At a guess, Malthusian Theory is still alive and kicking with some…
At the rate we are going, with no changes in how we are going, 500 years is pretty optimistic.
But, that we will not change the way we are going is, IMHO, pessimistic, and the pitfalls in front of us, while treacherous, are not inevitable.
I like to think that, just as the Malthusians of the past have been shown to be wrong, the zero population growthers of today will be shown to be just as wrong.
If the costs are lower, explain why every jurisdiction I can find that moved heavily to wind and solar has much higher consumer energy prices?
I’ll answer that for you - despite panel prices coming down, solar is still extremely expensive as part of the grid, because you still need baseload energy so you wind up paying for two parallel systems. Also, in northern countries you need to heavily over-build summer capacity in order to get acceptable winter capacity. Or, you import energy at additional cost to make up the slack, and hope you can sell the solar energy in the summer when you have an excess, but you’re selling at a discount. Germany has the highest power prices in Europe because of these factors. Ontario saw their energy prices skyrocket when they heavily built out wind and solar. So did South Australia.
Yes, I know the arguments, because I’ve used them myself in favor of carbon taxes. But now we have actual results from the implementatiom of those taxes, and it’s not great. There’s a lot more going on here than just a Pigouvian efficiency gain. For example, poor people cannot buy new cars, nor afford to retrofit their houses with high efficiency heating. And poor people tend to not do a lot of joyriding in their cars, but instead use them for work or other necessary activities. That’s WHY demand for energy is so inelastic. Industry appears perfectly happy to just pass the cost along to the consumer. Industry in America is already pretty energy efficient, and it takes a long time to implement change.
I mean sure, Leonardo DiCaprio and other celebrity climate activists could sell a yacht or two, or maybe turn down the heat on one of their extra swimming pools, but I don’t see them doing that either. The rest of us can twiddle on the margins by turning the thermostat down a degree or two in winter, but our control over our energy consumption is very limited.
Also, since the poor and working class can’t do that much about their energy consumption, and because energy is a larger portion of their overall income, a carbon tax is regressive. And because it hits a lot of people, it’s politically unpopular.
That’s just the reality. People are turning against carbon taxes in a big way. Alberta’s government imposed one - then they lost in a gigantic landslide and the carbon tax is no more. The same happened in Australia and other places where the carbon tax has been implemented. And bear in mind that the tax isn’t nearly big enough to push wholesale changes in behavior and would probably have to be four or five times as high as it typically is to really drive change. And I don’t think that is politically palatable to the public.
Bwahahahaha. Have I got a bridge to sell you. Our government announced that the carbon tax would be ‘revenue neutral’. It turned out that what they meant by ‘revenue neutral’ was that the government would take the money and spend it on whatever they wanted, thus ‘returning it to the people’. Unlike other taxes where they simply burn the money, I guess.
Other places have used carbon taxes as a slush fund to reward political constituencies, buy votes, etc.
Then there’s the rebates to poor people, to try to correct for the regressive nature of the tax, and special carve-outs for important political allies, non-profits, sometimes farmers and certain industries… All of this cuts down the effectiveness of the tax. As usual with government, the implementation of a policy doesn’t look very much like the clean ivory tower policy the textbooks recommend.
Some people like bike riding. Others drive. I don’t see anyone giving up their car and riding a bike to work unless driving just becomes too painful. A 5c/L carbon tax isn’t going to push anyone out of their car.
And by the way, the majority of the population in the western nations do not have the advantage of living in a place like sunny California. Our carbon tax in Alberta isn’t going to do away with cars when it’s too cold to walk or bike 8 months of the year. It also isn’t going to get older people out of their cars, no matter how high the carbon tax. And the days of ‘excess’ car driving through Sunday afternoon drives and such are long gone. Most people drive directly to work and back, or directly to whatever destination they need to get to, and back. Not a lot of slack there.
