Using a world average target number and then presenting a list that leads with world outliers is misleading. This is the kind of statistical sleight of hand that climate skeptics seize upon to dismiss arguments.
The world average is currently under the target number:
> World average 4.7t
I think you meant to imply that the CO2 emissions of poor countries were going to catch up to other countries, but I don’t think it’s that simple. The global rollout of solar power, battery storage, and cheap EVs is exceeding expectations, for example.
I don’t want to downplay the severity of the situation, but I don’t think this type of fatalistic doomerism is helping. In my experience with people from different walks of life, it’s this type of doomerism that turns them off of the topic entirely.
Doomerism is the reaction to our utter failure to even pretend to try. It did not cause that failure. Nor are people looking at the data and going, "yeah, I ought to do something, but people on Hacker News were gloomy so I'm going to buy a bigger SUV instead." EVs and solar and suchlike are much, much, much too little and much, much, much too late.
Doomerism doesn't help, except in the extremely limited sense of helping someone express their frustration. But it also isn't hurting because we'd be doing exactly the same nothing if they were cheerful.
What nobody talks about is there’s not enough oil and natural gas left to miss 2C by much. At current consumption rates we run out of both in ~50-60 years. Coal isn’t competitive with renewables and as soon as we stop pumping hydrocarbons the associated influx of Methane also stops. So we’re almost guaranteed to miss 2.5C of global warming, and stopping at 2C is likely.
So congratulations humanity, all that money spent on R&D instead of directly cutting emissions without any solid alternatives actually worked!
That was true before recent developments in exploitation and conversion. Canada had proven oil reserves of 5 billion barrels in 2002, but by 2005 it had proven reserves of 180 billion barrels because the Alberta oil sands became viable. South America now has far more oil than the Middle East - it's oil that wasn't considered economically recoverable until about a decade ago. Over recent years, we have discovered far more oil and gas than we've burned. Coal doesn't have much of a future as an energy source for electricity generation, but it might have a future as a feedstock for synthetic liquid fuels.
We're probably going to leave most of those hydrocarbons in the ground, but only because of the huge progress that has been made in renewable energy technologies. If that progress stalls or there are big breakthroughs in hydrocarbon technology, then there's still a real risk of substantially exceeding 2C. We have reason to be optimistic, but not complacent.
Oil in place comes to a much larger number, but we’re past the point where this oil is a net positive from an energy perspective. It’s a carbon intensive battery not a fuel source.
At current prices. As prices go up new sources of fuel become economical and the cycle continues. Not to mention that methane emissions from agriculture are a significant contributor as well (30% from cows) so just removing hydrocarbons doesn’t solve that problem.
It seems like an unrealistic bet that hydrocarbon-based emissions drop to 0 just because you think we’ll run out of fuel in 50 years. Does that mean airplanes stop flying in 50 years? No one is making these bets in the marketplace alongside you for good reason. And remember, consumption grows quite a bit year over year so you’re looking at a much shorter time frame if your prediction were to be true.
We use oil because it’s cheap not because it’s the only possible solution. It’s not that we’re going to run out 100% year X, it’s that as economies of scale end priced inherently spike. Gas stations can scale down to 1940’s levels by having most of them close, but giant fuel refineries, pipelines, etc need scale to be worth the maintenance.
Batteries are fine for ocean shipping on a ~50 year timescale, and that basically covers burning fossil fuels. Using it as a feedstock for plastics etc is a non issue for climate change.
> Who is going to pay the equivalent of 50$/gallon when they can use an EV?
If we're going to be arguing for peak oil, let's argue for peak lithium then too. EVs are going to get more and more expensive too as we have to extract from more expensive lithium stores.
> We use oil because it’s cheap not because it’s the only possible solution
For some things sure. Aviation fuel and ship fuel notably don't have any real replacements on the horizon.
From your sibling comment:
> The cost premium of biofuels for air travel aren’t that high and the scale can meet demand for long distance flights. Fertilizer from nitrogen in the atmosphere is again cost competitive relative to that kind of increase. Batteries are fine for ocean shipping on a ~50 year timescale, and that basically covers burning fossil fuels. Using it as a feedstock for plastics etc is a non issue for climate change.
