Comment by ravitation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ravitation | Hacker News Reader

>If we can achieve this progress without real political or financial support, think how quickly it could change with it. Rather than trying to power through a headwind, we now have the wind at our backs.

Obviously the idea that climate change (or 99.9% of things really) is capable of driving humanity extinct is absurd; but this is essentially the opposite message and equally wrong. I can imagine what it would be like if we had real political and/or financial support, but I'm not sure that there's a lot of evidence, at least here in the United States, that we're all that close to substantial support in either area.

In all honesty, it's hard to not read this as a technologist/neoliberal hype piece. "We don't have political support or money, but technology and the market will save us."

One thing that's somewhat amusing is the set of examples given to support this narrative. "Coal is effectively dead in many countries." Except that coal being dead in Sweden or France is essentially meaningless when roughly 60-70% of the power in China and India comes from coal. "Renewable prices are falling rapidly." This is mostly looking at solar and wind, which are difficult to implement for a variety of physical reasons regardless of price per kWh. "The price of batteries has fallen by 97 percent in the past 30 years." Except that modern battery storage is still horribly inefficient when compared to, for example, oil or natural gas.

Of course these problems are solvable, but it's hard to see how one could frame this genuinely and in good faith as some kind of net tailwind.

> Except that coal being dead in Sweden or France is essentially meaningless when roughly 60-70% of the power in China and India comes from coal.

That's an inconvenient truth that's mostly left out of a lot of the narratives around climate change. 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.

[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

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

I think it is misleading to look at % change without also taking into account the total magnitude, as the development state and energy situations in each country are drastically different. China is in a growth phase so electricity demand is increasing year over year. US electricity demand is relatively constant. China emissions are certainly increasing, but they are still half of the US per capita.[1]

Despite lower GDP, China has brought significantly more renewable power production online than the US in the last 10 years[2]. The US has added about 300 Twh of renewable electricity production in the last 10 years. China has has added about 1,600 Twh of renewable electricity production in the last 10 years.[3]

China electricity demand will increase to support GDP, and this is non-negotiable. They already source more of their electricity from renewables (as a percent), and are on track to have a lower fossil fuel consumption (as a percent) when they stabilize development.

In short, China is lower than the US in terms of per capita CO2 emissions, and has a trajectory to remain lower in the future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China

It is all relative. Things like those that you mentioned are Tailwinds in comparison to a scenario where we have no progress. Tailwind of the problematic metaphor, a better one might be that we have made some Headway

>It is all relative.

Hence the "net" part of what I said... All of what you said is fairly self-evident...

The article essentially argues to focus on the soft breeze at our backs instead of the hurricane in our face, which is a bit ridiculous, and only helps the political and financial forces that are the root cause of the hurricane.

I think you missed my point: There is no headwind - the net is positive.

That is to say, renewables are increasing, therefore the net velocity is positive (and accelerating). It is not 100%, so we have further to go (distance traveled).

If you want to measure the rate of change, it makes sense to benchmark against where you started and see if you are progressing.

In terms of renewable power adoption, the world is making ground, not losing it. The world on a better trajectory than it was 20 years ago, a wouldn't without the effort put in over the last few decades. There is a lot more work to do, and it is not going as fast as one might hope, but that does not negate past accomplishments.

Technically in your framing, there still would be a headwind (i.e. things limiting the rate of the acceleration).

Either way, this framing only works in very specific contexts, for example "renewables" or "many countries," many of which we'd arguably make progress on regardless (e.g. the cost of batteries would decrease over time regardless of the impetus of climate change), so it isn't very useful. Global emissions continue to increase, so, if we apply this framing more broadly, the net velocity is still negative (though acceleration has increased). As before, I'd also argue that simply increasing acceleration (towards reducing emissions/mitigating climate change) would happen regardless (e.g. as fossil fuel scarcity increases, usage of alternatives would increase), and still is not very useful.

If this is the framing of the article, it frames it this way very poorly, as you said. Instead it presents headwind vs. tailwind as two alternatives (i.e. "[r]ather than [..] we now have [...]") as opposed to things you'd always have (i.e. forces for vs. forces opposed).

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