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Comment by yokaze | Hacker News Reader

Or laws/taxes are passed, which incorporate the externalities, and subventions for detrimental efforts are cut. That is "just" a matter of political will.

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How much war are you willing to wage to force other countries to do the same? I think that's really the only question that matters when it comes to the "everybody pass laws" plan.

You can never know when the tipping point is because either you haven't yet hit it, or you already have but don't know at which point in the past the death spiral could have been prevented, if at all.

This is an ineffective approach. No country can assume any other will fall in line to "do the same". This creates a do nothing approach because it turns doing the right thing, by taking the first steps, into a game of finger pointing. War is definitely not the answer and is 100% counterproductive to the end goal.

If all countries, that are supposedly interested in being the best climate change affectors, all competed to truly be the best - we'd be in a far better spot. The war you allude to is not international in nature. It's national. If the US, for example, actually removed campaign contributions and lobbying allowances from organizations responsible for a majority of annual pollution we'd already be down the road. But instead it is national politics, and those legislators, that are the real roadblock to starting the snowball move towards clean technology.

The problem with this approach, which I was trying to highlight, is that as long as "doing better by climate change" implies "economic disadvantage" there will be major polluters who do not get on board. What will you do with them? If you really believe this is an existential crisis for humanity, you must be willing to destroy these countries. Choose your poison: bomb them to oblivion or sanction/starve them to death. That is why this is a failed approach.

Your logic assumes everything in the world to be equal. The world is messy. If we don't start we all lose. The Internet wasn't bootstrapped because the world's countries all agreed on exactly the right way to implement networks and protocols and there are countries that have both contributed very little opposed to those that have contributed a lot. Moving to clean energy has huge economic advantage. So, again, your get on board or be destroyed is counterproductive and irrational. Heavy, one off, polluters can be dealt with after the fact.

>If we don't start we all lose.

I didn't suggest we don't start. I suggested the "everyone pass laws" plan has a fatal flaw the size of China and India.

>your get on board or be destroyed is counterproductive and irrational.

That's not my plan, it's yours. "Laws" are the get on board or be destroyed approach. You can do it domestically pretty easy, but it's much harder across national boundaries.

>Heavy, one off, polluters can be dealt with after the fact.

China already emits more than twice the US CO2. China is on track to double its emissions by 2030. How far are you willing to go to stop them? It's a very simple question.

Why would you need to stop China? They have invested more into renewable energy and electric transportation than any other country.

If we accept the axiom that CO2 emissions are an eminent threat to the existence of humanity, then I think the answer is obvious. This isn't a friendly competition for who can invest the most in green tech. This is a life or death race to rid the world of carbon emissions. The world's largest polluter doubling its emissions over the next decade cannot be accepted under those conditions.

China will stop when they contracted to and not before -- although their rapidly declining air quality may influence more action sooner. They have had a "developing country" pass through UN climate agreements as did India. I suspect no one 30 years ago expected us to be little further forward, nor China and India having mostly developed past "developing" status. COP25 was a joke sadly, so, we're screwed...

I think China committed and signed on to start reducing emissions in 2025 or 2030, I forget which.

> Choose your poison: bomb them to oblivion or sanction/starve them to death. That is why this is a failed approach.

>That's not my plan, it's yours.

Really? If you want to try and give your argument legs at least try not to contradict yourself in the same thread. And please don't state I made a claim falsely.

Also...

>China is on track to double its emissions by 2030

This isn't actually true [0].

[0] https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/current-pol...

>Really? If you want to try and give your argument legs at least try not to contradict yourself in the same thread. And please don't state I made a claim falsely.

I was explaining how the "we're all just going to pass laws" plan is the plan which leads to violence. You even copied the part where I said "That is why this is a failed approach."

>This isn't actually true [0].

The report I was reading is from 2009. If you include its emissions from deforestation and farming (as much as 1/3 of its emissions) it's still very closely on track.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/China-to-Double-P...

More generally, enforcement of the agreed mandates, whether laws within countries, or treaties without.

Here in the US, the selection of laws receiving effective enforcement seems a rather small sample of the vast pile typed out in dusty books.

With just a few big markets making the changes the rest of the world could be steered in the correct direction surely? If the US/EU etc. required that products coming in from China (or other countries where we offload our carbon use to) were created with less than X carbon released (differing per product) and with independent verification then they'd make the changes I'd imagine. Prices would go up of course which is likely why the political will isn't there, but I think it's disingenuous to say that the only way is war.

You could take that further too, say a 10% tariff on products coming from countries that buy beef from other countries who are cutting down the rainforest. I realise it would quickly become legislatively complicated, but isn't this the kind of hard problem we elect representatives for?

This is a very happy path engineering design. What will you do with countries who refuse to comply? Will you bomb them? Will you sanction/starve them to death? Is this really an existential crisis for our species? I want to know what cards you're willing to put on the table.

>What will you do with countries who refuse to comply?

What are you on about? They can't "refuse to comply" in the above scenario, because it's a matter of pricing in carbon on imports. They can either comply with a process to verify that all carbon inputs have already been neutralized, pay the cost to neutralize them, or else America/EU/Japan/whoever else participates will simply slap on a very conservative carbon price themselves. No cooperation is necessary, if they don't want to bother their products will simply be priced somewhat higher than if they had and thus they'll probably sell less.

