of trillions in the hole; we can't afford it. just as importantly, since you're making a practical argument for why we should care, your own linked analysis suggests America will experience very little impact from global warming. impact levels run from a bit below +10 to a bit below -30 with zero as no impact; looks like our projected impact is around -10. if you were assigning America some vaguely proportional cost, we could do so relative to emissions (giving us a $40T bill) or GDP ($72T). both of those numbers are significantly greater than the current national debt. they would bankrupt the nation, cripple the common man with inflation, and screw us out of any shot at reindustrializing. as usual, unsaid is the massive downgrade in standard of living people expect us to somehow magically accept to build this bridge to nowhere. [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-insights/the-net-zero-transition-what-it-would-cost-what-it-could-bring https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-ins...
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  You appear to be aggressively agreeing with the person you replied to with your source. They said the US could spend 8 Trillion a year and it would still make financial sense. Your Mackinsey report says the whole world should spend 9.2 Trillion a year to make the transition and that it makes financial sense to do so, both due to avoided costs of climate change and that many of the things needed to transition have a positive return in investmemt anyway. Your own contribution on top of the report just seems muddled and confused given what you've cited. Are you saying Mackinsey are wrong and it would be cheaper to do nothing? They're very clear even in the executive summary that is not the case: > The rewards of the net-zero transition would far exceed the mere avoidance of the substantial, and possibly catastrophic, dislocations that would result from unabated climate change, or the considerable benefits they entail in natural capital conservation. Besides the immediate economic opportunities they create, they open up clear possibilities to solve global challenges in both physical and governance-related terms. These include the potential for a long-term decline in energy costs that would help solve many other resource issues and lead to a palpably more prosperous global economy.

Voultapher 2y ago

As much as I'm in favor of moving towards renewables, we are still destroying our biosphere, and the resources needed for renewables are not renewable ... > Energy transition aspirations are similar. The goal is powering modernity, not addressing the sixth mass extinction. Sure, it could mitigate the CO2 threat (to modernity), but why does the fox care when its decline ultimately traces primarily to things like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, agricultural runoff, pollution, pesticides, mining, manufacturing, or in short: modernity. Pursuit of a giant energy infrastructure replacement requires tremendous material extraction—directly driving many of these ills—only to then provide the energetic means to keep doing all these same things that abundant evidence warns is a prescription for termination of the community of life. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/ Humanity needs to let go of the fantasy of endless growth, which permeates through our cultures, economies and politics. Life on this earth is a co-op, you can't win by being the last species alive, or at least your wining will look very sad and be short lived. If you think endless growth is a viable strategy, go and ask your neighborhood slime mold in a petri dish what it thinks.

nazgul17 2y ago
Before growth became a thing, it was a zero sum game. Nasty setup for harmonious living.
- bwestergard 2y ago
  Do you mean that "Before [economic] growth became a thing, [life] was a zero sum game?". I'm genuinely unsure what you mean by that. By any measure, the history of life on earth has seen many ups and downs in biodiversity. So the flourishing of one species often coincided with the flourishing of many other related species. A well-known example would be various pollinating insects and birds and the flowers they pollinated in the early cretaceous.
- gsf_emergency_2 2y ago
  Yes! Nonrenewables+greenhouse gases. Are a zero-sum game with Earth. Problem is, locally, a zero-sum game can look quite non-zero-sum (as opposed to globally). And perhaps vice versa too (in time scales, eg universally) I'm all in on renewables+albedo driven globally pos-sum games :) (Until heat death of solar system)
- fch42 2y ago
  If you mean "eat or get eaten", then there's a few early red flags that the pursuit of growth and decarbonisation concurrently may well lead us back to that idea. There's a strong correlation in politics worldwide of extreme xenophobia with climate change denial, and growth-focus with "others pollute more than us". If you think "carbon budget" then it's compelling to grow yours at the expense of others.
ETH_start 2y ago
We are not confined to Earth. Currently something like 99.9999999% of the energy radiated by the sun is emitted into empty space, where it is completely wasted. That can all be harvested. To put that into perspective, our civilization could use 20 trillion times more energy than it does now if it harvested the sun's entire output.

adamsch 2y ago

precisely, fossil fuels are ruining the economy

User23 2y ago

What do you mean "we?" China has not just indicated but incontrovertibly demonstrated that they do not care about carbon dioxide emission targets. They are massively ramping up their oxidative energy production. So as I see it there are two choices. One: deindustrialize and let China control all industrial production while having massive carbon dioxide emissions or, Two: reindustrialize and challenge China's industrial production advantage while having massive carbon dioxide emissions. Low emissions aren't on the table. They're not a possibility. So at this point I'm deeply suspicious of anyone peddling that fantasy. They are, most likely, spreading Chinese misinformation, wittingly or unwittingly.

