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Comment by badpun | Hacker News Reader

It sounds almost like the disruption necessary to stop global warming is greater than the disruption that would be caused by the global warming.

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When no one can forecast plausible consequences for global warming that have any consistency, it's very hard to have any idea. We have wild apocalyptic visions of the world ending in twelve years, or Mad Max resource scarcity causing the downfall of society, massive sealevel rises wiping out coastal cities. Or it could be an adjustment of a degree or two upward, to bring us in line with the averages for the Medieval Warm Period and other previous climate optimums.

Nor do we have any real understanding of the equilibrium effects of the climate, and many who are pushing climate models are quite obviously ignorant of shifts in global temperature and atmospheric composition on a paleontological scale.

Nobody really knows what the hell is going to happen, and when presented with rank fear-mongering, it's prudent to puzzle yourself with the classic question, cui bono?

Applying the classic question, I'd conclude that the confusion is probably exactly what those who 'bono' the most from inaction are actively creating, and I'd put my money on the many scientists across disciplines who seem to be panicking instead.

When concerned scientists and climate alarmists stop flying in airplanes I might give their warnings of impending dire consequences more credit.

Until the smartest or most concerned folks begin to consistently eat their own dog food I won't either.

I smoke because even though lots of doctors tell me it'll kill me, many of them are smokers too.

Pain now or in the near term always seems far more severe than pain in the further future. Let's suppose that unrestrained global warming will reduce agricultural production to the point where it's no longer viable to grow any meat (or maybe 1% as much). Alternatively we could reduce our meat consumption in the near future by 90%, as part of a broad sustainability program, and be able to maintain that level of meat production indefinitely.

That's the sort of tradeoff we might be looking at.

The difference is that if it's a consequence of nature then people will just accept it. If it's a consequence of politics, then people will fight wars over it. How are you going to stop a sovereign country from growing food that they want? If your trade deals can't offer them more than what your restrictions on them are, then the only option is to intervene by force and institute an authoritarian rule.

Politics isn’t all about coercion. Persuasion and consensus can work just fine. Nobody’s about to start a war over other countries growing too much cattle on their own territory, but as the direct and tangible consequences of climate change become increasingly apparent, I expect the imperative for change to become more broadly accepted. The Paris agreements show that there is broad agreement internationally already.

There’s also no need to draconian enforcement. We can start with a ramped increasing environmental tax on meat products, reductions in farm subsidies on the same, etc. 50 years ago smoking was ubiquitous as a core social and recreational activity, now it’s marginalised. The same could happen to meat eating.

The Paris agreement probably doesn't gave informed consent of the population. I know very few people who are okay with increasing meat prices and reducing their consumption. Finding consensus on this where the people, not just the elite (politicians), agree is going to be difficult. Some countries are just going to disagree. Some are going to use these kinds of talks and rules to play political games etc. How are you going to force a country like China to follow this?

>50 years ago smoking was ubiquitous as a core social and recreational activity, now it’s marginalised.

Meat is the easiest way to get a reasonably balanced diet. There's a reason why we've eaten meat for longer than we've been humans. You're not going to curb that anywhere as easily as smoking. I would even be willing to bet that there are many many many people in the world who would be willing to fight to be able to eat meat.

A lot of this thread leads like the dreams of authoritarians.

not sure youre being sarcastic or not... of course the disruption due global warming will be vastly greater than the disruption caused by trying to prevent it, that much is a given

Even if the actual disruption was the same magnitude - if you have control over the disruption, it is much more pleasant one than the one you don't have any control over.

Is it though? Because if humans have control over it, then you can be sure that humans will fight over it. How would the US tell Russia to pollute less?

> How would the US tell Russia to pollute less?

Easy. This has actually been done many times during Cold War.

You do it yourself, and so well, that their citizens will demand it too.

There were many social advances in the West that were imported (usually in a crippled way, but still) to the communist countries (I was born in one). Things like 5-day work week, education improvements, recycling, ecological laws, nuclear proliferation treaties... usually it's very small things, but they do make difference.

