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Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2019 6:25 am
by Robert Tulip
Please answer this poll, happy to discuss.

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:31 pm
by Chris OConnor
I know this is a subject near and dear to your heart, as it should be for all of us, but I am somewhat ignorant of the science involved. With that said I voted for cutting emissions and taxing carbon. I just don't know enough about the other options to vote/comment on them.

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 6:47 am
by Robert Tulip
I added a sixth option, Reduce Personal Carbon Footprint, because that is something some people see as the only possible action. Adding the extra option set all the votes to zero, so if you voted early you can vote again (but not vote often).

I am basically working full time on this issue now, but it still perplexes and depresses me how weak the public understanding is, with an amazing psychology of repression of challenging information. The situation is that the extra carbon humans have added is enough to cause accelerating feedback loops to make dangerous warming inevitable, unless we take urgent action to remove the added carbon and directly cool the planet. That makes managing solar radiation an urgent security imperative, through the priorities of field trials and political analysis. Unfortunately there is a complete lack of interest in any such action. We spend trillions on weapons and almost nothing on the real clear and present danger of climate change. Despite that I am a complete optimist. Maybe I should add another option, trust in God.

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 12:08 pm
by geo
I voted for cutting emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere. But I also wanted to vote for reducing one's own carbon footprint. The first two are goals that we make as a society and are because they require a political unity that is missing from today's discourse. Liberals tend to frame climate change in idealistic and often over-simplistic terms. Conservatives tend to dismiss the problem as just liberal propaganda.

But reducing one's own footprint is arguably a personal obligation. Can we decry climate change without making personal sacrifices? I wonder what David Thoreau would have to say about it. Or would he simply show us by demonstrating what a sustainable lifestyle would look like?

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:52 am
by DWill
I voted for reduce emissions and remove carbon. It's hard to argue that Robert isn't right that without that we won't reach the goals of Paris. The problem with this combo, I suppose, is that it might confuse the public. If we're going to remove the carbon, then do we even need to reduce emissions? Of course, we do. It's a two-pronged attack. Relying only on CR would be just as futile as relying only on reduction. The point I see as crucial but don't often see recognized, is that zero-emission energy is a necessary goal because it may be only for the next 80 years that we have anything to burn! Gas and oil will become scarce despite the fracking boom. As for more abundant coal, let's not go there. So it's a matter of saving our economy as well saving the earth.

Circular economy is getting to be a big deal, although some have called it hyped. 76 million Google results vs. 476,000 four years ago. CE is not itself a frontline solution to transforming the energy grid, but it assumes that in a no-waste economy the energy input will be all renewable. I mention CE because getting behind it is a natural way to reduce individual carbon footprint. The biggest problem with carbon footprint is that there is no leadership on the issue and no effective policies exist. Maybe if Jay Inslee can get himself elected president, we'll all get a better idea of how we can help.

Jeremy Rifkin has some interesting ideas about zero-carbon energy in The Third Industrial Revolution. He says that every home can be a green power producer, with extra energy sold over the grid to other small producers who need more.

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 5:03 pm
by Robert Tulip
geo wrote:I voted for cutting emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere. But I also wanted to vote for reducing one's own carbon footprint. The first two are goals that we make as a society and are because they require a political unity that is missing from today's discourse. Liberals tend to frame climate change in idealistic and often over-simplistic terms. Conservatives tend to dismiss the problem as just liberal propaganda.

But reducing one's own footprint is arguably a personal obligation. Can we decry climate change without making personal sacrifices? I wonder what David Thoreau would have to say about it. Or would he simply show us by demonstrating what a sustainable lifestyle would look like?
Thanks geo. A friend of mine working on climate change argues that what humanity needs is a new 'great awakening', not as a religious movement like in the 1840s but rather as a way of understanding personal responsibility for our planetary survival, seeing the connection between our individual values and the fate of the biosphere. That echoes Thoreau's spiritual ideas about nature, and shows how our individual psychology can be decisive in bringing about social and environmental change. I think there is much merit in such a personal sense of connection, since many of the dominant consumerist values - envy, gossip, vanity, hedonism - are antithetical to humanity continuing to participate in evolution.

What I dislike about the 'personal footprint' idea is how it perversely reinforces an individualist mentality, by suggesting what we do as isolated individuals is more important than combining to work together on shared objectives. Climate change will only be fixed through global industrial systems that remove more carbon from the air than total emissions. And before that can be achieved, radical measures are needed to directly cool the air in order to prevent dangerous tipping points into a hothouse earth. Personal frugality only makes a spiritual difference toward those material goals, and can even harm those goals when people see them as too risky.
The reality is that not cooling the air is far far riskier than cooling the air.

