I think at this point emissions reductions is a matter of will, not technology. Rather than waiting for some technological magic bullet when it comes to emissions reductions, we need to take aggressive action.

But we're going to need CCS technologies to start pulling the carbon back out if we want to avoid really bad outcomes, and those technologies are much less developed.

I agree that reducing emissions is about will, but I'm frightened that we seem not especially willful. And that does seem like a matter of culture, which could be changed. We just don't have a robust framework for deliberately creating those changes. We gave a portfolio of expensive one-offs.

Ah, but we do. Tax carbon emissions (cf EU) at a proper level and you'll solve the core incentive issue.

Follow (policy) research on how to implement this and it should be fine. The biggest hurdle is will, especially to take the first step.

I think we're talking about different things. Yes, I agree that a carbon tax is needed, and would change individual behavior. But as you say, the biggest hurdle is will, which we have been sorely lacking. I'm talking about, how can we change what people _want_, which would include as a consequence creating the political will which allows us to take such decisive action.

So far, lots of places have not chosen to implement any carbon tax because they value the environment less than their present access to goods and services to which they are accustomed. And even the carbon taxes which have been put in place don't actually address the real externalities of emissions, suggesting that even if the polity there values the environment _some_, it's still less valuable than buying cheap stuff.

EU carbon taxes vary wildly between countries, from €0.07 in Poland to €116 in Sweden. Sweden's tax is at the very low end of recommendations from a 2018 UN report, which gave the extremely broad range of $135 to $5,500 per ton. And only now is there a _proposal_ for an EU border tax to account for emissions in goods entering the EU. So even in Sweden, where perhaps cultural values made a comparatively high rate politically feasible, no one has yet paid a carbon tax which actually addresses the externalities of emissions, because of imports.

My original comment mentioned Tesla as an example of how to get people to actually want the greener goods more than their alternatives. People that really wanted a Tesla wanted it more than any ICE car. They still wanted it after Tesla hit the tax break cap in the US. They perceived a Tesla as smart, glamorous, futuristic, and conveying status. This is qualitatively different than someone who lives in a place with a carbon tax who can be convinced to take a train trip rather than a regional flight, or buys a home which is better sealed and will be cheaper to heat/cool.

I would claim that aside from typical corporate marketing activities which center around a given product or brand (which is what I was thinking of when I referred to a "portfolio of expensive one-offs"), the other primary precedents for getting people to want differently have been religious evangelism and state propaganda, neither of which ever yielded an engineering discipline of predictable, well-understood mechanisms.

Underrated comment.

I think the general consensus is that where it's possible to eliminate emissions, that's much better than emitting and then capturing later, but there are huge disparities across emitters as to how easy that is to do, and there's a likely outcome where getting to net zero (or even net negative) emissions involves eliminating emissions in most industries and then using capture to deal with the laggards.

Getting less abstract: there are no real technological hurdles for eliminating emissions for personal vehicles, and probably-manageable ones for other surface transport (cargo shipping, etc.). Decarbonizing the electric grid has some technological challenges to solve (mostly around intermittency and storage if we go all renewables, or cost if we go mixed renewables and nuclear), but there are reasonably clear paths forward. On the other hand, we really don't know how to do zero-carbon long haul aviation, or concrete production and curing, or aluminum smelting, or trans-oceanic shipping -- maybe portable/modular nuclear could be used for the last two, but it's still pretty pie-in-the-sky. So, maybe in the future we have electric cars but carbon capture for long-haul jets, or something.

(Aside: the recent Bill Gates climate book has a pretty thorough rundown of all the major current emitters and the levels of technological readiness for decarbonizing each.)

Carbon neutral jet fuel exists (synthetic fuels from electrolysis, and/or biofuels), and could be scaled up. The issue is not “can we do this”, it’s “can we justify doing this economically”.

For synthetic fuels: yes, absolutely... but it requires economical carbon capture, which GP was saying we maybe shouldn't invest in, in favor of emissions reductions (and if we want net zero, it'd have to be direct air capture, probably, rather than point source, because in this theoretical future, the coal power plants or whatever are all gone). Anyhow, whether you frame captured-carbon fuels as "you capture carbon and then burn it again so it's neutral" or "you burn it, and then deal with its emissions by capturing it again" is sort of arbitrary, and the latter is basically what I'm already arguing for.

Biofuels seem mostly like a crock, honestly -- the ones we can produce now compete with food for arable land and would do so more aggressively at scale, and the ones that wouldn't do that (algal fuels, maybe cellulosic fuels like switchgrass) still require fundamental R&D to make the economics work. And again: even if they did work, this is a solution where you're burning fuels and emitting carbon, and then remedying by capturing again, this time with plants. So again: it's carbon capture.

