I agree with you and I think that was @zecarlo 's point as well, though there’s obviously a significant portion of the population that will dispute the point. It would take a totalitarian form of government to simply strong-arm us into to doing the right thing, so we instead come up with incentives to elicit the preferred response. Naturally, the proportionality of those incentives gets argued and it inevitably gets tied to the perceived cost - which is how we end up here. But you’re right, establishing a carbon market is not a long-term goal and preserving the environment for our grandchildren is. But in the meantime, we’re going to spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about the vehicles that help us get there.
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@zecarlo @cyclonengineer @JKil116
I’m really appreciating the rationality of this discussion. As an aspiring economist, the “what is the cost” really hits home. At the same time, I agree with @cyclonengineer . Financial costs are a bit of a moot point if the earth is uninhabitable
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Growing up in a capitalist economy, it is hard to break free from the monetary cost above all else type thinking.
Looking back at many non-western cultures through history, the idea of putting money before community well being is fairly new.
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If only we could harness dirty energy to produce some type of air cooling system into which we could escape hot temperatures.
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You can’t break free from costs no matter what kind of economy you grow up in. Thomas Sowell’s 3 questions should be considered for any policy.
Compared to what?
At what cost?
What hard evidence do you have?
At what cost? becomes extremely pertinent when considering the scale of the perceived problem and the myriad of policy recommendations.
Going full Greta will cost a lot more than going full nuclear, which has unique costs of its own.
The scale of the issue is also such that there is no such thing as a real expert who can assess the totality of any given society-level course of action. Too many factors are in play.
I’ll also remind everyone that governments are often quite bad at doing difficult things and quite prone to passing stupid policies for optics.
My state government is presently in the process of suing a second HR software implementation partner, blaming the vendors for the inability of DAFS to follow proven implementation policy.
Of course, State of Maine had their top people working on the important stuff, like banning plastic straws and single use plastic bags.
Having found themselves unable to fix the roads and the IT infrastructure, State of Maine has instead shifted to fixing the planet. I think we will soon get tax credits for electric cars that we can use to traverse our decrepit, pock-marked roads.
I’m sure Greta is smiling at us from the confines of her volcanic lair.
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I’m not even sure why people immediately jump to “money,” “financial costs,” etc. when someone mentions costs.
I understand what you are getting at and there is of course a cost. however, to figure out solutions to the problem science should be looked at first, cost considered (at least monetary) considered second.
What if the concept of “an economy” is the root cause of many of these types of problems? (A question to ponder, not something I necessary believe)
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That’s all fine and good when you live in a country with access to said dirty energy and a fairly stable power grid.
This is not the standard for much of the world.
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Air conditioning, like indoor plumbing, existed thousands of years ago.
Sure, we do subsidize them. As a matter of fact we still subsidize oil companies to a degree if I recall correctly (I may not, but I’m frankly too lazy to look it up right now). I agree that it’s a confluence of govt and private sector, though I would not probably call it a union (to me that’s more than semantics).
In any case yes it exerts influence but it’s not unique, and if we are arguing scale it can be argued that Oil currently has much more scale and influence, so I would not take the equivalence lightly or at face value yet personally.
I absolutely do not agree with inflating utility bills, but I think that is different from traditional subsidies - which by definition are ALL funneling money towards a product or service that cannot currently compete somehow, whether it shows promise or because you need the sector (i.e. farms).
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I’m quite pleasantly shocked by it so far. I rather hope it continues.
I am frankly skeptical that the world will become uninhabitable through warming on any time scale that would matter to us. Now that does not address problems like rising sea level, or shifting coastlines, or what cycloneengineer posted above which is bubbles of inhabitable areas growing larger. But the Earth as a whole? I’m not convinced.
We still don’t even know all the variables yet, not by a long shot. Way too early for chicken little statements by people who make money off of fear.
BUT…
That also doesn’t mean we should ignore things. The uncertainty is huge, no doubt. But so are the potential consequences, and humans are notoriously bad at long term risk assessment. They always overshoot the importance of imminent or acute risks and tend to undervalue the long term ones.
I do not favor turning economies upside down, and I most certainly do not favor giving politicians more power. I oppose this strongly on philosophical and ideological grounds, but also because as twojarslave said - the scale of the issue is so large that there is no such thing as an expert that can assess the totality of a society level overhaul. There is thus not even a practical argument to make in favor of giving these people vast power.
However I do think there are things that can and should be done because you cannot quantify everything with a dollar amount.
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Sounds fucking familiar.
Ironically, the only government I will work with now is the CCP because they know how to cover their asses and even if they really fuck up to the point it warrants an investigation, the ones whom are investigating are actually educated or experienced with the type of projects so they know when it’s not the fault of 3rd party vendors.
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One of my big concerns with the climate change and “green” movement is that humans tried and true methods of curbing waste are no longer useful.
China used to buy a bunch of recyclable materials from the USA to, you know, recycle into other goods. However that isn’t happening anymore
So now more is being consumed to create more mountains of trash. In Florida, the only mountains we have are these massive landfills. There are three huge ones within a half hour of me to the north, south, and west.
Mass consumerism at its finest.
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Other doomsday stuff: declining species variety and increasing antimicrobial resistance. Yes, humans are a plague.
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Why not re-imagine waste disposal by crowd-sourcing the process back to the local level?
Call me a dreamer, but I’m imagining a world where everyone has a backyard burn pit. Take it from Uncle TwoJar, once you get a good tire fire going your waste disposal needs will be attended to for years to come.
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One of my favorite SF writers, Kim Stanley Robinson, has a bunch of books that envision significantly climate changed worlds. I’ve been meaning to get around to reading them (Science in the Capital series; New York 2140; The Ministry for the Future).
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When I lived in the St Louis area, the local landill (on the banks of the Missouri Rover) had/has an underground fire that has been burning for decades
What about the potential for nuclear war? Future pandemics? Mass, destructive recession (looks like Aus is going to go through a self induced recession), mass civil unrest and ensuing societal decay, a large scale natural disaster of epic proportions?
There are many ways by which the world could end within the next 60 years. Getting caught up on it is a good way to stay paralyzed in fear. Advocate for change, take small steps yourself to reduce your own carbon footprint. Otherwise try focus on the here and now
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Oh I get anxiety about those issues too
I’m part of an activist org and do my best (walking when I can, using as few plastic bags as possible, taking short showers, not buying a lot of stuff)
Not trying to derail the thread, but I’ve tackled this one by taking only cold showers. Two-fold benefit as I see it. Been at it consistently for 6 months and really liking it.
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