Hacker News Reader

Comment by machina_ex_deus | Hacker News Reader

Our profits margins are lacking, please do force some artificial scarcity so we get some of our power back after the competition in our field eroded our power!

Notice how every suggestion for fighting climate change always involves preventing new oil competitors from developing while doing nothing about existing oil fields?

They are laughing all the way to the bank as they know the world depends on them and can't possibly detach that dependence, renewables barely make a dent in that. They don't care about total oil consumption only profit margins.

View on HN

There’s nothing artificial about the budget of carbon emissions we have before each temperature increase is bought. Increasing the cost of fossil fuel is a good way to make alternative energy more appealing to investors

Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7 Trillion

https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel...

... fossil-fuel subsidies rose by $2 trillion over the past two years as explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) more than doubled to $1.3 trillion ...

Our analysis shows that consumers did not pay for over $5 trillion of environmental costs last year. This number would be almost double if damage to the climate was valued at levels found in a recent study published in the scientific journal Nature ...

I'm not defending our irresponsible Co2 emission behavior in any way, and this only applies to a part of your link, but I feel calling negative (future?) externalities "government subsidies" is simply dishonest reporting.

I'd also argue that this framing is actively harmful, because it perpetuates the view that "big government" and "big oil corporations" are mainly to blame for lackluster action, but the inconvenient truth is that the average western citizen just does NOT want to sacrifice neither vacation air travel nor personal car, nor is he willing to pay more for energy/electricity.

Government action (or lack thereof) mainly mirrors this popular sentiment-- its not a big lobbying conspiracy...

> calling negative (future?) externalities "government subsidies" is simply dishonest reporting

If the government knows about those negative externalities, and chooses not to prevent or tax the behavior, but instead subsidizes that sector, how else would you describe it?

> "big government" and "big oil corporations" are mainly to blame for lackluster action

If one government takes action, those actions often get reversed within a few years. The issue isn't just one specific government; it's the system itself. Critics argue that neither capitalism nor communism can resolve this, but they're not the only systems possible.

The real culprits include the growth imperative in our financial system, politicians' focus on short-term actions at the expense of long-term vision, the slow adoption of renewable energy, and subsidies for harmful sectors decades after their impacts are known, etc.

We have only a few years/decades to reverse the effects of past actions; after that point, they'll become irreversible. We're in the overshoot for 50 years at this point, after all.

Blaming one political side or the other doesn't solve the issue. We must tackle problems like climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, overfishing, inequality, and the need for Universal Basic Income/Services across multiple fronts.

We need a Great Reset/Rewrite; otherwise, we should brace for a Great Simplification.

> If the government knows about those negative externalities, and chooses not to prevent or tax the behavior, but instead subsidizes that sector, how else would you describe it?

E.g. as "negative externatilites that were not appropriately taxed".

Because "subsidies" implies tax dollars being spent to deteriorate the situation, while the reality is basically the reverse.

And it is VERY obvious that this doesn't simply happen because "big oil" did so much lobbying that the government misrepresents the will of the people-- voters were visible in favor of subsidies and lower fuel prices (especially blatant during Ukraine-price spikes in Europe).

Just picture running on a "100% fossil fuel taxation to be spent on improved public transport" platform-- what country you think would elect that right now? Much less re-elect...

> We have only a few years/decades to reverse the effects of past actions; after that point, they'll become irreversible.

I disagree with this viewpoint: I think long term consequences are already completely inevitable, any current and future actions are only gonna change the exact magnitude.

> I think long term consequences are already completely inevitable

Degradation vs. collapse. Collapse is still preventable, but the window is closing fast.

If we'd stop fossil fuels, reform agriculture and reforest what we can, we'd be able to reverse the warming and let biodiversity rebound. Continue for a few more decades, and the carrying capacity falls drastically.

Collapse of what? Civilization?

I don't buy into that at all; massive waves of climate refugees, environmental disasters, loss of coastal urban space, economical crises: sure-- but collapse of civilization?! I simply don't see that happening, to me that appears like completely unfounded pessimism.

But feel free to try and change my view...

> Collapse of what? Civilization?

I was referring to the collapse (significant degradation) of the environmental carrying capacity. In such a scenario, our civilization would implode on its own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/st-matthew-island/

> But feel free to try and change my view

It's a complex topic ... I only can give you a few links. The system we live in is very complex ... and as in every complex system even a minor error can cripple the system. Just remember how much damage to the economy was caused by just one ship blocking the Suez.

I don't think the system is able to handle large-scale agricultural failures, prolonged droughts or abrupt sea level rises. Everything seems to be changing more rapidly than predicted - from air and sea temperatures to thawing, droughts, biodiversity loss, etc.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/07/climate-...

Climate Collapse Could Happen Fast - As temperature and weather records fall, Earth may be nearing so-called tipping points.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/cata...

Catastrophic climate 'doom loops' could start in just 15 years, new study warns

https://www.iflscience.com/chances-of-societal-collapse-in-n...

Chances Of Societal Collapse In Next Few Decades Is Sky High, Modelling Suggests

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119

Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32

The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ Is Inevitable

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115

Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01157-x

Earlier collapse of Anthropocene ecosystems driven by multiple faster and noisier drivers

https://apnews.com/article/climate-united-nations-paris-euro...

UN warns Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world’

https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.html

Limits to Growth

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/09/the-planet-...

The planet heats, the world economy cools – the real global recession is ecological

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4

Humans are driving one million species to extinction

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7...

Animal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/08/ecological-cliff-edge/

Ecological cliff edge

It literally is a big lobbying conspiracy.

The only way to make non-fossil energy sources more appealing, is to make fossil sources more expensive.

The side-effect of this is, yes, unfortunately increased profits for oil companies.

I don't know if these could be cut down using some windfall tax scheme.

Not if the increased cost is due to tax

Exactly, fuel should be more expensive because the negative externalities of its consumption should be priced in.

The extra value extracted from pricing in those externalities should be directed by the state towards offsetting the damage, it shouldn’t just be pocketed by the companies causing the damage.

Why would a much higher fuel tax, imposed on crude oil, and scaled in at 30% immediately and 10% over each the next 7 years, not work?

I'm wondering what effect that would have on food prices, which is a critical factor looking at stability of societies globally?

I am not an expert and have no answers, I just wanted to point out the situation is non-trivial form systems design point of view.

That's a valid concern and is the reason to scale the tax in over a many year period. That tax revenue doesn't have to be consumed by a swelling government, but part of it could be directly distributed as a dividend to each member of the society on an equal per-capita basis or biased towards lower income members of the society.

The counterfactual challenge is brutal, too: if we don’t do anything, the impact on food production will be far worse but if we don’t let it happen first we’re going to be plagued with people saying it wouldn’t have been so bad.

> The only way to make non-fossil energy sources more appealing, is to make fossil sources more expensive.

Really? That seems pretty suboptimal to me. How about trying to make them cheaper/more reliable?

The problem is that we no longer have the time to let market forces work that slowly. Things like home heaters, stoves, vehicle engines, etc. have service lifespans measured in decades so we need everyone buying electric now. Things like EVs or heat pumps often have higher upfront cost so we need to stop having the situation where people feel like they have to pay more to do the right thing because the fossil fuel prices are subsidized so low that many people don’t feel much pressure to change.

You can also subsidize clean energy, which is what we've been doing.

To clarify, we've been minimally subsidizing clean energy while not only significantly subsidizing oil exploration and development, but also using the largest military + intelligence budgets (US, UK) to "stabilize" oil producing regions and transportation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com