I think you're mistaken here. Biofuels for air travel are much more complex than just pricing. You've got regulatory approvals, cost of retrofitting existing engines / figuring out how to make them drop-in without needing petroleum, etc. If you're thinking that batteries are fine for ocean shipping, I'd like a sample of what you're taking because the energy demands of massive ship containers dwarf the capabilities of batteries. That's why they're talking hydrogen fuel cells and nuclear.
> It’s not that we’re going to run out 100% year X, it’s that as economies of scale end priced inherently spike. Gas stations can scale down to 1940’s levels by having most of them close, but giant fuel refineries, pipelines, etc need scale to be worth the maintenance.
Conversely, there's a huge incentive to have oil be competitively priced and avoid a total collapse of that segment. That's why you see huge resistance politically - there's no real plan put forward for how we transition to a clean energy economy for the people currently participating in the oil economy.
Oil is consumed, lithium isn’t. There’s plenty of lithium to electrify the world multiple times, but it’s just an element so you can literally recycle it for billions of years.
> You've got regulatory approvals, cost of retrofitting existing engines / figuring out how to make them drop-in without needing petroleum, etc
0.2% of global aviation fuel is already biofuels, the regulatory processes is already involved and we’re talking a 50+ year timeframe here there’s plenty of options without retrofitting existing aircraft.
As to boats, weight and volume are a non issue so they scale just fine into the 24,000 TEU behemoths. Upfront costs are prohibitively expensive though operating costs are presumably. That said, there’s many options, ships are one of the few cases where hydrogen is a realistic possibility.
Recycling lithium is typically more expensive than extracting it through mining. Recycling companies claim a recovery rate of 95-98% so certainly lithium is lost and that's ignoring that smaller batteries often don't even end up in the recycling stream. But the important bit is the cost - if it's more expensive than mining then the recovery isn't economical then either there's a government subsidy or the lithium ends up diluted in the trash stream. You'd have a point about nickle or cobalt because they're particularly valuable but lithium is not so it is effectively being consumed.
> 0.2% of global aviation fuel is already biofuels
But it's not even clear that biofuels reduce CO2 due to production, processing & transport as well as land clearing for scaling it up. [1] suggests that biofuels can actually end up emitting more CO2 than the fossil fuels they replace (for example here's an earlier study [2]). And that's ignoring the substantial scaling challenges that SAF faces on the production side. I hope it works out but the lesson with huge risky bets is that many don't pan out and all we have now is large risky bets left which makes me pessimistic we'll succeed just because we run out of oil (assuming we even do which again seems highly unlikely to me because that's not how economics works).
[1] https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-should-we-measure-co2-em...
[2] https://theconversation.com/biofuels-turn-out-to-be-a-climat...
As to lithium being consumed, it’s still around we don’t actually need to recycle it to be available to humanity in the future. We’re talking hundreds to thousands of years from now before mining becomes an issue, current economic issues are largely meaningless. Unlike oil, these are the early days of the lithium economy. Making a big battery pile somewhere is perfectly reasonable form of recycling.
As noted in the MIT article:
> Since most natural ecosystems absorb and store carbon, while farmland in active use tends to produce it, this land use change can create more climate-warming pollution
Basically the land is changed from a carbon store to a carbon producer for biomass meaning you're no longer sequestering the carbon which is where you get extra carbon in the ecosystem even if you're not having any carbon in the transportation & production.
Much of the world was covered in forests for literally millions of years. Dig down a deep as roots go, count up the carbon in a given acre, and divide by a few million and you get essentially 0/year as the long term rate.
Transitions between forests and farmland basically store or release a fixed quantity per acre though it’s a slow process for deep root systems.
We can make anything up. Why not stick to the facts, as we know them, and reasonable projections?
There is no reasonable projection for any fuel other than fossil fuel to maintain the sort of flying we do now.
Unless you are deeply involved in battery technology, your prediction seems overly pessimistic.
