Comment by blondie9x | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blondie9x | Hacker News Reader

Governments of this planet are not moving quickly enough on climate change with small incremental changes over time. However, people and organizations who champion these efforts can pressure governments to drive faster change.

Climate Pledge

To protect all of humanity globally now and for the future of our posterity I am committing to the following.

I pledge to limit eating red meat. I will restrict intake of cows and lambs etc. If I choose to have children, I will have 2 or less. I will try to use cycling or mass transit options whenever possible and to participate in efforts to expand transit. I will restrict flying to only when necessary and try to limit flying to only when no other choice is available. If I do fly I will try to offset all emissions. I will try my utmost to conserve energy and minimize use of heating and cooling appliances. I will try my best to limit energy use to renewable sources when I have the choice. When I cannot choose I will fight for the ability to have this choice. I will try to help those close to me understand these choices and the need for those able, to also join the pledge. I will only consume what I need. I will not perpetuate extravagance and will only support companies who champion sustainable efforts. I will do my best to strive for and support sustainable and minimalist technology. I will stay involved in the public discourse on environmental issues and stay engaged on efforts to mitigate climate change.

I know its the trend to say individual effort is useless but I think the best thing about individual effort is it gets you in the mindset of conserving and a population that has made a habit of putting in their part will be extra frustrated when they see corporations and governments not putting in their part.

It also prepares people for systematic change which will result in us having to do most of these things anyway.

Would be cool if instead of me thinking about offsetting my emissions for the flight tickets I buy... The government would implement a tax that just does that.

And they could do similarly for all other products relating to emissions.

The government could achieve that by installing the right taxes of these energy sources destroying the environment.

It would be cool but they haven't done it and we don't have time to sit and wait. If we start self enforcing these rules on ourself then when it comes to election time people will be more open to voting for a government that does this.

The people likely to self-enforce these rules are exactly the people that would already vote for a carbon tax. The real problem are the majority who either don't care, or actively believe that climate change is a Chinese hoax.

A nice element of carbon taxes is that, if desired by voters, can be revenue-neutral and substitute other tax revenues. This helps encourage your economy to grow in ways that avoid environmental externalities.

Canada has recently implemented one federally and it has a lot of pushback in regions where a larger portion of their economy has historically come from bitumen tar sands. Other regions with different economies are more receptive to it.

Would be cool if instead of me thinking about offsetting my emissions for the flight tickets I buy... The government would implement a tax that just does that.

Taxes to stop behavior are bunk in this context. There's a lot of consumption that's necessary for many in some amount and luxury for other who afford a vast amount. Taxes cut into some people's basic survival and economic activity while not stopping over people's consumption.

What is necessary is the state to dictate to various industries and companies that they must stop CO2 production - by changing their products and production methods.

The simplest thing is that US is to mandate a lot more travel by bus. No one likes that but hey, no like a burning planet.

> more travel by bus. No one likes that but hey, no like a burning planet.

Says who? I hate driving, I find it the most soul crushing and time wasting activity there is. In comparison I find taking the bus to be relatively relaxing and cheaper.

What I don't like is a shitty bus service that doesn't take me to where I need to go or only comes every hour. Some areas may only have a shitty bus service and this is probably where you got the idea from but lets not pretend that this is just a reality of public transport.

I think the idea that red meat will always be far worse for the environment then other food is a bit of a red herring and conflated with ethics of animal eating. There are many factors not considered in those statistics such as nutrient absorption and protein quality.

While it is true that carbon emissions are worse for grain fed animals (most of the red meat you see) it doesn't have to be this way. "Regenerative agriculture" claims to you raise carbon neutral (or negative) beef farms by restoring the native plant life and replenishing the soil. This won't feed the entire earth, but I try to support grass fed farms and obtain most of my red meat from them. Chriss Kresser offers some interesting points on this topic.

....but he can’t read forest plots sooo...

Oxford and CSIRO already proved grass fed cattle emit more greenhouse gases then CAFO grain fed, and that's after taking into account sequestration

Thanks for this I'm reading about it now.

Imagine taking advice from Chriss Kresser unironically.

Can you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested. I admit only a shallow investigation into this topic and its certainly not my wheelhouse.

I respect your creed, but I'm not religious so I don't think I'll adopt it.

> If I choose to have children, I will have 2 or less.

This is the only thing that actually matters. Everything else you’ve listed is a rounding error compared to this.

Although I’m curious how you came up with two as your threshold.

It's a copypasta. OP didn't make up the number 2 but I'm guessing it comes down to 2 being a tolerable number to most people.

I mean, it's literally the replacement population. 2 parents die, 2 children remain.

Technically you need a little more than 2 because people die without having children occasionally.

Two is slightly below replacement rate so will result in a steadily decreasing population which would solve many environmental issues but itself.

The delay on population decisions is huge. We need action before the impact of any population decrease is felt. In any case, the population of the Western World is stable or decreasing and the places where population is increasing couldn't care less about personal responsibility for decreasing climate change.

