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>In order to reach 1.61 metric tons an individual would not be able to own a gas-powered car, could not regularly consume meat, could not live in remote areas only visitable by plane etc. Many things people don't even consider "luxuries" (like visiting family overseas) would be a non-starter.

So literally what was normal life in Europe up to the 80's, even 90s for some regions.

It's not difficult to imagine how to accomplish this, we have even more available to make life comfortable.

Ask anyone born in the 50's, they'll share tricks.

Are electric planes physically impossible or just not realistic with current oil prices and no carbon tax?

Mostly fuel energy density vs battery energy density.

You can use some biofuels (limonene) as a near-direct substitute for jet fuel though. I think maybe you need to change a few o-rings but the vapor pressure, combustion point, etc are all there and it's been demonstrated in Australia.

“Why Electric Planes are Inevitably Coming”

https://youtu.be/aH4b3sAs-l8

tldr: They’re already being deployed in some shorthaul routes.

There are electric planes out there, but they're pretty small. You're not likely going to see any electric 747s anytime soon, if ever.

"A battery's efficiency, or ability to hold power, is measured in specific energy. Right now, even the best batteries have a specific energy of only 250 watt-hours per kilogram, but we have to get closer to 800 to really start flying, and that is still nothing compared to jet fuel's specific energy, which is nearly 12,000 watt-hours per kilogram."

"So if you want to add more power to a plane, you need to get a bigger battery, and to get that plane airborne despite the weight, you'll need even bigger battery that's more powerful, but that means more weight. And then you'll need an even bigger battery to offset that weight."

https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-planes-future-of-av...

Not with Lithium-Ion tech, no. But aluminum-air batteries provide an order of magnitude higher densities of energy(~1300Wh/kg), and should be able to power a large-ish plane. The main problem being of course that aluminum air batteries are not rechargable, but all you'd need to do is swap the spent aluminium rods at the airport and replace them with fresh ones - then use renewable energy nearby to melt and reform the aluminium rods to be used again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery

Interesting. I'm surprised I didn't hear that solution mentioned in Bill Gates "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" book.

He basically made the same battery weight argument and was pushing for alternative biofuels for planes, if I remember correctly. And that was just published earlier this year, and seemed pretty comprehensive about discussing all possible solutions, at least as far as I could tell.

Maybe just because it's (presumably) nowhere near the point where it could be feasible for commercial passenger planes?

At the range where electric planes are possible, they compete heavily with trains (which have less overhead for boarding and arrive closer to city center, which saves time).

Basically, imagine you have an electric plane with a range of 500 miles and travels at 250mph, and a train that travels at 125mph.

For the 500 mile trip, it's 2 vs 4 hours, but the train ride is generally going to be a better experience, and you'll arrive more rested and closer to your destination.

For a location like Europe, where high-speed rail is fairly developed, it's a hard sell to switch to electric planes in this case, IMO.

If by electric you mean batteries, it’s only realistic for very short flights.

For longer flights there are other more realistic alternatives with no net emissions, which are mainly hydrogen (made from electrolysis) and biofuels (made using carbon already present in the air).

The lockdowns prove your point. People hate living like that. And it also shows behavioral change is pointless. In 2020 we had barely any airplane traffic. Factories all over the world closed, China was basically closed for business for two months. No traffic since everyone stayed at home. Less frivolous consumption, world gdp contracted almost 5 % = degrowth. Result for this horrible way of living? A measly 7 % lower emissions in 2020. A reduction that can only be achieved once, you can’t close the same factory twice. We need 10 % lower every year…

That’s not worth changing my whole lifestyle for. I’d rather pay for geo-engineering solutions instead of something that lowers my quality of life and ultimately doesn’t do much to solve the problem.

What about high resolution satellite pollution maps and airstrikes? If the combustion engines or the refineries are not destroyed, they will be used. We could start slowly with only the dirtiest targets. Doing this now is less aggressive then what will happen after global crop failures.

Thinking about this more… This depends on electric flight. You cant stop the refineries with uavs powered by their targets product. It may be that electric flight is the cornerstone to emission prevention.

Global crop failures is pretty far fetched. Even the IPCC lowers the projections every year. Not a denier in the least, but we have over-estimated the impact in a huge way.

Im sure it wont be like a biblical plague, but the IPCC report that came out moments ago reiterated the 20 year to 1.5 C+ timeline. What matters is if a crop failure hits a nation with few friends and lots of nukes.

yup... nuclear... choose powerplants or weapons.

