EU unveils sweeping climate change plan
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
If leading markets can create bubbles where carbon is accurately accounted for, the free-rider problem can be substantially alleviated and we might be able to finally make some progress on climate.
I'm less hopeful about new fuel taxes. We've seen how that's gone in France, and even Switzerland.
In other words, it's not marginal numbers that matter, it's absolute numbers, and something absolutely has to be done about those numbers.
--
[0]: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/shipping-industry-car...
In a world that has climate change under control, there's for sure going to be a reduction in pollution produced by global shipping, but in the world we live in there's much better places to start than by limiting global shipping.
That said a carbon tax certainly does limit shipping, as some of it will no longer be profitable. Fortunately when doing it with a carbon tax, it just so happens to be the shipping that we shouldn't have been doing in the first place!
Me too, but I've seen multiple businesses go to the wall after spending seven figures on mandated protections - worthwhile protections - that competitors in you-already-know-where didn't. The second best time is now I suppose, but that has had consequences.
Also, reminder that this is proposed to *not* apply to the single most polluting form of transport: https://gript.ie/eu-plans-carbon-tax-for-most-flights-except...
The problem with fuel taxes is that it's hard to tell whether the money is spent toward making everyone less reliant on fuel... or simply funding pensions for underperforming bureaucrats!
Collecting an extra tax on a single mother of two won't suddenly make her able to afford a Tesla.
Cool quote here: "The aim is to put the economy on a new level, not to stop it"
It's super obvious that this is structured as a compromise with business interests. Infuriating.
I'm not sure why "business" is always the big bad wolf, I guess it’s an easy target. Businesses are a vehicle for people, like a commune with unified set of goals. YC itself is designed to start businesses. Business create jobs, wealth, improve our lifestyles, and grow our economy.
I think any plans moving forward to address global warming have to include business and economic interests. I think what you need more of is incentives to drive innovation in the areas where government wants to push businesses and taxes and/or more regulation in areas government is trying to avoid. Businesses will always follow the money.
Of course, you could argue that business wouldn't do this if people didn't demand it, which is true. But I'm much more comfortable with regulating business than people's desires.
What's the difference?
Corporations are interested in their bottom line, and keeping their large shareholders happy.
Are we regulating "business" or "people" when we ban plastic straws when the people want plastic straws and the business is providing them because we want them?
I guess I'm just not sure in this instances I see a meaningful difference. I'm not saying we shouldn't take action and that businesses should be responsible, but it seems like we're saying that we'll just regulate the business and that the people are like somehow hopeless and unable to take action. People can do things like not use plastic bags, turn the A/C off, and buy locally made products that are more expensive (just examples). If you care about your community or country why wouldn't you be doing these things? Maybe people don't care about anything except their bottom line too? Idk.
So here's a regulation we could play with - you can't buy any produce that is grown outside of 50 miles of where you live. Now what? Who are we regulating?
- Don't spoil common resources
- Don't commit violence against others
- Don't gobble up resources and hoard them for yourself
- Don't mislead others
These apply to businesses too, and when you think about it, it covers a lot:
Plastic bags/straws: spoiling common resources, no one can use them
A/C: uses a lot of energy, only use it when you must
Buy local: when you factor in externalities like atmospheric carbon production, road construction and maintenance, and human suffering (road accidents, lost wages and political power due to corporate agglomeration and financial draining of communities), it falls under "don't spoil common resources" and "don't gobble up resources".
---
But more broadly, I always find the "let's rely on individual action" option odd. Besides much of pollution being industrial and not addressable by individual action, it's also obviously not working. So is your position that we deserve what we get? That seems super unsatisfying to me.
I think my position is that regulating businesses should probably be done, but they don’t come out of nowhere. They fill demands that people have. So people need to start caring and change their habits, and business will follow suit. Not that business shouldn’t or couldn’t be regulated in tandem, but as a reply to the person who was saying businesses care about their bottom line, but people don’t - I find that to be a bit naive. I don’t see a distinction in “care” here. Plenty of companies do the right thing, even better sometimes on a per-capita basis (if you could compare their employees to another group of people).
TBH we are fucked so none of this matters. People think electric cars will save us when cars themselves are the issue. Or that we shouldn’t ban plastic straws because it doesn’t do enough when the whole point is we shouldn’t have single use items (except obvious cases like medicine).
