Re:Making America Carbon Neutral Could Cost $1T a Year
by jonhendry18 on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @07:10PM
(#19914738)
"The 3rd world also releases a lot less air pollution than the west."
Probably true in terms of overall quantity, but in terms of pollution or carbon emitted per watt of energy (or joule, or whatever) produced the 3rd world is probably worse.
Lots of dirty-burning, low-efficiency cook stoves out there running on (unavoidably) low-quality fuel. And lots of smoky, high CO2 emission two stroke engines in use.
Which is not to excuse Western emissions but simply to note that there's problems all over.
Re:Making America Carbon Neutral Could Cost $1T a Year
by ddxxdd on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @01:32AM
(#19907002)
The last time I checked, the IPCC ar4 report said that the effects of climate change would cost about 5% of GDP, starting in 2100. Some Wall Street Journal economists ran the numbers and found that the net present value of those costs are about 0.1% of gross domestic product. So the power of economic growth and compounding interest means that overreacting to climate change is even more dangerous than climate change itself.
Re:Making America Carbon Neutral Could Cost $1T a Year
by gruturo on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @04:12AM
(#19907684)
Fine in theory.
In practice we only get one planet, and trying to quantify whether taking care of it outweighs the loss of income of just letting the damage happen is not merely wrong, but outright terrifyingly inhuman.
It goes even beyond the Tyler Durden (Fight Club) car recall speech, which I won't talk about for obvious reasons.
And honestly, this is all beside the point--we can talk until we're blue in the face but who can afford to pay for climate change mitigation, but at the end of the day, someone has to do it, or we're all going to be much, much worse off than we are today, rich and poor.