Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to Zero
March 7, 2021 2:51 PM Subscribe
“It is our best understanding that, if we bring down CO2 to net zero, the warming will level off. The climate will stabilize within a decade or two." The idea that global warming could stop relatively quickly after emissions go to zero was described as a “game-changing new scientific understanding” by Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of news organizations covering climate.
“This really is true,” he said. “It’s a dramatic change in the paradigm that has been lost on many who cover this issue, perhaps because it hasn’t been well explained by the scientific community. It’s an important development that is still under appreciated.”“It’s definitely the scientific consensus now that warming stabilizes quickly, within 10 years, of emissions going to zero,” he said.
The linked article buries the lede a bit. In a linked news story, the neglected mechanism seems to be a stronger link between the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere and the oceans.
I remember the discovery that the oceans are already taking up atmospheric carbon dioxide being news a few years ago. At the time it seemed like mostly bad news: it suggested we'd been underestimating how much CO2 we'd been putting into the atmosphere, and therefore how much work we had to do to stop. Also an increasingly acidic ocean makes it harder to survive as an animal with a limestone skeleton, like mollusks and corals.
I'd love to learn this had turned around into good news while I wasn't paying attention. I am a little trigger-shy about accepting good news lately.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:38 PM on March 7, 2021 [18 favorites]
I remember the discovery that the oceans are already taking up atmospheric carbon dioxide being news a few years ago. At the time it seemed like mostly bad news: it suggested we'd been underestimating how much CO2 we'd been putting into the atmosphere, and therefore how much work we had to do to stop. Also an increasingly acidic ocean makes it harder to survive as an animal with a limestone skeleton, like mollusks and corals.
I'd love to learn this had turned around into good news while I wasn't paying attention. I am a little trigger-shy about accepting good news lately.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:38 PM on March 7, 2021 [18 favorites]
Thank you very much for sharing this article, which I would never have found for myself. It is good to know that concrete actions could have a strong positive effect.
posted by rpfields at 3:42 PM on March 7, 2021
posted by rpfields at 3:42 PM on March 7, 2021
B. Berwyn is one of the few really competent (both in terms of research and in distillation into clear prose) climate reporters out there; tftl.
posted by progosk at 3:44 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by progosk at 3:44 PM on March 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
In a world with so many top priorities, let us make this a top priority. Those of us who consume the most can do the most to get to zero, and use our scarce surpluses while they last to help those who didnt benefit from our trashing the planet.
I worry about ghgs released from a warmer environment, but the faster the ship can be turned around, the more we can save.
Thank you for posting this good news
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 4:42 PM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
I worry about ghgs released from a warmer environment, but the faster the ship can be turned around, the more we can save.
Thank you for posting this good news
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 4:42 PM on March 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
Yes and if enough people chipped in I could have a pony. Both are equally unlikely. I don't like to be a pessimist but "well if we do impossible thing A impossible thing B will happen!" is a useless conjecture.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:22 PM on March 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:22 PM on March 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
This comic sums it up:
"Mother Gaia, I come of behalf of all humans to apologize for destroying nature and beg for forgiveness."
"Oh my beloved self-centered humans..."
"We're sorry for being so selfish. We never meant to kill nature."
"That wasn't what I mean by self-centered. Nature is adaptable. No matter what you do to it it will simply change and take on new forms. It has survived worse things than you. You are however in the process of changing it so much you can't live in it. You're not killing nature, you're killing yourself. That's what I mean by self-centered. You just think that because you can't live, then nothing can."
"What?"
"You're fucking yourself over big time and won't be missed."
posted by BiggerJ at 5:32 PM on March 7, 2021 [55 favorites]
"Mother Gaia, I come of behalf of all humans to apologize for destroying nature and beg for forgiveness."
"Oh my beloved self-centered humans..."
"We're sorry for being so selfish. We never meant to kill nature."
"That wasn't what I mean by self-centered. Nature is adaptable. No matter what you do to it it will simply change and take on new forms. It has survived worse things than you. You are however in the process of changing it so much you can't live in it. You're not killing nature, you're killing yourself. That's what I mean by self-centered. You just think that because you can't live, then nothing can."
"What?"
"You're fucking yourself over big time and won't be missed."
posted by BiggerJ at 5:32 PM on March 7, 2021 [55 favorites]
Yeah. The Earth has been all kinds of hot and cold. We are not endangering the Earth itself. We are simply endangering us and many other living things. Hell, we haven't even been around very long. Earth probably hasn't noticed anything at all.
posted by Splunge at 5:42 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Splunge at 5:42 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Quickly After Emissions Go to Zero
Easy peasy, stop all trucks, all cars, all electricity (except for solar/wind), all industry, all farms that use non-manual tractors and woo trucks, all stores, all hospitals (them pesky diesel backup generators) even mortuaries that cremate... any idea how much gas those burn? There are no good solutions. No practical solutions. Get a boat.
posted by sammyo at 6:00 PM on March 7, 2021
Easy peasy, stop all trucks, all cars, all electricity (except for solar/wind), all industry, all farms that use non-manual tractors and woo trucks, all stores, all hospitals (them pesky diesel backup generators) even mortuaries that cremate... any idea how much gas those burn? There are no good solutions. No practical solutions. Get a boat.
posted by sammyo at 6:00 PM on March 7, 2021
I doubt that the current combination of unfettered capitalism and its near complete hold on the minds of the white labor aristocracy of the global North will permit this to happen. Socialist movements outside the global North might shake that up, however.
Near the end of his stunning documentary on Antarctica, I remember Werner Herzog intoning something about humans and climate change... along the lines of "Nature will regulate us." Indeed.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 6:14 PM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
Near the end of his stunning documentary on Antarctica, I remember Werner Herzog intoning something about humans and climate change... along the lines of "Nature will regulate us." Indeed.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 6:14 PM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
Enough with the dystopian obsessions. Enough.
What's one thing you (dear reader) are doing on any level (personal/public/political/etc) to pull the massive climate change U-turn? Everyone is doing something. Tell me what you're doing. What are you doing to make it better?
posted by aniola at 6:48 PM on March 7, 2021 [37 favorites]
What's one thing you (dear reader) are doing on any level (personal/public/political/etc) to pull the massive climate change U-turn? Everyone is doing something. Tell me what you're doing. What are you doing to make it better?
posted by aniola at 6:48 PM on March 7, 2021 [37 favorites]
There are no good solutions. No practical solutions.
That's a load of crap, and has always been a load of crap, and promoting it as if it were true does nothing but engender the kind of self-fulfilling paralysis that the fossil fuel majors have been propagandizing to create for the last fifty years.
Get a grip.
posted by flabdablet at 6:48 PM on March 7, 2021 [73 favorites]
That's a load of crap, and has always been a load of crap, and promoting it as if it were true does nothing but engender the kind of self-fulfilling paralysis that the fossil fuel majors have been propagandizing to create for the last fifty years.
Get a grip.
posted by flabdablet at 6:48 PM on March 7, 2021 [73 favorites]
What are you doing to make it better?
I got sterilized thirty years ago.
posted by flabdablet at 6:51 PM on March 7, 2021 [36 favorites]
I got sterilized thirty years ago.
posted by flabdablet at 6:51 PM on March 7, 2021 [36 favorites]
I'm not sure if the idea of reaching net zero mans stopping "all cars, all trucks, all electricity, all industry, all farms, all stores, all hospitals..."
I think it may mean we reduce our emissions to the point that natural sinks can handle what we do emit and start reducing the excess. Perhaps someone more well informed than me can weigh in.
posted by Reverend John at 6:53 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think it may mean we reduce our emissions to the point that natural sinks can handle what we do emit and start reducing the excess. Perhaps someone more well informed than me can weigh in.
posted by Reverend John at 6:53 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Net zero means that anything we do to add carbon to the global carbon cycle is balanced up by something else that we do to take it out.
The single most effective thing we can do to get to net zero is to get off our present addiction to de-sequestering fossil carbon - coal, oil, methane, limestone - as fast as possible.
Next most effective is winding back our present addiction to destroying existing carbon sinks.
Third most effective is creating as many additional carbon sinks as we possibly can. This is only third most effective because whatever we do along those lines, the oceans are already doing at a far higher rate than we will ever achieve. All that fossil limestone came from the oceans in the first place, and the processes that made it are ongoing.
It will take a lot longer for the ocean to de-acidify than it will for the greenhouse effect to stabilize, but the ocean is undoubtedly where most of the fossil carbon we've re-injected into the active cycle is going to be spending most of its time in the meanwhile.
posted by flabdablet at 7:05 PM on March 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
The single most effective thing we can do to get to net zero is to get off our present addiction to de-sequestering fossil carbon - coal, oil, methane, limestone - as fast as possible.
Next most effective is winding back our present addiction to destroying existing carbon sinks.
Third most effective is creating as many additional carbon sinks as we possibly can. This is only third most effective because whatever we do along those lines, the oceans are already doing at a far higher rate than we will ever achieve. All that fossil limestone came from the oceans in the first place, and the processes that made it are ongoing.
It will take a lot longer for the ocean to de-acidify than it will for the greenhouse effect to stabilize, but the ocean is undoubtedly where most of the fossil carbon we've re-injected into the active cycle is going to be spending most of its time in the meanwhile.
posted by flabdablet at 7:05 PM on March 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
That's a load of crap, and has always been a load of crap, and promoting it as if it were true does nothing but engender the kind of self-fulfilling paralysis that the fossil fuel majors have been propagandizing to create for the last fifty years.
This. Combustion stuff can shift to things like hydrogen, biofuel, CO2 recycling using clean energy to create the fuel purely as a storage of energy. Just because we're not doing it now means we're forever out of reach. Once upon a time you couldn't drive coast to coast in an electric car.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:27 PM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
This. Combustion stuff can shift to things like hydrogen, biofuel, CO2 recycling using clean energy to create the fuel purely as a storage of energy. Just because we're not doing it now means we're forever out of reach. Once upon a time you couldn't drive coast to coast in an electric car.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:27 PM on March 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
I really hate doomsaying.
But I also don't actually know how possible it is for us to get to net zero.
So I did a quick search on "can we get to net carbon zero?" and here are the first few reliable-sounding things I found:
Can we get to net zero emissions?, Physics World, 2018; cites a study by the European Climate Foundation laying out three ways to get to net zero by 2050
What Does "Net-Zero" Mean? 6 Common Questions, Answered, World Resources Institute, 2019; the answer to question 5 suggests there are ways to reach net zero
The race to zero emissions, and why the world depends on it, United Nations - UN News, Dec. 2020, "The good news is that the technology exists to reach net zero – and it is affordable."
How do we get to net-zero emissions? 6 experts share their views, World Economic Forum, Nov 2020; "change is achievable and affordable, according to a panel at the World Economic Forum’s Green Horizons Summit" :
But absent that, I will 100% take "world experts say it's possible" over doomsaying any day.
Thank you very much for posting this, folklore724. I look forward to reading more thoughtful responses from my fellow MeFites.
posted by kristi at 7:29 PM on March 7, 2021 [27 favorites]
But I also don't actually know how possible it is for us to get to net zero.
So I did a quick search on "can we get to net carbon zero?" and here are the first few reliable-sounding things I found:
Can we get to net zero emissions?, Physics World, 2018; cites a study by the European Climate Foundation laying out three ways to get to net zero by 2050
What Does "Net-Zero" Mean? 6 Common Questions, Answered, World Resources Institute, 2019; the answer to question 5 suggests there are ways to reach net zero
The race to zero emissions, and why the world depends on it, United Nations - UN News, Dec. 2020, "The good news is that the technology exists to reach net zero – and it is affordable."
How do we get to net-zero emissions? 6 experts share their views, World Economic Forum, Nov 2020; "change is achievable and affordable, according to a panel at the World Economic Forum’s Green Horizons Summit" :
Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is perfectly achievable if investment in fossil fuels is redirected to zero-carbon alternatives, according to speakers at the World Economic Forum’s Green Horizons Summit.Now, maybe all these folks are wrong, and if so, I'd like to hear informed information on why and how they are wrong.
But absent that, I will 100% take "world experts say it's possible" over doomsaying any day.
Thank you very much for posting this, folklore724. I look forward to reading more thoughtful responses from my fellow MeFites.
posted by kristi at 7:29 PM on March 7, 2021 [27 favorites]
I just ran across this website earlier today. Drawdown: The World’s Leading Resource for Climate Solutions
posted by aniola at 7:30 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by aniola at 7:30 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is perfectly achievable if investment in fossil fuels is redirected to zero-carbon alternatives, according to speakers at the World Economic Forum’s Green Horizons Summit.
I don't disagree, but it should be noted that the a particularly big and gnarly "if" in that sentence is doing a lot of work.
Realistically, net zero would require lifestyle changes. Less individualism, more collectivisation of resources for more efficient use. Imagine the galaxy brain meme with cars/fuel efficient cars/electric cars and then finally "taking the damn bus instead" as galaxy brain.
posted by Dysk at 7:36 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
I don't disagree, but it should be noted that the a particularly big and gnarly "if" in that sentence is doing a lot of work.
Realistically, net zero would require lifestyle changes. Less individualism, more collectivisation of resources for more efficient use. Imagine the galaxy brain meme with cars/fuel efficient cars/electric cars and then finally "taking the damn bus instead" as galaxy brain.
posted by Dysk at 7:36 PM on March 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Educating Girls is More Effective in the Climate Emergency than many Green Technologies
posted by aniola at 7:39 PM on March 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
posted by aniola at 7:39 PM on March 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
I thought we had already learned that the biggest polluters are not individuals but corporations. We can't "take the bus" our way to a solution. We have to push for bigger change.
posted by emjaybee at 7:57 PM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 7:57 PM on March 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
Easy peasy,
stop all trucks, all cars,
* Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
* Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced
* G.M. Will Sell Only Zero-Emission Vehicles by 2035
* Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030
all electricity (except for solar/wind),
* Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA
* Lloyd's market to quit fossil fuel insurance by 2030
all industry, all farms that use non-manual tractors and woo trucks, all stores,
* Germany hits 64% carbon free electricity in 2020 (renewables + nuclear)
* Building demand for net zero steel
all hospitals (them pesky diesel backup generators) even mortuaries that cremate... any idea how much gas those burn?
* World's largest energy storage system proposed in Morro Bay (Li-Ion, "To get a sense of the size of this project, it would hold enough energy to power approximately 450,000 homes,")
There are no good solutions. No practical solutions.
See above
Get a boat.
Get involved.
posted by gwint at 8:20 PM on March 7, 2021 [52 favorites]
stop all trucks, all cars,
* Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
* Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced
* G.M. Will Sell Only Zero-Emission Vehicles by 2035
* Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030
all electricity (except for solar/wind),
* Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA
* Lloyd's market to quit fossil fuel insurance by 2030
all industry, all farms that use non-manual tractors and woo trucks, all stores,
* Germany hits 64% carbon free electricity in 2020 (renewables + nuclear)
* Building demand for net zero steel
all hospitals (them pesky diesel backup generators) even mortuaries that cremate... any idea how much gas those burn?
* World's largest energy storage system proposed in Morro Bay (Li-Ion, "To get a sense of the size of this project, it would hold enough energy to power approximately 450,000 homes,")
There are no good solutions. No practical solutions.
See above
Get a boat.
Get involved.
posted by gwint at 8:20 PM on March 7, 2021 [52 favorites]
Describing greenhouse gas emission removal strategies as "affordable" does them a disservice, implicitly perpetuating the fossil fuel major propaganda talking point that the demands of the economy are intrinsically opposed to those of the environment.
Every greenhouse gas emission removal strategy deployed in the last fifty years, with the notable exception of nuclear electricity generation, has been downright profitable.
posted by flabdablet at 8:30 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
Every greenhouse gas emission removal strategy deployed in the last fifty years, with the notable exception of nuclear electricity generation, has been downright profitable.
posted by flabdablet at 8:30 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
via metafilter chat:
Oh shit! The economy!!
posted by aniola at 8:31 PM on March 7, 2021 [15 favorites]
Oh shit! The economy!!
posted by aniola at 8:31 PM on March 7, 2021 [15 favorites]
We can't "take the bus" our way to a solution. We have to push for bigger change.
We absolutely have to push for bigger change!
We also have to accept that sometimes bigger change will require that most of us, most of the time, "take the bus" (or walk or bike or whatever) because the status quo isn't sustainable.
I bike and walk not because I believe that my individual choice will make a significant difference, but because I'm confident that we can't continue to rely on everyone using 4000lb personal vehicles for transportation if we want to sustain a healthy planet. As long as driving cars is normal (and thus the automotive industry, the oil industry, etc.), we're never going to reach net zero.
I ALSO advocate for bigger change like safe and functional bike/pedestrian infrastructure, improved transit service, and land use planning that shortens commutes.
This often gets presented as a chicken-or-egg issue: "We have to start by all taking the bus" vs "We have to start by lobbying for better bus service" but that's a false dichotomy. We can do both, and benefit from it. Taking the bus makes us stronger, more credible advocates for transit. Advocating for transit gets us better, more useful bus service so we can make fewer car trips.
(I realize personal automobiles aren't the biggest emissions contributor, but you can repeat the above a few times substituting things like "buy fewer new things, make do & mend" or "turn down the heat and the a/c" or "eat seasonal local produce where possible" to address most of the major causes of emissions and the various personal-vs-bigger-change arguments that are frequently applied to them.)
posted by sibilatorix at 8:47 PM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
We absolutely have to push for bigger change!
We also have to accept that sometimes bigger change will require that most of us, most of the time, "take the bus" (or walk or bike or whatever) because the status quo isn't sustainable.
I bike and walk not because I believe that my individual choice will make a significant difference, but because I'm confident that we can't continue to rely on everyone using 4000lb personal vehicles for transportation if we want to sustain a healthy planet. As long as driving cars is normal (and thus the automotive industry, the oil industry, etc.), we're never going to reach net zero.
I ALSO advocate for bigger change like safe and functional bike/pedestrian infrastructure, improved transit service, and land use planning that shortens commutes.