Agreed. Removal and reductions are not mutually exclusive.

One huge positive I see from the creation of this prize is the publicity and interest in carbon removal. From my experience more people are learning about the requirement for carbon removal and realizing how expensive it is.

For those of us who want to leave a minimal footprint, becoming aware of how expensive it is to undo our footprint incentivizes us to reduce too.

(Credit where credit is due, Stripe, Shopify and Microsoft are also really helping this area grow too. )

> Agreed. Removal and reductions are not mutually exclusive.

Making people believe that some magic techno fix will swoop in and somehow solve the climate change problem is undesirable. People need to accept that a large reduction in emissions is necessary and this will require many people to change at least some of their habits.

Those 36 gigatons aren't largely a result of consumer behaviors, but industry (which, admittedly, increases as a function of demand)

Reducing footprints through innovation will go a ways. Changing "culture" (i.e. coerced minimalism) is a thing, but it's a band-aid solution on a leaking hoover-dam; virtue signaling for the most part.

Carbon footprints scale up with population. Everyone eats, wants gadgets, wants a home, good infrastructure. If these demands can't be met without excess encroachment of land and destruction of the environment, then there's too many people. Innovation and increased efficiency can't outrun growth. Yes, it's poised to level off in the next 100 or so years after adding an extra few billion to the total, but the interventions needed are more urgent and by extension the reduced rate should be more urgent. Though changes to the energy sector alone can make a substantial dent in emissions in the near-term, given political will.

All of this would be a moot point if the global population were halved and remained stagnant.

The rampant op-ed push for minimalism on the part of the consumer, for housing especially, seems almost like a nefarious ploy to plant the idea that commoners should now be content with less, with environmentalism as the red herring. So being unable to afford a detached home is to be thought of as a happy virtuous accident.

I actually think all people in the developed world - rich people of course most of all, but “commoners” too - do need to learn to be content with a lot less. Before the industrial era, the average person in England owned 36 objects. And that’s counting like 1) table 2) bowl 3) cup 4) knife. The way people in America and Europe have been taught to live in the last century - even the lower-middle and working class, let alone the rich - is inherently unsustainable, and can never be sustainable. “Buy less sh*t” should be the first and most powerful front in our fight against climate change, but it isn’t because we are selfish and gluttonous beasts.

> Before the industrial era, the average person in England owned 36 objects.

Life at the advent of the industrial revolution sucked. The Victorian age was also one of high inequality. I'm not sure what that's supposed to inspire.

> inherently unsustainable

What part? You're not addressing that. I did, however: increase in population increases demand for things.

Environmental destruction is scaling with population, not consumer voraciousness.

> “Buy less sh*t” should be the first and most powerful front in our fight against climate change, but it isn’t because we are selfish and gluttonous beasts.

Look at the stuff you have lying around in your domicile. That's somewhere near the average of what people in the West own.

Digital consumption has increased on average, people aren't tripping over things in their ever-shrinking domiciles with ever-shrinking purchasing power owing to stagnant wages.

Not only are you overestimating consumption of "shit", you're failing to make a meaningful connection between consumer habits and lack of sustainability. It's a question of scale.

Of course rising population is at the heart of this. But unless you’re planning to Thanos our way out of the situation, the people in the Western world need to consume less. Less beef, which is hugely polluting. Less sugar, which is toxic and useless. Less paper products. Less air conditioning. And yes, fewer objects. The average American child owns between 70 and 100 toys. The average American woman owns 100+ items of clothing. The average American spends $16,000 on retail items per year. It is too much; it is more than we need. It all takes energy to manufacture, and to ship, and it all ends up in the trash.

> But unless you’re planning to Thanos our way out of the situation, the people in the Western world need to consume less.

There are more viable and compassionate solutions to accelerate stagnation of global growth. One is universal access to contraceptives, the other is eliminating global poverty and improving economic stability. This is no less politically viable than coercing Westerners to consume less, and far more effective.

Add to that, our governments *target a growth rate of 3-4% per year through immigration*. That is purely through policy, and the entire point to increase GDP through, you guessed it, consumption. As you well know, our minimum carbon footprints are higher in the West. The minimum. If decimating consumption is such a priority for green advocates, then it should follow that they staunchly oppose increases in immigration rates, and in fact favor reductions. That would actually be consistent with the argument. This is an obvious connection that people coyly dance around. And while it's a separate discussion, many economists agree today that GDP is not a reliable measure of a nation's prosperity and chasing perpetual growth is not required.

> Less beef, which is hugely polluting.