My plan, from a European perspective, would be for the EU to build a couple hundred new nuclear plants in ten year. France built almost 60 reactors between the seventies and the eighties so I believe it’s certainly possible with more modern tech. So by 2030 the EU has tons of cheap energy.

Cheap energy makes the following possible:

- carbon capture for negative emissions

- desalination plants for drinking water from the sea during heat waves

- vertical farms so farming is decoupled from the weather

- electric planes, cars and boats

- production (and worldwide export) of green hydrogen for industrial use

- electrical heating instead of gas

Bonus:

- export of all the above technologies once EU mastered them

Ambitious? Very. Difficult? Yes. Doable? I think so. To me this sounds like a better solution than just trying to live like it’s 1940 again.

When you look at who's polluting and who's emissions are on an upward trajectory, there's one obvious country that's actively working against the environment. China's emissions aren't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. One of the many reasons it's cheaper to manufacture in China and why North Americans and Europeans can't compete [0].

Comparing the US[1] and China[2], the US has:

- Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%)

- A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%)

Meanwhile for the same period China has had

- a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)

- 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007

So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation.

Time to add tariffs on goods produced by states who made the decision of going all-in on polluting power generation, and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.

> In France they implemented a modest fuel tax and they got the Yellow Vest Protests

The thing with fuel taxes is that, well, it doesn't help anyone. The poor single mother living and working in an area without great transit option will still have to rely on her car. Is the new tax going to help her afford an electric one or will it just contributes to some underperforming bureaucrat's pension fund?

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emis...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china

Why would you compare derivatives and not absolute values when designating who is "actively working against the environment"? Objectively US is polluting way more per capita.

Derivatives shows trajectories.

Obviously, so what? If you have a shop-lifter who stole 100$ worth of goods last year and 200$ this year and a fraudster who stole 100000$ last year and measly 50000$ this year, you wouldn't say that the first one is a hardened criminal and the second is an upstanding citizen, would you? Get on your high horse when US is polluting at least less than others, otherwise it makes no sense.

Except the orders of magnitudes you are suggesting are nowhere near the current situation regarding CO2 emissions.

We're talking about 16T per capita in the US vs almost 7T in China.

So it's more like Stealing 200$ vs 100$.

Only because the CO2 emitted by producing then exporting the goods that are eventually consumed elsewhere are accounted on China rather than on wherever they are consumed, right? Or has Chinese lifestyle become more wasteful than US'?

Yet more anti-China western propaganda. You can criticize China for many issues, but this isn't one of them. You have to look at facts.

You can't just look at absolute emissions per capita, you need to look at consumption-based emissions:

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/eys0iw/per...

I don't see any such "trajectory" that you mention.

Domestic flights wouldn’t be hard to electrify (815km range within 4-5 years, 1300km range within 10 years… enough to electrify short haul flights which are half of all passenger miles traveled by air… and most medium/long haul flights can be broken up to shorter routes), and you can also do electric car road trips (I just drove from Texas to Virginia in a Model S). Eventually, even long haul flights (~4000-5000km) could be electrified.

It’s ultimately not hard to reduce emissions to low levels. Just use electricity for stuff we usually use fossil fuels for now. Until 1950 or so, most hydrogen for fertilizer was made with electrolysis, so it wouldn’t be hard to do that. Many homes are already heated purely electrically. Several electrical grids have very low per-kWh emissions. Mix of nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, and geothermal makes it pretty feasible. Even new iron in new plants in the US (the steel which isn’t recycled already in arc furnaces) is about half made with hydrogen (as part of natural gas syngas) and could be tweaked to be ~90-95% hydrogen.

It’s not hard or even particularly expensive. We just gotta do it and quit telling people the only way to fight climate change is castration (literal or metaphorical, ie degrowth).

(Also, a crewed solar powered plane flew around the world a few years ago, although you’d want to use mostly battery electric.)

…really, the hard thing to electrify are the long haul transoceanic flights. A yearly visit to relatives in France has a massive carbon footprint right now, but it’s also something almost no one does (compared to commuting, having a house in the suburbs, domestic flights, and road trips, which are relatively easy to decarbonize). An appropriate carbon price on the few electrification-resistant sectors would address the problem efficiently.

> That strikes me as close-to-impossible for industrialized nations to achieve. A round-trip flight from NYC to SF emits 1.5 metric tons per passenger. In order to reach 1.61 metric tons an individual would not be able to own a gas-powered car, could not regularly consume meat, could not live in remote areas only visitable by plane etc.

So?

> Many things people don't even consider "luxuries" (like visiting family overseas) would be a non-starter.

That is a luxury, whether you consider it one or not is irrelevant. When you emigrate there are certain consequences.