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 10:31 pm
by Harry Marks
I voted for a carbon tax because it brings all the others in its wake. Robert makes a cogent argument that removing carbon is needed, but a reasonable carbon tax will create incentives to remove carbon, and thus, as usual in economic policy, recognizing reality in the form of prices will motivate many smart and effective people in a way that central decisions will not.

Likewise, many environmentalists argue that we need to learn to be at one with our environment and quit with the extractive mentality. All well and good, I say, but until the revolution has come, do we have to have a scorched earth as the price for people's slow response? The pent-up destruction is already almost unbearable, and if we recognize that it will be twice as bad by the time it is undeniable and obviously urgent, then putting our faith in a radical change in culture just looks like eco-cide.

We have a lot of experience to show that corporate capitalism can work wonders to clean the environment, but will only do so if the incentives are present. Yet so far we have done close to zilch to provide such incentives. Why waste breath haranguing individuals to change their wicked ways when the really efficient changes require large-scale coordinated technical efforts, rather than goodness of consumers' hearts? (Invisible hand, and all that.) Among the many forecastable effects of incentives would be serious efforts to remove carbon, and probably some pretty efficient measures to use it commercially.

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 11:47 am
by DB Roy
I drive a hybrid which I hope helps out. Although it has nothing to do with climate change, I recycle everything I can get away with. I refuse to throw plastic bottles in the trash. I'll take them home with me if I'm out somewhere and toss them in my recycle bin. It pisses me off when I see people throw them in the trash.

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 8:18 am
by DWill
DB Roy wrote:I drive a hybrid which I hope helps out. Although it has nothing to do with climate change, I recycle everything I can get away with. I refuse to throw plastic bottles in the trash. I'll take them home with me if I'm out somewhere and toss them in my recycle bin. It pisses me off when I see people throw them in the trash.
Recycling is about all individuals can do currently to feel they are doing something. Well, there are a few other things like spending more money on high-mpg cars and installing solar panels. But recycling is such a sad system that won't get much better until producers give more attention (or are forced to) to the end points of their products, ensuring that products can be repaired, refurbished, remanufactured, or recycled--whatever is most appropriate for the product and its condition. That is the point of having "extended producer responsibility" regulations in place. Making consumers feel it's all on them to see that waste is reduced is bs. That does all relate to climate change because the "circular" way is generally less energy intensive.

I agree with Harry Marks that taxing carbon is quick and effective, and it is really more likely to bring about a heightened consciousness than invoking all the environmental prophets will. Responding to necessity does that sometimes. It did in the first gasoline crisis in 1973.

Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:31 pm
by Harry Marks
DWill wrote: Recycling is about all individuals can do currently to feel they are doing something. Well, there are a few other things like spending more money on high-mpg cars and installing solar panels.
My point would be that the system should not depend on individuals making more moral choices. There are indeed some choices that make a difference: not buying more house than you need is one of the big ones - heating and cooling use a lot of energy and people often buy extra space just for status. You can install a heat pump, especially if you have a basement or second floor that you don't use all that much (so the slow heating and cooling response doesn't matter that much to you). And you can indeed drive less car (high-mpg) and use solar (for water heating, in the sunny zones, not just for electric).

But the real difference on GHG's will be made by things like what powers cars (hydrogen is really good, electric is potentially very good but right now often generated by coal) and how electricity is generated. The choices involved will depend on which sources are cheaper, but if fossil fuels (and to an extent, nuclear) are cheaper by imposing costs on the rest of society, then government has to get that reflected in the prices. Only when they do so will the private sector begin to adapt to the true public interest. We have seen huge advances in solar power and battery technology with very little incentive, but the response would have been much faster and more thorough if the incentives had been there. Firms responded to the potential in the learning curve, which is what Robert wants to take advantage of, but they at least had a market (off-grid users of electric, etc.) without any added incentives. Carbon sequestration is going along on the same basis, but with the threat of carbon penalties to give incentive to the technology.
DWill wrote:But recycling is such a sad system that won't get much better until producers give more attention (or are forced to) to the end points of their products, ensuring that products can be repaired, refurbished, remanufactured, or recycled--whatever is most appropriate for the product and its condition. That is the point of having "extended producer responsibility" regulations in place. Making consumers feel it's all on them to see that waste is reduced is bs. That does all relate to climate change because the "circular" way is generally less energy intensive.
Yes, this is the idea. It may offend Devin Nunes terribly to be asked if he wants a straw, rather than just have one thrown at him, but in general producers can be very responsible and usually with minimal customer displeasure. We ran into a problem about this in Europe with UHT milk (most Americans will say "Huh? What's that?" but it is big in Europe.) Something about the packaging requirements has foil inside the typical cardboard box, so it is not recyclable. If there were more incentives, the packagers would find a way to make that foil separable from the cardboard after use.