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Relying on market forces to mitigate/address the impact of climate change will require us to collectively impose actual market pressure (i.e. regulation, constr

Relying on market forces to mitigate/address the impact of climate change will require us to collectively impose actual market pressure (i.e. regulation, constraints) to do so. Not seeing much sign of that among the major contributors of emissions right at the moment.

GoatInGrey 1y ago
That's because very few people are being meaningfully affected right now. For most, climate change exists as an abstract idea and not an immediate, physical problem. It doesn't help that claims like those made by Al Gore about the polar ice caps being gone by 2016 turned out to be untrue. I wouldn't expect society to transform itself if told that an asteroid may impact Earth in eighty years, for similar reasons.
- netsharc 1y ago
  Heck, faced with a rapidly spreading virus that can kill in 2 weeks (for the general public at a very low percentage, for our elderly neighbors a lot higher), a large majority of humans turned to angry denials and conspiracy theories to justify to themselves that "it's not that dangerous!". We are so fucking dead.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    When somebody says something isn't that dangerous it always comes with an unstated post-text of 'for an average person of average health.' Each year the flu kills hundreds of thousands of people. As the population ages, and thus has more individuals in senescence where your body is basically just breaking down, that will increase into the millions. But yet it's still not unreasonable to say that the flu isn't that dangerous. And you might think I'm being disingenuous with these facts and perhaps e.g. all those deaths from the flu are just in Africa or wherever. Whereas in reality it's the exact opposite! Places like the US have a substantially higher than average mortality rate from the flu. Globally deaths are around 700k and in the US it's around 50k. We have 4% of the world's population, but 7% of the world's flu deaths. The reason is because it's not about healthcare, vaccines, or whatever else. It's about the amount of people in senescence. At a certain age, and the subsequent state of health it entails, lots of things that indeed 'aren't that dangerous' turn into life-ending threats. For some contrast that most aren't aware of, the average age of mortality of the Spanish Flu was 28 - which made it a completely terrifying freak outlier in terms of viruses, which generally affect the very young and very old most severely. Nobody would be saying that the Spanish Flu is not that dangerous in modern times.
    - gf000 1y ago
      Well, maybe search for the keyword "long COVID" and see how it has caused a lot of suffering even among young and otherwise healthy individuals. Also, people seem to forget that exponentials go up very fast, so an "average person of average health" would be very selfish to not make the necessary precautions to limit the spread of the virus as much as feasible.
      - somenameforme 1y ago
        You vaccinate yourself to protect yourself. People who are vaccinated for a disease can and do spread said disease. It's this way for literally everything. The claims that you cannot spread COVID if you're vaccinated were simply false. Vaccination can have a mitigating effect of course, but we were never going to be able to eliminate COVID with something like herd immunity. The only virus completely eliminated by vaccines is small pox, and that was largely because of a number of ideal factors. The top two are probably that that no animals carried smallpox, only humans. And the second is that infection or vaccination provided lifetime immunity of effectively 100%. This dramatically reduced its potential for mutation and meant that getting rid of it in humans would get rid of it - period. Coronaviruses, by contrast, are transmissible between humans and animals. This means even if you fully eliminated it in humans, it could, and probably would, come back. This is why flus are basically impossible to get rid of. If you believe CDC numbers then US flu deaths in 2020 were essentially 0, yet now it's back like nothing ever happened. Even the Spanish Flu is still with us as a variant of the common flu. But fortunately most viruses trend towards less lethal mutations over time. Probably natural selection in play - killing your host is not a great path to survival and reproduction. As for long COVID. I'd rather defer that conversation for a few years. Research on exactly what it is and exactly what causes it is ongoing, and so debating it at this point is just going to be speculation.
        gf000 1y ago
        But it's quite trivial to see that vaccination will heavily decrease the possibility of transmission - it's like continuously coughing up millions upon millions of viruses vs only re-transmitting a few. And you are right that in the long term Covid will probably become just like the regular flu, as it mutates to more infectious, but less and less dangerous - but I don't see how it's relevant. At the height of the pandemic not the weakened strains were at play, and you surely know that a^n will either very quickly die out, or very quickly explode depending on the given 'a' - masks, vaccination, and staying home absolutely helped decreasing the possible reach of the disease.
  - vasco 1y ago
    Which virus turned "a large majority of humans to angry denials"?
    - oporquinho94 1y ago
      COVID
- pyrale 1y ago
  > That's because very few people are being meaningfully affected right now. Once we're all at the edge of extinction, the markets will provide? If that's your point, your idea of capitalism is a cargo cult.
tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
Market pressure is required to avoid climate change by keeping companies from externalizing climate impacts. Market pressure is not required for a city to decide that having the city flooded is bad, and start a tender for building a sea wall. This makes the line go up for the sea wall companies.