No one except loonies see "You can't own a car, consume meat live anywhere but NYC and can't visit your family 5 states over" and are okay with it.

It doesn't matter who's okay with it. We have a choice between that, or an even less pleasant future. "Everything is awesome forever and we don't have to pay for it" is simply not one of the options.

> We have a choice between that, or an even less pleasant future. "Everything is awesome forever and we don't have to pay for it" is simply not one of the options.

When I see these flat assertions stated as foregone conclusions IRL by friends, I am prompted to ask, “What mitigations did you already implement against this conclusion?”

Revealed preferences demonstrate that overwhelmingly their assertions are far stronger than their mitigations. This is worrisome, as it shows even “true believers” are not taking commensurate action. The dislocation when it arrives, if as large a magnitude as claimed by IPCC, will be large even for that cohort.

I strongly disagree with your comment. Your definition of luxury is narrow and proscriptive. If you're trying to evaluate whether people would accept certain changes in their lifestyle, their definition of luxury is the one that matters.

In a tight definition, indoor plumbing is a luxury. As a person whose family vacations used to include an outhouse, I most certainly do not consider that a luxury in my life.

The whole scenario is far fetched. We're imagining some egalitarian world (won't happen), in which with today's technology we need to make due with tomorrows resources, but without time to adapt and find alternatives.

More realistically, we need to start making at least some steps. If air travel becomes more expensive, we'll do less of it, and at least try to find alternatives, personally. Society might try to find workarounds, like negative emissions, or construct alternatives (like high-speed rail) that are "good enough", at least for many flights. We might have alternative, emissions free fuel, someday.

But the real point is: this is not going to be as extreme as is sketched simply because inequality isn't going away, and secondly - this is necessarily going to happen gradually, so the impact will be reduced as society will have time to adapt. Let's just hope gradually doesn't mean glacially, because then we'll pay the climate price.

> this is necessarily going to happen gradually

That depends on what you mean by "gradually". Climate is a non-linear system. It can change radically in a very small number of years. Within a single generation, for example, much of the world's current farmland could become desert. That is going to be very hard to adapt to.

> That is going to be very hard to adapt to.

If that comes to pass I hope I won't be alive to see it, but I think 'hard to adapt to' is putting it very mildly. You're talking about war and famine on a scale that the world has not seen before.

Yes. That's exactly right. I think even the people who worry about climate change don't fully appreciate how grim the situation is, and how fast things are going to get really, really bad, a small number of decades tops. If you haven't already, look up "blue ocean event."

No, my definition of luxury is to take anything that we didn't have in the last 100 years and consider it optional, because that's the kind of world you'll be living in regardless of your opinion on the matter.

And then you will realize that it is a luxury to be able to zoom around the planet on a moments notice, to have a multiple 100's of KW personal energy budget per month and so on. These things are not givens and once they're gone everything that depended on them will be gone as well, because you will prefer to survive.

100 years in an arbitrary period. Why not go back 10k years to define a luxury?

What people would accept or not it's speculation.

People in the west were not supposed to accept a lockdown, yet they did. They were not supposed to accept election fraud, corruption, high crime rate, yet they regularly do as well.

Acceptance is really not the hard part in this problem.

Being organized in such a way that the global long term interest of the majority is only a concern when it can be positively correlated to the short term interest of a minority, is.

> So?

You have made peace with these things which is commendable.

That said, you must still understand how big of a change this would be for other people who have not. For example, I suspect the Canadian government would have a hard time telling indigenous populations in Nunavut that they have banned flights to their communities. Same would go for island nations like Iceland or even the state of Hawaii.

You and I can probably both agree that others will be reluctant to give up eating meat, fresh fruits/vegetables that have been flown in from warmer climates. We can probably also agree that most people would not vote for a party that promised to shut down global international tourism.

I cannot see any political solution to this problem.

It doesn't matter.

If prices rise gradually, people will adapt. Remote villages might become ghost towns (hardly the first time in Canada, incidentally), or become more isolated. And the world isn't going to turn into some utopian egalitarian place either, so the hard reality is that many people won't lose anything by losing air travel, because they already do none, and thus those that have that luxurious habit now will not need to suddenly lose it; there's time to adapt. Most of the US certainly doesn't need air travel either, and train or even road travel can be quite emissions poor; it just means travel will take more time (and willingness to build infrastructure).

A more realistic scenario is one in which inequality does not change significantly - and then the reductions are less severe.

But seriously: losing most air travel (or just cheap air travel): if that's it, count yourself lucky!

> If prices rise gradually, people will adapt.