This often gets presented as a chicken-or-egg issue: "We have to start by all taking the bus" vs "We have to start by lobbying for better bus service" but that's a false dichotomy. We can do both, and benefit from it. Taking the bus makes us stronger, more credible advocates for transit. Advocating for transit gets us better, more useful bus service so we can make fewer car trips.
(I realize personal automobiles aren't the biggest emissions contributor, but you can repeat the above a few times substituting things like "buy fewer new things, make do & mend" or "turn down the heat and the a/c" or "eat seasonal local produce where possible" to address most of the major causes of emissions and the various personal-vs-bigger-change arguments that are frequently applied to them.)
posted by sibilatorix at 8:47 PM on March 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
Is that a fossil fuel propaganda talking point? Isn’t the argument that capitalism is destroying the environment and must be replaced for sustainability’s sake another way to say the same thing?
posted by Selena777 at 8:52 PM on March 7, 2021
posted by Selena777 at 8:52 PM on March 7, 2021
I doubt that the current combination of unfettered capitalism and its near complete hold on the minds of the white labor aristocracy of the global North will permit this to happen. Socialist movements outside the global North might shake that up, however.
Socialist countries have contributed plenty to global warming. I see no evidence that socialism is automatically greener than capitalism.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:21 PM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
Socialist countries have contributed plenty to global warming. I see no evidence that socialism is automatically greener than capitalism.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:21 PM on March 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
Super wicked cynic back,
Is that a fossil fuel propaganda talking point?
Very likely and it's no reason not to push all the tech that will reduce fossil fuel use, I'm deeply thrilled by the rapidly reducing solar cost per watt curve and all the initiatives outlined above, and the Inside Climate Change article is an optimistic (if not clear in it's science) message, but even there if we hit zero now, today, it's already too hot. Not accelerating is better than steady "too hot" but even this optimistic message does not suggest how to bring the planet back to the nice steady state of the last few millenium.
Change in the environment is at this point inevitable, which means we need to accelerate technology that will let us make the best of the new environment. That means all the solar and wind but also getting outposts off the surface, hopefully to move all toxic processes off planet. And probably CRISPER. If wheat can be tweaked to grow better in different climates before gene tech, whole new plant species ar possible. Need more creative ecology, not just understanding the interrelationships but creating new and more wonderful interdependencies that work with new parameters.
But you're right we don't need a boat, we need a whole new world, no, we need whole new WORLDS.
posted by sammyo at 10:15 PM on March 7, 2021
Is that a fossil fuel propaganda talking point?
Very likely and it's no reason not to push all the tech that will reduce fossil fuel use, I'm deeply thrilled by the rapidly reducing solar cost per watt curve and all the initiatives outlined above, and the Inside Climate Change article is an optimistic (if not clear in it's science) message, but even there if we hit zero now, today, it's already too hot. Not accelerating is better than steady "too hot" but even this optimistic message does not suggest how to bring the planet back to the nice steady state of the last few millenium.
Change in the environment is at this point inevitable, which means we need to accelerate technology that will let us make the best of the new environment. That means all the solar and wind but also getting outposts off the surface, hopefully to move all toxic processes off planet. And probably CRISPER. If wheat can be tweaked to grow better in different climates before gene tech, whole new plant species ar possible. Need more creative ecology, not just understanding the interrelationships but creating new and more wonderful interdependencies that work with new parameters.
But you're right we don't need a boat, we need a whole new world, no, we need whole new WORLDS.
posted by sammyo at 10:15 PM on March 7, 2021
Nature is adaptable. No matter what you do to it it will simply change and take on new forms.
I'm tired of hearing this. Nature is adaptable on a very large timescale; our activities are on a much shorter one. Those species that have been wiped out are wiped out forever. The damage to the biosphere is permanent.
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:22 PM on March 7, 2021 [15 favorites]
I'm tired of hearing this. Nature is adaptable on a very large timescale; our activities are on a much shorter one. Those species that have been wiped out are wiped out forever. The damage to the biosphere is permanent.
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:22 PM on March 7, 2021 [15 favorites]
Exactly, nature is adaptable but it takes it's time. We need to use science and technology to give it a boost. There is no going back.
posted by sammyo at 10:48 PM on March 7, 2021
posted by sammyo at 10:48 PM on March 7, 2021
we need a whole new world, no, we need whole new WORLDS
To be fair, that's only true for those of us who live in cultures predicated on the apparent notion that we already have at least three, and even then only to the extent that we're too lazy and/or stupid and/or hidebound to work out how to maintain anything like present comfort levels while using only our fair share of resources.
Over the last forty years it's become plainly apparent to me that it's possible to have a completely satisfactory life inside a flagrantly wasteful Western culture without personally requiring anywhere near the resources typically consumed by my fellow citizens. The way it's done is to take joy in preferring to get productive use out of stuff that other people have already discarded over buying new things, treating the blandishments of the advertising industry in support of the Greatest New Thing as the pure cultural poison that they absolutely are.
Western cultures have been civilisation-scale detritivores for a couple hundred years now, literally feeding ourselves on the fossilized remnants of life that's millions of years old. It's well past time that we pulled that back far closer to personal scale and got comfortable with reprocessing our own leavings and discards for health and fun and profit.
The way we work at present - where poor choices of materials lead to horribly destructive effects as our material flow loops close (which they always must do, there not actually being an "away" to throw things to) is obviously not sustainable. But I can see no fundamental reason why it ought to be beyond the wit of humanity to reorganize our economies around interlocking and explicit, by design closed material flow loops driven by tapping into existing energy flows. A lot of this is already happening. Let's keep looking for opportunities to make it happen more.
The damage to the biosphere is permanent
Life finds a way.
Our disturbance to the biosphere is irrevocable, and our impoverishment of biodiversity is palpable and horribly distressing to witness, but it pays to remind ourselves that life on this planet was microbial for literally billions of years and that those little fuckers are damn near impossible to get rid of altogether.
It may well turn out that the only recognizable legacy of humanity will at some point be descendants of our gut flora. And that might not be much, but it's something.
I like to think of them sitting back and stroking their little microscopic beards and shaking their little microscopic heads and kvetching about how much fuss those crazy kids have been making since this newfangled fad for piling up on top of each other got started.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on March 7, 2021 [8 favorites]
To be fair, that's only true for those of us who live in cultures predicated on the apparent notion that we already have at least three, and even then only to the extent that we're too lazy and/or stupid and/or hidebound to work out how to maintain anything like present comfort levels while using only our fair share of resources.
Over the last forty years it's become plainly apparent to me that it's possible to have a completely satisfactory life inside a flagrantly wasteful Western culture without personally requiring anywhere near the resources typically consumed by my fellow citizens. The way it's done is to take joy in preferring to get productive use out of stuff that other people have already discarded over buying new things, treating the blandishments of the advertising industry in support of the Greatest New Thing as the pure cultural poison that they absolutely are.
Western cultures have been civilisation-scale detritivores for a couple hundred years now, literally feeding ourselves on the fossilized remnants of life that's millions of years old. It's well past time that we pulled that back far closer to personal scale and got comfortable with reprocessing our own leavings and discards for health and fun and profit.
The way we work at present - where poor choices of materials lead to horribly destructive effects as our material flow loops close (which they always must do, there not actually being an "away" to throw things to) is obviously not sustainable. But I can see no fundamental reason why it ought to be beyond the wit of humanity to reorganize our economies around interlocking and explicit, by design closed material flow loops driven by tapping into existing energy flows. A lot of this is already happening. Let's keep looking for opportunities to make it happen more.
The damage to the biosphere is permanent
Life finds a way.
Our disturbance to the biosphere is irrevocable, and our impoverishment of biodiversity is palpable and horribly distressing to witness, but it pays to remind ourselves that life on this planet was microbial for literally billions of years and that those little fuckers are damn near impossible to get rid of altogether.
It may well turn out that the only recognizable legacy of humanity will at some point be descendants of our gut flora. And that might not be much, but it's something.
I like to think of them sitting back and stroking their little microscopic beards and shaking their little microscopic heads and kvetching about how much fuss those crazy kids have been making since this newfangled fad for piling up on top of each other got started.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on March 7, 2021 [8 favorites]
Personally, hearing about life still existing on Earth even if humans screw things up badly is a way to move past the paralyzing fear of creating a sterile planet because we can't get to zero emissions instantly. It's a way to avoid complete despair.
But hearing that the theory that we have decades of baked in warming even if emissions went to zero may not be true... that things could stabilize in my kid's lifetimes? That gives me hope and more will to cut emissions personally and fight for national change.
P.S. Monarch is going to start delivery of their electric tractors in fall of 2021.
posted by Mister Cheese at 11:45 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
But hearing that the theory that we have decades of baked in warming even if emissions went to zero may not be true... that things could stabilize in my kid's lifetimes? That gives me hope and more will to cut emissions personally and fight for national change.
P.S. Monarch is going to start delivery of their electric tractors in fall of 2021.
posted by Mister Cheese at 11:45 PM on March 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
I thought we had already learned that the biggest polluters are not individuals but corporations. We can't "take the bus" our way to a solution. We have to push for bigger change.
Private vehicles contribute several times more emissions than all plans traffic, for example, but mefi is still all over cutting down on people's airline use. This is lower hanging fruit with a bigger impact.
posted by Dysk at 12:43 AM on March 8, 2021
Private vehicles contribute several times more emissions than all plans traffic, for example, but mefi is still all over cutting down on people's airline use. This is lower hanging fruit with a bigger impact.
posted by Dysk at 12:43 AM on March 8, 2021
Besides, you can blame who you want, but the fact is that if manufacturing widget x is environmentally unsustainable, stopping the use of widget x is going to be a lifestyle change, whether you do that by tackling the demand or supply side - the end result is still that people have to give up widget x.
So for me it's not so much about individual decisions, it's about society scale decisions to do things lige make us all take the bus by banning cars, not a bunch of individuals making the decision to not take the car today.
posted by Dysk at 12:49 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
So for me it's not so much about individual decisions, it's about society scale decisions to do things lige make us all take the bus by banning cars, not a bunch of individuals making the decision to not take the car today.
posted by Dysk at 12:49 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've been coming to the conclusion that I'd better vote Green this coming election (I'm not in the US, my vote for smaller parties count for something). My reasoning is something along the lines of "radical change is needed" and "established parties have different levels of commitment to environmental causes, but none of them will actually do anything remotely radical", so I'm thinking I'll have to do my part to get more Green representation in to move the window to get anything done. Even though I have all kinds of nuanced positions otherwise. I guess that makes me a single-issue voter now?
posted by Harald74 at 1:27 AM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Harald74 at 1:27 AM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Even if we hold some line on warming, I'm curious to know how methane ices figure into their numbers.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, climatologist Michael Mann (of "hockey stick graph" fame) said about the methane ice idea:
Many of the prominent doomist narratives – [Jonathan] Franzen, David Wallace-Wells, the Deep Adaptation movement – can be traced back to a false notion that an Arctic methane bomb will cause runaway warming and extinguish all life on earth within 10 years. This is completely wrong. There is no science to support that.So at least some climatologists seem to think there's nothing there to figure into their numbers.
posted by biogeo at 1:38 AM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
people have to give up widget x
The thing about green tech is that it's almost always the case that sustainable widget Y works better and costs less once given half a chance to get a foot in the door of the marketplace.
We need change, but we don't necessarily need sacrifice unless we're determined to cling Trump-like to our own presently insane level of wastefulness as worth preserving for its own sake.
The idea that an environmentalist is somebody who requires the whole world to wear a hair shirt and shiver in the dark is just another fossil fuel industry propaganda talking point.
posted by flabdablet at 1:44 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
The thing about green tech is that it's almost always the case that sustainable widget Y works better and costs less once given half a chance to get a foot in the door of the marketplace.
We need change, but we don't necessarily need sacrifice unless we're determined to cling Trump-like to our own presently insane level of wastefulness as worth preserving for its own sake.
The idea that an environmentalist is somebody who requires the whole world to wear a hair shirt and shiver in the dark is just another fossil fuel industry propaganda talking point.
posted by flabdablet at 1:44 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
Easy peasy, stop all trucks, all cars, all electricity (except for solar/wind), all industry, all farms that use non-manual tractors and woo trucks, all stores, all hospitals (them pesky diesel backup generators) even mortuaries that cremate... any idea how much gas those burn? There are no good solutions. No practical solutions. Get a boat.
We'll always have Logan's Run.
posted by fairmettle at 2:14 AM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
We'll always have Logan's Run.
posted by fairmettle at 2:14 AM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
The thing about green tech is that it's almost always the case that sustainable widget Y works better and costs less once given half a chance to get a foot in the door of the marketplace.
What is "green tech"?
In my mind the biggest "widget" whose entire economic model is predicated upon forcing people to buy a new one every couple of years is the so-called smartphone. The resources that go into manufacturing these things is obviously nothing compared to that of, say, a car but my daily driver is 30 years old. Does anyone imagine that a current iPhone will still be in service in 30 years?
Also I wonder how much embedded energy in the manufacture of things like HVAC systems is factored into its reputed energy efficiency. My house has a Lennox furnace from the 1970s and it continues to chug along. I've been told that I'd save money if I replaced it with a new unit. Sure, but in the 27 years my mother has lived in her condo she has replaced her HVAC system three times. The current one, which was the most state-of-the-art unit with a "smart" thermostat mandated by her city, has gone kaput two or three times in as many years, always in the dead of winter. Each time is due to a failed component on a PCB and the entire board is replaced.
Sometimes I think simple is best. Make it simple, make it reliable and endlessly rebuildable and just do with less overall.
posted by drstrangelove at 3:30 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
What is "green tech"?
In my mind the biggest "widget" whose entire economic model is predicated upon forcing people to buy a new one every couple of years is the so-called smartphone. The resources that go into manufacturing these things is obviously nothing compared to that of, say, a car but my daily driver is 30 years old. Does anyone imagine that a current iPhone will still be in service in 30 years?
Also I wonder how much embedded energy in the manufacture of things like HVAC systems is factored into its reputed energy efficiency. My house has a Lennox furnace from the 1970s and it continues to chug along. I've been told that I'd save money if I replaced it with a new unit. Sure, but in the 27 years my mother has lived in her condo she has replaced her HVAC system three times. The current one, which was the most state-of-the-art unit with a "smart" thermostat mandated by her city, has gone kaput two or three times in as many years, always in the dead of winter. Each time is due to a failed component on a PCB and the entire board is replaced.
Sometimes I think simple is best. Make it simple, make it reliable and endlessly rebuildable and just do with less overall.
posted by drstrangelove at 3:30 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
The thing about green tech is that it's almost always the case that sustainable widget Y works better and costs less once given half a chance to get a foot in the door of the marketplace.
It depends on the widget on question, and on whether it is the widget itself that is the issue, or the consumption pattern associated with it (eg drstrangelove's smartphone example illustrates this very starkly).
I'm not asking anyone to wear a hair shirt (though a lot of environmentalists do advocate for things like flying less, whether through individual behavioural change or broader policy solutions) but noting that some of our consumption patterns are inherently unsustainable, and that one way or another, getting to net zero will involve some degree of lifestyle change. You can quibble about the specific pithy example I used to illustrate it (collectivised transport) but I don't think there's much issue to take with the broader thesis.
posted by Dysk at 3:45 AM on March 8, 2021
It depends on the widget on question, and on whether it is the widget itself that is the issue, or the consumption pattern associated with it (eg drstrangelove's smartphone example illustrates this very starkly).
I'm not asking anyone to wear a hair shirt (though a lot of environmentalists do advocate for things like flying less, whether through individual behavioural change or broader policy solutions) but noting that some of our consumption patterns are inherently unsustainable, and that one way or another, getting to net zero will involve some degree of lifestyle change. You can quibble about the specific pithy example I used to illustrate it (collectivised transport) but I don't think there's much issue to take with the broader thesis.
posted by Dysk at 3:45 AM on March 8, 2021
Lifestyle changes aren't really necessary, but they do in some cases make the problem more tractable and can make a difference with other forms of environmental damage besides carbon emissions. What is necessary to reach net zero is to stop digging up fossil carbon and burning it. That's all. We have the means and it is now cheaper, so it will happen regardless of what anyone thinks about it.
The main remaining question is whether the transition will happen quickly enough to avoid displacing a billion people. Probably not, in my view, at least not without some significant breakthrough in carbon capture technology that produces an economically useful output product, similar to how many coal fired power plants sell gypsum from their scrubbers. We don't need net negative (yet) to keep human society going, but we do need it to avoid some rather serious consequences for a large fraction of the human population.
posted by wierdo at 4:27 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
The main remaining question is whether the transition will happen quickly enough to avoid displacing a billion people. Probably not, in my view, at least not without some significant breakthrough in carbon capture technology that produces an economically useful output product, similar to how many coal fired power plants sell gypsum from their scrubbers. We don't need net negative (yet) to keep human society going, but we do need it to avoid some rather serious consequences for a large fraction of the human population.
posted by wierdo at 4:27 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
If this turns out to be true it is excellent news, and as Mister Cheese says it is a great motivator to rally for radical change. And thanks MF, this is a great discussion to read.
posted by Meatbomb at 4:41 AM on March 8, 2021
posted by Meatbomb at 4:41 AM on March 8, 2021
getting to net zero will involve some degree of lifestyle change
No question in my mind but that this is true.
Huge question in my mind about whether or not the altered lifestyle resulting from that change will be worse. The tacit assumption behind all the fossil fuel industry propaganda is that it must be worse. But personally I would far rather live with widgets that are are both durable and repairable by design; it's just so much less annoying.
Not sure I know of any extant touch screen fondleslab that actually counts as "green tech" though it has to be said that the folks at Fairphone are giving it the old college try. Looking forward to seeing what they can do once they start shipping enough volume to make them sustainable; once they offer one that works in Australia it will certainly be what I get to replace the bottom-end Chinese disposable I currently have after it eventually breaks beyond my ability to salvage.
