Climate change and human responsibility

[Mr.Coffee]

From the green side of the debate, Itse makes some of the most compelling realistic points in this thread.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

From the green side of the debate, Itse makes some of the most compelling realistic points in this thread.

Realistic in that they don’t rely on any new technology to implement. In terms of execution I’d say they’re essentially pipe dreams. The economic impacts of his suggestions would be devastating.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Itse

Does that shut down coal plants, preferably in less than a decade? Because if it doesn't, then it doesn't really do much.

We don't need more green energy. We need less fossil energy.

Well, if enough people "vote with their wallets" then there will be more money to spend on green energy, and that will displace coal. But I suspect 99% of the climate strikers are not paying extra for green energy, even though they could.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

From the green side of the debate, Itse makes some of the most compelling realistic points in this thread.

He does. But it's going to take a lot. Aleks makes a good pointabout working hours. Is transit going to run 24/7 for the odd rider? Are you paying for that bus driver? Are people going to have to live closer together and bike at 2am, to get somewhere at 3am?

Heck, Calgary Transit just cut $60 million out of the budget.

The last 50 years, urban planning has not considered green initiatives. It's been built for comfort and convenience. People have chosen to live in big houses 1 hour away from downtown. I don't know how we roll that back.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Salt Water Cowboy #10

This is the way to change. Waiting for some bumbling politician to force corporations to change takes years if it happens at all.

We already know how "voting with our wallets" goes. We've tried that approach for decades now. This is the result of that process. We've been hoping for the magic hand of markets to fix this for as long as I've lived. It's just not going to happen.

People can be collectively awesome in short focused spurts with a clearly defined goal.

But on a daily, individual level we're lazy and selfish and mostly preoccupied with being entertained and employed and getting laid every now and then.

[dre]

Originally Posted by Itse

We already know how "voting with our wallets" goes. We've tried that approach for decades now. This is the result of that process. We've been hoping for the magic hand of markets to fix this for as long as I've lived. It's just not going to happen.

People can be collectively awesome in short focused spurts with a clearly defined goal.

But on a daily, individual level we're lazy and selfish and mostly preoccupied with being entertained and employed and getting laid every now and then.

Where do regulations stop Itse? We should consider restructuring the NHL too. Flames travelled 40,000 miles last year. Since pro sports are just for our entertainment, maybe we need to take a look at pro sports as well.

[Corral]

Yep ^^ and I cringe at how the market ideology changed the narrative from a country of citizens to a country of consumers. What collective action problem has the market solved in the modern era? Poverty? Hunger? Pollution? Fisheries collapse? None of the above. The market needs help even in its home building the financial markets!

That being said I also believe it is too late for collective action to prevent the worst of climate change. Ie the conservatives are correct when they say other parts of the world will simply replace whatever emissions we cut.

There is no happy ending on climate change.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Corral

Yep ^^ and I cringe at how the market ideology changed the narrative from a country of citizens to a country of consumers. What collective action problem has the market solved in the modern era? Poverty? Hunger? Pollution? Fisheries collapse? None of the above. The market needs help even in its home building the financial markets!

That being said I also believe it is too late for collective action to prevent the worst of climate change. Ie the conservatives are correct when they say other parts of the world will simply replace whatever emissions we cut.

There is no happy ending on climate change.

The market solves every problem it’s been given the incentive to solve. Carbon is not a priced externality so the market doesn’t care. Overfishing - non priced externality. Hunger - the market did its job driving down food costs and ensuring that more calories are produced than required to be consumed. The market also excelled in making money through financial markets and they correctly priced in the externalities that governments would bail them out. The market responds to all incentives almost perfectly.

In 1990 a Carbon tax increasing modestly each year and applied globally would have solved climate change. It’s what the market does.

Too late for that now. Geo-engineering needs to begin aggressively to give time for the market to find the solutions.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Realistic in that they don’t rely on any new technology to implement. In terms of execution I’d say they’re essentially pipe dreams. The economic impacts of his suggestions would be devastating.

Outside of public transport, they're not even expensive.

In most countries that whole list of suggestions would barely even register on a list of "biggest public projects in history".

Planting trees is dirt cheap. Sure you need to buy land to do it and that's not exactly free, but it's not particularly expensive. (Especially for a country like Canada or Finland, with a relatively sparse population.)

Canada and Finland both only produce about 9% of their electricity with coal. New energy plants get built anyway all the time, often with private money. Shutting down all coal plants would not be a huge deal.

Electric cars are not, in principle, any more expensive than fossil fuel ones.

Moving government subsidies from producing one type of energy to another type of energy doesn't cost anything, in jobs or company productivity for the most part. It'd mostly be the same companies just owning different power plants. It's not like the fossil fuel industry is an especially labor intensive field. Electricity would likely be somewhat more expensive in the short term admittedly, but not crazily so.

