Greenhouse gas emissions hit ‘all-time high,’ approaching point of no return
studyfinds.org
studyfinds.org
In fact, most of the world has embraced carbon taxes, including China, California, Washington, Canada, EU and so on.
The USA is a bit of an outlier here, and it's not because the environmental left are in control there.
https://time.com/5447748/washington-state-carbon-tax-climate...
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/09/carbon-tax-climate...
EDIT: To provide context on why the Left finds carbon taxes dubious, it’s that carbon taxes are very likely regressive. That is, they are though to hit poorer people harder:
https://www.nber.org/digest/jan10/how-regressive-price-carbo...
I agree, but I think this is an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. We can craft companion policies that lessen the regressive nature of carbon taxes, while still maintaining the benefits of carbon taxes.
Also, please address my main point about the environmental Left’s rabid opposition to nuclear power over the last 40 years.
You're also mentioning their opposition over the last 40 years, yet not comparing it to the latest and greatest nuclear power plants. Presumably many people are unaware of advances in nuclear power technology.
Edit to add: Thirdly, if the rabid environmental Left is opposed to nuclear power, I'd expect them to also be opposed to most of consumerism for other reasons (such as the environmental impacts of resource extraction). If they believe necessary power can be had from non-nuclear, non-carbon-intensive power plants (such as wind or solar), then to support nuclear power would be basically supporting the continuation of a consumerism that they generally see as bad for the environment.
To only take greenhouse gas emissions seriously when rabid environmental Leftists completely change their worldview seems counter-productive. You have to take it on its own evidentiary basis.
> “This aversion to taxes in the U.S. is high and should not be underestimated,”
Yeah, the environmental left really hate taxes.
> AOC tweeted in 2019 that “carbon tax or cap-and-trade … could be part of a solution [but] they are inadequate as the whole answer
Not thinking something is the sole answer is not the same as not supporting it. If it was then I (and AOC) don't support any climate policy because we support at least 2.
Several of them talk about carbon taxes being voted down by the general population, so unless you think the "environmental left" have a majority support that doesn't matter.
I'm also sick of the yellow vest protest being mispreresented:
> The movement was initially motivated by rising crude oil and fuel prices, a high cost of living, and economic inequality. The movement argued that a disproportionate burden of taxation in France was falling on the working and middle classes,[71][72][73] especially in rural and peri-urban areas.[32][74] The protesters called for lower fuel taxes, a reintroduction of the solidarity tax on wealth, a minimum wage increase,[39] among other things.
People seem really keen to skip over all the inequality bits that fed into it, taking the sole lesson that "you can't tax carbon" which is only really true in the US. France is part of the EU's carbon trading scheme. It already taxes carbon.
Currently implemented policies cover 23% of all Carbon emmissions, and more are in the process of being set up, including carbon tariffs which effectively impose it on exports for countries that don't have their own carbon price.
The US is resposible for about 28%, so that's a good chunk of "the rest of the world" as measured by CO2 output.
Sadly, Mother Nature doesn't care how many idiots we're sharing the planet with. We won't get any sympathy points.
Are you sure the nuclear-related danger being weighed against climate change isn't the danger of relying on nuclear plants to reduce emissions? Because unless things change unrealistically faat, they aren't going to be able to do much in terms of keeping warming <2 °C. It isn't the environmental left's fault that the economics of building a nuclear project are absolutely terrible.
I'd also point out there are large parts of the left that are ambivalent or pro nuclear, and finally that the people providing the data and climate projections (i.e., climate scientists) are not typically environmental activists. Even if they were, it is probably a 'tu quoque' sort of logical fallacy to suggest bad ideas about policy response have bearing on the actual projections they produce.
Humans are approaching the point of no return. As George Carlin put it: “The planet isn’t going anywhere, we are. (…) The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas”.
Putting it bluntly, humans will be fine. Civilisation, even, will be fine. The coming chaos is one of migrating people, economic centres and food production. Rich, cohesive nations will see depressed growth. Poor or fractured societies will collapse.
Within the (rhetorical) context of potential extinction, surviving is just fine.
The intersection of folks gearing up on climate change and far-flung humanitarian outcomes is limited. The fraction of the first doing it for the second, smaller still.
Recognising incentives—even unsavoury ones—is key to changing behaviour. If you are middle class or above in the rich world, or over 50, climate change is unlikely to ruin you. If you’re in the upper class in the rich world, climate change is unlikely to materially inconvenience you or your direct descendants. (You may even see opportunity.)