I think this is where you and I disagree. I would contend that the average citizen will resist this. I am basing this off what we saw in France when they introduced a very modest fuel tax.

I think this is an issue that would actually unite both the left and the right. I suspect that if we made air travel, meat and fresh (flown-in) produce only available to the wealthiest 0.X% of our population we would see widespread outrage. It would be seen as just another example of inequality.

So first of all - France is known for it's remarkable protest culture. That's not typical. Secondly, the fuel tax in question, while reasonable and necessary, is also a somewhat special case even in France because it represents taking away peoples everyday mobility. As cars electrify, that will be less so, and other measures - such as those targeting luxury travel like air travel - would surely not see quite the same levels of protest. And at this point, because the protests were widespread, and because they succeeded, there is going to be vigilance against sneaky plans by the government to pass it while nobody is watching - but that too is a fairly local issue.

I expect that even in France those tax hikes will eventually pass, even if it takes longer than elsewhere and much longer than other measures. It may need some other compromise, like a comparable tax-reduction for median incomes; and some level of political maneuvering to placate the particularly hard hit. Or perhaps they'll try to achieve similar reductions via other measures such as speed limits and regulations on cars. But I don't think it's representative of social upheaval vs. climate-change cost in general, anyhow.

> France is known for it's remarkable protest culture.

It's also known for its remarkably high tax rate on fiul:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#/media/File%3AFuel_...

Reality doesn't care what humans want.

The options are make some voluntary changes now, or make very chaotic and much bigger forced changes later.

If we make the wrong choice our culture becomes extinct. We may or may not survive as an animal species, but that's almost a secondary issue.

That's it. That's what's on the table. Short of surprise alien intervention or unobtanium Magical Carbon Capture Technology™ there are no other choices.

The political problem is that we've managed to isolate ourselves from both physical and emotional challenges to the extent that we'd rather believe in a variety of fantasy game tokens than deal with reality.

But if that's the best we're capable of as a species, that's where we are. No one is going to give us a special pass. We'll just be one more failed species in a very long list, and that will be that.

Precisely. This coin does not want to drop because people's addictions depend strongly on it continuing not to drop. It doesn't even enter consideration that there is a possible end to this bonanza because 'we wish it to be so'.

So this would require martial law to implement. Basically no one in the US would accept those restrictions. Doesn't seem politically feasible without a ww3.

Massive climate change would implement it, with or without our acceptance.

That scenario isn't so far-fetched, sadly. WW3 is a real possibility if we can't solve this problem another way.

> That is a luxury, whether you consider it one or not is irrelevant. When you emigrate there are certain consequences.

Interesting. Why are you (or your political affiliates) the ones who get to decide what is a luxury and what is “essential”?

Were you ordained with some divine moral authority?

I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but that kind of authoritarian thinking will thankfully never be allowed to prevail in the United States.

It's not me who will decide, it will be your wallet.

> but that kind of authoritarian thinking will thankfully never be allowed to prevail in the United States.

That's a very funny statement.

It's even funnier when you consider that surveys show 26% of the U.S. population qualifies as highly right-wing authoritarian.

https://morningconsult.com/2021/06/28/global-right-wing-auth...

The world is going to need a combination of a bunch of policies. It's not just emissions reduction; it's also carbon sinks, and adaptation to the non-avoided impacts.

Also, none of this needs to happen overnight, and every step along the way is helpful. Even if we fail to achieve the optimistic target of 1.5C, that doesn't mean it's all pointless and we might as well emit whatever.

And that means that those targets aren't all that important. We need emissions reductions, the more the merrier, whether or not we hit some kind of arbitrary goal or not. Whether we reach those exact benchmarks you propose or not kind of doesn't matter.

I'd just like to additionally point out that however unfair perhaps, the premise of that nature article is some kind of super-unrealistic sci-fi, because there's no question of everybody on the planet having the resources for "high life satisfaction", including perhaps your proposed annual plane trips. In fact, it's likely that the annual median number of plane trips even by Americans is... zero - at least most years: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1579/Airlines.aspx - and even the average is just 2 or so; this is clearly a luxury.

Additionally, carbon-negative processes will be necessary. How expensive that turns out to be, and how much carbon planes need to emit will hopefully play a role in pricing plane trips in the future.

For now, we could start by at least taxing jet fuel appropriately.

I live in an energy-efficient appartment, drive less than 100km/month. I rarely buy clothes. I rarely buy tech stuff (except for a new phone every 3-4 years). I don't fly. I eat no animal products. All my electricity comes from renewable sources (sweden has a lot of hydro power).