Food would likely be cheaper overall.

Making appliances and clothes etc to last does not significantly alter their costs.

Also, a very short lesson on how market economies work;

Let's say that for example the profits of consumer electronics takes a hit because people don't need to replace every gadget they own every two years. For the most part the money that does not go into consumer electronics just goes elsewhere. Unless your economy is especially reliant on making consumer electronics, the overall economy would be fine.


Of course the whole argument that stopping catastrophic uncontrolled climate change is "expensive" is in itself just really ####ing stupid.

What do you think the effect on global economy would be when about 570 coastal cities globally are simultaneously sinking into the sea? That's an estimated 1 trillion dollars worth of property just lost, and 800 million people go from being the drivers of economy to refugees? "Pacific Ocean now coming to Richmond near you".

That's the actual "devastating effect on economy" scale.

The economic scale I'm suggesting is on the scale of mildly inconvenient tax raises.

There is no option C where you don't have to pay anything.

There is only
A: "You pay a little and suffer a little" or
B: "You pay a lot and suffer a lot".


The math doesn't look very complicated to me.

[Azure]

The land issue with trees isn't as serious as one would think when you realize how much federal owned land there is.

Also, there are a lot of land owners who would love for trees to be planted on their land for shelter belts.

[Corral]

Originally Posted by GGG

The market solves every problem it’s been given the incentive to solve. Carbon is not a priced externality so the market doesn’t care. Overfishing - non priced externality. Hunger - the market did its job driving down food costs and ensuring that more calories are produced than required to be consumed. The market also excelled in making money through financial markets and they correctly priced in the externalities that governments would bail them out. The market responds to all incentives almost perfectly.

In 1990 a Carbon tax increasing modestly each year and applied globally would have solved climate change. It’s what the market does.

Too late for that now. Geo-engineering needs to begin aggressively to give time for the market to find the solutions.

But failure to ensure complete cost accounting is by definition the very reason why the market fails to solve collective action problems. Externalities are a creation of market ideology. Sure the market ensures more calories are produced than consumed, however it will not discriminate on who consumes the calories. Hence its inability to solve collective hunger.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Itse

It's also a complete fantasy that voting with your wallet could tackle something like carbon emissions.

For that to work, you'd need basically everyone to change their spending habits, keep updating their knowledge level on carbon emissions to be aware of what are the low emission choices, and you need everyone to keep doing this every day for the rest of their lives.

Or you could get 51% of the people to vote for major changes for a few years, and then you could have a government that puts in regulations which takes care of the same without everybody needing to constantly self-police their own spending habits.

What you suggest is so hard I call it a fantasy. Never going to happen.

I think we just disagree on which path is 'easier' and/or 'more likely'. Both of our proposals involve two steps:

1. Individuals changing their behaviour
2. The 'Big Guys' responding in kind - for me it's the market, for you it's the government (actually I might say you have three steps, because you want the government to move the market)

The answer is probably a combination of both.

What I'm suggesting is a much, much easier way of getting more done, faster and with much less effort needed from most people. It's much easier to get someone to vote for something than it is to get them to watch what they buy forever and ever. I know I would much rather have someone put in some regulation that would free me to buy what I want without having to think about my carbon footprint all the damned time, simply because of personal convenience.

The only thing "voting wíth your wallet" does affect is general opinion, which is important in eventually getting the votes in.

That's why everyone who cares needs to do it. It does not actually affect carbon emissions in a measurable way, but it does play it's part in the attempt of trying to get a majority of voters and politicians behind this thing for at least a while, until they get distracted by something like terrorism or refugees or American Idol.

Changing voting behaviour is not particularly fast or easy, as you seem to somewhat acknowledge. But even if we achieve that (like we maybe kind of sort of did in 2015), the next step requires the government to follow through, and follow through in a not stupid way.

"Did they vote us in for climate change? Or electoral reform? Or legal weed? Hmmm, well now that I actually look at the numbers, it might not be as easy as I thought. Plus, I've had lots of great meetings with really powerful and influential people recently who seem really smart and make a lot of compelling points. I wouldn't be here without their support...and like I said, they wouldn't be rich and influential if they weren't smart. So...legal weed it is!"

Originally Posted by Itse

We already know how "voting with our wallets" goes. We've tried that approach for decades now. This is the result of that process. We've been hoping for the magic hand of markets to fix this for as long as I've lived. It's just not going to happen.

People can be collectively awesome in short focused spurts with a clearly defined goal.

But on a daily, individual level we're lazy and selfish and mostly preoccupied with being entertained and employed and getting laid every now and then.

Have we though? Costco is still running cheek to jowl every hour it is open, filled primarily with boomers buying more stuff than they could ever use.

