Ask HN: Why aim for reducing climate change? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why aim for reducing climate change?

56 pointsdanuker121 comments

For a long time, I thought preserving the environment through reducing greenhouse gas emissions would improve human wealth as a result - via ecosystem services, not having to move agriculture and populations when rain patterns change and so on.

But apparently, the IPCC estimates that the best scenario by far in terms of GDP per capita is the fossil-fueled development.[1] I was shocked to discover this.

Why is this the case? Did the IPCC not correctly factor how quality of life would deteriorate in case of climate change?

In light of this, why should we aim to reduce emissions at a significant detriment to human life? Is it because of unknown unknowns? Or solely to preserve endangered species?

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/ipcc-scenarios?facet=no...

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Well if you read the description below the graph you'll get a little insight into the nuances between the models.

SSP1 - the 2nd place amongst GDP metrics - lowers poverty, reduces inequality, and helps the environment as well as improving health and education.

SSP5 - the 1st place - just bull rushes economic growth, but does little to reduce equality, and doesn't help health or the environment.

The broader sense of social well-being is maximised by SSP1. SSP5 is a short-term economic growth trend. Something shortsighted and ultimately very bad.

It's natural that investing into cheaper, more harmful resources, could benefit us more in the short term. But doesn't it make sense to go for the more beneficial long-term developments that will come down in cost with investment anyways? The earlier the better?

It's tempting to shoot for fossil fuels still, but scratch the surface and the benefits of developing sustainable resources is better now in a host of ways besides immediate economic growth, and better economically in the long run too once fossil fuels become scarcer and enviromental disasters damage industry.

Just look at recent issues like global instability's effect on energy import, and how our infrastructure can be impacted by small issues (shipping routes collapsing). Climate issues like flooding and rising sea levels, would dramatically imapct shiopping. And mass immigration from those disasters would increase likelihoods of wars that affect global trade.

Limiting the chances for these things to happen, at the cost of immediate GDP growth, is better for everyone.

It's a prisoner's dilemma between nations and currently everyone is playing to win only for themselves - and so everyone is losing.

Continuing - "why should we aim to reduce emissions at a significant detriment to human life?"

That's a false premise - GDP =/= benefit to human life. It's actually just a subjective benefit to some humans who control capital in those high GDP countries. Human life goes far beyond GDP and things like happiness metrics and longevity metrics do not always directly correlate to GDP.

GDP per capita correlates quite nicely with life expectancy, so it seems GDP isn't just a number, it actually corresponds with something in reality.

Once you are in a high GDP (western countries) situation it doesn't matter anymore, and an increase in GDP for those does not really mean an increase in life expectancy. The marginal benefit decreases massively.

See e.g. US GDP growing 38% 2009-2019, but life expectancy being stagnant with a 0.5% increase.

[1] https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore...

Of course, it's not the case that had the US GDP not grown as much, we would instead have had more of an increase in life expectancy. The American population is unfortunately quite unhealthy by global standards, mainly due to lifestyle issues. Besides, with the US life expectancy at 79 years and the world's best at 85, you're not buying much to begin with.

As other commenters are pointing out, it would be nice if there was a better measure of a population's health and happiness; but GDP corresponds to it to a large degree, perhaps up to a certain point of wealth, as you said.

> mainly due to lifestyle issues

Are you blaming individual choice for problems that are systemic in nature?

No blame; I'm observing, not condemning. Your phrasing does make me question, however, whether you think individual choice amounts to anything, considering we all form parts of systems.

Once you get past $20k/yr GDP per capita, there's indeed limited additional benefit (there are diminishing returns).

But if look at the scenarios for Middle East and Africa, it would take roughly 10 years longer for the Green Road scenario to get to $20k/yr, compared to the Highway.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/ipcc-scenarios?facet=no...

When it comes to reducing climate change, countries that are already rich don't matter so much. They can reduce emissions without reducing their quality of life too much.

But there are lots of countries in the world that are not at high GDP yet, but will be high GDP in the future. Because their GDP is not high, GDP growth does correlate very strongly with their quality of life. They are not going to want to delay their growth just because of climate change, and it's probably immoral to force them.

I didn't say it was 'just' a number.

I didn't claim it didn't correlate 'nicely' with life expectancy.

I said it doesn't 'always' correlate. There are outliers, as with most trends. And besides - quality of life is a more important metric than life expectancy. Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia are world leaders on life expectancy and GDP. But terrible on women's rights, equality, and human rights.

We shouldn't be measuring human benefit on GDP, we shouldn't be questioning the merits of reducing climate change based on maximising GDP.

> I said it doesn't 'always' correlate.

It either correlates or it doesn't, and outliers, as the name implies, are statistical anomalies.

That being said I also think quality of life is important, but I think being dead is quite a poor quality of life.

Indeed. Same with nutrition [1] and education [2].

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hidden-hunger-index-vs-gd...

[2] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/learning-outcomes-vs-gdp-...

Living long is highly over rated as quality of life tanks beyond a point. Ideally we should be measuring Gross National Stupidity.

The US life expectancy is terrible given the GDP.

Reminds me of the saying "money can't buy happiness". It can't but it does remove friction. A country with a larger GDP can do more for it's citizens.

That country is likely to do so by shipping carbon and misery to poorer countries unless some sort of international pressure or governance happens.

There's nothing subjective about central heating, air conditioning, healthcare, and living in homes that can easily withstand hurricanes and flooding.

Your answer is spot on.

This makes me think of Yoichi Kaya's formula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity

It shows illustrates the dependency between GDP, population, energy and emissions. Assuming we don't want to reduce population and GDP, we are left with optimizing energy and emission intensity.

