People's financial incentives are not aligned with the climate's necessary modifications. The two won't be aligned until climate passes over its tipping point and enters an irreversible feedback loop.
Correct. I'd add that I don't think anyone worth listening to has ever really thought this to be true: rather, it is convenient for those with the majority of private capital for everyone to believe it is true so that they don't have to account for how they spend their money.
Or laws/taxes are passed, which incorporate the externalities, and subventions for detrimental efforts are cut.
That is "just" a matter of political will.
How much war are you willing to wage to force other countries to do the same? I think that's really the only question that matters when it comes to the "everybody pass laws" plan.
With just a few big markets making the changes the rest of the world could be steered in the correct direction surely? If the US/EU etc. required that products coming in from China (or other countries where we offload our carbon use to) were created with less than X carbon released (differing per product) and with independent verification then they'd make the changes I'd imagine. Prices would go up of course which is likely why the political will isn't there, but I think it's disingenuous to say that the only way is war.
You could take that further too, say a 10% tariff on products coming from countries that buy beef from other countries who are cutting down the rainforest. I realise it would quickly become legislatively complicated, but isn't this the kind of hard problem we elect representatives for?
This is a very happy path engineering design. What will you do with countries who refuse to comply? Will you bomb them? Will you sanction/starve them to death? Is this really an existential crisis for our species? I want to know what cards you're willing to put on the table.
>What will you do with countries who refuse to comply?
What are you on about? They can't "refuse to comply" in the above scenario, because it's a matter of pricing in carbon on imports. They can either comply with a process to verify that all carbon inputs have already been neutralized, pay the cost to neutralize them, or else America/EU/Japan/whoever else participates will simply slap on a very conservative carbon price themselves. No cooperation is necessary, if they don't want to bother their products will simply be priced somewhat higher than if they had and thus they'll probably sell less.
>Is this really an existential crisis for our species?
Well, yeah, but at this point a lot could be done just by the first world fixing its markets to properly internalize carbon emissions and make all fossil fuels carbon neutral, which will then also help make a path for ramping up of negative emissions. China is certainly one of the biggest economies, but even they aren't in a position to just give up on all exports to the first world without more expense than just participating in a proper free market. It's in their interest too anyway.
They will then create workarounds, as they already do for tariffs. The most common one is to find an intermediary country and ship the goods through there.
Tariff's don't have to be high enough to starve out countries to cause change, most people seem to agree that the Chinese people only tolerate the CCP because their economy is growing, if tariff's slowed that then they'd be under pressure to do something to fix it. There are similar situations in countries all over the world.
Personally I think it is an existential threat to our way of life - if you take the most conservative predictions then at the very least there's going to be disruption to the global food supply (maybe not enough to starve everyone, but there'll be much less choice than now) and mass migration due to drought which could very easily kick off WW3.
I do believe though that if the political will was there in the big Western markets the worst of this could be avoided without it having to come to conflict. Most experts seem to be of the same opinion, the vast majority say a carbon tax is the best method available to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Major nuclear powers have a significant portion of their economies tied up in fossil fuels. They will not go down without a fight.
China already emits 2x US CO2 and is on track to double its emissions by 2030. There is no scale of trade war/tariffs I can imagine that will derail this.
Let's turn this around, if the markets that China sell to implement tariff's dependent on fossil fuel usage what do you expect them to do? How do you expect them to "fight" that?
Do you expect they'll just give up selling to those markets entirely? That would lead to less manufacturing in China and a reduction in carbon output from the country. Manufacturing in the US/EU etc. would likely take up some of the slack, but at a much lower carbon output and higher price.
Do you expect them to just continue selling with the tariff? That would lead to a reduction in sales, a reduction in manufacturing, a reduction in carbon output. As before I'd guess manufacturing in the US/EU etc. would take some of the slack.
Or do you expect them to start a war over it? Do you think killing their customers makes sense to them?
Personally I think it much more likely that they'd make the required changes, increase prices accordingly and continue to be the manufacturing hub of the world. Currently they have no reason to curb their carbon usage, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't do it if they were given an economic reason.
