476 karma · joined January 23, 2013
There is enough water in the Southwest for a sizable population, of course. The problem ahead is how to distribute a constrained resource to that population without deferring to lobbied interests, wealthy landowners, golf-course owners, etc. That's an uphill battle, to say the least.
So, either the population has to be reduced, or consumption has to be reduced. But either option seems politically impossible. Our understanding of freedom is not compatible with the cold reality of constrained resources. There isn't a price mechanism capable of equitably reducing consumption, and there isn't a technological solution that's capable of scaling to demand. Something's gotta give.
The function of admissions for these institutions is:
1. Secure revenue through donations and full-tuition-paying students to cover their operating costs
2. Boost marketing/PR efforts by maintaining an image of prestige and progressive values.
The prestige of these schools is already unassailable in the public imagination, so this is a simple marketing maneuver in order to maintain a positive image as a progressive institution.
If the goal was to educate as many high-achieving students as possible, they would simply establish testing standards, admit students who pass those standards (pending a holistic review, most likely), hire more world-class professors, and expand the class size.
But increasing the class size of Princeton would also decrease their "exclusiveness" and by extension their prestige.
So in order to balance these concerns, the admissions process needs to walk a tight-rope between admitting desirable minority students that make for good marketing material, "legacy" & wealthy students, and the most academically gifted.
These institutions are structurally positioned to oppose an educational system whose goal is to provide the best education possible to the most students. It's not about equality. In fact, it's about preserving inequality in their favor.
> it is important to realize that increasingly developed countries have been outsourcing most of their high polluting industries.
Neither of these points apply to the OP. They did not make the claim that the US emits more than India per capita. Secondly, your rebuttal of the point that "western countries have reduced carbon emissions" is not a rebuttal at all -- the OP specifically addressed this point in their comment if you read it. 90% of China's emission are directly caused by consumption, not manufacturing or export.
Of course the per-capita carbon footprint of the USA is unfairly high, and the result of a consumerist culture with poor urban planning, a legacy of racialized housing discrimination, etc. Although these are all very important concerns, they are ethical concerns. And the climate simply does not care about ethics.
The fact is that western countries are decreasing emissions and decarbonizing infrastructure, while China is still building coal plants for domestic consumption and attempting to export coal projects to poorer countries abroad in order to expand geopolitical soft power. If you believe that high levels of climate change have the potential to cause mass suffering around the world -- and particularly in the Global South -- then you must agree that the risk and harm involved in expanding coal outweighs the ethical concerns regarding per-capita carbon disparity.
That said, the Paris Accords specifically allow developing countries (China included) more time to lower their emissions compared to Western countries, precisely to account for inequitable per-capita carbon footprints. All western countries are on the right path -- the only question is if they're decarbonizing fast enough. The question for China is: will it even start decarbonizing soon enough?
China produces most of the world's solar panels and has amassed a wealth of research and development potential for renewable energy. The fact that they choose to continue building coal plants is inextricably tied up in political and geopolitical reasons.
As far as India goes, they have made a tremendous effort to meet their climate goals and the world owes them a huge debt.
Politically, I identify as a socialist, but I recommend this critique of the so-called "climate left" which includes analysis of some of the claims you made: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-climate-left-is-a-usef...
Either way, it remains to be seen how effective carbon capture plants will be. A lot depends on investment and proving a business model. Renewables have the upper hand on fossil fuels now, because they solve a proven business problem, cheaper. Carbon capture companies have to prove that there's even a market for their services. Although, some would advocate for a Keynesian approach to building out mass DaC infrastructure funded directly from federal spending.
Changing agricultural practices probably has a better outlook for carbon sequestration at the moment.
I hear this a lot from people online. But how realistic is this really? Say we enter 4 degrees of warming. I assume that we will experience food losses in both agriculture and fishing. The expectation seems to be that we will make no adjustments to our supply chains, no adaptations, no restrictions on food waste (currently over 50% in the developed world) or any other attempt to mitigate these factors.
Heatwaves/wet bulb stuff is worrying, and so are hurricanes. I don't want to diminish the problem. But it seems that this argument really rests on an understanding that we don't understand feedback loops, and that they are much worse than we anticipate, and that they lock us in to a Hothouse Earth scenario that pushes us into much higher levels of warming that we anticipate, and etc.
Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't. But I haven't seen any evidence for it, despite how often people parrot it from other Reddit comments or whatever.
1) permafrost melt, albedo feedbacks, etc., which has been considered in the most recent IPCC reports and is still being researched
2) sudden mass extinction due to biodiversity loss
As far as 1) goes, read the IPCC report and get back to me. 2) is scarier, for sure, but there is not enough research done to conclude that we have breached or are about to breach an extinction tipping point. Some recent models suggest phytoplankton extinction (the usual tipping point in doomer arguments) may be reversed in lower latitudes in a warming climate. But no one knows.
“Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were,” he wrote me in an email. “It is absolutely critical to recognize that I am NOT claiming that humans haven’t done great damage to marine and terrestrial [ecosystems], nor that many extinctions have not occurred and more will certainly occur in the near future. But I do think that as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons." https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends...
How does the COVID response have anything to do with the climate response? The governments of the world have all responded differently -- some quite stringently -- and the speed with which we produced an mRNA vaccine (itself a technological marvel) is truly nuts.
>The issue with climate are feedback loops which cause non-linear responses. These are dangerous because they have a tendency to sneak up on you. We are being way too conservative in our climate response and the uncertainty around the future should not make us feel better.
It is true that feedback loops are dangerous, but what do you mean by "sneaking up" on us? There's always uncertainty in modeling and projections of any kind, but the most agreed-upon climate models and projected scenarios include feedback loops.
> I believe Michael Mann is wrong that scary headlines prevent action. Look at Greta and the youth climate movement and XR. It exploded BECAUSE of the dread and anxiety. Yes, it's true people on the sidelines might get scared away, but you only need a small group of REALLY committed actors to make real change. Those on the sidelines will come along after the fact.
Well, maybe. Everyone is different, so perhaps some people will be spurned to act by these sorts of headlines. A majority of people in the US agree that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed, so hopefully we will see more and more political pressure in the future.
https://www.angellist.com/blog/inside-the-venture-climate-te...
The body of this article does touch on the actual claim of the paper -- that a myriad of factors linked to climate change have stymied agricultural productivity (particularly in less-affluent countries) compared to what that productivity would have been without those factors -- even though total agricultural output has grown due to better technology and so on.
However, if all you see is the headline the impression you get is: the world is getting hot and our farms aren't being productive enough. That's a different claim that inspires despair, not action.
Climate change is real and very, very scary. But the progress we've made in renewables, battery tech, agricultural yields, desalinization, etc., is really remarkable. It ain't over 'til it's over.
The trap with AirBnb and urban STR's is the idea that you can live like a native, but the truth is you're not fooling anyone but yourself.
-DFW
Just because there would be some democratic input doesn't mean there would be total democratic control. I think that's a pretty un-substantiated slippery slope.