I just finished this comic book by Jancovici which explains all this and it is very easy to read. https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-End-Blain-Christophe-eb...

I believe economic inequality is quite unrelated to pollution. You can have rich and green (Ireland/Switzerland), rich and carbon-heavy (Arab states/US/Aussie), poor and green (most developing countries have very low carbon emissions) or poor and carbon-heavy (Iran).

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-fossil-energy-...

Also, do you not consider 2100 "long-term"? Do you think economic effects of the environment will only reflect later?

> You can have rich and green (Ireland/Switzerland)

You can only have that because they outsource pollution.

The comparison here was "carbon-heavy" versus "green", not polluting versus non-polluting. Carbon dioxide is not pollution and has no relation to the outsourcing of it. A country which uses 100% nuclear power and as such does not emit any (or hardly any) Carbon dioxide would be "green" and as such would be "rich and green".

The post I'm replying to starts with "I believe economic inequality is quite unrelated to _pollution_." And energy production is just one aspect. Do the rich green countries not consume any plastic products? Meat? Do they have 100% electric vehicles?

I was referring to greenhouse gas pollution, which may have been unclear. CO2 and methane are pollutants.

But your point still stands, as you illustrate. Countries might be importing CO2- and methane-heavy products rather than manufacture their own.

2100 is reasonably long term in my mind. It's an arbitrary milestone that a lot of people are using, as in these SSPs.

The assessment that generated the SSPs puts SSP5 at an estiamted 4.4 degrees C increase in global average temperatures by 2100.

4 degrees of increase is brutal for the climate and the knock on effects on global resources are what I am focussing on. Extreme weather, flooding, drought, knock on effects on our globalised supply chains, and the hidden costs to offsetting all of this. GDP could increase, but so would population displacement, need for disaster recovery, moving agriculture to changing climate zones and so on.

SSP5 is generally considered a 'strange' approach to global social well-being, more of a 'what if fossil fuel fanatics tried their hands at global welfare, and just paid to mitigate the harm they create'. AKA a huge gamble and one that goes against human nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Socioeconomic_Pathways https://www.greenfacts.org/en/impacts-global-warming/l-2/ind...

I thank you for clarifying!

Indeed, a hot Earth would mean a lot of disruption. But we'd have a lot of time to deal with it, also. And IPCC (which is an institution created to summarize science and estimate the impacts) should have taken the disruption into account (it being the main purpose of its existence).

But thank you for the links, I will definitely read some more.

Great reply. You may find more mileage with the "tragedy of the commons" analogy, but prisoners dilemma is certainly better known.

Many will point out that GDP isn't everything, and they're right, but you are asking the right questions. Consider that human development has always been about more energy expended per capita, and using that energy to shape our environment so that life gets better. A footpath that gets muddy in the rain becomes (with more energy) a Roman road paved with stone becomes (with yet more energy) a modern asphalt highway, each progressively letting people travel further with greater ease.

With that in mind, and considering that fossil fuels are for now still the cheapest and most reliable source of energy for those who need it the most -- that is, the global poor -- I think an immediate phase-out of fossil fuels without an equivalent alternative is a non-starter, climate change or not. There is a lot of investment into renewable energy sources so it's possible that we reach that point of equivalence soon, though.

In terms of climate change itself, the argument I find most persuasive to significantly reduce emissions is to prevent geopolitical instability arising from climate-related natural disasters, mainly crop failure and famine. I happen to think that there's more pessimism than warranted in that regard, but nonetheless it's a real risk.

Not energy. Work per capita. Expending 120 million joules of energy to travel every 15 miles is a much poorer outcome that spending 120 million joules to travel 45.

Now we're bargaining for efficiency ;-) of course it's pointless to burn energy for no output. But it is strictly better to be in a position where one can easily expend 120 million joules on anything, than in one where there is a scarcity of available energy.

It's not only for the poor. An immediate phase-out of fossil fuels would mean instant civilization collapse and billions dead. Not being able to grow and transport food, not being able to process raw materials, nothing that requires plastic, etc.

I absolutely agree with you. I think anti-fossil-fuel activists extrapolate how easily somebody could switch their ICE car to an EV, or better yet change their lifestyles to one that doesn't need a car, to the orders of magnitude higher energy requirements behind the scenes that support modern life that cannot feasibly be run on alternative sources any time soon -- construction, shipping, agriculture, mining, etc.

I also expect a lot of them don't think about where the power in their car's charging station comes from.

"Improving human wealth" is hardly the point of anything at all. If you believe otherwise, I'm afraid you are horribly confused. You won't be alone, but you will be confused.

Are you trying to maximize "human wealth", "human life", or "quality of life"? You've brought at least three different priorities into it, and none of them are necessarily related to each other.

In any case, "climate change" will wreak havoc on humanity and everything else. We should aim to avoid that to the extent that we think wreaking havoc on humanity and everything else is bad. This will involve tradeoffs, some of which are certain to be unpleasant. Adapt-or-die is a fact of nature, so having to justify adapting is at least curious.

I remember a man on television many years ago who said he was in favor of "saving the planet", but who would pay for it? The implication was that if it cost too much money, he'd rather just let the planet die. That's a pretty wild idea, you know? Imagine a comet on a collision course with the planet, and we ask ourselves, you know, whether it's really worth spending all that money to prevent the annihilation of all life.

</ramble>

Pick any measurement of quality of life that you want. You'll see that it's closely associated with GDP per capita.