All that said, phones are a bit of a distraction from the main green tech point. Green tech is not so much about fascinating toys like ultraminiature pocket computers as about ordinary boring infrastructure stuff, things like house insulation and high R-value windows and solar PV panels and heat pumps and wind turbines and batteries. It's about smelting steel with hydrogen instead of coke and making concrete whose curing chemistry sucks up almost as much carbon dioxide as its manufacture releases and using engineered plantation-sourced wood products to replace concrete altogether and turning marsh gas into hydrogen and graphite. There's a huge amount of this stuff going on all over the place and its pace is only getting faster.
posted by flabdablet at 4:51 AM on March 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
No question in my mind but that this is true.
Huge question in my mind about whether or not the altered lifestyle resulting from that change will be worse. The tacit assumption behind all the fossil fuel industry propaganda is that it must be worse. But personally I would far rather live with widgets that are are both durable and repairable by design; it's just so much less annoying.
Not sure I know of any extant touch screen fondleslab that actually counts as "green tech" though it has to be said that the folks at Fairphone are giving it the old college try. Looking forward to seeing what they can do once they start shipping enough volume to make them sustainable; once they offer one that works in Australia it will certainly be what I get to replace the bottom-end Chinese disposable I currently have after it eventually breaks beyond my ability to salvage.
All that said, phones are a bit of a distraction from the main green tech point. Green tech is not so much about fascinating toys like ultraminiature pocket computers as about ordinary boring infrastructure stuff, things like house insulation and high R-value windows and solar PV panels and heat pumps and wind turbines and batteries. It's about smelting steel with hydrogen instead of coke and making concrete whose curing chemistry sucks up almost as much carbon dioxide as its manufacture releases and using engineered plantation-sourced wood products to replace concrete altogether and turning marsh gas into hydrogen and graphite. There's a huge amount of this stuff going on all over the place and its pace is only getting faster.
posted by flabdablet at 4:51 AM on March 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
Sometimes I think simple is best.
In most cases, if it uses fossil fuels, the answer is no.
If you want to count the CO2 emissions used in the manufacture of new, more efficient appliances, then you would also need to count the CO2 emissions to create the fossil fuels as well, not just what gets emitted from the operation of the appliance.
Normally, these efficiency calculations, say, for a heat pump versus gas heater, would compare the CO2 emitted for the kwh of electricity used by the heat pump versus the CO2 emitted by burning gas.
But that doesn't count ALL the energy and emissions spent in extracting the gas from deep sea wells - a hugely expensive operation, involving construction of new deep sea wells as old ones go dry, maintaining the ships, staffing the wells, catering, healthcare... shipping the gas to shore, running the refinery, all very costly in terms of energy, burning lots of fossil fuels in the process.
Anyway if you were interested in the math... you'd look at manufacturing CO2e intensity... so about 500kg of CO2e per $1000 in manufacturing costs, you can apply that flat factor to most products as an estimate.
The Prelude gas processing facility that Shell built can produce 3.6 million tonnes of LNG per year, but its operating emissions alone are 2.3 million tonnes of CO2e per year. That's just the processing, not the mining, or transport, yet...
Ordinarily, burning 1kg of natural gas liberates about 2.3 kg of CO2... you can add another 0.8 kg from the processing step alone.
As the "easy" fossil fuels get used up, we have to extract from more and more difficult sources, and we end up in a paradoxical situation where in order to produce an extra 100 barrels of oil, we need to spend 50 barrels of oil to get at it, and this ratio gets worse and worse as the easier wells get used up. Look at hard complex and expensive those deep sea mining operation are.
posted by xdvesper at 5:04 AM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
In most cases, if it uses fossil fuels, the answer is no.
If you want to count the CO2 emissions used in the manufacture of new, more efficient appliances, then you would also need to count the CO2 emissions to create the fossil fuels as well, not just what gets emitted from the operation of the appliance.
Normally, these efficiency calculations, say, for a heat pump versus gas heater, would compare the CO2 emitted for the kwh of electricity used by the heat pump versus the CO2 emitted by burning gas.
But that doesn't count ALL the energy and emissions spent in extracting the gas from deep sea wells - a hugely expensive operation, involving construction of new deep sea wells as old ones go dry, maintaining the ships, staffing the wells, catering, healthcare... shipping the gas to shore, running the refinery, all very costly in terms of energy, burning lots of fossil fuels in the process.
Anyway if you were interested in the math... you'd look at manufacturing CO2e intensity... so about 500kg of CO2e per $1000 in manufacturing costs, you can apply that flat factor to most products as an estimate.
The Prelude gas processing facility that Shell built can produce 3.6 million tonnes of LNG per year, but its operating emissions alone are 2.3 million tonnes of CO2e per year. That's just the processing, not the mining, or transport, yet...
Ordinarily, burning 1kg of natural gas liberates about 2.3 kg of CO2... you can add another 0.8 kg from the processing step alone.
As the "easy" fossil fuels get used up, we have to extract from more and more difficult sources, and we end up in a paradoxical situation where in order to produce an extra 100 barrels of oil, we need to spend 50 barrels of oil to get at it, and this ratio gets worse and worse as the easier wells get used up. Look at hard complex and expensive those deep sea mining operation are.
posted by xdvesper at 5:04 AM on March 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
That whole thing is all about energy return on energy invested, EROEI. You know, the thing that the fossil fuel majors and their useful idiots have been falsely claiming for twenty years is negative for solar PV panels.
That well financed liars routinely engage in projection should not really be surprising, but it is surprising just how many people swallow the line.
posted by flabdablet at 5:41 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
That well financed liars routinely engage in projection should not really be surprising, but it is surprising just how many people swallow the line.
posted by flabdablet at 5:41 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I should have probably mentioned that I keep my heat set at 59. Partly to save energy (and money), partly to spare that old unit as much as I can and partly due to hating how dry it makes everything.
I'm not opposed to more efficient systems using modern technology but it just leads to an ever decreasing "design life." Undoubtedly this is baked into the system, of course. Capitalism invented planned obsolescence, after all. But it doesn't have to be this way. There is nothing keeping them from building a unit designed for long-term serviceability. Parts could be kept in production longer and PCBs could be design with fewer proprietary ICs so off-the-shelf electronic parts could be swapped when they fail. (Through-hole PCBs would be even better for ease of repairability, but that ship has sailed.)
posted by drstrangelove at 5:44 AM on March 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm not opposed to more efficient systems using modern technology but it just leads to an ever decreasing "design life." Undoubtedly this is baked into the system, of course. Capitalism invented planned obsolescence, after all. But it doesn't have to be this way. There is nothing keeping them from building a unit designed for long-term serviceability. Parts could be kept in production longer and PCBs could be design with fewer proprietary ICs so off-the-shelf electronic parts could be swapped when they fail. (Through-hole PCBs would be even better for ease of repairability, but that ship has sailed.)
posted by drstrangelove at 5:44 AM on March 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
EROEI on solar panels is actually pretty decent. It takes around 2 years to break even but let's compare that to a nuclear reactor which takes massive amounts of energy to construct not to mention many years.
posted by drstrangelove at 5:48 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by drstrangelove at 5:48 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Thanks for this little bright spot of a post.
One thing that gives me hope about lifestyle change is the response of societies around the world to the pandemic. I know reporting on this has tended to be negative, but at least to my eyes, I've been impressed how people, en masse, have been carrying radically disruptive changes to their lifestyles for, to be a bit glib, the greater good.
And these disruptions have been deeply painful, as they've undermined the foundations of our social networks, and we are social creatures. In contrast, many of the disruptions demanded by a more sustainable lifestyle boil down to reigning in excessive consumption in wealthy countries. And I think many people feel that, in some sense, spiritually perhaps, this would in fact be a good thing. Travel more carefully, eat less meat, reduce consumerism, think and act locally. Those are just good things, right?
I think the reason we haven't undertaken these things en masse isn't apathy or greed, but simply because we still lack a clarity of vision and purpose. The pandemic required an immediate response with effective action, and we mostly got it. Climate change is more nebulous, and saying that "we could fix it if everyone stopped driving and eating meat" is facile. But as the science and economics of climate change comes better into focus (with research highlighted in this thread), and realistic actions begin to align with effective mitigation, I do believe we will rise to the challenge. I think we already are. I simply hope it is soon enough.
posted by Alex404 at 6:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
One thing that gives me hope about lifestyle change is the response of societies around the world to the pandemic. I know reporting on this has tended to be negative, but at least to my eyes, I've been impressed how people, en masse, have been carrying radically disruptive changes to their lifestyles for, to be a bit glib, the greater good.
And these disruptions have been deeply painful, as they've undermined the foundations of our social networks, and we are social creatures. In contrast, many of the disruptions demanded by a more sustainable lifestyle boil down to reigning in excessive consumption in wealthy countries. And I think many people feel that, in some sense, spiritually perhaps, this would in fact be a good thing. Travel more carefully, eat less meat, reduce consumerism, think and act locally. Those are just good things, right?
I think the reason we haven't undertaken these things en masse isn't apathy or greed, but simply because we still lack a clarity of vision and purpose. The pandemic required an immediate response with effective action, and we mostly got it. Climate change is more nebulous, and saying that "we could fix it if everyone stopped driving and eating meat" is facile. But as the science and economics of climate change comes better into focus (with research highlighted in this thread), and realistic actions begin to align with effective mitigation, I do believe we will rise to the challenge. I think we already are. I simply hope it is soon enough.
posted by Alex404 at 6:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
Addendum: Another thing that the pandemic has brought into sharp relief is that meaningful lifestyle changes for individuals have to be backed up with a coordinated social/national response. The problem with arguing about particular aspects of lifestyle is that they invariably target particular groups, which turns people against each other. I think there's a... phase transition though, where once everyone is participating and carrying at least some burden, the project becomes self-sustaining. People are monitoring for bad actors, and broad social reorganization can occur.
posted by Alex404 at 6:21 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Alex404 at 6:21 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
I am curious about the demand for direct air capture of carbon. If we can pause climate change by going net zero, how much incentive is there to go further and suck CO2 out of the sky?
posted by doctornemo at 6:43 AM on March 8, 2021
posted by doctornemo at 6:43 AM on March 8, 2021
This is a great read. I teach a class on sustainable (industrial) construction, and though it is difficult, the students are so good! Often they are more ambitious than we are. They are really serious about it and they find solutions. I'm not saying they are saving the world right now, but they are ambitiously acquiring a skillset that will help them save the world during their professional lives. And this academic year it became a mandatory course.
I don't think one should define our future living conditions as spartan, unless one defines wealth as something very specifically on the lines of what Trump defines as wealth, where one has sky-scrapers and mansions, big cars, a lot of air travel, a lot of stuff.
The designs my students suggest often provide a high quality of life. Beautiful spaces with very little energy use, throughout the life-cycles. This year, a group had a spa bath in their project, powered by solar and geothermal heat. Grey water can be reused. The house they designed was small, but spacious because of smart solutions, and it could be disassembled for reuse or moving. Not least, it cost about the same as a trailer home. This is possible. Some former students are already out there, working in teams on how to bring this knowledge to social housing.
The problem is the snail-like resistance to change on all levels within the established construction industry and infrastructure, including politicians and regulators. And I live in a progressive country.
posted by mumimor at 6:53 AM on March 8, 2021 [15 favorites]
I don't think one should define our future living conditions as spartan, unless one defines wealth as something very specifically on the lines of what Trump defines as wealth, where one has sky-scrapers and mansions, big cars, a lot of air travel, a lot of stuff.
The designs my students suggest often provide a high quality of life. Beautiful spaces with very little energy use, throughout the life-cycles. This year, a group had a spa bath in their project, powered by solar and geothermal heat. Grey water can be reused. The house they designed was small, but spacious because of smart solutions, and it could be disassembled for reuse or moving. Not least, it cost about the same as a trailer home. This is possible. Some former students are already out there, working in teams on how to bring this knowledge to social housing.
The problem is the snail-like resistance to change on all levels within the established construction industry and infrastructure, including politicians and regulators. And I live in a progressive country.
posted by mumimor at 6:53 AM on March 8, 2021 [15 favorites]
how much incentive is there to go further and suck CO2 out of the sky?
Not much.
As I mentioned above, inventing new ways to remove carbon from the global cycle is a distant third to working out how not to push new carbon into it and how to get by without destroying natural systems that are already pulling it out, because the splashy watery ocean surface is already sucking down carbon dioxide faster than anything we can ever build will ever do.
But even once we've got those the two main priorities happening to the extent that best remediation bang for buck can be had by building new carbon sinks, industrial machinery that captures atmospheric carbon dioxide directly is about the least useful thing to pursue, mainly because it's so diffuse. We'll remove far more carbon from circulation by capturing carbon dioxide right where it's being made (if we're still making it on anything like an industrial scale) before it gets diluted back into the atmosphere at large, and by capturing carbon at other points in the global cycle after life has pulled it out of the atmosphere and concentrated it first.
Methane is one of the big opportunities there. Quite a lot of life processes that would otherwise release methane back to atmosphere can be contained and have that methane harvested. For example, that's exactly what Hazer's commercial demonstration plant is being built to do at the Woodman Point sewage processing facility; the carbon from that methane will end up as graphite, a form stable enough to count as sequestered for all practical purposes.
Of course there's nothing wrong with giving life a helping hand at the concentration thing. Reforesting on a massive scale, both on land and in the ocean, will do nothing but good. And if we absolutely must still throw carbon dioxide into the air, it will do no damage if we got it from there in the first place.
posted by flabdablet at 7:42 AM on March 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
Not much.
As I mentioned above, inventing new ways to remove carbon from the global cycle is a distant third to working out how not to push new carbon into it and how to get by without destroying natural systems that are already pulling it out, because the splashy watery ocean surface is already sucking down carbon dioxide faster than anything we can ever build will ever do.
But even once we've got those the two main priorities happening to the extent that best remediation bang for buck can be had by building new carbon sinks, industrial machinery that captures atmospheric carbon dioxide directly is about the least useful thing to pursue, mainly because it's so diffuse. We'll remove far more carbon from circulation by capturing carbon dioxide right where it's being made (if we're still making it on anything like an industrial scale) before it gets diluted back into the atmosphere at large, and by capturing carbon at other points in the global cycle after life has pulled it out of the atmosphere and concentrated it first.
Methane is one of the big opportunities there. Quite a lot of life processes that would otherwise release methane back to atmosphere can be contained and have that methane harvested. For example, that's exactly what Hazer's commercial demonstration plant is being built to do at the Woodman Point sewage processing facility; the carbon from that methane will end up as graphite, a form stable enough to count as sequestered for all practical purposes.
Of course there's nothing wrong with giving life a helping hand at the concentration thing. Reforesting on a massive scale, both on land and in the ocean, will do nothing but good. And if we absolutely must still throw carbon dioxide into the air, it will do no damage if we got it from there in the first place.
posted by flabdablet at 7:42 AM on March 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
Reforesting on a massive scale, both on land and in the ocean, will do nothing but good. And if we absolutely must still throw carbon dioxide into the air, it will do no damage if we got it from there in the first place.
Don't forget grasslands. I live in the middle of what was once one of the biggest grasslands in the world and from what I've read it is highly-effective at sequestering carbon but in the soil so it's basically immune to fires. But not so much when it's plowed. I'd like to see this region turned back into native grasslands with the reintroduction of bison.
posted by drstrangelove at 7:51 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
Don't forget grasslands. I live in the middle of what was once one of the biggest grasslands in the world and from what I've read it is highly-effective at sequestering carbon but in the soil so it's basically immune to fires. But not so much when it's plowed. I'd like to see this region turned back into native grasslands with the reintroduction of bison.
posted by drstrangelove at 7:51 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by folklore724
Eponysterical? Or contra-eponysterical? That is the question.
posted by beagle at 7:53 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Eponysterical? Or contra-eponysterical? That is the question.
posted by beagle at 7:53 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Easy peasy, stop all trucks, all cars, all electricity (except for solar/wind), all industry, all farms that use non-manual tractors and woo trucks, all stores, all hospitals (them pesky diesel backup generators) even mortuaries that cremate... any idea how much gas those burn? There are no good solutions. No practical solutions. Get a boat.
This is not true and it is not helpful. It is my view that a substantial amount of the two types of climate change denialism is based on this idea and the cognitive dissonance caused by believing that solving the problem is impossible so why not eat, drink, and be merry?
(The two types are:
-Active, will get you nasty looks at North London / Downtown Manhattan dinners, stating that it simply isn't real.
-Passive, very common, this is acting as if there is no crisis without being so vulgar as to say so.)
If instead you tell people that for a few hundred dollars a year we can already get most of the way there which is true you will get a very different response.
Disagreements between energy modellers who work for governments, for electricity network operators, and for investors (yes, even the vampiry ones) are now about:
-How to get the last 20% done.
-How to structure incentives to most efficiently get to net zero.
-Whether deeply decarbonised systems are cheaper with nuclear, with CCS, or all battery.
--Secondary to that, whether build-out programmes of existing LWR designs should continue, on the assumption that the catastrophic cost over-runs have been figured out at the cost of EDF etc. or build smaller modular LWRs or pursue exotic designs like the IFR / LIFTR
-Whether hydrogen will be a niche energy carrier used only as chemical feedstock or whether it will also power shipping or even heating for older building stock.
-Whether we get to net-zero fast enough (it's the area under the curve that matters rather than the end date, so reducing faster but technically overshooting 2050 is better than staying high for longer and then nosediving to zero in the 2040s) [really more of a climate modelling thing but relevant as an input for assessing solutions]
-How to allocate benefits and costs within and between countries: on a net basis, most concepts for zero-emissions will generate surplus or cost a small amount (on a cash basis, obviously once you count the cost of local pollution and global warming it's not close) but there's allocational issues. We will save money on electricity and transport but probably be worse-off for domestic heating. How do you tackle that without causing fuel poverty?
I can discuss and have discussed those things for hours. They're all details.
We never have discussions about technical impossibility and discussions about financial impossibility are now rare.
The idea that this is either technically or financially impossible simply isn't credible anymore. The realistic worst case is that we get to about 95% reduction from 1990 levels and find that the cost of the last 5% is too high. Even it that did happen (and on current evidence it will not) we would at least have many, many decades more of adaptation time.
