Comment by salmonfamine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by salmonfamine | Hacker News Reader

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> It isn't over until it's over. However, COVID and the response governments around the world made it's clear they are NOT treating climate like an emergency.

How does the COVID response have anything to do with the climate response? The governments of the world have all responded differently -- some quite stringently -- and the speed with which we produced an mRNA vaccine (itself a technological marvel) is truly nuts.

>The issue with climate are feedback loops which cause non-linear responses. These are dangerous because they have a tendency to sneak up on you. We are being way too conservative in our climate response and the uncertainty around the future should not make us feel better.

It is true that feedback loops are dangerous, but what do you mean by "sneaking up" on us? There's always uncertainty in modeling and projections of any kind, but the most agreed-upon climate models and projected scenarios include feedback loops.

> I believe Michael Mann is wrong that scary headlines prevent action. Look at Greta and the youth climate movement and XR. It exploded BECAUSE of the dread and anxiety. Yes, it's true people on the sidelines might get scared away, but you only need a small group of REALLY committed actors to make real change. Those on the sidelines will come along after the fact.

Well, maybe. Everyone is different, so perhaps some people will be spurned to act by these sorts of headlines. A majority of people in the US agree that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed, so hopefully we will see more and more political pressure in the future.

The COVID response showed that governments (not all) can take drastic action when needed, both to limit the spread of the decease as well as to protect the economy. If they treated the climate emergency as the crisis it is, they would have acted as forcibly, or even stronger, to reduce green house gas emissions. They are not even close.

There are no technical or economical hurdles that stops us from strongly mitigate the climate change. It is pure politics. And it make me so angry.

> If they treated the climate emergency as the crisis it is

They treat it as politicians that need to get re-elected, since that's linked to direct and indirect financial rewards. However, climate is something which is going to dramatically change in 50-100 years. The sea levels might not rise by 1 meter in the next 10-20 years. That means climate change isn't this government's problem. So no, there isn't a government on this planet that is going to treat climate change as an emergency.

It’s just enough that enough of their constituents do for them to start caring. A lot of young people and people with kids already care a lot. If people can worry about the deficit 10 or 15 years down the line people can worry about climate change.

> A lot of young people and people with kids already care a lot.

A lot of young people say they want to combat climate change and want politicians to do so.

But I've also seen the studies when those same people are asked about willingness to pay/sacrifice to accomplish that goal. They are... not good.

We will see if the next generation supports a carbon tax if it means higher prices for consumer goods and the benefits disproportionately accrue to people 2 generations down the line.

Which studies?

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/who-is-wi...

Interestingly, the younger generation is less willing to pay than the 30-44 age group, even though willingness to pay is uncorrelated with income.

Talk about cherrypicking the results. Yes, slightly more 30-44 year olds are willing to pay more for renewable energy than 18-29 year olds. But both of those groups are much bigger than the two groups 45-59 and 60+. So the reasonable conclusion is the opposite of what you suggest.

I guess my thinking is combatting climate change is going to cost more than $10/mo on the electrical bill, I pay like $5k/mo in tax and apparently most people in a similar financial situation can't accept an increase of like 0.5% of what they pay in taxes to avert climate change.

$10/mo is very little, and the fact that we can barely get majorities of the younger generation to say that that would be okay is disheartening.

If the government treated climate like they did COVID (lockdowns, etc.) it would trigger a civil war in the United States.

The sad thing is that the necessary actions would impact people’s life directly much less that the COVID restrictions. Petrol and flying would become expensive, and some jobs would disappear and be replaced with other jobs, sometimes somewhere else.

> some jobs would disappear

Some communities would disappear. Look at Canada. Without trucking, air or train with low-cost energy-efficient fuel combustion to move goods, you have no way to supply the vast majority of the inland for large countries.

We already heavily subsidize rural living in the US, no reason we couldn't just offset the emissions necessary to deliver goods to rural areas and encourage urbanization (which is not where most emissions are coming from).

Yes, but that is nothing new. How many people do you need to run a mine today compared with 40 years ago. Or cutting down lumber or run a steel mill. So most communities far from cities are already gone.

In addition, trucking et c. will not disappear. The moment the economic incentives are there, there will be hydrogen fuel cell trucks on the roads in almost a blink. The technology is there.

>There are no technical or economical hurdles that stops us from strongly mitigate the climate change.

I think if actually work through a solution in just about any industry you'll find that it's actually fairly complex, both in terms of technical implementation and economic adaptation.

> both in terms of technical implementation and economic adaptation.

Can you elaborate with an example? Most industry has managed to completely transition from coal -> natgas in the last decade and a half so I find it hard to believe that the transition is just so complex it isn't possible.

If we price carbon at what it actually costs, seems like they'd figure out how to transition again.