I am genuinely interested in how you think they'd "fight" a carbon tax from the US/EU etc., because I can't see a way where it doesn't reduce the amount of carbon being released compared to a world without the carbon tax.
I expect China, Russia, India, the US and others to lie. I expect them to steal. I expect them to sabotage. I expect them to wage economic and kinetic wars. I expect them to do everything in their power, evil or not, to give themselves an economic advantage.
Tariffs of the sort you're talking about are a great way to nudge countries in the right direction. China is already the largest polluter and is on track to double its emissions over the next decade. Stopping that will take quite a bit more than a nudge. It will take destroying their economy. Except they have nuclear weapons. I'm sorry, but we already can't get them to stop stealing our intellectual property, stop sending us products laced with lead, stop mass murder for organs, stop putting Uyghur men in concentration camps and then assigning a rapists to live with their families, stop sending fentanyl illegally the US which kills thousands every year. The idea we're going to apply enough pressure to China to turn around this boat which is going to double its CO2 emissions in the next decade seems like a complete fantasy.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think it's a fantasy even that the US/EU would implement a carbon tax on imports like this in the next decade anyway. It's too easy for us to offload the problem elsewhere and then do nothing because "we're nothing compared to China" even though our consumption drives their emissions.
I'm just looking for more realistic methods to slow emissions, I think it's more likely a carbon tax will be implemented than Western nations going to war over emissions, so I'll push for the more likely scenario that will slow the problem hopefully enough that I won't have to suffer the worst of the consequences.
Honestly though, my wife and I have decided against having children because we believe there's a high enough chance they won't have the quality of life we've been able to enjoy, so I agree with you that nothing significant will be done in time to curb the problem.
As the EU has recently hinted, climate may (I'd say pretty much guaranteed, only question is when) become a key point in any trading arrangements. Others will follow. Whether soon enough remains to be seen.
Want to sell to us? Prove your climate credentials, carbon accounting etc. No? Ok, your goods get the carbon levy.
What's eventually left is only the rogue states that refuse where sanctions, blockade or ultimately war may actually be the answer.
Really only comes down to how deep is the abyss we appear to be staring into... Though this can sometimes prompt enough action to get international laws passed.
This is an ineffective approach. No country can assume any other will fall in line to "do the same". This creates a do nothing approach because it turns doing the right thing, by taking the first steps, into a game of finger pointing. War is definitely not the answer and is 100% counterproductive to the end goal.
If all countries, that are supposedly interested in being the best climate change affectors, all competed to truly be the best - we'd be in a far better spot. The war you allude to is not international in nature. It's national. If the US, for example, actually removed campaign contributions and lobbying allowances from organizations responsible for a majority of annual pollution we'd already be down the road. But instead it is national politics, and those legislators, that are the real roadblock to starting the snowball move towards clean technology.
The problem with this approach, which I was trying to highlight, is that as long as "doing better by climate change" implies "economic disadvantage" there will be major polluters who do not get on board. What will you do with them? If you really believe this is an existential crisis for humanity, you must be willing to destroy these countries. Choose your poison: bomb them to oblivion or sanction/starve them to death. That is why this is a failed approach.
Your logic assumes everything in the world to be equal. The world is messy. If we don't start we all lose. The Internet wasn't bootstrapped because the world's countries all agreed on exactly the right way to implement networks and protocols and there are countries that have both contributed very little opposed to those that have contributed a lot. Moving to clean energy has huge economic advantage. So, again, your get on board or be destroyed is counterproductive and irrational. Heavy, one off, polluters can be dealt with after the fact.
I didn't suggest we don't start. I suggested the "everyone pass laws" plan has a fatal flaw the size of China and India.
>your get on board or be destroyed is counterproductive and irrational.
That's not my plan, it's yours. "Laws" are the get on board or be destroyed approach. You can do it domestically pretty easy, but it's much harder across national boundaries.