But these aren't advances. We're talking about a reduction in quality of life. If we want to reduce the amount of meat people eat because it's a major contributor to climate change, then we'll have to do this through taxes or other such means. If Russia doesn't want to go along with it and has their people eat as much meat as they want then the US would be powerless.

What you suggest only works if you're talking about improving quality of life.

That's not true. Things like ecological or workplace safety regulations are improvements to quality of life at the expense of economic production. Averting global warming also does increase quality of life.

> has their people eat as much meat as they want

It's not healthy to eat that much meat anyway.

> then the US would be powerless

And you shouldn't panic. The US is far from powerless. There are many countries in Europe that for example do not have nuclear weapons. Does it make them dead? No, they continue to live, in fact often with high quality of life.

This worry that you somehow "lose the race", it's such a nonsense (reminds me of "mineshaft gaps" from Dr. Strangelove).

The wealthier will be disrupted relatively more by mitigating climate change as they consume more and have the means to invest. The poor will be disproportionately affected by climate change and are less able to adapt. So even if everyone is worse off overall without mitigation measures against climate change now, the rich would be relatively stronger and so may consider later adaptation preferable to present mitigation.

How is that different from saying that wealthier people are better off, and that this will continue to be the case?

Without climate change inequalities might well increase, but with it they will increase more. I’m also saying that the wealthy may not actually be better off, but they may be relatively better off compared to the less wealthy (e.g. absolute wealth might decrease but relative inequality might increase). For example poorer people may lose land to flooding and go from subsistence to poverty.

Edit: lots of articles about this online, but e.g. http://time.com/5575523/climate-change-inequality/ has some sobering statistics on the likely impact of climate change: e.g. "A 2015 study in the journal Nature projected that the average income in the poorest countries will decline 75% by 2100 compared to a world without warming".

I don't think this is true, unless when you say "the rich" you mean "90% of the population of the West".

Resource consumption happens by a person. There's only so many resources a person will use while being rich. A rich person might consume far more resources than a poor person, but rich people collectively have a much smaller impact than the poor, because there are far fewer of them. This means that if you start tackling climate change and the impact is that food becomes more expensive, then poor people will be far more affected by this than rich people.

I think this probably needs a proper analysis either way, but Oxfam (I realise not a source everyone agrees with) claims 50% of emissions come from the top 10% (this wouldn't just be the "West" - Middle East oil states, rich Asian countries, and rich people worldwide generally all contribute and some in the West probably maintain relatively low carbon lifestyles).

https://theconversation.com/emissions-inequality-there-is-a-... has the Oxfam discussion.

There would be an impact on poor people as you say, but this depends on the exact policies adopted. A study such as the one summarised and linked here: http://bruegel.org/2018/11/distributional-effects-of-climate... would be needed to confirm either way - their conclusion is that climate change mitigation efforts are potentially but not necessarily regressive with respect to wealth distribution.

I don't know any simulations of either scenarios, so I can't tell if the disruptions are comparable or not. It was just my thought at the pretty harrowing and grand scale list of sacrifices we would need to make to stop global warming. Maybe the alternative is worse, I don't know.

Yep. IPCC AR4 report claims that climate change will cost about 5% of GDP by 2100. That comes to a net present value of about 0.1% of GDP (assuming 3% growth).

What part of "eating less meat / driving less/ relocalize industry" will kill people from heatwaves and cause mass migrations?

Relocalizing industry will certainly cause mass migrations (people will follow the industry).

You're being intellectually dishonest here.

Relocalizing industry is a controlled process, where the direction of the flux of people is known, and housing and infrastructure sizing can be planned and handled, and people won't follow the industry if they can't get acceptable living conditions.

Mass migrations from climate change are due to unexpected meteorological events either directly (floods, heat waves, etc), or indirectly (food scarcity, drinkable water shortages, political instability, etc). The scale, location and time are unpredictable. The people concerned will need to migrate and have to live in unsanitary housing camps.

History suggests that desperate people will attempt to follow the industry regardless of how horrendous the living conditions may be.

not even close

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