Although I am not a fan of AOC, her much-ridiculed Green New Deal seems to be the only seriously put-out-there proposal that approaches anything near the drastic level of action needed to combat climate change. There are still major unaddressed things (for instance, an immense amount of carbon is emitted by China and developing nations, but that’s outside the scope of U.S. control…or that getting the nation to switch from air travel to rail travel might be an impossibly difficult sell.)
From a purely scientific and practical standpoint, is there any other U.S. policy put out there that would match the Green New Deal in terms of urgency in addressing climate change?
I’d be surprised if anyone else would put out something with that level of, er…urgency. So, I doubt it. From past threads, not very many people take the thing seriously, which might make you think about why no one else has put out something similar.
There have, of course, been proposals to address climate change put forth. Just nothing, um, like the GND.
According to this, a GND would require about $18 trillion over the next 30 years.
Seeing how the US only spends 40-50 billion a year on renewables, I don’t think anything compares to the $400-500 billion or so a year the GND would require.
However that 400-500 billion wouldn’t all come from the public sector, there is a multiplier effect in the private market. I don’t know what it is, but I’m assuming/hoping for every $1 the public sector spends, the private sector may match it by $2-3 or so. So to raise 400 billion may only require an extra $100 billion in public sector spending.
But to my knowledge, there is nothing else like the GND. Thats why it was such a big deal when AOC proposed it.
I’m sure you know this already, WC, but first of all, I don’t think there’s any real consensus on what a green new deal is. It’s just a resolution full of some proposals, many of which may not see the light of day.
Secondly, people are far too fixated on the costs and not looking at the potential for jobs and economic value. If a lot of those costs are going into the hands of laborers, then that’s money that will circulate throughout the entire economy. And if that money can effectively reduce environmental pollution, we’re talking about savings in terms of medical care. We’re talking about lower cleanup costs. We’re talking about maybe even better real estate values in some locations. I could go on.
I’m skeptical that any green new deal would actually show dramatic reversals in terms of our global climate, as the problem is already upon us. But it would at least make our air cleaner to breathe and reduce pollution to groundwater through fracking - those would be immediate benefits. Maybe that’s how we ought to sell it, with benefits that are obvious to people.
I think the answer is “no, but irrelevant”. After all, nearly half of voters in America vote for the party who at best don’t believe we need to do anything at all about climate change and can therefore emit all the carbon we want, and at worst think the whole thing is a hoax and believe we should be prevented from even studying it. Until those people are out of power, the urgency of the proposal does not matter because the people who vote for the deniers will not change their vote based on the urgency.
There are a lot of aspects to the GND. Some of them have little or nothing to do with lowering us to zero emissions. The reason that estimates vary wildly is that people are having to make a lot of assumptions about what it would be if this thing ever went forward. FactChecker in fact says this in the article you linked too. I don’t think the other figures touted are ‘problematic’, I think they simply make other assumptions. I recall that Bloomberg also did an article on this, and I seem to recall their estimate falls between the Republican high end and what FactChecker seems to think their estimate might pan out on. A lot of this is more cost on the social side of things, not on the green energy side.
And that’s really the problem. WHY is there a bunch of stuff in this supposed document on green energy and carbon emissions that is about social engineering that has nothing to do with climate change? How do we take this seriously when it doesn’t have any sort of focus, and when it’s talking about figures that range from half a trillion dollars A YEAR to several trillion dollars a year…for decades? Where does that kind of money come from? AOC is of the school that we simply borrow the money, that this is ok, but she is glossing over a lot in her assumptions and, IMHO, doing climate change a disservice by trying to tack on everything including the kitchen sink into one package and bundling it all together. If we want to address climate change, we should focus on addressing climate change. If we want to do massive social engineering, that should be in a separate plan. That way, if one part isn’t acceptable the entire thing doesn’t fold.