According to these scenarios, the planet won't die, in as much as it can support GDP.

US has one of the highest GDP per capita in the world yet:

- it's behind Poland and Lebanon or Barbados for life expectancy

- it's behind Poland or Morocco for safety

- is behind Poland or Slovenia or Turkey for work-life balance

- is middle of the pack for environment (despite its gigantic size most people live in so and so unhealthy places)

- is below average for civic engagement

- is middle of the pack for social mobility

- somehow US is among the highest in education rankings globally, something I have a hard time believing considering the emphasis on standardized tests and overall simplicity of US curricula (I guess research gets conflated with education, but ranking high schoolers for their math proficiency or functional literacy gets US middle of the pack)

- is among the highest ranking for depression and other mental illnesses

The best ranking countries in the world in all of those are...European social democratic countries that have never put GDP growth over social or environmental matters.

Facts are that being born in LA and coming from a high GDP family likely won't give you a better life by most metrics than being born in Latvia. You're not gonna be happier nor healthier nor more fulfilled.

What you say is completely true. But you compare rich countries with other rich countries, and you are looking at exceptions rather than the trend. Morocco, the poorest country you've chosen, is richer than India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-gdp-pe...

Once you get past $20k/yr GDP per capita, there's indeed limited additional benefit (there are diminishing returns). Which country is ahead of which other is essentially random. It depends on other factors, not GDP.

But if look at the scenarios for Middle East and Africa, it would take roughly 10 years longer for the Green Road scenario to get to $20k/yr, compared to the Highway.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/ipcc-scenarios?facet=no...

And yet, there is no significant migration from the US to the European social democratic countries. Why not? Latvian population shrunk by a quarter since 1990.

I am genuinely curious, as this often comes up in these discussion. Often, an argument would be that moving away from family and friends to a country where you do not speak the language is difficult. And yet, millions of people move to the US, which is a lot more difficult. So why not?

> And yet, there is no significant migration from the US to the European social democratic countries.

The reverse is also true. There isn't really a huge migration from Sweden or Switzerland to the US.

> And yet, millions of people move to the US, which is a lot more difficult.

We live in a society and world where you're brainwashed since your birth into thinking that money is the most important thing in the world. Thus people that already make good money move to the other side of the world (say to Silicon Valley) because they will make much more money there.

Then they find they aren't necessarily living a better life, just that they can afford more things.

I've been in places and cultures where there isn't such an emphasis on money and material things, like in central asia, and I think people there live much happier lives than most of us in high income countries do.

> I remember a man on television many years ago who said he was in favor of "saving the planet", but who would pay for it? The implication was that if it cost too much money, he'd rather just let the planet die. That's a pretty wild idea, you know?

I haven't seen that, but I'm pretty sure that's not what he meant. It sounds like capability, not intent - people do need money both to live and implement the solution, so if no one's willing to pay then it can't be done.

Your example with the comet is a totally different situation, looking at the funders instead of the implementers like that first person you referred to.

> "Improving human wealth" is hardly the point of anything at all.

Human wealth enables to do anything beyond the natural course of events where most people die after a very short-lived and miserable existence. Where we're subject to starvation, disease, dangerous animals, or perishing due to mundane cold, heat and other natural events.

Now, if you don't care about wealth, you basically end up being a consumerist. Fritter away whatever humanity can manage to produce on immediate consumption. Progress stagnates and humanity degenerates. If you claim to be none of those, you're probably just anti-human. In which case, nothing is stopping you from a pro-active start on depopulation.

Keep in mind that both the SSP1 and SSP5 lines are optimistic predictions*, if everything goes according to its respective plan.

If we choose the fossil-fuel development aiming for SSP5, but we get SSP3 or SSP4 instead, then we will mess up the environment for little benefit. Perhaps we should aim for SSP1 because even if we fail then at least the environment will be in a good condition to be able to try again.

*In particular, SSP5 requires "a very high carbon price, and lots of carbon capture and storage". If we don't get that, we don't get the high GDP either.

I agree that we should aim for improving institutions, education, social equity, and health. But I believe this is orthogonal to fighting climate change.

"Or solely to preserve endangered species?"

We, are the endangered species in the long term. For me this is the best I can do for other people, besides taking care for my family and friends. How can I help children and their children be able to grow up in an environment that is friendly to them? With all our luxury living is so easy, but with me living my life, I would like to not have a negative impact to the life of others. And here are a lot of unknown unknowns. I do notice I tend to be happier when I try to make my life more simple.

If I try to look at it objectively its only natural our population will go down. But if we are able to steer this, I would like to try that.

I think your premise rests on the assumption that higher GDP => a better society. Is that necessarily true? One could have a high GDP with millions of slaves working in poverty for some rich upper class, for instance.

As things are in much of the world now, in other words. GDP is a terrible measure of “success”, and yet remains the primary indicator used by the international community to judge that very thing.

GDP gets used a lot because it is a measure that can be computed more easily, reliably, and objectively than many other measures. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, just more broadly useful than other options.

> One could have a high GDP with millions of slaves working in poverty for some rich upper class, for instance.

Could one really? Outside of a couple of petro-states whose high GDP comes from oil and gas resources, there are no countries in the top 30 GDP per capita that have even a loose form of slavery. Millions of slaves producing small amounts of value per capita doesn't add up to a rich nation with high GDP.

