Ask HN: What unprecedented measures could be taken to stop climate change? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What unprecedented measures could be taken to stop climate change?

4 pointsjjranalli19 comments

I'm wondering what measures, given sufficient resources, could have a meaningful impact in quickly reducing global emissions. I'm especially interested in what would require the involvement of a large group of people (millions) and/or the use of large quantities of money ($ billions).

Some examples:

- Assist governments in accelerating the ecological transition in their countries, giving access to additional resources when needed

- Institute funds to reward individuals who contribute to the environment, for example by installing renewable energy systems or consuming green energy

It would be great to learn more about the root causes of the slow reduction in emissions, the main challenges and why they haven't been solved yet.

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I think some kinds of global carbon tax + other green house gasses (GHG) done at a WTO type level.

Stop telling people what they can/cant do this and focus on pricing the damage points. Puts costs against goods like meat production, petrol cars, private jets etc. Rather than moralise, put a price on them and give people the choice. This will encourage farms to use seaweed to reduce cattle methane or bring in electric planes or goods that last longer.

Ideally this could be taxed at a national level. And for countries that wont, put export/import tariffs on them from the trading block to meet the cost they should have taxed. Monies raised must go towards environmental improvement measures e.g. buying land for forest regrowth or carbon scrubbing.

Obviously huge global plan with masses of detail and nothing is perfect, but generally I feel putting agreed globally consistent costs on GHG emission seems the best way to redirect the world to better behaviours.

So affluent people can go on as usual and low income families are priced out of travel and heating.

It's not that simple.

I feel its simple to say "It's not that simple" whilst not trying to show an alternative.

Any solution is going to have downsides. For right or wrong, it doesn't seem realistic to make some solution where a wealthy upper echelons take all or even the majority of the weigh of a global problem.

Most of the world is low income, and you need to bring in the mass market for change. And there will be issues for sure but if you dont force change across the entire market little will change. Like do you expect we make a rule where people below $20k income to keep using petrol cars without any new cost but everyone else goes electric? Bad example? Maybe some proportional carbon/GHG tax system? Doing that at an individual level would be very difficult.

Id love to be wrong but I dont see a solution where we make global changes of any real significance and dont effect low income people, which is much of the world. Do you?

Nuclear https://youtu.be/N-yALPEpV4w

Simple but not easy. Difficult to enforce however.

Here goes:

Non-recyclable packaging for food items is illegal as a first step. Other packaging is staged for later. No more than 10 years to implement. No excuses for anything that goes into a home to have non-recyclable packaging after that 10 year changeover.

Fossil fuels can't be sold anymore. Fossils can be used for various long lasting purposes. Not for disposable purposes, eg face masks.

Computers and similar obsolescence landfill items (IoT) must be completely repairable/upgradeable and/or at least realistically reclaimable. No excuses. Companies failing to do this are billed for the existence of the item and must track it like nuclear waste. Think in terms of landfill storage fees.

That's just a start. Good luck.

Buy coal mines, coal generators, and petroleum refineries in developed countries, sit on the coal and dismantle the generators and refineries to destroy fossil fuel supply and force consumers to cleaner options. China is harder considering the authoritarian regime, but conversely they are deploying renewables very quickly because they don’t have nimby or property rights barriers (and they have a voracious demand for energy).

You want to find ways to dismantle fossil infrastructure in a manner that is too burdensome to go back once you’ve taken action. The only way forward is then lower carbon technologies (and yes, natural gas use may temporarily increase, but that will incentivize faster deployment of cheaper renewables paired with energy storage).

China indeed seems to be the hardest problem to solve.

But wouldn't it be better to go after the demand for energy from fossil fuels, instead of supply? I wonder if there has ever been a large scale attempt at this

Demand is hard. You’re at the whim of irrational human consumers (and all that that entails). Supply is easy. You’re at the whim of violently rational economic actors with control of assets.

Assume a distressed fossil asset is for sale, and you want to acquire it to retire it permanently. You’re engaged with someone who isn’t emotional; it’s just business. You negotiate on the value of the asset(s), and once an agreement is reached, transfer of ownership occurs and it’s a done deal. It’s not like consumers when you’re at the whim of their identity and self in some cases, trying to sell them on clean power or mobility.

Bonus points if you can use leverage (policy, relationships, whatever) to drive down the value of the distressed asset before acquiring it for forced retirement. That’s just being capital efficient.

I could be wrong, but I doubt the approach you described alone could reduce emissions at the scale required.

What I'm trying to say is that (I think) the root of the problem are the economic incentives for fossil fuel companies. It's easier for them to compromise with governments (who can't strong-arm them) and pay fines (which in turn gets charged to their customers). I don't think this problem has ever been solved.

But what if for some reason consumers, at a large scale, stopped paying for energy produced with fossil fuels? Wouldn't they be forced to adapt?

Consumers may be emotional, but can also be swayed with the right incentives (governments typically play this part). I assume this to be extremely hard of course, but theoretically I feel like it would be the only way to align all parties in the same direction.

There doesn’t appear to be any meaningful political or government will to implement a carbon tax or shift policy rapidly to deprecate fossil fuel use in a timely manner. Those, of course, would be the ideal path forward, but radical solutions will likely need to come from outside of government based on how we’ve gotten to here.

> wouldn't it be better to go after the demand for energy from fossil fuels, instead of supply? I wonder if there has ever been a large scale attempt at this

There has been, it's called the "global pandemic". The world will never find a better way to attack demand for energy consumption in such a short period. And you did not even notice. Your post would have fit perfectly well in HN circa 2019.

> What unprecedented measures could be taken to stop climate change?

Easy. Stop talking about it. Unthinkable I know. But I guarantee you life would go on and we'd all find other things to overreact to. Just like the "pandemic".

My company takes part in https://stripe.com/climate That's where soon billions USD can be spent (some projects are still in research stage).

"Stripe is kick-starting market for carbon removal" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29007726

Carbon removal tech is such a fundamental piece in all this, and I'm glad Stripe is leading the way. Research takes time though, so hopefully they reach that stage soon

Consensus and urgency among a vast majority of world governments.

Just OPEC may be enough, but there are a lot of non-OPEC controlled oil reserves, and OPEC controls haven't always been super effective. If OPEC announced (and held to) a coordinated reduction in production of say 5% a year, I don't know if other sources (or OPEC defectors) would make up the shortfall. A strong signal of reduced availability/increased prices of oil would increase motivation to use alternate energy sources, some of which have reduced emissions.

Moratorium on human procreation until we have a sustainable transition off of fossil fuels. Really it's just cruel at this point to continue to play this game where more people are brought into being, presumably for their parent's personal happiness, but have their futures shortchanged by the previous generations' lack of action.

Dump a couple container ships of powdered iron oxide in the oceans. I would not recommend this, as it could lead to global agriculture collapse and mass starvation due to lack of crucial component for plant growth. Plants require carbon dioxide...

The book "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance" discussed one method that only costs on the order of millions of dollars a year -- I believe it was putting sulphur into the atmosphere to cause a cooling effect. It certainly sounded worth considering.

Billions in funding for modern fission nuclear reactors in the short term. Trillions in funding for Fusion power plants for the medium term.

One unprecedented step in this direction would be to shift fossil fuel subsidies into nuclear subsidies. You probably want to do that part in stages.

Pretty much any measure taken to stop climate change would be unprecedented.

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