Her proposal isn’t a realistic plan. Nor, at least according to the threads I was in earlier on this (or what I’ve read subsequently) should it be taken that way. It’s just a wild, pie in the sky big ideas platform that, perhaps, something might come out of. Take a piece here, toss out all of this crap, and, hm, maybe we could use this part, etc etc. But the reason no one else has done something quite like this is that it’s kind of a waste, overall, plus it’s going to bring the person doing it in for some serious derision, as it’s not practical or feasible, from either a political or any other stand point. As a sort of mission statement, it’s ok, but I doubt many Washington politicians are going to put their name on something that loopy.
Like I said, there has been actual, focused legislature proposed to deal with climate change. The big issue is that, politically, the consensus is still not there for both sides to agree that there even is a problem, let alone what we should or can do about it. Until there is such a consensus (which means there needs to be something like wrt the voters), moving forward is not possible in our system unless one side (the side that wants to do something) has enough votes to do it on their own and completely over the objection of the other side. And that hasn’t happened, to date. I think Obama COULD have focused on climate change in the first part of his first term and perhaps gotten some real teeth put in, but he chose to go for health care reform. If a similar situation comes up in 2020, it’s hard to say what the new democratic president will do, as often they know they have one shot at something and have to do it while they still have the votes. Will the new president push through climate change, or will they want to push through single payer healt care, or even just push through more steel wrt ObamaCare? Or will they want to push for something else? Immigration reform? There is a finite amount of political capital any president has, even when their party also controls the house and senate, so it’s always going to be a question of what is possible to do within our system and the constraints of the office and the makeup of the house and senate.
This is exactly right. And the political calculation also has to consider the political rewards. Health care reform (even something that had a near-term cost to the Democratic party like Obamacare did) has long-term benefits (being seen right now as the GOP scrambles to avoid another fight about repealing Obamacare). As folks see benefits from public policy they will fight against politicians threatening to undo those benefits.
The problem with climate change legislation is that the pain is now, and the gain is both hypothetical (i.e. being compared against a climate reality we hopefully avoid) and in the future. It will be pretty easy to campaign against, for example, a carbon tax if there seems to be no real impact to voters (unlike repealing Obamacare).
So if I had to bet, in a Democratic-led Congress with a Democratic President, the #1 issue would once again be more health care reform rather than climate change.
Someone who knows the environmental math can hopefully clue me in: Is the climate-change situation at the point where no matter how much the U.S. cuts its own carbon emissions, it will not be enough to change the global situation, and that only if Africa, China, etc. join in in drastic carbon cut-down does it become sufficient?
Well, I’m sure better posters will be along to answer this question more comprehensively, but the short answer is that climate change isn’t an on/off switch with either nothing happening or the end of the world. It’s a continuum of things that might happen. So, if the US were to be able to cut our emissions it would have an effect. Maybe, instead of 2 or 2.5 degrees C increase, it’s only 1.8 degrees C increase. That will mean that some bad things might happen, but some might not. Same goes for other countries cutting their emissions. At this point, it seems we are already in climate change…it is happening right now, and has been for a while now. How bad it gets is going to depend on what we end up doing. There are other factors too. CO2 is only one part of it. Warming the planet has other feedback loops, such as the release of methane and also the change in albedo, amount of water vapor and a ton of stuff I probably haven’t even thought of (GIGO would answer this better obviously, or Stranger or some of the other more keyed in 'dopers).
More or less, yes. The US has to cut way back, the EU has to cut way back, China has to cut back much more, and places like India and Africa can’t start producing more. We can’t just offshore our GHG-producing industry to the Third World and say that we have done our part, IOW. Which was why the Kyoto Treaty was meaningless and counter-productive - exempting China is the same thing as saying “don’t do anything serious”.
Here is a simple but accurate perspective on a very complex problem in the form of just two charts.
The first chart shows that for the 800,000 years that we’ve been experiencing rapid semi-regular glaciation cycles (it’s actually been more like at least 1.5 million) atmospheric CO2 has stayed in a remarkably narrow range, from about 180 ppm during maximum glaciation, to no more than 300 ppm during interglacial warmth. In this interglacial, we should nominally be at around 285-290 ppm.