> there are no countries in the top 30 GDP per capita that have even a loose form of slavery

Allow me to quote the 13th amendment, Section 1, article 1: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Now look at the US carceral system and tell me if you can still say with a straight face that "there are no countries in the top 30 GDP per capita that have even a loose form of slavery"

Perhaps I should have better stated that no country is rich by virtue of slavery. According to the ACLU[0], American prisoners produce about $11B of goods and services a year. With the US GDP at $23T, that's a rounding error. You could not say with a straight face that the American economy depends on slavery to maintain its top-30 status.

The more interesting question is whether or not the Constitution should be amended to strike that bit, or whether prison labor is a good thing or a bad thing. Insofar as it provides an incentive to imprison more people, I think it's a bad thing; but in terms of giving duly-convicted prisoners a skill they could take with them after they're released, I think it can be useful. Of course, I'm not claiming that all forms of prison labor are like that.

You perhaps further imply that this system does in fact incentivize the government to imprison more people than it otherwise would; I'm not sure that's true. Some estimates[1] show that not even 1% of violent criminals in several categories are imprisoned, and I've read that the average state prisoner has ten arrests and five prior convictions before they enter the prison for the first time. If anything, it seems like policy is erring on the side of keeping fewer people in prison.

[0]: https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit...

[1]: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

GDP is a very bad metric for measuring national wealth or people's wellbeing.

This is a known fact by decades, but there is simply no other metric "as simple" and effective to measure.

The IPCC projections Ara based on a faulty assumption.

On this talk "the appealing neoclassical economics of climate change by Steve Keen". [0]

The talk goes into detail how the IPCC projections were made and all the wrong assumptions done on it.

[0] https://youtu.be/5LvyxH3O7kE

I finally got the chance to start watching this, and I am yet more stunned. Apparently the studies projecting GDP completely ignore the climate science and build their own ludicrous temperature -> GDP model. This does not even account for rainfall.

What a joke.

Trying to correlate climate change with GDP per capita is rather like trying to connect the performance of a car with the color of the passenger seats.

Things like ecosystem services or quality of life are not part of the GDP number. It only counts how much money changes hands.

> why should we aim to reduce emissions at a significant detriment to human life?

Around 60% of the global population lives within 100km of the shore[0]. In the US, coastal counties are home to 40% of Americans.

Relocating all those people (not to mention industry and commerce) would be a significant detriment to human life. Damage to industry worldwide would be a lot more than a few percent of GDP.

And this is not even considering all the ecological damage, food shortages (crop failures due to rising temperatures), danger to people everywhere due to more intensive storms, heat, etc.

In short, this is probably because climate economic modeling has traditionally focused on estimating more knowable, quantifiable impacts, and acknowledging but not including potential (maybe even probable!) impacts that are too difficult to model based on current knowledge. Tail risk is a big area that has traditionally not been modeled well leading to a very likely underestimate to the social cost of carbon (SCC): https://www.volts.wtf/p/economists-have-quantified-the-econo...

Here’s a historical overview of the situation with some links to the latest research: https://impactlab.org/research-area/social-cost/

It’s not just tail risk, even things like geopolitical instability and crop failure were often not historically included… you can see why the headline statement seems to conflict with intuition, and it’s because of the narrow view taken on the impact of the fossil fuel scenario on GDP.

There is one more important element, and that is the distinction between economic activity (which GDP measures) and economic welfare. Natural disasters often don’t have much of an impact on GDP in part because the rebuilding activity counts in GDP. But it’s obvious to see why a future where we are spending an increasingly larger share of our effort to mitigate and rebuild losses is a much worse one. So GDP may not be the best measure here: https://www.economy.com/economicview/analysis/296804/How-Nat...

The moderate climate that we have/had that allowed for agriculture and the dawn of our entire civilization is an outlier on the geological timescale of this planet. We should be doing everything we can to preserve that climate.

Civilization is perpetually 7 days away from collapsing. Once the food chain collapses, in 7 days so does every modern amenity that you take for granted. GDP isn't the end goal, our survival is.

The biggest risk for climate change has always been food production and economic water availability. Just look at the western US that depends on the Colorado River for the risk involved.

We can live most anywhere on the planet, and that isn't going to change. Though relocating from higher risk areas to lower has a cost that will be inflicted on those who are in an area where the risk shifts. If it happens on a long enough timescale the effects won't be that great as we're generally rebuilding our infrastructure on regular intervals anyway.

I always wonder why we focus so much on prevention instead of mitigation the actual risk cases. Instead of curbing emissions, which seems to have no effect (see economic down turns with corresponding dips in emissions as evidence with no apparent results in CO2 levels).

Why don't we invest in better water distribution systems and food production resilience? Instead of making it hip to have a lower carbon footprint, why don't we change what being "green" means to, say gardening?

That water availability...

Is a Lack of Water to Blame for the Conflict in Syria? - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/is-a-lack-of-water...

> A 2006 drought pushed Syrian farmers to migrate to urban centers, setting the stage for massive uprisings

> In Syria, a devastating drought beginning in 2006 forced many farmers to abandon their fields and migrate to urban centers. There’s some evidence that the migration fueled the civil war there, in which 80,000 people have died. “You had a lot of angry, unemployed men helping to trigger a revolution,” says Aaron Wolf, a water management expert at Oregon State University, who frequently visits the Middle East.

> Tensions between nations are also high. Since 1975, Turkey’s dam and hydropower construction has cut water flow to Iraq by 80 percent and to Syria by 40 percent. Syria and Iraq have accused Turkey of hoarding water.

From a few years ago - the US Army's assessment of issues with climate change: https://climateandsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/impli...

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> We can live most anywhere on the planet, and that isn't going to change. Though relocating from higher risk areas to lower has a cost that will be inflicted on those who are in an area where the risk shifts. If it happens on a long enough timescale the effects won't be that great as we're generally rebuilding our infrastructure on regular intervals anyway.