bokoharambe 2y ago
Much sillier to think "reindustrialization" is possible. It is a problem of social metabolism, not a policy issue. Industrialization was a particular historical phenomenon that has now fully passed in the West. China "won" before the game even began for the simple fact of them being a very late developer. Development is not even guaranteed as a consequence of industrialization anymore; see premature deindustrialization. No misinformation needed, just cold hard historical laws.
rtsil 2y ago
Reindustrialization isn't possible because you cannot reduce your costs to China levels, particularly if you clamp down on immigration as well. The best you can hope for is to diversify the supply by industrializing other, geographically and/or ideologically closer countries that can produce at reduced costs and are also more dependent on your economy or your military might. A suite of vassal countries, if you will.
- vimy 2y ago
  The humanoid robots will make reindustrialization very cheap.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Do humanoid robots in America have any economic benefit over the exact same robots in, say, Mexico? Or on a lights-out factory on the ocean floor in international waters? Or on the moon? Even if they're physically in the US, are these robots driven by AI, or remote control? If the former, does this re-industrialisation create any jobs? If the latter, why hire Americans to control the robots rather than much cheaper Cubans or Vietnamese or Salvadorans?

ETH_start 2y ago

CO2 massively increases farm yields so I find your claims to be tenuous at best: https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/ https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_fertilization_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_fertilization_effect

ch0wn 2y ago
No, it is not and the idea that extreme weather would somehow result in more food is laughable on its face. Higher CO2 concentrations also reduce the nutrients in food. https://skepticalscience.com/fact-brief-plant.html https://skepticalscience.com/fact-brief-plant.html
- ETH_start 2y ago
  It accelerates plant growth, reducing nutrient concentration per cubic centimeter of food, but increasing the total nutrient yield because the overall boost in biomass outweighs the dilution effect. This is why greenhouse farms pump CO2 into their environments. Your reaction though really demonstrates a close-mindedness about your belief that CO2 is harmful that is anti-science.
  - BytesAndGears 2y ago
    But an individual human eats a fixed amount of food. So that fact seems pointless, since people will get less nutrition overall- unless we should all only eat ultra-processed snacks and reserve fresh food for the wealthy?
    - ETH_start 2y ago
      On what basis do you claim that an individual eats a fixed amount of food? If you're worried about how artificially elevated CO2 levels affect agricultural products, then you should start taking issue with commercial greenhouses, which regularly pump CO2 in to increase yields. This is a common practice, and only now is it being viewed as something bad or strange because it's not convenient for the climate change narrative that presents industrial emission of CO2 as the apex threat that requires government-enforced collective action to solve.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

User23 2y ago

You're only off by an order of magnitude. $370B is around 1.25% of $30T

_bin_ 2y ago

cool theory. McKinsey estimates a transition like that would cost $275 trillion and take until 2050. that's a lot of money. not only that, we all know the global south will, true to form, come calling with their hands out, demanding that we pay for their stuff too. which would essentially bankrupt America. we're already tens of trillions in the hole; we can't afford it. just as importantly, since you're making a practical argument for why we should care, your own linked analysis suggests America will experience very little impact from global warming. impact levels run from a bit below +10 to a bit below -30 with zero as no impact; looks like our projected impact is around -10. if you were assigning America some vaguely proportional cost, we could do so relative to emissions (giving us a $40T bill) or GDP ($72T). both of those numbers are significantly greater than the current national debt. they would bankrupt the nation, cripple the common man with inflation, and screw us out of any shot at reindustrializing. as usual, unsaid is the massive downgrade in standard of living people expect us to somehow magically accept to build this bridge to nowhere. [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-insights/the-net-zero-transition-what-it-would-cost-what-it-could-bring https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-ins...

ZeroGravitas 2y ago
You appear to be aggressively agreeing with the person you replied to with your source. They said the US could spend 8 Trillion a year and it would still make financial sense. Your Mackinsey report says the whole world should spend 9.2 Trillion a year to make the transition and that it makes financial sense to do so, both due to avoided costs of climate change and that many of the things needed to transition have a positive return in investmemt anyway. Your own contribution on top of the report just seems muddled and confused given what you've cited. Are you saying Mackinsey are wrong and it would be cheaper to do nothing? They're very clear even in the executive summary that is not the case: > The rewards of the net-zero transition would far exceed the mere avoidance of the substantial, and possibly catastrophic, dislocations that would result from unabated climate change, or the considerable benefits they entail in natural capital conservation. Besides the immediate economic opportunities they create, they open up clear possibilities to solve global challenges in both physical and governance-related terms. These include the potential for a long-term decline in energy costs that would help solve many other resource issues and lead to a palpably more prosperous global economy.