I think this gets at what I--and maybe you're with me--really think: these problems are cultural. People don't hold businesses accountable, so it's a race to the bottom in all kinds of ways: worker pay, labor conditions, pesticide use, fossil fuel use, carcinogen use, taxes, single use items, etc. etc. etc.
And you're right that many businesses do in fact at least try to do the right thing. But if you're like, a florist or some SBO who needs a van or two, can you even buy an EV? Should it really be up to you to push automakers to build EVs to suit your purpose?
I find myself of two minds:
1. we're (the US) a democracy and our society should reflect our will--it currently doesn't and that's the problem, whether it's apathy or corruption or whatever.
2. we're a republic because it's unreasonable that every citizen become a change agent; we elect representatives to do that--they currently don't and that's the problem.
> TBH we are fucked so none of this matters.
Yeah I mean, I hear people on podcasts railing against this kind of fatalism. I get what they're saying, we could in fact take action right now to address the worst parts of climate change. I think it's really, painfully obvious we won't do that though. Humans just aren't wired to deal with this kind of problem. The effects are too abstract and distant. Even in this thread, with people way higher than average intelligence you have people scoffing at climate activists, saying they're demanding the impossible. Totally insane.
And I am a hopeful person at heart, so it’s like I think we are fucked but I’ll try anyway and think we should. :)
At heart, people (in general) don't desire leaded gasoline. People desire smooth engine operation. There's nothing wrong with that desire.
Companies see that desire and substitute a solution that seem cheap only because the costs are external: leaded gasoline. That is a problematic means to an innocent end.
This is how business in general operates: it sees an innocent desire, comes up with a concrete solution, and sometimes that solution has great external costs attached to it, but business proceeds to ignore that.
In all of that process, the external costs are very rarely attached to the desire, and almost always specific to the solution provided by the business.
To some extent, sure, but we have gotten into a nasty habit of allowing businesses to privatize profits while socializing losses. And the losses have been absolutely massive.
It would, if it weren't for the core feature (and problem) of Capitalism: the disconnect between those who work and those who own.
As it stands there are people with power so disproportional that to talk of democracy or a "common interest" is simply disingenuous. In this case in particular: the interests of a few people to maximise their own profits trump the interests of the entire public to have clean air, not suffer from 100,000s of deaths per year due to pollution, not have to endure climate change and the catastrophically expensive cleanup processes we'll have to implement sooner or later (i.e. they save 1$ now so we'll have to spend 10$ in a few decades), etc.
I think it's the opposite, actually.
It's like we're trying to find solutions to this and I'm like, "well, what if much of Texas just had a power outage for weeks during the coldest part of the year; sure some people would die but we'd save a lot of carbon emissions". You'd rightly balk and say "that is INSANE". And then climate change would do it to us anyway.
So it seems to me that the ones who are "out of touch with what is actually possible" are the climate change skeptics and the incrementalists. How can you ignore what's already happening?
None of these good things are beneficial to the environment or climate. 'Economic activity' done by businesses is the main driver of climate change.
Because in this case, business--specifically the fossil fuel "energy" industry--has corrupted democratic governments for their own profit, at the expense of literally every human alive now and for the foreseeable future.
> Businesses are a vehicle for people, like a commune with unified set of goals.
Businesses are not a vehicle for people. They are not democracies. They are the opposite of a commune. If they were democracies, we'd have a direct way to hold them accountable and control their behavior. We obviously don't have that.
> I think any plans moving forward to address global warming have to include business and economic interests.
Pick any counterargument you like here:
1. Only kooks are talking about things like degrowth. It's a strawman to suggest otherwise. Of course plans will include business and economic interests. The question is what is prioritized, and that's why I said:
> It's super obvious that this is structured as a compromise with business interests. Infuriating.
2. The only way this works is by forcing markets to factor in externalities like atmospheric carbon production (or waste, etc.) into their pricing, which we've clearly failed to do.
The biggest news is the carbon tariffs, through I notice how they avoid calling it that. I suspect that the US trade war has enabled taxing imports an political tool, and as such it is being tested here in order to serve several purposes. I doubt however that it will be used consistently within the EU, like when countries import and export energy produced by fossil fuels.