Over a long period of time, the carbon tax might move some people on the margin into a more efficient car when it comes time to replace their own. But this is a long-term, and fairly small effect. The auto fleet lifespan averages about 12 years. So half the cars get turned over every 12 years. If carbon taxes caused people to buy cars that were, say, 10% more fuel efficient, then the carbon tax will have improved fleet fuel economy by 5% in 12 years. I guess that’s something, but measured against the price, which is that carbon taxes make climate change policy less tenable by getting governments who support climate change policies kicked out of office, is it worth it?
I thought I’d link to this (admittedly long) video that sort of goes into some of the things Sam is talking about. It’s called California’s Renewable Energy Problem by Real Engineering, who is, I should say, a big advocate for renewable energy. The video talks about the real world issues with solar and also gets into some of the issues with large scale batteries for energy storage, as well as the real world implications and issues with California’s plans to shut down it’s last nuclear power plant and how that factors into all of this. I was going to post this in the other renewable energy thread, but I gave up on that one so thought I’d post it here. Not that it’s likely to be watched in either, but what the hell. 
As the other poster noted, ignorance can get the ones that do not want to deal with the issue far.
Do you have a cite about the main part of the revenue not going back to people that can afford this less?
Good thing that me and most posters in this thread favor nuclear in places like that.
That came up in my feed a while back, and I watched part of it then. Decent overview, but nothing really new to anyone who follows the subject.
Without serious advances in battery technology, if only to make them cheap enough to roll out the enormous number we would need, renewable energy simply is not dense enough or reliable enough to replace fossil fuels. There are places where it will make sense as a supplement, but never as the main workhorse of powering our world. Keep in mind (not you, I’m sure you know), we also want to transfer our transportation needs to electric as well, which is going to place a greater and greater demand on electricity production. Massive desalination will probably be needed in the not too distant future, and that’s going to need lots of power. If we make power cheap enough, we can even start using it to recapture the carbon in the atmosphere, either sequestering it, or using it for feed stock for making liquid fuels, as there will still be applications where liquid fuel will be far superior to batteries.
The only thing that can reliably replace fossil fuels is nuclear. I’m for investing in new generation fission plants, but the only other alternative I see is to dump a trillion dollars or more a year into fusion until we figure out how to make it work for commercial power generation. Shouldn’t be much more than 50 years, right?
This seems like a rather naive take on the situation. Of course we can have much greater control over our energy consumption and carbon footprint than that: we can choose not to have a car, choose not to have children, drastically reduce our meat consumption, and so on.
Admittedly most people don’t want to choose these options, and even in the aggregate they wouldn’t be sufficient to solve the problem. But they definitely have way more impact than just “turning the thermostat down a degree or two”.
I specifically said ‘short term’. Even inelastic markets eventually correct for shocks. Over the very long term, higher gas prices will probably incentivize some people to live closer to work, buy smaller cars, etc. But these are effects that show up in decades, not years. As I said, if you incentivize 10% of the people to buy a car that’s 10% more efficient next time they buy a car, then in 12 years about 5% of the cars on the road will be 10% more efficient than they otherwise would be. Even if you got everyone to downsize and buy a vehicle that’s 10% more efficient, that’s only a 5% gain in fleet efficiency in 12 years. That’s not a big effect when we keep hearing that we only have a decade to do something before all is lost.
But is the effect worth the cost? I definitely agree that a carbon tax will have SOME effect. There are always people on the margin. But the question is whether the cost/benefit is there. And the cost right now appears to be that it’s hugely unpopular and if more politicians that support it keep losing elections, it’s going to damage the cause of climate change dramatically.
There are several provinces in Canada threatening to sue the federal government or even leave the country if the feds impose a carbon tax. The Alberta carbon tax was the #1 issue in the last campaign, and the NDP were destroyed.
As I said, I’ve argued for carbon taxes. I understand them, and I understand that in an ideal world they can actually make markets more efficient. But the reality is that they appear to be incredibly unpopular, and the opponents are fighting it by denying climate change in general. The carbon tax is turning people away from climate change science, which is going to make it harder to get anything done at all. The question is, is it really worth it? Are we really seeing the kind of reductions in CO2 due to carbon taxes that warrant doing this kind of PR damage?
I don’t have time to argue with a barrage of half-truths. Google “US CO2 emissions compared with EU CO2 emissions” and report back when you have a more informed view.