There have been some interesting strides in innovation that reduce methane emissions some 90+% using a fraction of kelp/seaweed in feed, and this may be rolled out as a matter of policy. That would eliminate issues related to methane emissions in a fell swoop, in a way that discouragement of consumption can't touch. It's a ways off, but it doesn't have to be, it's right there.

Land-use, contrary to popular belief, is actually decreasing in the U.S. for cattle in spite of the small uptick in demand growth. However, it has been growing in Brazil, presumably due to the growing Chinese market and they're supplying of soy to just about everyone.

> The average American child owns between 70 and 100 toys.

Citation?

> The average American woman owns 100+ items of clothing.

Citation?

> It is too much; it is more than we need.

There is no metric offered for what is enough / too much. It's entirely arbitrary. And yet, the difference between a perceived low consumption and average consumption, in aggregate, across the population, would not result in a significant change as the environment is concerned, since we all still use power, water, transportation, food, as the most basic form of living. The industry giants are responsible for most destruction. We can pat ourselves on the back for buying fewer material goods but it doesn't put a dent in the problem. Given the approx 36 gigatons of annual emissions, you won't even get down to 35 with a persuasive campaign. You won't even get down to 35.5.

Blaming the consumer is foolhardy. Most problems with regards to energy and waste can be resolved through policy. People want these problems fixed but feel dismayed when most of what they throw in the recycling bin, typically related to food stuffs, ends up at the dump.

Living well means more than mere survival. You don't "need" your little device you use to browse hackernews and your daily caffeinated drink and all the comforts you take for granted, and no one gets to decide for you that you don't need them, in a free country. This is important because blaming consumers will not save the environment, strong policy and innovation will.

You can google all the stats I provided, just like I can google all the no-citation stats you provided.

Yup! I’m a big fan of contraception and options for women. That will probably start to bring the global population down slowly within about a hundred years. But we have less than thirty years to fix the climate problem.

Per-person carbon emissions in the developing world are <1 ton per year. For Europe, China, India its 5-10 tons per year. Which is bad enough. For the United States, it’s TWENTY TONS PER PERSON PER YEAR.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

That isn’t because we for some reason have worse power plants or worse ways of making steel. It’s because we eat too much; we drive too much, in cars that are too big; we use too much heat and air-conditioning, in houses that, in spite of what you keep saying, are the largest in the world, and getting bigger every decade (you can google this too). We fly too much, we buy too much, we use too much, we consume more than literally any other people on the planet, and if we don’t stop, we are going to kill everyone, ourselves included.

To put this another way, if every American started living, not even like people in Kenya, but like people in France, that would take 3 gigatons off of global annual emissions. Holy shit.

> You can google all the stats I provided

Did, and did not find what you suggested. I did find a 300 dollar figure which just reflects cost, not the number of toys.

> For the United States, it’s TWENTY TONS PER PERSON PER YEAR

As I said: everyone has a higher carbon footprint in the West, mainly owing to infrastructure and industry. The combined consumer spending choices are not what is leading to the extra tonnage.

Here's the breakdown straight from the EPA: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Industry. Electricity. Transportation. Agriculture. Commercial and Residential COMBINED are just 13%.

Americans are not consuming so much more than Europeans as to generate 10 extra tons of carbon. The average spending reflects it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household... . Not to mention this doesn't take into account prices, and digital service & goods consumption.

I hope that clears any doubts.

> That isn’t because we for some reason have worse power plants or worse ways of making steel.

The suburban experiment is a North American one, and America is absolutely huge. Infrastructure is vastly more expensive to maintain in NA, and yes there are inefficiencies everywhere. Simply living, having access to water, electricity and food, creates more emissions in America based on location.

Suburbs are money-losers and subsidized by city-centers, despite the taxes on residents there. Sprawled cities are way more wasteful than dense cities, and America is a nation of sprawled cities.

Ultimately, you're dwelling on a red herring. I addressed the primary issue already. Sustainability matters because of scale. If the population were actually stagnant, a) consumption would not lead to increased emissions anywhere, b) we'd actually address the problem. Bullying consumers does not. It's just a race to the bottom.

Sustainability matters because of scaling.

The co2 producer most lagging behind in terms of reduction is transportation. This is a field where endusers have giant impacts, and it will likely not be solved by making those giant SUVs electric.

This is also where the US is pretty bad, because of a culture that aspires to urban sprawl.

More dense cities, more mixed use planning, more active transportation, less detached housing, less parking etc. are ways in which developed countries could really reduce their transportation carbon footprints (and incidentally also footprints related to AC/heating).

> Tesla made some people want an electric car really badly

The emphasis here is on some people.

Observe the morons who think they are clever/funny "rolling coal".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK6Amk4Hf4Y

My personal belief is that all governments should implement carbon tax/trading schemes which are either revenue neutral or 100% of the revenue is invested into carbon capture schemes.