Planning and constructing a new nuclear reactor takes at least 15 years and it's the most expensive and also dangerous form of energy source.
Just look at Hinkley Point C in the UK where costs exploded and construction was delayed over and over. The cost of £92/MWh (estimated in 2012) is outrageously expensive as well when wind and solar are approaching half. New nuclear reactors make no sense now.
Solar and wind don't generate waste?
And while batteries are getting better, they're still not to the point that solar and wind can just replace the kind of power nuclear produces.
Further, lithium batteries don't produce waste?
Per energy generated, it's not clear at all to me that the nuclear waste from a country running off nuclear power is worse than the CO2 emissions of running that same country off fossil fuels.
That cave full of nuclear waste has something like "all the waste generated by the UK to date". Enough CO2 to fill a cave is one coal plant running for a few days.
You should compare it to solar/wind/(etc) which produce neither CO2, nor radioactive plutonium, cesium, xenon, (etc)
It's really not. It is compact, contained, and isolated. It takes a tiny amount of space compared to any other solution.
> It's dangerous for tens of thousands of years
Some of it is. Most of it isn't. By definition, long-lasting isotopes are the least dangerous.
> we don't know if we will be able to tell a civilization 10,000 years in the future that the stuff we buried deep in a cave is dangerous.
We won't have a civilisation in the next century if we keep fucking it up. It is patently absurd, considering the state of the world, to keep saying that nuclear is the absolute worst. Non-nuclear is what put us in this very situation in the first place.
This is false. Even accounting the few catastrophic failures (including Chernobyl and Fukushima), deaths by nuclear industry can be counted in dozens.
Here is what says Wikipedia about the Fukushima aftermath :
> There were no deaths from radiation exposure in the immediate aftermath of the incident, though there were a number of (non-radiation related) deaths during the evacuation of the nearby population. As of September 2018, one cancer fatality was the subject of a financial settlement, to the family of a former station workman.
There were a few more deaths in Chernobyl but it’s mainly due to the bad management of the cleaning process.
How do you figure THAT external cost?
It is kind of interesting that almost no one have heard of it, and that it did not make major international news.
Put in a plan to stop building new coal and gas power plants in EU and that strategy would have a bit more support behind it. New coal, gas and oil is the core of the energy strategy for handling grid stability. It will last much longer than 15 years.
It was a mistake not to go nuclear to get rid of fossil fuel plants 20 years ago. The window for new installations is closing rapidly as renewables improve however.
That said, in an effort to become more self sufficient I too will be installing solar panels in the near future.
Nuclear definitely has a long lead time (and requires huge initial capital), but it should be built nevertheless, as it is much more efficient than the alternative for base load production. It has also very good synergies with hydrogen production.
In [0], they give a figure of 5-6 years for actual construction. Add in a year or 2 for regulatory and other delays, and we're looking at 2027-2029-ish before we see a single megawatt of electricity out of them. What's more, there is probably only enough uranium to last about 5 years, if we could wave a magic wand and replace all existing power plants with nuclear [1]. Moreover, the plants themselves also have a finite lifetime of 40-60 years [ibid].
---
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm...
What if every time a country decided to build a new fossil fueled power plants, a rule went in to build a new nuclear power plant instead. In terms of climate goals, at worst we prevent the construction of new fossil fueled power plants. At best we arrive in the future with fossil fueled power plants replaced by an alternative that isn't cooking the planet.
> carbon neutral by 2050
Now imagine dismantling the whole industry with its R&D, supply chains, people’s pensions, etc.
US has 800 cars per 1000 people, but Italy and Spain have 650/1000 and even Poland, which is significantly poorer than US, has over 700 cars per 1000 people. In Europe, car ownership is only slightly less of a necessity than it is in the US, and I think if you look at the data that measure cars not per capita, but per household, the gap in car ownership between US and European countries would be even smaller.
I just opened up google maps, picked out two random small towns in Germany, and the driving distance between them is 200km/2hrs, while the transit length is 3hrs (with a transfer in a major city). Doing the same in the Northeast, one of the best areas for transit in the US, resulted in two towns 120miles/2hrs drive distance, and 18hr/6 transfers transit distance. So yes, a car is more convenient in both cases, but transit is a competent alternative (which is what I said). France and Italy had comparable results to Germany, Spain did not. Germany, France, and Italy makes up roughly half of the EU population (add in Belgium or the Netherlands if you wanna be precise, they've got decent transit too).