>the places where population is increasing couldn't care less about personal responsibility for decreasing climate change.

I wouldn't say this is necessarily true, it's more that they have other things to care about. We can't criticise developing nations for enjoying the same luxuries we did a hundred years ago. It should be our (first world) job to ensure they get the same benefits from fossil fuels as we did, such as transport freedom and easy access to electricity, but using environmentally friendly technology. Unfortunately, we can't even get ourselves away from fossil fuels quick enough, so this is likely not going to happen.

Also, developing countries emit far fewer emissions per capita when you look at consumption-based emissions [0]. This isn't necessarily a problem with the number of people, it's a problem with the type of lifestyle people want and expect. Even if population increase stopped entirely climate change would get far worse if everyone on Earth had a 1st world lifestyle of red meat, SUVs and yearly holidays.

Population increase is obviously a problem but it's an overstated one. If everyone went vegetarian, which is going to have to happen at some point, the planet can sustain 10 billion people [1], which we're only forecasted to hit in 2100, if we even a) make it that far and b) don't see a reversal in population growth, which has been predicted.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/global-inequalities-co2-consumpti... [1] https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-suppor...

I wouldn't say this is necessarily true, it's more that they have other things to care about. We can't criticise developing nations for enjoying the same luxuries we did a hundred years ago.

Well, no.

The only means of survival for the human species going into the 20-40 seems to be coming up with energy-efficient ways for everyone to enjoy a decent standard of living.

Also, developing countries emit far fewer emissions per capita when you look at consumption-based emissions [0]. This isn't necessarily a problem with the number of people, it's a problem with the type of lifestyle people want and expect.

Yeah, emphasizing population is ineffective and kind of misanthropic. The thing is, the large population of the third world certainly reach the point of consuming to first world standards and first-world inefficiencies. Then we'd be more even more doomed than now.

What's your opinion on China's and India's impact on global warming? I am honestly interested.

If the US had the same per capita emissions as India I'd personally organize a parade in the streets. I'd openly weep with how amazing that would be. I'd build statues to the leaders who made that happen.

That's how I feel about India's impact on global warming.

You’d be incredibly poor though, because the US produces a tremendous amount of wealth in GDP per carbon emission - much greater than India or China.

That wealth is not yours.

India and the US emit almost exactly the same C02 per GDP dollar, but China is quite a lot worse.

Germany, OTOH is over 1/3rd less than the US and similarly rich, and Japan is quite efficient too.

Figures in kg per PPP $ of GDP

  China: 0.561
  Germany: 0.189
  India: 0.304
  Japan: 0.243
  US: 0.3

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?view=...

Germany burns a lot of lignite (the dirtiest kind of coal) as well as hard coal, so imagine what that figure would be if the political will existed to shut those power plants down.

To answer the question, 38.6% of Germany's CO2 emissions are from power generation [1], and around 70% of those are from coal power plants [2]. That's 27% of total emissions from burning coal.

[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/co2-emissionen-103.ht...

[2] Figure 10, https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/14...

so imagine what that figure would be if the political will existed to shut those power plants down.

Today Germany announced:

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and Germany's four coal-producing states unveiled details of their plan to phase out coal at the latest by 2038 on Thursday.

The plans outline a timeline for decommissioning lignite-coal power plants in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg as well as easing the financial transition for the states and energy firms involved.

Energy firms will receive a €4.35 billion ($4.85 billion) payout to compensate for the coal phaseout.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-pay-energy-firms-billions-i...

These plans have been public for a while and have been heavily criticised for being far too unambitious. Some of the lignite plants are not scheduled for shutdown until 2034, and hard coal until 2038.

Loudly touting that we're the first to bindingly exit coal with a 2038 target when France's target is 2022, they just haven't enshrined it in law, and Britain's power generation was coal-free for nearly half of 2019 (3665 out of 8760 hours), with a shutdown target of 2025 and coal accounting for just 2% of their electricity generation compared to 40% for Germany's, is just sad. That statement is incredibly carefully crafted to avoid being an outright lie, while still being extremely misleading.

"Coal supplied 2% of UK electricity in 2019, down from 30% in 2014." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal_fired_powe...), and 40% in 2012, sounds a lot better to me.

I don't disagree, but I live in Australia where our PM brings coal into parliament to say how much he loves it. 2038 would be a great goal here...

Only if you assume that the US reduces their emissions by going back to a rural lifestyle. Instead the US could replace fossil fuels with renewables and keep their wealth.

We are going to be incredibly poor anyway if we can't reduce emissions.

If we (developed nations) could all lower our per capita carbon footprints to the levels of China, or even better India, we'd all be doing much better wouldn't we?

https://cotap.org/per-capita-carbon-co2-emissions-by-country...

China's carbon per PPP-GDP is about twice as bad as most developed countries, so you're either proposing making everyone poor, or making everyone's economy more carbon inefficient. Either way the answer is "no."

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?most_...

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