I wonder is this Mankind’s great filter moment? Nations and International bodies fail to pool their efforts towards creating a sustainable climate, underestimate climate change impact and overestimate our ability to act. Thus civilisation as a whole is stuck firefighting for centuries instead of all the progress that could have been made. I guess only time will tell.
The book 1984 goes into the psychology a little bit. The Party had the ability to make the world better for everyone, but at the cost of diminishing the power of the elite. The would rather live in a worse world and hold power than live in a better world with less or no power. Of course, they cannot see the future, but this is how they assessed the situation.
This is a very well documented phenomenon. Cromwell didn't want to depose Charles I. But Charles refused to compromise on the principle of absolutism, even after losing the war, so he tried to raise another army and ended up dead. The Haitian revolutionaries were prepared to let the white Haitians keep all of their land and economic privileges, but again and again they conspired with foreign powers to bring back slavery, despite being outnumbered twenty to one, so in the end they were all massacred.
Because the lead up to the revolution was one where the powers that be decided it was much better economically to work someone to death over IIRC 7 years than to be more sparing on the labor.
You don’t set the conditions for response in moderation if you live through something like that.
For context, Haiti was realistically worth more than all of Canada at the time.
Oh, yeah. It’s hard to blame anyone in a slave rebellion for slaughtering everyone they can because they’ve been horribly tortured and they’ll all be killed.
Leclerc was deliberately sent by Napoleon to eliminate all black people in 1803. It wasn’t some sort of secret. That was the goal: wipe them all out and bring new slaves.
So why should Black people after winning the war not try to reciprocate?
Looks like we’re headed towards something like that…. Climate change has been so far away for decades that they have been able to push it off and say see it’s not that bad, well it’s finally starting to show signs and people are starting to see that they will let the house burn down before they pull the fire alarm as long as they still get to be the one who controls the fire alarm. Like how long are we going to let that be the case? It’s clear they will watch us all die with the ship as long as they can step over us to get off first.
They won't even rule that, if climate change worsens to the point where society begins to breaks down and these elites retreat to their little enclaves and bunkers in the like of New Zealand each and every one of them is getting bullets to the head within five seconds of the bunker doors closing from the people they hired to "protect and serve" them. Their entire worth as a person is based upon an artificial social construct and when the society that supports said construct no longer exists so does any reason to let them live. They don't have skills in electronics, mechanics, chemistry, medicine or any other field that'd be essential to maintaining some form of higher living after the shit hits the fan. They'll have outlived their usefulness and demonstrated they're liabilities who'll fuck over everybody else for their own goals.
The rich are typically convinced of their own deservedness and by extension, their importance. They think they're the saviors, so what benefits them benefits humanity. Where would we all be without their guidance?
Fossil fuel combustion will just die off from costs over the next decade, wtf are you talking about?
Solar and wind is already much cheaper than fossil fuel and batteries are rapidly getting cheap enough to edge out fossil fuel... that's why almost all new power generation is new solar and wind.
It's just hard to understand that once you get below a certain price threshold ALL OF A SUDDEN the investors and consumers mass switch over. You don't have like 2010 adoption rates into 2020 and you don't have 2020 EV adoption rates into 2030. You have a point where if you go with fossil fuel you lose more and more money.
Fossil fuels for plastics and fertilizers are more or less a whole different category of much less immediate problems.
To get to Net Zero you really only have to replace power plants, cars&trucks and industrial heating, you never actually need to get to 0 fossil fuel use. Most of the focus is power plants and internal combustion since that's the most grossly inefficient use.
The planet currently consumes half out CO2 pollution per year, or we'd be way more fucked by now, so you never actually need to get to like 0% fossil fuel use. The heat is already invested and the CO2 will only go away so fast, so there is diminishing returns in going overboard against fossil fuels.
We will still use it for jets and mining and military and that won't really matter in the big picture of how much damage we have to mitigate before we can get to the point of regulating the climate... because you also have to realize the climate is a moving target, not something we can just roll back to Pre-industrial times and lock it in with merely pollution reduction.
Batteries are getting cheaper, but even the best still have poor energy density compared to hydrocarbons fuels. We can’t power commercial airliners with lithium ion batteries because the aircraft would be too heavy to go any appreciable distance.
Fossil fuels will always have a place in the economy until some sort of foundation-shaking battery technology comes out that has triple the current energy and is cheap to produce. It is unfortunately also possible such a technology can’t exist due to the limits of chemistry.
Personally, I think our best bet is still to leverage renewable energy to synthesize carbon-neutral fuels like hydrogen and use those in place of hydrocarbons wherever possible. Lower energy density, and harder to handle, but at least the combustion byproduct is just water and the synthesis byproduct is oxygen, which is also useful and non-polluting.
We can shut down the whole industry tomorrow, and people will just deal with it. It won't substantially change productivity in any industry actually making anything.
People will be less happy-- being able to go off for a week to a warm country during winter is fantastic, but that only supports a hotel and hospitality industry, which does in fact not support any kind of production complex.
That’s quite far fetched. What are we going to do, revert back to steam train? There is more to air travel than musicians going to the next super venue and people going on their Disney vacations
We have electric trains. It's not that bad. We also have the possibility of just not travelling.
It sucks, but the technology to sequester carbon just isn't there. If we're moving towards some kind of big climate problem, we'll save ourselves a great deal in the long run by simply not allowing greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere.
Ending flights will do so at essentially no cost. The fuel comes from abroad, and travel is no longer required for international business. Even for inspecting factories and physical goods, telepresence has reached the point where it is feasible to perform such inspections remotely.
It would be a very fast change, and not particularly expensive to realise.
It'd suck to no longer be able to take a trip to Spain in the winter, but if we'll get a crisis from CO2 emissions, we have to do this, because we can't just let it happen only because we enjoy air travel. It'd be like Churchill refusing to institute rationing during WWII because it'd mean that he couldn't buy a roast beef to eat on Sunday, something comical.
If there isn't going to be a crisis, of course, then we don't have to do anything. But ending air travel will have very minimal consequences. Presumably people will also figure out how to achieve it on batteries over time, but if there's going to be a crisis, there's no reason whatsoever to wait for that.
Yea I don’t think we’d do that. We’ve based our entire economy over the last 300 years on the RAPID movement of people, goods, and services. Where are these electric trains? Certainly not in America. If I wanted to take a train to California it would take almost 3 days. A flight is 5.5hrs.
You’d be asking our economy and citizens to revert back to a lifestyle that hasn’t existed since arguably the 30s-40s. The genie can’t go back in the bottle. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Unless we start building high speed rail like TOMORROW. But we’ve all seen how that’s been going so far
Yes and the rapid movement of goods and services can now be decoupled from the movement of people.
These electric trains are basically everywhere in Europe.
The solution is mostly to not travel. It is not a reversion to a 30s or 40s lifestyle. Most people couldn't afford air travel until the 1970s, some couldn't until the early 80s. I don't think we flew in my family until the 1950s.
We can solve much of this, if required. Improvements in overnight trains may even keep the weekend trip to Barcelona or Nice feasible.
Why not go all the way back to just living in trees at that point. The fact is you could cut out 80% of emissions with the things there’s readily available clean substitutes for, which would be a huge improvement.
Why focus on one of the hardest sections that is only 2.5%, but which also drives multiple industries and actively spreads wealth from richer people to poorer people (tourism)?
I could see hydrogen, but I also think PHEVs are a big part of the solution. 150km of electric range plus a gas backup, 99% of people would be happy with that and wouldn't be burning gas 99% of the time.
>The planet currently consumes half out CO2 pollution per year, or we'd be way more fucked by now, so you never actually need to get to like 0% fossil fuel use. The heat is already invested and the CO2 will only go away so fast, so there is diminishing returns in going overboard against fossil fuels.
The planet's ability to consume half of CO2 pollution is dwindling. Oceans are overheating. The permafrost switched from a carbon sink to a contributor. As things heat up, this problem gets worse exponentially, i.e. it's a lot hotter and now massive forest fires contribute to our CO2. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
This tired class warfare nonsense is just marxist crap masquerading as intelligent thought.
It's just as wrong to paint all wealthy people with the same brush as it is to paint the poor the same way. Social class isn't the equivalent of morality level.
It's not about "morality" at all. It's about the wealthy having different and mutually opposed material interests to the not-wealthy. It is therefore in the rational self-interest of the non-wealthy to oppose the wealthy's accumulation of more resources and power.
Indeed, the wealthy at any given time have the opportunity to reinvest their wealth into their communities via selfless philanthropy, thereby divesting themselves of their surplus wealth and simultaneously making the world a better place for no other reason than simply the desire to do good.
But most often, they do not. It's very rare that they do this. Most of their philanthropy is quite limited and often serves to better their name or benefit themselves in some way. It can hardly be said to be altruistic at all and inevitably does actually very little to help improve the world.
With all of that in mind it's clear that the only way to address the issue is to recover this surplus wealth through taxation and regulation. Not only are the current taxes much too generous but very often the rich even avoid paying their share of these taxes by various schemes and machinations.
Strict enforcement of a progressive tax policy is the way in which we make the world a better and more equitable place for all.
There has always been a class war based on monetary distribution. The only way to diffuse the war is high taxes on wealthy individuals. Create a wealth cap above which nobody can climb.
There is no reason to assume that the people who would benefit from moving away from fossil fuels aren’t the same people who also benefit from continuing to use fossil fuels.
Which sounds stupid, but really people just underestimate how diversified wealthy, powerful people’s investments are. The only people who are truly dedicated to the success of fossil fuels would be nations without a diversified economy, and the direct employees of fossil fuel company’s.
The problem with fossil fuels is that discovery, extraction, transport, refining, storage, etc require excessive government support at each step. This has created deep entanglements between private corporations and government.
The fossil fuel industry uses those entanglements to lobby governments for favorable conditions for multinational corporations. Other multinationals, like Chase or Facebook, may not directly care about fossil fuels, but they identify that they are benefiting from the legal and business environment that the fossil fuel industry lobbying has provided.
Nuclear has some entanglements, but way less than fossil fuels. And, solar and wind are just simpler technologies and have less entanglements. The lobbying environment hidden by fossil fuels would disappear.. and lobbying for a pro-multinational environment would be more expensive for all corporations.
It's more than just pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Not... really. Whether classic mining law is obsolete is a good question. But the accounting mores are from two fronts - equipment depreciation and depletion allowance. There's a much smaller set of "incentive" subsidies that's really in the noise.
Much depends on where the activity takes place - it's arguably worse in Canada. Canada is very dependent on oil revenue.
It would have been much better to have held all extractive resources in common but the legal basis for that emerged after the die was cast. The capital and labor mix of the mid 19th century ( and before, for coal ) led us here. I think Norway's proven the point but the status quo is hard to steer.
> And, solar and wind are just simpler technologies and have less entanglements.
There are limitations; it's not simply a matter of a lack of will. Solar's going as well as it ever has but it's still like 15 years break even even with direct subsidy to solar. Throw in nuclear and I, at least, am happy. It does not help that natural gas is often , curiously enough, effectively a waste byproduct until infrastructure to exploit it arises.
Much of the claim that oil is subsidized is a bit hyperbolic. The basic transnational aspect of big oil is pretty annoying but it might be simply inherent. I've worked for a big oil services firm and the arrogance is profound, but that doesn't mean that much.
Every single step in phasing in green tech requires Fossil Fuels. Given a flat playing field, Solar and Wind don't stand a chance. In fact, end all subsidies for all energy, don't encourage excess spending/consumption.
>Every single step in phasing in green tech requires Fossil Fuels.
Even if you are depending on fossil fuels, adopting green tech means that the net emissions will be less versus using fossil fuels for everything. When green energy is more ubiquitous, some fossil fuel dependence can be removed from the supply chain.
It is ok to use fossil fuels for some things, by the way. We don't have to use it for everything.
And, this green tech uses fossil fuels is a talking point the fossil fuel industry puts out. Remember, they hired the same propagandists that lied about smoking causing cancer.
Not when that energy production creates more unnecessary consumption. The whole problem is not one of energy sources but one of government incentivized overconsumption/production. Stop government spending and create more currency stability via saving incentives, emissions would drop much more radically in that environment.
Also, I disagree with the stance that using Hydrocarbons for much of our products is an okay thing to do. We know that they release PFAs and forever chemicals, the smart thing to do would be to set up a socioeconomic paradigm that prioritizes sturdy goods manufactured using metals like stainless steel and wood, which is a great carbon sink that essentially is a true renewable resource. I live in Canada and would love to see construction of new homes that are mostly wood but the protection of forests disincentivize housing developers to explore this path.
I said that without FF subsidies, we don't know if green tech would be feasible. Because there is that overproduction incentive via subsidies, we don't know the true market equilibrium point of any of these energy sources.
The US spends $10B to $50B on FF subsidies per year (it's hard to know what counts - consensus seems to be $20B).
Removing them wouldn't kill FFs - using the $50B number, we're talking about $150 per person in the US.
The average American spends $2100 on gas per year (obviously, there's a lot of variance), and about the same on heating and cooling, and about the same again on other household energy needs (refrigeration, hot water, cooking, etc.).
But only 60% of US utility costs come from fossil fuels, so let's drop the $4000 home energy expenses down to $2400.
So now we have $4400 in FF costs, to which we'll add $150 by removing subsidies.
That's not really earth shattering. It's not going to kill FF overnight.
I'm talking about implicit subsidies worldwide that we pay for--or will in the future, as the younger generation has been stuck with the bill and the consequences.
You're trying to deflect with explicit subsidies on a domestic scale.
The problems is fossil fuel does a lot more than nuclear and can be exported and nuclear can't really replace most fossil fuel use globally, so you wind up with a kind of dead end expensive nuclear infrastructure to go with your fossil fuel infrastructure, and higher costs.
Those higher costs translate to solar panels and batteries being more expensive and really just slowing down the real solution, which is solar, wind and batteries. Levering EV batteries and grid storage into one tech is ideal and also exactly what is happening as batteries are now crashing in prices just as solar did.
Without batteries to replace fossil fuel it's just a pipe dream. You HAVE to have the alternative exist and be affordable before you really expect some magical change over and nuclear can't power cars and trucks and planes or realistically even commercial ships. That would be insanely higher costs and people would real life starve if shipping went up that much in cost.
You will kill people faster with higher costs than the rather slow by steady rate of climate change, and like it or not this is about preserving humanity, not some ideiologcal battle with oil companies.
Consumers are the reason for the demand for oil, not some grand oil corporation BS. There isn't a good enough alternative and people need it to survive. There is no reason to pretend otherwise. This is very much a science and engineering problem or a mass social/economic deflation problem and FUCKING DUH people aren't going to self deflate just to maybe save the world of tomorrow. That was never a real plan that had a chance.
The real plan has always been use fossil fuels low efficiency against it to replace it with something cheaper.
I don't think you're being fair to the power to weight ratio advantage and the fact we will also still need fertilizer and plastics. We are really only trying to get rid of the worse uses of fossil fuel, beside that it's actually really solid energy storage and a good chemical base for many materials.
It's going to prove pretty easy to replace 90% of more of fossil fuel combustion, particularly because most of that is super low efficiency power plants and vehicles running only 20-40% efficient with 60-80% of the fuel merely producing waste heat. The bulk of that is easy to replace and is getting replaced at the power plant level rapidly already.
You just don't see a big drop in emission yet because batteries aren't quite cheap enough to wipe out already established fossil fuel power plants or make EVs the better choice in every way. That's not far off and like solar and wind took over new power by being cheaper, the cheaper batteries will finish the job on most fossil fuel.
There's not big conspiracy here, as soon as the tech gets reliably cheaper people jump ship because MONEY.
"We shall deal first with the reluctance of the 'captains of industry' to
accept government intervention in the matter of employment. Every
widening of state activity is looked upon by business with suspicion, but the
creation of employment by government spending has a special aspect which
makes the opposition particularly intense. Under a laissez-faire system the
level of employment depends to a great extent on the so-called state of
confidence. If this deteriorates, private investment declines, which results
in a fall of output and employment (both directly and through the
secondary effect of the fall in incomes upon consumption and investment).
This gives the capitalists a powerful indirect control over government
policy: everything which may shake the state of confidence must be carefully
avoided because it would cause an economic crisis. But once the
government learns the trick of increasing employment by its own
purchases, this powerful controlling device loses its effectiveness. Hence
budget deficits necessary to carry out government intervention must be
regarded as perilous. The social function of the doctrine of 'sound finance'
is to make the level of employment dependent on the state of confidence.
The dislike of business leaders for a government spending policy grows
even more acute when they come to consider the objects on which the
money would be spent: public investment and subsidizing mass
consumption.
The economic principles of government intervention require that public
investment should be confined to objects which do not compete with the
equipment of private business (e.g. hospitals, schools, highways). Otherwise
the profitability of private investment might be impaired, and the positive
effect of public investment upon employment offset, by the negative effect of
the decline in private investment. This conception suits the businessmen
very well. But the scope for public investment of this type is rather narrow,
and there is a danger that the government, in pursuing this policy, may
eventually be tempted to nationalize transport or public utilities so as to
gain a new sphere for investment.
One might therefore expect business leaders and their experts to be more in
favour of subsidising mass consumption (by means of family allowances,
subsidies to keep down the prices of necessities, etc.) than of public
investment; for by subsidizing consumption the government would not be
embarking on any sort of enterprise. In practice, however, this is not the
case. Indeed, subsidizing mass consumption is much more violently opposed
by these experts than public investment. For here a moral principle of the
highest importance is at stake. The fundamentals of capitalist ethics
require that 'you shall earn your bread in sweat'—unless you happen to
have private means.
We have considered the political reasons for the opposition to the policy
of creating employment by government spending. But even if this opposition
were overcome—as it may well be under the pressure of the masses—the
maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes
which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders.
Indeed, under a regime of permanent full employment, the 'sack' would
cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the
boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness
of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and
improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. It is
true that profits would be higher under a regime of full employment than
they are on the average under laissez-faire; and even the rise in wage rates
resulting from the stronger bargaining power of the workers is less likely to
reduce profits than to increase prices, and thus adversely affects only the
rentier interests. But 'discipline in the factories' and 'political stability' are
more appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells
them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view, and
that unemployment is an integral part of the 'normal' capitalist system."
It is pretty well known and clear. For instance, the French Revolution occurred because the aristocracy and the church thumbed their noses. Then most of them got their heads removed.
There was also some regional Cold War-esc politics going on. The UK supported monarchs so the loss of a monarch was a blow to UK hegemony in Europe. France losing its monarchy was a massive blow which would later culminate in Napoleon, the Continental System and the UK being essentially cut off from Europe which would have ended the UK had the British not expanded into Asian with the British Raj and kicked off another era of UK hegemony.
It wasn't as simple as church bad, kings bad. It is important to remember that the spirit of the French Revolution was shortly lived. It quickly collapsed into a ruthless dictatorship under the Robespierre brothers and later reformed as a monarchy under Napoleon. It barely lasted 5 years - it ended in 1799 and the Bonaparte monarchy began in 1804. The Revolution was more about getting rid of House Bourbon and less about democracy.
Did you mean to say "losing"?
Explanation: Loose is an adjective meaning the opposite of tight, while lose is a verb. Statistics
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A lot of what you are referring to is fueled by corporate backed propaganda. To the extent we have insight into the funders, one is the fossil fuel industry with Koch Industry being a huge funder.
It’s not even about the entire elite losing power, it’s a specific subset of the elite who are fucking things up for everyone. That’s what makes it so much more frustrating imo.
I think the Three Body Problem, the first installment of the Three Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu has a better analogy.
In the first book it concludes with an imminent alien invasion in slow motion - the aliens send a fleet to Earth but its going to take them a few hundred years to reach the planet. They realize pretty quickly that they have a huge problem to contend with - humanity is developing too quickly and by the time the alien fleet reaches the planet humanity will be able to defeat them.
The solution they come up with is to stifle development using "miracles" - they convince humans to believe in illogical and unrealistic issues to fragment society. Ironically, in the book they use an environmentalist group backed by a billionaire oil tycoon to cause chaos. In the book the group works more like a social justice cult and less like a bona fide interest group. The aliens repeat this strategy in all areas of politics, technology and society - they make people believe in and pursue improbably, unrealistic or imaginary problems and goals which slows down progress and gives the aliens the advantage.
The Dark Forest and Death's End, the other two parts of the TBP trilogy, read more like high political theory crafting and less like an epic science fiction. Looking at our own world, the use of social engineering to fragment and manipulate open societies as a legitimate tactic in stifling progress in order to give another an advantage suddenly doesn't seem that crazy. I wonder how much of the oil discourse is really just a part of the new Cold War.
Given the author of TBP is Chinese, had extensive experience working in the West, and he is a hardcore Orwell fan it really does look like the TBP isn't about aliens but really it's about the Cold War, and China-West relations. For anyone who hasn't read the series - despite the authors insistence that the trilogy isn't political it is quite obviously is a thinly veiled critique on the Cold War, post-Cultural Revolution China, and the pointlessness in pursuing war at the cost of progress in the face of existential threats which in the books Liu represents as 'death' in the form of aliens, abstract dimensional terrors, and the death of the universe
I haven't seen the Netflix series but the books are fantastic - 10/10 read so I can recommend them to anyone. They're not really that sci-fi - there is some Dune level abstractness but it is ultimately politics on steroids with some really endearing and likeable characters. It's just the analogy of how the aliens approach humans rings true today when we look at China - technological and military gap that can't be bridged so fragmented open societies to stifle progress.
This is an interesting thought experiment - not knowing your lot in life, would you prefer to live as you are living now, or would you trade to be among the lowest class in a future world that is far more technologically advanced and "better" than today?
Or, would a poor person today prefer to live as they are, or would they prefer to live at the level of Andrew Carnegie or even Henry VIII in those days?
Realistically solar and batteries only just got cheap enough for any of these non fossil fuel dreams to make sense vs be like tech genocide.
If we switched to lower pollution fuels like nuclear and wind and solar 20+ years ago that would mean a lot more starvation and poverty and literally more ppl would die from the high energy and food prices than from climate change.. so far at least.
Now that solar is cheap it's the dominate choice for new power and batteries are dropping fast enough in cost that it will only be a few more years that solar and batteries are cheaper than any other option.. and faster to setup and get a return on investment.
The real goal is to get the alternative cheaper so mass adoption is a form of efficiency increase and cost savings, not to switch over when it's way more expensive and drive up the cost of living to the point people revolt and start to die faster than from actual climate change.
The US taxpayer is MASSIVELY subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. What is that doing to the cost of living?
Koch Industries is pumps between 500M-1B per year on lobbying and propaganda (to the extent that we know). It pays off because they receive billions on tax breaks and subsidies as a result. That tax payer is paying for those. What is that doing to the cost of living?