The most likely situation is that we do manage to do this and that it won't cost as much as currently imagined. It is very easy to come up with outrageously high figures for the cost but that discounts the fact that energy is already capital intensive and that ageing assets need to be replaced anyway. Once you look at the marginal rather than the absolute cost, the situation becomes much clearer.
I thought we had already learned that the biggest polluters are not individuals but corporations. We can't "take the bus" our way to a solution. We have to push for bigger change.
While it right to say that changes need to happen at the level of society, saying that this fictional legal creation, the corporation, did it is actually in the same category of personalising the problem as telling people to take the bus. Instead of saying that it's Larry's fault for driving a car, we say that a fictional dude called 'ExxonMobil' has done all these emissions. That son of a bitch, if we could get our hands on him we'd solve all our problems!
Of course contra Mitt Romney, corporations aren't people my friends. The only logical way to look at emissions is on a consumption basis. Corporations aren't people and consume nothing. That doesn't mean that they're not a handy locus for regulation, even if there aren't any 'ExxonMobil' emissions, we should still use the law to make sure that emissions relating to our collective consumption are reduced. Industry lobbyists actually want you to blame individual companies (not usually the ones they're specifically lobbying for, it must be said) because it distracts from substance. If ExxonMobil is bad, then we can solve the problem by specifically going after them... only to find that there's only a mirage left and actually all the emissions are now coming from completely different companies.
The real alternative which we know works for production-side emissions is to use our collective technology of legislation to force reductions of emissions through a mix of outright technology mandates both positive and negative and putting prices on emissions. The UK has reduced its emissions by 42% from the 1990 target. None of that was done by finding the worst company to go inside the straw goat of emissions guilt so that we could send all our guilt to heaven in a towering pyre of carbon neutral biomass smoke while we all sighed in relief. It was done through simple policy tools that we know work.
The next step will have to be an international system of carbon border adjustment. It's already true that European steel has half the carbon footprint of Chinese steel (and the carbon footprint of Icelandic aluminium is much lower than that of middle eastern) without a system of counting and adjusting that we cannot be surprised if these industries do not reduce their emissions further and we will lose popular buy-in if we end up purely exporting production with no climate benefit. If you want to know why the EU hasn't done this yet it's that American steel is on average even lower carbon so would have to receive an import "bonus" in a rational carbon border adjustment system.
Like I said, there's lots to think about for net zero but we already know what to do to get very close in an affordable way.
posted by atrazine at 7:59 AM on March 8, 2021 [32 favorites]
This is not true and it is not helpful. It is my view that a substantial amount of the two types of climate change denialism is based on this idea and the cognitive dissonance caused by believing that solving the problem is impossible so why not eat, drink, and be merry?
(The two types are:
-Active, will get you nasty looks at North London / Downtown Manhattan dinners, stating that it simply isn't real.
-Passive, very common, this is acting as if there is no crisis without being so vulgar as to say so.)
If instead you tell people that for a few hundred dollars a year we can already get most of the way there which is true you will get a very different response.
Disagreements between energy modellers who work for governments, for electricity network operators, and for investors (yes, even the vampiry ones) are now about:
-How to get the last 20% done.
-How to structure incentives to most efficiently get to net zero.
-Whether deeply decarbonised systems are cheaper with nuclear, with CCS, or all battery.
--Secondary to that, whether build-out programmes of existing LWR designs should continue, on the assumption that the catastrophic cost over-runs have been figured out at the cost of EDF etc. or build smaller modular LWRs or pursue exotic designs like the IFR / LIFTR
-Whether hydrogen will be a niche energy carrier used only as chemical feedstock or whether it will also power shipping or even heating for older building stock.
-Whether we get to net-zero fast enough (it's the area under the curve that matters rather than the end date, so reducing faster but technically overshooting 2050 is better than staying high for longer and then nosediving to zero in the 2040s) [really more of a climate modelling thing but relevant as an input for assessing solutions]
-How to allocate benefits and costs within and between countries: on a net basis, most concepts for zero-emissions will generate surplus or cost a small amount (on a cash basis, obviously once you count the cost of local pollution and global warming it's not close) but there's allocational issues. We will save money on electricity and transport but probably be worse-off for domestic heating. How do you tackle that without causing fuel poverty?
I can discuss and have discussed those things for hours. They're all details.
We never have discussions about technical impossibility and discussions about financial impossibility are now rare.
The idea that this is either technically or financially impossible simply isn't credible anymore. The realistic worst case is that we get to about 95% reduction from 1990 levels and find that the cost of the last 5% is too high. Even it that did happen (and on current evidence it will not) we would at least have many, many decades more of adaptation time.
The most likely situation is that we do manage to do this and that it won't cost as much as currently imagined. It is very easy to come up with outrageously high figures for the cost but that discounts the fact that energy is already capital intensive and that ageing assets need to be replaced anyway. Once you look at the marginal rather than the absolute cost, the situation becomes much clearer.
I thought we had already learned that the biggest polluters are not individuals but corporations. We can't "take the bus" our way to a solution. We have to push for bigger change.
While it right to say that changes need to happen at the level of society, saying that this fictional legal creation, the corporation, did it is actually in the same category of personalising the problem as telling people to take the bus. Instead of saying that it's Larry's fault for driving a car, we say that a fictional dude called 'ExxonMobil' has done all these emissions. That son of a bitch, if we could get our hands on him we'd solve all our problems!
Of course contra Mitt Romney, corporations aren't people my friends. The only logical way to look at emissions is on a consumption basis. Corporations aren't people and consume nothing. That doesn't mean that they're not a handy locus for regulation, even if there aren't any 'ExxonMobil' emissions, we should still use the law to make sure that emissions relating to our collective consumption are reduced. Industry lobbyists actually want you to blame individual companies (not usually the ones they're specifically lobbying for, it must be said) because it distracts from substance. If ExxonMobil is bad, then we can solve the problem by specifically going after them... only to find that there's only a mirage left and actually all the emissions are now coming from completely different companies.
The real alternative which we know works for production-side emissions is to use our collective technology of legislation to force reductions of emissions through a mix of outright technology mandates both positive and negative and putting prices on emissions. The UK has reduced its emissions by 42% from the 1990 target. None of that was done by finding the worst company to go inside the straw goat of emissions guilt so that we could send all our guilt to heaven in a towering pyre of carbon neutral biomass smoke while we all sighed in relief. It was done through simple policy tools that we know work.
The next step will have to be an international system of carbon border adjustment. It's already true that European steel has half the carbon footprint of Chinese steel (and the carbon footprint of Icelandic aluminium is much lower than that of middle eastern) without a system of counting and adjusting that we cannot be surprised if these industries do not reduce their emissions further and we will lose popular buy-in if we end up purely exporting production with no climate benefit. If you want to know why the EU hasn't done this yet it's that American steel is on average even lower carbon so would have to receive an import "bonus" in a rational carbon border adjustment system.
Like I said, there's lots to think about for net zero but we already know what to do to get very close in an affordable way.
posted by atrazine at 7:59 AM on March 8, 2021 [32 favorites]
Individuals should make changes, especially in the US, where we wildly overconsume fossil fuels. Reducing car and plane travel is a huge step. Keeping the smaller house cooler in winter, warmer in summer is a step. Insulating buildings, painting roofs white in AC-intensive areas, etc. Just buying less stuff. The US has a massive oversupply of consumer goods that cost fuel to make and distribute, and create a disposal problem.
But the other step that is critical is putting pressure on elected officials. This problem requires the government to solve it. Make it clear to every elected official that Climate Crisis is your priority and you will vote accordingly.
I can't tell if we're doomed, if we're not doomed, or something in between. But we should try. I think there's far too many articles and discussions about whether or not we're doomed, and not enough about how to effect the changes. GOPers are still trying to say Climate Crisis isn't real, ffs. We have to find ways to address the liars and move forward.
posted by theora55 at 8:03 AM on March 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
But the other step that is critical is putting pressure on elected officials. This problem requires the government to solve it. Make it clear to every elected official that Climate Crisis is your priority and you will vote accordingly.
I can't tell if we're doomed, if we're not doomed, or something in between. But we should try. I think there's far too many articles and discussions about whether or not we're doomed, and not enough about how to effect the changes. GOPers are still trying to say Climate Crisis isn't real, ffs. We have to find ways to address the liars and move forward.
posted by theora55 at 8:03 AM on March 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
teach a class on sustainable...Beautiful spaces with very little energy
I'm not suggesting as part of the curriculum, but how does the current theory reconcile these efforts to prevailing consumer sentiment? Or: how do you think we win without heavily regulating choice?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 8:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm not suggesting as part of the curriculum, but how does the current theory reconcile these efforts to prevailing consumer sentiment? Or: how do you think we win without heavily regulating choice?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 8:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I bike and walk not because I believe that my individual choice will make a significant difference, but because I'm confident that we can't continue to rely on everyone using 4000lb personal vehicles for transportation if we want to sustain a healthy planet. As long as driving cars is normal (and thus the automotive industry, the oil industry, etc.), we're never going to reach net zero.
We probably won't have to adapt that far.
Just putting it out there but the Tesla Model S kerb weight is north of 4500lbs and it gets 100 MPGe. Why? Because staying in motion is just overcoming rotational friction and air resistance. It's very little energy used. Most energy wasted in a gasoline engine is sent to the brake pads. Electric cars get the majority of that energy back.
Weight is kind of an irrelevant factor in physics if you're getting the majority of your acceleration energy back when you slow down.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:19 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
We probably won't have to adapt that far.
Just putting it out there but the Tesla Model S kerb weight is north of 4500lbs and it gets 100 MPGe. Why? Because staying in motion is just overcoming rotational friction and air resistance. It's very little energy used. Most energy wasted in a gasoline engine is sent to the brake pads. Electric cars get the majority of that energy back.
Weight is kind of an irrelevant factor in physics if you're getting the majority of your acceleration energy back when you slow down.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:19 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
EVs still use a ton of energy. Mass transit, walkable cities and bicycle-friendly infrastructure are going to be more energy efficient than just finding new ways to power our cars. There are a million other problems caused by car dependency, too.
posted by drstrangelove at 8:38 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by drstrangelove at 8:38 AM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
Weight is kind of an irrelevant factor in physics if you're getting the majority of your acceleration energy back when you slow down.
Maybe in spherical cow theory but not in practice. There really is a penalty for weight. If you compare the Tesla Model S to the Tesla Model 3, the Model S uses 20% more energy per mile. There's a real cost to carrying around 1,200 pounds of batteries that for 400 mile range you only use 1% of the time.
The Model S is the energy pig Hummer of electric cars.
posted by JackFlash at 8:51 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Maybe in spherical cow theory but not in practice. There really is a penalty for weight. If you compare the Tesla Model S to the Tesla Model 3, the Model S uses 20% more energy per mile. There's a real cost to carrying around 1,200 pounds of batteries that for 400 mile range you only use 1% of the time.
The Model S is the energy pig Hummer of electric cars.
posted by JackFlash at 8:51 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
if anyone knows of companies that are hiring software engineers or web developers and are dedicated to fighting climate change please drop the link thx i've been having a hard time finding them
posted by lazaruslong at 8:53 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by lazaruslong at 8:53 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
The Model S is the energy pig Hummer of electric cars.
And yet "the energy pig Hummer of electric cars" still only uses <300Wh/mile. Compared to a gasoline car they're not just beating them, they're not even playing the same ball game. Plus if I have an extravagant EV I can put in extra solar and offset the energy usage using solid state electric generation. I can't do that with a car.
Plus the psychological factors. I don't think energy shaming people into sacrificing creature comforts isn't going to get them to net zero any time soon. Letting them have cake and eat it too? Far better strategy.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:01 AM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
And yet "the energy pig Hummer of electric cars" still only uses <300Wh/mile. Compared to a gasoline car they're not just beating them, they're not even playing the same ball game. Plus if I have an extravagant EV I can put in extra solar and offset the energy usage using solid state electric generation. I can't do that with a car.
Plus the psychological factors. I don't think energy shaming people into sacrificing creature comforts isn't going to get them to net zero any time soon. Letting them have cake and eat it too? Far better strategy.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:01 AM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
I think shaming people who willingly put dollars into Musk's pocket is an even better strategy.
posted by sideshow at 9:05 AM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by sideshow at 9:05 AM on March 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
I'm not suggesting as part of the curriculum, but how does the current theory reconcile these efforts to prevailing consumer sentiment? Or: how do you think we win without heavily regulating choice?
Actually, marketing already is a tiny and controversial part of the course. I won't say I'm happy with it. But it does engage the students, they enjoy making the flashy renders.
TBH, most consumers have no idea what they are buying and they are fooled a lot of the time. It would only take a small tweak of the current marketing to convince people that they are getting something better and cheaper, with the advantage that it is true.
One example is indoor climate. Americans use a lot of their budget on aircondition / heating, much more than other countries. There isn't even a need for innovation, just best practice would be a huge improvement. Federal CO2 taxes could be one way to get there, and it might be necessary, but energy renovation incentives are another tool. Get cash for insulating your your house and installing a heat pump. Energy efficient cars is another easy way. I wish I could afford and electric car, and I'm sure my next car will be electric, but meantime the one I have drives 25 km/liter and I get a tax discount for driving an energy-efficient car.
posted by mumimor at 9:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Actually, marketing already is a tiny and controversial part of the course. I won't say I'm happy with it. But it does engage the students, they enjoy making the flashy renders.
TBH, most consumers have no idea what they are buying and they are fooled a lot of the time. It would only take a small tweak of the current marketing to convince people that they are getting something better and cheaper, with the advantage that it is true.
One example is indoor climate. Americans use a lot of their budget on aircondition / heating, much more than other countries. There isn't even a need for innovation, just best practice would be a huge improvement. Federal CO2 taxes could be one way to get there, and it might be necessary, but energy renovation incentives are another tool. Get cash for insulating your your house and installing a heat pump. Energy efficient cars is another easy way. I wish I could afford and electric car, and I'm sure my next car will be electric, but meantime the one I have drives 25 km/liter and I get a tax discount for driving an energy-efficient car.
posted by mumimor at 9:06 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Since we're talking about Teslas... again, these things are good examples of planned obsolescence. Will you still be able to keep a Model S going in 30 years? A large percentage of a car's total energy diet is in its manufacture and later scrapping. Better to keep them on the road as long as possible but already the owners of the earliest Model S are starting to find it harder and harder to keep them in operation.
posted by drstrangelove at 9:18 AM on March 8, 2021
posted by drstrangelove at 9:18 AM on March 8, 2021
Plus if I have an extravagant EV I can put in extra solar and offset the energy usage using solid state electric generation.
Wasting energy is wasting energy. This idea that you can "offset" wasted energy is a mental accounting fallacy. If someone were not wasting their solar energy on an "extravagant" car, then that solar energy would be back in the grid and used by someone else instead of fossil fuel electricity. Instead, the extravagant car has squandered clean energy causing an increase in dirty energy.
posted by JackFlash at 9:20 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Wasting energy is wasting energy. This idea that you can "offset" wasted energy is a mental accounting fallacy. If someone were not wasting their solar energy on an "extravagant" car, then that solar energy would be back in the grid and used by someone else instead of fossil fuel electricity. Instead, the extravagant car has squandered clean energy causing an increase in dirty energy.
posted by JackFlash at 9:20 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
It would help if we could figure out a way to stop Bitcoin. I wish it were as simple as outlawing it.
posted by ovvl at 9:57 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 9:57 AM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
A large percentage of a car's total energy dietcost is in its manufacture and later scrapping.
This is one of those myths that won't die, regrettably, and it's definitely one that was pushed by car manufacturers to smear hybrids, and then EVs, and also, amazingly electric bikes. It is, to all realistic measurements a counterproductive thing to worry about, and a cry to inertia. The desired outcome is that when it comes to replacing your vehicle, you've forgotten all about any anxieties you have about the impact of its energy use, as well as having a reduced desire to cut back on how much you use it, both things that could reduce how much you spend on your car.
posted by ambrosen at 10:15 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is one of those myths that won't die, regrettably, and it's definitely one that was pushed by car manufacturers to smear hybrids, and then EVs, and also, amazingly electric bikes. It is, to all realistic measurements a counterproductive thing to worry about, and a cry to inertia. The desired outcome is that when it comes to replacing your vehicle, you've forgotten all about any anxieties you have about the impact of its energy use, as well as having a reduced desire to cut back on how much you use it, both things that could reduce how much you spend on your car.
posted by ambrosen at 10:15 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think shaming people who willingly put dollars into Musk's pocket is an even better strategy.
No, it's not. This is classic broken-brained Twitter thinking. We have a really effective set of technologies for making the collective will our populations happen which we group together and call "the state".
Setting up a clown-shoes system of labour law regulation and then posting memes or whatever to shame people for buying products from people who abuse it (n.b. only a tiny subset of people likely to see it, most of whom likely agree with you) is the opposite of a strategy.
Remember how everyone was deleting Uber? Their shareholders sure don't. Meanwhile when their London operating license was suspended, suddenly a lot of things that weren't possible became possible.
A thousand wagged fingers and tuttings about how Uber and other gig-economy companies should treat their "contractors" as employees. All so much vapour compared to a single document where the UK Supreme Court decided that they were.
What are voluntary corporate PPAs and consumer choices to buy green energy compared to a state run CfD programme? One of these built a bunch of noble companies with 400 employees and liberal policy on wearing sandals to the office and one of them built a 50GW pipeline of offshore wind projects.
posted by atrazine at 10:26 AM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
No, it's not. This is classic broken-brained Twitter thinking. We have a really effective set of technologies for making the collective will our populations happen which we group together and call "the state".
Setting up a clown-shoes system of labour law regulation and then posting memes or whatever to shame people for buying products from people who abuse it (n.b. only a tiny subset of people likely to see it, most of whom likely agree with you) is the opposite of a strategy.
Remember how everyone was deleting Uber? Their shareholders sure don't. Meanwhile when their London operating license was suspended, suddenly a lot of things that weren't possible became possible.
