COP26 agrees new global climate deal
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
This agreement will not be kept to.
What will happen is climate change will continue, perhaps accelerating a bit more slowly than it would otherwise have done, becoming more and more destructive and harmful, until the situation is so up-front right-now deadly serious that action is finally taken, by which time action will not matter, because of the huge lag between cutting emissions and reduction in the rate of climate change.
What will be needed at that point is geo-engineering, on a global scale. The technology for this does not exist, it will need to be invented, and then cost-reduced, and then deployed on a global scale on a point-blank timescale - like going from zero to manufacturing every single car in the world in five or ten years. I have no hope this will actually work, and it's madness for civilization as we know it, and to avoid the deaths of billions, to depend upon it.
I am hopeful that the generation of leaders who will be in power by then will have what it takes to deploy even a fraction of a geoengineering solution. What the solar geoengineering field needs today is funding for research & modeling methods
Consistent crop and fishery failures induced by ecological collapse and massive environmental change, and attendent economic failure.
The world has billions living on one or two dollars per day. These people barely survive now; what happens when food shortages cause prices to strongly rise, across whole belts of countries at a time, and they stay high because crop failures become normal, and where the loss of wealth generation, from the loss of crops, hammers the economy?
Bear in mind farmers cannot just "change crops". Each crop requires a particular set of skills, technologies and experience, and these are extremely poor people, both financially and in other forms of capital, such as knowledge resources. These are the billions of people without mobile phones.
In poorer countries - populous countries - the production of crops is the main production of wealth for the mass of the population.
For those people, with significant, systemic, sustained food price rises, there comes a point where you have had so little food, for so long, you either die from it directly, or you become ill and can't fight that illness off, and it kills you.
Elected officials need broad support from their base to enact policies that can have a hit on quality of life. Fighting climate changes with the solutions that we have right now requires actual sacrifices from the people, and that is never good news for elected officials because their constituent ultimately value their comfort much more than possible future gains or sea level in third world countries.
Now when they hold a summit, they get some needed spotlight on the issue and get to have everyone in the media stress out how important that fight is. This translates into a stronger support for environmental policies at the local level which turns it into a key issue for voters. Once that's achieved the line moves for everyone and it's easier to push far reaching changes.
On forums such as HN where the majority is center-left (at least on environmental issues), achieved higher-education and probably younger than the median American it's easy to lose sight on the fact that climate change is still not seen as an absolute truth for a significant chunk of the world[1]. Summits such as the COP26 helps raise more awareness and hopefully we'll have enough support before it's really too late.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/18/a-look-at-h...
>The Indian delegate has just called for a change to the wording of the draft climate agreement.
>He asks for the line to call for the "phase-down" not the "phase-out" of unabated coal power.
>This would be a major change to the text.
>The line around coal and fossil fuels is seen as unprecedented language in a COP agreement.
I sleep well at night because I absolutely don't represent my citizen's choice (cynical scenario)
OR I know something they don't know which allows me to sleep well... (hopeful scenario)
They are not wealthy enough to never be affected by climate change, no one is.
What I believe is happening is that these people are high on power. They may realize that their course is self-destructive, but they don't know how to avert it, and asking them to abandon their power is antithetical to who they are.
History is filled with dynasties of rulers going out in a messy way. We are headed to a time of unprecedented change, and we should expect that, for the only time in history, these changes will cause no threat to wealthy people?
The president in a parliamentary democracy like India is a decorative head like the Queen of UK without much agency. Modi is the Prime Minister who is the real head of state.
I am a fairly empathetic person, and the fact that over a billion people are likely to die from wet bulb or whatever else, purely in the name of money, greed, & systematic buffoonery has me pretty mentally fucked up already.
Would it be in my best interest to find some sort of drugs that completely turn off my empathy for the next two decades? Because the other options I can think of aren't very compatible with life.
The outcome at this point is essentially inevitable, the U.S. seems pretty incapable of rolling out the amount of nuclear we'll need to divert a global catastrophe.
Legislation like that is possible because of average citizens. Find a local political climate group in your area. Work with them.