I would challenge you to tell the people in the Southwest of the US to move out... or the Middle East... or desert parts of Africa... or small island nations in the Pacific.

An approach of relocating people from where it isn't sustainable to live in the future to where it is has the risk of devastating the cultures associated with those areas.

It is preserving those cultures that is important and the reason that it is necessary to try to prevent as much climate change as is possible. It likely won't be enough, and mitigation will also be needed but going to a "well, its too bad your island home of centuries is now under water, we'll just move you to an enclave in Europe" or "well, this part of South Western Asia is no longer inhabitable, we'll set up an enclave for you somewhere else" - those approaches tend not to work too well.

> I would challenge you to tell the people in the Southwest of the US to move out... or the Middle East... or desert parts of Africa... or small island nations in the Pacific.

Why would I try to do that? Seems authoritarian and wrong to tell people they can't try to live some place. The issue is economics and risks. Let them assume them as they will, no need force move anyone.

Water has always been an issue in the west. I'm rather familiar with it as I have researched water rights and live in this region. There is nothing untenable about living in the south western US.

Going into the nuance here you seem to be missing. Water rights for the region are principally based on who arrived first. This was intentionally done by the first settlers to insure their own access. As little as 10 years ago you couldn't even collect rain water because you would impede the water access of a water right's owner down stream.

Over time this has been tweaked and oh so slowly modernized. It's time for a major overhaul as the quantity is based on the flows that just aren't there anymore.

So the water is over allocated, and the costs paid by the water rights owners often do not reflect its scarcity. So you have people with lots of water rights using it to grow animal feed and otherwise farm the desert in a region that is increasingly water scarce.

There is plenty of water in the region to support the population if the use cases are allowed to be more elastic. A system needs to be put in place that ALL users pay based on availability, which would provide funds to maintain and build more capacity.

If we really value humans then miscellaneous environmental concerns should not be allowed to block large scale water projects.

Making such moves would allow people to live there as they desire by removing the cheap water away from mostly farmers and some industrial uses in the region. Which will disrupt a lot of food supplies.

This is why I believe our efforts are best centered around food and water, not emissions.

It got even more complicated when noting that GDP per capita is not equal everywhere. And there potentially are global maximum for local area (local as in not world wide, but a country or a region) to just ignore climate change risk altogether, since the current economic situation, either staying as is or trying to grow while avoiding climate change, is just too bad already.

I'm in Vietnam, and while the government fully acknowledges climate change, with projection and plan to lose xx% of our most populous city (currently 10+ million population) to sea rise, but fully go ahead with coal power generation for industry... so yeah. There is definitely some dysfunctional planning at play, but probably a lot of calculated risk too. I'm expecting China to have the same calculus.

I don't know if the experts do plan and account for those situations, but you definitely aren't gonna get a good layman discussion on a Western centric forum like this one. I'm barely comfortable to write this comment as is :-)

> I'm in Vietnam .. plan to lose xx% .. to sea rise .. There is definitely some dysfunctional planning at play.

I thought the same reading earlier in the week that Vietnam is challenging China on the "building low level artifical islands in the Spratly Island's" game.

( I ocean surveyed there in the early 1990s and have memories of being stopped at sea by gun boats from every surrounding nation )

My understanding is that the impacts of warming will be uneven, with parts of e.g. India becoming unlivable. So we're looking at mass migration and/or warfare with continued warming. Are the GDP estimates factoring those into account?

I'd love it if this could be handled peacefully, and Canada just sells a big chunk of some northern province to the Indian government: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33483424 But history doesn't exactly leave me optimistic here.

The SSP5 Full-based model say: "This world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress". In short, this is believing in a return of the "30 glorious" period with the utopia than a magic technology will solve everything in time.

Then look for the example of Venice, with her sea level problem. Sure a very costly technology seem to have mitigated the high tides (for now). But in the same time, the "competitive market" of very big ferry-boats have replaced the high tides in the work of destroying the city.

For the global sea level, there will be regions who will gain a lot of money with it, like northern Canada and maybe Russia, because, it will be more easy to excavate minerals/petroleum/gaz/etc. and transport them with new and economics sea routes. This will bring a lot of GDP globally, but in the same time, plenty of poor and populous regions will disappear. The lost in GDP will be small because they will go from poor to still poor (or dead).

This... only if the Gulf-Stream did not change his route because of the climate change. This sort of very bad hypothesis is never accounted by this family of economic models.

PS: The subject here is climate change, but the mass extinction of species is far more a problem then climate change because it cannot be reverted... until a few millions years.

The SSP5 appears to be presupposing everything else just works out in a high-trust, globally-integrated economy. The basic problems expected to surface in this century are largely ravaging of coastal communities and at least a few places that can currently support human life no longer being able to, largely near the equator. As far as balance of global land mass versus human population, there should still be enough, but significant migration will need to occur, including across national boundaries.

I'm not all that confident, given the way strong nationalism, isolationism, and anti-immigrant sentiment seem to have made major comebacks in rich nations far from the equator, that this would really happen.

But the bulk of the more serious ecosystem collapse scenarios probably don't happen until the next century. You can certainly make the argument that more people, more money, and significant investment into basic research and geoengineering stands a better chance of addressing this than stomping on emissions to prevent it. Higher GDP is probably a prerequisite to this happening, but political will and strong, trusted governments are another. We can't just have that GDP going toward bigger houses, faster cars, smarter targeted advertising, and even better-funded attacks on public services, science, and expertise.

