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Comment by ldh0011 | Hacker News Reader

On a tangentially related note, it confuses me why so many people seem to think that the only reason to do away with fossil fuels as much as possible is climate change. Millions die prematurely from air pollution every year. Even if climate change was fake we should still be trying to use cleaner energy.

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"What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an...

I honestly feel that people have got away with one with this type of thinking. In my province (British Columbia), there's a few major issues that have all been attributed to climate change; forest fires, flooding & decline of the salmon populations. Since there's this big boogeyman that they can't solve themselves (climate change), they don't even have to look into their forest management practices (spraying round-up to kill Aspen - a firebreak species - to plant mono-culture round-up ready pine stands - a serotineous species), or their off-shore fish farms that are located at the mouth of some of the most important rivers for salmon (spread sea lice and disease) or power generation (almost exclusively hydro dams), or that they've drained lakes for farm land and when the levees can't keep up the land floods again.

Great Barrier Reef is another prime example, pollution is causing a lot of issues, but you only hear of coral bleaching because of climate change.

The government-imposed greenbelts around some major Canadian cities have also backfired.

The reduced supply of land drives up prices within the urban area surrounded by the greenbelt.

This in turn just encourages more sprawl on the outer edges of the greenbelt, where land can be cheaper.

Those living in these new developments often commute into the urban area for work or other reasons, and now have to drive much farther each day as they pass through the greenbelt two (or more) times.

Infrastructure development in and through the greenbelt becomes bureaucratically challenging, preventing public transit or more efficient road infrastructure from being built.

Environmental regulations can too often have unanticipated (or ignored) environmental impacts that negate many of the supposed benefits.

Ehh. The Agricultural Land Reserve really isn't the problem in Vancouver.

Cities already have a ton of land where they can+should be allowing more housing but aren't (ex: the vast majority of residential land in Vancouver bans townhouses+apartments+condos). With the exception of maybe some parts of Richmond, I don't think there's much a case that the ALR is the problem here.

Agree. Just drive down main once and look at all the 2 story buildings… not even talking about the neighborhoods that are primarily detached. Vancouver is so expensive yet nobody is allowed to create denser housing. Nimbyism at its finest

This assumes there is no cost to the change.

The real question is if the cost to change is less than the current or future costs of inaction. I find what you said a manipulate style of argument used frequently today.

"What about lithium mines" ignoring the various oil disasters and the effects of drilling

"What if the vaccine had a 2% chance of killing me" ignoring the probability of dying from covid (made up numbers here)

I'm not claiming which side is right but these are often framed as the choice between the cost of the change and no cost.

But the premise of the point made by @jrussino is that the avoided costs of mitigating climate change turn out to be less than anticipated. In that case, we will have spent a lot of money for little benefit. The snarky joke doesn’t make logical sense.

I replied to your comment of "This assumes there is no cost to the change." which is not nor is it ever the case.

Except it is the case in the joke I was replying to:

> "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an...

This joke asserts that climate change mitigation measures would be justified even if climate change was a hoax. And that joke only works if you assume that those measures are free, or at least very cheap.

That isn't necessarily true if the benefits unrelated to climate change are also high, which it seems to me that they are. If millions of premature deaths are prevented yearly the measures can actually be pretty darn costly and still worth taking. And that is just one of many upsides.

That's not a great argument.

There are limited resources. If we spend on X, it means we don't spend on Y.

If it turns out Y is the bigger problem? Well, we missed a massive opportunity to make the world even better.

That is my new favorite quote.

There was a reply to this comment, now deleted, which said "Should have cars add something to exhaust so humans can see/smell it--even if just for demo purposes. Might help people to understand."

And I wanted to reply to that to say that we did used to be able to see exhaust fumes, and things were added so that we can't see them.

I have often thought that "the school run" would be different if everyone could see the cars pumping out exhaust outside the school, but history suggests that what would be different is people wouldn't want to see it, rather than being inconvenienced by getting rid of it. And that's a pattern which comes over from elderly care problems, homelessness and mental health problems, poverty problems, where the actions taken are often closer to sweeping under the rug than trying to solve the root causes.

> "Millions die prematurely from air pollution every year."

Especially including the radiation in the emissions from coal burning power plants, which kills more people every year than any nuclear power plant accident.

Radiation from coal is probably not a problem: "These studies concluded that the maximum radiation dose to an individual living within 1 km of a modern power plant is equivalent to a minor, perhaps 1 to 5 percent, increase above the radiation from the natural environment"

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

> Especially including the radiation in the emissions from coal burning power plants, which kills more people every year than any nuclear power plant accident.