>Is this really an existential crisis for our species?

Well, yeah, but at this point a lot could be done just by the first world fixing its markets to properly internalize carbon emissions and make all fossil fuels carbon neutral, which will then also help make a path for ramping up of negative emissions. China is certainly one of the biggest economies, but even they aren't in a position to just give up on all exports to the first world without more expense than just participating in a proper free market. It's in their interest too anyway.

They will then create workarounds, as they already do for tariffs. The most common one is to find an intermediary country and ship the goods through there.

Tariff's don't have to be high enough to starve out countries to cause change, most people seem to agree that the Chinese people only tolerate the CCP because their economy is growing, if tariff's slowed that then they'd be under pressure to do something to fix it. There are similar situations in countries all over the world.

Personally I think it is an existential threat to our way of life - if you take the most conservative predictions then at the very least there's going to be disruption to the global food supply (maybe not enough to starve everyone, but there'll be much less choice than now) and mass migration due to drought which could very easily kick off WW3.

I do believe though that if the political will was there in the big Western markets the worst of this could be avoided without it having to come to conflict. Most experts seem to be of the same opinion, the vast majority say a carbon tax is the best method available to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Major nuclear powers have a significant portion of their economies tied up in fossil fuels. They will not go down without a fight.

China already emits 2x US CO2 and is on track to double its emissions by 2030. There is no scale of trade war/tariffs I can imagine that will derail this.

Let's turn this around, if the markets that China sell to implement tariff's dependent on fossil fuel usage what do you expect them to do? How do you expect them to "fight" that?

Do you expect they'll just give up selling to those markets entirely? That would lead to less manufacturing in China and a reduction in carbon output from the country. Manufacturing in the US/EU etc. would likely take up some of the slack, but at a much lower carbon output and higher price.

Do you expect them to just continue selling with the tariff? That would lead to a reduction in sales, a reduction in manufacturing, a reduction in carbon output. As before I'd guess manufacturing in the US/EU etc. would take some of the slack.

Or do you expect them to start a war over it? Do you think killing their customers makes sense to them?

Personally I think it much more likely that they'd make the required changes, increase prices accordingly and continue to be the manufacturing hub of the world. Currently they have no reason to curb their carbon usage, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't do it if they were given an economic reason.

I am genuinely interested in how you think they'd "fight" a carbon tax from the US/EU etc., because I can't see a way where it doesn't reduce the amount of carbon being released compared to a world without the carbon tax.

I expect China, Russia, India, the US and others to lie. I expect them to steal. I expect them to sabotage. I expect them to wage economic and kinetic wars. I expect them to do everything in their power, evil or not, to give themselves an economic advantage.

Tariffs of the sort you're talking about are a great way to nudge countries in the right direction. China is already the largest polluter and is on track to double its emissions over the next decade. Stopping that will take quite a bit more than a nudge. It will take destroying their economy. Except they have nuclear weapons. I'm sorry, but we already can't get them to stop stealing our intellectual property, stop sending us products laced with lead, stop mass murder for organs, stop putting Uyghur men in concentration camps and then assigning a rapists to live with their families, stop sending fentanyl illegally the US which kills thousands every year. The idea we're going to apply enough pressure to China to turn around this boat which is going to double its CO2 emissions in the next decade seems like a complete fantasy.

Oh don't get me wrong, I think it's a fantasy even that the US/EU would implement a carbon tax on imports like this in the next decade anyway. It's too easy for us to offload the problem elsewhere and then do nothing because "we're nothing compared to China" even though our consumption drives their emissions.

I'm just looking for more realistic methods to slow emissions, I think it's more likely a carbon tax will be implemented than Western nations going to war over emissions, so I'll push for the more likely scenario that will slow the problem hopefully enough that I won't have to suffer the worst of the consequences.

Honestly though, my wife and I have decided against having children because we believe there's a high enough chance they won't have the quality of life we've been able to enjoy, so I agree with you that nothing significant will be done in time to curb the problem.

As the EU has recently hinted, climate may (I'd say pretty much guaranteed, only question is when) become a key point in any trading arrangements. Others will follow. Whether soon enough remains to be seen.

Want to sell to us? Prove your climate credentials, carbon accounting etc. No? Ok, your goods get the carbon levy.

What's eventually left is only the rogue states that refuse where sanctions, blockade or ultimately war may actually be the answer.

Really only comes down to how deep is the abyss we appear to be staring into... Though this can sometimes prompt enough action to get international laws passed.

No war necessary. Make it a condition of trade, a carbon tariff. If a sizable block of countries requires this any country without a carbon tax will be at a significant trade disadvantage.

I'd say another question worth asking is whether waging war, or antagonism of any kind, is the optimal way to approach this problem.

This seems to be the overwhelmingly preferred approach, but my intuition tells me that seeking a mutually agreeable path of cooperation would be a wiser approach. Not that this is easy of course - heck, even getting people to realize that we aren't actually doing this seems fairly impossible.

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