I feel somewhat strange writing that as someone who buys into the systems philosophy of "fix whats broken immediately, enhance it later". While that's true in computer systems, it doesn't seem uncommon in the realm of politics that periods of disasters are taken as opportunities to experiment with different ideas.

That’s not how politics works. You can’t abuse a crisis to ram something unrelated down the opposing party’s throat. You end up alienating everyone including the moderates.

This never works with even something as simple as a government shutdown over budget considerations.

This is exactly how it works in practice in the US because the government is in terminal gridlock.

> You end up alienating everyone including the moderates.

The largest political party in the US is the non-voting party. Again, how it works in practice is that almost half of the population is already alienated.

Hell, it was written by the oppositions party current presidential front runner.

Is the ability to travel, including all the business, leisure, and cultural exchange benefits worth less than 2% of our carbon footprint?

So, the real picture is that this 2.5% of global CO2 emissions are caused by as few as 6% of the population, who also are incidentally the richest and bear a high personal carbon footprint in other domains than transportation.

Also please remember that the aviation sector is growing, and therefore its global contribution to GHG emissions will grow as well in the future. Discounting the carbon footprint of the aviation sector based on today's numbers is a mistake.

If you do not want to impede on your ability to travel, you shouldn't object to it for the 94% of the population that want the same thing as you, and when it becomes available to them the aviation sector's emissions will increase 15-fold.

When costs are not priced in the benefits are weighed against nothing.

Efforts should be made to reduce all sources of emissions.

Wow - no, totally not.

The value derived from some kinds of emissions and resulting costs for changing them is infinitely differentiable from others.

For example, changing our electricity grid over to a more renewable resource, piece by piece, will maybe be a little bit more expensive, but it won't be disruptive.

'Stopping all flights' because airplanes emit CO2 could be devastating to the world economy, in addition to a massive reduction in the quality of life of people everywhere.

The factory that produces medical drugs needs some kind of Co2 emissions - probably worth it.

The one producing plastic bouncy balls for pets - probably not.

'The Market' has a lot of asymmetries, but it also contains a lot of intelligence, which is why it's always reasonable to be skeptical of arbitrary, system-wide controls.

Using this crisis for a 'massive experiment in what to turn online next as the basis for CO2' is excessively totalitarian, because we wouldn't really know why, how, what we are doing, and the resulting social pain would be great.

If there were a rational, clean path forward and 'good timing' for the introduction of specific measures, then yes, use the opportunity. But I don't see any of that.

General messaures of wellbeing and life satisfaction in the West haven't shifted over the last forty years despite a massive increase in air travel.

That we are 'happier because we can travel, but sadder because we have Facebook' is another can of worms entirely.

But this 'no improvement in wellbeing' argument is mostly undermined by the fact that given the choice, almost 0 people chose to 'live like 50 years ago'. Everyone today can do that easily. They can go back to not having dishwashers, not wearing seatbelts, smoking a pack a day, black and white TV if they want to, but for some reason, they mostly chose modern convenience.

But the real issue is the fact that economic activity is diverse, and heavy-handed centralized attempts to intervene will have crazy consequences.

If there are 'obvious' ways to use a crises for 'obvious good' then sure, but I don't see any such thing.

If a government doesn't keep that in mind it may bite them back somehow (see the beginning - as opposed to the follow-up - of the "gilets jaunes" movement in France).

The 'large policy changes' will have completely varying consequences across the economic spectrum, for good and bad, which is the general problem with centralized planning.

So if the government 'shut down all co2 emitting factories' it might have small consequences here, and terrible consequences over there.

But if the government institutes a 'carbon tax' that makes your 'pet toys' and 'medicine' 10% more expensive, then given the inelasticity in demand and surpluses derived from medicine, people will continue to buy it at the same rate, and possibly buy fewer 'pet toys'. If travel rose by 20%, then maybe we'd see less leisure, fewer business trips, but the 'important trips' would still happen.

When you consider that it makes it much harder to convince the average person to lower their emissions when they can see their boss jetting off to Bali on a whim.

Also that 2% figure is wrong in so many ways.

"Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority (of the ruler, or to the decision of a majority) in exchange for protection of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order"

And of those who refuse to consent, explicitly or tacitly and disagree with others definitions of "social order"? Do people expect them to just roll over without fighting?

Trying to take away/cut things people have come to expect and offer nothing of equivalent in return? Good luck with that.

The idea of using CO2 emissions control as a form of social control doesn't sound crazy at all to me. Without knowing anything else, I'd assume it was a valid concern at least worth discussing, and I'd assume that anyone unwilling to at discuss it reasonably is probably a malicious and dishonest person with selfish motives who should not be trusted.

Monetary policy is maxed already, so we will need fiscal stimulus. This will be the opportunity to invest in green infrastructure. We will need the government to step up and provide jobs and spending, and it should direct both with wisdom to prepare for the climate challenge.

[1] https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycomme...

I'd like to see the government pay anybody who wants a job to plant trees.

It sure would ... wouldn't it.

Huge amounts of wealth is going to be destroyed and people are going to suffer.

Development is going to slow down further limiting our ability to respond to those problems.

Meanwhile you are cheering for an emission rate blip and suggest it's worth hurting us even further ? That's going to do what exactly ?

I'm surprised at how regressive the popular opinion is around here - I wouldn't expect it from people who are in the filed of problem solving with technology.