Indeed, getting emissions under control is key. And so are developing solutions to removing carbon from the ambient air, with fewer than 2,000 people working in the industry worldwide.

Regarding your point about carbon capture, XPRIZE recently closed a $20 million prize for making products out of carbon emissions captured at industrial sources: https://www.xprize.org/prizes/carbon/articles/xprize-announc...

And it's futile if we don't start removing C02 from the atmosphere. I'd rather bet on C02 removal than anything else.

(Side note: it's CO2, carbon+(oxide×2), not C zero two)

It's not futile if we don't remove atmospheric CO2, but we would have to get to net zero warming without cheating and we would have to get there within our emission budget to stay below <insert your temperature target>.

> What if we need systematic memetic engineering, to make lower energy consumption actually feel desirable?

lol, there has been an unrelenting campaign to do so, going all the way back to the 70s - when global cooling and population control were the hot topics at Davos. Captain Planet, he's our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero...

I'm all for abandoning conspicuous consumption and the treatment of electronics as consumable goods (sent from 2011 vintage Thinkpad), but I'm not on board with weird its-for-your-own-good social engineering/propaganda campaigns. It is a moot point anyway, as you'd be impotently counter-messaging every advertising/branding strategy that has (or will) ever exist.

> Our 2019 emissions were ~36 gigatons

The plants absorb about 25% of that and the oceans another 25%. If we absorb 10 gigatons yearly by 2050, that might be good enough.

Surely dissolving CO2 in the ocean acts as a buffer, not a sink? We will have to stop emitting all of that CO2 as well (and future generations will have to sequester it). The net absorption / emission from the biosphere involves a lot of emission following from our changes to the planet. We can significantly reduce our emissions (and slowly recover some of them) with better stewardship of the environment but there is a risk to the sequestered carbon: eg. where climate change causes forests to die and release most of their stored carbon.

Moreover, higher CO2 content in the oceans leads to acidification. This is bad for coral and organisms that build shells. I don't recall the exact reason but my understanding is that it tends to dissolve carbonates.

Wait, 36 originally × .75 from plants × .75 from oceans - 10 captured = 20¼ Gt. I think you're off by about 10 Gt?

And that's assuming the ocean and plants will infinitely capture more and more carbon, which I sincerely doubt as well, but I'll go ahead and assume you mean this as a bridging method to get us another decade or two to finalize real solutions.

it's actually 36 - (36x0.25) - (36x0.25) - 10 = 8.

But yeah, we would have to reduce our emissions by at least 8GT to get to zero. That is totally doable, advanced economies are already reducing CO2 at a faster rate than 25% over 30 years: the US has reduced it's emissions by 1GT in 10 years (16% reduction).

If you absorb 25% (you wrote "plants absorb about 25%" and same for trees), then 75% remains, so apply ×0.75 twice instead of applying ×0.25 twice.

but that's not how it works...plants absorb a quarter of total emissions and the oceans about a quarter too. So half the emissions are absorbed, and half are not.

I think you're making a very common mistake, which is misunderstanding the carbon cycle.

We could, theoretically, grow enough plants to get down to pre-industrial levels. However, plants decompose when they die, re-releasing their carbon into the atmosphere, and lots of the plants alive to die are grown using petrochemical fertilizer, which was taken from under the ground, not the atmosphere.. So, we'd have to keep all of those new plants alive, forever, or maintain that extreme level of plant growth forever. This seems like an even harder problem.

You're oversimplifying it. First of all, the ocean is a sink for CO2, it absorbs it and mix it down in the depths, not release it back.

Plants don't sequester the carbon, like you said. But on the other hand, the extra CO2 is causing a bigger plant mass growth. So called greening of the deserts (but not just deserts). So basically the living biosphere is growing and absorbing CO2 as it does, because it can.

The plants evolved when there was more CO2 around, 200-300 is very close to starvation, they thrive in 1000+ environments.

Total Earth biomass is 550 gigatons, much larger than 36 which is what we emit every year. But obviously it cannot keep up...since the year 1750 we emitted 1700 gigatons, so more than 3 times the weight of the biosphere. That being said, I can see how the biosphere can grow by 2% with all the extra CO2 and go from 550 to 560, 570 and so on.

The limiting factor for plant growth isn't carbon, it's nitrogen.

While that is true for a lot of circumstances, in others the addition of CO2 helps the plants survive droughts and other conditions easier.

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

https://theconversation.com/yes-more-carbon-dioxide-in-the-a...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.14950

Elon tweeted about making rocket fuel out of arrested carbon. This technology could, it seems, be used outside earth as well (other planets, not space).