>Heavy, one off, polluters can be dealt with after the fact.
China already emits more than twice the US CO2. China is on track to double its emissions by 2030. How far are you willing to go to stop them? It's a very simple question.
> Choose your poison: bomb them to oblivion or sanction/starve them to death. That is why this is a failed approach.
>That's not my plan, it's yours.
Really? If you want to try and give your argument legs at least try not to contradict yourself in the same thread. And please don't state I made a claim falsely.
Also...
>China is on track to double its emissions by 2030
>Really? If you want to try and give your argument legs at least try not to contradict yourself in the same thread. And please don't state I made a claim falsely.
I was explaining how the "we're all just going to pass laws" plan is the plan which leads to violence. You even copied the part where I said "That is why this is a failed approach."
>This isn't actually true [0].
The report I was reading is from 2009. If you include its emissions from deforestation and farming (as much as 1/3 of its emissions) it's still very closely on track.
China will stop when they contracted to and not before -- although their rapidly declining air quality may influence more action sooner. They have had a "developing country" pass through UN climate agreements as did India. I suspect no one 30 years ago expected us to be little further forward, nor China and India having mostly developed past "developing" status. COP25 was a joke sadly, so, we're screwed...
I think China committed and signed on to start reducing emissions in 2025 or 2030, I forget which.
If we accept the axiom that CO2 emissions are an eminent threat to the existence of humanity, then I think the answer is obvious. This isn't a friendly competition for who can invest the most in green tech. This is a life or death race to rid the world of carbon emissions. The world's largest polluter doubling its emissions over the next decade cannot be accepted under those conditions.
You can never know when the tipping point is because either you haven't yet hit it, or you already have but don't know at which point in the past the death spiral could have been prevented, if at all.
No war necessary. Make it a condition of trade, a carbon tariff. If a sizable block of countries requires this any country without a carbon tax will be at a significant trade disadvantage.
I'd say another question worth asking is whether waging war, or antagonism of any kind, is the optimal way to approach this problem.
This seems to be the overwhelmingly preferred approach, but my intuition tells me that seeking a mutually agreeable path of cooperation would be a wiser approach. Not that this is easy of course - heck, even getting people to realize that we aren't actually doing this seems fairly impossible.
When will incentives ever be aligned with one's own long term interests?
There is reason for despair, that competition to survive the day to day - everyone needs to get through their week, month and year - will always detract from the larger concerns about long term sustainability of our civilization and prosperity.
I worry that we have removed people's moral agency by normalizing huge debts for life's necessities. We have the technology to make housing and education cheap and plentiful, but instead create scarcities and credit to have leverage over the workforce and keep them working in ways they'd prefer not to. I mean, every day I think "but guys seriously shouldn't we use all these computers to work on the metaphorical asteroid heading for Earth??? guys??" But we don't, myself included, because bills.
> When will incentives ever be aligned with one's own long term interests?
Once we've installed a good global governance system (imo some form of confederation of confederation ala Switzerland) that democratically aggregates preferences and can align the incentives.
People like to act like competition is inevitable, forgetting that the main hegemon of the last 50 years has competition as a large part of it's ideology (and all the runner ups are not democratically legitimised in the sense people in Europe or the US would consider enough). It's not a law of physics, it's part of a system that can be changed.
So I'd disagree. The time for despair is when you are dead, or can no longer try to improve things. Now there's work to do
> Once we've installed a good global governance system (imo some form of confederation of confederation ala Switzerland) that democratically aggregates preferences and can align the incentives.
This is wishful thinking with more than half the world not involved in democratic governance. But be of good cheer. There's profit to be made where there's crisis.
We have in fact already passed a couple of those tipping points, unfortunately. But we can still make a big difference by getting our act together.
But, some of those are already locked in, we might not see the effect for 1000 or even 10000 years, but still.
Thing is the world's climate will not fail us gradually.
Past the 'tipping point' the 'Geo-engineers' will be let out of the asylum and get to deploy their crackpot hail-Mary schemes playing fast and loose with a runaway high dimensional complex feedback system they (or we) barely are beginning to understand.