A thousand wagged fingers and tuttings about how Uber and other gig-economy companies should treat their "contractors" as employees. All so much vapour compared to a single document where the UK Supreme Court decided that they were.
What are voluntary corporate PPAs and consumer choices to buy green energy compared to a state run CfD programme? One of these built a bunch of noble companies with 400 employees and liberal policy on wearing sandals to the office and one of them built a 50GW pipeline of offshore wind projects.
posted by atrazine at 10:26 AM on March 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
Also, bitcoin mining uses a reprehensible amount of electricity that is derived from fossil fuels or should be displacing electricity from fossil fuels. It's absolutely fucked up for that if no other reason.
posted by theora55 at 10:39 AM on March 8, 2021
posted by theora55 at 10:39 AM on March 8, 2021
There needs to be some internet law about how every climate thread eventually winds up with people arguing about Elon Musk and Bitcoin.
posted by gwint at 10:41 AM on March 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by gwint at 10:41 AM on March 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
I see no evidence that socialism is automatically greener than capitalism.
that's because your thinking is wrong. You have to start by deciding that capitalism is the cause of everything that's wrong with the world. It then follows that everything is better than capitalism. For instance, I may hate my neighbour's dog for barking when I'm out in the hammock. But then I ask myself, is that dog worse than capitalism? No. Is that dog maybe barking at capitalism in the form of what it imagines are mercenary raiders coming to murder the family and steal all their riches and belongings? Very likely.
posted by philip-random at 11:27 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
that's because your thinking is wrong. You have to start by deciding that capitalism is the cause of everything that's wrong with the world. It then follows that everything is better than capitalism. For instance, I may hate my neighbour's dog for barking when I'm out in the hammock. But then I ask myself, is that dog worse than capitalism? No. Is that dog maybe barking at capitalism in the form of what it imagines are mercenary raiders coming to murder the family and steal all their riches and belongings? Very likely.
posted by philip-random at 11:27 AM on March 8, 2021 [12 favorites]
Mod note: One post removed. Please avoid doomsday predictions.
posted by loup (staff) at 11:43 AM on March 8, 2021
posted by loup (staff) at 11:43 AM on March 8, 2021
that's because your thinking is wrong. You have to start by deciding that capitalism is the cause of everything that's wrong with the world. It then follows that everything is better than capitalism. For instance, I may hate my neighbour's dog for barking when I'm out in the hammock. But then I ask myself, is that dog worse than capitalism? No. Is that dog maybe barking at capitalism in the form of what it imagines are mercenary raiders coming to murder the family and steal all their riches and belongings? Very likely.
^ found the best comment in this thread.
posted by some loser at 11:47 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
^ found the best comment in this thread.
posted by some loser at 11:47 AM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
There needs to be some internet law about how every climate thread eventually winds up with people arguing about Elon Musk and Bitcoin.
I brought Bitcoin up. So Bitcoin and Musk are both very much tied into the current story about climate change. What's your point?
posted by ovvl at 11:55 AM on March 8, 2021
I brought Bitcoin up. So Bitcoin and Musk are both very much tied into the current story about climate change. What's your point?
posted by ovvl at 11:55 AM on March 8, 2021
I thought we had already learned that the biggest polluters are not individuals but corporations. We can't "take the bus" our way to a solution. We have to push for bigger change.
I don't really understand this reasoning. The economy is an ecosystem. Who are the corporations producing things for? Consumers. We can either stop buying en masse, or we can legislate restrictions on production that raise costs or prohibit it. For example: what if we passed a law that Coca-Cola was responsible, dollar-for-dollar or pound-for-pound for every piece of plastic that left its factories? Either a bottle of Coke would cost ten bucks (entirely made-up number) or they'd simply fold. Or, they'd innovate (yeah, sure.) But Coke isn't simply bottling that stuff and teleporting it into space. No industry exists without consumer demand. We are all responsible.
~~~
An interesting thing is happening in BC. We're building the Site-C hydroelectric dam. It's enormous, it'll obliterate farmland, valuable ecosystems and unceeded indigenous territories. There's widespread opposition to it, but also widespread support. The rest of the world considers our electrical generation infrastructure "green" because it's almost entirely hydro, but up close, these projects are incredibly destructive.
I oppose the project in the abstract but I have to remember some things: we favour electrification, but we don't want the rare-earth mines in our country; we favour solar power but we don't want the silicon mining and production to happen in our country; we like wind power but we (the people who can afford to care) don't want the turbines to obstruct our views... Yeah the real problem with hydro power is ultimately that you can't externalize it to China, DRC or Saudi Arabia. You have to live face-to-face with the consequences of your actions.
Imagine if, for every dollar you spend and every article you consume, a proportional amount of extraction and production had to happen in your neighbourhood. You can have solar panels on your roof and feel like you're helping but what if you have the silicon mine, the factory and the worker barracks and associated noise, traffic and pollution, on your block, too? You can have the electric car but what if you have to live on the lip of the cobalt mine? Somebody does, somewhere. Why not "here?"
~~~
A thousand wagged fingers and tuttings about how Uber and other gig-economy companies should treat their "contractors" as employees. All so much vapour compared to a single document where the UK Supreme Court decided that they were.
What makes you think these two things are unrelated? Maybe they're both consequences of the growth of an underlying consciousness of what Uber really is?
posted by klanawa at 11:59 AM on March 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
I don't really understand this reasoning. The economy is an ecosystem. Who are the corporations producing things for? Consumers. We can either stop buying en masse, or we can legislate restrictions on production that raise costs or prohibit it. For example: what if we passed a law that Coca-Cola was responsible, dollar-for-dollar or pound-for-pound for every piece of plastic that left its factories? Either a bottle of Coke would cost ten bucks (entirely made-up number) or they'd simply fold. Or, they'd innovate (yeah, sure.) But Coke isn't simply bottling that stuff and teleporting it into space. No industry exists without consumer demand. We are all responsible.
~~~
An interesting thing is happening in BC. We're building the Site-C hydroelectric dam. It's enormous, it'll obliterate farmland, valuable ecosystems and unceeded indigenous territories. There's widespread opposition to it, but also widespread support. The rest of the world considers our electrical generation infrastructure "green" because it's almost entirely hydro, but up close, these projects are incredibly destructive.
I oppose the project in the abstract but I have to remember some things: we favour electrification, but we don't want the rare-earth mines in our country; we favour solar power but we don't want the silicon mining and production to happen in our country; we like wind power but we (the people who can afford to care) don't want the turbines to obstruct our views... Yeah the real problem with hydro power is ultimately that you can't externalize it to China, DRC or Saudi Arabia. You have to live face-to-face with the consequences of your actions.
Imagine if, for every dollar you spend and every article you consume, a proportional amount of extraction and production had to happen in your neighbourhood. You can have solar panels on your roof and feel like you're helping but what if you have the silicon mine, the factory and the worker barracks and associated noise, traffic and pollution, on your block, too? You can have the electric car but what if you have to live on the lip of the cobalt mine? Somebody does, somewhere. Why not "here?"
~~~
A thousand wagged fingers and tuttings about how Uber and other gig-economy companies should treat their "contractors" as employees. All so much vapour compared to a single document where the UK Supreme Court decided that they were.
What makes you think these two things are unrelated? Maybe they're both consequences of the growth of an underlying consciousness of what Uber really is?
posted by klanawa at 11:59 AM on March 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
It would help if we could figure out a way to stop Bitcoin. I wish it were as simple as outlawing it.
Force the price of exhumed carbon fuels to reflect their true cost, with a tax that fully funds remediation and restitution for all those impacted by climate change. Target this as close to the source of the problem as possible, i.e., at extraction rather than combustion. (Do the same for the environmental and human rights impact of rare earth metal extraction and processing, used in manufacturing photovoltaic cells.) No half-measures here: the market price of any energy source must reflect its true total cost, but then subsidize energy costs for individuals to keep prices affordable up to levels necessary for basic needs (heating/cooling, basic appliances, reasonable internet use, etc), but for corporations (and, beyond a reasonable basic level of use, individuals) let prices that people actually pay reflect the true total cost. Coordinate this globally with a treaty allowing tariff-free trade between signatories who impose the remediation/restitution tax, but imposing a tariff on non-signatories to ensure that extractors in non-signatory countries cannot gain a competitive advantage. The tariff must apply not only to fuels but also energy-intensive manufactured products, and include the cost of regulation in the price to create an incentive for countries to join the treaty while also relieving treaty members of the cost of tariff enforcement.
None of the above directly targets Bitcoin mining, of course, since it effectively "launders" dirty energy usage under this system, and in theory Bitcoin miners in countries that both possess large fossil fuel reserves and do not sign the treaty would be unaffected. But as pretty much every other sector of the economy would be negatively impacted by not joining the treaty group (assuming enough large economies joined), such a country would have to be prepared to go all-in to keep energy prices low specifically for Bitcoin mining. Otherwise, Bitcoin miners would be forced to pay the true price of their energy use, and if they can do so and still be profitable, more power to them: if the internalization costs are set correctly, there will be enough resources available to ensure that the climate impact of their activity is appropriately remediated. Probably this will mean 100% of carbon emissions associated with the energy usage are sequestered and buried, which will probably make it impossible for usage of exhumed carbon to be profitable, which is a win-win.
Solutions are completely possible, the only barrier is the greed, fear and ignorance of people making political decisions, including voters in democratic countries.
posted by biogeo at 12:14 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
>> There needs to be some internet law about how every climate thread eventually winds up with people arguing about Elon Musk and Bitcoin.
> I brought Bitcoin up. So Bitcoin and Musk are both very much tied into the current story about climate change. What's your point?
Simply that those topics are vastly overrepresented in the online discussion of climate change, evidenced by the fact that they always seem to appear in these types of threads. But, I mean, I get it to a certain degree. A guy who wants to colonize mars is a more exciting topic of debate than, say, heat pumps and crypto is more fun to yell about than say cement. But deploying heat pumps and getting cement manufacturing to net zero are orders of magnitude more important to solving the climate crisis than the head of one car company and a energy wasting algorithm.
posted by gwint at 12:20 PM on March 8, 2021 [16 favorites]
> I brought Bitcoin up. So Bitcoin and Musk are both very much tied into the current story about climate change. What's your point?
Simply that those topics are vastly overrepresented in the online discussion of climate change, evidenced by the fact that they always seem to appear in these types of threads. But, I mean, I get it to a certain degree. A guy who wants to colonize mars is a more exciting topic of debate than, say, heat pumps and crypto is more fun to yell about than say cement. But deploying heat pumps and getting cement manufacturing to net zero are orders of magnitude more important to solving the climate crisis than the head of one car company and a energy wasting algorithm.
posted by gwint at 12:20 PM on March 8, 2021 [16 favorites]
The desired outcome is that when it comes to replacing your vehicle, you've forgotten all about any anxieties you have about the impact of its energy use, as well as having a reduced desire to cut back on how much you use it, both things that could reduce how much you spend on your car.
No, I drive a 30 year old Volvo and I continue to fix it myself as needed. When the time comes I want to convert it to electric but it will be with stuff I scrounge up.
I'm not sure what else has to be said here-- the energy required to manufacture a car is not insubstantial.
posted by drstrangelove at 12:22 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
No, I drive a 30 year old Volvo and I continue to fix it myself as needed. When the time comes I want to convert it to electric but it will be with stuff I scrounge up.
I'm not sure what else has to be said here-- the energy required to manufacture a car is not insubstantial.
posted by drstrangelove at 12:22 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
crypto is more fun to yell about than say cement
One has to be careful about the bathtubs-kill-more-people-than-guns fallacy. The utility of cement, including for "green" infrastructure is enormous and undisputed. Bitcoin is.. really just a way to monetize climate change without the inefficiencies inherent in extracting and burning oil.
posted by klanawa at 12:32 PM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
One has to be careful about the bathtubs-kill-more-people-than-guns fallacy. The utility of cement, including for "green" infrastructure is enormous and undisputed. Bitcoin is.. really just a way to monetize climate change without the inefficiencies inherent in extracting and burning oil.
posted by klanawa at 12:32 PM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Drive by cynic here again, actually I really appreciate atrazine's comments most totally thought provoking and will be bookmarked for some late night browsing.
Still the curves that I'm visualizing and can not draw here but the going up hot curve levels out when the CO2 curve hits the x axis (zero), now or in 2050, it's still too damn hot. And it really bugs me that some folk here interpret that to mean do nothing when what it really means is DO MORE MORE MORE MORE. It will not be enough but crazy not to do MORE SOONER and MORE faster and MORE smarter.
And it's really great that all the initiatives are taken seriously but then I read, oh and all the countries even China and wonder who reads about international political politics. Following threads, a real disturbing one for this topic and other, they're building ships at an incredible rate. One ship burns a cool zilllion car or bitcoin carbon units and using them (a lot are navy ships) sets back all good plans a few generations.
So sorry all the good news is wonderful, really it is and warms my soul but barely tic's the cynic scale.
posted by sammyo at 12:47 PM on March 8, 2021
Still the curves that I'm visualizing and can not draw here but the going up hot curve levels out when the CO2 curve hits the x axis (zero), now or in 2050, it's still too damn hot. And it really bugs me that some folk here interpret that to mean do nothing when what it really means is DO MORE MORE MORE MORE. It will not be enough but crazy not to do MORE SOONER and MORE faster and MORE smarter.
And it's really great that all the initiatives are taken seriously but then I read, oh and all the countries even China and wonder who reads about international political politics. Following threads, a real disturbing one for this topic and other, they're building ships at an incredible rate. One ship burns a cool zilllion car or bitcoin carbon units and using them (a lot are navy ships) sets back all good plans a few generations.
So sorry all the good news is wonderful, really it is and warms my soul but barely tic's the cynic scale.
posted by sammyo at 12:47 PM on March 8, 2021
if anyone knows of companies that are hiring software engineers or web developers and are dedicated to fighting climate change please drop the link thx i've been having a hard time finding them
I recommend visiting Drawdown and clicking on like a million links for ideas.
posted by aniola at 1:15 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
I recommend visiting Drawdown and clicking on like a million links for ideas.
posted by aniola at 1:15 PM on March 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Wasting energy is wasting energy. This idea that you can "offset" wasted energy is a mental accounting fallacy. If someone were not wasting their solar energy on an "extravagant" car, then that solar energy would be back in the grid and used by someone else instead of fossil fuel electricity. Instead, the extravagant car has squandered clean energy causing an increase in dirty energy.
A large percentage of a car's total energy diet is in its manufacture and later scrapping. Better to keep them on the road as long as possible but already the owners of the earliest Model S are starting to find it harder and harder to keep them in operation.
Everything we ever do is going to require some amount of energy. Life is literally a struggle against the inevitability of entropy. As the grid gets cleaner and cleaner the energy we have is going to become more abundant and we need to be able to do fun things with it.
With more abundant energy we'll also be able to frequently recycle resources into newer versions of products that are better without the question being "is it destroying our planet" as we start to close the loops of almost every production cycle on Earth. It's a long, painstaking process but a lot of industries are already partially closing those loops with mass recycling. CDW waste for instance is 90% recycled in The Netherlands.
You can't affect change by saying "no fun allowed" and "the future options suck anyway" respectively. Yes we're going to have to make a lot of batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. Yes a lot of energy is going to be required to convert everything up to electric. Both of these are manageable as we make each painstaking step towards independence from fossil fuels.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:13 PM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
A large percentage of a car's total energy diet is in its manufacture and later scrapping. Better to keep them on the road as long as possible but already the owners of the earliest Model S are starting to find it harder and harder to keep them in operation.
Everything we ever do is going to require some amount of energy. Life is literally a struggle against the inevitability of entropy. As the grid gets cleaner and cleaner the energy we have is going to become more abundant and we need to be able to do fun things with it.
With more abundant energy we'll also be able to frequently recycle resources into newer versions of products that are better without the question being "is it destroying our planet" as we start to close the loops of almost every production cycle on Earth. It's a long, painstaking process but a lot of industries are already partially closing those loops with mass recycling. CDW waste for instance is 90% recycled in The Netherlands.
You can't affect change by saying "no fun allowed" and "the future options suck anyway" respectively. Yes we're going to have to make a lot of batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. Yes a lot of energy is going to be required to convert everything up to electric. Both of these are manageable as we make each painstaking step towards independence from fossil fuels.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:13 PM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
With more abundant energy we'll also be able to frequently recycle
Oui oui oui
posted by sammyo at 2:43 PM on March 8, 2021
Oui oui oui
posted by sammyo at 2:43 PM on March 8, 2021
the problem is the snail-like resistance to change on all levels within the established construction industry and infrastructure, including politicians and regulators.
Construction regulations here in Melbourne are designed to reinforce low-density suburban housing, except for some grandfathered-in buildings and some strips recently marked out for higher density housing. The weird thing is that we know how to make lovely, desirable high-density apartments that last forever. E.g., the Haussman apartments for which Paris is famous. I'm sure we could do even better than that nowadays, but we have a fetish for suburbia. It's just astonishing how everything is tied together to prevent the construction of energy-efficient housing, often in subtle ways.
Here's the most problematic regulations as I understand them:
1) The maximum height for residential buildings is 9.5 meters, which is enough for a three-storey pitched-roof building ... unless you're building a multi-dwelling building (i.e., flats or apartments), in which case the height limit is one meter less. This effectively restricts you to either two stories, or three low-ceilinged stories with a flat roof. You know, for poor people.
2) Every dwelling needs at least one car space. If you have more than two private rooms - even two bedrooms plus a study - you need at least two. If you have ten or more dwellings on a site, you need extra spaces for guests. The size of the car spaces and access is all regulated and can easily require as much area as the footprint of the dwellings themselves. These regulations apply even in semi-rural areas with lots of on-street parking, and inner-suburban areas with lots of public transport.
3) There is a minimum amount of garden space. I don't actually have a problem with this in general, but I suspect it's more to reduce density than anything environmental or to aid comfort. E.g., a driveway can be "garden space".
4) The size of the block is regulated. It takes much longer to get a dwelling approved for a block smaller than 300 square meters; the municipality can consider a lot of extra factors; and the application gets opened up to public scrutiny and objections.