I seriously doubt it's going to be a "Great Filter" event (assuming you Even believe the Fermi Paradox is a paradox, and isn't just a product of an incomplete knowledge and understanding of the universe). Humans and or civilization will survive. Worst case, our society and culture will be greatly diminished, and we'll have to spend centuries reconfiguring and rebuilding everything; nations will fall, and new ones will eventually rise; knowledge will be lost, and eventually regained. It'll be a new dark age of humanity, but it won't be our end.
That said, we should be doing everything we can to mitigate and avoid this potential (probable) future.
> I wonder is this Mankind’s great filter moment? Nations and International bodies fail to pool their efforts towards creating a sustainable climate, underestimate climate change impact and overestimate our ability to act. Thus civilisation as a whole is stuck firefighting for centuries instead of all the progress that could have been made. I guess only time will tell.
If only someone had said something over a hundred years ago and people kept doing research to prove it. While are scientists that used their entire career to waste more energy and steal from their wallet, I think we can tell who won today. It's not the scientists that were ridiculed or thrown into an insane asylum for asking you to wash your hands between births.
It absolutely is. The math is known. The only thing science disagrees on is the exact timeframe because of the complexity involved in the system prevents a comprehensive model that can factor in everything.
We are in the feedback loop right now. Potentially a half dozen feedback loops.
That's basically happened, warming is locked in, now we're just trying to avoid an external level event, distracted by Wars, bullshit politics and economic downturn whilst all the signs are it will get a lot worse now. We are firefighting now.
The biggest hurdle, in addition to the loss of power by the elite, will be the point at which fossile fuels are still fairly important to the lower and middle class for daily life, but aren't in demand enough in other sectors to help drive the cost down. This will cause a temporary but brutal "poor tax".
Look at what the cost of this crusade has been in California. PG&E has TRIPLED electricity bills ($600/mo for a 1100 sq ft apartment) in the last 1-2 years, for the sake of climate change mitigation, while natural gas remains 1/10th the cost per unit of energy. We've spent BILLIONS on trains that barely anyone uses. EVs are heavily subsidized, and yet still unaffordable for the vast majority of people, and there isn't enough lithium in the world to fill those batteries.
There comes a point where efforts to avoid climate change are counterproductive and just plain stupid. Climates change, and there comes a point where we should focus on adapting, rather than pouring $trillions into this obsession of zero carbon output.
> Climates change, and there comes a point where we should focus on adapting, rather than pouring $trillions into this obsession of zero carbon output.
It's estimated that it will cost on the order of 10x - 100x more to adapt to runaway climate change, than it would to prevent it. And that's when we're already running up on the cost curve of prevention: if we had not had oil and gas propagandists underselling the problem, purchasing legislators, and otherwise delaying what needed to be done, the US and the West would have been assured a century of economic and technological dominance because we'd own the means of developing a sustainable economy.
Instead we're going to burn hundreds of trillions of dollars, collectively, over the next 50 years, trying to adapt to a world whose foundations are turning to sand beneath our feet. If you think that yearly wildfires in North America and a couple wars per year due to resource or water shortages is where this is going to end, I hate to inform you that is the sound of the starting gun.
But the fundamental problem is that in order to prevent it, we would have to lower the standard of living for everybody on the planet. There is literally no solution that we can implement that would maintain our current standard of living.
No leadership has found a solution to this problem, not because they have no will to, because there isn’t one.
Wars and starvation will be a result of our failure to solve this crisis, not our failure to recognize it.
Not to mention that we have been facing a warming climate for a few thousand years, and will be for the foreseeable future.
There were plenty of acceptable off-ramps. But none that the wealthy and powerful would accept, because their standard or living might not grow as fast. This was a political failure, enabled by economists who were willing to accept and spread lies, for money. The profession has the blood of millions on its hands, and seems unable or unwilling to do anything about that complicity. It is a moral failure.
> Not to mention that we have been facing a warming climate for a few thousand years, and will be for the foreseeable future.
This is strictly false. The rate of change, on a historical scale, can only be attributed to human activity. This is a bit like saying "all cars stop eventually, so there's no reason to worry about a crash at 90 mph."
>It's estimated that it will cost on the order of 10x - 100x more to adapt to runaway climate change, and it would to prevent it.
Absolute horseshit. It was also estimated that the polar ice caps would be gone by 2012, and that certainly didn't happen.
These estimates are put out by people looking for money for their pet cause. And their estimates will be meaningless a few years later when they're over budget, underperforming, and holding their hands out for more cash.
If this green energy nuts were serious they would be pro-nuclear. They are only for green energy when it’s through a lens of them assuming power. That’s their fundamental principle through which all things must flow. Cheaper electricity via existing technologies and private ownership doesn’t make them more powerful so they don’t care. If they actually believed carbon was as dangerous as they claim; they’d be demanding nuclear energy everywhere. They don’t.
While I've always been a fan of nuclear power, this is something of an expired take. Nuclear is nowhere near price competitive with renewable+storage, and hasn't been for most of a decade now. It also only works where there's significant freshwater supplies, which means several very energy-hungry parts of the country (Southwest, West) are straight-up ineligible for it.
The green energy nuts aren't perfect, but a lot of them are working from solid and stable economic and scientific models that simply tell "traditional" economists things they don't want to hear, because it makes business owners confront the possibility that there's more to this economy than extracting profit from it.
Climate would still brutally change, modern civilization didn't happen to spring up right after the start of the Interglacial Warming Period. That's not a coincidence, humans had been around 200k+ years, but about 160k of those year were shit ass glacial conditions with way less food and rain and way more hypothermia.
Most of Earth climate sucks for humans AND to make it trickier humans are big brains and adapted for the cooler conditions of an Ice Age, BUT modern ciziliation is adapted for the short lived warming cycle of an Ice Age. It's a pretty fragile balance that we will have to artificially produce.
The only way to make the sustainable climate ppl are dreaming of is to permanently change the natural cycle to be an Interglacial Warming Period indefinitely, but without the80k years of cooling can you really keep this many glaciers around?
Lol the fuck are you talking about. Are you claiming that fossil fuels and industrial farming aren't having a rapid and measurable effect on the current climate?
They've bought in to some conservative propaganda that magically makes climate change not humanity's fault because sometimes, there are glacial periods.
Climatologists have thoroughly investigated and debunked the scientific questions that originally spawned this political meme, but as we've seen, that doesn't stop trolls, "useful idiots (in the Soviet sense of the term)," or simple shills from spreading them around like they're news.
Interesting opinion. How much money has J.P. Morgan invested into fossil fuels? Obviously we can’t just stop, but phasing out is a perfectly reasonable solution economically and environmentally.
Fundamentally the article claims that the reason we can't transition is because consumers demand more cars and air travel. They said that the developing world will want "to buy more cars and take more flights".
In other words, in order for the whole world to be as environmentally destructive as the rich world, we're going to have to destroy the environment.
That sounds a lot more like "we don't want to solve the problem" than "we can't solve the problem."
> That sounds a lot more like "we don't want to solve the problem" than "we can't solve the problem."
That is fundamentally what they are saying. Net zero in ‘years’ can be attained but it would come at a significant cost that society won’t accept. So it’s ‘impossible’ with the current constraints of what society will accept.
Most surveys I've seen that probe some of the trade-offs of climate policy find voters aren't willing to pay much for climate mitigation. Ruy Teixeira recently discussed one survey in the link provided.
In environmental activist circles it is taken as given that the political influence of the FF industry is the primary reason we have climate inaction. This seems wrong to me & I think the unwillingness of the public to foot the bill for climate mitigation is what's driving climate inaction.
>The shift towards heavier and less fuel-efficient conventional vehicles increases growth in both oil demand and CO2 emissions. Between 2021 and 2022, oil use in conventional cars, excluding SUVs, remained roughly the same, but the oil consumption of SUVs globally increased by 500 000 barrels per day, accounting for one-third of the total growth in oil demand. On average, SUVs consume around 20% more oil than an average medium-size non-SUV car. The combustion-related CO2 emissions of SUVs increased by nearly 70 million tonnes in 2022.
Their earlier report (emphasis mine): https://www.iea.org/commentaries/growing-preference-for-suvs-challenges-emissions-reductions-in-passenger-car-market
>The impact of its rise on global emissions is nothing short of surprising. The global fleet of SUVs has seen its emissions growing by nearly 0.55 Gt CO2 during the last decade to roughly 0.7 Gt CO2. As a consequence, SUVs were the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO2 emissions since 2010 after the power sector, but ahead of heavy industry (including iron & steel, cement, aluminium), as well as trucks and aviation.
To a degree yes, but you just acknowledged that the FF industry has spent billions on influence and punditry. How many voters don’t believe the scientists that specialize in the field? I’m not saying voters should be ignored, but maybe we can try and find a solution to the education problem.
The internet has made everyone convinced they know more than specialists. There is a reason why specialization is necessary for an economy to function well. We can’t all get a PhD in climate science so we need to listen to those that did. Ya know?
I don't think it is an education problem. The point I was making is even if people accept the scientific basis of climate change their appetite for paying for climate mitigation policies (or changing their behavior) is fairly low.
Certainly in my peer group I notice people arguing the importance of climate change but this doesn't in anyway change their consumer preferences: they still buy that $75k Sprinter van to drive around the West rock climbing, everyone is flying at the slightest opportunity. The messaging by environmental groups laying the responsibility CC on corporations and billionaires has been a really stupid self-own by creating the impression that Climate mitigation is someone else's problem.
Voters and politicians hate inflation. Getting rid of fossil fuels without a ready replacement is going to lead to a lot of energy-driven inflation that will make no one happy. This is why I'm a pessimist on any meaningful policies phasing out FFs is going to happen soon.
The question isn't just whether folks take flights at the slightest opportunity, but whether they would take flight instead of, say, a comparable light rail service that takes slightly longer but is more environmentally friendly.
It's not about getting people to go cold turkey, it's about giving them access to healthier alternatives.
Americans are losing their minds faced with single-digit inflation and you think they'll swallow a 20-hour train ride for 5 times the cost of a 5-hour flight?
To borrow a phrase from the Ozzies: yeah, nah.
Edit: I think this has been the most mundane reply I got blocked for. Still had to get the last word in I guess.
I'm not that guy but I'd like to point out that no one is actually asking anyone to take a 20-hour train ride. Many flights and most intercity car trips in the most populous parts of the US could be replaced with high-speed trains that could have comparable cost and travel time to flying. The northeast, the Texas Triangle, and California + Las Vegas are all strong contenders.
Here is a short, friendly, and data-driven video making the case for train travel in North America and they show their work.
If you made the train rides pleasant enough and gave them enough free time and opportunity to engage in them, while also disincentivizing the use of planes, yes, obviously there would be broad trends towards the use of trains.
You're being disingenuously reductionist and overconfident in your social analysis skills and it's annoying me.
There is no education problem. There is a cognitive dissonance problem and therefore a interest problem. The reason voters don't believe the scientists in the field is because they have a vested interest in the opposing narrative, nothing else.
Voters are shockingly ignorant about everything. They don't know shit about black holes or ultra violet lithography either. But they still believe whatever prominent scientists working on ultra violet lithography have to say. Not because they can asses their statements accurately but because they have no interest in not believing them.
Education isn't a solution because the percentage of people too dumb to understand climate science is structurally too high everywhere in the world, not just in the US. Education only gets you so far. Normally that isn't a problem. It only becomes a problem when scientific narratives contradict religious beliefs or when those narratives have economic and policy implications that could harm their material interests. Like higher taxes on planes induced by climate science making certain holidays out of reach that people are used to.
That is what drives the resistance more than anything. People supplying the narratives that are in demand is just a natural consequence of the interest configuration in society.
It's called psychological denial. You don't want to believe something is true, so you just don't believe it. This makes it easier to convince voters that it's a fiction.
Oil is extremely energy dense to the point where a gallon of gas has the energy density of 1000+ 18650 battery cells.
Additionally humans have gotten very good at extracting value out of every drop of oil. Even the tires that electric cars use come from oil. So many things in our economy not just related to transportation would have to change and with current technology it’s close to impossible.
Blaming the oil companies for demand side economics, physics, and chemistry is silly.
The less we use it for things we have an alternative for the better. It is a finite resource. Why is it for energy plants when we can use green and nuclear at a relatively similar cost? We need it for airplanes because there is no other alternative to oil, not for grandma to go to cvs and get her meds. We need it for rockets to advance our science and tech. Economically it makes sense to switch to renewable, or more abundant energy sources.
The point of this article is we don’t have enough money and the technology isn’t ready for us to switch everything away from oil the way we need to.
It doesn’t make sense “economically” because many alternatives have their own draw backs. For example the amount of energy and water required to make a replacement for a paper bag is like 1000x the amount of energy and water required to make a plastic bag.
That is not what they are saying. They are saying that the developing world is going to tell the developed world to F off because the developed world is responsible for most of the environmental damage and it isn’t fair for the developing world to sacrifice growth and prosperity for a problem they didn’t create.
>They are saying that the developing world is going to tell the developed world to F off because the developed world is responsible for most of the environmental damage and it isn’t fair for the developing world to sacrifice growth and prosperity for a problem they didn’t create.
Anybody who burns fossil fuels is causing the problem, so your formulation is wrong.
Yes, of course the rich countries are most responsible and should pay for most of the cleanup costs.
But anybody who burns fossil fuels is part of the problem and it's time to stop making excuses. In rich countries they say: "China burns more than we do (as a country)...and they are still building coal plants." In China they say: "Rich countries caused the problem and now they want us to suffer from the cleanup." Big countries blame small countries for the per-capita CO2. Small countries look at big countries total emissions. Rich countries ask why poor countries emissions are growing so quickly. Poor countries ask why rich countries emissions are not dropping faster.
Everybody has an excuse. It's a totally self-defeating blame game.
No, the article is saying that we are going to be transitioning more slowly because interest rates are up and it's going to be more expensive to make the investments that we need to make.
As for the developing countries--many do not have the infrastructure to support EVs yet. Heck, adoption of EVs has been happening more quickly than anticipated in the US that there are regions where there are concerns about the reliability of the grid over the next few years.
Individuals can't solve this issue because it's a group action problem.
Are all 8 billion consumers meant to have a meeting and agree to only fly on carbon neutral planes?
The only agents able to solve this problem are governments and large corporations. Literally just because there are less of them that need to agree to a solution.
Sure, I agree. Although I don't think that lets consumers off the hook. Just because the average person doesn't have the ethical backbone to make the right choice does not mean that you yourself should not make the right choice.
By analogy, most people aren't vegan, and I'm not either, but I know that factory farming is wrong and they are right and I don't try to pretend otherwise. People who spend their children's carbon budget are wrong, even if everyone else is doing it.
Personally I'd be more strongly morally inclined to give all my income to aid and development charities than make my life carbon neutral. It would likely be much more impactful.
Taking the moral approach to climate change is philosophically messy and has mixed results.
The economics are pretty clear cut though. We're going to all be poorer unless we coordinate a transition to a low carbon economy.
One can define "good" extremely narrowly to exclude all of these, of course. I could do the same to prove that there aren't any "good" alternatives to hydrogen.
Did you seriously just say that with a Democratic president standing there enforcing Republican tariffs on green energy? Did you really write that in public on purpose in 2024?
I'm impressed. I'll be referring to this comment later. Don't touch it.
I mean, they’re saying it could take generations globally, which sounds perfectly plausible to me.
The world is a massive place and fossil fuels are used just about everywhere on the planet. It’s not gonna be done in 20 years unless a cheap, easy, sci-fi-like alternative energy machine is invented. That’s not happening.
Read the article closely. The JP Morgan person is advocating for an INCREASE in fossil fuel use to allow more people to have more cars and more air travel.
Yeah, and the government of Nigeria is not going to tell Nigeria to not do exactly as the Americans did a century ago out of some nebulous commitment to an externality. They want what Americans already have, and who can blame them? I'd want an AC unit and a pool in Nigeria too.
This isn't about JP Morgan, this is about human beings. He's stating what should be obvious.
>Yeah, and the government of Nigeria is not going to tell Nigeria to not do exactly as the Americans did a century ago out of some nebulous commitment to an externality.
Sure, if you consider a livable planet for our grandkids a "nebulous commitment". I don't. I'd just call that common sense and responsibility, and I believe that many Nigerians are in possession of both.
In fact, it turns out that yes they do:
>In order to protect the Nigerian environment and ecosystem from the ravages associated with climate change and to achieve the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria signed the country’s climate change bill into law on 18th November 2021.
...
The goal of the carbon budget is to keep the average increase in global temperature within 2 degrees Celsius and make a concerted effort to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
So no, it isn't like Botswana at all.
They know that we're all in this together. I'm pleased that they are not as eager to make excuses for inaction as redditors are.
They say it’s impossible to meet it in the timeframe that was set. Not that the goal itself was impossible.
And the reason is because we can’t just change societies demand overnight. It would be great to suppress demand, we could institute a carbon tax so that everyone has to pay for the pollution they cause. However, this is going to significantly impact the poor far more than the wealthy. JP Morgan believes we don’t have the constitution to make the hard choices required to attain the stated goals in the stated timeline. They particularly pointed out social unrest if energy costs increased (what would happen with a carbon tax.)
Cutting off fossil fuels cold turkey has staggering negative externalities as well, like the deaths of a large portion of the global population very quickly.
I'm not upset at him for working for a bad company. I'm upset that he's taking a defeatist position which is at odds with the wellbeing of the world's people but in line with his own corporate interests.
Something he could say instead is: "If we do nothing, fossil fuel demand is projected to continue to increase, so government should do something right now."
But...JP Morgan is invested in fossil fuels, so it isn't in his interest to say that.
> It added that investment in renewable energy “currently offers subpar returns” and that if energy prices rose strongly, there was even a risk of social unrest.
If we want renewable energy to take over fossil fuels, it must do it at a cheaper price point. Because people aren't going to choose to do without over getting what they want and causing pollution. And if energy prices go up, which is required for renewable energy to become more popular, then there’s a social unrest concern.
None of this is a judgement on values nor is it being defeatist.
You are confusing JPMorgan believing that society needs more energy, and is willing to pay for it, and so they invest in fossil fuels to provide to society what it wants with JPMorgan wanting to change society to use more fossil fuels so that their investments do better.
It is much, much easier for JPMorgan to divest from fossil fuel investments than it is for them to change all of societies habits. Their investments are where they are because they believe our need for fossil fuels exceeds what other industry bodies have predicted. This article just restates the same position JPMorgan had before they initiated their investments.
>If we want renewable energy to take over fossil fuels, it must do it at a cheaper price point.
You know how we alter that price point? Add in the cost of negative externalities of fossil fuels with a carbon tax. Something governments could choose to do.
They could, but they would be lynched by an angry mob pretty quickly if they did that. We all saw what the rising energy costs induced by the Ukraine war triggered in Europe, massive government subsidies on energy costs. Now imagine a government doing the opposite by making energy more expensive on purpose. What do you think is going to happen?
People will just accept paying even more on already tight budgets?
>Because people aren't going to choose to do without over getting what they want and causing pollution. And if energy prices go up, which is required for renewable energy to become more popular, then there’s a social unrest concern.
Sure. That's what I said. If we don't WANT to invest in the transition, then we will fail to do so. And part of the way that we can shape the consensus away from doing it is to say that its "impossible."
Instead of being honest and saying: "We don't want to do it", we claim it is impossible.
And given that JPMorgan makes tons of money off of the status quo, it is very convenient to claim it is impossible rather than saying: "We have hard choices ahead of us and JP Morgan will take the lead in making some of them and we will use our bullhorn as loud as we can to encourage governments and other corporations to make hard choices too."
>JPMorgan Chase contributes more money towards fossil fuel industries than any other bank, putting a total of $268 billion into coal, oil and gas firms over the last four years, according to a new study.
>In total, the world’s biggest banks have put $2.7 trillion into those industries since the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to the Banking on Climate Change 2020 report, which tracked data on 35 private financial institutions. While investments to the biggest coal, oil and gas producers fell in the immediate aftermath of the Paris Agreement, researchers found that in 2019 those investments shot back up by some 40%.
>Another three U.S. banks—Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America—joined JPM to round out the top four fossil fuel investors; Canada’s RBC took fifth position. Britain’s Barclays was the largest European investor in fossils overall, having plowed $118 billion into hydrocarbons, but according to the report, French firm BNP Paribas overtook all other European banks in 2019, putting more than $30 billion into fossil financing.
>No matter what the commercials say, there are only three basic categories of investment: ownership, lending, and cash equivalents. They are products that are purchased with the expectation that they will produce income, or profit, or both.
Lending money is a category of investing. The risks generally are lower than for many investments; consequently, the rewards are relatively modest.
This entire conversation seems to overlook the fact that climate doesn't care about economics. You can't bargain with it, just endure it. Climate has an almost unlimited ability to inflict cost on the economy of every country. It leads the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse around by the nose.
We are rushing towards an unprecedented threat to humanity, and any economist that isn't ringing the alarm bell is worth about as much as a firefighter playing with a flare gun in a gas refinery.
While it's true that transitioning away from fossil fuels is a monumental task, it's not an impossible one. You suggests that we need a "cheap, easy, sci-fi-like alternative energy machine," but the reality is that many of these technologies already exist and are becoming increasingly affordable.
The Paris Agreement aims for the world to be carbon-neutral by 2050, and achieving this goal is not just desirable, but necessary. The consequences of not doing so are severe and far-reaching, affecting every aspect of our lives, from the food we eat to the air we breathe.
Every individual, community, and nation has a role to play in this transition. We can start by reducing our energy consumption, supporting renewable energy projects, and advocating for policies that promote sustainability.
The transition to a carbon-free world will create new jobs, stimulate economic growth, and improve public health. It's not just about saving the planet; it's about building a better future for all of us.
Let's not wait for generations to pass before we take action. Let's act now, for ourselves, for our children, and for the future of our planet. The technology is here, the will is growing, and together, we can make the Paris Agreement a reality.
Nuclear is the cheap and easy alternative to fossil fuels. And gives experts and scientists sufficient buffers to figure out actual renewable energy sources.
India and China at this point hopefully will become torch bearers of nuclear energy for the whole world.
That only addresses energy use. You’ve also got transportation, petrochemical production (fertilizers), and a long tail of other fossil fuel products (think plastics) that simply can’t be replaced by anything that currently exists. Nuclear works but it’s no silver bullet. Even if we electrify everything (Simon Micheux has shown this is basically impossible with current materials science), it’s going to take generations at minimum.
Ok, so you’re going to go through all of the work to get a barrel of oil and just throw away 60% of it? Get real. A developing country that doesn’t have the infrastructure to employ renewables or nuclear is going to burn it, and unless you threaten them with war for trying to run their economies on oil and natural gas, they’re going to do it. In fact, there’s a decent probability everyone will continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future because renewables only account for like 10% of worldwide power generation and the demand for energy is not slowing down. If you think we’re going to plateau any time soon, especially with AI hitting its stride, you’re sorely mistaken.