I don't think you realise how bad things are going to get as this panic drags on, think unemployment and poverty waves 2008 levels.

I'm not saying climate change is irrelevant - I'm saying proposing to slow down economic activity to reduce emissions has no quantifiable or tangible benefit - it's basically wishful thinking - and the downsides are going to be very harsh

I'm measuring how bad things are relative to how rightly fucked things can be, and climate change offers up a whole wenu of awesome things. Widespread crop failures, Ecosystem collapse, Food supply shortages, violent uprisings, Mass human migrations, Famines, the collapse of the global supply chain and upheavals in the global balance of power. How bad can it get, and when? I don't know exactly but 2020 is off to a very exciting start.

2 months ago The pandemic felt unreal to North America, even though the warnings were easy to read. Now it's real, and hopefully it's waking us up, as people, as governments, and as businesses as to how quickly, suddenly, and shockingly the unreal can become real.

And I agree with you, the economic fallout is going to be terrible. There are many things to worry about, and one of the things I worry about is that thousands of small businesses are going to go under, and their employees, who are often young and living paycheck to paycheck won't have a job to go back to after this blows over.

If this pandemic causes an economic heart attack, I'll see it like a middle aged guy keeling over trying to climb 2 flights of stairs. As in: hopefully that heart attack will scare you into a greater appreciation for taking care of yourself, and it is in fact a blessing in disguise. Or maybe all those businesses will go under and Gen-Z will have to work at the Amazon warehouses until they're 30. Difficult choices need to be made.

The reason I see the above solutions as regressive is because I believe these things have a high probability of occurring irregardless of emission control at this point.

But the timeframe is longer - we're better off trying to prepare for the outcome of those scenarios - and technology is going to be a key component. If technological development collapses as a result of an economic collapse we are going to be majorly screwed emissions or not.

Also I think the "reduce emissions" crowd is sucking all the air out in the discussion about handling climate change. Climate change is just one of the risk factor our society faces in this new era - viral infection spread, nuclear disasters, etc. society right now is very fragile and humans have a huge influence on our environment for the first time in history - the society must adapt and hoping things will go back to the good old days if we just stop doing things is very narrow-minded

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us-lij...

"Hundreds of athletes from the US military were in Wuhan for the Military World Games in October 2019."

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

If the climate were so sensitive to CO2 levels, where we've seen it go from 250 to over 400 ppm...we would see much more dramatic warming than we have. It was not that much cooler 100 years ago. So far, we have yet to have a year significantly warmer than 1998. It's been 22 years and the CO2 has been rising all that time. In spite of billions of people coming out of poverty. Minimal difference in maximum temps. Antarctica had record sea ice extent in 2014. Antarctica has been trending positive for sea ice over the past 30 years: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/sea_ice_so...

There's never ever been a geologic extinction event associated with high levels of CO2. In fact quite the opposite: the abundant and biodiverse periods in Earth's history are associated with high CO2.

Plants literally suffocate at 150ppm. We are near historical lows for the planet Earth.

And stop reading bad science.

Best indications are that a series of super-volcanic events triggered massive drought, which probably led to drying conditions and decreased sunlight for photosynthesis, which triggered massive fires which burnt up tons of oxygen and caused hypoxic conditions for tens of thousands of years. This whole episode is also associated with geomagnetic instability [2]. Now, the two are related, because geomagnetism is caused by movement of the inner and outer core of the Earth. If the earth sees periodic disruptions in the normal movement of the cores, I can easily imagine that to trigger massive volcanic activity.

Now, in that case, a release of CO2 occurred from all the plant matter dying off as a result of drought, fire, flood, and volcanism. The CO2 itself didn't cause the extinction. The volcanism caused the extinction.

[1] http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13429...

Also, the problem is not that humans in general are incapable to withstand the increased temperatures, but that the extreme changes in climatic patterns and the changes weather patterns will wreak havoc with infrastructure and agriculture. Any species whose lifecycle is tied to the seasons will face decline and possible extinction. With every species removed from the ecosystem, this ecosystem becomes more weak and fragile. Changes to seasonal weather patterns will make living in some areas untenable, causing local and global migration. And we all know how well established societies are dealing with migration (hit; not good at all).

Watch Dr. Patrick Moore's 2015 talk on this: "The Sensible Environmentalist" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFHX526NPbE

Or Dr. Richard Lindzen's 2018 talk: "Global Warming For The Two Cultures" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2q9BT2LIUA

Or geologist James Kanis's talk on Plate Climatology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=GX1e_uU5u3A...

Or you could also dig into the science yourself, with a skeptical, rational mind and care for the scientific method, and come to your own conclusions. I would recommend learning about everything from thermodynamics to geology to atmospheric science. It's fascinating stuff. We live in an era where it's easy to do that.

With any other hard physical science, the math is derivable. I can look at the equations for special relativity, I can read about the aether-related theories that preceded it (which were consensus at the time), I can see where they fell short and how they failed to measure up, I can read about Einstein's thought experiments that the led to the theory, I can read about the fundamental experiments that validated the theory. I can see how it evolved since then and led to developments in quantum physics. I can do all this. And I submit to you that if quantum physics is accessible then certainly climate science and geology are accessible. We have Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, numerous sources for contemporary publications and you can absolutely follow it and you can play a part in it. And then you will know the topic.

I outsource thinking to other people all the time. That's essentially what it means to live in a modern society.