5) Setbacks at the front, back, and each side are regulated, with greater setbacks for higher buildings. A special form of blocky architecture has been designed to accommodate these regulations by, e.g., building low-roofed garages on the property boundary, with the upper floor sitting on an engineered beam about halfway across. You can't build, e.g., terraced houses, except as part of a multi-building development on a site that is subsequently subdivided.
6) Windows can't overlook "private space". This sounds good, but it reduces density significantly - an upper storey will need to be about ten meters from your neighbour's boundary, unless your windows are obscured. And this regulation gives the neighbour an opportunity to object, a process that can easily add six months to construction time.
7) Lots of vague regulations about "neighbourhood character", which mostly prevent constructing multiple dwellings to replace a single one.
And then there are other things like tiered charges for water that discriminates against large households or multiple dwellings (that share their meters: newer ones mostly don't) and municipal charges that are expressly designed to penalise the subdivision of blocks. Consequently, Melbourne is huge and sparsely-populated:- "Melbourne ranks as the 955th most densely populated city out of the 1,040 on the Demographia list, with approximately 1,500 people per square kilometre."
I understand that we don't want people building crappy high-density housing, but what we get instead is crappy low-density housing in huge developments that are a long way from shops and employment. I think a solution to all this would be to have a range of government-approved multi-dwelling designs that are attractive, tall, and spacious; designed with energy-efficiency in mind and built to last, with all the amenities that residents like. Let developers build them as of right (perhaps with a municipal right of appeal) as long as the building conforms to the approved specifications. You could still have the regular planning scheme for individual dwellings and non-conforming construction, but developers would leap at the chance to construct higher-density designs even with all the regulated concessions to apartment size and energy efficiency. Melbourne could finally stop growing; more people could afford large apartments in areas with public transport; artists could do those paintings of boulevards in the rain; everyone would benefit.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:59 PM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
Construction regulations here in Melbourne are designed to reinforce low-density suburban housing, except for some grandfathered-in buildings and some strips recently marked out for higher density housing. The weird thing is that we know how to make lovely, desirable high-density apartments that last forever. E.g., the Haussman apartments for which Paris is famous. I'm sure we could do even better than that nowadays, but we have a fetish for suburbia. It's just astonishing how everything is tied together to prevent the construction of energy-efficient housing, often in subtle ways.
Here's the most problematic regulations as I understand them:
1) The maximum height for residential buildings is 9.5 meters, which is enough for a three-storey pitched-roof building ... unless you're building a multi-dwelling building (i.e., flats or apartments), in which case the height limit is one meter less. This effectively restricts you to either two stories, or three low-ceilinged stories with a flat roof. You know, for poor people.
2) Every dwelling needs at least one car space. If you have more than two private rooms - even two bedrooms plus a study - you need at least two. If you have ten or more dwellings on a site, you need extra spaces for guests. The size of the car spaces and access is all regulated and can easily require as much area as the footprint of the dwellings themselves. These regulations apply even in semi-rural areas with lots of on-street parking, and inner-suburban areas with lots of public transport.
3) There is a minimum amount of garden space. I don't actually have a problem with this in general, but I suspect it's more to reduce density than anything environmental or to aid comfort. E.g., a driveway can be "garden space".
4) The size of the block is regulated. It takes much longer to get a dwelling approved for a block smaller than 300 square meters; the municipality can consider a lot of extra factors; and the application gets opened up to public scrutiny and objections.
5) Setbacks at the front, back, and each side are regulated, with greater setbacks for higher buildings. A special form of blocky architecture has been designed to accommodate these regulations by, e.g., building low-roofed garages on the property boundary, with the upper floor sitting on an engineered beam about halfway across. You can't build, e.g., terraced houses, except as part of a multi-building development on a site that is subsequently subdivided.
6) Windows can't overlook "private space". This sounds good, but it reduces density significantly - an upper storey will need to be about ten meters from your neighbour's boundary, unless your windows are obscured. And this regulation gives the neighbour an opportunity to object, a process that can easily add six months to construction time.
7) Lots of vague regulations about "neighbourhood character", which mostly prevent constructing multiple dwellings to replace a single one.
And then there are other things like tiered charges for water that discriminates against large households or multiple dwellings (that share their meters: newer ones mostly don't) and municipal charges that are expressly designed to penalise the subdivision of blocks. Consequently, Melbourne is huge and sparsely-populated:- "Melbourne ranks as the 955th most densely populated city out of the 1,040 on the Demographia list, with approximately 1,500 people per square kilometre."
I understand that we don't want people building crappy high-density housing, but what we get instead is crappy low-density housing in huge developments that are a long way from shops and employment. I think a solution to all this would be to have a range of government-approved multi-dwelling designs that are attractive, tall, and spacious; designed with energy-efficiency in mind and built to last, with all the amenities that residents like. Let developers build them as of right (perhaps with a municipal right of appeal) as long as the building conforms to the approved specifications. You could still have the regular planning scheme for individual dwellings and non-conforming construction, but developers would leap at the chance to construct higher-density designs even with all the regulated concessions to apartment size and energy efficiency. Melbourne could finally stop growing; more people could afford large apartments in areas with public transport; artists could do those paintings of boulevards in the rain; everyone would benefit.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:59 PM on March 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
ALL MUST HEED THE LAW OF GWINT (also known as gwint's law); THIS IS THE LAW OF GWINT: EVERY CLIMATE THREAD MUST WIND UP WITH PEOPLE ARGUING ABOUT ELON MUSK AND BITCOIN. THE GWINT HATH SPOKEN.
posted by ovvl at 6:14 PM on March 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 6:14 PM on March 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
Bitcoin miners would be forced to pay the true price of their energy use, and if they can do so and still be profitable, more power to them
The Bitcoin network has interlocking operations and incentives that keep a miner's reward in Bitcoin for mining a block quite close to the economic cost to the miner of doing so. Jacking up the price that Bitcoin miners pay for energy would automatically cut the amount of it they use without affecting their profitability in any way.
But they'd still be using unconscionable amounts of energy to achieve the task they perform (providing a decentralized medium of exchange and store of value) because there are newer protocols that perform the same task while requiring literally billionths of the energy per transaction and whose energy consumption does not depend on the market price of their tokens.
The fastest way that I can think of to rein in the energy consumed by the Bitcoin network is to provoke a Bitcoin price crash by aggressively and loudly spreading the understanding that it's Bitcoin in particular, not blockchain tech in general, that burns completely unconscionable and unnecessary amounts of energy for what it does. Don't waste your time trying to convince folks that cryptocurrencies are funny money compared to the government issued stuff; that's a huge and distracting rabbit hole that just distracts from the main issue at hand. Instead, use whatever technical and/or financial credibility you have in the circles in which you move to encourage everybody you know who currently holds or uses Bitcoin to get out of Bitcoin while the getting is good and switch to one of the newer, non proof-of-work cryptocurrency protocols instead.
If the 6.25BTC a miner currently gains from mining a new block were worth closer to $3 than $300,000, this would automatically cut the energy currently consumed by the Bitcoin network by five orders of magnitude.
If Bitcoin has a future, so do all the cryptocurrencies that cost less and work better.
posted by flabdablet at 6:55 PM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
The Bitcoin network has interlocking operations and incentives that keep a miner's reward in Bitcoin for mining a block quite close to the economic cost to the miner of doing so. Jacking up the price that Bitcoin miners pay for energy would automatically cut the amount of it they use without affecting their profitability in any way.
But they'd still be using unconscionable amounts of energy to achieve the task they perform (providing a decentralized medium of exchange and store of value) because there are newer protocols that perform the same task while requiring literally billionths of the energy per transaction and whose energy consumption does not depend on the market price of their tokens.
The fastest way that I can think of to rein in the energy consumed by the Bitcoin network is to provoke a Bitcoin price crash by aggressively and loudly spreading the understanding that it's Bitcoin in particular, not blockchain tech in general, that burns completely unconscionable and unnecessary amounts of energy for what it does. Don't waste your time trying to convince folks that cryptocurrencies are funny money compared to the government issued stuff; that's a huge and distracting rabbit hole that just distracts from the main issue at hand. Instead, use whatever technical and/or financial credibility you have in the circles in which you move to encourage everybody you know who currently holds or uses Bitcoin to get out of Bitcoin while the getting is good and switch to one of the newer, non proof-of-work cryptocurrency protocols instead.
If the 6.25BTC a miner currently gains from mining a new block were worth closer to $3 than $300,000, this would automatically cut the energy currently consumed by the Bitcoin network by five orders of magnitude.
If Bitcoin has a future, so do all the cryptocurrencies that cost less and work better.
posted by flabdablet at 6:55 PM on March 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Thanks so much for posting this. I had not noticed this change in thinking, and since about 80% of the reports in climate change science are "worse than we thought" (even in the linked article) so choosing to highlight something positive and important is great.
posted by mark k at 7:44 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by mark k at 7:44 PM on March 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
wierdo: Lifestyle changes aren't really necessary, but they do in some cases make the problem more tractable and can make a difference with other forms of environmental damage besides carbon emissions. What is necessary to reach net zero is to stop digging up fossil carbon and burning it. That's all.
Lifestyle changes can make a hell of a difference. Most of us living in industrialised parts of the word can easily halve our clothes shopping and not miss anything, while still making a very real difference. The fashion industry is one of the most wasteful and polluting industries on earth and it's also treating its employees inhumanely.
I don't see why anyone would say that lifestyle changes aren't necessary. They are if we want a chance at keeping this world inhabitable for people and animals. What is so horrible about lifestyle changes anyway?
I have stopped using shower gel and shampoo, and started using Aleppo soap instead. My skin feels better, not worse. I'm saving money and not buying plastic bottles mostly filled with water. Yay, lifestyle change!
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:36 AM on March 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Lifestyle changes can make a hell of a difference. Most of us living in industrialised parts of the word can easily halve our clothes shopping and not miss anything, while still making a very real difference. The fashion industry is one of the most wasteful and polluting industries on earth and it's also treating its employees inhumanely.
I don't see why anyone would say that lifestyle changes aren't necessary. They are if we want a chance at keeping this world inhabitable for people and animals. What is so horrible about lifestyle changes anyway?
I have stopped using shower gel and shampoo, and started using Aleppo soap instead. My skin feels better, not worse. I'm saving money and not buying plastic bottles mostly filled with water. Yay, lifestyle change!
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:36 AM on March 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Lifestyle changes aren't really necessary, but they do in some cases make the problem more tractable and can make a difference with other forms of environmental damage besides carbon emissions. What is necessary to reach net zero is to stop digging up fossil carbon and burning it. That's all.
At least at present, that simple solution does require lifestyle change. No more cars in extreme cold environments where current battery tech doesn't really work. No more long-haul flights. And a billion other things in industry (steel production for one) that we can't do. Not that they would necessarily be theoretically impossible to do, but at present, we have a lot of activities open to us that would not be possible if we were to stop digging up and burning fossil fuels tomorrow, next week, or next decade.
I absolutely think it's a good idea to do so, but it will, for many, necessitate some degree of lifestyle change.
posted by Dysk at 2:18 AM on March 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
At least at present, that simple solution does require lifestyle change. No more cars in extreme cold environments where current battery tech doesn't really work. No more long-haul flights. And a billion other things in industry (steel production for one) that we can't do. Not that they would necessarily be theoretically impossible to do, but at present, we have a lot of activities open to us that would not be possible if we were to stop digging up and burning fossil fuels tomorrow, next week, or next decade.
I absolutely think it's a good idea to do so, but it will, for many, necessitate some degree of lifestyle change.
posted by Dysk at 2:18 AM on March 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
The thing is to not make lifestyle change seem like a downgrade, in terms of quality of life. It's true we need to cut down on fossil fuels, but it's also true that we need to improve infrastructure. I think leaders have to use a language that makes the change sound attractive and something to aspire to for a majority. It's impossible to like Elon Musk, but the Tesla did make electric cars sexy.
I often think that a lot of people in my generation (late boomer or early x) turned to reaganism because the left made it seem so hard to do the right thing, on every aspect of life from food to transportation. It was all about giving up stuff, rather than choosing something else in a positive sense, and it seemed sort of religious.
Reaganism is a right-wind ideology based on escapism. Trumpism is when there are no more places to go and hide from reality. Together they form the brackets around an era of shameless denial and outright lies, where even Democrats had to be in on the deception if they wanted to stand a chance. It's as if a huge part of the world's population have been on a decades long spring break with the rest of the world forever and hopelessly trying to clean up the mess. Now there are no more margaritas, but the thing is not to spell doom and gloom, but to make adulting look attractive, as something better than drunk driving and waking up in detention.
We are not quite there yet, but I am optimistic because I teach young people and see their desire for change.
posted by mumimor at 2:26 AM on March 9, 2021 [7 favorites]
I often think that a lot of people in my generation (late boomer or early x) turned to reaganism because the left made it seem so hard to do the right thing, on every aspect of life from food to transportation. It was all about giving up stuff, rather than choosing something else in a positive sense, and it seemed sort of religious.
Reaganism is a right-wind ideology based on escapism. Trumpism is when there are no more places to go and hide from reality. Together they form the brackets around an era of shameless denial and outright lies, where even Democrats had to be in on the deception if they wanted to stand a chance. It's as if a huge part of the world's population have been on a decades long spring break with the rest of the world forever and hopelessly trying to clean up the mess. Now there are no more margaritas, but the thing is not to spell doom and gloom, but to make adulting look attractive, as something better than drunk driving and waking up in detention.
We are not quite there yet, but I am optimistic because I teach young people and see their desire for change.
posted by mumimor at 2:26 AM on March 9, 2021 [7 favorites]
With more abundant energy we'll also be able to frequently recycle resources into newer versions of products that are better without the question being "is it destroying our planet" as we start to close the loops of almost every production cycle on Earth. It's a long, painstaking process but a lot of industries are already partially closing those loops with mass recycling. CDW waste for instance is 90% recycled in The Netherlands.
I have my doubts that this green energy is going to be more "abundant." For example, are there any factories presently that manufacture solar panels that are powered entirely by solar energy?
As for recycling, the process takes enormous amounts of energy. If we're really going to move into a carbon neutral future we need to rethink our idiotic notions of the abysmally short product design lifespans we have presently. There is no reason why a car can't be made to last for decades. Same for pretty much anything. Incidentally we are nowhere near closing those "loops" as you mentioned. The recycling of e-waste, for example, consists mostly of a very toxic process to capture the most valuable materials from that waste (e.g. gold). If we're actually serious about this we'd make those electronics easier to repair and keep them in service for longer.
posted by drstrangelove at 3:59 AM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
I have my doubts that this green energy is going to be more "abundant." For example, are there any factories presently that manufacture solar panels that are powered entirely by solar energy?
As for recycling, the process takes enormous amounts of energy. If we're really going to move into a carbon neutral future we need to rethink our idiotic notions of the abysmally short product design lifespans we have presently. There is no reason why a car can't be made to last for decades. Same for pretty much anything. Incidentally we are nowhere near closing those "loops" as you mentioned. The recycling of e-waste, for example, consists mostly of a very toxic process to capture the most valuable materials from that waste (e.g. gold). If we're actually serious about this we'd make those electronics easier to repair and keep them in service for longer.
posted by drstrangelove at 3:59 AM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
It's impossible to like Elon Musk, but the Tesla did make electric cars sexy.
Powering cars by another means really isn't much of a solution at all. Those cars still require tires which are nasty to produce and difficult to recycle or to dispose. The roads themselves require huge amounts of energy and one of the materials used for asphalt is the waste from the oil refining process.
Cars are a major part of the problem. Getting away from them and refashioning our lives around walkable cities, bicycle infrastructure and mass transit would be a better start than millions of new vehicles.
posted by drstrangelove at 4:02 AM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Powering cars by another means really isn't much of a solution at all. Those cars still require tires which are nasty to produce and difficult to recycle or to dispose. The roads themselves require huge amounts of energy and one of the materials used for asphalt is the waste from the oil refining process.
Cars are a major part of the problem. Getting away from them and refashioning our lives around walkable cities, bicycle infrastructure and mass transit would be a better start than millions of new vehicles.
posted by drstrangelove at 4:02 AM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think we should not try to find one magical solution for everything, but rather a combination of partial solutions. For example: a bicycle for short distances, public transport for long distances, and people who still need a car for midrange trips could switch to electric. The cars would see less usage, so they could possibly be shared.
There are already people doing things this way.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:25 AM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
There are already people doing things this way.
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:25 AM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Powering cars by another means really isn't much of a solution at all.
I totally agree, though I do think at the time Tesla came out, it was a step in the right direction. We need to get rid of the cars altogether in the end, but at least where I live, that means there has to be big changes in infrastructure. In half an hour, I'm going to pick up my daughter at the nearest national railway station, it's an hours drive. She could take first a bus and then an other bus or a local train, that would take more than two hours, maybe up to three hours, and I'd still have to drive to get her at the local station. As I understand it, this would be even worse in the US.
While we are pushing for change (and right now, we have a government who actually wants that change and is looking to finance it), there has to be attractive solutions that are more sustainable than just taking out the big ol' 4WD, like many people here do.
The thing is, people have known about this global crisis for 50 years. But the majority of normal people and politicians have almost entirely ignored it since the 80s because they couldn't see any solutions they felt they could live with at all. Saving the planet was all about pious asceticism, and tbh, boring and sad. I think we need to handle it differently today. We need to present sustainable solutions as something desirable.
posted by mumimor at 4:44 AM on March 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
I totally agree, though I do think at the time Tesla came out, it was a step in the right direction. We need to get rid of the cars altogether in the end, but at least where I live, that means there has to be big changes in infrastructure. In half an hour, I'm going to pick up my daughter at the nearest national railway station, it's an hours drive. She could take first a bus and then an other bus or a local train, that would take more than two hours, maybe up to three hours, and I'd still have to drive to get her at the local station. As I understand it, this would be even worse in the US.
While we are pushing for change (and right now, we have a government who actually wants that change and is looking to finance it), there has to be attractive solutions that are more sustainable than just taking out the big ol' 4WD, like many people here do.