The two takeaways from that chart are, first, the extent of the tremendous CO2 peak we’ve created at well over 400 ppm now, greater than the difference between an ice age and an interglacial, and second, the extreme rapidity with which that increase has occurred. Natural climate changes like post-glacial warming take thousands of years. Most of what we’ve done has barely taken 50 years, and most of the effects are only beginning to be felt.
This is the second chart. The first chart showed us the extent to which rapid rises in CO2 levels above 300 ppm are something entirely new and unprecedented in human history. The second chart shows us where we’re likely to end up. The RCP numbers represent different targets for additional watts per square meter of warming (or what climatologists call climate forcing) by 2100. These targets are used because they’re more scientifically rigorous than CO2 levels in trying to model and predict environmental impacts, because it avoids arguments about all the complex feedbacks that relate CO2 increases to climate forcing. Nevertheless, each RCP number can be at least approximately associated with a corresponding atmospheric CO2 concentration.
In my view and that of most observers, RCP 4.5 will require very aggressive mitigation and is almost certainly not realistically achievable. RCP 2.5 you can just forget about. Where we’re heading is probably the vicinity of 6.0, which corresponds to a CO2 concentration of an incredible 750 ppm.
So what does that tell us in answer to the quoted question? It tells us that we have to do much better than that, because projections are that this will lead, not just to excessive heat waves and the poleward migration of pests and disease and to the potential for widespread food crop failures, but to worsening climate instability and destructive extreme weather. Some countries can be singled out as “worst offenders”, but we won’t even stop at 750 ppm without contributions from everyone. China is the biggest emitter, India is also a bad problem –here is a pie chart of how different countries rank – but the US is critical not just for being a big emitter in absolute terms, but as a leader and a role model, particularly insofar as it’s the biggest per-capita emitter, and the US is also important as a potential provider of technologies for carbon mitigation and clean energy.
I should clarify a statement I made in that last post. The correct version is "These [RCP climate forcing] targets are used because they’re more scientifically rigorous than CO2 levels in trying to model and predict environmental impacts, because it avoids arguments about all the complex feedbacks that relate CO2 increases and climate forcing to temperature change. A first-level approximation between CO2 levels and climate forcing is actually fairly straightforward. What is much more complex is relating either one to actual temperature change, because this is where all kinds of complex positive and negative feedbacks have to be accounted for, such as albedo changes from loss of polar ice, a major factor that amplifies Arctic warming. The relationship between forcing and resultant equilibrium temperature is actually a pretty simple formula, but the formula involves a parameter – climate sensitivity – the value of which has only been established within a broad range.
There is nothing serious about the Green New Deal. Scientifically, there is NOTHING in the Green New Deal. It’s little more than a progressive’s dream action plan. There are no numbers in it, no concrete proposals other than pie-in-the-sky things like refurbishing or rebuilding every structure in America or eliminating all fossil fuels in a decade.
Real proposals involve details, and cost estimates, and examples, and legislative proposals in detail. The Green New Deal reads like a undergraduate class project in ‘environmental studies’. And that’s being generous.
Also, the Green New Deal is incredibly counter-productive to the cause of climate change. For one thing, the fact that it’s more about socialist overhauls of society makes it sound unserious about climate change. For another, it’s tactically foolish in that it ties climate change to political changes wholly unacceptable to a majority of the voting public - when you need that public if you want to make sweeping changes to our energy infrastructure.
It’s also counter-productive in that it completely ignores the ONLY solution that can feasibly be implemented in the next few decades - nuclear power.
If the left gets power and tries to implement sweeping changes like heavy carbon taxes or other restrictions on a narrow party-line basis, you only need to look at Canada for the result. My province imposed carbon taxes even though they were opposed by the majority of the people, and the Canadian government imposed carbon taxes on the rest of the provinces even though the public is against it. The result? My province is having an election on Wednesday, and the polls give the NDP party just a 1% chance of surviving. The Federal government is being sued by the provinces, and Trudeau is likely to lose the next election. The opposition has promised to completely reverse all the carbon taxes.