Ok, I can accept being wrong about the current electricity generation mix. Regardless, we’re using more fossil fuels than ever before, not less. Demand is accelerating, and we have serious material bottlenecks to contend with in the quest to electrify. I’d be happy to see fossil fuels go away, but it’s just not realistic given the economic realities of the world, especially as energy-hungry technologies are being deployed faster than we can add to energy production capacity.
It's one cheap and easy alternative, but solar cells really easy to deploy, and you get energy right away.
I know people who have put solar cells on their houses in Sweden and use them to charge their electric cars. In southern Europe meanwhile, solar cells are something that can provide 50%+ of all energy needs.
In southern Europe, southern France, Spain, Italy, etc., you can power your entire household on solar cells than you put on top of your house. You can power your farm equipment entirely on solar cells on your barn, etc.
I don't know what the payback time is, but the payoff time in Sweden is five years.
In Spain average insolation is, I think, about double. So 2.5 years. What else pays itself off that fast? Selling drugs? Burgling a bank?
I guess you have not read anything about the reality (impossibility) of “phase out fossil fuel” dreams? Someone below mentioned the “Paris Agreement”. Are you aware that essentially all the signers have already said it will not happen. For a reality check, look at global crude and condensate demand. Also look at the correlation between GDP and fossil fuel use.
My minor was in global studies with a specialization in global energy. Guess again. You’re confusing impossible with expensive. Governments will write blank checks for tools of murder but can’t find a pen when it comes to investing in something for their citizens.
I dont understand why people are like it's too expensive to phase out fossil fuels, when the cost of continuing to use fossil fuels will be losing most of every city on the coast between Texas and Maine to as a start.
The problem is its getting framed against a cost that doesn't exist, continuing to use fossil fuels and not paying any greater price than we have been.
I mean, for gods sake, we can pretty much write off all of Florida between sea level rise and increased hurricane activity.
Well, our leadership needs to get on it, that's why they are leaders, they chose the hard job, they need to nut up and do it or let someone who can and will lead.
Gas prices were rock bottom in 2020 and Trump lost for other reasons (didn't he?). Oh and if you think I'm a bitter republican for saying this, gas prices have doubled since Biden was inaugurated, hell it reached 6 dollars in 2022, a miderm election year, and republicans won the house with pretty much the tiniest margin.
Find a fuel that can power society and replace oil at the same level of quality of life and people will gladly switch.
Telling people they are killing the planet because they want to get to work or go food shopping while Taylor Swift and other rich people jet set and use their jets to taxi their friends around pisses lots of people off, and I really can't blame them.
What you are discussing appears to be a consensus view among many younger people, non-energy experts, and of course green enthusiasts. The reality is quite different. However, it would not be surprising if you have never been exposed to any analysis that runs counter to the consensus narrative. I assure you, the case for a hydrocarbon free world is non existent. For a few examples of some realistic analysis, check out Robert Bryce's work. Read "A Question of Power" and your perspective will be broadened.
Far a real world example, check out Norway. More electric cars per capita than anywhere, yet hydrocarbon demand continues to rise.
Wanna make a wager on US hydrocarbon demand growth 5 years after Biden's multi -trillion green subsidies?
You must have flunked your studies. Seems like you have no clue about energy markets at all and no it is just not oil, plus you have absolutely no clue how oil is used in everything of your life and can not be replaced even in the next 200 years.
There is absolutely nothing economically or environmentally reasonable about phasing out fossil fuels.
Look at what the cost of this crusade has been in California. PG&E has TRIPLED electricity bills ($600/mo for a 1100 sq ft apartment) in the last 1-2 years, for the sake of climate change mitigation, while natural gas remains 1/10th the cost per unit of energy. We've spent BILLIONS on trains that barely anyone uses. EVs are heavily subsidized, and yet still unaffordable for the vast majority of people, and there isn't enough lithium in the world to fill those batteries. Those mines aren't exactly environmentally friendly either.
There comes a point where efforts to avoid climate change are counterproductive and just plain stupid. Climates change, and there comes a point where we should focus on adapting, rather than pouring $trillions into this obsession of zero carbon output.
But I think that's a perfect example of the corruption involved in spending on climate change initiatives. Money gets allocated towards that cause, and then nobody actually tracks what results from the investment. Climate change measures are a bottomless black hole for our money and quality of life, and it deserves far more scrutiny.
...you do realize most of the proposed climate change government initiatives (as opposed to private industry being subsidized, or contracted out) are cash flow positive? The only reason they're so politically toxic is because of the impacts of pricing carbon have on the investor class.
It seems to me that you are suffering from a narrow vision. You’re looking at how it would affect you, in our current state of things. Most of the carbon output is not from you, me or anyone else. It’s residential and commercial and we could invest funds into replacing fossil fuel plants to nuclear. Zero emission, safer for nearby residents than any toxin spewing plant by far, we have tons of uranium in Nevada waiting to be mined, and while it would be a massively expensive investment it would give exponential returns. As we phase out fossil fuels we can do a better job for the workers too. NAFTA wasn’t a bad idea, it was poorly executed and American workers paid the price. So as we phase out fossil fuel jobs, we can include funding for worker education to ease the shift into a new energy field.
That alone would be a great economically efficient way to phase out a large portion of our carbon output. And there is a bit of hope involved in this discussion that new tech will save us as far as the lithium problem. And it is a problem, but just because there are hurdles in the road doesn’t mean we just tell our grandkids “sorry you can’t see stars anymore, but hey it was too expensive”
It’s not a prediction. In LA for a while in the 80s the smog obscured the sky. Same thing is true in modern day Beijing. Not a “doomsday prediction” but an observed event.
Lolwhat? You don't think trains have positive ROI?? The most cost effective way to ship large amounts of good over land? The way one of the richest people alive today made his fortune isn't cash flow positive? What reality are you in??
Lol, no. We're talking about the reality of phasing out fossil fuels, and you're regurgitating unhinged opinions regarding the financial viability of trains for some unbeknownst reason
It isn’t so much of an opinion as it is an observation on study results. This opinion is not isolated to JPM. There are significant challenges to the transition away from fossil fuels not the least of which is raw materials. Just to accomplish the 2030-2035 deadline for the USA of selling only EVs, the WORLD’s mining production has to basically double practically overnight and that’s only for consumer vehicles which makes up less than 15% of emissions from fossil fuels. Add in commercial vehicles and the energy consumption of those vehicles too and you’re looking at an astronomical amount of energy consumption jump that I don’t know that the current infrastructure is ready for.
It’s his interpretation of the results of a study. If you really want to get into it has the study been peer reviewed? Who funded the study? It’s crazy talk to say we need to stop extracting and using oil immediately, but it’s also crazy talk to say fuck it. My whole original point was that jp morgan is an investment firm and bank, not a climate science institute. I understand that he is talking about the economics, but he is pushing an agenda in someone else’s lane. I just want to know what his incentive is.
There’s also places where green energy is just prohibitively expensive or inefficient. A lot of the mandates that insist that it has to be 100% green energy is going to double rates in certain areas that can’t realistically do it.
Most energy uses is for commercial and residential. We think gasoline for cars, but that’s a drop in the bucket for global consumption of oil. We have the tech to safely and efficiently convert to nuclear power for residential and commercial uses. Zero emissions get released in nuclear power plants. It leaves radioactive waste but that can easily be stored and contained. France gets more than 50% of its energy from nuclear, whereas the US only gets around 11% from nuclear. Just think of all the jobs and stimulus that a program like that would create. Our government has already burdened my future away with debt, and at least this way it’s for something other than legislative pork or aid money for genocides.
Nuclear power is inflexible for peak power usage. The current struggles with most grids are being able to scale up and down with AC demand and 4-8pm, which nuclear is terrible with.
This is a terrible false equivalency. No one is advocating Nuclear for solving peak demand. You would mixed grid. Let Nuclear cover the base demand and use solar/wind to provide during peak demand. This is what France and Finland does.
Nuclear is a solution to a problem that rarely exists then. Most baseline plants are locked in for 50 year periods- planned on well in advanced. You can’t just build a nuclear plant and it works. Load balancing is hard and baseline plants in general are just not popular for a long term sustainable grid.
The irony is that the more solar becomes popular- the less nuclear makes sense.
Solar has the problem of putting into TOO much energy in the grid at the wrong time, which makes it even more crucial that we ONLY build plants with maximum flexibility moving forward. Unless you propose we put a moratorium on solar?
Photovalic cells consume massive amounts of precious resources and have an effective lifespan for 25 years last I read. It’s not really a sustainable option for mass execution. But using solar mixed with nuclear, wind, hydro, and there is designs being drawn up for turbines that use coastal currents. That would power Florida all summer long through hurricane season. Joking aside, the Atlantic current is one of the most powerful and we could put a huge chunk of energy into the grid if those work out.
Many European countries manage a mostly green energy grid reasonably well and reasonably priced. I know that America has its own unique issues, namely logistics cuz this bitch huge, but if the French can do it there is no way that we can’t.
The challenges will be different, we are also the size of multiple France’s. As of the 2020 census ~82% of Americans live in cities or urban areas, and in the same year ~81% of the French live in cities or urban areas. It wouldn’t be hard to congregate a huge portion of residential and commercial energy effectively in the same manner. Rural areas will be different.
JPM doesn’t invest their own money rather they invest client money plus they are an actual bank that offer services that don’t include any investments. Do you even have a clue about what JPM actually does or are you one of those with opinions but no knowledge?
ITT: people using long-form essays to essentially describe the tragedy of the commons.
It’s not new, and is quite literally a tale as old as civilization. People collectively can’t be bothered and refuse to accept we are all individually the snowflake in the avalanche.
Yes, but the outstanding question is what will it take to break the dam and create some sort of revolution.
And it still remains unacceptable that the people holding power at corporations like these actively choose to frame the problem as "welp, can't do anything about it" rather than "we're gonna have to change the paradigm if we want to survive."
This is much, much more about the power of the elites than the ignorance of the masses.
People think of fossil fuels and think that EVs won’t need them, but our economy is so dependent on petroleum products in general. Plastics and materials that come from fossil fuels at this point in time cannot be replaced with almost any other product.
I am fine with transitioning to EVs, even though I don’t think they are very good right now. There is time needed to make them better which may be in the 10-20 year investment range. Repairability of an EV is essentially zero, which adds a lot of waste in countries that don’t care about recycling. And charging obviously is a challenge for those without a home charger.
The fossil fuel dependency will continue until we build alternatives to the plastics and products we derive from them. And investments will need to be made not just in EVs but alternative products all around.
> Plastics and materials that come from fossil fuels at this point in time
"Fossil fuel" refers to the burning of oil/gas for energy. Not to the use of oil/gas as a feedstock. The use as feedstock isn't what's pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel
>>A fossil fuel[a] is a hydrocarbon-containing material such as coal, oil, and natural gas,[2] formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel.
All production processes have a carbon footprint. Even Solar and Wind, which are subordinate to Fossil Fuels for the baseline grid in most cases. Thankfully, Japan has the common sense to reconsider and go forward with Nuclear.
Germany and Denmark are already getting a higher share of their electricity from solar and wind than Japan ever did from nuclear. Considering the doubling rate for solar and how long new nuclear often takes to come online, nuclear might never catch up with solar and wind.
Though you can claim that it doesn't need to, I suppose. China's an interesting case, because though they're mentioned as being big on nuclear, they're getting more from solar and more from wind than from nuclear, and both solar and wind are still scaling more quickly than nuclear.
We don’t need EVs either. EV were created to save the automobile industry, not the planet.
We already have the means and systems that could replace automobiles in general. If you live in an area with well developed urban planning and maintained public transportation, there is no need for any cars for most people.
I'm all for increasing the share of transport via mass transit. But you won't get rid of cars. Even in countries with outstanding mass transit systems, a high percentage of trips are still taken by automobiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share (and that's in cities with > 1 million inhabitants. Smaller cities are more likely to have less mass transit.
I would contest that making things even worse, we probably need to be zero plastic even more than zero FFE.
That's because, while the science is still relatively new on it, I do believe we are trending to a belief that micro plastics are deleterious to human fertility. And if so, it would explain the massive decline in global fertility we see in recent decades.
With the climate, there's at least degrees of pain we could shoot for but eventually stabilize once we got our shit together. I don't think we can recover when we poison ourselves to the point where we can't even desire and are incapable to have enough kids for replacement levels.
> That's because, while the science is still relatively new on it, I do believe we are trending to a belief that micro plastics are deleterious to human fertility. And if so, it would explain the massive decline in global fertility we see in recent decades.
Is that such a bad thing? Plastics in this sense seem to be a solution, not a problem.
> Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at the Rocky Mountain Institute, disputed JPMorgan’s assertion that the cost of building renewables capacity was becoming unaffordable, saying the annual growth of energy infrastructure spending will only be 2 per cent, as money is increasingly diverted from oil and gas projects into renewables.
> “Renewable energy is much cheaper and more efficient than fossil fuel energy, which is why almost all electricity generation capacity now being built is solar or wind,” he said.
Higher interest rates may slow down the investments but since renewables are cheaper the trend isn't going to reverse.
What article IS right about though is that we are falling short of 2030 targets, as this IEA report released 3 months ago confirms:
> Under existing policies and market conditions, global renewable capacity is forecast to reach 7 300 GW by 2028. This growth trajectory would see global capacity increase to 2.5 times its current level by 2030, falling short of the tripling goal. Governments can close the gap to reach over 11 000 GW by 2030 by overcoming current challenges and implementing existing policies more quickly.
Renewables are not a matter of "if they happen" but "when". Problem of course is that fighting climate change is a race and there is a massive difference between reaching our targets in 2030 vs reaching our 2030 targets in 2050 for example.
Renewables are not cheaper for what matters. The battery technology is not there yet so instead of one power plant, going hard on renewables takes construction of up to two power plants.
With the number of large scale battery storage units being implemented over the past couple of years, I don't think it is any longer obvious that "battery technology is not there yet". For the more economic situations (eg. daily short term power storage to meet evening demand) I think it may very well be "here now".
Yep. Reality has not been a part of energy planning for a long time. Renewables and EVs are good but we are not ready to transcend fossil fuel dependency.
All that is happening now is the developing countries with some power and autonomy like China, India and Indonesia can ignore climate colonialism and are rapidly building out coal-fired power infrastructure.
Weaker countries and those dependent on the West are forced to depend on more expensive and less reliable renewable energy.
We are about to learn that you can leapfrog technology in mobile phones and industries not constrained by physical laws, in particular the law of thermodynamics.
Developing countries are not going to be able to go from inadequate fossil infrastructure directly to a modern renewables based system.
JP Morgan (and UBS and others) are just saying what they have known to be true for a long time but have not been able to say. But the dam has broken.
The rapid transition fantasies of the global elites have been been practical and were never going to work.
Climate change is real and we do need to look for and invest in plans to mitigate and adapt. But they can’t be imposed on the poor by the rich, either with or from wealthy countries.
The pushback is now too strong and the logic too powerful. This is the year in which the global elite climate consensus collapses.
What I am saying is the story. The previous comments from UBS were far more direct. J P Morgan has to be more polite than me but they agree 100% that net zero may be generations away.
The article also says that RE stocks have “stalled”, because as you comment shows it is easy to offend the true believers. But the charts shows they have collapsed 60%.
War and interest rates may be the cover story, and interest rates have certainly make it impossible to continue to subside uneconomic projects. But the core problem is reality.
Our civilization would collapse in days without fossil fuels and although that will change some day it is probably not in our lifetime.
However, if you would like produce any facts or evidence, we can have a nice friendly logical discussion.
Pointing to the collapse is rather disingenuous without mentioning the frankly insane rise over 2020, the fact that fall is largely linked to a reduction in commitments from policy makers, and the huge numbers of elections this year where some candidates are taking an actively anti-renewable stance for political purposes. They remain essentially level with fossil fuel stocks and the suggestion that they offer inferior returns to fossil fuels doesn’t seem to have any basis in reality. I’m also intrigued what uneconomic projects you are referring to?
No one is referring to removing fossil fuels instantly and scare tactics around that point are a common trope of oil companies. Similarly your point around developing countries struggling to adopt renewables because they don’t yet have fossil fuels seems ill considered given there is no stepping requirement between the two, if anything the distributed nature of renewables should allow for easier energy investment.
This is what happens in bubbles. Prices race up and collapse. Pointing this out is not disingenuous by any stretch. The downward pressure on fossil stocks probably has as much to do with punitive policies from the US and Europe as anything else. If Trumps wins the next election I assure you they will soar. In fact the recent uptick May reflect little more than confidence that will be what happens.
I worked in the energy and renewable energy fields for many years. I saw this coming and shifted my focus.
Two years ago all of the idealists and advocates were shouting from the rooftops that this was the end of fossil fuel, that we would see “stranded assets”.
Renewables may be distributed but solar only generated power for 1/4-1/3 of the day and outside of a centralized system would be very hard to finance. If you think interest rates are punitive now, just wait until you see the cost of debt for projects in developing countries with low credit off-takers.
I think that if you pay attention, even in developed countries they agree that the barrier is the grid. They just don’t ascribe that cost to RE.
I don’t think it is a bubble, it was an extremely sharp rise followed by a decline over 3 years, that’s the opposite of a normal bubble. The timings also link very strongly to climate initiatives and low interest rate environments associated with covid.
It still seems very likely there will be a bunch of stranded assets. In many cases renewable energy production is cheaper and grid level storage solutions do away with the one down side presented by renewable energy.
Re developing nations, outside of vehicles, centralised systems would be needed just as much for fossil fuel energy production and would have to overcome similar financing hurdles.
In fact renewables might well offer easier small scale distributed production with sodium batteries are likely to offer very cheap distributed energy storage solutions.
The barrier to what is the grid? Switching to EVs? Sure. But if you’re improving the grid to handle more energy production generally then that production might as well be renewable.
Grid-based storage is much further away than you seem to think. I don’t believe there are any commercial applications is developing countries except perhaps remote islands with a tourist economy. It is decades away from grid replace in countries like Cambodia or much of Africa.
I may agree that the rise was linked to climate initiatives (I.e. subsidies and regulations) and low interest rates.
Fossil energy can support grid development because of its high and predictable utilization rates. When you can generate power reliably 24 hours a day, you can build a grid to support it.
With Solar the advantage is indeed that it can be sited near demand. But it won’t support a grid because it operated for 25% of the day and the exact same 25% that everyone has power and doesn’t need more.
Commercial and Industrial solar rooftops were among the best applications of solar because they are near demand. But the only reason there is that much demand is because of the grid. You couldn’t build a new factory and use only solar to power it.
Solar and batteries could indeed be very effective at proving distributed power but it would be expensive, which is why it works in Hawaii or other wealthy island where they have money and limited options.
I’ll defer to the opinions of the economists here but that chart is to me a classic bubble. Irrational expectations pumped it up, reality brought it back down.
Ignoring the wide use of hydro power which exactly is grid scale energy storage, grid based storage is in place in a huge number of places already. https://www.energy-storage.news/europe-deployed-1-9gw-of-battery-storage-in-2022-3-7gw-expected-in-2023-lcp-delta/
There’s a battery farm going up near me in SW london in the next year or so.
And that’s just lithium batteries. Flow battery tech is being used in a number of projects underway and iron oxygen batteries, heat storage systems, compressed air storage systems, and fly wheel systems are all developing at a remarkable pace that will likely see a number of projects online by the end of decade.
What is possible or impossible depends largely on one’s choices. It isn’t physics.
Explain how it is physics that demands that we never hundreds of billions in building GPU factories instead of solar panels?
How is it physics that determines that the entire Russian economy is oriented towards bombing their neighbours instead of transitioning?
How is it physics that allocated hundreds of billions of dollars to building defensive weaponry in Ukraine instead of building batteries?
How is it physics that prevented most countries in the world (including rich countries) from having a price on carbon as advised by economists decades ago?
How is it physics that decided that we would not have carbon related border adjustment taxes?
Per the article, how is it physics that demands that global air flight tourism must grow year on year?
We have chosen to invest in things other than the highest priority things and that’s why it is “impossible” for us to meet our goals.
Yes, there is a sense in which it is “impossible” in the same sense that it is impossible for an obese person to lose weight. If one has no mechanism for mustering the motivation then it is impossible to reach the goal. It is also “impossible” for me to learn to play the guitar.
I will believe it is truly impossible at a physics level only once we’ve actually tried carbon taxes and border adjustments in every country. That’s the most economically sound plan and we haven’t even tried it yet.
It is impossible in the sense that a rapid transition would lead to a societal collapse that would kill most of the people on the planet and reduce what is left to a dark ages level of advancement.
If you want to lump that into “It just depends on the price you want to pay”, you are free to do so.
I do believe that over a reasonable period of time a transition to all or mostly non-carbon energy should be our goal. But for now, the approach of China and India are the only rational ones. Build new renewable and fossil infrastructure out together.
>It is impossible in the sense that a rapid transition would lead to a societal collapse that would kill most of the people on the planet and reduce what is left to a dark ages level of advancement.
According to the article that we are discussing, global use of fossil fuels for non-essential purposes is going UP.
"the populations of developing countries begin to buy more cars and take more flights."
"More and more of the world is getting access to energy and a greater proportion want to use that energy to upgrade their living standards"
This doesn't sound at all like we are near a "collapse" which will "kill most of the people on the planet." It sounds like we are making the choice to accelerate the destruction of our environment to satisfy our short-term needs.
It's flatly false to claim that reducing global tourism air travel, cruises and car manufacturing would cause a "collapse" which will "kill most of the people on the planet." And I'm sure you know that's false.
I'm not cherry picking an example out of thin air. These are quotes from the article that we're discussing. THEY are the ones attributing our failure to transition to people who want more cars and to take more flights.
What should happen instead is that the poor world should keep their plane traffic at the current level and the rich world should reduce theirs to match the poor world. Huge amounts of rich country money should be spent to upgrade the living standards of poor countries with sustainable technology.
But we like our trips to Hawaii and JP Morgan tells us that there's nothing we can do to accelerate the transition, so I guess we might as well take the trip to Hawaii.
I am very familiar with that "logic" and that's why I'm wasting time on Reddit instead of focusing on the priorities that I actually care about in my life. Working on my taxes is "impossible" as long as there is someone on Reddit to argue with.
You are indeed cherry picking and misconstruing. My reference to societal collapse from a rapid transition away from renewables was obviously hypothetical. It is correct and I would be curious if you would dispute that, but I never said that is what we are doing.
Yes developing countries are increasing their use of energy because they want to stop being poor. I commend them for that and urge them to continue doing it. This is not a problem that has been caused by the poor. I certainly think they are right to wait for Bill Gates, Taylor Swift and the world’s other billionaires to cut back on their disgusting misuse of resources before the agree to languish voluntarily in deprivation.