I once did the maths, Chernobyl was on the order of 100 times Chinas current yearly nuclear emissions caused by coal burning.

Particulate matter and nitrogen oxides are the real issue (and sulphur dioxide where it’s not filtered out yet).

There's one particular mine/set of generators in china that basically just burns low-grade uranium ore (the ash is more concentrated than Namibian and Nigerian mines). If you exclude that one 100x is about right.

For the rest, yeah.

Also La Hague emits about 1/20th of a chernobyl per year.

CO2/NOx/SOx/particulates from coal are still worse.

As a bike riding hippie in the age of video meetings and streaming, explain to me why the world elite need to fly all over the world in private jets to discuss climate change?

Can you tell me why my grocery store stopped giving out free plastic bags by charging for them, and now phasing them out for paper, but they still sell plastic garbage bags and I can't reuse the grocery store bag for my garbage bag now?

Can you tell me why bunker fuel for cargo ships which is a major driver for pollution isn't being stopped? Seems like there are a limited number of large ships creating a massive amount of emissions that would be go after.

Can you explain why the phrase "Climate Change" is a better mission that "reduce pollution", which seems easier to understand and get behind for everyone?

I don't know about the others, but for the last one, "reduce pollution" only works if people, who aren't bike riding hippies by a large margin, see any point in reducing pollution. Why is pollution even bad, anyway? Seriously, factories have been working for centuries and nothing has gone wrong, so why should we regulate where they can pour their waste or make them pay for environmental nonsense like carbon capture? It's just this weird hippy tax that has no point since nothing has gone wrong.

Climate change (because people were too stupid to use the phrase "global warming" without making fun of the "warming" part whenever it was remotely cold) encapsulates the need for people to care about pollution with the understanding that it may be future generations will reap the benefits in a way that "reduce pollution" does not.

(See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33713513 )

> Seriously, factories have been working for centuries and nothing has gone wrong, so why should we regulate where they can pour their waste or make them pay for environmental nonsense like carbon capture?

Pardon? Factories have caused all sorts of problems with discharge, intentional or unintentional. Here's some from the top of my head:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster (mismanagement at a pesticide factory causes an explosion, poisoning many people and permanently contaminating the surrounding landscape).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease (a factory discharged mercury into the sea for years, where it interacted with anaerobic bacteria in the sediment to become incredibly deadly organic mercury and poisoned an entire town)

Keep in mind, these are from the top of my head and I am a nonexpert; we have environmental regulations because people have been hurt or killed by pollution numerous times.

Here's a quote that I hope will emphasize just how powerful pollution can be on an industrial scale:

> Pollution was so heavy at the mouth of the wastewater canal, a figure of 2 kg of mercury per ton of sediment was measured: a level that would be economically viable to mine. Indeed, Chisso did later set up a subsidiary to reclaim and sell the mercury recovered from the sludge.

They literally dumped enough mercury into the river to turn it into a mercury mine. If that doesn't convince you that factories haven't simply been operating with "nothing going wrong", then I don't know what to say.

Presumably, in that "Seriously, ..." quote, rather than asking an earnest question, the HNer was roleplaying their idea of the general population that's resistant to "reduce pollution" messaging.

Maybe. I've reread the comment and it can be read either way. Worst case scenario is that my comment remains correct but tone deaf, so I'm not going to retract it, but am open to a correction if GGP chooses to offer one.

Factories have done unmeasurable damage to our ecosystem, that is unequivocable. But we had to rename it climate change because people couldn't get over the phrase global warming whenever it was cold so I don't see "Reduce Pollution!" as a winning slogan. People who care, care about the underlying concept no matter what it's called. People who don't care don't believe it's a problem in the first place and won't do anything to reduce pollution.

Well, I disagree with the cynicism (as I believe people are caring more & more) but my bad on misinterpreting.

but thank you for sticking up for planet Earth!

it's not long since it was normal for rivers to set on fire:

https://history.com/news/epa-earth-day-cleveland-cuyahoga-ri...

> Climate change (because people were too stupid to use the phrase "global warming" without making fun of the "warming" part whenever it was remotely cold)

I think climate change works better anyway, as global warming caused other changes, not just a rise in average temperatures

If people are too stupid to understand pollution is bad and should be reduced (most people will agree to this, just talk to them about it in a garage with the door shut and a truck running inside), how are they going to understand climate change, which is a more obscure term without a direct meaning?