The thing is, people have known about this global crisis for 50 years. But the majority of normal people and politicians have almost entirely ignored it since the 80s because they couldn't see any solutions they felt they could live with at all. Saving the planet was all about pious asceticism, and tbh, boring and sad. I think we need to handle it differently today. We need to present sustainable solutions as something desirable.
posted by mumimor at 4:44 AM on March 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
I also think people need to be realistic and not automatically expect that some magical solution will come along just in time to solve these problems while allowing us to continue living profligate lifestyles.
posted by drstrangelove at 5:24 AM on March 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by drstrangelove at 5:24 AM on March 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
excuse my ignorance but I was born in 1959. Is there a clear purpose to block chain tech beyond what amounts to imposing an artificial scarcity which, on the face of it, appears to be "necessary" because the digitization of so much of our culture has effectively removed scarcity as an organizing principle from very many aspects of the economy? I mean, without scarcity, we may as well just give stuff away, right?
posted by philip-random at 9:45 AM on March 9, 2021
posted by philip-random at 9:45 AM on March 9, 2021
If my experience in exactly one computer science department is any indication, there's an enormous amount of enthusiasm for blockchain but pretty much nobody has any idea of what to do with it beyond getting away from "fiat" currency. And yes, there is a fair amount of gold bug/Jews rule everything nuttery there.
But the solution-looking-for-a-problem thing is very common in compsci departments so in that respect it's not that unusual.
posted by klanawa at 9:58 AM on March 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
But the solution-looking-for-a-problem thing is very common in compsci departments so in that respect it's not that unusual.
posted by klanawa at 9:58 AM on March 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
At least at present, that simple solution does require lifestyle change. No more cars in extreme cold environments where current battery tech doesn't really work. No more long-haul flights. And a billion other things in industry (steel production for one) that we can't do.
That list is much smaller than you might think. We have already built plants to make oil from turkey guts and other animal byproducts, to pick one example. Replacing coke in steelmaking is a harder problem, but again, ideas abound, we just haven't actually done them at any scale yet, but the use of hydrogen instead will be viable once solar and wind get to the point where significant overproduction of energy is a more common occurrence.
posted by wierdo at 10:45 AM on March 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
That list is much smaller than you might think. We have already built plants to make oil from turkey guts and other animal byproducts, to pick one example. Replacing coke in steelmaking is a harder problem, but again, ideas abound, we just haven't actually done them at any scale yet, but the use of hydrogen instead will be viable once solar and wind get to the point where significant overproduction of energy is a more common occurrence.
posted by wierdo at 10:45 AM on March 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sure, these are things we can do, to varying extents. They are not things we can do at the cost and scale we currently do, though. That means it'll price people out of things they currently consume.
Like, long haul travel is still possible in a near future of zero emissions, but it is slower, more expensive, or both. That makes it less accessible. Things being possible isn't the same as them continuing to be as available and accessible as they are now.
posted by Dysk at 7:05 PM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Like, long haul travel is still possible in a near future of zero emissions, but it is slower, more expensive, or both. That makes it less accessible. Things being possible isn't the same as them continuing to be as available and accessible as they are now.
posted by Dysk at 7:05 PM on March 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Yes, things will change, but things are always changing. It isn't like $150/bbl oil didn't price people out of things. Good thing we can make it cheaper than that, if we want to badly enough. I suspect there will be a period similar to what we had pre-2008 when resource costs were extremely high at some point, but prices will come down again both because people will change their habits in response and because energy cost for anything that can be made intermittent and variable will drop like a rock.
If net zero were to happen in the next five years, it would take drastic and obvious changes. Chances are that it won't, as bad as that is for the city I live in. Making it by 2050 or even 2040 will be gradual enough most people will hardly notice the change.
posted by wierdo at 6:42 AM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
If net zero were to happen in the next five years, it would take drastic and obvious changes. Chances are that it won't, as bad as that is for the city I live in. Making it by 2050 or even 2040 will be gradual enough most people will hardly notice the change.
posted by wierdo at 6:42 AM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
We have already built plants to make oil from turkey guts and other animal byproducts, to pick one example.
Turkeys that were undoubtedly a part of the corporate agribusiness machine that is heavily dependent upon petroleum and natural gas.
We'd be better off raising these things ethically and sustainably and using their guts as feed for other animals and/or compost rather than finding yet another means to power our cars by another method.
posted by drstrangelove at 7:56 AM on March 10, 2021
Turkeys that were undoubtedly a part of the corporate agribusiness machine that is heavily dependent upon petroleum and natural gas.
We'd be better off raising these things ethically and sustainably and using their guts as feed for other animals and/or compost rather than finding yet another means to power our cars by another method.
posted by drstrangelove at 7:56 AM on March 10, 2021
Cheap, commercial flights are basically going to be incompatible with a post-fossil fuel world. It will still exist but it will go back to being too expensive for most people to use.
And that's really not the end of the world, right? Travel has become such a bore as most places are overrun with tourists these days anyway. I haven't been on a plane in 15 years and have little desire to ever be stuffed inside a fart tube again.
posted by drstrangelove at 7:59 AM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
And that's really not the end of the world, right? Travel has become such a bore as most places are overrun with tourists these days anyway. I haven't been on a plane in 15 years and have little desire to ever be stuffed inside a fart tube again.
posted by drstrangelove at 7:59 AM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
do we really want a world where battling the crowds at Machu Picchu is a thing?
posted by philip-random at 8:23 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by philip-random at 8:23 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
do we really want a world where battling the crowds at Machu Picchu is a thing?
Nope. I'm okay with seeing it in photos.
A friend went there over a decade ago with his SO who is originally from Peru. Even back then he said the crowds were insane and many were disrespectful to the site and happily violated the rules.
posted by drstrangelove at 8:55 AM on March 10, 2021
Nope. I'm okay with seeing it in photos.
A friend went there over a decade ago with his SO who is originally from Peru. Even back then he said the crowds were insane and many were disrespectful to the site and happily violated the rules.
posted by drstrangelove at 8:55 AM on March 10, 2021
I live in a place that is a destination for many, and as each year goes by, it gets worse. First you get the true cool travellers, passionate to know more of the world and respectful of what they find. But then they go and write f***ing travel guides. I've pretty much decided that my next major journey will be by automobile and defined more by never-more-than-a-hundred-miles-a-day than any particular destination ... though I do intend a few lost highways.
posted by philip-random at 9:29 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by philip-random at 9:29 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
i am 100% okay with air travel going away.
but man, i am not okay with the idea of travelling to see places like machu picchu going away.
idk. we only get one life to live, and i desperately wish to fill mine with seeing as much of the planet as possible and learning as much as i can about the people who live there now and who lived there in the past.
there's something very deep inside my soul and psyche that wants to physically inhabit albeit very temporarily as many of the extraordinary places on earth as i can. going everywhere is not realistic, and i am not owed entry to sovereign nations who may not wish me there, and i'm okay with that.
but i would happily eat beans on a sailboat for a month to have a chance to walk across madagascar or sit with people in papua new guinea or wander through fields in rural japan.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:39 AM on March 10, 2021
but man, i am not okay with the idea of travelling to see places like machu picchu going away.
idk. we only get one life to live, and i desperately wish to fill mine with seeing as much of the planet as possible and learning as much as i can about the people who live there now and who lived there in the past.
there's something very deep inside my soul and psyche that wants to physically inhabit albeit very temporarily as many of the extraordinary places on earth as i can. going everywhere is not realistic, and i am not owed entry to sovereign nations who may not wish me there, and i'm okay with that.
but i would happily eat beans on a sailboat for a month to have a chance to walk across madagascar or sit with people in papua new guinea or wander through fields in rural japan.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:39 AM on March 10, 2021
Uh okay? I've never had the opportunity to travel the world. In a few years I may finally be able to afford to go somewhere. I absolutely want to travel by air again. It's not blase or who cares for me.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:45 AM on March 10, 2021
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:45 AM on March 10, 2021
okay. wasn't trying to attack anyone.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:48 AM on March 10, 2021
posted by lazaruslong at 9:48 AM on March 10, 2021
was responding to / conveying my feelings on the idea of it being enough to see historic sites in photos is all. to each their own.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:50 AM on March 10, 2021
posted by lazaruslong at 9:50 AM on March 10, 2021
More responding to the privilege inherent in being bored with world travel.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:58 AM on March 10, 2021
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:58 AM on March 10, 2021
lazarus, I understand where you're coming from and I don't begrudge you a thing. But at this stage in my journey I've come to accept that there are many things I'll never see. And I'm okay with that. Edward Abbey once asked his 10-year old daughter if a road should be built out to the overlook of the Green and Colorado Rivers. She said no. Abbey asked her if it was fair that people physically-incapable of making the 10-mile out-and-back hike should be excluded from visiting the overlook. She thought about and said that basically people can't always get what they want.
On another note a friend in SW Colorado has said that in the past few years his old hiking haunts down there have become absolutely overrun with people. He calls them the "selfie stick" crowd. People that go out to get their selfies while clogging trailheads and roads. He said COVID amplified the problem.
I tend to go to out-of-the-way places and museums that others don't seem to care about. If people start showing up I guess I'll have to go looking elsewhere.
posted by drstrangelove at 10:08 AM on March 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
On another note a friend in SW Colorado has said that in the past few years his old hiking haunts down there have become absolutely overrun with people. He calls them the "selfie stick" crowd. People that go out to get their selfies while clogging trailheads and roads. He said COVID amplified the problem.
I tend to go to out-of-the-way places and museums that others don't seem to care about. If people start showing up I guess I'll have to go looking elsewhere.
posted by drstrangelove at 10:08 AM on March 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
More responding to the privilege inherent in being bored with world travel.
Not so much bored as 'not particularly interested in going to Venice or Barcelona, etc when a million other people are there at the same time.'
posted by drstrangelove at 10:10 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Not so much bored as 'not particularly interested in going to Venice or Barcelona, etc when a million other people are there at the same time.'
posted by drstrangelove at 10:10 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
More responding to the privilege inherent in being bored with world travel.
your comment came right after mine and started with "uh, okay?" and now your saying you are responding to privilege of being bored with world travel? i'm really confused now. are you directing your comment at me, or was this just a miscommunication born of happenstance?
...
drstrangelove, i can get down with everything you just wrote. i definitely know that i won't be able to see everything. c'est la vie. i also really like out-of-the-way places when possible. there's some stuff that seems like it can't be replaced via substitution with a lesser known, related site (e.g. the Taj Mahal or Petra) but many places likely can be.
i really like Atlas Obscura for that -- not everything there is actually Obscura but a lot is. i spend way too much time traveling in my mind on that site, lol
posted by lazaruslong at 10:14 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
your comment came right after mine and started with "uh, okay?" and now your saying you are responding to privilege of being bored with world travel? i'm really confused now. are you directing your comment at me, or was this just a miscommunication born of happenstance?
...
drstrangelove, i can get down with everything you just wrote. i definitely know that i won't be able to see everything. c'est la vie. i also really like out-of-the-way places when possible. there's some stuff that seems like it can't be replaced via substitution with a lesser known, related site (e.g. the Taj Mahal or Petra) but many places likely can be.
i really like Atlas Obscura for that -- not everything there is actually Obscura but a lot is. i spend way too much time traveling in my mind on that site, lol
posted by lazaruslong at 10:14 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
I wonder what the breakdown is between "tourism" travel and "half my family lives overseas" travel? Obviously it's a spectrum, but people use air travel for various reasons.
posted by sagc at 10:20 AM on March 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by sagc at 10:20 AM on March 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
laz--- Atlas Obscura is one of my favorite websites.
Again I don't begrudge people for wanting to see the world. It's understandable. Even if cheap airfare goes away those who are truly filled with wanderlust will find a way. After all, Joshua Slocum basically rowed from somewhere near South American back to the U.S. when his ship sank. When there's a will, there's a way. :)
posted by drstrangelove at 10:24 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Again I don't begrudge people for wanting to see the world. It's understandable. Even if cheap airfare goes away those who are truly filled with wanderlust will find a way. After all, Joshua Slocum basically rowed from somewhere near South American back to the U.S. when his ship sank. When there's a will, there's a way. :)
posted by drstrangelove at 10:24 AM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Obviously it's a spectrum, but people use air travel for various reasons.
yes, no question. I guess the hope is that travel in the future will become less frivolous -- fewer long weekends in [name your current hip go-to spot], more months or entire seasons visiting folks back home, or just really committed travelling/exploring (as opposed to touristing). I'm old enough to remember a time when heading off to London or wherever for a friend's wedding or to see a U2 concert just wouldn't be considered rational. Maybe if you were rich but I didn't really hang with rich people. So such an occasion would only be considered if it could be fit into a longer journey that involved lots of other locations and interests, but even then, you'd only really imagine doing something like that a small handful of times in your life.
Of course by the time I hit age thirty, you could get airfare to Europe for maybe a week or two's salary, so the limiting factor was now stuff like paying for accommodation, or just time. Which is really air travel's key effect -- how it condenses and distorts time, and space. Where I currently live is almost exactly on the opposite side of planet from Cape Town, South Africa. To get there by air would require approximately twenty-four hours travel time. Sounds like a lot, I guess, until you compare it to ... well, Jules Verne's time. He would've given it forty days ... and that would be pushing it.
I guess I like the notion of travel imbuing us with a real sense of distance, and how a visceral grasp of that helps us begin to grasp the reality of where we really are, third rock from the sun etc
posted by philip-random at 11:09 AM on March 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
yes, no question. I guess the hope is that travel in the future will become less frivolous -- fewer long weekends in [name your current hip go-to spot], more months or entire seasons visiting folks back home, or just really committed travelling/exploring (as opposed to touristing). I'm old enough to remember a time when heading off to London or wherever for a friend's wedding or to see a U2 concert just wouldn't be considered rational. Maybe if you were rich but I didn't really hang with rich people. So such an occasion would only be considered if it could be fit into a longer journey that involved lots of other locations and interests, but even then, you'd only really imagine doing something like that a small handful of times in your life.
Of course by the time I hit age thirty, you could get airfare to Europe for maybe a week or two's salary, so the limiting factor was now stuff like paying for accommodation, or just time. Which is really air travel's key effect -- how it condenses and distorts time, and space. Where I currently live is almost exactly on the opposite side of planet from Cape Town, South Africa. To get there by air would require approximately twenty-four hours travel time. Sounds like a lot, I guess, until you compare it to ... well, Jules Verne's time. He would've given it forty days ... and that would be pushing it.
I guess I like the notion of travel imbuing us with a real sense of distance, and how a visceral grasp of that helps us begin to grasp the reality of where we really are, third rock from the sun etc
posted by philip-random at 11:09 AM on March 10, 2021 [2 favorites]
Enough people prioritize travel as a hobby, lifestyle or goal that increased limits to accessibility will be seen as a lowering of the quality of life for the type of person who has an outsized media voice, even if they’re educated on climate change and have superficial sympathies with the environmentalist movement.
posted by Selena777 at 12:09 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 12:09 PM on March 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Enough people prioritize travel as a hobby, lifestyle or goal that increased limits to accessibility will be seen as a lowering of the quality of life for the type of person who has an outsized media voice, even if they’re educated on climate change and have superficial sympathies with the environmentalist movement.
Exactly.
I had a friend who traveled overseas (Asia) twice yearly. He always had some kind of adventure planned and I will admit it was always something very interesting. But he was also constantly bleating about climate change and for him it was one of those problems caused by rich greedy people. I remember the time I broached the subject about international air travel and its carbon footprint/energy consumption and he didn't like that at all. He honestly believed a 747 only held 1500 gallons of fuel. I had to break it to him that it was actually closer to 50,000 gallons. Later on he forwarded me some article claiming that, per passenger, an airliner got around 25 mpg. Sounds pretty good but when I looked at the details they were assuming a fully-loaded flight where all of the seats were coach. And no matter what the claimed miles per gallon does it truly matter when the flight is 5000 miles? There is never going to be a time when I drive that far in a week yet alone 12 hours.
posted by drstrangelove at 12:34 PM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Exactly.
I had a friend who traveled overseas (Asia) twice yearly. He always had some kind of adventure planned and I will admit it was always something very interesting. But he was also constantly bleating about climate change and for him it was one of those problems caused by rich greedy people. I remember the time I broached the subject about international air travel and its carbon footprint/energy consumption and he didn't like that at all. He honestly believed a 747 only held 1500 gallons of fuel. I had to break it to him that it was actually closer to 50,000 gallons. Later on he forwarded me some article claiming that, per passenger, an airliner got around 25 mpg. Sounds pretty good but when I looked at the details they were assuming a fully-loaded flight where all of the seats were coach. And no matter what the claimed miles per gallon does it truly matter when the flight is 5000 miles? There is never going to be a time when I drive that far in a week yet alone 12 hours.
posted by drstrangelove at 12:34 PM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Driving my (17 year old, 20mpg) truck 10,000km a year to work would be indefensible but the equivalent of driving the same distance to Asia for a couple of weeks of chillin' is A-OK?
I'm not gonna say it's wrong but it's... interesting.
posted by klanawa at 4:45 PM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm not gonna say it's wrong but it's... interesting.
posted by klanawa at 4:45 PM on March 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the great illustration on why the much larger carbon emitters so everything in their power to convince us that this issue is one of individual choice.
posted by wierdo at 11:16 PM on March 10, 2021
posted by wierdo at 11:16 PM on March 10, 2021
Driving my (17 year old, 20mpg) truck 10,000km a year to work would be indefensible but the equivalent of driving the same distance to Asia for a couple of weeks of chillin' is A-OK?
There a realistic alternatives (for most people/situations) to the truck. Public transit, electric cars, walking or biking - I can't say what may or may not relevant for you.
Getting to see someone who lives across a meaningful distance in the sorts of timeframes that capitalism allows you to realistically set aside (because no, there is no amount of wanderlust that means you are not bound by the rules of money) is only possible on a plane.