> US has 800 cars per 1000 people, but Italy and Spain have 650/1000 and even Poland, which is significantly poorer than US, has over 700 cars per 1000
You appear to have taken this article [1], and picked out the top three EU countries.
> In Europe, car ownership is only slightly less of a necessity than it is in the US, and I think if you look at the data that measure cars not per capita, but per household, the gap in car ownership between US and European countries would be even smaller.
"Owning a car" is not the same metric as "Needing to own a car to do literally anything because there are no alternatives". Germany, France, and Italy all rank higher than the US in annual passenger-km's of rail travel, despite each having populations 1/5th to 1/4th the size of the US[2]. Or look up modal share by country for other info - there's no handy Wikipedia summary, unfortunately, but for example, Germany is about 30% transit commutes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...
And yes, there’s biking, but doing that while it’s raining is a complete different story.
Now add the time it takes you to walk to the transit stop (rail station), the time to wait for the train/bus (remember, if you were driving, you could have departed immediately), and time to walk to your actual destination at the city you're going to. In practice, door-to-door trip using public transportation will almost always take twice as long as driving, unless you're lucky and have a non-stop train/bus that departs from right in front of your home and gets you right in front where you want to be. Of course, you also need to be on train's schedule, not your own, and that having 2-3 transfers each way is exhausting and annoying.
> transit is a competent alternative (which is what I said).
If your time is worthless, that is. That's why these trains and buses are usually packed with students and retirees.
> You appear to have taken this article [1], and picked out the top three EU countries.
And your point is? These countries are more representative of Europe at large, not two of the wealthiest places there.
> "Owning a car" is not the same metric as "Needing to own a car to do literally anything because there are no alternatives".
Alas, "owning a car" is very much the relevant metric in this discussion, which, allow me to remind you, was about how it is more difficult for Europeans to afford the car than it is to Americans.
What we need is lots of small and cheap cars that can be built easily and on a massive scale. Something akin to the original Volkswagen, or an automobile equivalent of the liberty ships.
Or even better, more public transport, and more remote work.
Also, such a transition would not be unprecedented, see for example how western societies adapted to the war efforts during WWI and WWII. These were radical changes of industrial production on a truly massive scale. The sort of things we need now.
Small steps could have been taken 30 years ago but now it's too late for that.
^^^ So much exactly this! ^^^
I watched a mess of climatologists warn society on public TV about the consequences of climate change (global warming) and explain why it was a real issue to be acting upon, way back when (my late teenage years mebbe?) and apparently we've had some inkling of it bein' an issue decades longer'n that even… Truth is stranger'n fiction, I suppose.
Let's take the victories where we can.
You get the batteries and the renewable energy by building factories that produce batteries and by building wind turbines and solar panels. It's not rocket science.
Wouldn't other carbon-reducing initiatives lessen the need for banning gas-powered calls altogether?
People are expected to travel long distances either by using fast charging and taking slightly longer breaks than before.
We must be active about carbon capture. It's not optional.
If we do get a very efficient way of capturing GHGs on a large scale, then great. But it really is not a given.
> "The aim is to put the economy on a new level, not to stop it," they said.
How socially fair and non-destabilizing will climate change be?
Now ask yourself, will the US or the BRICs also do this? I don't see it. The truth of the matter is we will resort to some sort of hamfisted geo engineering once we get desperate enough, and that will have to be kept up indefinitely until we figure out how to air capture CO2 and sequester it. We understand the basic chemical reactions around this, but we have no idea how to do this at the scale required.
It's looking grim for future generations.
In my opinion however the EU as is is hopelessly underpowered to effectively address big issues. They just don't have the mandate to actually get all 27 states to act as one.
The moment EU policies go against high member nation interests they are shut down. See Poland, Hungary, Netherlands, Malta, Luxemburg, etc for examples of this. Every single one has the power to basically veto all decisions.
No government institution is going to be 100% effective at what it does, but the EU has shown that as far as large organizations go, it is remarkably effective at pushing certain actions that it's member states cannot do.
