Hacker News Reader

Comment by salynchnew | Hacker News Reader

The solutions mentioned:

-Phasing out and eliminating fossil fuels

-Implementing "a significant carbon price"

-Restoring ecosystems such as carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots

All policy issues. Given the amount of regulatory capture, it seems like a fourth obvious solution would require significant changes to the incentives for politicians or how lobbying is conducted by fossil fuel ecosystem companies.

View on HN

I'm always a little confused by these suggestions because what I've heard from the researchers, directly, seems a bit different (or rather their list is more inclusive). I had the opportunity to work at some DOE labs and while there attended a lot of climate talks. One thing they always mention is carbon sequestration. It seems a lot of groups like Green Peace and Sierra Nevada are against CCS that isn't biological, where the researchers tend to be of the position "we're so fucked that even planting as many trees as we can AND building CCS systems isn't enough". So I find it weird that point #3 here is purely an environmental one. And at these talks there's always some intern that asks about nuclear, and there's almost always the same blunt answer "that'd be great and help, but it is never going to happen" (note DOE labs also research nuclear reactors and weapons, so some of these people work on reactors). There's more that they suggest, but going to these talks can often be depressing because it's not just the political will. We don't even have the technology (which in part is due to political will. Damn coupled equations).

What I learned from them is "don't take anything off the table, we're that fucked." And so whenever I read articles like this I always question why they leave things off the table and do not mention that we currently do not have the technological means to solve the issue. They tend to focus on electricity production and vehicle emissions, but also things like heating/cooling (which creates a feedback loop because adapting to climate change we need more of these technologies).

If you do ever get the chance to attend talks like these I do highly suggest going to them and asking a lot of questions. Climate researchers tend to be extremely passionate and will talk your ears off (in a good way).

The devil is in the details:

- How quickly do we phase out fossil fuels. Less than 5 years is un realistic but more then 20 years is probably too long to wait

- How much should we charge for carbon emissions?

- How do we restore ecosystems that took millions of years to form?

I do feel the focus on lobbyists and corruption distracts from the more serious problem: part of the solution will have to involve reducing certain luxuries for many upper-middle-class people: less real meat, less AC in the summer, less driving, much more expensive clothing and furniture, etc. ExxonMobil isn’t the problem here, it’s ordinary citizens who don’t want to make the sacrifice. And the problem isn’t “corrupt politicians” so much as “politicians who want to win elections,” aka all politicians. And “we simply have to elect liars who are guaranteed to lose their election after betraying their voters” isn’t an option.

The process will certainly involve some pain and serious injustices, even if it’s necessary for the long term. Reducing meat consumption in particular is one that won’t be solved by electric generation technology, and lies directly on powerful cultural fault points in the US/Canada (“it’s the hippies and college professors who took your pork chops and bankrupted our hard working farmers!”). And eventually we will simply have to ban beef and pork.

No, I'm sure we are just a few peaceful protests away from changing their minds.

Somehow the phrase "being the first against the wall when the revolution comes" has been in my mind lately.

(This is not a threat. It's just that a certain group of old mostly-men have the extremely dubious honor of being the first human beings ever to single-handedly make the entire planet a worse place to live for whole new generations of humans, and the latter may rightfully be slightly resentful about that.)

> it seems like a fourth obvious solution would require significant changes to the incentives for politicians

Politicians are choosen. By people like you and me. Obviously (to me) you and me like to look the other way, trying to ignore serious problems as long as possible. YOLO.

Taxing negative externalities won't work here; bean counters just add that to the price of business.

Only thing that will work is government subsidies to invest in cleaner technology and have them rival whatever we give oil companies. We can take the latter away, but we need a lot of baby boomers to die off first; there's too many in power that won't stand for it.

Why will taxation (or better yet remove subsidies for extraction) not work?

At some price point, the economics of extraction simply don't make sense anymore vs. other means of energy production (see: coal, nuclear).

We have an extraction "economy" mainly because of government subsidies and support. And that continuing because extraction industries have corrupted governments.

No government on the planet has enough balls to enact enough taxes for it to be worth companies to switch to cleaner energies. That's why it won't work.

It will if there are cheaper alternatives.

Bean counters still use the cheapest means of production to run business. Burning fossils isn't required for most businesses, it's just the cheapest way to do business.

For example, if carbon taxes are high, then all the sudden trains becomes super economical so you can expect a large increase in train shipping vs truck shipping.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com