I know you like “colourful language,” Sam — and thanks for this jab which tells us what we need to know about your views on climate change — but in the real world, thresholds and future projections are fuzzy.
Is there some X before which all is saved and beyond which all is lost? Very doubtful. If there is, nobody knows what X is. Do you have a cite for hearing X = 9.99 years?
Climate change activists have done a really poor job over the years. Turning to “extremism” would only make things worse.
I went to a climate event three months ago. Well, it was billed as a climate event, but it was really an environmental event. They discussed climate change, but also the ozone layer, pollution, corporate greed, ignorance, loss of biodiversity (including the loss of bees) and so forth. I was happy to see the focus not being exclusively on climate change, while at the same time not ignoring it.
Peter Sandman is a risk communicator, and he talks about the risks of climate change (and also vaccine denial and other such topics). He uses this formula:
Risk = Hazard + Outrage
I really feel the first term should be “perceived risk”. The hazard is the actual hazard of climate change, whereas the outrage is what people viscerally feel. For climate change, the perceived risk would be moderate: hazard is high, but outrage is low. Same for extreme weather events. The outrage toward water pollution is more severe, and the outrage over radiation is extreme.
The green movement does not consist of people who think the same way as everyone else. Thinking about humanity in the long term is harder than just thinking about yourself and what’s coming up within a week. The greens also feel, viscerally, more outrage than most people about climate change… and don’t realize this! Trying to educate those who don’t feel the outrage often backfires. It doesn’t help that attempts to educate people in a less emotion matter doesn’t work due to all of the anti-green propaganda out there.
I procrastinate. One thing I learned to do to avoid procrastination is to break down any tasks I’m dreading doing into small concrete steps. Unfortunately there aren’t many “easy” steps involving fighting climate change. Use less gas. Sure… but then people don’t do this. They don’t really perceive how much gas is being used, and get surprised when they run low on gas and have to buy some. Walk fifteen minutes rather than drive is more concrete, and it would work where I live, but not in a suburb or in a rural area.
I really feel the government should just change things. Carbon taxes and so forth, such as the Canadian Liberal Party’s attempt at the “Green Shift” (a large increase in carbon taxes matched by a cut in personal taxes). Unfortunately, those are almost always very unpopular. (Macchiavelli says not to change the tax system! I guess he was right.) I think it might be better to just raise carbon taxes without a counterbalancing reduction in other taxes, because nobody believes this will be revenue-neutral anyway. That would be knocked down by the next conservative government, then reintroduced when a more liberal government comes to power, and so forth.
What we need is large-scale political solutions that change the behavior of billions of people. Strapping on a suicide vest doesn’t advance that cause. Shooting an oil executive doesn’t advance that cause. And you’re ignoring the ways that people do try to minimize their own carbon footprint to the extent that they can do so.
On the other hand, if you see someone about to be murdered, you can save that one life by putting your own body at risk. Even delaying a murder is a worthwhile thing because it might create a chance for that person to be saved by themselves or others.
That’s why I don’t understand any pro-lifer who says abortion is murder, but they aren’t risking anything to save a human life. Well, apart from understanding that it’s hypocrisy.
It’s possible that future generations will fault all of us for not strapping on suicide vests or taking some other desperate action to arrest carbon pollution. I mean… intellectually I find it a pretty convincing case that humanity is about to kill enormous chunks of life on earth and possibly render it uninhabitable. If I understood that on an emotional level, then I would strap on a suicide vest and do something drastic. But it’s too horrible to believe, so I tell myself that driving a Prius and avoiding air travel is probably good enough.
Well if we really want to get extreme, once we close our coal plants we should be bombing all the ones in developing countries. It might result in billions of deaths and a nuclear winter, but i don’t think anyone will be worried about climate change anymore.
They are extreme by the rhetoric. They constantly say the sky is falling and we will all be flooded out by next year or something like that and then the next year comes and nothing happens. After awhile people quit believing.
I remember they were predicting a global food shortage yet right now their is a global food glut.