I heard a podcast interview with Bill Gates recently on this subject, in which he identifies cement and steel as largely unsolved in terms of carbon impact. solar and electric cars is probably good enough for residential and transport. (Kara Swisher’s Sway on 15Feb)

Price carbon at the cost needed to offset that carbon, use the price to offset the carbon.

Fossil free large scale steel plants are built in this moment: https://www.ssab.com/company/sustainability/sustainable-oper...

If you read that it's mostly talking about electrification of the steel mills and mining operations. It's a required step ultimately but is only as carbon neutral as the power coming into the facility.

It’s in Sweden, where almost all electricity already comes from renewables and nuclear. Also, the comment was a response to the claim that steel production was hard to do without fossil fuels.

I didn't say, nor do I believe, that it's impossible. I even agree with your approach, pricing the externalities into the cost. A few challenges that come to mind:

a) We don't have a good way to normalize offset pricing, there's a nascent market but there is tremendous variability in pricing.

b) It's also not clear how much the offset market can scale on existing approaches and technologies. We can only plant so many trees, and we aren't in a position to run most heavy transport or ag off of current electrification technologies. Eventually we're going to need new technologies to reduce dependencies on petroleum and find alternatives or develop carbon capture technologies for processes that are difficult to reduce any further.

c) Economically, nothing happens in a vacuum. When one company our country or industry begins pricing in these externalities, they are placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Tariffs and regulation will likely need to be introduced to moderate the inevitable shift in trade and the increased prices will cascade to the consumer.

Ultimately I agree with most of what you're saying, including that political decisions are a large factor.

Such as?

> The COVID response showed that governments (not all) can take drastic action when needed,

If this is our rubric and measure of good governance, why don't we all just become fascists already? At least in that case we could pretend to be unified and proud of what we're doing, instead of this chaotic, bungled, arbitrary response that takes hints from authoritarianism without getting any of its benefits.

> There are no technical or economical hurdles that stops us from strongly mitigate the climate change.

This statement is absurd. Do you have some magic wand that is going to solve the car problem, or the international shipment problem? Have you got some secret battery technology that you aren't letting on about, perhaps one that doesn't require extremely expensive rare materials to produce?

Remember, as you drive your Tesla around, that nigh-indentured Chinese workers essentially engaged in mining actions arguably worse than classic colonialism in Africa are responsible for providing you with your "clean" vehicle, which will probably never make up for the emissions created in its production....

The car problem is solved. There are huge battery factories built all over the world right now. Most major car manufacturers are releasing several electric cars this year. I’d bet you that few cars run by fossil fuels will be sold in Europe or North America in ten years from now.

The car problem is solved when I have a wide selection of used electric cars in the $10k price range that I can work on in my own garage. That's still a decade out.

> I’d bet you that few cars run by fossil fuels will be sold in Europe or North America in ten years from now

Pipe dream. I'd take that bet. You'll have to weasel out with creative definitions of "few".... not everyone lives in the city, man.

> How does the COVID response have anything to do with the climate response? The governments of the world have all responded differently -- some quite stringently -- and the speed with which we produced an mRNA vaccine (itself a technological marvel) is truly nuts.

I read the point as that now we've seen what governments around the world are willing to do when they perceive a real emergency: Shut down entire industries, print money to subsidize everybody, and enforce exceptions for rent/debt payments for people affected. There has as yet been no willingness to take anything of the sort in response to climate change.

That mostly applies to the developed world. Countries like mine won’t be able to afford the necessary changes, and we’re set to keep growing.

Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?

How does your country intend to "keep growing". Will it do the export strategy that China and pretty much every other Asian country followed (Korea, Japan)? If yes, then it will be done by pegging the currency to the dollar with the end result of accumulating a reserve of US treasury bonds. The additional bonds that your country is purchasing will allow the US government to do more green investments, maybe even abroad, maybe even in your country. If these investments end up increasing the trade deficit even further then the green investment cycle starts again.

>How does the COVID response have anything to do with the climate response?

I can't speak for the parent poster, but the US COVID response made me pretty pessimistic about our country's ability to deal with complicated near-future threats that (a) are not immediately tangible, (b) require even modest personal sacrifices (see e.g., wearing masks.) Back in the earlier phases of the pandemic it was a near-term threat with an unknown IFR and a pretty high immediate body count, not some future concern where the worst effects are decades away.

I guess the good news here is that some countries were much more successful in organizing a coordinated COVID response. Unfortunately, slowing down climate change is a global effort: you can't just seal your borders to prevent it. TL;DR as a practice run for how we'll deal with the much bigger climate crisis, our global grade in this one was barely passing. Thank god we had a quick technical fix in the form of vaccination.

Likewise. I was already somewhat pessimistic, but was hopeful that there might be a cultural shift with the younger generations.

Covid made me much more pessimistic about the younger generation's willingness to sacrifice for greater good (IMO, the older generations are a lost cause).

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