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Comment by gotadollar | Hacker News Reader

Not if you Incentivize The Technology that will slow or stop it.

Consensus on a carbon tax that is consistent with the marginal cost of abatement and staying below 2C is $50 or so per tonne by the late 2020s and up to $180 by 2050 to get all the way to net zero. The idea is that you set a tax that goes up predictably so that you incentivise capital decisions leading to emissions reductions over the life of the capital asset.

That might seem like a lot but based on US average consumption based emissions (production based emissions taxation is for chumps) that's $850 annually by the late 2020s. Of course, all or most of that can be returned to people through other tax reductions. I can't be the only one who looks at that number and thinks, "Is that fucking it? Jesus, just do it then."

Correct.

Don't listen to the doomsayers that just talk and don't propose any practical solutions.

At least there are those who are developing the tools, technologies and policies that will slow it down or make a significant impact in stopping it.

Back to the Amish way of life. That will work out, but people will have to go out of their confort zone.

IMHO hydrogen cars is the future. It gives the storage medium that is needed for wind turbines (and solar) to become ecologically positive. It gives a smoother transition path for fossil energy.

If only cars were the sole problem.

Well, it is pretty doom and gloom if you look at the numbers for the Arctic region and realize that we are on the trail that was considered the worst case scenario. Climate Change (at that time natural, less abrupt) contributed to the end of the Roman Empire, and while few of mankind may survive, billions are unlikely to.

Not changing behaviors and just hoping for magical, unproven technology is plain stupid in my view. We are going to need that investment in technology, but it‘s not the magic solution. Many ecosystems aren’t even fully understood, so we can’t really tell what will result of their imminent collapse.

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