Climate change and the 75% problem

Re:Climate change and the 75% problem by bendavis381 on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @12:06PM (#18240410)

I would rephrase it as "the price is so much higher, suppliers are forced to develop alternative products to satisfy demand". Energy suppliers have been given massive subsidies for decades because they don't have to factor in the negative externalities. A carbon cost should be a part of the balance sheet in the way raw materials are. Given that, suppliers will have to innovate their way to bring price back down to equilibrium, or go out of business.

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Re:Climate change and the 75% problem by whatshisface on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @12:14PM (#18240507)

Option one: build solar panels. Option two: poor people no longer drive, and their standard of living falls. Capitalism, if given a pricing signal to "reduce emissions," will pick a completely merciless combination of the two.

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Re:Climate change and the 75% problem by jnurmine on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @02:01PM (#18241704)

Option three: improve mass transit, to move more people per fuel unit.

Option four: reduce need to drive around by bringing services closer to people and promoting remote working etc.

Option five: remove need to drive for shopping and such by creating "bus for stuff", you order things and get them delivered (near) home.

Option six: convert existing vehicles to electric (probably needs some form of battery innovation and might not be cheap even if price is offset by the raw metals salvaged from the engine).

Just a few examples of the obvious options. The truly clever smart options take more analysis (and a smarter mind than mine) to figure out.

The point: the search space for "reduce emissions (driving) because price of gas is insane" is very large, going full solar or poor don't drive are not really the only options.

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Re:Climate change and the 75% problem by umanwizard on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @12:20PM (#18240574)

Well, good. Our collective standard of living needs to fall in order for the planet to survive.

If you don’t want it to hit poor people specifically you can subsidize the tax for them.

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Re:Climate change and the 75% problem by whatshisface on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @12:44PM (#18240877)

Well, there's always option three: keep things going and pray for a technical miracle. That's the default choice and probably the road we're on.

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