And the thing is nobody really know what climate change will do. Yes, I know its happening. No, I dont know the long term effects.
The worst thing climate change activists are doing is to bring the whole intersectional leftist thing to the debate, which is extremely counterproductive. The ‘Green New Deal’ has more expenses associated with left-wing social policy baked into it than the climate change policy.
The left needs the right to be able to pass sweeping climate change legislation. What they should be engaged in is outreach - trying to widen the tent and appeal to the people who currently oppose climate policy. Instead, they seem hell-bent on narrowing their support as much as they can. If support for climate change policy requires that people also support universal income, free college education, 70% tax rates and a bunch of other left wing dream items, they are automatically excluding the right’s support and feeding in to the belief that climate change is just a stalking horse for a left-wing power grab.
People who really care about climate change have let their issue be hijacked by virtue signallers, hucksters, and leftists who ARE using the issue as a power/money grab. The left needs to police their own, because the right won’t do it.
The left does this shit all the time. I supported Pride, until Pride became a march for the extreme left and started excluding groups like the Log Cabin Republicans. I support gay rights, but I cannot march with people carrying hammer and sickle flags or anti-semitic BDS signs. So my support is gone.
Since the left already votes for climate change, gay rights and the rest, you would think the focus of the leaders of these movements would be to expand their political support to the middle and the right. Instead, it seems like they only want the truly woke, and everyone else can go to hell.
Get the intersectional leftists out of the climate debate and start working on how to make those policies more appealing to the right, or nothing serious will ever get done.
Not all those expenses will come from the government, many will come from corporations that also do know that dealing with the issue will be more expensive later.
A lot of those items are related, for example there will be a disruption of many people working in the fossil fuel industry that will need things like that.
:dubious:
What in heck then were the votes against the Green New Deal and other proposed actions that were defeated by the right then if not policing against the left?
So what a fringe is doing negates what most supporters of gay rights do? That is very silly once one takes into account that the head honcho of the Republicans declared that there were fine people among this thrash:
As who Trump and a mess of Republicans support, the reality is that they do tell us, many times before and nowadays, that we all can go to hell.
You first, a search for who has the right clutching pearls due to what that fringe says (and they are less when the issue is just climate change, race relation is another issue) is a problem because very right wing sources of information see it that way; now looking why it is a problem for the right shows that a lot of it is just uneasiness that comes for having to deal with it.
Nope.
Need a cite for that, because usually, among the right, sources like to talk about prediction failures when it actually came from themselves or popular media that does not check research in the proper way.
Now, I have to say that the cite is needed also because even on the food front it was pointed before at the current state some benefit to crops was to be expected, but once more heat comes a lot of the negatives will increase over the few positives. Good things like: "Improved agriculture in some high latitude regions: will encounter more negatives, such as: “Decreasing human water supplies, increased fire frequency, ecosystem change and expanded deserts”
Like if that was not mentioned many times before:
When you use the term ‘virtue signallers’ you’re signalling that you’re not about serious debate.
You just spent an entire post policing the left in some pretty vicious terms. The right is happy to police the left. In fact, that’s all they do.
Oh goody, another arbitrary rule designed to avoid debate. Nicely done.
But they won’t listen. That’s the point. If someone on the right says, “Hey, stop adding all that leftist shit to climate change policy,” they’ll just get called names. If Barack Obama comes out and says it, the left might listen. If some heavyweight left-wing funding sources threatened to cut off funds for a climate change protest if the organizers insist on adding abortion or taxing the rich to the platform, perhaps they’ll stop doing it.
Take this Pride thing. The advancement of gay rights has always hinged on getting the right to accept it. The left is fully on board. So tell me how it helps a pride parade to allow Marxists and Palestinian activists to march with them, while excluding actual gay Republican groups? How does that benefit anyone at all? How does that help move gay rights forward? It seems to me that it’s more likely to alienate the people you are seeking to win over, if that’s the intent at all.
Who said something about arbitrary rules?
Clearly, if anyone cares deeply for our best interests, it’s gotta be Sam. He is fraught with concern for the clarity of our message. So, bless his heart, he means well.