Kinja reply list

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benjaminalloverHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 12:00pm
I’m with the esteemed Mr. Hansen; that was an industrial trade show on the inside, with the countries and companies who created the mess weighing and dismissing the coming impacts on the global poor in favor of “moderation”. The people outside those closed meetings- especially indigenous peoples- were the ones who should have been at the table.
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  Vanguard Knightbenjaminallover
  12/14/15 12:35pm
  It’s par for the course in regards to human history:
  
  Screw Brown people, then value them for the problems you created.
  
  What I fear most is how white people will react when their own standards of living takes a nose dive along with all the people they usually scapegoat...
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  gilbertkittensbenjaminallover
  12/14/15 12:47pm
  The people outside those closed meetings- especially indigenous peoples- were the ones who should have been at the table.
  
  Ok, that is literally a fantasy. You know who really should have been at the table? Unicorns. That’s who. Either have the exact same chance of ever attending international negotiations on anything in any of our lifetimes.
  
  You look at the day to day reality of power and rapacious corporate greed and suddenly you expect fairness? The world is not fair, and it’s not going to become fair, ever. You must reject the feeling that it should be fair. No amount of wanting fair, sane action on the part of national governments will ever make that happen. They will act on climate change, only when it is to late and only to save the property of the powerful. Fairly soon a consensus will develop around planning for climate change as opposed to trying to prevent it and the plans developed won’t help the people that really need help.
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jokepitchHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 11:55am
I’m actually surprised the GOP doesn’t want a carbon tax - because they could milk a good eight years of political theatre out of trying to repeal it.
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  ideasleepfuriouslyjokepitch
  12/14/15 12:05pm
  Honestly though, it’s a market-based solution that offers corporations and individuals choices to suit their needs, something a real conservative party should be all over. And yet its presented as the most socialist scheme ever. Ugh.
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  jokepitchideasleepfuriously
  12/14/15 12:09pm
  Because the GOP’s dogma has reached critical mass and they are physically incapable of supporting anything with the word “tax” applied to it - unless it’s immediately followed by the word “cut.”
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CohaagenHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 11:56am
Let’s say you got what you wanted.

How do you enforce a carbon tax? I’d love to know.
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  Hamilton NolanCohaagen
  12/14/15 1:16pm
  Good point—in all of human history, no tax has ever been enforced. Checkmate.
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  CohaagenHamilton Nolan
  12/14/15 1:31pm
  That’s an odd response. I didn’t make a point.
  
  Governments can obviously implement and enforce taxes on its citizens, but how do you police the worldwide use of carbon? Taxes are only as good as the force behind them. We pay the IRS under the threat of incarceration or even violence should we resist. How does a Carbon Tax get enforced?
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VanNostrandHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 11:48am
We didn’t get the one thing we need

1. Followed by a numbered list of six points
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  MaryVanNostrand
  12/14/15 11:54am
  It’s six pieces of evidence in support of the one main point.
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  LithiumFoxVanNostrand
  12/14/15 11:56am
  Technically, it’s 6 points about the one thing we need; a Carbon Tax.
  
  So they’re not wrong. If anything, it’s the same point, restated from slightly different perspectives and repeated for emphasis.
  
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Arctic_AttorneyHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 12:35pm
The thing that’s really needed is for there to be a price on carbon. A carbon tax is just one way to achieve this. Also effective are tradable emission credits, abatement subsidies, technology standards and carbon-sink subsidies. Each works well is some circumstances and poorly in others, so a mix of all of these things are needed. To prescribe just one would have been foolish as each country needs a different mix of the above measures to achieve their targets.
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  HowieArctic_Attorney
  12/14/15 5:20pm
  Also effective are tradable emission credits
  
  Fuck that noise, who ever invented tradable emissions credits was just some shithead looking to commoditize pollution for their benefit.
  