We have built an insane amount of infrastructure within 10 meters of sea level (cities, ports, nuclear power plants, homes) and any model that doesn’t take into account the destruction of that infrastructure is a broken model (it’s probably not incorporated because it’s so hard to believe).

If NYC floods (a la Sandy) a few times a year, you can sure as hell bet there will be negative GDP consequences.

10 meters? Are you serious? The current WORST case scenarios as modeled by the IPCC would put us on track for about 1 meter of rise by 2100 and <4 meters of rise by 2300 (with confidence interval going as high as 5), 280 years from now. Models aren’t accounting for 10 meters because nobody with credentials is forecasting 10 meters of rise even in worst case scenarios. This model in question here is only concerned with the upcoming 100 years, and we 100% will not be seeing even multi-meter rises by then let alone 10.

> By 2300, seas could stand as much as 5 meters higher under the worst-case scenario.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148494/anticipating...

Have you heard of “storm surges”?

I didn’t say NYC would be flooded, I said it would have significantly more sandy-like events (where the storm surge was already 3-4m in battery park city).[1]

And I don’t know how much you know about tides given your above comment, but starting out a meter higher usually has nonlinear effects on how far inland waves can travel.

[1] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/10/supplemental...

10 meters is still way too much - have another look at your own source - we’re talking an extra meter at best over typical highs - again nowhere near 10m even with the worst case meter of rise in the next 100 years.

Again, 1m rising sea level != 1 meter higher storm surges (don't even get me started on the oceans being a bigger heat well and causing larger storms).

Don't forget Sandy was a Category 1 hurricane whose eye made landfall in Southern New Jersey. It was by no means a worst case scenario.

You can minimize climate change all you want, but maybe do some research first?

I think this boils down to another far more simple question

How would you fix what for which reasons? As long as we pretend this to be mainly an ideological problem while ignoring the practical difficulties of not just solving stuff, but figuring out what to solve using which metric, we are unlikely to do anything sensible. Because every error and uncertainty in the conclusion to that question is extremely profitable to exploit.

I would be willing to go one step further, the more people dont talk about this, but are having trivialized arguments in which you know to be right pushing for vague calls to action, the less likely is it that we are doing anything sensible.

I am also confident, that if i were wrong on this, somebody could explain why. While there is a limit to complexity of possible solutions, ignoring the problem doesnt make it go away. It makes it worse.

edit: In case its not obvious, this flawed approach of framing something as an ideological argument while discouraging goal oriented approaches would also be how sabotage looks.

> improve human wealth

What does that mean? Why should that be a goal?

> why should we aim to reduce emissions at a significant detriment to human life?

What? How do you concluded that reducing emissions would cause "a significant detriment to human life?" Are you saying that climate change would not be a significant detriment to human life?

What are you getting at here? What are your assumptions?

They aren't wrong.

Fuel is machine food. The more machines we have doing work the more a single human can output. That means cheaper food and products. Which, in turn, means wealthier people. The history of petroleum use has been towards cleaner fuels. I see no reason not to stumble forward as we always have. Using petroleum is how wealthy nations became wealthy. We aren't going to stop rising nations from doing the same. If we did without a way for them to leapfrog oil, to produce energy, we are doing a ladder pull.

The more recent transition to natural gas for energy production is the single greatest reduction in emissions in the last 20 years. We are using natural gas from oil wells now. However, it can also be easily produced from organic waste. Closing the fuel loop would be a huge win.

Environmental regulations typically hurt GDP. But we as a society (in the US at least) have long ago figured out that the improved quality of life is worth the decrease in overall productivity in many cases.

If you generalize the analysis to GDP trumps all, most environmental protections would fail that test.

It's very clear that burning fossil fuels is the right move unless there's some catastrophic outcome associated with climate change. This is because economic progress compounds. A small GDP gain now will be huge in a century.

I doubt there will be a catastrophe associated with climate change. I could be wrong. Since we're not going to stop emitting carbon we'll find out.

Because the higher CO2 levels get, the dumber we all become. If you think there’s too many dumb people now, you’re going to be extra disappointed as time passes!

https://www.pranaair.com/blog/harmful-effects-of-carbon-diox...

Higher GDP just means more wealth concentrated in the hands of a very few, while the costs and consequences continue to be externalized to the poorest.

"GDP per capita" is effectively a lie, when the wealth is so unevenly distributed. In that light, it's hardly a metric to maximize.

>Why is this the case?

Seems very obvious. Fossil fuels are the best way to generate energy by far. In the end GDP and environmental pollution are the same thing or at the very least highly correlated.

>In light of this, why should we aim to reduce emissions at a significant detriment to human life? Is it because of unknown unknowns? Or solely to preserve endangered species?

It is because certain groups believe that climate change will induce an apocalyptic scenario ending most life on earth.

The "dirty secret" of the whole thing is that decarbonisation and deindustrialisation are the same thing. China is gambling that climate change is self correcting, which is the game theoretical optimum for any nation.

> Fossil fuels are the best way to generate energy by far.

Nope. Not by far.

That was the case a decade ago, but fossil fuels are already not competitive on several situations, a close first on many others, and significantly ahead on very few.

What goes back to the OP's question. The IPCC projections are like that because the IPCC doesn't model technological progress at all.

>That was the case a decade ago, but fossil fuels are already not competitive on several situations, a close first on many others, and significantly ahead on very few.

Regulations, Taxes and opportunity decline with growth.

Said about the thing that has been on exponential growth for 5 decades already and without any sign or reason for an inflection.