The idea that I said reducing tourism would lead to a collapse is a scarlet herring. I said nothing of the sort.
What we do seem to agree on is that the rich should bare the cost ahead of the poor. It is a tragedy that it is happening the other way around.
If it makes you feel any better you are keeping me from bed. I live in a developing country in Asia.
>You are indeed cherry picking and misconstruing. My reference to societal collapse from a rapid transition away from renewables was obviously hypothetical. It is correct and I would be curious if you would dispute that, but I never said that is what we are doing.
It's simply a strawman. That is not a proposal made at COP or in this subreddit or elsewhere. It's not on the table. It's not worth discussing.
We should transition to renewables at the fastest pace that does not cause societal collapse. Instead we are budgeting on increased use of fossil fuels for non-essential purposes. We are doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
>Yes developing countries are increasing their use of energy because they want to stop being poor. I commend them for that and urge them to continue doing it. This is not a problem that has been caused by the poor. I certainly think they are right to wait for Bill Gates, Taylor Swift and the world’s other billionaires to cut back on their disgusting misuse of resources before the agree to languish voluntarily in deprivation.
I 90% agree with this, but in general I dislike the framing of anyone "waiting" until someone else takes action. Literally everyone on the planet has some excuse for waiting for someone else. But sure, I agree that the majority of the cost should be carried by the rich countries (for many different reason). Nobody should be "waiting" to take action though.
And developing countries SHOULD NOT adopt the poor habits of taking cruises and non-essentially airplane flights of the rich countries. Of course the rich countries should also shed those bad habits.
>What we do seem to agree on is that the rich should bare the cost ahead of the poor. It is a tragedy that it is happening the other way around.
I don't see it happening the other way around. I mostly just see the transition as not happening. Globally speaking, the level of investment is miniscule.
The Inflation Reduction Act will cost less than the Iraq war and at the end of it America will have lots of wonderful new capital built. It should be several times as large and a lot of it should be spent in developing nations.
That's what I mean by saying "it's impossible" when we've barely even tried.
A hypothetical argument is not a strawman. I am not claiming that anyone is proposing it. I am highlighting the fact that we remain and will remain dependent on fossils fuels. There are many who claim otherwise.
I think we should transition to non-carbon energy as fast as we can without significantly curtailing growth or hurting poor people. I don’t say renewables because nuclear is almost certain to be a big part of it and the transition will be slower and more painful without it.
I don’t want developing countries to take cruises per se but I do want them to be about to bring themselves out of poverty.
I don’t see a lot being done in many developing countries to implement renewable energy but that is because it is not easy. I do see a massive effort on behalf of international organizations and development finance institutions to deny these countries the ability to develop any fossil assets. As I said China, India and Indonesia are themselves pushing forward with coal, not because they want it but because they need it.
Cambodia for example is a desperate poor country that is poised for an era of economic growth. But they suffer from inadequate energy and high electricity prices. They are not powerful like the countries I mentioned and so have been forced to cancel the coal plant that would have fueled that.
I dislike coal but Cambodia has no other options. They can’t use gas because they couldn’t get international finance for it (and other reasons). They have no wind, are at capacity on hydro and so are stuck with solar.
But without a grid variable solar will be of little use and at some point itself gets hard to finance because using all of it without an adequate grid supplied with baseless power won’t be easy.
I personally think EVs as a large scale urgent policy are borderline dumb. We have know for decades that there is one way to reduce vehicle fuel consumption and that is reducing vehicle weight. And electric Hummer is a perversion. Taxing cars on weight would have solved the vehicle side of the problem years ago.
Now to bed. I have enjoyed arguing with you. I will respond to any other comments in nine hours or so. I sleep very well!
>Developing countries are not going to be able to go from inadequate fossil infrastructure directly to a modern renewables based system.
The way technology adoption works is trailing societies leapfrog to the newest tech. Africa isn’t installing landlines they are installing cell towers - and before cell infrastructure is built out will likely go to sat phones now that the technology is modernizing.
Rural Afghanistan is covered in solar panels not newly built coal mines.
Solar is a tiny fraction of Afghanistan's energy production; coal is much more important.
But Afghanistan is sui generis because of the Taliban running things - it's not clear that they have the technical ability to reopen some of their unused coal mines, and they are also exporting a lot of the coal they do have to Pakistan for cash (Pakistan is having severe energy shortages).
The comparison with landlines and cell phones isn't really apt. Countries that skipped the landline phase tended to not have a very well developed landline infrastructure in the first place; Afghanistan has 50+ coal mines and has used coal for 100+ years.
I addressed above that leapfrogging works with tech, it does not work with energy. A problem with energy, electricity and climate is that the fields have technical aspects that are hard for people outside of the field to understand
>All that is happening now is the developing countries with some power and autonomy like China, India and Indonesia can ignore climate colonialism and are rapidly building out coal-fired power infrastructure.
That just plain isn't true, both China and India are investing heavily into green energy (even if they are also investing in fossil fuels).
There's no reason I'm aware of why we can't use something like natural gas as a primary stopgap before transitioning purely to renewables. Is the infrastructure still not up to stuff in terms of transport or something?
Development finance will not fund any fossil fuel projects and new LNG is very hard to plan and finance. You need guaranteed offtake and small countries struggle to procure supply version large capitalize players as contracts are long
This is an economics sub, so here are some real numbers.
My old magnus opus breakdown of how pointless it is to do ANYTHING about climate change.
Using the IPCC's own calculations, I will show that the policy recommendations to "stop" climate change are insane.
The IPCC figured a 5% cut in emissions when Australia implemented it's carbon tax by 2020. (the largest and most ambitious plan implemented to date) sourcesource2
100% of Australia's emissions are 1.2% of global emissions.
The 5% cut of Australia's global amount of 1.2% is 0.07% of total global emissions.
IPCC figures Co2 will be 410ppm by 2020
0.07% of 410 is 409.988 ppm (math is actually (2ppm * 8.5 years) * 0.0007 = 0.0119 ppm reduced of the total 17ppm increase that would have occurred over the 8.5 year projection)
IPCC equation for Co2 forcing is (5.35 * ln(current Co2 / revised Co2 )) or (5.35 * ln(410/409.988)) source
(5.35 * ln(410/409.988)) = 0.00016 w/m2 of reduced forcing
Climate sensitivity parameter is simple the change in temperature per w/m2 increase. In other words, the actual change in temp divided by the change in energy 'imbalance' since the start of the industrial revolution(150 years). Accounting for El Nino it's risen ~ 0.7-0.8 K over the last 150 years, but lets just say 1 C.
(5.35 * ln(400 / 280)) = 1.90821095007 w/m2
1 C / 1.90821095007 = 0.52 K per w/m2 (PS, This number is unlikely to rise because it's derived from a natural logarithm, thus will asymptotically approach zero as Co2 concentrations rise)
Then figure the climate sensitivity parameter of 0.52(0.00016) and you get 0.0000832 C reduction in global temperatures.
Read that again... it's 1:12,000th of a single degree Celsius.
To save a full degree Celsius of warming, based on the IPCC's own math on the Australian carbon tax plan, would cost 3.2 quadrillion dollars.... or 43 times total global GDP.
Does climate change really matter if the only realistic solution is an economic apocalypse?
According the the stern report(the biggest economic study ever done on climate economics, by the Royal Society of the UK), global costs, under a worst case(nothing done) scenario are expected to be ~ 5% of GDP per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review
That means that if the costs of a carbon tax costs the average person more then 5% per year, then it is not worth it. Given that emissions are basically synonymous with GDP, a 5% cut in emissions would have an impact on temperatures literally too small to measure, but huge economic ramifications.
To use the above math on how long it would take to achieve a single C drop in temps spending 5% of global GDP on it.
(5.35 * ln(400 / (400+ (20 * 0.05)))) = -0.01335830906 w/m2 (co2 rises ~ 2ppm per year, figured a 5% cut over 10 years, or 400 +(20 * 0.05))
(0.52) * -0.01335830906 = -0.00694632071 K
1/0.00694632071 = 143.96 * 10 = 1440 YEARS
Well damn. 1440 years to mitigate a single degree C at 5% GDP cost(3.5 trillion per year). How many star systems can we colonize before then?
So you are stuck in a paradox. Either you drastically lower the average living standard to a level far worse then climate change would ever cause, or cut emissions to a level that would have no discernible impact on global temperatures. In either case, it makes no sense.
You can argue about the plants and animals... But I can guarantee that any cut that is forced on people strong enough to have a measurable impact... would cause an economic apocalypse large enough to cause widespread environmental destruction. Starving people will burn the forests for energy and hunt everything to extinction, in order to survive.
To end this... Nuclear power is the only realistically viable path to disconnecting the carbon emission = GDP connection, But It's not "deniers" stopping the nuclear revolution... it's environmentalists.
Did you mean to say "more than"?
Explanation: If you didn't mean 'more than' you might have forgotten a comma. Statistics
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Fossil fuels are not being phased out, the carbon foot print, created by the plebs, is now being phased out, so that the industrials and wealthy can carry on as if nothing has changed.
For those wanting to phase out fossil fuels, what’s the alternative? A lot of Electric comes from fossil fuels. People don’t want to build dams and don’t like nuclear. These same folks want everyone to live in cities. We won’t ever make enough energy with wind or solar. Someone explain what the alternative is that you guys want?
And that’s just electricity. Air travel? There is no non-fossil alternative at the moment (and I’m not sure we’re even close). And everyone forgets about shipping. We love cheap stuff. Everything we have has been shipped from somewhere else with diesel power (trucks, container ships). We’re not close to replacing the large container ships with anything other than diesel. I doubt all of us would feel comfortable with nuclear reactors floating all over the world, and I really can’t see that being the replacement.
Don't forget about all the derivative products (plastics, petrochemicals, fibers, asphalt, tires, rubber, area rugs etc etc etc) we make with oil. There are industrial uses for oil that renewables can never, ever replace.
Electricity generation is more or less the easiest part of the equation.
It'll be another 30-100 years before we can even think about a complete phaseout of oil.
Ah so they must not have taken bailout money, correct? Because that would be a point against their comment, would be to show they weren't benefactors of the bailouts.
JpMorgan is trapped in an ethical dilemma. What’s good for the planet and future generations VS what’s good for Jamie dimon and his Epstein island buddies. You know which way they will pick every time.
"JPMorgan is a leading financier of fossil fuel projects and low-carbon energy projects. The bank underwrote $101bn of fossil fuel deals in 2021 and 2022"
...but a lot of his friends are. I hope you're not deluded enough to believe this is some altruistic call to tamper expectations of overhauling a pillar of the economy since the industrial revolution - it's just an attempt to push back divestment another generation.
There is no ethical dilemma. What is good for Jamie Dimon today is good for JP Morgan's shareholders, and since most Americans hold JP Morgan shares in their 401ks, it's good for Americans by extension.
If you want an economy, you must have, at a minimum, plentiful and affordable energy and plentiful and affordable food.
We only have two choices today: Oil based energy or Abject poverty, starvation and death. I choose oil.
“I can’t make as much money trading on green energy as I can trading on the HEAVILY subsidized oil industry posting record profits for 78 straight quarters!
Climate alarmists are getting us to scale back our energy economy before we have a real means to replace the status quo. It's going to lead to a lot of people suffering horribly.
I'm not saying that fossil fuels shouldn't eventually be mostly phased out, but it should be done gradually and not all at once like it seems the Western nations are hell-bent on doing.
Standard of living is directly related to energy economy. If they cut the energy to "save the planet" they will be cutting human lives ultimately. But these people are antinatalist and nihilistic at the end of the day so it's s not all that surprising.
I saw E85 on sale for $4.89/gal...oil needs to stay cheaper than roughly $5.50/gal, otherwise they'll lose marketshare to corn producers and industrial moonshine fuel.
Smooth_Detective | 1 year, 7 months ago
I wonder is this Mankind’s great filter moment? Nations and International bodies fail to pool their efforts towards creating a sustainable climate, underestimate climate change impact and overestimate our ability to act. Thus civilisation as a whole is stuck firefighting for centuries instead of all the progress that could have been made. I guess only time will tell.
user_dan | 1 year, 7 months ago
The book 1984 goes into the psychology a little bit. The Party had the ability to make the world better for everyone, but at the cost of diminishing the power of the elite. The would rather live in a worse world and hold power than live in a better world with less or no power. Of course, they cannot see the future, but this is how they assessed the situation.
NorthAtlanticTerror | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is a very well documented phenomenon. Cromwell didn't want to depose Charles I. But Charles refused to compromise on the principle of absolutism, even after losing the war, so he tried to raise another army and ended up dead. The Haitian revolutionaries were prepared to let the white Haitians keep all of their land and economic privileges, but again and again they conspired with foreign powers to bring back slavery, despite being outnumbered twenty to one, so in the end they were all massacred.
badluckbrians | 1 year, 7 months ago
Cromwell asked Charles to just let him fuck off and move to Connecticut at one point, but Charles said no, lololol
GoldenInfrared | 1 year, 7 months ago
Why didn’t they leave the ones that didn’t own land?
(Besides collective revenge reasons)
ErikETF | 1 year, 7 months ago
Because the lead up to the revolution was one where the powers that be decided it was much better economically to work someone to death over IIRC 7 years than to be more sparing on the labor.
You don’t set the conditions for response in moderation if you live through something like that.
For context, Haiti was realistically worth more than all of Canada at the time.
PolyDipsoManiac | 1 year, 7 months ago
Oh, yeah. It’s hard to blame anyone in a slave rebellion for slaughtering everyone they can because they’ve been horribly tortured and they’ll all be killed.
johnniewelker | 1 year, 7 months ago
Leclerc was deliberately sent by Napoleon to eliminate all black people in 1803. It wasn’t some sort of secret. That was the goal: wipe them all out and bring new slaves.
So why should Black people after winning the war not try to reciprocate?
GoldenInfrared | 1 year, 7 months ago
Because people are not a monolith and many were just trying to get by and not commit mass murder?
johnniewelker | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is like applying 2024 morals into 1803… I guess we can all do that in hindsight
GoldenInfrared | 1 year, 7 months ago
Even in Ancient Greece people called off a mass execution when a rebellion happened, in favor of only punishing the leaders.
The idea that humans shouldn’t be killed just cuz’ is not some newfangled idea that came with the iPhone X
Phenganax | 1 year, 7 months ago
Looks like we’re headed towards something like that…. Climate change has been so far away for decades that they have been able to push it off and say see it’s not that bad, well it’s finally starting to show signs and people are starting to see that they will let the house burn down before they pull the fire alarm as long as they still get to be the one who controls the fire alarm. Like how long are we going to let that be the case? It’s clear they will watch us all die with the ship as long as they can step over us to get off first.
ChocolateDoggurt | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is something more people need to understand, and why organized violence will almost always be necessary in making meaningful social change.
The rich would burn the world just to remain kings of a pile of ash.
soccerguys14 | 1 year, 7 months ago
“I do not intend to be queen of the ashes”
Spoiler she became queen of the ashes loll
Earthwarm_Revolt | 1 year, 7 months ago
See Syria.
SmartsVacuum | 1 year, 7 months ago
They won't even rule that, if climate change worsens to the point where society begins to breaks down and these elites retreat to their little enclaves and bunkers in the like of New Zealand each and every one of them is getting bullets to the head within five seconds of the bunker doors closing from the people they hired to "protect and serve" them. Their entire worth as a person is based upon an artificial social construct and when the society that supports said construct no longer exists so does any reason to let them live. They don't have skills in electronics, mechanics, chemistry, medicine or any other field that'd be essential to maintaining some form of higher living after the shit hits the fan. They'll have outlived their usefulness and demonstrated they're liabilities who'll fuck over everybody else for their own goals.
semperviren | 1 year, 7 months ago
I think now they are counting on having armies of AI robots to quell any challenges to their control of the enclaves.
ceralimia | 1 year, 7 months ago
Same with people who buy 50 acres of land and a cabin. You're gonna get raided within a month.
futatorius | 1 year, 7 months ago
If I decide that I need canned goods and shotgun shells, I know where I'll look first.
Tripleawge | 1 year, 7 months ago
The rule of the Strong. Just when you thought humanity had evolved past it, it pulls them back in again.
beingsubmitted | 1 year, 7 months ago
The rich are typically convinced of their own deservedness and by extension, their importance. They think they're the saviors, so what benefits them benefits humanity. Where would we all be without their guidance?
Capital-Part4687 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Fossil fuel combustion will just die off from costs over the next decade, wtf are you talking about?
Solar and wind is already much cheaper than fossil fuel and batteries are rapidly getting cheap enough to edge out fossil fuel... that's why almost all new power generation is new solar and wind.
It's just hard to understand that once you get below a certain price threshold ALL OF A SUDDEN the investors and consumers mass switch over. You don't have like 2010 adoption rates into 2020 and you don't have 2020 EV adoption rates into 2030. You have a point where if you go with fossil fuel you lose more and more money.
Fossil fuels for plastics and fertilizers are more or less a whole different category of much less immediate problems.
To get to Net Zero you really only have to replace power plants, cars&trucks and industrial heating, you never actually need to get to 0 fossil fuel use. Most of the focus is power plants and internal combustion since that's the most grossly inefficient use.
The planet currently consumes half out CO2 pollution per year, or we'd be way more fucked by now, so you never actually need to get to like 0% fossil fuel use. The heat is already invested and the CO2 will only go away so fast, so there is diminishing returns in going overboard against fossil fuels.
We will still use it for jets and mining and military and that won't really matter in the big picture of how much damage we have to mitigate before we can get to the point of regulating the climate... because you also have to realize the climate is a moving target, not something we can just roll back to Pre-industrial times and lock it in with merely pollution reduction.
SpaceyCoffee | 1 year, 7 months ago
Batteries are getting cheaper, but even the best still have poor energy density compared to hydrocarbons fuels. We can’t power commercial airliners with lithium ion batteries because the aircraft would be too heavy to go any appreciable distance.
Fossil fuels will always have a place in the economy until some sort of foundation-shaking battery technology comes out that has triple the current energy and is cheap to produce. It is unfortunately also possible such a technology can’t exist due to the limits of chemistry.
Personally, I think our best bet is still to leverage renewable energy to synthesize carbon-neutral fuels like hydrogen and use those in place of hydrocarbons wherever possible. Lower energy density, and harder to handle, but at least the combustion byproduct is just water and the synthesis byproduct is oxygen, which is also useful and non-polluting.
impossiblefork | 1 year, 7 months ago
We also don't need commercial airliners.
We can shut down the whole industry tomorrow, and people will just deal with it. It won't substantially change productivity in any industry actually making anything.
People will be less happy-- being able to go off for a week to a warm country during winter is fantastic, but that only supports a hotel and hospitality industry, which does in fact not support any kind of production complex.
lajfa | 1 year, 7 months ago
Air travel contributes 2.5% of greenhouse gases. If you try to ban air travel, people will be saying "What about the other 97.5%"
_RamboRoss_ | 1 year, 7 months ago
That’s quite far fetched. What are we going to do, revert back to steam train? There is more to air travel than musicians going to the next super venue and people going on their Disney vacations
impossiblefork | 1 year, 7 months ago
We have electric trains. It's not that bad. We also have the possibility of just not travelling.
It sucks, but the technology to sequester carbon just isn't there. If we're moving towards some kind of big climate problem, we'll save ourselves a great deal in the long run by simply not allowing greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere.
Ending flights will do so at essentially no cost. The fuel comes from abroad, and travel is no longer required for international business. Even for inspecting factories and physical goods, telepresence has reached the point where it is feasible to perform such inspections remotely.
It would be a very fast change, and not particularly expensive to realise.
It'd suck to no longer be able to take a trip to Spain in the winter, but if we'll get a crisis from CO2 emissions, we have to do this, because we can't just let it happen only because we enjoy air travel. It'd be like Churchill refusing to institute rationing during WWII because it'd mean that he couldn't buy a roast beef to eat on Sunday, something comical.
If there isn't going to be a crisis, of course, then we don't have to do anything. But ending air travel will have very minimal consequences. Presumably people will also figure out how to achieve it on batteries over time, but if there's going to be a crisis, there's no reason whatsoever to wait for that.
_RamboRoss_ | 1 year, 7 months ago
Yea I don’t think we’d do that. We’ve based our entire economy over the last 300 years on the RAPID movement of people, goods, and services. Where are these electric trains? Certainly not in America. If I wanted to take a train to California it would take almost 3 days. A flight is 5.5hrs.
You’d be asking our economy and citizens to revert back to a lifestyle that hasn’t existed since arguably the 30s-40s. The genie can’t go back in the bottle. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Unless we start building high speed rail like TOMORROW. But we’ve all seen how that’s been going so far
impossiblefork | 1 year, 7 months ago
Yes and the rapid movement of goods and services can now be decoupled from the movement of people.
These electric trains are basically everywhere in Europe.
The solution is mostly to not travel. It is not a reversion to a 30s or 40s lifestyle. Most people couldn't afford air travel until the 1970s, some couldn't until the early 80s. I don't think we flew in my family until the 1950s.
We can solve much of this, if required. Improvements in overnight trains may even keep the weekend trip to Barcelona or Nice feasible.
BigBasket9778 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Why not go all the way back to just living in trees at that point. The fact is you could cut out 80% of emissions with the things there’s readily available clean substitutes for, which would be a huge improvement.
Why focus on one of the hardest sections that is only 2.5%, but which also drives multiple industries and actively spreads wealth from richer people to poorer people (tourism)?
cupofchupachups | 1 year, 7 months ago
I could see hydrogen, but I also think PHEVs are a big part of the solution. 150km of electric range plus a gas backup, 99% of people would be happy with that and wouldn't be burning gas 99% of the time.
Villager723 | 1 year, 7 months ago
>The planet currently consumes half out CO2 pollution per year, or we'd be way more fucked by now, so you never actually need to get to like 0% fossil fuel use. The heat is already invested and the CO2 will only go away so fast, so there is diminishing returns in going overboard against fossil fuels.
The planet's ability to consume half of CO2 pollution is dwindling. Oceans are overheating. The permafrost switched from a carbon sink to a contributor. As things heat up, this problem gets worse exponentially, i.e. it's a lot hotter and now massive forest fires contribute to our CO2. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
probablyseriousmaybe | 1 year, 7 months ago
Sure, but don't you think if the world devolved into organized violence that it would also burn to a pile of ash???
dust4ngel | 1 year, 7 months ago
they rebuilt europe after we killed the nazis
Brancer | 1 year, 7 months ago
But that will just cause a set of new elites to form. Its human nature to stratify.
uber_neutrino | 1 year, 7 months ago
This tired class warfare nonsense is just marxist crap masquerading as intelligent thought.