GoatInGrey 1y ago

That's because very few people are being meaningfully affected right now. For most, climate change exists as an abstract idea and not an immediate, physical problem. It doesn't help that claims like those made by Al Gore about the polar ice caps being gone by 2016 turned out to be untrue. I wouldn't expect society to transform itself if told that an asteroid may impact Earth in eighty years, for similar reasons.

netsharc 1y ago
Heck, faced with a rapidly spreading virus that can kill in 2 weeks (for the general public at a very low percentage, for our elderly neighbors a lot higher), a large majority of humans turned to angry denials and conspiracy theories to justify to themselves that "it's not that dangerous!". We are so fucking dead.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  When somebody says something isn't that dangerous it always comes with an unstated post-text of 'for an average person of average health.' Each year the flu kills hundreds of thousands of people. As the population ages, and thus has more individuals in senescence where your body is basically just breaking down, that will increase into the millions. But yet it's still not unreasonable to say that the flu isn't that dangerous. And you might think I'm being disingenuous with these facts and perhaps e.g. all those deaths from the flu are just in Africa or wherever. Whereas in reality it's the exact opposite! Places like the US have a substantially higher than average mortality rate from the flu. Globally deaths are around 700k and in the US it's around 50k. We have 4% of the world's population, but 7% of the world's flu deaths. The reason is because it's not about healthcare, vaccines, or whatever else. It's about the amount of people in senescence. At a certain age, and the subsequent state of health it entails, lots of things that indeed 'aren't that dangerous' turn into life-ending threats. For some contrast that most aren't aware of, the average age of mortality of the Spanish Flu was 28 - which made it a completely terrifying freak outlier in terms of viruses, which generally affect the very young and very old most severely. Nobody would be saying that the Spanish Flu is not that dangerous in modern times.
  - gf000 1y ago
    Well, maybe search for the keyword "long COVID" and see how it has caused a lot of suffering even among young and otherwise healthy individuals. Also, people seem to forget that exponentials go up very fast, so an "average person of average health" would be very selfish to not make the necessary precautions to limit the spread of the virus as much as feasible.
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      You vaccinate yourself to protect yourself. People who are vaccinated for a disease can and do spread said disease. It's this way for literally everything. The claims that you cannot spread COVID if you're vaccinated were simply false. Vaccination can have a mitigating effect of course, but we were never going to be able to eliminate COVID with something like herd immunity. The only virus completely eliminated by vaccines is small pox, and that was largely because of a number of ideal factors. The top two are probably that that no animals carried smallpox, only humans. And the second is that infection or vaccination provided lifetime immunity of effectively 100%. This dramatically reduced its potential for mutation and meant that getting rid of it in humans would get rid of it - period. Coronaviruses, by contrast, are transmissible between humans and animals. This means even if you fully eliminated it in humans, it could, and probably would, come back. This is why flus are basically impossible to get rid of. If you believe CDC numbers then US flu deaths in 2020 were essentially 0, yet now it's back like nothing ever happened. Even the Spanish Flu is still with us as a variant of the common flu. But fortunately most viruses trend towards less lethal mutations over time. Probably natural selection in play - killing your host is not a great path to survival and reproduction. As for long COVID. I'd rather defer that conversation for a few years. Research on exactly what it is and exactly what causes it is ongoing, and so debating it at this point is just going to be speculation.
      - gf000 1y ago
        But it's quite trivial to see that vaccination will heavily decrease the possibility of transmission - it's like continuously coughing up millions upon millions of viruses vs only re-transmitting a few. And you are right that in the long term Covid will probably become just like the regular flu, as it mutates to more infectious, but less and less dangerous - but I don't see how it's relevant. At the height of the pandemic not the weakened strains were at play, and you surely know that a^n will either very quickly die out, or very quickly explode depending on the given 'a' - masks, vaccination, and staying home absolutely helped decreasing the possible reach of the disease.
- vasco 1y ago
  Which virus turned "a large majority of humans to angry denials"?
  - oporquinho94 1y ago
    COVID
pyrale 1y ago
> That's because very few people are being meaningfully affected right now. Once we're all at the edge of extinction, the markets will provide? If that's your point, your idea of capitalism is a cargo cult.

tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago

Market pressure is required to avoid climate change by keeping companies from externalizing climate impacts. Market pressure is not required for a city to decide that having the city flooded is bad, and start a tender for building a sea wall. This makes the line go up for the sea wall companies.