Check out the recent Green Amendment that was passed in NY. That movement started from the everyday person. It’s passing as huge implications for future environmental law cases in the state. A similar amendment in other states has stopped the passage of expanding fracking operations, etc
Keystone XL was stopped by everyday people. Line 3 is facing a resistance made up of everyday people.
This narrative that we are “powerless” is exactly what the powers against us want. Research shows that climate anxiety increases inaction. Research also shows that people involved in community campaigns have lower rates of climate anxiety.
If you live in WA or FL feel free to PM me. I have a lot of resources that could get you started
People want to keep politics separate from work, but this seems like nonsense to me. Reductively, politics revolves around who does the work, who pays the costs of that work, and who receives the benefits from that work. To separate politics from work when politics is about work is to throw away the greatest power you have - your contribution to the world through work. Voting every few years is so unimaginably paltry compared to using your economic output to have a say.
People have this idea that cooperatives are inefficient, but ensuring profits stay within the company instead of being extracted off to people who had no hand in its creation is a burden they do not share.
Microsoft spends $250k/employee/year on dividends and stock buybacks for shareholders.
If this idea sounds interesting read the book Democracy at Work.
This works both ways - if we can replace a few climate skeptics with climate action independent candidates then that might move the needle on government intransigence.
Strangely, the uptake of solar panels has been great down-under .. yet the uptake of electric vehicles has been appalling, with state governments even imposing a road tax on sales.
The real problem here is the government _subsidizes_ coal and gas, and we are even approving new gas fields for exploitation.
It is hard to maintain empathy and hope and still be a realist .. but I hope you will stay motivated and take what action you can.
We may be able to use tech in creative ways to circumvent government inaction - For example : instead of waiting for the government to roll out a carbon price or carbon tax .. everyday people may invest in a green-energy crypto token asset which is used to raise funds for clean energy projects ?
side note : Ive been actively DIS-couraging smart people in Australia to talk about nuclear, here - the problem here is it would take 15 years to even do the paperwork, and we have shown very little competence in rolling out high tech engineering projects [ NBN broadband failure as one example, submarines another ] .. so I think unless you have nuclear in place or in development already, there just isn't time. Meanwhile we could and should be building as many solar plants as possible, in parallel, essentially without such major regulation needed.
Dont let the bastards wear you down, keep doing all the things .. every ton of carbon we keep in the ground is a win that buys our kids time - so thankyou.
The only realistic solution from global warming will not come from government action, or attempting to force nations into economic untenable positions that have the effect of lowering living standards for their populations.
The only realistic solution is via technological innovation where by coal, oil, etc are made obsolete by natural market forces, not artificial tax schemes, fines, or other such agreements.
People that continue down the path that making these fuels more expensive by artificial government actions will continue to be disappointed in the results, as people need to heat their home, move goods, etc and they will always want do to that by the cheapest means, injecting government policies that simply increase prices of those basic needs of society to make alternatives more attractive will never ever be popular with the majority citizens of any nation which is why nations look to water down the language.
This is a PR event with no substance, like most international agreements.
First, my concern with technical innovation is that it will simply be exploited for increased output. If the process for making widgets is made twice as efficient, people will make twice the widgets and pollute just as much.
Second, in your example of coal being made obsolete by market forces: governments are already skewing these forces with massive subsidies for fossil fuels. We need governments to stop doing that.
Third, bringing new technology to market requires huge investments and risks. We need governments to incentivize and support this development so that it can happen as quickly as possible. Free markets are not some efficient force that just always magically do the right thing when left to their own devices. They are marred by countless modes of failure.
The underlying social and political issues are almost intractable, but they cannot be ignored just because it's too difficult. I don't believe we can simply technology our way out of this.
100% agree, my entire post is about government inaction... My ideal government does nothing ;) that that applies to both sides of this, they should neither subsidize nor fine technologies. It should be up purely to market forces.
>>Third, bringing new technology to market requires huge investments and risks. We need governments to incentivize and support this development so that it can happen as quickly as possible
This has never been true for any advancement, Governments are TERRIBLE at picking winner and losers from a technology standpoint (see Ethanol) , and often time they SLOW not accelerate advancement. It has been proven in many sectors, including energy production, that once the government gets out of the way real progress begins.