It's just as wrong to paint all wealthy people with the same brush as it is to paint the poor the same way. Social class isn't the equivalent of morality level.
paceminterris | 1 year, 7 months ago
It's not about "morality" at all. It's about the wealthy having different and mutually opposed material interests to the not-wealthy. It is therefore in the rational self-interest of the non-wealthy to oppose the wealthy's accumulation of more resources and power.
atreides_hyperion | 1 year, 7 months ago
Indeed, the wealthy at any given time have the opportunity to reinvest their wealth into their communities via selfless philanthropy, thereby divesting themselves of their surplus wealth and simultaneously making the world a better place for no other reason than simply the desire to do good.
But most often, they do not. It's very rare that they do this. Most of their philanthropy is quite limited and often serves to better their name or benefit themselves in some way. It can hardly be said to be altruistic at all and inevitably does actually very little to help improve the world.
With all of that in mind it's clear that the only way to address the issue is to recover this surplus wealth through taxation and regulation. Not only are the current taxes much too generous but very often the rich even avoid paying their share of these taxes by various schemes and machinations.
Strict enforcement of a progressive tax policy is the way in which we make the world a better and more equitable place for all.
uber_neutrino | 1 year, 7 months ago
> It's about the wealthy having different and mutually opposed material interests to the not-wealthy.
Maybe be specific about what you think this is.
dust4ngel | 1 year, 7 months ago
> This tired class warfare nonsense is just marxist crap
if you want to dismiss something as marxist, you want it to be economic policy - the class analysis is the part he got right
TeaKingMac | 1 year, 7 months ago
>Social class isn't the equivalent of morality level.
If you're a multi-billionaire (and not actively philanthropizing your money away [like Bezos' ex-wife]), you're an asshole.
cccanterbury | 1 year, 7 months ago
There has always been a class war based on monetary distribution. The only way to diffuse the war is high taxes on wealthy individuals. Create a wealth cap above which nobody can climb.
uber_neutrino | 1 year, 7 months ago
You know what they say about opinions...
UDLRRLSS | 1 year, 7 months ago
There is no reason to assume that the people who would benefit from moving away from fossil fuels aren’t the same people who also benefit from continuing to use fossil fuels.
Which sounds stupid, but really people just underestimate how diversified wealthy, powerful people’s investments are. The only people who are truly dedicated to the success of fossil fuels would be nations without a diversified economy, and the direct employees of fossil fuel company’s.
user_dan | 1 year, 7 months ago
The problem with fossil fuels is that discovery, extraction, transport, refining, storage, etc require excessive government support at each step. This has created deep entanglements between private corporations and government.
The fossil fuel industry uses those entanglements to lobby governments for favorable conditions for multinational corporations. Other multinationals, like Chase or Facebook, may not directly care about fossil fuels, but they identify that they are benefiting from the legal and business environment that the fossil fuel industry lobbying has provided.
Nuclear has some entanglements, but way less than fossil fuels. And, solar and wind are just simpler technologies and have less entanglements. The lobbying environment hidden by fossil fuels would disappear.. and lobbying for a pro-multinational environment would be more expensive for all corporations.
It's more than just pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
anti-torque | 1 year, 7 months ago
lol... entanglements
Let's just call criminal activity and corruption what it is.
ArkyBeagle | 1 year, 7 months ago
> excessive government support at each step.
Not... really. Whether classic mining law is obsolete is a good question. But the accounting mores are from two fronts - equipment depreciation and depletion allowance. There's a much smaller set of "incentive" subsidies that's really in the noise.
Much depends on where the activity takes place - it's arguably worse in Canada. Canada is very dependent on oil revenue.
It would have been much better to have held all extractive resources in common but the legal basis for that emerged after the die was cast. The capital and labor mix of the mid 19th century ( and before, for coal ) led us here. I think Norway's proven the point but the status quo is hard to steer.
> And, solar and wind are just simpler technologies and have less entanglements.
There are limitations; it's not simply a matter of a lack of will. Solar's going as well as it ever has but it's still like 15 years break even even with direct subsidy to solar. Throw in nuclear and I, at least, am happy. It does not help that natural gas is often , curiously enough, effectively a waste byproduct until infrastructure to exploit it arises.
Much of the claim that oil is subsidized is a bit hyperbolic. The basic transnational aspect of big oil is pretty annoying but it might be simply inherent. I've worked for a big oil services firm and the arrogance is profound, but that doesn't mean that much.
yousakura | 1 year, 7 months ago
Every single step in phasing in green tech requires Fossil Fuels. Given a flat playing field, Solar and Wind don't stand a chance. In fact, end all subsidies for all energy, don't encourage excess spending/consumption.
user_dan | 1 year, 7 months ago
>Every single step in phasing in green tech requires Fossil Fuels.
Even if you are depending on fossil fuels, adopting green tech means that the net emissions will be less versus using fossil fuels for everything. When green energy is more ubiquitous, some fossil fuel dependence can be removed from the supply chain.
It is ok to use fossil fuels for some things, by the way. We don't have to use it for everything.
And, this green tech uses fossil fuels is a talking point the fossil fuel industry puts out. Remember, they hired the same propagandists that lied about smoking causing cancer.
yousakura | 1 year, 7 months ago
Not when that energy production creates more unnecessary consumption. The whole problem is not one of energy sources but one of government incentivized overconsumption/production. Stop government spending and create more currency stability via saving incentives, emissions would drop much more radically in that environment.
Also, I disagree with the stance that using Hydrocarbons for much of our products is an okay thing to do. We know that they release PFAs and forever chemicals, the smart thing to do would be to set up a socioeconomic paradigm that prioritizes sturdy goods manufactured using metals like stainless steel and wood, which is a great carbon sink that essentially is a true renewable resource. I live in Canada and would love to see construction of new homes that are mostly wood but the protection of forests disincentivize housing developers to explore this path.
user_dan | 1 year, 7 months ago
You just said green energy is bad because:
>Every single step in phasing in green tech requires Fossil Fuels.
I said that is net better emissions.
>Not when that energy production creates more unnecessary consumption.
Now, you are trying to change the subject by implying that a 100% fossil fuel energy society would have less consumption.
Seriously, fuck off.
yousakura | 1 year, 7 months ago
I said that without FF subsidies, we don't know if green tech would be feasible. Because there is that overproduction incentive via subsidies, we don't know the true market equilibrium point of any of these energy sources.
ArkyBeagle | 1 year, 7 months ago
Oh, it's impossible even then. What's the replacement value of oil? It can't be calculated.
anti-torque | 1 year, 7 months ago
>In fact, end all subsidies for all energy
Fossil fuels would die overnight. But at least ethanol would disappear first.
thewimsey | 1 year, 7 months ago
The US spends $10B to $50B on FF subsidies per year (it's hard to know what counts - consensus seems to be $20B).
Removing them wouldn't kill FFs - using the $50B number, we're talking about $150 per person in the US.
The average American spends $2100 on gas per year (obviously, there's a lot of variance), and about the same on heating and cooling, and about the same again on other household energy needs (refrigeration, hot water, cooking, etc.).
But only 60% of US utility costs come from fossil fuels, so let's drop the $4000 home energy expenses down to $2400.
So now we have $4400 in FF costs, to which we'll add $150 by removing subsidies.
That's not really earth shattering. It's not going to kill FF overnight.
anti-torque | 1 year, 7 months ago
I'm talking about implicit subsidies worldwide that we pay for--or will in the future, as the younger generation has been stuck with the bill and the consequences.
You're trying to deflect with explicit subsidies on a domestic scale.
Capital-Part4687 | 1 year, 7 months ago
The problems is fossil fuel does a lot more than nuclear and can be exported and nuclear can't really replace most fossil fuel use globally, so you wind up with a kind of dead end expensive nuclear infrastructure to go with your fossil fuel infrastructure, and higher costs.
Those higher costs translate to solar panels and batteries being more expensive and really just slowing down the real solution, which is solar, wind and batteries. Levering EV batteries and grid storage into one tech is ideal and also exactly what is happening as batteries are now crashing in prices just as solar did.
Without batteries to replace fossil fuel it's just a pipe dream. You HAVE to have the alternative exist and be affordable before you really expect some magical change over and nuclear can't power cars and trucks and planes or realistically even commercial ships. That would be insanely higher costs and people would real life starve if shipping went up that much in cost.
You will kill people faster with higher costs than the rather slow by steady rate of climate change, and like it or not this is about preserving humanity, not some ideiologcal battle with oil companies.
Consumers are the reason for the demand for oil, not some grand oil corporation BS. There isn't a good enough alternative and people need it to survive. There is no reason to pretend otherwise. This is very much a science and engineering problem or a mass social/economic deflation problem and FUCKING DUH people aren't going to self deflate just to maybe save the world of tomorrow. That was never a real plan that had a chance.
The real plan has always been use fossil fuels low efficiency against it to replace it with something cheaper.
user_dan | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is foolish. Energy needs are not a one size fits all t-shirt. Not every energy need has to be exported or transported.
You have fallen for fossil fuel industry propaganda.
Capital-Part4687 | 1 year, 7 months ago
I don't think you're being fair to the power to weight ratio advantage and the fact we will also still need fertilizer and plastics. We are really only trying to get rid of the worse uses of fossil fuel, beside that it's actually really solid energy storage and a good chemical base for many materials.
It's going to prove pretty easy to replace 90% of more of fossil fuel combustion, particularly because most of that is super low efficiency power plants and vehicles running only 20-40% efficient with 60-80% of the fuel merely producing waste heat. The bulk of that is easy to replace and is getting replaced at the power plant level rapidly already.
You just don't see a big drop in emission yet because batteries aren't quite cheap enough to wipe out already established fossil fuel power plants or make EVs the better choice in every way. That's not far off and like solar and wind took over new power by being cheaper, the cheaper batteries will finish the job on most fossil fuel.
There's not big conspiracy here, as soon as the tech gets reliably cheaper people jump ship because MONEY.
AnUnmetPlayer | 1 year, 7 months ago
The economics version of this is Kalecki's Political Aspects of Full Employment:
"We shall deal first with the reluctance of the 'captains of industry' to accept government intervention in the matter of employment. Every widening of state activity is looked upon by business with suspicion, but the creation of employment by government spending has a special aspect which makes the opposition particularly intense. Under a laissez-faire system the level of employment depends to a great extent on the so-called state of confidence. If this deteriorates, private investment declines, which results in a fall of output and employment (both directly and through the secondary effect of the fall in incomes upon consumption and investment). This gives the capitalists a powerful indirect control over government policy: everything which may shake the state of confidence must be carefully avoided because it would cause an economic crisis. But once the government learns the trick of increasing employment by its own purchases, this powerful controlling device loses its effectiveness. Hence budget deficits necessary to carry out government intervention must be regarded as perilous. The social function of the doctrine of 'sound finance' is to make the level of employment dependent on the state of confidence.
The dislike of business leaders for a government spending policy grows even more acute when they come to consider the objects on which the money would be spent: public investment and subsidizing mass consumption. The economic principles of government intervention require that public investment should be confined to objects which do not compete with the equipment of private business (e.g. hospitals, schools, highways). Otherwise the profitability of private investment might be impaired, and the positive effect of public investment upon employment offset, by the negative effect of the decline in private investment. This conception suits the businessmen very well. But the scope for public investment of this type is rather narrow, and there is a danger that the government, in pursuing this policy, may eventually be tempted to nationalize transport or public utilities so as to gain a new sphere for investment.
One might therefore expect business leaders and their experts to be more in favour of subsidising mass consumption (by means of family allowances, subsidies to keep down the prices of necessities, etc.) than of public investment; for by subsidizing consumption the government would not be embarking on any sort of enterprise. In practice, however, this is not the case. Indeed, subsidizing mass consumption is much more violently opposed by these experts than public investment. For here a moral principle of the highest importance is at stake. The fundamentals of capitalist ethics require that 'you shall earn your bread in sweat'—unless you happen to have private means.
We have considered the political reasons for the opposition to the policy of creating employment by government spending. But even if this opposition were overcome—as it may well be under the pressure of the masses—the maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. Indeed, under a regime of permanent full employment, the 'sack' would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. It is true that profits would be higher under a regime of full employment than they are on the average under laissez-faire; and even the rise in wage rates resulting from the stronger bargaining power of the workers is less likely to reduce profits than to increase prices, and thus adversely affects only the rentier interests. But 'discipline in the factories' and 'political stability' are more appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view, and that unemployment is an integral part of the 'normal' capitalist system."
SeefKroy | 1 year, 7 months ago
"I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place than we do."
TransitJohn | 1 year, 7 months ago
The Iron Law of Institutions.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_institutions
Richandler | 1 year, 7 months ago
It's not hard to take out power brokers one by one. You just have to be willing to do it.
Terrible person in every single way, but that is exactly what Putin did in Russia.
simbian | 1 year, 7 months ago
It is pretty well known and clear. For instance, the French Revolution occurred because the aristocracy and the church thumbed their noses. Then most of them got their heads removed.
Thom0 | 1 year, 7 months ago
There was also some regional Cold War-esc politics going on. The UK supported monarchs so the loss of a monarch was a blow to UK hegemony in Europe. France losing its monarchy was a massive blow which would later culminate in Napoleon, the Continental System and the UK being essentially cut off from Europe which would have ended the UK had the British not expanded into Asian with the British Raj and kicked off another era of UK hegemony.
It wasn't as simple as church bad, kings bad. It is important to remember that the spirit of the French Revolution was shortly lived. It quickly collapsed into a ruthless dictatorship under the Robespierre brothers and later reformed as a monarchy under Napoleon. It barely lasted 5 years - it ended in 1799 and the Bonaparte monarchy began in 1804. The Revolution was more about getting rid of House Bourbon and less about democracy.
ammonium_bot | 1 year, 7 months ago
> france loosing its
Did you mean to say "losing"?
Explanation: Loose is an adjective meaning the opposite of tight, while lose is a verb.
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dust4ngel | 1 year, 7 months ago
> The would rather live in a worse world and hold power
this may also explain middle america consistently voting to destroy themselves in the name of white supremacy.
user_dan | 1 year, 7 months ago
A lot of what you are referring to is fueled by corporate backed propaganda. To the extent we have insight into the funders, one is the fossil fuel industry with Koch Industry being a huge funder.
A lot of this stuff is related.
GreatReason | 1 year, 7 months ago
That book is fiction.
King__Rollo | 1 year, 7 months ago
It’s not even about the entire elite losing power, it’s a specific subset of the elite who are fucking things up for everyone. That’s what makes it so much more frustrating imo.
Thom0 | 1 year, 7 months ago
I think the Three Body Problem, the first installment of the Three Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu has a better analogy.
In the first book it concludes with an imminent alien invasion in slow motion - the aliens send a fleet to Earth but its going to take them a few hundred years to reach the planet. They realize pretty quickly that they have a huge problem to contend with - humanity is developing too quickly and by the time the alien fleet reaches the planet humanity will be able to defeat them.
The solution they come up with is to stifle development using "miracles" - they convince humans to believe in illogical and unrealistic issues to fragment society. Ironically, in the book they use an environmentalist group backed by a billionaire oil tycoon to cause chaos. In the book the group works more like a social justice cult and less like a bona fide interest group. The aliens repeat this strategy in all areas of politics, technology and society - they make people believe in and pursue improbably, unrealistic or imaginary problems and goals which slows down progress and gives the aliens the advantage.
The Dark Forest and Death's End, the other two parts of the TBP trilogy, read more like high political theory crafting and less like an epic science fiction. Looking at our own world, the use of social engineering to fragment and manipulate open societies as a legitimate tactic in stifling progress in order to give another an advantage suddenly doesn't seem that crazy. I wonder how much of the oil discourse is really just a part of the new Cold War.
Given the author of TBP is Chinese, had extensive experience working in the West, and he is a hardcore Orwell fan it really does look like the TBP isn't about aliens but really it's about the Cold War, and China-West relations. For anyone who hasn't read the series - despite the authors insistence that the trilogy isn't political it is quite obviously is a thinly veiled critique on the Cold War, post-Cultural Revolution China, and the pointlessness in pursuing war at the cost of progress in the face of existential threats which in the books Liu represents as 'death' in the form of aliens, abstract dimensional terrors, and the death of the universe
I haven't seen the Netflix series but the books are fantastic - 10/10 read so I can recommend them to anyone. They're not really that sci-fi - there is some Dune level abstractness but it is ultimately politics on steroids with some really endearing and likeable characters. It's just the analogy of how the aliens approach humans rings true today when we look at China - technological and military gap that can't be bridged so fragmented open societies to stifle progress.
MoonBatsRule | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is an interesting thought experiment - not knowing your lot in life, would you prefer to live as you are living now, or would you trade to be among the lowest class in a future world that is far more technologically advanced and "better" than today?
Or, would a poor person today prefer to live as they are, or would they prefer to live at the level of Andrew Carnegie or even Henry VIII in those days?
Capital-Part4687 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Realistically solar and batteries only just got cheap enough for any of these non fossil fuel dreams to make sense vs be like tech genocide.
If we switched to lower pollution fuels like nuclear and wind and solar 20+ years ago that would mean a lot more starvation and poverty and literally more ppl would die from the high energy and food prices than from climate change.. so far at least.
Now that solar is cheap it's the dominate choice for new power and batteries are dropping fast enough in cost that it will only be a few more years that solar and batteries are cheaper than any other option.. and faster to setup and get a return on investment.
The real goal is to get the alternative cheaper so mass adoption is a form of efficiency increase and cost savings, not to switch over when it's way more expensive and drive up the cost of living to the point people revolt and start to die faster than from actual climate change.
user_dan | 1 year, 7 months ago
The US taxpayer is MASSIVELY subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. What is that doing to the cost of living?
Koch Industries is pumps between 500M-1B per year on lobbying and propaganda (to the extent that we know). It pays off because they receive billions on tax breaks and subsidies as a result. That tax payer is paying for those. What is that doing to the cost of living?
thewimsey | 1 year, 7 months ago
> The US taxpayer is MASSIVELY subsidizing the fossil fuel industry
$10-$50B per year. That's not MASSIVE by any means.
Facts matter.
You want to imagine that if we just got rid of the subsidies, renewables would suddenly be much more competitive. But it's just not the case.
PhenomeNarc | 1 year, 7 months ago
Sorry, did you say that $10B isn't massive?
McFlyParadox | 1 year, 7 months ago
I seriously doubt it's going to be a "Great Filter" event (assuming you Even believe the Fermi Paradox is a paradox, and isn't just a product of an incomplete knowledge and understanding of the universe). Humans and or civilization will survive. Worst case, our society and culture will be greatly diminished, and we'll have to spend centuries reconfiguring and rebuilding everything; nations will fall, and new ones will eventually rise; knowledge will be lost, and eventually regained. It'll be a new dark age of humanity, but it won't be our end.
That said, we should be doing everything we can to mitigate and avoid this potential (probable) future.
badpeaches | 1 year, 7 months ago
> I wonder is this Mankind’s great filter moment? Nations and International bodies fail to pool their efforts towards creating a sustainable climate, underestimate climate change impact and overestimate our ability to act. Thus civilisation as a whole is stuck firefighting for centuries instead of all the progress that could have been made. I guess only time will tell.
If only someone had said something over a hundred years ago and people kept doing research to prove it. While are scientists that used their entire career to waste more energy and steal from their wallet, I think we can tell who won today. It's not the scientists that were ridiculed or thrown into an insane asylum for asking you to wash your hands between births.
aThiefStealingTime | 1 year, 7 months ago
It absolutely is. The math is known. The only thing science disagrees on is the exact timeframe because of the complexity involved in the system prevents a comprehensive model that can factor in everything.
We are in the feedback loop right now. Potentially a half dozen feedback loops.
Spend time with people you care about.
hurtfullobster | 1 year, 7 months ago
Does the fear of climate change affect next quarters profit? The answer to that is the answer to your question.
Aliktren | 1 year, 7 months ago
That's basically happened, warming is locked in, now we're just trying to avoid an external level event, distracted by Wars, bullshit politics and economic downturn whilst all the signs are it will get a lot worse now. We are firefighting now.
KypAstar | 1 year, 7 months ago
The biggest hurdle, in addition to the loss of power by the elite, will be the point at which fossile fuels are still fairly important to the lower and middle class for daily life, but aren't in demand enough in other sectors to help drive the cost down. This will cause a temporary but brutal "poor tax".
TBSchemer | 1 year, 7 months ago
Look at what the cost of this crusade has been in California. PG&E has TRIPLED electricity bills ($600/mo for a 1100 sq ft apartment) in the last 1-2 years, for the sake of climate change mitigation, while natural gas remains 1/10th the cost per unit of energy. We've spent BILLIONS on trains that barely anyone uses. EVs are heavily subsidized, and yet still unaffordable for the vast majority of people, and there isn't enough lithium in the world to fill those batteries.
There comes a point where efforts to avoid climate change are counterproductive and just plain stupid. Climates change, and there comes a point where we should focus on adapting, rather than pouring $trillions into this obsession of zero carbon output.
kylco | 1 year, 7 months ago
> Climates change, and there comes a point where we should focus on adapting, rather than pouring $trillions into this obsession of zero carbon output.
It's estimated that it will cost on the order of 10x - 100x more to adapt to runaway climate change, than it would to prevent it. And that's when we're already running up on the cost curve of prevention: if we had not had oil and gas propagandists underselling the problem, purchasing legislators, and otherwise delaying what needed to be done, the US and the West would have been assured a century of economic and technological dominance because we'd own the means of developing a sustainable economy.
Instead we're going to burn hundreds of trillions of dollars, collectively, over the next 50 years, trying to adapt to a world whose foundations are turning to sand beneath our feet. If you think that yearly wildfires in North America and a couple wars per year due to resource or water shortages is where this is going to end, I hate to inform you that is the sound of the starting gun.
Affectionate-Wall870 | 1 year, 7 months ago
But the fundamental problem is that in order to prevent it, we would have to lower the standard of living for everybody on the planet. There is literally no solution that we can implement that would maintain our current standard of living.
No leadership has found a solution to this problem, not because they have no will to, because there isn’t one.
Wars and starvation will be a result of our failure to solve this crisis, not our failure to recognize it.
Not to mention that we have been facing a warming climate for a few thousand years, and will be for the foreseeable future.
kylco | 1 year, 7 months ago
There were plenty of acceptable off-ramps. But none that the wealthy and powerful would accept, because their standard or living might not grow as fast. This was a political failure, enabled by economists who were willing to accept and spread lies, for money. The profession has the blood of millions on its hands, and seems unable or unwilling to do anything about that complicity. It is a moral failure.
> Not to mention that we have been facing a warming climate for a few thousand years, and will be for the foreseeable future.
This is strictly false. The rate of change, on a historical scale, can only be attributed to human activity. This is a bit like saying "all cars stop eventually, so there's no reason to worry about a crash at 90 mph."
Affectionate-Wall870 | 1 year, 7 months ago
What were these acceptable off-ramps?
