Satellite supergroup spots methane super-emitters

I think the "easily" is the discordant bit.

Typical developed country debt/GDP ratio is around 50-100%. So same order of magnitude as the green transition, but still, add 100-200% to it and you tripl your debt or so. That's non trivial in a world where increasing the debt by 5% in a year is seen as a lot.

I think the model of “we could fix this if we just tried harder and sacrificed more” is actually a pretty bad model for engaging with problems that don’t have a known, acceptable solution (so we’re ignoring garbage solutions to global warming like, prevent Africa from industrializing).

And I don’t mean that it isn’t true that we could try harder, I just mean that sometimes “trying harder” seems to make the problem worse rather than better.

I can think of a few problems like this:

- homelessness

- cost of college

- healthcare

- housing

I’m not sure if the critical factor is that the issues are morally charged and so encourage effort-heavy policies or if it’s because “trying harder” is really a supply-side subsidy, meaning money for healthcare providers or colleges or landlords. In practice at least it seems that supply side subsidies without cost controls are essentially useless, as the cost of the subsidized good rises to match the subsidy.

> Yes, all spending will at some point have to be accounted for, but it is relatively easy for governments to borrow money if the political will exists.

I think the next few years will show you why unchecked borrowing is a bad thing. Ultimately, the people who lose their homes pay for it.

> To reduce global CO2 emissions to zero the estimates are in the range of 100-200% of global GDP. This seems to be an amount of money that could easily be raised as debt or created via monetary policy. What is holding back such an investment?

Where are those numbers coming from? So far we have invested a significant amount and not seen anywhere close to those returns on investment.

Not only this, but in what Universe is 200% global GDP sustainable?

> This seems to be an amount of money that could easily be raised as debt or created via monetary policy.

Ultimately, somebody always foots the bill - and it's normally the poorest people who lose the most. What you're asking for is for these people to suffer. I don't consider this an acceptable trade.

Thank you!

It is a bit weird that we need so many emissions per person in the US. In the very least it ought to be a sign of where there’s slack in the system.

In your opinion what should pollution be measured as a function of? If you choose not to measure it per capita, then every country, no matter how large or small will be measured equally, setting up perverse incentives for smaller countries to have pollution heavy environments.

The alternative would be to say that Americans are worth more than Chinese (and Europeans and everyone else) and have a God given right to emit twice as much.

Yes because we polute to provide for people. You wouldn't expect the USA to absolutely polute the same amount as Liechtenstein.

So the solution to climate change is to break up China into smaller countries that have emissions that are utterly irrelevant!

If all he does is cooking food on fire, he definitely won’t have a high per capita score, per capita by definition gives you an average. If he does below average than your average western citizen, the score of his country will be less of that.

We obviously have to account for it per capita — you would surely not allow as little CO2 emission for China as you would to, say, Hungary. Like, that would be completely unfair.

I was thinking about that. On one hand, per capita tells you the relative use per person, which is useful for who consumes the most (most wasteful lifestyle). We know this will almost always be America.

On the other hand, we could measure per gdp and see who generated the most value from that pollution. This would probably help the US relative to other nations in ranking. It may hint at how efficiently the consumption is.

Of course economic output isn’t everything in life, there’s other ways to determine value and fairness and all that, but it’s be an interesting comparison to per capita.

Eg. The hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor," said Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor at Edmunds.com.

https://www.edmunds.com/about/press/leaf-blowers-emissions-d...

That's exactly what the EU is doing - right now putting in place the "CBAM" (carbon border adjustment mechanism)

This is the one good thing I was looking forward to from the Trump administration

A lot of the methane consumption can’t be moved overseas

I know I’ve been in meetings where I’ve wished for the sweet relief of death.

Would the use of force need to be unaimous, super majority, simple majority, or a unilateral decision?

“Do deliberate”, I think. Like the mafia setting up a hazardous waste disposal company, and then simply dumping the waste into a ditch. Makes them a lot more money.

I mean "deliberate pollution" not so much in the "evil villain who directly wants to ruin the environment" sense, and more like "I'd rather have $X in profit than spend anything to handle this properly, whatever happens next is somebody else's problem."