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Comment by Pet_Ant | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I was surprised with how during the shutdowns we were still able to produce everything we needed. There were no food or power shortages. Wild animals started to return to cities. It demonstrated that most economic activity is really not necessary for our standard of living. We can do so much better. We have lots of wiggle room.

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Consider that most people did not enjoy the shutdowns and they quickly became extremely unpopular politically.

People didn't enjoy the inability to socialize freely, go to the movies or the hairdresser. I know others who had the time of their lives hanging out with friends in the backyard, drinking beers and grilling.

Well there's shutdowns and there's shutdowns; "hanging out with friends in the backyard, drinking beers and grilling" was pretty much illegal during some of them.

Reducing economic activity to deal with climate change wouldn't be the type of shutdown to make socializing illegal. Quite the opposite actually.

Also I don't recall it ever being illegal to meet people outdoors with social distancing.

Okay, I’ll bite.

How much was economic activity reduced during the shutdowns?

By how much did did reduce emissions, was it 2 percent or 5 percent?

By how much would we need to reduce economic activity to reduce emissions by 100%( Which is the amount of reduction needed for dealing with climate change)?

What if we, instead of shutting down the economy, redirected it to build renewables and nuclear?

From skimming this article's abstract[1] emissions went down 8-17% in April 2020. It doesn't say how much the GDP went down by. Lots of people lost jobs in April. But only 6 months later we had the tightest labor market in decades, so swings and roundabouts.

It isn't a binary choice between stopping all economic activity and 100% renewables and nuclear. There is a range of choices and priorities.

For instance, what would we really lose by eliminating private jets, super yachts, and cruise ships tomorrow?

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10281825/

The only way to redirect an economy like you describe is with central planning which is absolutely not the American Way (tm).

No, you can just impose a tax on CO2. You can even lower other taxes to compensate.

It has a similar effect of redirecting resources, while actually working.

Taxes are usually just passed to the consumer and you can be sure a co2 tax will increase the cost of just about everything sold, EVs included.

What if we did both

It would be less effective than just taxing co2.

If you’re not sure about the price you can do an auction of a limited contingency of emission certificates.

We absolutely could live like the 1920s/50s but with a bit more high-tech and better healthcare sprinkled in. But our entire financial system (including having the ability to retire) is based on the fundamental assumption of economic growth (and population growth for that matter).

I mean... that seems like a reasonable price to pay if we can get rid of nature killing pollution and potentially species ending global warming. That's just me.

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