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Comment by deanclatworthy | Hacker News Reader

What I have found more frustrating than those in denial of climate change lately, is those who deny responsibility. That the real problem is in other countries. India. China. America. Little old X in Europe can't possible be the ones that need to sort it out. Therefore there's no point changing our habits.

I feel a little hopeless in these discussions. I have little hope for change. I cannot argue against the fact that our impact in Europe will not be enough. This requires a global, concerted effort and it's hard to argue against the logic that it won't matter what we do in Europe if everyone else doesn't follow suit. We are just delaying the inevitable.

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The only way to combat a Tragedy of the Commons problem is through collective action.

Unilateral changes actually have a net negative impact because other parties simply consume more (CO2 in this case).

> Unilateral changes actually have a net negative impact because other parties simply consume more (CO2 in this case).

I fail to see your logic. If many people consume less petroleum maybe the price goes down and others consume more, but I don't see how they're going to consume more than what was the state of things in the first place.

Honestly it seems like a shallow rationalization to avoid taking personal responsibility for your actions. That might sound harsh but I'm a firm believer in extreme ownership as espoused by Jocko Willink. I'm allergic to excuses and rationalizations.

It's very simple. If Country A reduces CO2 production by closing a few factories, and Country B increases CO2 production to replace that market demand, Country A will have spent economic resources in making that change, and Country B would simply be producing what A+B produced before.

It's a net negative for the world.

I see, you're talking not about unilateral personal choices, but unilateral country choices.

It's not that simple, there are many unilateral choices a country can make that would not have a net negative effect. For example if you close a coal power plant in Virginia, China is not simply going to build one and sell the power to the US - there are physical limitations there.

You have a valid point that a country needs to think about unintentional consequences of their decisions, something politicians are notoriously bad at, but claiming that all unilateral action is net negative is such a ludicrous strawman that I don't actually beleive that's your position on the subject.

How do you know there is a negative effect? I can see some people buying more because something is on sale, but that's temporary and overall a smaller market should consume less.

Because there is a cost to not using that common good and pursuing an alternative energy source.

Even for the cheapest approach, there is still a cost to consuming more rather than less. Energy isn't free.

The thing is, the people blaming others also tend to strongly oppose collective action solutions.

Eg a carbon tax is better than individual action. And if combined with an international effort to apply it to imports, it would be even more effective.

But the people in question tend to say “oh, it could never be done. Others would oppose. [let’s do nothing]”

One way to approach this perhaps is to look at emissions per capita. Norway, as an example, is a way bigger offender (or at least has been, haven’t check recent data) than China by this metric.

And it _is_ a political problem at this point. You cant really demand change from people around you if you’re not prepared to do the same yourself.

It largely depends on how you count emissions. Norway has very low emissions per capita, as they have the right geography for hydroelectric power (with which they generate >95% of their electricity). On the other hand, they have a large industry of exporting oil to other countries.

I think a more useful metric is per unit of GDP. ...because then it becomes an efficiency metric. "How much wealth can we create with X amount of CO2".

I really don't see how this would be a good idea.

First of all it suggests that wealth is the be-all and end-all of human progress. It also implies that wealth creation is equivalent wherever it happens - that somehow if a place is more efficient at creating wealth than it should be privileged.

Finally, of course, this means that poorer countries that produce less wealth will almost certainly be less efficient by this metric, and hence should be penalized (of course, we shouldn't mention that a lot of their production actually ends up being consumed by the rich-world which can this way claim to be highly CO2 efficient).

> it suggests that wealth is the be-all and end-all of human progress

You misunderstand. The point is to quantify economic power. ...because economic power is the ONLY way fix global warming.

Well, we already have good measures for economic power, e.g. gdp. How would this extra measure help?

but then very poor countries will never be able to get to the development level of the rich countries because they’ll be energy limited. Buying a car (even if electric) could push them over the quota. Where as folks in the west can continue driving their giant SUVs.

Very poor countries developing western lifestyles isn't compatible with solving climate change.

The whole thing looks very gloomy to me.