This is power that countries have always had, and it’s now moving into the EU realm. It’s more centralization and more eu control.
So it’s a step towards what you want.
A dozen draft proposals, which still need to be approved by
the bloc's 27 member states and the EU parliament, were
announced on Wednesday.
Since it’s a new form of taxation that everyone seems ok with. Perfect for any government.
As a EU citizen I do hope things won’t progress any further in this political regard because that will be the death of the Union (I know I’ll be among the many protesting deeper political integration), blowing up the economic union which while not perfect had its distinct advantages. Hope someone puts some common sense into today’s EU politicians/technocrats, they seem not to notice that they’te driving us all over a cliff (because apparently Brexit didn’t mean anything to them).
The EU was always meant to be a political union. The economical elements were introduced first because they're more palatable.
It's an argument I often see repeated from people living in countries where the EU for sold as a trade tool (for example the Netherlands) when it was simply not the case.
why would it be? The Union has evolved feom an agreement to coordinate coal and steel production to much more, and helped keep peace and bring wealth and integration. Globally the challenges are however not purely economic, economy and politics always mix - see China or Trump's arbitrary tariffs. Why would deeper integration be death of the Union?
For me deeper integration is very much needed as plainly the EU countries are mostly too small to play any global role individually and will be bullied by China & co if they don't get more closely together.
France and Germany handed over a lot of control of their war critical industrial infrastructure to 'High Authority' which preceded the European Commission, not for trades sake but to prevent world war III and form an counter weight against the Warsaw Pact.
Robert Schuman ( the French Foreign Minister at the time ) declared: " Through the consolidation of basic production and the institution of a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and the other countries that join, this proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace."[1]
The only one to envision Europe purely as an economic union was Churchill, and since the UK left his visions hold even less importance.
[1] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/symbols/europe-day...
That's a fudge that some governments (mostly British ones) used to avoid blowback at home, knowing (or hoping) that their people would not get any information from foreign media. That's a lie. It was never the case. It was political from the very beginning. You should read the Schuman declaration.
• Majority of countries: 55% (comprising at least 15 of them), or 72% if acting on a proposal from neither the Commission nor from the High Representative
and
• Majority of population: 65%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_E...
Self interested cooperation among sovereign states is the only long term peaceful means of solving cross-border issues.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
These were initially met with huge resistance, yet got approved, and triggered huge changes, not only inside the EU, but throughout the world.
This one probably will see a zillion amendments and may eventually be either made powerless or be rejected.
My money is on it being approved in a weaker form, with a future version tightening things, like what happened with RoHS.
The trick is to get everybody commit to “we want to move to a climate-neutral economy. To get there, we need to do A”.
If you can get that, everybody has committed to “we want to move to a climate-neutral economy”. If it turns out A isn’t sufficient to get there, extending that to “A, B, and C” is easier than going there in one step. The eventual extension to “A, B, …, Z” may be a long way off, but that doesn’t mean the EU won’t get there.
The EU addresses privacy and many other issues better than the US.
The EU has implemented actually changing the currency of every member, just as one example.
Therefore 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.
FTA
>The commission is betting that instead of hordes of yellow-vest protesters taking to the streets, citizens will be willing to pay a price for cleaner air, lower emissions, and more sustainable lifestyles.
color me skeptical. Granted, I’m not European just interested in international politics , but this bill seems tilted heavily in favor of particularly Germany and also France(the mentioned protesters, I know). If they really wanted this for the good of the Bloc, their would be plans to give aid (power plants, expertise, transmitted green energy, grants for the required renovations) to the poorer members/regions. Perhaps i’m just misinformed, but wouldn’t the burden of higher petrol taxes, more ambitious targets for renewables and renovation requirements be a much greater burden on the more eastern members? This particularly seems devious:
>A requirement for countries to more quickly renovate buildings that are not deemed energy efficient
Not the development of new stricter standards that everyone should follow, just adding more pressure on those who couldn’t afford to do it promptly (because if you are required to make an efficiency upgrade, the only reason not to make it promptly and enjoy the benefits of the efficiency is if you can’t afford it.)