You can expect this kind of reaction if you try to impose carbon taxes on any population that isn’t already fully bought in. You might get away with them in California or Oregon or DC, but good luck in North Dakota or Texas.
In any event, I hope it eventually dawns on people that there is only one way the world is going to wind down fossil fuel consumption, and that is if another energy source becomes available that is cheaper and can still provide reliable baseload power. Because as long as the cheapest energy comes from fossil fuels, we will burn every drop of it that’s available.
China, India, and Africa are not about to bankrupt themselves to save the world. Russia and the middle east absolutely rely on fossil fuel sales for economic survival. Expecting them to go along with voluntary reductions or treaties is a pipe-dream. And without them, what we do here just won’t matter, and would in fact accelerate the shift of carbon-intensive activities to those countries, making the problem worse. If you unilaterally drive your energy costs up, you create a comparative advantage for those countries that don’t, and a great incentive for them to never follow suit.
Our job should not be to remake society, but to advance research into nuclear technology, solar, wind, and any other forms of energy. And specific to nuclear, we need to overhaul the regulations that make nuclear power so needlessly expensive.
Once we get to the point where the countries that embrace nuclear out-compete the luddites burning fossil fuel, we will see a rapid shift away from fossil fuels. Until then, we’re pissing in the wind. Unilaterally raising costs of fossil fuel in the west will have the primary effect of shifting heavy industry to the east, where it will be even dirtier. And demanding that the developing world stop using more energy is highly immoral.
I would argue that it’s impossible to bring it within a narrow range, because there are so many unknowns and because complex systems are impossible to predict. This can go both ways - for example, let’s say that an important factor is the build-up of clathrates in the deep ocean. This could act like a giant, long-term RC circuit - while the clathrates are building, the effect of added CO2 partially goes into this, making it look like climate change isn’t as bad as we thought. Then the temperature reaches a point where the clathrates are released, and boom! You get a step function in greenhouse gas releases, and everything gets worse fast. Then the Clathrates start to build again…
There are millions of feedbacks in the climate system. Some act in the short term, some in the medium term, and some in the long term. We haven’t come close to identifying all of them, or likely even a large percentage of them. Some of the biggest feedbacks like cloud formation are still not well understood. The last time I checked we didn’t even know if cloud feedback would be positive or negative.
This is not an argument against climate change. It’s more an argument about how we should be talking about it. People who say, “The earth will be hotter by 1.2-2.5 degrees in 100 years” are blowing smoke, and people can sense that. I believe it would be better to say, “We are playing with fire. We have pushed a key control variable in the climate to levels we haven’t experienced before, and this could have vast, dangerous, unintended consequences.” Because honestly, that’s really all we can say. There will be harm, and it could range from mild to god-knows-what.
China, India, most if not all African countries, and most Middle Eastern countries are signatories to the Paris climate accord; they have ratified it and it’s now in force. You may not like it, but that’s pretty good for a “pipe dream”. Russia is also a signatory but has been more recalcitrant about moving forward. I partially agree with you, though, in that the real problem with the Paris agreement is that many countries will fail to meet their targets, and frankly it wouldn’t be enough even if they did. Referring back to my post about the RCPs, the goal seems to be to achieve something like RCP 4.5 or better, but the parameters and level of commitment point to a result more like 8.5 – that’s the line that looks like the trajectory of a rocket headed for the moon. This is nothing for either of us to celebrate. But at least they’re moving in the right direction, and unlike Kyoto, the Paris agreement is all-inclusive. Or was, until Trump bumbled into it.