There is no way in hell I am even close to 1.6 metric tons of co2, and I really tried to bring it down. Every calculator I try put me at about 1/3 of the average swede, which would mean I am at about 2.5 metric tons.

Don't forget food etc - even as a vegetarian, in Europe, you're likely to hit that 1.6 tons number just with food, or come close to it, at least as much as my google-foo tells me. Of course, these numbers are all quite hard to estimate, and particularly for animal products (which you don't consume!) include questionable factors like land-use changes - which are questionable not because they don't matter, but because of the remarkably optimistic assumption that land use change is driven by consumption, rather than driven by the low cost of said change for those actively doing it.

But sure, it sounds like you've found a lifestyle that works for you and has at least considerably less impact, regardless of the exact number (and ignoring the exact number is likely wise anyhow). Great!

I do everything you've said, essentially 'by accident'. I don't have a car, don't fly, and don't live in a remote area. It's basically a function of how good the infrastructure is. If you live in a dense city, with good cycle lanes, and decent train connections, you don't really need a car. Not flying is also enabled by this.

Everybody could definitely live like this. I would actually prefer it - cars degrade my cycling experience. I think it's just a function of shit urban planning that makes this impossible in some places.

It would be a major social change, but no more major than everybody moving out of cities and into suburbs in the first place.

I enjoy my car. I enjoy maintaining a building, going hiking, exploring the countryside, etc. The left wing politics, density, and “urbanness” of big cities is not for me. I much prefer the open road, nature, etc. I want to retire to 10 acres of land.

All of that, I can’t do without a car. I don’t think everyone could live like you, since it’s just not the majority societal preference. People never evolved to live in concrete jungles.

Lots of responses here focusing on planes and air travel. Just wanted to call out what a small part (1.9%) of the problem that actually is: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Yes, but all the small parts add up.

Thanks for re-iterating this. Granted, due to where the emissions take place, air travel is slightly stronger/higher but I feel like the sole focus on air travel is an annoying feature of a lot of climate-change discussions. It's something we really don't have many technically or economically viable alternatives for yet.

Why don't climate-change measures and discussions focus on the other 95%+ of sources that are easier to address?

I get all the points but the eating meat part. We simply don’t need it, there is no benefit anymore. Not contradicting your overall point though, even if some things are luxury. We got used to it which is why we might not consider it as luxury. I don’t think we’ll have solar powered planes but maybe emission free trains?

> In France they implemented a modest fuel tax and they got the Yellow Vest Protests in response. I can't see the average individual ever voting for a party that wouldn't let them visit family and nearly eliminate meat consumption.

The Yellow Vests protests were against the tax and its unevenly distributed burden (the wealthy can easily pay that tax). If a government were to discourage people from eating meat or travelling in planes through other means than taxes, I'm not so sure we'd see Yellow Vest protests.

I agree these are huge challenges, and that climate activists are unrealistic in their expectations of how much people are willing to sacrifice or change. I would guess most climate activists take more than one flight per year, and certainly I do as someone who is concerned about climate (in non-COVID times.)

For this reason, I really think technology has to be used to solve these problems. EVs, public transit, and high-speed rail where it makes sense are very straightforward answers for many things. There is also low-hanging fruit like insulating buildings, and switching buildings to use electricity instead of natural gas. In the US, all of these could be accelerated mostly with government subsidies. There aren't really any major technical hurdles to adopting them right now.

Beyond that, I think we have to have carbon capture, and carbon-neutral biofuels. That would enable us to continue flying and eating meat. Hopefully lab-grown meats also pan out in the coming decades or so.

That's the mindset that brought us here.

> That strikes me as close-to-impossible for industrialized nations to achieve. A round-trip flight from NYC to SF emits 1.5 metric tons per passenger. In order to reach 1.61 metric tons an individual would not be able to own a gas-powered car, could not regularly consume meat, could not live in remote areas only visitable by plane etc. Many things people don't even consider "luxuries" (like visiting family overseas) would be a non-starter.

I'm surprised that you describe this as close-to-impossible. My current situation is exactly that and I'm fine. But maybe it's a lot easier to live in the EU compared to the US.

> That strikes me as close-to-impossible for industrialized nations to achieve. A round-trip flight from NYC to SF emits 1.5 metric tons per passenger.

High speed rail may help here. It won’t be faster than planes anytime soon, but if you factor the TSA lines and delays in lounges, it may be a lot more comfortable for shorter routes like NYC to Chicago.

Ever thought about all those governments and complexity? Simplicity for unity: https://github.com/rene-tobner/unity