There is no 'backup' on this planet. There is no 'safety net'. There is no 'oh shit, abort!' button.
An optimist would say we are just going to make sure to speed up the inevitable.
Why did you decide to pursue this strategy to help fight the climate crisis? As opposed to other strategies such as carbon removal technologies or supporting / electing public officials that understand the climate crisis?
2 big reasons:
1) There are a lot of solutions to climate change that we could enact today if they had funding. Project Drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org/) may be of interest—it lists all the solutions to climate change we can enact today. It's quite surprising—we don't need CRT, we just need action today. With electing officials, we think that would be the best solution but it's relatively high risk—if we fail to do it, climate change gets worse. (that said electing officials is still super important, more on why we didn't choose that route in (2))
2) We thought this is something we'd be good at relative to our other options.
It would be really cool to work on CRT or clean energy breakthroughs, but we have no science background and it would be years before we ramped up to start making an impact on those technologies.
For policy, we think we can be good active members of our communities and vote etc, but we could not see ourselves spending all of our time lobbying or campaigning or otherwise pulling levers in the political space.
But what we do love doing is building products. We are content doing this all day, and hope that will allow us to make more and more useful products to reverse climate change.
The thing is, that there is no real "pure" speculation without the demand.
In Berlin only 1.7% of housing is empty, of which 41% is because of ongoing modernisation, 31% because of renter currently changing and 12% because of mold or other damages.
So only approx. 0.27% of housing is empty in hope of higher prices or because of other reasons. [1]
The demand is real. No living space is created by this policy. Much will not be build because of it.
I would imagine, but obviously can't speak for the parent poster, that if you suggested limiting speculation they could agree on a sensible implementation of that policy.
I have not met anybody so far who thinks wealthy foreigners should be able to use real estate to launder money, store value, hide wealth, or otherwise not use real estate for what it is meant for, that is to say as places for people to live, play, or work.
Since all that does happen, what relevance is it to say you haven't met anyone who supports it? Do you consider yourself the kind of person who should have met such people? Do you move in those circles? Do you meet a disproportionately large amount of people, or people at high levels who influence policy?
How on earth is rent control supposed to help with that? If anything, rent control makes being a landlord less appealing relative to selling to a Russian oligarch.
Price is where supply meets demand. So prices moving up means either:
1. Demand is increasing faster than supply can keep up
2. Supply is shrinking faster than demand falls
For housing in large cities, it's usually (1) above.
Easy money policies stoke artificial demand by making money cheaper (lower interest rates). That makes speculation in housing easier than it otherwise should be. Don't blame "speculators." They are simply responding to conditions created by central banks and the fiat money system.
You can apply software engineering to develop an application, but you can also do application development without any proper software engineering.
Software Engineering is a design discipline, management discipline, and engineering discipline. Application development is (principally) the act of building an application by writing code. It doesn't require design, management, or engineering discipline to accomplish. But it's better if you've done those things (minimally, the engineering and design portions).
At the same time, a junior software engineer may not be responsible for anything but the writing of code, where others have determined the design and engineering aspects and are conducting project management for them. Or with only limited responsibility (such as developing tests for the aspects they're responsible for developing, which is a part of the engineering discipline: V&V).
In practice, the main difference is the pay / relative "rank" within a company. Employer's perspective: Want to hire a software engineer but don't have the budget? Create a new role, call it something else, now the pay difference is justified.
Context - I'm a software engineer by title but my job is application development. Which is hard, mind you! It looks like simple coding but it involves prioritizing, making smart decisions, and making all stakeholders happy.
I've worked in both of those environments, where my titles were literally "application developer" and "software engineer". In the former, we did a lot of things without process and worked on a wide variety of applications and in the latter I worked in an Agile environment focusing on a core product.
As with most HR departments, it could be a classification required for salary, which also highly depends on work experience and not necessarily school background.
- Someone who's job title is much fancier than otherwise necessary
