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spodek

The sad irony is that the pattern of

- knowing the science enough to know they're contributing to others suffering

- knowing what might happen with reasonable certainty

- but compartmentalizing that awareness internally to avoid acting

- hiding it externally

- and keeping doing what they were doing

describes the reactions of most individuals about climate change.

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And actively funding propaganda that delays action.

Also sounds exactly like what happened with tobacco companies, lead in paint/gasoline, etc.

It's like we never learn and then those who are in charge made rules to make it even harder to learn as we went forward.

Also that humans are terrible at existential threats.

The moral debate around climate change should center around what you just said. Either we are all compartmentalizing it, or we all honestly convinced of "no harmful effects worth worrying over." Most people that care about climate change have a lot of cognitive dissonance, trying to hold our institutions to a high standard but unable to act in a meaningful way.

Personally I believe that the amount of human suffering that will be caused by climate change will be small, but I'm unable to really discern whether motivated reasoning lead me to this conclusion. The evidence presented by both sides about the amount of human suffering that will be caused is highly questionable.

every item should be tax on how much money it would take to revert it back to it’s raw material and remove whatever air pollutants it produced. this is going beyond the carbon tax. such tax revenue can only be used on recycling or funding research on renewable energy or other energy sources like fusion.

It's not that simple and my guess is that the AG wont win it (neither do they care to)

Unless it can be demonstrated scientifically that humans are the primary cause of climate change (despite what you hear that causality is not established) I don't think there is any case what so ever unless some weird inconsequential settlement.

Also

A life without fossil fuel is a life most of us don't want to live.

So sure there are drawbacks with using fossil fuels just as there were with using wood or just as there is with dong or other lesser versions of fuel.

But the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. We wouldn't have this conversation if it wasn't for fossil fuel.

Last but not least. This smells of politics, not of justice. NY is trying to push for a much more green profile. So it's likely to do with that probably as an attempt at getting de-blasio nominated (yes politics is that scruppules)

> life without fossil fuel is a life most of us don't want to live.

This is downright silly. Sure I have a cellphone, car but I don't live for those things. I live for the people around me, and they are not made of fossil fuel.

You don't just have a cellphone. You have ambulances, you have food, you have medicine, you have heat, you have buildings, you have more or less 80% of your surroundings based on fossil fuels. In other words, there would be much less people around you to live for if it wasn't for fossil fuels.

It's silly to claim you can live without which is why we don't and aren't even close to doing that in the rich countries.

We've had the technology to do all of that without fossil fuels for decades. We are close to doing it in rich countries today, despite both active opposition and the usual passivity of the status quo. Renewable energy sources are now cheaper than non-renewables, across the board, regardless of subsidies in either direction. England for the first time since the Industrial Revolution generated more power with renewable sources than fossil fuels this year. Norway, an oil exporter, is on a path to be entirely fossil fuel free soon inside the country's borders. Germany and even the US have also had periods where large amounts of the country's energy grids were entirely renewable.

It's silly to claim we are entirely reliant on fossil fuels for all our modern conveniences, when everything but cars/trucks/shipping is mostly energy source independent and the grid is overall greener than it has ever been in decades, and getting greener. (And we certainly have the technology to solve cars/trucks/shipping today, too.)

You can call it silly all you want it doesn't change the facts.

We aren't close to doing anything even in rich countries. Wind and solar is less than 1% of world energy. And even in countries that are rich the cost is pushed onto the consumers just ask Germany.

https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR3eH1AFcRSPSEit8JINLCMvE_...

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