If the general public needs to be convinced of a project to save the planet climate change is not good messaging!

And yet people are terrified of radiation at any level, of carcinogen at aspartame level danger, from "toxins", from evil Chinese poisoned food, from modified genetics plants and foodstuffs.

But a direct scientific link to ... well, almost all of those fears is totally acceptable because we love our cars?

The world... is insane.

Because the government uses ban hammers instead of simply taxing the amount of pollution emitted.

And if they tax it, people will complain about cost-shifting, saying the consumer should pay, and accuse the taxes for driving inflation etc. I am in favor of making polluters account for negative externalities, it's been a long-theme of my comments here), but I've noticed that people are adept at inventing new bases of objection.

Perhaps you could suggest a place where the pollution taxation approach has worked and the enforcement has teeth, which you would be happy to see implemented here even though it might come with short-term costs.

Cost incentives work. It's why people buy cars that get more mpg. Why wouldn't they prefer to buy a car that engenders a lower pollution tax?

If by “people” you mean “Americans”, they buy F-150s to go to the grocery store, and they vote out governments that threaten their ability to do so.

Taxing pollution, particularly consumer-facing taxes, has a long history of political failure, whereas subsidising clean technology has a long history of political and technical success.

*F-250

Saw an F-450 the other day... granted, it was at the gun range, but I was there in my compact hatchback and it had not a spec of dust on it.

It doesn't simply "have a long history of political failure"; it has a history of political failure in certain areas of the United States. In much of the rest of the developed world, e.g. nearly all of Western-Europe, it has a history of success and taxing cars based on fuel consumption and emissions has indeed caused buyers to gravitate towards more fuel-efficient cars.

Do they tax the rate of emissions, or the amount emitted? It's important to tax the latter.

Both. The former directly through taxes on the cars themselves and the latter indirectly through fuel taxes, which while imperfect works well as a proxy.

Fuel taxes work well for CO2 emissions, but not for other emissions, where the design of the ICE can reduce them dramatically.

Fair point, but the EU ETS took many, many years to have any serious effect as I understand it.

If we can have a sales tax, we can have pollution taxes.

In the United States, you can't, at least at a federal level, nor across most of the red states.

I was hoping for examples of incentives for this specific problem you considered successful and would express support for if implemented here.

And if they tax it, people will complain about cost-shifting, saying the consumer should pay

The consumer should pay, because that will reduce demand.

It’s funny to see a government encourage a carbon tax to reduce fossil fuel use (high gas prices drive consumers to look for alternatives), then turn around this year and either cut gas tax or send out checks to consumers to offset higher gas prices.

Not sure any politician has the Will to follow through with it.

Taxes have a bigger effect on the poor, while pollution is caused overwhelmingly by the rich.

> pollution is caused overwhelmingly by the rich

Then they'll be the ones overwhelmingly paying the pollution taxes.

Because the poor have no resources to tax -- it makes no sense to tax them.

And it doesn't mean the rich will be paying a fair share, just that they will be paying more than the poor.

If the taxes on pollution are flat, they are by definition paying their fair share.

> but they still sell plastic garbage bags

You ever tried to put the drippy nasty stuff in a paper trash bag?

My understanding was that it is not about the bag, but where it tends to end up afterwards. Trash bags mostly end up in landfills, where they do no harm. Grocery bags by contrast have a higher tendency to be mis-identified as recyclable and then get caught by the wind and blown somewhere bad.

I agree completely with the point here, but why are you buying drippy nasty stuff?

I was talking about leftover foodstuffs :)

That's exactly the stuff that doesn't belong in the landfill, compost it.

It still needs to be kept in my kitchen until whatever happens to it happens.

Bunker fuel is being phased out.

Far too late and slowly and I’m skeptical of the enforcement.

The cargo ship owning class of wealthy people don’t not care about laws.

Shipping is < 3% of global emissions.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-shipping-environment-imo-...

Because major environmental actors (big NGOs...) are mostly engaging in a PR exercise to incite fear into our collective lizard brain. As Attenborough said: "saving our planet is now a communications challenge"

Linking Climate to life-threatening scenarios like Hurricanes (that hit you in-your-face) and food crisis, are more apt to rattle us into panicky action.

Slow, inconspicuous, decades-in-the-making ill-health (but not sudden death) inducing chemicals in our water, air and food will never make it through our current processes of media and political decision-making.

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