Yes, eventually your comment will be right. It's just not right now.

Linear for Hydro (the good one). Wind and solar (the bad ones) seem exponential, but don't even sum to Hydro in total energy generation. Other renewables are linear.

This is also barely even responding to the argument at all... Just explain to me how Germany, who notoriously are very keen on renewables (the bad ones, since the good one does not work here), has the highest energy prices in the world?

Cost breakdown for electricity on Germany:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1346309/household-electr...

Looks like their transmission is quite expensive, and 2022 has had an increase on generation prices. (I wonder why... Are you trying to pinpoint that one on renewables?)

And yes, I'm talking about solar and wind. Hydro left its exponential stage ages ago. But well, if you postulate them to be bad...

>Looks like their transmission is quite expensive, and 2022 has had an increase on generation prices.

German energy prices aren't some of the highest in the word since 10 months ago.

>https://www.statista.com/statistics/1346309/household-electr...

I can only access 2021 data. TWENTY PERCENT of energy prices are just tax to fund renewables. This was removed early 2022, else I probably could not have posted this, but it has existed for decades. In 2021 you could have instantly slashed electricity prices by 20% just by ignoring renewables.

But you are still missing the point entirely, it isn't like coal and solar are competing on an equal regulatory playing field. One industry is funded by a 20% tax on energy prices, the other has to compete with that while being under various other direct taxes, "carbon taxes", etc., which inevitably are taxes which show up in the production price.

Honestly you are really stupid if you think renewables are more economical. For decades they have been subsidized and given all possible regulatory benefits they can possibly get, but germany is still producing energy with coal. I am at a loss for what to say. Again in 2021 TWENTY PERCENT of the energy price were due to taxes for renewables.

The IPCC report has sections, and the one done by economists is, mhhh. I would say: "burn it". However they'd probably say it would boost GDP...

> Or solely to preserve endangered species?

You are aware, that we are on of those endangered species' when we don't change anything about climate change?

This doesn't seem right. Are you proposing that humans would be erradicted from climate changes? How would that happen?

Bingo.

I think the focus should be on effective ways to help poor contries, reduce policical risks, improve market flow, make everyone richer, without being stupid about it.

Cut out coal plants as soon as we can, research into geoengineering, renewable, etc.

On our current path of technological improvement CO2 will be a non issue in a decade or two.

IPCC is politicized with a liberal/capitalist realist perspective

Scratch the surface a little bit and the marxist envy comes out quite easily.

From "Green new deal" type stuff, where technical solutions don't count because rich people would still be richer than poor people or something, to the new "degrowth" strategy which barefacedly tells us we need to be worse off, be fewer, or both.

Why? Because these activists are rich, bored, and useless. And playing polo and buying fast cars is not an acceptable use of their time anymore, no, now they compete between themselves to see who saves the world the hardest.

Don't look for any logical explanation, go to the eschatological ones and you'll have better luck.

The earth doesn’t care if it’s warmer or colder, polluted, full of CO2, etc. The earth is a planet. If humans die out it will be like we were never here geologically speaking.

The reason to be a good environmental steward is to make the earth habitable for ourselves. This is why people who claim “I don’t want kids because of global warming” are so incredibly stupid - the earth does not care a smidgen about them, it’s a rock. If they really cared about the environment they would have as many kids as they could in hopes of raising a great scientist to help the environment!

Another thing to remember is that the earth has been much warmer and much cooler during the time of humanity. We had a little ice age throughout the Middle Ages. While we are most certainly making the earth warmer with technology, this isn’t a death blow to us. We as a species will adapt.

Even if humans had zero output on the environment we would still have to deal with a changing climate - the earth cycles between colder and hotter naturally over time. So becoming better able to heat or cool the earth technologically will be a very good technique for our species.

> The reason to be a good environmental steward is to make the earth habitable for ourselves. This is why people who claim “I don’t want kids because of global warming” are so incredibly stupid - the earth does not care a smidgen about them, it’s a rock. If they really cared about the environment they would have as many kids as they could in hopes of raising a great scientist to help the environment!

What even is this argument?

People who are saying they don’t want kids because of global warming are saying that because they don’t want their kids to grow up in a world where the consequences of generations of not caring about global warming are evident.

And why are they stupid, exactly? Because they don’t want to inflict potential suffering on their kids? Because they don’t want to add to the overpopulation of the planet? True monsters, these people.

They are literally saying they would rather humanity as a species die out rather than survive and solve problems. And given very few people will not have kids because of global warming, really what they are saying is, "My own genes are terrible so I'll let other humans figure it out." Very stupid arguments all around!

No, they are saying they don’t want to bring a life into a world of suffering.

There are 8 billion people in the world already. Every single one of them does not have to make a baby for humanity to survive. Some people already pick up the slack as it is.

> Honestly, you should get over yourself

Honestly, you should get over yourself! You are yet another in a long line of Malthusian doomsayers that believes the world is ending. Simply absurd

The world isn’t ending, our time on the planet is ending.

Why would you want to bring a life into a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for your species?

> This is why people who claim “I don’t want kids because of global warming” are so incredibly stupid

Just a different explanation for this: If one has a super pessimistic view of effects of global warming in the next 50~100 years, e.g., collapse of civilization, it's reasonable not to have kids to prevent their suffering.

The Earth is rock is like saying a computer is a plastic and metal box. True but lacking in usefulness. When most people talk about the Earth they mean a living ecosystem of biological organisms. The Earth in that sense also doesn't care, because it doesn't have the self reflection necessary to do so. However humans in general seem to care, not only about themselves but also about the ecosystem in general.