Interestingly, China wins over North America and Europe on both metrics.

kg CO2 per PPP $ GDP:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?end=2...

I don't think it has ever been more on emissions per capita than China.

People on denial will always find a viewpoint that suits them. I've witnessed discussions demanding emission limits per square kilometer of land. Unsurprisingly by people from sparsely populated areas.

Collective action is essential but the way forward is through smaller efforts as pilot projects and to prove the market.

Setting a good example doesn't inevitably result in everyone following along, but a proven solution is a whole lot easier to sell than a proposal that's never been tried at scale.

I'd go further and say there could easily be a set of outcomes where it's a big first mover advantage for anyone who develops the approach that works in any of the many niches needed to move forward. And for the first nation that systematically enables that kind of scaled climate focused development - they'll get huge payback as the effects get worse and lagging nations pony up the money to mitigate effects and go to leading nations and companies looking for solutions with any sort of track record.

I've also found those discussions to be extremely frustrating. Yeah, I understand feeling that as individuals we're not able to make much of a difference, but that's all the more reason we should be advocating for structural changes.

There is a very harsh implicit truth that humans, when left to do what they think best, choose to live in cities. Anything larger than about knee high is systematically exterminated and anything smaller is fitfully exterminated. Most of the land is covered in concrete. The idea that people need to take responsibility for increased PPM of CO2 when their default contribution is city living has a certain flavor of missing the forest for the trees. That is just how we roll by choice.

The hope that people might choose reduced/more expensive energy availability was always slim to nonexistant. Collective action is not going to fly; the only things that will work are (1) running out of fossil fuels or (2) Renewables/nuclear being a cheaper, better choice.

> Therefore there's no point changing our habits.

This kind of feels to me like mutual assured destruction. Nobody lay down their weapons because of the other party. If you are not changing habits because the source of the problem doesn't lie in your geographical section, you are turning your back to the fact that climate crisis is a human kind crisis. We need to change habits as a whole, so that even when we are not directly helping, we are setting precedent and example.

Edit: the talks are frustrating though, I am not arguing that! But let's not give up. Giving up we are assuring our defeat.

The few I know (and it's "few") there's TheShifters group (a team of ~volunteers helping the Shift Project).

They've been trying social efforts for quite a while now.

Are there other similar groups that try to educate and motivate the rest of the population ?

With enough of these groups, I believe most people will feel motivated, they just need a headstart to follow (we're too social).

This is so ridiculous. Not only are rich countries the biggest polluters per capita, but they're responsible for most of the total emissions since the industrial revolution: https://www.wri.org/blog/2014/05/history-carbon-dioxide-emis...

Any one country isn't enough to make a difference, but we're all in this together, and The West bears more than its fair share of responsibility. Pointing your finger and India and China just makes you look like a selfish hypocrite.

Oh blame the third world for climate change because they are busy building their economy & uplifting of their poor.

Has the colonists accepted the responsibility for their plundering of once wealthy countries that's called "third world" now ?

> the real problem is in other countries

It's worse than that. And this always receives a negative reaction...yet this is the truth nobody seems to want to talk about save a very few brave researchers:

We can't do a thing about it. Period.

I've written about this many times. This isn't about denying climate change or our contribution to atmospheric CO2 concentration --that would be silly, it's as real as it gets.

This is about pulling our heads out of the sand to take a look at the data in order to understand what it is screaming at us very loudly. It goes something like this:

If humanity --all of us-- left the planet tomorrow and we took all of our technology, cars, planes, buildings --everything-- with us...it would take somewhere in the range of 50K to 100K years for atmospheric CO2 to come down by 100 ppm (which is roughly what we need).

This isn't me saying it. This is the very accurate data we have. We know, with a very high degree of certainty, what the atmosphere looked like and how long it took for CO2 to increase and decrease when humanity was but a bunch of apes on trees.

This data is provided to us by the 800,000 years of ice core atmospheric data we already have. Ice core atmospheric composition sampling is a highly accurate way to learn about what the atmosphere looked like in the past. And, again, to be redundant, we have data going back 800,000 years.