  There just needs to be hard limits imposed on carbon emissions. If your a polluter you get fined, end of story. If your company cannot reduce emissions then the fines get bigger and bigger and bigger until no amount of cost cutting or subsidizing the cost of the fine through increased pricing can overcome the penalty and either the company solves the problem or they disappear completely.
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  Arctic_AttorneyHowie
  12/14/15 6:05pm
  ...says the economically illiterate. By allowing a company who’s more cost-effectively cutting carbon to cut extra and sell their excess to a company for whom cutting carbon would be more expensive, it allows the total emissions to be reduced in the least economically harmful way. Where they’re appropriate, tradable emission credits are the most effective means of cutting emissions and encouraging technological innovation to reduce carbon intensity of output. Their limitation, however, is that there’s significant transaction costs involved in the schemes so it only works for larger point-source polluters.
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KaostheoryHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 12:02pm
The end costs of everything should be included in the purchase price. Drugs and alcohol should cover rehabilitation, consumables should cover disposal etc. The problem always comes down to the inequitable distribution of money. Poorer people and counties will always want to catch up and use the cheapest means possible, climate will always come second at best.
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  gawkophileKaostheory
  12/15/15 12:36pm
  That’s the whole problem with contemporary “free market” types - they don’t believe in costs that are further away than the tips of their dicks. I was talking with a professor once who argues on the bad side of environmental ethics, and he asked me why we shouldn’t continue to allow strip mining of coal in Appalachia. I told him that, on my view, when you pollute the air and water, make my property unsafe and less valuable, you’re stealing from me. Your freedom to swing your fist has passed its bounds and connected with my nose. He actually bit the bullet and said, “yeah, that’s a problem for our views of property and freedom.”
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harloHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 1:08pm
I work in sustainable development, and have been working in it for years. A carbon tax would be a very elegant tool, but there are other tools that can its work.

What we need, actually, is a realization that economic development (in the classical sense), an unchecked human population, and a healthy global environment cannot coexist.

Consumption is the problem. Codifying and deeming it “good” through classical economic policy and models, and accelerating it exponentially through population growth and development, will inevitably lead to an unsustainable anthro-ecological system.

So, sure, let’s “solve” climate change. But solving it through the mechanisms and superstructures that got us into this mess in the first place is a fool’s errand.
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Zach ScottHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 1:23pm
A carbon tax would be best. But leaving aside the logistics of implementing it worldwide and getting every country to sign off on it, we’re not even at a point where we can pass it in the United States, and we won’t until the House changes hands again (in other words, don’t hold your breath).

A small glimmer of hope can be found in the continually decreasing costs of clean energy. The point of a carbon tax is it makes the price of carbon more closely aligned with its true cost to society by incorporating costs that were previously externalized like climate change. This would drive the price of emitting carbon up, making renewable clean energy sources more attractive in comparison. But already, in much of the world (including parts of the United States), clean energy is already cheaper than fossil fuel options. And that trend will only continue in the future, as R&D and broader implementation drive clean energy prices down the cost curve, while the finite reserves of fossil fuels can only drive prices upward.

None of that is to say that we’d be fine just sitting around waiting for everyone to start using clean energy and solve climate change. The fossil fuel industry will go down kicking and screaming and fighting clean energy at every opportunity (and through endless litigation). And there’s the fact that we should have begun making the transition back in the 1990s if we wanted a better chance to avert worst-case scenarios.
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IAmNotADamnWriterHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 11:59am
But poor countries got money from rich countries to fight climate change in their own poor countries, so the rich countries that have all the polluting industries and chemicals can just let those poors take care of the problem. Okay? Fill ’er up!
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nopunin10didHamilton Nolan
12/14/15 12:51pm
Another thing to consider is that Obama made sure that any agreement he signed would be one he already has the legal power to implement. It would have been like Woodrow Wilson after WW1 otherwise, with the US legislature snatching victory away after successful negotiations.
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  fancycheesenopunin10did
  12/14/15 1:28pm
  Exactly. It drives me crazy to hear people say that these negotiations were a failure because the Paris agreement isn’t a climate change silver bullet. In my opinion, given the obstacles we’re up against (US Republicans, namely) the agreement is hugely impressive and a testament to Obama/Kerry’s leadership.
  
  Good read “republican-proofing” the deal: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/d…
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