The US is not even symbolically moving in the right direction, except by accident, like switching power plants to natural gas instead of coal because it’s now cheaper, or building more efficient cars because people are sick of paying for gasoline. The US is the only country in the world that has withdrawn from the agreement entirely. The main difference between the US and virtually everybody else is that by affixing their signatures to the agreement, all these other countries indicate that they understand that a significant problem exists that must be addressed. The US leadership apparently does not. With a move this absurdly wrongheaded, maybe a metaphorical kick in the ass like the Green New Deal that sparks conversation and reminds the Trumpists what the rest of the world is doing and why they’re doing it isn’t such a bad thing.
This is not entirely wrong, except in degree (no pun intended!). It’s not the kind of thing I’d want to blast as nonsense, because there’s some truth in it. It’s practically certain that climate sensitivity doesn’t have a single value over a sufficiently long period, that it isn’t linear, and it’s known for a fact that climate can and does sometimes change in a step function commonly known as a tipping point. It does, however, have a meaningful value over a relatively short period – say the next 100-200 years, and research into narrowing down this value is critically important for rating the severity of any given increase in climate forcing.
The reason that climate sensitivity can be said to have a relatively stable value over the short to medium term is that of the “millions of feedbacks in the climate system” only about a handful are powerful enough to be significant, accounting for the vast majority of the effect. The comment about cloud formation is just typical FUD, for instance. It’s still a somewhat controversial area, true, but it IS very likely that this is one of the low-impact feedbacks, for a variety of reasons: clouds provide both negative and positive feedbacks depending on type and altitude, and their impact is likely to be minimal because both observational evidence and modeling suggest that a warming climate, to the extent that it influences cloud formation at all, will produce both types of cloud feedbacks.
You have a lot more faith in international agreements than I do. International agreements like the Paris Accord get signed because of virtue signaling, or for comparative advantage, or because of idealism. But when push comes to shove, countries act in their own interest. Agreements that hold when the economy is clicking along and everyone is content suddenly go in the dumper when economies get stressed.
Look at the ABM treaty. Russia violated it the minute it had the technology to do so. The Kyoto treaty was a complete failure, and only got many countries to sign on by giving them ‘offsets’ that gave them advantages over other signatories. No one is meeting the requirements of the Paris Accords even in spirit except maybe a couple of smaller countries like Canada, but even here that’s about to be unwound because of widespread public opposition. Germany, after decades of buildout of renewables, undid it all by shutting down a few nuclear plants. Their GHG emissions are now going up, and they are buying fossil fuels from Russia.
And all this stuff is a drop in the bucket. China added about 100 GW of coal power last year, and apparently another 259 GW of coal power are currently under construction. In the meantime, my province has a total of about 5-6 GW of coal power, and we are spending billions of dollars in penalties to shut them down early to ‘save the planet’. We are punishing ourselves to a significant extent to reduce our coal power by the equivalent of less than 2% of China’s increase in just two years.
This is politically unsustainable, as we are seeing by the massive backlash against carbon taxes and other climate policies in Canada. You can’t expect half the world to make radical changes to their standards of living just to accommodate a few years of growth by their geopolitical rivals. It won’t fly.
That’s why the only way out of this is a massive shift to a technology that is cost competitive with fossil fuels and which can provide baseload power. And the only energy source we have that can remotely do that is nuclear power. France and Sweden have extensive nuclear power, and they have the cheapest energy prices in Europe. Ontario once had cheap energy when it got it from nuclear power. Now it’s trying to do it with renewable energy, and now has the most expensive power in Canada. That also is not politically stable, and it’s actually rewarding China for building coal plants, because it makes Chinese-sourced energy intensive products cheaper in comparison to Canadian manufactured goods. This is simply stupid policy.
It is already too late to prevent global climate change from being catastrophic, because it’s already catastrophic. On the other hand, it will never be too late to do anything about it. The longer we wait, the worse it will be, and it’s already as bad as it is because of how long we’ve waited.
The best time to act is now. The worst time to act is never.
EDIT: Sam Stone, the reason the Kyoto treaty was a complete failure was because we didn’t join it. At the same time that we’re saying “It’s pointless for us to do something if the rest of the world won’t”, the rest of the world is saying the same thing about us, even while doing more than we are.