This means we KNOW how the atmosphere behaved when we were not here.

This also means we KNOW how it will behave is we all left.

If it takes the planet 50,000 to 100,000 years for a 100 ppm reduction there's NOTHING we can do at a small scale (solar panels world-wide, stop using cars, stop using planes, ban all fossil fuels, etc.) that will accelerate the slope at all. If we stay on the planet the rate of change is GREATER than 50K to 100K for 100 ppm, because we are contributing more CO2 to the equation.

Please don't take my word for it. Look at the data and you should have the same revelation about this issue I had many years ago. This does not mean we should not make an effort to clean-up our act, there are many reasons for which this is a good idea and none of them anything to do with climate change. I does mean we need to not lie to ourselves and start having real conversations about this stuff rather than, on the one hand, denying it, and, on the other, thinking we can actually affect planetary scale problems with truly insignificant measures. Hint: Everything is insignificant when compared to humanity leaving the planet. Both extreme positions are unreasonable and delusional.

Finally, a problem: Scientists, researchers, don't want to talk about this reality because their careers would be over if they did. At the very least their grants would evaporate. This is a terrible side-effect of the religion climate change has become. We need to free our researchers so that they can be honest about what we know and we can put them to work on how to deal with reality.

Here's were you will find the 800,000 years of ice core data:

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical...

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html

Here's a paper that explains why it is that atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise exponentially even if we switch the the most optimal forms of renewable energy world-wide:

https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

I have looked into this issue in depth and I have yet to find any argument or proposed solution that can do better than all of humanity leaving the planet, which is to say we can't fix it. We better start talking about how to live with it soon rather than propose ridiculous "solutions" that are far more likely to kill us all than fix anything.

Cool so we've moved from "global warming isn't happening" to "it's happening but we can't do anything so let's make the best of it".

Going 100% renewable alone isn't enough. We also need afforestation programs and carbon capture programs on a massive scale.

Well, nobody said there's rule that says reality has to align with how we would like things to be.

The problem is greater than that. I urge you to read the paper and look at the data. We are talking about planetary scale issues here, which means solving the problem in 50 or 100 years by forcing it (chemically or whatever) is far more likely to kill all life on this planet than to fix anything at all.

And, so, sadly, 100% renewable --which is impossible-- and reforestation will not do it either.

First of all, aside from the fact that 100% renewable --again, global, planetary scale-- is impossible, we already know that, if we did that, atmospheric CO2 levels would continue to rise exponentially. That's the paper I linked to in my comment.

That leaves reforestation. So, we start with atmospheric CO2 continuing to rise exponentially and want trees to fix it.

Here's the other dose of reality, which comes from a simple question:

How did the planet "fix it" on its own when we were not around?

Simple:

- Trees grew - Storms, cyclones, hurricanes, rain

And it took 50,000 to 100,000 years for that to drop atmospheric CO2 by 100 ppm. Again, please, don't take my word for it, I'm just another delusional moron, go look at the data and challenge that. I'd be very interested in learning I am wrong and how.

The other question is:

How did the planet cause CO2 levels to rise?

Simple:

- Massive continental scale fires burning for tens of thousands of years

Look at what's going on in Australia. Even with all of our technology we can't stop it. I have no idea how much CO2 got injected into the atmosphere so far but it can't be trivial. Now imagine that at a global scale, with massive country and continent scale fires raging unimpeded. That's how the planet did it.

Which brings me back to the reforestation issue. Yes, we need to restore the Amazon and other areas. What we've done is criminal. However, we are not going to fix the problem in 100 years by doing this. We can't.

The other danger is, once again, fires. If we plant trees on every available square meter --assuming that was possible-- we would be creating massive amounts of fuel for fires much larger than what we are seeing in Australia. In other words, just planting trees isn't a solution at all, and doing it without an understanding of the dangers involved could kill more life on earth than the alternatives.

It's a very difficult problem. I don't claim to have any solution. All I know is that we are not discussing the truth. All we have are two religious camps, one saying it isn't real and the other saying we have to destroy entire economies to fix it in 50 years. Both are crazy.

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