Then again, we've at least convinced them to recycle most of their packaging now (even though it's a fools errand) and compost the 20 tomatoes they didn't eat from their 60 pack. 'Green' products have exploded (again, largely an environmental mirage) and there has been a resurgence of local marketplaces selling local goods.

Boomers are still the most influential voting-blocks and wallet-blocks. I don't have much faith in changing their voting behaviour (or the subsequent follow through then required), but I feel we are at least making a bit of progress in them reconsidering their purchase of a 10 lb bag of apples from New Zealand (though I acknowledge the progress is still too slow).

The silver lining I see to my approach is the reciprocal benefits of making these changes. Instead of a 90 minute+ round trip to Costco every 10 days (including the "epic" gas savings from idling in line for 10 mins at the gas bar) you go to your nearest grocer every 5 days. Maybe sometimes you even walk! Before long, you realize that you don't need that big deep freeze in your basement to hold an extra 6 loaves of bread and frozen pizzas you bought in 2008 (but were never visible because you kept buying new ones when they were on sale at Costco). $5 per month saved. Buying fresh and local starts to feel good, and you start to feel good. Yada yada yada, eventually you see that the financial differences are minimal (just as likely to save as to spend more) and that many of the lifestyle changes were actually beneficial in the long run.

Ultimately, I'm arguing that consumers can generate very real carrots for the market to exploit to mutual benefit. I see your approach as requiring the government to mandate artificial sticks and artificial carrots that actually make sense and work to the benefit of all...doesn't sound particularly fast nor easy to me.

Sadly, we're both living in fantasy-land. But ~50/50 of both approaches is probably the best bet...

[zamler]

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Incentives, tax dirty energy etc. that's all wonderful except there is nothing on a mass scale to replace carbon energy and especially using oil to make products. There is no alternative currently.

It will be an economic and technological miracle if in 50 years 50% of our energy and goods production is from renewable sources.

[Azure]

On the food side, heavily subsidizing locally grown produce and working on the community level to increase the size and occurrence of the farmers market would help a lot.

Awareness campaigns built around supporting your local economy, local grower, local farmer, local meatshop, etc.

Just hammer away at it and keep stealing market share.

[Azure]

It is not necessary to stop using oil based products. We JUST need to replace carbon based energy, or find a way to create it cleaner.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Azure

It is not necessary to stop using oil based products..

I disagree, pretty much everything made from petroleum is difficult or impossible to recycle and will take 10,000 years to break down.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Corral

But failure to ensure complete cost accounting is by definition the very reason why the market fails to solve collective action problems. Externalities are a creation of market ideology. Sure the market ensures more calories are produced than consumed, however it will not discriminate on who consumes the calories. Hence its inability to solve collective hunger.

Of course, but the government can’t solve problems efficiently on its own. It is terrible at picking the correct solution. It’s role is to ensure externalities are properly priced in.

A well regulated market is what is required for the solution.

For example closing every coal plant might be the correct solution. However instead of the government banning coal. The cost of CO2 should be attributed to coal and then the market will close them, covert them to gas or move to 100% Carbon Capture. If you just ban it you exclude creative solutions that could occur.

So the complaint that the market can’t solve a problem seems kind of ridiculous. The market solves every problem you ask it to.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by zamler

I disagree, pretty much everything made from petroleum is difficult or impossible to recycle and will take 10,000 years to break down.

Again, only because the way we are recycling right now isn't working.

We free dump most of our 'waste.'

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Azure

Again, only because the way we are recycling right now isn't working.

We free dump most of our 'waste.'

Maybe you're right. But for example think about a power tool that uses glass fiber reinforced plastic how do you recycle that? It takes a bevy of chemicals to break it down, or you grind it into pellets, melt it, purify, then make other products. The process and energy to do that from what I've read is hardly worth the trouble.

And we basically know plastic is not something feasible financially to recycle that's why 90% of it ends up in the ground. There has to be a better way.

[Corral]

Originally Posted by GGG

Of course, but the government can’t solve problems efficiently on its own. It is terrible at picking the correct solution. It’s role is to ensure externalities are properly priced in.

A well regulated market is what is required for the solution.

For example closing every coal plant might be the correct solution. However instead of the government banning coal. The cost of CO2 should be attributed to coal and then the market will close them, covert them to gas or move to 100% Carbon Capture. If you just ban it you exclude creative solutions that could occur.

So the complaint that the market can’t solve a problem seems kind of ridiculous. The market solves every problem you ask it to.

Well it may be that you and I are not far apart on this. However what you describe as market regulation sounds to me like market intervention by the state. The market is not a panacea for climate action. If what you are saying is that state intervention is needed than we are agreed.

Market purists would say that market regulation should be limited to ensuring transparency and eliminating transaction costs. Imposing a price is intervention not regulation IMHO