Now, "a couple weeks chilling" on the regular is hardly a responsible use of that ability and infrastructure. But an immigrant heading back for a funeral, or to see a song family member - even if they could afford to take a month off to travel by boat or train or whatever, it'd still not do them much good. Air travel is currently the only way we have it bridging these gaps.
The fact that some people use that tool for frivolity does not mean that that is all it ever is.
posted by Dysk at 12:39 AM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
There a realistic alternatives (for most people/situations) to the truck. Public transit, electric cars, walking or biking - I can't say what may or may not relevant for you.
Getting to see someone who lives across a meaningful distance in the sorts of timeframes that capitalism allows you to realistically set aside (because no, there is no amount of wanderlust that means you are not bound by the rules of money) is only possible on a plane.
Now, "a couple weeks chilling" on the regular is hardly a responsible use of that ability and infrastructure. But an immigrant heading back for a funeral, or to see a song family member - even if they could afford to take a month off to travel by boat or train or whatever, it'd still not do them much good. Air travel is currently the only way we have it bridging these gaps.
The fact that some people use that tool for frivolity does not mean that that is all it ever is.
posted by Dysk at 12:39 AM on March 11, 2021 [3 favorites]
Song family member = dying family member. I still can't type (or write? swipe?) on a phone it seems.
posted by Dysk at 12:56 AM on March 11, 2021
posted by Dysk at 12:56 AM on March 11, 2021
the change we need in order to survive as a species requires both a serious reconciliation of our everyday individual fossil fuel needs/wants and those of big govt, big industry, big military. It's not either/or. Not that THEY don't appreciate it when we get so divisively reductive.
posted by philip-random at 8:08 AM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by philip-random at 8:08 AM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
Due to the design of our cities, economic inequality, workplace policies, shitty transit and infrastructure, it is not possible for "most" people (depending on where) to make the choice em masse to commute other than by driving. If they did, the alternative systems would instantly be overwhelmed. And not everyone can buy an electric car. Not everyone can live close enough to work or have a safe enough route to ride.
I'm privileged -- I commuted 50km/day by bicycle before the pandemic and now I work at home. Because it's the right thing to do, yes, but more importantly because I can. I don't have to drive my old truck every day because I'm lucky.
I think we should make major changes to our society to enable these choices but I also acknowledge that changes that occur at the pace of civilization are useless to people in the now, who have to get to work today. And I think everyone should make more of an effort to drive less, but I know it's not realistic for many, particularly the working poor. Why make this their problem?
For the working poor, whether to fly to the Virgin Islands is an easy choice to make. Fortunately, for everyone else -- all holiday travelers and most business travelers -- it's a choice they can make today at no cost to themselves. Too bad for the airline industry but... life I all about choices, right?
posted by klanawa at 9:27 AM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm privileged -- I commuted 50km/day by bicycle before the pandemic and now I work at home. Because it's the right thing to do, yes, but more importantly because I can. I don't have to drive my old truck every day because I'm lucky.
I think we should make major changes to our society to enable these choices but I also acknowledge that changes that occur at the pace of civilization are useless to people in the now, who have to get to work today. And I think everyone should make more of an effort to drive less, but I know it's not realistic for many, particularly the working poor. Why make this their problem?
For the working poor, whether to fly to the Virgin Islands is an easy choice to make. Fortunately, for everyone else -- all holiday travelers and most business travelers -- it's a choice they can make today at no cost to themselves. Too bad for the airline industry but... life I all about choices, right?
posted by klanawa at 9:27 AM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the great illustration on why the much larger carbon emitters so everything in their power to convince us that this issue is one of individual choice.
Individual choice is a factor and not an insignificant one. Especially by those in positions to make those choices as klanawa noted above.
It's been said here that corporations are responsible for CO2 emissions but... how much of that is secondary to consumer demand? How much CO2 is produced from a 3000-mile weekend trip to the USVI for some holiday merrymaking? Is that strictly the fault of the airlines or the oil companies that produce the Jet-A required for the trip? If enough people collective decided NOT to go those flights would be grounded.
posted by drstrangelove at 10:19 AM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
Individual choice is a factor and not an insignificant one. Especially by those in positions to make those choices as klanawa noted above.
It's been said here that corporations are responsible for CO2 emissions but... how much of that is secondary to consumer demand? How much CO2 is produced from a 3000-mile weekend trip to the USVI for some holiday merrymaking? Is that strictly the fault of the airlines or the oil companies that produce the Jet-A required for the trip? If enough people collective decided NOT to go those flights would be grounded.
posted by drstrangelove at 10:19 AM on March 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
Is that strictly the fault
Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.
When people point out that it's large corporations who do so much of the polluting, that doesn't mean they're unaware of the linkage to aggregate consumer action. It just means that you should do your regulating at the corporate level instead of hectoring consumers, either individually or en masse.
If you want fewer people to jet off to the USVI, it will be more effective to have a carbon tax so that the large corporations are forced to charge more than it would to tell people they ought to travel less. If you want to reduce noncarbon air pollution, it would be more effective to make power plants put in scrubbers and make car manufacturers put catalytic converters on all the cars they make than it would be to tell consumers that they ought to drive less and ought to buy catalytic converters.
If you'd rather, putting $5000 in carbon taxes on a round-trip ticket to Asia is a really good way to get people to collectively decide not to go on those flights. A much better way than an infinity of individual conversations urging people not to take them.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:44 AM on March 11, 2021 [7 favorites]
Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.
When people point out that it's large corporations who do so much of the polluting, that doesn't mean they're unaware of the linkage to aggregate consumer action. It just means that you should do your regulating at the corporate level instead of hectoring consumers, either individually or en masse.
If you want fewer people to jet off to the USVI, it will be more effective to have a carbon tax so that the large corporations are forced to charge more than it would to tell people they ought to travel less. If you want to reduce noncarbon air pollution, it would be more effective to make power plants put in scrubbers and make car manufacturers put catalytic converters on all the cars they make than it would be to tell consumers that they ought to drive less and ought to buy catalytic converters.
If you'd rather, putting $5000 in carbon taxes on a round-trip ticket to Asia is a really good way to get people to collectively decide not to go on those flights. A much better way than an infinity of individual conversations urging people not to take them.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:44 AM on March 11, 2021 [7 favorites]
Good points, GCU.
posted by drstrangelove at 12:33 PM on March 11, 2021
posted by drstrangelove at 12:33 PM on March 11, 2021
If you'd rather, putting $5000 in carbon taxes on a round-trip ticket to Asia
Thing is, you can fully carbon offset your flight from Melbourne to London for about $25.
Carbon offsets fund projects that are making changes at the current margin - low hanging fruit - tree planting, methane recapture, distributing low energy lightbulbs.
Mathematically, it works out. Ethically, it feels like buying indulgences in the days of the Catholic church, permission to sin and have a guilt free holiday.
posted by xdvesper at 12:44 AM on March 12, 2021
Thing is, you can fully carbon offset your flight from Melbourne to London for about $25.
Carbon offsets fund projects that are making changes at the current margin - low hanging fruit - tree planting, methane recapture, distributing low energy lightbulbs.
Mathematically, it works out. Ethically, it feels like buying indulgences in the days of the Catholic church, permission to sin and have a guilt free holiday.
posted by xdvesper at 12:44 AM on March 12, 2021
You gotta be fucking kidding me...
If anyone still reads comments down here: NO, OFFSETS ARE NOT A THING, they're nothing more than greenwash codswallop from the market-obsessed crowd at best, a complete scam at worst.
What matters is atmospheric CO2 concentration, cumulative total emissions, the area under the curve in the emissions graphic, not the Y-axis value of the yearly emission line.
Net carbon emissions must drop to NEGATIVE (removing excess carbon already in the atmosphere and ocean) for things to improve.
They must to drop to 0 (zero) and do it quickly for things to stop getting worse (not getting better, mind, just not worse than what we've already committed to).
None of the above 2 scenarios will happen in my lifetime, in fact by the time I'm dead yearly anthropogenic carbon emissions will almost certainly still both be higher than any year so far and rising.
Even if offsets were not a scam (hint: they almost certainly are), the right thing to do isn't to waste in one place but "offset" in another, it's to not waste at all and do the "offset" part anyway, and much more.
Just read the fucking IPCC summary reports, people, they're not that long.
posted by Bangaioh at 2:57 AM on March 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
If anyone still reads comments down here: NO, OFFSETS ARE NOT A THING, they're nothing more than greenwash codswallop from the market-obsessed crowd at best, a complete scam at worst.
What matters is atmospheric CO2 concentration, cumulative total emissions, the area under the curve in the emissions graphic, not the Y-axis value of the yearly emission line.
Net carbon emissions must drop to NEGATIVE (removing excess carbon already in the atmosphere and ocean) for things to improve.
They must to drop to 0 (zero) and do it quickly for things to stop getting worse (not getting better, mind, just not worse than what we've already committed to).
None of the above 2 scenarios will happen in my lifetime, in fact by the time I'm dead yearly anthropogenic carbon emissions will almost certainly still both be higher than any year so far and rising.
Even if offsets were not a scam (hint: they almost certainly are), the right thing to do isn't to waste in one place but "offset" in another, it's to not waste at all and do the "offset" part anyway, and much more.
Just read the fucking IPCC summary reports, people, they're not that long.
posted by Bangaioh at 2:57 AM on March 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
It's been said here that corporations are responsible for CO2 emissions but... how much of that is secondary to consumer demand? How much CO2 is produced from a 3000-mile weekend trip to the USVI for some holiday merrymaking? Is that strictly the fault of the airlines or the oil companies that produce the Jet-A required for the trip? If enough people collective decided NOT to go those flights would be grounded.
Better for enough people collectively deciding to tax the fuel for those flights. I do think that it's a problem to base solutions on mass individual action rather than collective action, these are not the same thing. It's easy to live in filter bubbles and assume that a very large number of people will voluntarily give these things up but I see no evidence of that.
I'm sure there's many things to be said about walkable developments but:
1) This is a very American perspective. Like many billions of people I already live somewhere where I can walk almost everywhere and walking plus public transport took care of 95% of my pre-pandemic journeys.
2) It's great for new development but it is intrinsically hard to retrofit density for a whole suburb. Sure you can change local zoning codes but buildings are really long-lived and building patterns even more so. There is also a substantial carbon cost embodied in already constructed infrastructure. I question how wise it would really be to just replace all of it in order to reduce automotive energy use at a time when that energy use is going electric anyway.
2b) Anything that looks like an attempt to force the vulgarian masses to live the way the bien pensant think they should is extremely dangerous politically, it's totally toxic and will lead to a backlash. If millions of chuds want to live in the suburbs and shove delivery pizza in their mouths while they fart their way through five hours a day of network television, I see it as my job to make the suburban pizza-shoving lifestyle carbon-neutral. I am extremely suspicious of anything that "conveniently" aligns someone's preferred aesthetics with their preferred solution to climate change. Maybe they got lucky and they lined up but that's no way to build a mass movement.
Further, it may well be true that aspects of our current lifestyle simply aren't compatible with preserving our planet in reasonable condition but I would prefer to ease people into that and let them see the real benefits of things like clean air before we force them to stop flying to Magaluf to get fingered on the beach. It's easier to sell people on the positives than it is to chastise them about the negatives.
Offsets are problematic for a number of reasons.
First, because they assume that the only impact they have is the offsetting activity. I.e. they assume the emitting activity would have happened regardless of the offset being available. If people are engaging in the underlying activity because the offset is there, it isn't great.
Second, it is really hard to account for these activities and many of them have historically been scammy. You can "plant a tree" but most tree planting is incompetently done and leads to many thousands of dead seedlings or whips per live tree. Not just that but the carbon storage potential of intact meadow, peat, and many other ecosystems that don't look as good to people is also substantial.
I would much prefer any "carbon offset" to be a straight tax that goes to the activities with highest reduction of emissions per $ spent.
In theory, I'm a big fan of Dieter Helm's preferred approach which is a carbon tax set by an independent body (like a central bank) and which is adjusted to keep to an emissions reduction trajectory. You can use all the thinking that's gone into central banking as well, set taxes a few years in advance, tweak them (with smaller tweaks for closer years) if the trajectory is off-target. Tariff adjust at the border for countries without comparable systems. Tax gets returned to people as a dividend with the net result being that high emitters pay higher taxes and low emitters pay lower net taxes.
The result of this would be squeeze emissions out of the system. Things like driving and electricity production decarbonise very rapidly, things like aviation less so but become gradually more expensive and therefore decrease in volume.
The key is having that independent body to monitor and adjust the tax trajectory in a predictable way to ensure that capital investment is going to emissions reduction. Of course that still leaves us with the political debate over the shape of the trajectory. I like a pretty steep one because we do ourselves no favours if we get to net zero in 2050 but have had high emissions all the way there. I'd rather get a big reduction by 2030 and then gradually hit net zero from that low level in 2060. (In practice net-zero 2050 is a simple slogan so I am favour it for that reason). As a starting point, we have the Paris agreement targets, as inadequate as they are.
posted by atrazine at 3:21 AM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Better for enough people collectively deciding to tax the fuel for those flights. I do think that it's a problem to base solutions on mass individual action rather than collective action, these are not the same thing. It's easy to live in filter bubbles and assume that a very large number of people will voluntarily give these things up but I see no evidence of that.
I'm sure there's many things to be said about walkable developments but:
1) This is a very American perspective. Like many billions of people I already live somewhere where I can walk almost everywhere and walking plus public transport took care of 95% of my pre-pandemic journeys.
2) It's great for new development but it is intrinsically hard to retrofit density for a whole suburb. Sure you can change local zoning codes but buildings are really long-lived and building patterns even more so. There is also a substantial carbon cost embodied in already constructed infrastructure. I question how wise it would really be to just replace all of it in order to reduce automotive energy use at a time when that energy use is going electric anyway.
2b) Anything that looks like an attempt to force the vulgarian masses to live the way the bien pensant think they should is extremely dangerous politically, it's totally toxic and will lead to a backlash. If millions of chuds want to live in the suburbs and shove delivery pizza in their mouths while they fart their way through five hours a day of network television, I see it as my job to make the suburban pizza-shoving lifestyle carbon-neutral. I am extremely suspicious of anything that "conveniently" aligns someone's preferred aesthetics with their preferred solution to climate change. Maybe they got lucky and they lined up but that's no way to build a mass movement.
Further, it may well be true that aspects of our current lifestyle simply aren't compatible with preserving our planet in reasonable condition but I would prefer to ease people into that and let them see the real benefits of things like clean air before we force them to stop flying to Magaluf to get fingered on the beach. It's easier to sell people on the positives than it is to chastise them about the negatives.
Offsets are problematic for a number of reasons.
First, because they assume that the only impact they have is the offsetting activity. I.e. they assume the emitting activity would have happened regardless of the offset being available. If people are engaging in the underlying activity because the offset is there, it isn't great.
Second, it is really hard to account for these activities and many of them have historically been scammy. You can "plant a tree" but most tree planting is incompetently done and leads to many thousands of dead seedlings or whips per live tree. Not just that but the carbon storage potential of intact meadow, peat, and many other ecosystems that don't look as good to people is also substantial.
I would much prefer any "carbon offset" to be a straight tax that goes to the activities with highest reduction of emissions per $ spent.
In theory, I'm a big fan of Dieter Helm's preferred approach which is a carbon tax set by an independent body (like a central bank) and which is adjusted to keep to an emissions reduction trajectory. You can use all the thinking that's gone into central banking as well, set taxes a few years in advance, tweak them (with smaller tweaks for closer years) if the trajectory is off-target. Tariff adjust at the border for countries without comparable systems. Tax gets returned to people as a dividend with the net result being that high emitters pay higher taxes and low emitters pay lower net taxes.
The result of this would be squeeze emissions out of the system. Things like driving and electricity production decarbonise very rapidly, things like aviation less so but become gradually more expensive and therefore decrease in volume.
The key is having that independent body to monitor and adjust the tax trajectory in a predictable way to ensure that capital investment is going to emissions reduction. Of course that still leaves us with the political debate over the shape of the trajectory. I like a pretty steep one because we do ourselves no favours if we get to net zero in 2050 but have had high emissions all the way there. I'd rather get a big reduction by 2030 and then gradually hit net zero from that low level in 2060. (In practice net-zero 2050 is a simple slogan so I am favour it for that reason). As a starting point, we have the Paris agreement targets, as inadequate as they are.
posted by atrazine at 3:21 AM on March 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
2) It's great for new development but it is intrinsically hard to retrofit density for a whole suburb. Sure you can change local zoning codes but buildings are really long-lived and building patterns even more so. There is also a substantial carbon cost embodied in already constructed infrastructure. I question how wise it would really be to just replace all of it in order to reduce automotive energy use at a time when that energy use is going electric anyway.
There's a lot more low hanging fruit in suburbia than one might think at first glance. Allowing accessory dwelling units by right in all residential zones is probably the biggest and least controversial. That alone can bring density to the point that bus lines can actually be useful. Going further, we could allow duplex conversions, relax lot size requirements, and similar tactics to increase density without changing the fundamental character of neighborhoods.
Zoning that allows neighborhood commercial on the edges of developments (like corner shops and such) can also be helpful in reducing the number of single occupancy car trips.
posted by wierdo at 4:21 AM on March 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
There's a lot more low hanging fruit in suburbia than one might think at first glance. Allowing accessory dwelling units by right in all residential zones is probably the biggest and least controversial. That alone can bring density to the point that bus lines can actually be useful. Going further, we could allow duplex conversions, relax lot size requirements, and similar tactics to increase density without changing the fundamental character of neighborhoods.
Zoning that allows neighborhood commercial on the edges of developments (like corner shops and such) can also be helpful in reducing the number of single occupancy car trips.
posted by wierdo at 4:21 AM on March 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Totally, and we should do all of those things. Fundamentally though, that settlement pattern still separates working and living space enough to make substantial car commuting almost inevitable. I don't know if you can realistically densify a suburb that is all detached houses enough to make properly linked public transport viable at a high enough frequency to pull people out of car commuting.
posted by atrazine at 9:19 AM on March 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by atrazine at 9:19 AM on March 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
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