>I don't believe we can simply technology our way out of this.
All of human history proves you wrong, but this time is the one time we should ignore history right?
Except all the actual scientists are agreeing with GP.
The "tech will save us" mantra seems to come mostly from business types and libertarian pundits, not from the people actually working on those technologies.
You probably know this, but without government intervention we'd still have leaded petrol, and renewables wouldn't have been as developed without the massive subsidies.
in the 70s' public pressure, and outcry became large enough that companies started phasing out leaded gas as customers were demanded alternatives, it is at this point that government, working with industry developed the phase out plan that the public was demanded.
This is often how regulations go, technology advances (in this case alternative anti-knock additives), public pressure builds, and at a critical junction industry allows (yes allows) government to "pass" regulation outlining something they were already going to do anyway based on public pressure.
Now often the question is well if they were going to do it anyway why would they have government pass regulation. That is easy to answer because there is always some fear that some company will buck the trend, large companies hate competition but they can not coordinate on their own as that would be anti-trust violations, Thus government provides a nice avenue to ensure no competition on some matters or topics
This is why facebook is currently asking the government for regulation. This is why Amazon supports a national sales tax, and why Walmart now supports increasing the minimum wage...
This a good thing. The point of taming climate change isn't to inflict random punishment on people, it is to stop changing the climate. I drive an EV powered by carbon-free electricity. Political programs that are aimed at curbing how much I (and other people) move around aren't going to get voted in.
There are places where nuclear makes more sense but now that solar has dropped in price by 10x it is incredibly competitive. Can't we just let the free market work this out?
And by people I mean the 0.1 percenters who provide electricity and love those dividends they got off the backs of the rest of us not upgrading their systems and then whined about bankruptcy the minute anyone tried to hold them accountable.
We're talking the same people who now want to put a tax on going off grid and installing solar because reasons and racism and s___
https://calcoastnews.com/2021/11/pge-claims-home-solar-is-ra...
I mean if coal is such a great solution why isn't it competitive and why do you hate free markets? Starting to think you might actually hate freedom and America. What could be more freedom(tm) than an open level playing field competition for our future?
While true, it does not make these actions ethical. Using threats of violence( and yes the mandates are threats of violence) to obtain a result you desire is unethical no matter how much you believe that action to be necessary. Once you use coercion via state violence to get your way you have lost all moral and ethical authority.
>>And by people I mean the 0.1 percenters
The problem here is the comment you were replying to asked about the poor, who if their heat bill goes up by 20% will have to choose between food and heat, will have to tell their kids "no Christmas for you this year" etc.
You seemly have no concern for these people.
To be clear, I am on your side when it comes to ending subsidies, though all subsidies including though on "green" energy as well
I just do not think your argumentation is valid or going to win the hearts and minds of anyone
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/03/699325560/for-the-few-who-hea...
And for those 130,000 households you would prefer to screw over the remaining 127.9 million so they can keep doing so. If you bothered to read the article some of those houses are 2400 square feet so I don't think the guy's poor at least in that case.
Or for $6.5B we could implement cash for coal and subsidized adding solar to their house and an electric heat pump or heater. And for those are solar isn't feasible we could just subsidize the electricity and give them the heating for a lot less. Compare and contrast with the $1.7T budget for the f-35 stealth fighter and this is chump change. And before you whine about jobs and other canned talking points to keep doing exactly what we're doing, we can early retire the entire 42,000 coal industry workforce for $12B. Now for the 2.4 million houses heating their homes with wood, those are bigger numbers but at least it's not coal.
As for the vaccine mandates any violence perpetrated on those who won't get vaccinated is vastly exceeded by the violence they are inflicting on spreading this pandemic and murdering Americans and destroying our economy and geopolitical competitiveness. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Get used to it. Or move to Pennsylvania and build a house heated by coal in a town that hates vaccines. There's a whole bunch of them there I used to live there.
And yes remove all the energy subsidies and stop getting in the way of nuclear power as well. We're long overdue to disrupt the energy industry and it's just not that expensive to do it.
I don't know what to say