TBSchemer | 1 year, 7 months ago
>It's estimated that it will cost on the order of 10x - 100x more to adapt to runaway climate change, and it would to prevent it.
Absolute horseshit. It was also estimated that the polar ice caps would be gone by 2012, and that certainly didn't happen.
These estimates are put out by people looking for money for their pet cause. And their estimates will be meaningless a few years later when they're over budget, underperforming, and holding their hands out for more cash.
Caracalla81 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Exactly. If we can't figure out who to do it while making a buck then is it really worth doing?
telefawx | 1 year, 7 months ago
If this green energy nuts were serious they would be pro-nuclear. They are only for green energy when it’s through a lens of them assuming power. That’s their fundamental principle through which all things must flow. Cheaper electricity via existing technologies and private ownership doesn’t make them more powerful so they don’t care. If they actually believed carbon was as dangerous as they claim; they’d be demanding nuclear energy everywhere. They don’t.
kylco | 1 year, 7 months ago
While I've always been a fan of nuclear power, this is something of an expired take. Nuclear is nowhere near price competitive with renewable+storage, and hasn't been for most of a decade now. It also only works where there's significant freshwater supplies, which means several very energy-hungry parts of the country (Southwest, West) are straight-up ineligible for it.
The green energy nuts aren't perfect, but a lot of them are working from solid and stable economic and scientific models that simply tell "traditional" economists things they don't want to hear, because it makes business owners confront the possibility that there's more to this economy than extracting profit from it.
telefawx | 1 year, 7 months ago
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx
Capital-Part4687 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Climate would still brutally change, modern civilization didn't happen to spring up right after the start of the Interglacial Warming Period. That's not a coincidence, humans had been around 200k+ years, but about 160k of those year were shit ass glacial conditions with way less food and rain and way more hypothermia.
Most of Earth climate sucks for humans AND to make it trickier humans are big brains and adapted for the cooler conditions of an Ice Age, BUT modern ciziliation is adapted for the short lived warming cycle of an Ice Age. It's a pretty fragile balance that we will have to artificially produce.
The only way to make the sustainable climate ppl are dreaming of is to permanently change the natural cycle to be an Interglacial Warming Period indefinitely, but without the80k years of cooling can you really keep this many glaciers around?
ThatOneAlreadyExists | 1 year, 7 months ago
Lol the fuck are you talking about. Are you claiming that fossil fuels and industrial farming aren't having a rapid and measurable effect on the current climate?
kylco | 1 year, 7 months ago
They've bought in to some conservative propaganda that magically makes climate change not humanity's fault because sometimes, there are glacial periods.
Climatologists have thoroughly investigated and debunked the scientific questions that originally spawned this political meme, but as we've seen, that doesn't stop trolls, "useful idiots (in the Soviet sense of the term)," or simple shills from spreading them around like they're news.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
Interesting opinion. How much money has J.P. Morgan invested into fossil fuels? Obviously we can’t just stop, but phasing out is a perfectly reasonable solution economically and environmentally.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
Fundamentally the article claims that the reason we can't transition is because consumers demand more cars and air travel. They said that the developing world will want "to buy more cars and take more flights".
In other words, in order for the whole world to be as environmentally destructive as the rich world, we're going to have to destroy the environment.
That sounds a lot more like "we don't want to solve the problem" than "we can't solve the problem."
UDLRRLSS | 1 year, 7 months ago
> That sounds a lot more like "we don't want to solve the problem" than "we can't solve the problem."
That is fundamentally what they are saying. Net zero in ‘years’ can be attained but it would come at a significant cost that society won’t accept. So it’s ‘impossible’ with the current constraints of what society will accept.
DeathKitten9000 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Most surveys I've seen that probe some of the trade-offs of climate policy find voters aren't willing to pay much for climate mitigation. Ruy Teixeira recently discussed one survey in the link provided.
In environmental activist circles it is taken as given that the political influence of the FF industry is the primary reason we have climate inaction. This seems wrong to me & I think the unwillingness of the public to foot the bill for climate mitigation is what's driving climate inaction.
thewimsey | 1 year, 7 months ago
> I think the unwillingness of the public to foot the bill for climate mitigation is what's driving climate inaction.
This is certainly the case. And it's true in the US as well as in Europe.
Not_FinancialAdvice | 1 year, 7 months ago
> voters aren't willing to pay much for climate mitigation
Consumers worldwide are doing the opposite; they've massively choosing to purchase larger and more fuel-hungry SUVs.
The IEA (not exactly a Mother Jones kind of organization) has noted how rapid consumer adoption of SUVs has threatened climate goals.
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/as-their-sales-continue-to-rise-suvs-global-co2-emissions-are-nearing-1-billion-tonnes
>The shift towards heavier and less fuel-efficient conventional vehicles increases growth in both oil demand and CO2 emissions. Between 2021 and 2022, oil use in conventional cars, excluding SUVs, remained roughly the same, but the oil consumption of SUVs globally increased by 500 000 barrels per day, accounting for one-third of the total growth in oil demand. On average, SUVs consume around 20% more oil than an average medium-size non-SUV car. The combustion-related CO2 emissions of SUVs increased by nearly 70 million tonnes in 2022.
Their earlier report (emphasis mine): https://www.iea.org/commentaries/growing-preference-for-suvs-challenges-emissions-reductions-in-passenger-car-market
>The impact of its rise on global emissions is nothing short of surprising. The global fleet of SUVs has seen its emissions growing by nearly 0.55 Gt CO2 during the last decade to roughly 0.7 Gt CO2. As a consequence, SUVs were the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO2 emissions since 2010 after the power sector, but ahead of heavy industry (including iron & steel, cement, aluminium), as well as trucks and aviation.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
To a degree yes, but you just acknowledged that the FF industry has spent billions on influence and punditry. How many voters don’t believe the scientists that specialize in the field? I’m not saying voters should be ignored, but maybe we can try and find a solution to the education problem.
The internet has made everyone convinced they know more than specialists. There is a reason why specialization is necessary for an economy to function well. We can’t all get a PhD in climate science so we need to listen to those that did. Ya know?
DeathKitten9000 | 1 year, 7 months ago
I don't think it is an education problem. The point I was making is even if people accept the scientific basis of climate change their appetite for paying for climate mitigation policies (or changing their behavior) is fairly low.
Certainly in my peer group I notice people arguing the importance of climate change but this doesn't in anyway change their consumer preferences: they still buy that $75k Sprinter van to drive around the West rock climbing, everyone is flying at the slightest opportunity. The messaging by environmental groups laying the responsibility CC on corporations and billionaires has been a really stupid self-own by creating the impression that Climate mitigation is someone else's problem.
Voters and politicians hate inflation. Getting rid of fossil fuels without a ready replacement is going to lead to a lot of energy-driven inflation that will make no one happy. This is why I'm a pessimist on any meaningful policies phasing out FFs is going to happen soon.
Quatsum | 1 year, 7 months ago
The rub is that we can incentivize net zero.
The question isn't just whether folks take flights at the slightest opportunity, but whether they would take flight instead of, say, a comparable light rail service that takes slightly longer but is more environmentally friendly.
It's not about getting people to go cold turkey, it's about giving them access to healthier alternatives.
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
Americans are losing their minds faced with single-digit inflation and you think they'll swallow a 20-hour train ride for 5 times the cost of a 5-hour flight?
To borrow a phrase from the Ozzies: yeah, nah.
Edit: I think this has been the most mundane reply I got blocked for. Still had to get the last word in I guess.
Caracalla81 | 1 year, 7 months ago
I'm not that guy but I'd like to point out that no one is actually asking anyone to take a 20-hour train ride. Many flights and most intercity car trips in the most populous parts of the US could be replaced with high-speed trains that could have comparable cost and travel time to flying. The northeast, the Texas Triangle, and California + Las Vegas are all strong contenders.
Here is a short, friendly, and data-driven video making the case for train travel in North America and they show their work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4
Quatsum | 1 year, 7 months ago
If you made the train rides pleasant enough and gave them enough free time and opportunity to engage in them, while also disincentivizing the use of planes, yes, obviously there would be broad trends towards the use of trains.
You're being disingenuously reductionist and overconfident in your social analysis skills and it's annoying me.
Dirkdeking | 1 year, 7 months ago
There is no education problem. There is a cognitive dissonance problem and therefore a interest problem. The reason voters don't believe the scientists in the field is because they have a vested interest in the opposing narrative, nothing else.
Voters are shockingly ignorant about everything. They don't know shit about black holes or ultra violet lithography either. But they still believe whatever prominent scientists working on ultra violet lithography have to say. Not because they can asses their statements accurately but because they have no interest in not believing them.
Education isn't a solution because the percentage of people too dumb to understand climate science is structurally too high everywhere in the world, not just in the US. Education only gets you so far. Normally that isn't a problem. It only becomes a problem when scientific narratives contradict religious beliefs or when those narratives have economic and policy implications that could harm their material interests. Like higher taxes on planes induced by climate science making certain holidays out of reach that people are used to.
That is what drives the resistance more than anything. People supplying the narratives that are in demand is just a natural consequence of the interest configuration in society.
parolang | 1 year, 7 months ago
It's called psychological denial. You don't want to believe something is true, so you just don't believe it. This makes it easier to convince voters that it's a fiction.
LeonBlacksruckus | 1 year, 7 months ago
Oil is extremely energy dense to the point where a gallon of gas has the energy density of 1000+ 18650 battery cells.
Additionally humans have gotten very good at extracting value out of every drop of oil. Even the tires that electric cars use come from oil. So many things in our economy not just related to transportation would have to change and with current technology it’s close to impossible.
Blaming the oil companies for demand side economics, physics, and chemistry is silly.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
The less we use it for things we have an alternative for the better. It is a finite resource. Why is it for energy plants when we can use green and nuclear at a relatively similar cost? We need it for airplanes because there is no other alternative to oil, not for grandma to go to cvs and get her meds. We need it for rockets to advance our science and tech. Economically it makes sense to switch to renewable, or more abundant energy sources.
LeonBlacksruckus | 1 year, 7 months ago
The point of this article is we don’t have enough money and the technology isn’t ready for us to switch everything away from oil the way we need to.
It doesn’t make sense “economically” because many alternatives have their own draw backs. For example the amount of energy and water required to make a replacement for a paper bag is like 1000x the amount of energy and water required to make a plastic bag.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
Sorry. Lost the plot a bit. I tend to Reddit high. lol
LeonBlacksruckus | 1 year, 7 months ago
That is not what they are saying. They are saying that the developing world is going to tell the developed world to F off because the developed world is responsible for most of the environmental damage and it isn’t fair for the developing world to sacrifice growth and prosperity for a problem they didn’t create.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
>They are saying that the developing world is going to tell the developed world to F off because the developed world is responsible for most of the environmental damage and it isn’t fair for the developing world to sacrifice growth and prosperity for a problem they didn’t create.
Anybody who burns fossil fuels is causing the problem, so your formulation is wrong.
Yes, of course the rich countries are most responsible and should pay for most of the cleanup costs.
But anybody who burns fossil fuels is part of the problem and it's time to stop making excuses. In rich countries they say: "China burns more than we do (as a country)...and they are still building coal plants." In China they say: "Rich countries caused the problem and now they want us to suffer from the cleanup." Big countries blame small countries for the per-capita CO2. Small countries look at big countries total emissions. Rich countries ask why poor countries emissions are growing so quickly. Poor countries ask why rich countries emissions are not dropping faster.
Everybody has an excuse. It's a totally self-defeating blame game.
DistinctTrashPanda | 1 year, 7 months ago
No, the article is saying that we are going to be transitioning more slowly because interest rates are up and it's going to be more expensive to make the investments that we need to make.
As for the developing countries--many do not have the infrastructure to support EVs yet. Heck, adoption of EVs has been happening more quickly than anticipated in the US that there are regions where there are concerns about the reliability of the grid over the next few years.
Tripleawge | 1 year, 7 months ago
What is the solution to quelling the demand for ICE cars and Cheap flights?
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
GLOBAL CARBON TAX.
Or local carbon taxes and border adjustment taxes.
Joshau-k | 1 year, 7 months ago
Individuals can't solve this issue because it's a group action problem.
Are all 8 billion consumers meant to have a meeting and agree to only fly on carbon neutral planes?
The only agents able to solve this problem are governments and large corporations. Literally just because there are less of them that need to agree to a solution.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
Sure, I agree. Although I don't think that lets consumers off the hook. Just because the average person doesn't have the ethical backbone to make the right choice does not mean that you yourself should not make the right choice.
By analogy, most people aren't vegan, and I'm not either, but I know that factory farming is wrong and they are right and I don't try to pretend otherwise. People who spend their children's carbon budget are wrong, even if everyone else is doing it.
Joshau-k | 1 year, 7 months ago
Personally I'd be more strongly morally inclined to give all my income to aid and development charities than make my life carbon neutral. It would likely be much more impactful.
Taking the moral approach to climate change is philosophically messy and has mixed results.
The economics are pretty clear cut though. We're going to all be poorer unless we coordinate a transition to a low carbon economy.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
If you give the money the average person spends on airfare and gas to those charities, you’ll be giving quite a bit.
MrsMiterSaw | 1 year, 7 months ago
Air travel currently accounts for 2.5% of CO2.
I feel like there could be ways to transition autos to electric and mitigate air travel emissions.
But you know, this requires the rich to be a little less rich and the powerful to have a little less power, so fuck it.
[OP] technocraticnihilist | 1 year, 7 months ago
The point is that there aren't any good alternatives to fossil fuels.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
Of course there are.
Solar, wind, hydro, batteries, hydrogen, flywheels, gravity storage, nuclear.
Lots of alternatives.
One can define "good" extremely narrowly to exclude all of these, of course. I could do the same to prove that there aren't any "good" alternatives to hydrogen.
[OP] technocraticnihilist | 1 year, 7 months ago
They are all inefficient, expensive and unreliable.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
I have been using extremely cheap hydro power for decades so I know first hand that you are either mistaken or lying.
[OP] technocraticnihilist | 1 year, 7 months ago
Hydro can only be used to power a small share of energy needs.
ahfoo | 1 year, 7 months ago
Did you seriously just say that with a Democratic president standing there enforcing Republican tariffs on green energy? Did you really write that in public on purpose in 2024?
I'm impressed. I'll be referring to this comment later. Don't touch it.
AdfatCrabbest | 1 year, 7 months ago
I mean, they’re saying it could take generations globally, which sounds perfectly plausible to me.
The world is a massive place and fossil fuels are used just about everywhere on the planet. It’s not gonna be done in 20 years unless a cheap, easy, sci-fi-like alternative energy machine is invented. That’s not happening.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
Read the article closely. The JP Morgan person is advocating for an INCREASE in fossil fuel use to allow more people to have more cars and more air travel.
hyphenomicon | 1 year, 7 months ago
He's saying that projected demand notably exceeds projected supply.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
Yeah, and when a good has notable negative externalities, as fossil fuels do, the role of governments is to suppress demand. (see also cigarettes)
e.g. through carbon taxes and border trade adjustments
But JP Morgan says it is "impossible" to reach our goal, so I guess we need not bother with all of that.
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
Yeah, and the government of Nigeria is not going to tell Nigeria to not do exactly as the Americans did a century ago out of some nebulous commitment to an externality. They want what Americans already have, and who can blame them? I'd want an AC unit and a pool in Nigeria too.
This isn't about JP Morgan, this is about human beings. He's stating what should be obvious.
See also: Botswana, elephants.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
>Yeah, and the government of Nigeria is not going to tell Nigeria to not do exactly as the Americans did a century ago out of some nebulous commitment to an externality.
Sure, if you consider a livable planet for our grandkids a "nebulous commitment". I don't. I'd just call that common sense and responsibility, and I believe that many Nigerians are in possession of both.
In fact, it turns out that yes they do:
>In order to protect the Nigerian environment and ecosystem from the ravages associated with climate change and to achieve the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria signed the country’s climate change bill into law on 18th November 2021.
...
The goal of the carbon budget is to keep the average increase in global temperature within 2 degrees Celsius and make a concerted effort to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
So no, it isn't like Botswana at all.
They know that we're all in this together. I'm pleased that they are not as eager to make excuses for inaction as redditors are.
UDLRRLSS | 1 year, 7 months ago
They say it’s impossible to meet it in the timeframe that was set. Not that the goal itself was impossible.
And the reason is because we can’t just change societies demand overnight. It would be great to suppress demand, we could institute a carbon tax so that everyone has to pay for the pollution they cause. However, this is going to significantly impact the poor far more than the wealthy. JP Morgan believes we don’t have the constitution to make the hard choices required to attain the stated goals in the stated timeline. They particularly pointed out social unrest if energy costs increased (what would happen with a carbon tax.)
AdfatCrabbest | 1 year, 7 months ago
Cutting off fossil fuels cold turkey has staggering negative externalities as well, like the deaths of a large portion of the global population very quickly.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
Who is proposing that we "cut off fossil fuels cold turkey". It's a total strawman.
Look back in the thread you're responding to. It's about NEW USES of fossil fuels. About new sources of demand.
How about if we stopped INCREASING our usage of them.
Tyler_CantStopeMe | 1 year, 7 months ago
No bad man, just bad. Work for bad company. Bad evil company.
/s
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
I'm not upset at him for working for a bad company. I'm upset that he's taking a defeatist position which is at odds with the wellbeing of the world's people but in line with his own corporate interests.
Something he could say instead is: "If we do nothing, fossil fuel demand is projected to continue to increase, so government should do something right now."
But...JP Morgan is invested in fossil fuels, so it isn't in his interest to say that.
UDLRRLSS | 1 year, 7 months ago
He isnt taking a position, he is stating facts.
> It added that investment in renewable energy “currently offers subpar returns” and that if energy prices rose strongly, there was even a risk of social unrest.
If we want renewable energy to take over fossil fuels, it must do it at a cheaper price point. Because people aren't going to choose to do without over getting what they want and causing pollution. And if energy prices go up, which is required for renewable energy to become more popular, then there’s a social unrest concern.
None of this is a judgement on values nor is it being defeatist.
You are confusing JPMorgan believing that society needs more energy, and is willing to pay for it, and so they invest in fossil fuels to provide to society what it wants with JPMorgan wanting to change society to use more fossil fuels so that their investments do better.
It is much, much easier for JPMorgan to divest from fossil fuel investments than it is for them to change all of societies habits. Their investments are where they are because they believe our need for fossil fuels exceeds what other industry bodies have predicted. This article just restates the same position JPMorgan had before they initiated their investments.
TeaKingMac | 1 year, 7 months ago
>If we want renewable energy to take over fossil fuels, it must do it at a cheaper price point.
You know how we alter that price point? Add in the cost of negative externalities of fossil fuels with a carbon tax. Something governments could choose to do.
Dirkdeking | 1 year, 7 months ago
They could, but they would be lynched by an angry mob pretty quickly if they did that. We all saw what the rising energy costs induced by the Ukraine war triggered in Europe, massive government subsidies on energy costs. Now imagine a government doing the opposite by making energy more expensive on purpose. What do you think is going to happen?
People will just accept paying even more on already tight budgets?
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
There are many jurisdictions with carbon taxes. You make them sound impossible. They aren't. Even in Europe.
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
Yeah, the governments at the top of the Maslow pyramid, so to speak. Not those at the middle or lower.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
>Because people aren't going to choose to do without over getting what they want and causing pollution. And if energy prices go up, which is required for renewable energy to become more popular, then there’s a social unrest concern.
Sure. That's what I said. If we don't WANT to invest in the transition, then we will fail to do so. And part of the way that we can shape the consensus away from doing it is to say that its "impossible."
Instead of being honest and saying: "We don't want to do it", we claim it is impossible.
And given that JPMorgan makes tons of money off of the status quo, it is very convenient to claim it is impossible rather than saying: "We have hard choices ahead of us and JP Morgan will take the lead in making some of them and we will use our bullhorn as loud as we can to encourage governments and other corporations to make hard choices too."
GayMakeAndModel | 1 year, 7 months ago
Fun fact: something isn’t true by virtue of being a fact.
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
You sure?
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
That... um... wow. I want to have this framed. Fuck that, I want this as a tattoo, it is profound in its stupidity.
thewimsey | 1 year, 7 months ago
> But...JP Morgan is invested in fossil fuels, so it isn't in his interest to say that.
JP Morgan is a bank. They aren't invested in fossil fuels. They may have fossil fuel companies as clients - I don't know.
But at least I'm not making things up.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
You don't consider offering a loan to build a fossil fuel pipeline or oil well an "investment"?
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/more-than-1300-scientists-call-on-jpmorgan-chase-shareholders-to-vote-in-favor-of-fossil-fuel-phase-out
https://bank.green/banks/jpmorgan_chase
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/03/18/jpmorgan-chase-tops-dirty-list-of-35-fossil-fuel-funding-banks/?sh=3d95bf2d5dfe
>JPMorgan Chase contributes more money towards fossil fuel industries than any other bank, putting a total of $268 billion into coal, oil and gas firms over the last four years, according to a new study.
>In total, the world’s biggest banks have put $2.7 trillion into those industries since the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to the Banking on Climate Change 2020 report, which tracked data on 35 private financial institutions. While investments to the biggest coal, oil and gas producers fell in the immediate aftermath of the Paris Agreement, researchers found that in 2019 those investments shot back up by some 40%.
>Another three U.S. banks—Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America—joined JPM to round out the top four fossil fuel investors; Canada’s RBC took fifth position. Britain’s Barclays was the largest European investor in fossils overall, having plowed $118 billion into hydrocarbons, but according to the report, French firm BNP Paribas overtook all other European banks in 2019, putting more than $30 billion into fossil financing.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/younginvestors/10/what-is-an-investment.asp
>No matter what the commercials say, there are only three basic categories of investment: ownership, lending, and cash equivalents. They are products that are purchased with the expectation that they will produce income, or profit, or both.
Lending money is a category of investing. The risks generally are lower than for many investments; consequently, the rewards are relatively modest.
changee_of_ways | 1 year, 7 months ago
This entire conversation seems to overlook the fact that climate doesn't care about economics. You can't bargain with it, just endure it. Climate has an almost unlimited ability to inflict cost on the economy of every country. It leads the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse around by the nose.
We are rushing towards an unprecedented threat to humanity, and any economist that isn't ringing the alarm bell is worth about as much as a firefighter playing with a flare gun in a gas refinery.
Adventurous-Rope-466 | 1 year, 7 months ago
While it's true that transitioning away from fossil fuels is a monumental task, it's not an impossible one. You suggests that we need a "cheap, easy, sci-fi-like alternative energy machine," but the reality is that many of these technologies already exist and are becoming increasingly affordable.
The Paris Agreement aims for the world to be carbon-neutral by 2050, and achieving this goal is not just desirable, but necessary. The consequences of not doing so are severe and far-reaching, affecting every aspect of our lives, from the food we eat to the air we breathe.