I’m also very very critical of carve outs. Why should their be an exemption for low-carbon alternatives to jet fuel? Just make the tax that much higher because of the impact of high altitude emissions. Apparently their is an exemption for both Private (jfc) and Cargo jets.[1] which explains the rationale, but doesn’t make it any better.
I’m very saddened by the Carbon border tax, which seems like direct protectionism to me. I’m a huge fan of border taxes on imported goods to level the playing field (offshoring dirty business is unacceptable from an environmental standpoint), but it’s a bankrupt idea if you are applying it to only certain goods and only on Carbon. Tax them for dumping, for not being required to have sealed floors, for not having to catch fumes/dust, etc.
Using climate change to enact rules that will disproportionately affect poorer people and give carve outs to the wealthy is disgusting. This looks like class warfare to me. It’s a cowardly and entirely inadequate attempt at addressing the problem and seems to target the poorest and give carve outs for the rich.
[1] https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2231434-eu-draft-exempts-...
At least when it comes to carbon taxing - which so far seems to be the most effective (both theoretically and practically) and equal way of curbing carbon emissions - EU is the frontrunner in the world, right? So it seems you're complaining at the best in class student here?
When will politicians start taking the space sunshade idea seriously?
(Yeah, what a joke that is)
I hope this doesn't spell the end for the ICE. That would be heartbreaking.
Combustion engines running on bio fuels will probably stick around until electric veichles cover all the fringe cases. Diesel engines won't go anywhere as they're needed for stuff like farming equipment, but they can run on bio-fuels aswell.
Not to mention the fact that the European car fleet is relatively old and will take a long time to modernize.
With no fast way to transition from fossil fuels to electric, I simply can't understand why we don't focus on synthetic fuels made with renewable energy, at least as a stop-gap solution.
Then there's the issue of growing crops for use as bio-fuel. In theory it's a renewable energy source, but in the real world it'll use valuable land that we will need for climate-friendly but inefficient organic farming for food.
Is there a reason tractors, combines etc couldn't be electric too? I don't know about the mega tractors of the massive farms of US and Canada, but at least here in Europe, tractor engines have surprisingly few horse powers.
I'm sure we'll get there at some point, but many farmers have equipment that are up to 50 years old. It's going to take many decades before it's all electric.
You won't see many of them on the roads, though, or be able to easily buy new ones. Like steam engines, they'll become museum pieces, hobbyist equipment or reminders to a bygone era.
Don't hold your breath, though. A car can easily last 10 years, 25 if made and maintained well, much longer with special care. We'll be seeing them at least into the 2050s, though they'll probably get banned from places like city standards as emission standards become stricter.
Which will be close to useless if China/India don't follow.
But the more that rich countries do, the easier it is for everyone to transition, and the longer everyone gets to make that transition.
That's a leap of faith. As of today, China is still building coal plants.
This stereotypical uninformed finger-pointing is unhelpfull
EDIT--I'm not stating that the EU should give up. I'm stating quite the opposite and that everyone needs to seriously rethink the economic and lifestyle relationship we currently have with our environment. This is a crisis that could be an opportunity, but the stalwarts won't change and you'll continue to see petty political fighting over energy bills and taxation.
strong disagree -1 "helpless" rhetoric
Given the existence of feedback loops, the sooner we deploy technology to directly reduce the temperature, the less of that technology we will have to deploy, but it seems inevitable that we will have to do something like this.
Can you please point me to some examples?
The CO2 impact of Japan for instance is large as it's a very developed country where each inhabitant enjoys a life of material abundance. 70% of its population is working in the Services tier, while all the food and goods come in boats.
Large amount of fossil fuel, mined minerals, and materials are burnt/extracted elsewhere to fuel that lifestyle. These emissions shouldn't be attributed to the factory-countries as they don't benefits from it.
I have a feeling being all radical and alarmist about it doesn’t achieve the desired effect. Too much emotion that doesn’t convince people.
Look how quickly climate change has escalated in even the past five years. What's going to happen when temperatures in the American breadbasket hit the temperatures we are seeing in the west coast, but sustain them throughout the growing season? What if that happens by 2024?
We really need to be prepared for the fact that nature might force our hand on a much shorter timeline than 2030.
Imagine the reaction you'd have if you could tell your 2016-self about how the past year has been. Now imagine we continue on the same course for the next five years.