Acting on the environment has to come from a place of stewardship and compassion. Self-interested quips per Carlin, while pithy, don’t hold. This framework explains why haughty climate activism fails; you’re trading someone’s present living standard for another’s future. Uncompensated, that will provoke backlash à la les guillettes jaunes, Canada’s trucker protest or whatever coal country is up to right now.
People in the present are already dying from the consequences, and rich countries aren’t immune.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210823-deadly-flooding-...
That's the problem with this line of argument. If you're arguing on selfish, transactional merits, it's fair to dismiss on the basis of one's personal experience. For most people in the rich world, that experience does not include clearly-identifiable bad effects from climate change, nor will it in the proximate future.
"Save yourself" doesn't work if the person you're pitching isn't actually in peril. (To highlight the point, that same person would likely support flood defenses. Even if their house is on high ground.)
Fair point. If I understand your larger argument, you’re saying that appealing to a selfish person’s selfishness may be ineffective or even counterproductive if we can’t make the subject matter directly relevant to their unique situation.
What’s your approach, then? If all you can get from them is either complacency or doing the bad behaviour out of spite, ignoring altogether may be best.
Fatalistic regret is a losing line of argument. The northern stretch of North America's Interior Plains is more than capable of feeding the continent. Prices will go up, but that will be in lifetimes, and will accrue to farmers here over elsewhere--that's something a savvy elite can position themselves to profit from.
There isn't a transactional argument for mitigating climate change that is self-interestedly rational for middle class Americans or Europeans. To the extent a sociopathic rich person in those societies looks at this, they'll likely see as much promise as risk. Change has to come from a sense of stewardship over our planet and compassion for less-fortunate people.
Unfortunately - humans are worse than cockroaches, and no matter what happens to the climate - a significant portion of us will always survive.
It's a good chunk of all the other species who are toast.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230307215203/https://twitter.c...
They didn't say we'd all be dead in 5 years, just that we'd possibly pass a tipping point. I guess we'll find out.
The quote doesn’t mean “everyone will be dead in five years unless we stop using fossil fuels before then”, it means “unless we stop using fossil fuels in the next five years, everyone will die at a later point as a consequence of the irreparable damage”.
Do you understand the difference?
*or the climate scientists are wrong again
If you had a chronic disease, would you take medicine to stave off the adverse effects and preserve your quality of life for longer? Or would you throw your hands up and let the disease ravage you since there’s no cure?
And remember: in the case of climate change your decision doesn’t affect only you but others as well.
What if you had a doctor who told you to stop eating ice cream or you were going to die. He keeps making predictions, you'll have a heart attack in 5 years, you'll get diabetes in 6 years, you'll be dead within the decade. The years pass and his predictions don't come true. Worse yet, you find out that he has a fridge full of Ben and Jerry's at home and publicly supports government funded ice cream socials (wars).
At what point would you stop trusting the experts? Keep in mind it's really hot in many parts of the world and their economies could really use some ice cream.
The problem is saying there is an arbitrary boundary of no hope. The danger is in the learned helplessness this reinforces and the lack of action it suggests.
This is an ongoing existential emergency to the survival of all life on the planet. The result will be a desertified Earth if nothing is done. What must happen immediately are draconian policy prescriptions that require leadership. This is because industries and people will not stop polluting voluntarily because they view it as their right to pollute and ruin the planet because they did it yesterday and they want their profits, their hamburgers, or doing burnouts in their ICE sports car. "Because I want, I will do whatever I want" is their logic. It's a Tragedy of the Commons at present that cannot be resolved by asking nicely.
Fossil fuels, meat agriculture, open clinker refinement, and more will have to change, and there is an urgent need for bio carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at scale that isn't anything remotely like #TeamTrees that actually takes carbon from the atmosphere and disposes of it somewhere safe for millions of years in an economical manner (preindustrials levels can be reached for under $25-30 T).
I live under a pretty big rock. Is there any explanation why this serious reduction of greenhouse has had no effect?
The economy only tanked for a brief period in 2020 and then had massive stimulus injected that led to a rush for consumer goods and real estate. Oil production increased and more oil and gas are being burned. Overall the trajectory for generation of greenhouse gases did not change significantly.
The part that doesn't: I'm admittedly looking only at my Urban area, but traffic is much less than it was. I still commute to the office, and it just isn't what it used to be, even into the city. My commute takes about 10 minutes less than it used to, 15 minutes instead of 25.
Obviously not a huge city, but definitely one that is well known across the U.S.
Getting to net zero isn't going to substantially reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or stop warming in it's tracks, it's just about limiting how much higher the temperature is going to get (at least for the short to medium term).