Every individual, community, and nation has a role to play in this transition. We can start by reducing our energy consumption, supporting renewable energy projects, and advocating for policies that promote sustainability.
The transition to a carbon-free world will create new jobs, stimulate economic growth, and improve public health. It's not just about saving the planet; it's about building a better future for all of us.
Let's not wait for generations to pass before we take action. Let's act now, for ourselves, for our children, and for the future of our planet. The technology is here, the will is growing, and together, we can make the Paris Agreement a reality.
AdfatCrabbest | 1 year, 7 months ago
Did AI write this comment?
I didn’t say we need an alternative energy machine. I said it’s not happening in 20 years without one.
Adventurous-Rope-466 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Lol no.
Just said that the timeline to make sure climate change stays under control is more or less 20y not multiple generations.
Smooth_Detective | 1 year, 7 months ago
Nuclear is the cheap and easy alternative to fossil fuels. And gives experts and scientists sufficient buffers to figure out actual renewable energy sources.
India and China at this point hopefully will become torch bearers of nuclear energy for the whole world.
MrP1anet | 1 year, 7 months ago
Nuclear is not cheap nor is it quick. Both budgets and timelines are almost always increased by 50% during the process
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
China and India don’t need nuclear S badly as we do. They’ll rolling out new coal at speed.
thehourglasses | 1 year, 7 months ago
That only addresses energy use. You’ve also got transportation, petrochemical production (fertilizers), and a long tail of other fossil fuel products (think plastics) that simply can’t be replaced by anything that currently exists. Nuclear works but it’s no silver bullet. Even if we electrify everything (Simon Micheux has shown this is basically impossible with current materials science), it’s going to take generations at minimum.
TeaKingMac | 1 year, 7 months ago
I don't think anyone is advocating abandonment of petrochemical plastics.
Just fossil FUELS
thehourglasses | 1 year, 7 months ago
Ok, so you’re going to go through all of the work to get a barrel of oil and just throw away 60% of it? Get real. A developing country that doesn’t have the infrastructure to employ renewables or nuclear is going to burn it, and unless you threaten them with war for trying to run their economies on oil and natural gas, they’re going to do it. In fact, there’s a decent probability everyone will continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future because renewables only account for like 10% of worldwide power generation and the demand for energy is not slowing down. If you think we’re going to plateau any time soon, especially with AI hitting its stride, you’re sorely mistaken.
TeaKingMac | 1 year, 7 months ago
>just throw away 60% of it?
Just spend some energy to break apart or combine the other components into ones that are suitable for plastic making
>renewables only account for like 10% of worldwide power generation
Every source online says it's nearly 30% now
> The share of renewables in the global power mix has increased by 10 percentage points since 2010 to nearly 30%.
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/renewables/renewable-in-electricity-production-share.html
> Renewables made up 29 percent of global electricity generation by the end of 2020.
https://www.c2es.org/content/renewable-energy/#:~:text=Renewable%20Supply%20and%20Demand&text=Renewables%20made%20up%2029%20percent%20of%20global,by%20the%20end%20of%202020
thehourglasses | 1 year, 7 months ago
Ok, I can accept being wrong about the current electricity generation mix. Regardless, we’re using more fossil fuels than ever before, not less. Demand is accelerating, and we have serious material bottlenecks to contend with in the quest to electrify. I’d be happy to see fossil fuels go away, but it’s just not realistic given the economic realities of the world, especially as energy-hungry technologies are being deployed faster than we can add to energy production capacity.
impossiblefork | 1 year, 7 months ago
It's one cheap and easy alternative, but solar cells really easy to deploy, and you get energy right away.
I know people who have put solar cells on their houses in Sweden and use them to charge their electric cars. In southern Europe meanwhile, solar cells are something that can provide 50%+ of all energy needs.
In southern Europe, southern France, Spain, Italy, etc., you can power your entire household on solar cells than you put on top of your house. You can power your farm equipment entirely on solar cells on your barn, etc.
I don't know what the payback time is, but the payoff time in Sweden is five years.
In Spain average insolation is, I think, about double. So 2.5 years. What else pays itself off that fast? Selling drugs? Burgling a bank?
Substantial_Pitch700 | 1 year, 7 months ago
I guess you have not read anything about the reality (impossibility) of “phase out fossil fuel” dreams? Someone below mentioned the “Paris Agreement”. Are you aware that essentially all the signers have already said it will not happen. For a reality check, look at global crude and condensate demand. Also look at the correlation between GDP and fossil fuel use.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
My minor was in global studies with a specialization in global energy. Guess again. You’re confusing impossible with expensive. Governments will write blank checks for tools of murder but can’t find a pen when it comes to investing in something for their citizens.
changee_of_ways | 1 year, 7 months ago
I dont understand why people are like it's too expensive to phase out fossil fuels, when the cost of continuing to use fossil fuels will be losing most of every city on the coast between Texas and Maine to as a start.
The problem is its getting framed against a cost that doesn't exist, continuing to use fossil fuels and not paying any greater price than we have been.
I mean, for gods sake, we can pretty much write off all of Florida between sea level rise and increased hurricane activity.
parolang | 1 year, 7 months ago
High gas prices will lose elections. We've already seen how important this has been in the past.
People will support environmental policies up until it costs them another 10¢ a gallon or kilowatt-hour.
People will deny the future up until it is on top of them, and then they will expect a quick and cheap intervention.
changee_of_ways | 1 year, 7 months ago
Well, our leadership needs to get on it, that's why they are leaders, they chose the hard job, they need to nut up and do it or let someone who can and will lead.
metakepone | 1 year, 7 months ago
Gas prices were rock bottom in 2020 and Trump lost for other reasons (didn't he?). Oh and if you think I'm a bitter republican for saying this, gas prices have doubled since Biden was inaugurated, hell it reached 6 dollars in 2022, a miderm election year, and republicans won the house with pretty much the tiniest margin.
Find a fuel that can power society and replace oil at the same level of quality of life and people will gladly switch.
Telling people they are killing the planet because they want to get to work or go food shopping while Taylor Swift and other rich people jet set and use their jets to taxi their friends around pisses lots of people off, and I really can't blame them.
cafeitalia | 1 year, 7 months ago
lol.
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
>I mean, for gods sake, we can pretty much write off all of Florida between sea level rise and increased hurricane activity.
I mean... does anyone really care?
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
>You’re confusing impossible with expensive.
Is there a substantive difference in this context?
Fortunately most of us live in democracies, which means the two may as well be synonymous.
Substantial_Pitch700 | 1 year, 7 months ago
What you are discussing appears to be a consensus view among many younger people, non-energy experts, and of course green enthusiasts. The reality is quite different. However, it would not be surprising if you have never been exposed to any analysis that runs counter to the consensus narrative. I assure you, the case for a hydrocarbon free world is non existent. For a few examples of some realistic analysis, check out Robert Bryce's work. Read "A Question of Power" and your perspective will be broadened.
Far a real world example, check out Norway. More electric cars per capita than anywhere, yet hydrocarbon demand continues to rise.
Wanna make a wager on US hydrocarbon demand growth 5 years after Biden's multi -trillion green subsidies?
BTW, I spent 20 plus years as an energy analyst.
cafeitalia | 1 year, 7 months ago
You must have flunked your studies. Seems like you have no clue about energy markets at all and no it is just not oil, plus you have absolutely no clue how oil is used in everything of your life and can not be replaced even in the next 200 years.
TBSchemer | 1 year, 7 months ago
There is absolutely nothing economically or environmentally reasonable about phasing out fossil fuels.
Look at what the cost of this crusade has been in California. PG&E has TRIPLED electricity bills ($600/mo for a 1100 sq ft apartment) in the last 1-2 years, for the sake of climate change mitigation, while natural gas remains 1/10th the cost per unit of energy. We've spent BILLIONS on trains that barely anyone uses. EVs are heavily subsidized, and yet still unaffordable for the vast majority of people, and there isn't enough lithium in the world to fill those batteries. Those mines aren't exactly environmentally friendly either.
There comes a point where efforts to avoid climate change are counterproductive and just plain stupid. Climates change, and there comes a point where we should focus on adapting, rather than pouring $trillions into this obsession of zero carbon output.
Phynx88 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Lol, you should probably not choose PG&E if you're trying to make a point about price, seeing as they posted a 55% YOY profit for 2023 at over 60B
TBSchemer | 1 year, 7 months ago
But I think that's a perfect example of the corruption involved in spending on climate change initiatives. Money gets allocated towards that cause, and then nobody actually tracks what results from the investment. Climate change measures are a bottomless black hole for our money and quality of life, and it deserves far more scrutiny.
Phynx88 | 1 year, 7 months ago
...you do realize most of the proposed climate change government initiatives (as opposed to private industry being subsidized, or contracted out) are cash flow positive? The only reason they're so politically toxic is because of the impacts of pricing carbon have on the investor class.
TBSchemer | 1 year, 7 months ago
Building trains is not cashflow positive. Not even fucking close.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
It seems to me that you are suffering from a narrow vision. You’re looking at how it would affect you, in our current state of things. Most of the carbon output is not from you, me or anyone else. It’s residential and commercial and we could invest funds into replacing fossil fuel plants to nuclear. Zero emission, safer for nearby residents than any toxin spewing plant by far, we have tons of uranium in Nevada waiting to be mined, and while it would be a massively expensive investment it would give exponential returns. As we phase out fossil fuels we can do a better job for the workers too. NAFTA wasn’t a bad idea, it was poorly executed and American workers paid the price. So as we phase out fossil fuel jobs, we can include funding for worker education to ease the shift into a new energy field.
That alone would be a great economically efficient way to phase out a large portion of our carbon output. And there is a bit of hope involved in this discussion that new tech will save us as far as the lithium problem. And it is a problem, but just because there are hurdles in the road doesn’t mean we just tell our grandkids “sorry you can’t see stars anymore, but hey it was too expensive”
TBSchemer | 1 year, 7 months ago
"Can't see stars anymore?" Which crazy doomsday prediction did that come from?
I'm all for nuclear, but electricity generation is not the bottleneck now. It's delivery. It's storage. It's batteries.
And we shouldn't be sacrificing quality of life for the sake of saving energy.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
It’s not a prediction. In LA for a while in the 80s the smog obscured the sky. Same thing is true in modern day Beijing. Not a “doomsday prediction” but an observed event.
Phynx88 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Lolwhat? You don't think trains have positive ROI?? The most cost effective way to ship large amounts of good over land? The way one of the richest people alive today made his fortune isn't cash flow positive? What reality are you in??
TBSchemer | 1 year, 7 months ago
We're talking about passenger trains, in an era where cars and planes are far more popular for actual travelers and commuters. Try to keep up.
Phynx88 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Lol, no. We're talking about the reality of phasing out fossil fuels, and you're regurgitating unhinged opinions regarding the financial viability of trains for some unbeknownst reason
johyongil | 1 year, 7 months ago
It isn’t so much of an opinion as it is an observation on study results. This opinion is not isolated to JPM. There are significant challenges to the transition away from fossil fuels not the least of which is raw materials. Just to accomplish the 2030-2035 deadline for the USA of selling only EVs, the WORLD’s mining production has to basically double practically overnight and that’s only for consumer vehicles which makes up less than 15% of emissions from fossil fuels. Add in commercial vehicles and the energy consumption of those vehicles too and you’re looking at an astronomical amount of energy consumption jump that I don’t know that the current infrastructure is ready for.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
It’s his interpretation of the results of a study. If you really want to get into it has the study been peer reviewed? Who funded the study? It’s crazy talk to say we need to stop extracting and using oil immediately, but it’s also crazy talk to say fuck it. My whole original point was that jp morgan is an investment firm and bank, not a climate science institute. I understand that he is talking about the economics, but he is pushing an agenda in someone else’s lane. I just want to know what his incentive is.
johyongil | 1 year, 7 months ago
The most prominent one is done by EY.
boringexplanation | 1 year, 7 months ago
There’s also places where green energy is just prohibitively expensive or inefficient. A lot of the mandates that insist that it has to be 100% green energy is going to double rates in certain areas that can’t realistically do it.
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
Most energy uses is for commercial and residential. We think gasoline for cars, but that’s a drop in the bucket for global consumption of oil. We have the tech to safely and efficiently convert to nuclear power for residential and commercial uses. Zero emissions get released in nuclear power plants. It leaves radioactive waste but that can easily be stored and contained. France gets more than 50% of its energy from nuclear, whereas the US only gets around 11% from nuclear. Just think of all the jobs and stimulus that a program like that would create. Our government has already burdened my future away with debt, and at least this way it’s for something other than legislative pork or aid money for genocides.
boringexplanation | 1 year, 7 months ago
Nuclear power is inflexible for peak power usage. The current struggles with most grids are being able to scale up and down with AC demand and 4-8pm, which nuclear is terrible with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
quellofool | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is a terrible false equivalency. No one is advocating Nuclear for solving peak demand. You would mixed grid. Let Nuclear cover the base demand and use solar/wind to provide during peak demand. This is what France and Finland does.
boringexplanation | 1 year, 7 months ago
Nuclear is a solution to a problem that rarely exists then. Most baseline plants are locked in for 50 year periods- planned on well in advanced. You can’t just build a nuclear plant and it works. Load balancing is hard and baseline plants in general are just not popular for a long term sustainable grid.
The irony is that the more solar becomes popular- the less nuclear makes sense.
Solar has the problem of putting into TOO much energy in the grid at the wrong time, which makes it even more crucial that we ONLY build plants with maximum flexibility moving forward. Unless you propose we put a moratorium on solar?
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
Photovalic cells consume massive amounts of precious resources and have an effective lifespan for 25 years last I read. It’s not really a sustainable option for mass execution. But using solar mixed with nuclear, wind, hydro, and there is designs being drawn up for turbines that use coastal currents. That would power Florida all summer long through hurricane season. Joking aside, the Atlantic current is one of the most powerful and we could put a huge chunk of energy into the grid if those work out.
Many European countries manage a mostly green energy grid reasonably well and reasonably priced. I know that America has its own unique issues, namely logistics cuz this bitch huge, but if the French can do it there is no way that we can’t.
metakepone | 1 year, 7 months ago
French population: ~70 million
American population: ~340 million
MightbeGwen | 1 year, 7 months ago
The challenges will be different, we are also the size of multiple France’s. As of the 2020 census ~82% of Americans live in cities or urban areas, and in the same year ~81% of the French live in cities or urban areas. It wouldn’t be hard to congregate a huge portion of residential and commercial energy effectively in the same manner. Rural areas will be different.
cafeitalia | 1 year, 7 months ago
JPM doesn’t invest their own money rather they invest client money plus they are an actual bank that offer services that don’t include any investments. Do you even have a clue about what JPM actually does or are you one of those with opinions but no knowledge?
Raychao | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is our 'great filter' moment. We've just realised oh shit! we don't have it.
We've been talking about this since I was a child in the 1980s (at least).
ManOfDiscovery | 1 year, 7 months ago
ITT: people using long-form essays to essentially describe the tragedy of the commons.
It’s not new, and is quite literally a tale as old as civilization. People collectively can’t be bothered and refuse to accept we are all individually the snowflake in the avalanche.
arbutus1440 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Yes, but the outstanding question is what will it take to break the dam and create some sort of revolution.
And it still remains unacceptable that the people holding power at corporations like these actively choose to frame the problem as "welp, can't do anything about it" rather than "we're gonna have to change the paradigm if we want to survive."
This is much, much more about the power of the elites than the ignorance of the masses.
Shyatic | 1 year, 7 months ago
People think of fossil fuels and think that EVs won’t need them, but our economy is so dependent on petroleum products in general. Plastics and materials that come from fossil fuels at this point in time cannot be replaced with almost any other product.
I am fine with transitioning to EVs, even though I don’t think they are very good right now. There is time needed to make them better which may be in the 10-20 year investment range. Repairability of an EV is essentially zero, which adds a lot of waste in countries that don’t care about recycling. And charging obviously is a challenge for those without a home charger.
The fossil fuel dependency will continue until we build alternatives to the plastics and products we derive from them. And investments will need to be made not just in EVs but alternative products all around.
zegorn | 1 year, 7 months ago
Well EVs aren't here to "save the planet", they're here to "save the automotive industry"
mhornberger | 1 year, 7 months ago
> Plastics and materials that come from fossil fuels at this point in time
"Fossil fuel" refers to the burning of oil/gas for energy. Not to the use of oil/gas as a feedstock. The use as feedstock isn't what's pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
>>A fossil fuel[a] is a hydrocarbon-containing material such as coal, oil, and natural gas,[2] formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel.
yousakura | 1 year, 7 months ago
All production processes have a carbon footprint. Even Solar and Wind, which are subordinate to Fossil Fuels for the baseline grid in most cases. Thankfully, Japan has the common sense to reconsider and go forward with Nuclear.
mhornberger | 1 year, 7 months ago
Germany and Denmark are already getting a higher share of their electricity from solar and wind than Japan ever did from nuclear. Considering the doubling rate for solar and how long new nuclear often takes to come online, nuclear might never catch up with solar and wind.
Though you can claim that it doesn't need to, I suppose. China's an interesting case, because though they're mentioned as being big on nuclear, they're getting more from solar and more from wind than from nuclear, and both solar and wind are still scaling more quickly than nuclear.
yousakura | 1 year, 7 months ago
The only thing that's stopping Nuclear from taking off to truly offset emissions is governmental policy.
Ano1822play | 1 year, 7 months ago
I heard that plastic based, fossil fuel based, construction materials are the future... Like buildings made of plastic
But cannot find the source again
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
If we want to be carbon negative we ought to be building out of wood.
Meloriano | 1 year, 7 months ago
We don’t need EVs either. EV were created to save the automobile industry, not the planet.
We already have the means and systems that could replace automobiles in general. If you live in an area with well developed urban planning and maintained public transportation, there is no need for any cars for most people.
mhornberger | 1 year, 7 months ago
> We don’t need EVs either.
I'm all for increasing the share of transport via mass transit. But you won't get rid of cars. Even in countries with outstanding mass transit systems, a high percentage of trips are still taken by automobiles.
Meloriano | 1 year, 7 months ago
I’m not saying we will get rid of cars. I’m saying we can dramatically reduce the amount of cars that we need and the share of people using them.
thewimsey | 1 year, 7 months ago
> If you live in an area with well developed urban planning and maintained public transportation, there is no need for any cars for most people.
And for the remaining 90% of the US population?
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
This may come as a surprise but there is an entire planet beyond the borders of the United States.
Eregorn | 1 year, 7 months ago
I would contest that making things even worse, we probably need to be zero plastic even more than zero FFE.
That's because, while the science is still relatively new on it, I do believe we are trending to a belief that micro plastics are deleterious to human fertility. And if so, it would explain the massive decline in global fertility we see in recent decades.
With the climate, there's at least degrees of pain we could shoot for but eventually stabilize once we got our shit together. I don't think we can recover when we poison ourselves to the point where we can't even desire and are incapable to have enough kids for replacement levels.
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
> That's because, while the science is still relatively new on it, I do believe we are trending to a belief that micro plastics are deleterious to human fertility. And if so, it would explain the massive decline in global fertility we see in recent decades.
Is that such a bad thing? Plastics in this sense seem to be a solution, not a problem.
prevent-the-end | 1 year, 7 months ago
> Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at the Rocky Mountain Institute, disputed JPMorgan’s assertion that the cost of building renewables capacity was becoming unaffordable, saying the annual growth of energy infrastructure spending will only be 2 per cent, as money is increasingly diverted from oil and gas projects into renewables.
> “Renewable energy is much cheaper and more efficient than fossil fuel energy, which is why almost all electricity generation capacity now being built is solar or wind,” he said.
Higher interest rates may slow down the investments but since renewables are cheaper the trend isn't going to reverse.
What article IS right about though is that we are falling short of 2030 targets, as this IEA report released 3 months ago confirms:
https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summary
> Under existing policies and market conditions, global renewable capacity is forecast to reach 7 300 GW by 2028. This growth trajectory would see global capacity increase to 2.5 times its current level by 2030, falling short of the tripling goal. Governments can close the gap to reach over 11 000 GW by 2030 by overcoming current challenges and implementing existing policies more quickly.
Renewables are not a matter of "if they happen" but "when". Problem of course is that fighting climate change is a race and there is a massive difference between reaching our targets in 2030 vs reaching our 2030 targets in 2050 for example.
Ketaskooter | 1 year, 7 months ago
Renewables are not cheaper for what matters. The battery technology is not there yet so instead of one power plant, going hard on renewables takes construction of up to two power plants.
nerox3 | 1 year, 7 months ago
With the number of large scale battery storage units being implemented over the past couple of years, I don't think it is any longer obvious that "battery technology is not there yet". For the more economic situations (eg. daily short term power storage to meet evening demand) I think it may very well be "here now".
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Yep. Reality has not been a part of energy planning for a long time. Renewables and EVs are good but we are not ready to transcend fossil fuel dependency.
All that is happening now is the developing countries with some power and autonomy like China, India and Indonesia can ignore climate colonialism and are rapidly building out coal-fired power infrastructure.
Weaker countries and those dependent on the West are forced to depend on more expensive and less reliable renewable energy.
We are about to learn that you can leapfrog technology in mobile phones and industries not constrained by physical laws, in particular the law of thermodynamics.
Developing countries are not going to be able to go from inadequate fossil infrastructure directly to a modern renewables based system.
JP Morgan (and UBS and others) are just saying what they have known to be true for a long time but have not been able to say. But the dam has broken.
The rapid transition fantasies of the global elites have been been practical and were never going to work.
Climate change is real and we do need to look for and invest in plans to mitigate and adapt. But they can’t be imposed on the poor by the rich, either with or from wealthy countries.
The pushback is now too strong and the logic too powerful. This is the year in which the global elite climate consensus collapses.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
What you are saying is unrelated to what the article says. You are just jumping on a headline that matches your priors.
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
What I am saying is the story. The previous comments from UBS were far more direct. J P Morgan has to be more polite than me but they agree 100% that net zero may be generations away.
The article also says that RE stocks have “stalled”, because as you comment shows it is easy to offend the true believers. But the charts shows they have collapsed 60%.
War and interest rates may be the cover story, and interest rates have certainly make it impossible to continue to subside uneconomic projects. But the core problem is reality.
Our civilization would collapse in days without fossil fuels and although that will change some day it is probably not in our lifetime.
However, if you would like produce any facts or evidence, we can have a nice friendly logical discussion.
Moist1981 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Pointing to the collapse is rather disingenuous without mentioning the frankly insane rise over 2020, the fact that fall is largely linked to a reduction in commitments from policy makers, and the huge numbers of elections this year where some candidates are taking an actively anti-renewable stance for political purposes. They remain essentially level with fossil fuel stocks and the suggestion that they offer inferior returns to fossil fuels doesn’t seem to have any basis in reality. I’m also intrigued what uneconomic projects you are referring to?