By not procreating because of environmental harm, people are seeing the earth as some sort of goddess that will be protected by the death of humanity. This is absurd on so many levels. Earth is a ball of matter and it doesn't care about them.

There’s a book called “Unsettled” that does a good job of explaining the many problems with the climate change accepted narrative in scientific consensus. You are just scratching the surface.

Also, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Koonin#Reception_of_...

I really dislike how "questioning", a cardinal virtue for science, is treated like heresy.

The critiques make me more interested, not less. One man's cherry-picking is another's identification or isolation of important signals.

Honestly, it's pathetic that this is even a matter of discussion amongst a self-proclaimed intelligent community (or is it wisdom?). I won't honor this thread with my counterpoints to the GDP argument since others have covered this to some extent. I live in the city, but even I understand the value of natural preservation.

We humans must become better shepherds of the earth we inhabit. It's not just out of the goodness of our hearts, but due to a moral obligation that binds us all.

I'd say we have a moral obligation to help people in poverty. More global wealth makes that easier.

One person's "natural preservation" is another person's status quo bias. Would you consider "natural preservation" to be a valid argument for, say, continuing a tradition that everyone agrees is harmful?

That's a pointless question, since I'll immediately argue that not preserving nature is a tradition that everyone should agree is harmful.

My hypothetical was one where everyone did agree.

I think preserving nature can be quite harmful: https://www.animal-ethics.org/wild-animal-suffering-matters/

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

(BTW, I think it's important to fight global warming -- but not because preserving the planetary status quo is important for its own sake)

I'm not looking at this from the microscopic perspective of animal suffering. Biodiversity alone is a pretty good signal for the health of our ecosystem. Yes, I'm quite glad humans have designed generally safer and happier means of existence for ourselves than the perils of the rest of the animal (and other lifeforms) kingdoms, but this does not make us immune from some harsh realities of nature. If we are careful, we should preserve our status without ushering in a complete collapse of those around us.

But what if millions start losing their jobs because hundrends of millions aren't leasing a new car every 2/3 years anymore? This would be a disaster for our planet, GDP would collapse. /s

What moral obligation? Based on what framework of morality?

Bespoke imposter! Let not your words penetrate my foundations. Let not your questions hold value in it of themselves. For you ask nothing with thinly veiled rhetoric. Now be gone, cast away with fervor and dismay.

lol what? if you claim it to be a moral imperative. Moral based upon what?

Fine I'll humor you with a quick quote.

Arthur Schopenhauer; Ueber die Grundlage der Moral, 1840:

"the everyday phenomenon of compassion, … the immediate participation, independent of all ulterior considerations, primarily in the suffering of another, and thus in the prevention or elimination of it…. Only insofar as an action has sprung from compassion does it have moral value; and every action resulting from any other motives has none."

Fan of Mr.Schopenhauer, but unsure if this quote provides grounding for your objective moral imperative. This only says that actions derived from compassion are the only actions that have moral value. No explanation of why that is the case nor does it create a necessity for moral action.

From the Schopenhauer perspective, the 'right' answer if I recall correctly is to embrace asceticism. To deny the will.

Whelp, I tried.

The best scenario possible for humans alive right now is to use fossil fuels (including coal) to reduce poverty and generally improve quality of life but having the fumes concentrated in areas where there is no population and have the electricity transported to major centers of population via high voltage lines.

Nothing is as cheap and vastly availible, doesn't require an overhaul of the grid, no need to develop new tech, it's all understood down to the last detail.

Everything else is just gaslighting, hypocrisy and selfishness that has people in rich areas of the world and especially the very rich areas within very rich countries (think California, New York, Oslo, Stokholm) care more about their children and their children's children than people who are alive right now.

The worse are those who don't have children and don't plan to have children but they still live in those rich areas and use climate to virtue signal. In one word Leonardo Di Caprio.

Amazing actor, great producer and fundraiser, delicious taste as far as his women but completely unaware of the trade-offs necessary to do what he wants.

The moment actors and people from the show-biz stopped supporting Africa and turned to climate you understand the deep divide between Hollywood, NYC and the priorities of the rest of the country, even with something as trivial as empathy. The rest of the country has empathy for humans whereas NYC and LA graduated to empathy towards animals and inanimate object such as climate.

> having the fumes concentrated in areas where there is no population

This will not help. It does not matter where the emissions happen because CO2 circulates globally. We have already burnt enough fossil fuels to put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to guarantee decades of climate change. If we continue burning fossil fuels, the rate of climate change will continue to increase.

You want to fight the CO2 that does the warming, that's an elite thought which generates itself in elite and rich areas such as California and New York.

I meant it as a way to fight the CO2 which causes cancer and respiratory problems, so you move the large emissions to unpopulated areas and then use high voltage to bring electricity in populated areas.

The rest of the world wants to fight pollution, only the elites want to fight climate change because their wealth affords them to focus on problems and time horizons which are simply not relevant nor accessible for the rest of the world.

That's a weirdly paternalistic perspective. Of course climate change affects everyone, everywhere.

> Of course climate change affects everyone, everywhere

I doubt you'd be holding the same stance if you were dying of HIV and/or Malaria.

And besides in general people living in bubbles of wealth rarely are conscious about being in them or the priorities of people outside such bubbles.

If you asked a billionaire they'll probably perceive themselves as the underdogs fighting for the forgotten men and women, oh wait the #1 person on Forbes shouts and whines about being an underdog fighting for the forgotten men and women each day, multiple times per day.

You have a serious axe to grind, pal. Best of luck to you.

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