No one is referring to removing fossil fuels instantly and scare tactics around that point are a common trope of oil companies. Similarly your point around developing countries struggling to adopt renewables because they don’t yet have fossil fuels seems ill considered given there is no stepping requirement between the two, if anything the distributed nature of renewables should allow for easier energy investment.
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is what happens in bubbles. Prices race up and collapse. Pointing this out is not disingenuous by any stretch. The downward pressure on fossil stocks probably has as much to do with punitive policies from the US and Europe as anything else. If Trumps wins the next election I assure you they will soar. In fact the recent uptick May reflect little more than confidence that will be what happens.
I worked in the energy and renewable energy fields for many years. I saw this coming and shifted my focus.
Two years ago all of the idealists and advocates were shouting from the rooftops that this was the end of fossil fuel, that we would see “stranded assets”.
Renewables may be distributed but solar only generated power for 1/4-1/3 of the day and outside of a centralized system would be very hard to finance. If you think interest rates are punitive now, just wait until you see the cost of debt for projects in developing countries with low credit off-takers.
I think that if you pay attention, even in developed countries they agree that the barrier is the grid. They just don’t ascribe that cost to RE.
Moist1981 | 1 year, 7 months ago
I don’t think it is a bubble, it was an extremely sharp rise followed by a decline over 3 years, that’s the opposite of a normal bubble. The timings also link very strongly to climate initiatives and low interest rate environments associated with covid.
It still seems very likely there will be a bunch of stranded assets. In many cases renewable energy production is cheaper and grid level storage solutions do away with the one down side presented by renewable energy.
Re developing nations, outside of vehicles, centralised systems would be needed just as much for fossil fuel energy production and would have to overcome similar financing hurdles.
In fact renewables might well offer easier small scale distributed production with sodium batteries are likely to offer very cheap distributed energy storage solutions.
The barrier to what is the grid? Switching to EVs? Sure. But if you’re improving the grid to handle more energy production generally then that production might as well be renewable.
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Grid-based storage is much further away than you seem to think. I don’t believe there are any commercial applications is developing countries except perhaps remote islands with a tourist economy. It is decades away from grid replace in countries like Cambodia or much of Africa.
I may agree that the rise was linked to climate initiatives (I.e. subsidies and regulations) and low interest rates.
Fossil energy can support grid development because of its high and predictable utilization rates. When you can generate power reliably 24 hours a day, you can build a grid to support it.
With Solar the advantage is indeed that it can be sited near demand. But it won’t support a grid because it operated for 25% of the day and the exact same 25% that everyone has power and doesn’t need more.
Commercial and Industrial solar rooftops were among the best applications of solar because they are near demand. But the only reason there is that much demand is because of the grid. You couldn’t build a new factory and use only solar to power it.
Solar and batteries could indeed be very effective at proving distributed power but it would be expensive, which is why it works in Hawaii or other wealthy island where they have money and limited options.
I’ll defer to the opinions of the economists here but that chart is to me a classic bubble. Irrational expectations pumped it up, reality brought it back down.
Moist1981 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Ignoring the wide use of hydro power which exactly is grid scale energy storage, grid based storage is in place in a huge number of places already. https://www.energy-storage.news/europe-deployed-1-9gw-of-battery-storage-in-2022-3-7gw-expected-in-2023-lcp-delta/
There’s a battery farm going up near me in SW london in the next year or so.
And that’s just lithium batteries. Flow battery tech is being used in a number of projects underway and iron oxygen batteries, heat storage systems, compressed air storage systems, and fly wheel systems are all developing at a remarkable pace that will likely see a number of projects online by the end of decade.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
What is possible or impossible depends largely on one’s choices. It isn’t physics.
Explain how it is physics that demands that we never hundreds of billions in building GPU factories instead of solar panels?
How is it physics that determines that the entire Russian economy is oriented towards bombing their neighbours instead of transitioning?
How is it physics that allocated hundreds of billions of dollars to building defensive weaponry in Ukraine instead of building batteries?
How is it physics that prevented most countries in the world (including rich countries) from having a price on carbon as advised by economists decades ago?
How is it physics that decided that we would not have carbon related border adjustment taxes?
Per the article, how is it physics that demands that global air flight tourism must grow year on year?
We have chosen to invest in things other than the highest priority things and that’s why it is “impossible” for us to meet our goals.
Yes, there is a sense in which it is “impossible” in the same sense that it is impossible for an obese person to lose weight. If one has no mechanism for mustering the motivation then it is impossible to reach the goal. It is also “impossible” for me to learn to play the guitar.
I will believe it is truly impossible at a physics level only once we’ve actually tried carbon taxes and border adjustments in every country. That’s the most economically sound plan and we haven’t even tried it yet.
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
It is impossible in the sense that a rapid transition would lead to a societal collapse that would kill most of the people on the planet and reduce what is left to a dark ages level of advancement.
If you want to lump that into “It just depends on the price you want to pay”, you are free to do so.
I do believe that over a reasonable period of time a transition to all or mostly non-carbon energy should be our goal. But for now, the approach of China and India are the only rational ones. Build new renewable and fossil infrastructure out together.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
>It is impossible in the sense that a rapid transition would lead to a societal collapse that would kill most of the people on the planet and reduce what is left to a dark ages level of advancement.
According to the article that we are discussing, global use of fossil fuels for non-essential purposes is going UP.
"the populations of developing countries begin to buy more cars and take more flights."
"More and more of the world is getting access to energy and a greater proportion want to use that energy to upgrade their living standards"
This doesn't sound at all like we are near a "collapse" which will "kill most of the people on the planet." It sounds like we are making the choice to accelerate the destruction of our environment to satisfy our short-term needs.
It's flatly false to claim that reducing global tourism air travel, cruises and car manufacturing would cause a "collapse" which will "kill most of the people on the planet." And I'm sure you know that's false.
I'm not cherry picking an example out of thin air. These are quotes from the article that we're discussing. THEY are the ones attributing our failure to transition to people who want more cars and to take more flights.
What should happen instead is that the poor world should keep their plane traffic at the current level and the rich world should reduce theirs to match the poor world. Huge amounts of rich country money should be spent to upgrade the living standards of poor countries with sustainable technology.
But we like our trips to Hawaii and JP Morgan tells us that there's nothing we can do to accelerate the transition, so I guess we might as well take the trip to Hawaii.
I am very familiar with that "logic" and that's why I'm wasting time on Reddit instead of focusing on the priorities that I actually care about in my life. Working on my taxes is "impossible" as long as there is someone on Reddit to argue with.
hyphenomicon | 1 year, 7 months ago
I think it's unclear if pricing developing countries with rising standards of living out of fossil fuels would be a good thing.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
If you do ONLY that, then sure, it's unclear. In fact it's probably wrong and bad.
If you also spend hundreds of billions of dollars on subsidizing their heat pumps, solar panels, EVs and batteries, then it becomes more clear.
For example, if you diverted the hundreds of billions being spent right now on AI, or weapons, or second and third cars per household or ...
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
You are indeed cherry picking and misconstruing. My reference to societal collapse from a rapid transition away from renewables was obviously hypothetical. It is correct and I would be curious if you would dispute that, but I never said that is what we are doing.
Yes developing countries are increasing their use of energy because they want to stop being poor. I commend them for that and urge them to continue doing it. This is not a problem that has been caused by the poor. I certainly think they are right to wait for Bill Gates, Taylor Swift and the world’s other billionaires to cut back on their disgusting misuse of resources before the agree to languish voluntarily in deprivation.
The idea that I said reducing tourism would lead to a collapse is a scarlet herring. I said nothing of the sort.
What we do seem to agree on is that the rich should bare the cost ahead of the poor. It is a tragedy that it is happening the other way around.
If it makes you feel any better you are keeping me from bed. I live in a developing country in Asia.
prescod | 1 year, 7 months ago
>You are indeed cherry picking and misconstruing. My reference to societal collapse from a rapid transition away from renewables was obviously hypothetical. It is correct and I would be curious if you would dispute that, but I never said that is what we are doing.
It's simply a strawman. That is not a proposal made at COP or in this subreddit or elsewhere. It's not on the table. It's not worth discussing.
We should transition to renewables at the fastest pace that does not cause societal collapse. Instead we are budgeting on increased use of fossil fuels for non-essential purposes. We are doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
>Yes developing countries are increasing their use of energy because they want to stop being poor. I commend them for that and urge them to continue doing it. This is not a problem that has been caused by the poor. I certainly think they are right to wait for Bill Gates, Taylor Swift and the world’s other billionaires to cut back on their disgusting misuse of resources before the agree to languish voluntarily in deprivation.
I 90% agree with this, but in general I dislike the framing of anyone "waiting" until someone else takes action. Literally everyone on the planet has some excuse for waiting for someone else. But sure, I agree that the majority of the cost should be carried by the rich countries (for many different reason). Nobody should be "waiting" to take action though.
And developing countries SHOULD NOT adopt the poor habits of taking cruises and non-essentially airplane flights of the rich countries. Of course the rich countries should also shed those bad habits.
>What we do seem to agree on is that the rich should bare the cost ahead of the poor. It is a tragedy that it is happening the other way around.
I don't see it happening the other way around. I mostly just see the transition as not happening. Globally speaking, the level of investment is miniscule.
The Inflation Reduction Act will cost less than the Iraq war and at the end of it America will have lots of wonderful new capital built. It should be several times as large and a lot of it should be spent in developing nations.
That's what I mean by saying "it's impossible" when we've barely even tried.
Sorry I'm keeping you up. :)
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
A hypothetical argument is not a strawman. I am not claiming that anyone is proposing it. I am highlighting the fact that we remain and will remain dependent on fossils fuels. There are many who claim otherwise.
I think we should transition to non-carbon energy as fast as we can without significantly curtailing growth or hurting poor people. I don’t say renewables because nuclear is almost certain to be a big part of it and the transition will be slower and more painful without it.
I don’t want developing countries to take cruises per se but I do want them to be about to bring themselves out of poverty.
I don’t see a lot being done in many developing countries to implement renewable energy but that is because it is not easy. I do see a massive effort on behalf of international organizations and development finance institutions to deny these countries the ability to develop any fossil assets. As I said China, India and Indonesia are themselves pushing forward with coal, not because they want it but because they need it.
Cambodia for example is a desperate poor country that is poised for an era of economic growth. But they suffer from inadequate energy and high electricity prices. They are not powerful like the countries I mentioned and so have been forced to cancel the coal plant that would have fueled that.
I dislike coal but Cambodia has no other options. They can’t use gas because they couldn’t get international finance for it (and other reasons). They have no wind, are at capacity on hydro and so are stuck with solar.
But without a grid variable solar will be of little use and at some point itself gets hard to finance because using all of it without an adequate grid supplied with baseless power won’t be easy.
I personally think EVs as a large scale urgent policy are borderline dumb. We have know for decades that there is one way to reduce vehicle fuel consumption and that is reducing vehicle weight. And electric Hummer is a perversion. Taxing cars on weight would have solved the vehicle side of the problem years ago.
Now to bed. I have enjoyed arguing with you. I will respond to any other comments in nine hours or so. I sleep very well!
[OP] technocraticnihilist | 1 year, 7 months ago
I agree
lmaccaro | 1 year, 7 months ago
>Developing countries are not going to be able to go from inadequate fossil infrastructure directly to a modern renewables based system.
The way technology adoption works is trailing societies leapfrog to the newest tech. Africa isn’t installing landlines they are installing cell towers - and before cell infrastructure is built out will likely go to sat phones now that the technology is modernizing.
Rural Afghanistan is covered in solar panels not newly built coal mines.
thewimsey | 1 year, 7 months ago
Solar is a tiny fraction of Afghanistan's energy production; coal is much more important.
But Afghanistan is sui generis because of the Taliban running things - it's not clear that they have the technical ability to reopen some of their unused coal mines, and they are also exporting a lot of the coal they do have to Pakistan for cash (Pakistan is having severe energy shortages).
The comparison with landlines and cell phones isn't really apt. Countries that skipped the landline phase tended to not have a very well developed landline infrastructure in the first place; Afghanistan has 50+ coal mines and has used coal for 100+ years.
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
I addressed above that leapfrogging works with tech, it does not work with energy. A problem with energy, electricity and climate is that the fields have technical aspects that are hard for people outside of the field to understand
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
>All that is happening now is the developing countries with some power and autonomy like China, India and Indonesia can ignore climate colonialism and are rapidly building out coal-fired power infrastructure.
That just plain isn't true, both China and India are investing heavily into green energy (even if they are also investing in fossil fuels).
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
So it is true. I agree with you because you are agreeing with me, even though you may wish you weren’t.
SeefKroy | 1 year, 7 months ago
There's no reason I'm aware of why we can't use something like natural gas as a primary stopgap before transitioning purely to renewables. Is the infrastructure still not up to stuff in terms of transport or something?
Rooflife1 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Development finance will not fund any fossil fuel projects and new LNG is very hard to plan and finance. You need guaranteed offtake and small countries struggle to procure supply version large capitalize players as contracts are long
FireFoxG | 1 year, 7 months ago
This is an economics sub, so here are some real numbers.
My old magnus opus breakdown of how pointless it is to do ANYTHING about climate change.
Using the IPCC's own calculations, I will show that the policy recommendations to "stop" climate change are insane.
The IPCC figured a 5% cut in emissions when Australia implemented it's carbon tax by 2020. (the largest and most ambitious plan implemented to date) source source2
100% of Australia's emissions are 1.2% of global emissions.
The 5% cut of Australia's global amount of 1.2% is 0.07% of total global emissions.
IPCC figures Co2 will be 410ppm by 2020
0.07% of 410 is 409.988 ppm (math is actually (2ppm * 8.5 years) * 0.0007 = 0.0119 ppm reduced of the total 17ppm increase that would have occurred over the 8.5 year projection)
IPCC equation for Co2 forcing is (5.35 * ln(current Co2 / revised Co2 )) or (5.35 * ln(410/409.988)) source
(5.35 * ln(410/409.988)) = 0.00016 w/m2 of reduced forcing
Climate sensitivity parameter is simple the change in temperature per w/m2 increase. In other words, the actual change in temp divided by the change in energy 'imbalance' since the start of the industrial revolution(150 years). Accounting for El Nino it's risen ~ 0.7-0.8 K over the last 150 years, but lets just say 1 C.
(5.35 * ln(400 / 280)) = 1.90821095007 w/m2
1 C / 1.90821095007 = 0.52 K per w/m2 (PS, This number is unlikely to rise because it's derived from a natural logarithm, thus will asymptotically approach zero as Co2 concentrations rise)
Then figure the climate sensitivity parameter of 0.52(0.00016) and you get 0.0000832 C reduction in global temperatures.
Read that again... it's 1:12,000th of a single degree Celsius.
Now... for the kicker... The IPCC estimated it would cost Australia 160 billion dollars over the 10 year carbon tax plan to get 0.00016 w/m2 of reduced forcing.. source, 2011 Garnaut Report, 11.2 billion per year tax, plus other indirect costs
To save a full degree Celsius of warming, based on the IPCC's own math on the Australian carbon tax plan, would cost 3.2 quadrillion dollars.... or 43 times total global GDP.
Does climate change really matter if the only realistic solution is an economic apocalypse?
According the the stern report(the biggest economic study ever done on climate economics, by the Royal Society of the UK), global costs, under a worst case(nothing done) scenario are expected to be ~ 5% of GDP per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review
That means that if the costs of a carbon tax costs the average person more then 5% per year, then it is not worth it. Given that emissions are basically synonymous with GDP, a 5% cut in emissions would have an impact on temperatures literally too small to measure, but huge economic ramifications.
To use the above math on how long it would take to achieve a single C drop in temps spending 5% of global GDP on it.
(5.35 * ln(400 / (400+ (20 * 0.05)))) = -0.01335830906 w/m2 (co2 rises ~ 2ppm per year, figured a 5% cut over 10 years, or 400 +(20 * 0.05))
(0.52) * -0.01335830906 = -0.00694632071 K
1/0.00694632071 = 143.96 * 10 = 1440 YEARS
Well damn. 1440 years to mitigate a single degree C at 5% GDP cost(3.5 trillion per year). How many star systems can we colonize before then?
So you are stuck in a paradox. Either you drastically lower the average living standard to a level far worse then climate change would ever cause, or cut emissions to a level that would have no discernible impact on global temperatures. In either case, it makes no sense.
You can argue about the plants and animals... But I can guarantee that any cut that is forced on people strong enough to have a measurable impact... would cause an economic apocalypse large enough to cause widespread environmental destruction. Starving people will burn the forests for energy and hunt everything to extinction, in order to survive.
To end this... Nuclear power is the only realistically viable path to disconnecting the carbon emission = GDP connection, But It's not "deniers" stopping the nuclear revolution... it's environmentalists.
ammonium_bot | 1 year, 7 months ago
> person more then 5%
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Explanation: If you didn't mean 'more than' you might have forgotten a comma.
Statistics
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Disillusioned_Pleb01 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Fossil fuels are not being phased out, the carbon foot print, created by the plebs, is now being phased out, so that the industrials and wealthy can carry on as if nothing has changed.
JaydedXoX | 1 year, 7 months ago
For those wanting to phase out fossil fuels, what’s the alternative? A lot of Electric comes from fossil fuels. People don’t want to build dams and don’t like nuclear. These same folks want everyone to live in cities. We won’t ever make enough energy with wind or solar. Someone explain what the alternative is that you guys want?
DrNoseDick | 1 year, 7 months ago
And that’s just electricity. Air travel? There is no non-fossil alternative at the moment (and I’m not sure we’re even close). And everyone forgets about shipping. We love cheap stuff. Everything we have has been shipped from somewhere else with diesel power (trucks, container ships). We’re not close to replacing the large container ships with anything other than diesel. I doubt all of us would feel comfortable with nuclear reactors floating all over the world, and I really can’t see that being the replacement.
albert768 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Don't forget about all the derivative products (plastics, petrochemicals, fibers, asphalt, tires, rubber, area rugs etc etc etc) we make with oil. There are industrial uses for oil that renewables can never, ever replace.
Electricity generation is more or less the easiest part of the equation.
It'll be another 30-100 years before we can even think about a complete phaseout of oil.
parolang | 1 year, 7 months ago
IMHO, the answer has always been nuclear. Everything else is a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed.
futatorius | 1 year, 7 months ago
Here's the reality: quit now or millions more people will die.
Bankers' and oil companies' advice is as useful and welcome as cigarette manufacturers' advice on healthy living.
Front_Expression_892 | 1 year, 7 months ago
Would you take recommendations about sugar consumption from PepsiCo?
Then stop thinking that JPMorgan's sales pitch is actual investment advice.
Also, JPMorgan are the guys who first made 2008 so special and then where the main benefactor of the bailouts.
It's worth than PepsiCo talking about sugar. It's your local dealer lecuring about integrating his product into your healthy lifestyle strategy.
thewimsey | 1 year, 7 months ago
JP Morgan didn't cause the 2008 crisis and didn't need a bailout.
Why are you just making things up?
It doesn't help your argument. Lying never helps arguments.
Do you think we are as dumb as you are?
We aren't.
JP Morgan doesn't sell fossil fuels, so your weird pepsi analysis is ... weird.
Blythe703 | 1 year, 7 months ago
>didn't need a bailout.
Ah so they must not have taken bailout money, correct? Because that would be a point against their comment, would be to show they weren't benefactors of the bailouts.
>JP Morgan doesn't sell fossil fuels
Do you think banks make money selling things?
RedAero | 1 year, 7 months ago
>Ah so they must not have taken bailout money, correct?
The statement was
>where[sic] the main benefactor of the bailouts.
It's well documented that they didn't even want the money they were pretty much forced to take.
>Because that would be a point against their comment, would be to show they weren't benefactors of the bailouts.
The word you're looking for is "beneficiary".
>Do you think banks make money selling things?
A service is a "thing", yes.
Blythe703 | 1 year, 7 months ago
They must have really struggled to take the 25 billion in loans. I am sorry the government would be so cruel as to force that on them.
The point is they invest heavily in fossil fuels and benefit from those companies doing well. That's why the Pepsi comparison is apt.
siddemo | 1 year, 7 months ago
And the LIBOR scandal.
ejMileman | 1 year, 7 months ago
JpMorgan is trapped in an ethical dilemma. What’s good for the planet and future generations VS what’s good for Jamie dimon and his Epstein island buddies. You know which way they will pick every time.
thewimsey | 1 year, 7 months ago
There is no ethical dilemma.
JP Morgan isn't a fossil fuel company.
JP Morgan thinks that some people have completely unrealistic expectations about moving away from FFs.
They aren't in the FF business.
frenchiefanatique | 1 year, 7 months ago
You are full of shit. Did you read the article?
"JPMorgan is a leading financier of fossil fuel projects and low-carbon energy projects. The bank underwrote $101bn of fossil fuel deals in 2021 and 2022"
Phynx88 | 1 year, 7 months ago
...but a lot of his friends are. I hope you're not deluded enough to believe this is some altruistic call to tamper expectations of overhauling a pillar of the economy since the industrial revolution - it's just an attempt to push back divestment another generation.
albert768 | 1 year, 7 months ago
There is no ethical dilemma. What is good for Jamie Dimon today is good for JP Morgan's shareholders, and since most Americans hold JP Morgan shares in their 401ks, it's good for Americans by extension.
If you want an economy, you must have, at a minimum, plentiful and affordable energy and plentiful and affordable food.
We only have two choices today: Oil based energy or Abject poverty, starvation and death. I choose oil.
jerkITwithRIGHTYnewb | 1 year, 7 months ago
“I can’t make as much money trading on green energy as I can trading on the HEAVILY subsidized oil industry posting record profits for 78 straight quarters!
[OP] technocraticnihilist | 1 year, 7 months ago
Because renewables aren't subsidized? Fossil fuel companies pay royalties, others don't
DruidWonder | 1 year, 7 months ago
Climate alarmists are getting us to scale back our energy economy before we have a real means to replace the status quo. It's going to lead to a lot of people suffering horribly.
I'm not saying that fossil fuels shouldn't eventually be mostly phased out, but it should be done gradually and not all at once like it seems the Western nations are hell-bent on doing.
Standard of living is directly related to energy economy. If they cut the energy to "save the planet" they will be cutting human lives ultimately. But these people are antinatalist and nihilistic at the end of the day so it's s not all that surprising.
Discokruse | 1 year, 7 months ago
I saw E85 on sale for $4.89/gal...oil needs to stay cheaper than roughly $5.50/gal, otherwise they'll lose marketshare to corn producers and industrial moonshine fuel.
Pillbugly | 1 year, 7 months ago
For as long as infrastructure is such that there are blackouts during the summer when people run A/C, phasing out fossil fuels is not realistic.