Not suggesting the article below is in any way conclusive but just one of many that turn up on a basic google search.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/passenger-electric-planes-be...
500 miles is nothing. The median flight distance for a commercial flight is ~2000 miles. And this is a concept plane. Certification of a plane is ~5-9 years so let's assume on the longer side since electric planes aren't really a thing. So 20% of your time budget has been spent building a replacement for a puddle jumper. There's a lot of them but the real fuel consumption happens by the large commercial jets.
That is a fantasy
The cost of doing that at a scle approaching what we use now rules it out except for niche uses
Activities such as tilling of fields, planting of crops, and shipment of products cause carbon dioxide emissions. Agriculture-related emissions of carbon dioxide account for around 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
US CO2 emissions in 2007 peaked at 6,016 million metric tons before consistently falling since down to 4,807 in 2023.
Per capita numbers are even better, but everyone assumes its from imports seemingly ignoring the massive reduction in coal use and vastly improved efficiency of just about everything. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon...
I just got back from a off-grid island here in New Zealand - 20 years ago, generators were everywhere and as soon as it got dark you'd hear nothing but the buzzing of running them all around you. Now there is solar everywhere and it's completely silent.
It's not working, so it's fairy tale. Is there evidence that it's really an effective plan to save lives and money caused by climate change?
> People were never going to accept, nor IMO should they have, a massive reduction in their living standards.
The first is just a claim - people accept hardship all the time for one purpose or another (such as wars). Also, what is so sacrosanct about their living standards?
Also, the liability of climate change is already on the balance sheet - and the massive reduction is coming, due to climate change. Just think of all the dead people, all the people who lose their property, all the poverty.
It's like saying, 'I won't suffer a massive reduction in my spending in order to pay my mortgage.' You already have the liability; that sentence doesn't mean anything.
The question is, given that reality, what will you do? Make up fairy tales about fairy godparents giving you magic wands to solve you problem?
I don't even think a massive reduction is necessary, though. Just stop driving, and your carbon footprint shrinks massively. I bike everywhere, and I don't consider it a sacrifice at all. Obviously, there still needs to be commensurate increases in funding for public transit to match the decrease in driving, but most people would still save money by not having to buy gas anymore. Really, I think that living an eco-friendly life would mean improving life, not worsening it.
"People farming" aren't expending fuel for personal use (save that which they are consuming for personal use) they're expending fuel on behalf of some {X} number of people who consume the produce.
We have farmers here (I kid you not) who live in a rural town centre and ride electric bikes to their work place, 4 thousand acre farms, upon which they operate giant machines for turning, seeding, and harvesting (and others for fire control, etc).
Personal fossil fuel usage should be reduced, it's just wasteful and counter productive, production fossil fuel usage needs to be made moe and more efficient an replaced to whatever degree possible (Agbots are a booming field).
It's viable to live on a farm and rarely leave it, many do and many enjoy that lifestyle.
It's viable to have shopping and personal items shipped in with larger supply deliveries and fold that personal usage into the neccessary usage for production.
FWiW I grew up on a cattle station in one of the more remote parts of the planet, no proper roads, TV, shops, etc and somehow still managed to get a good education and write a few million SLOC of mapping, geophysics, and asset managent code in the 80's and 90's.
So yes - I do think its viable ( QED ).
Look we’ve got larger form factor EV’s, but suggesting electric bikes as a viable alternative when it’s clearly a niche case for rural commuters is pointless.
> when it’s clearly a niche case
The entire oh but rural people is your niche case that you bought up.
For more than a decade now countries such as the US, Australia, etc have been more urban than rural. The overwhelming vast bulk of people live within urban areas.
And still some twit will counter a comment suggesting more people should walk, use lighter more efficient vehicles, etc. with a niche but what about farmers type parry.
That's weak.
Efficient solutions for the future should pay attention to distributions of people, trips, resources, etc.
Sad weak counters focus on "but some are different from the many therefore .."
One size doesn't fit all and there will be exceptions.
> One size doesn't fit all and there will be exceptions.
There’s ”some” and then there’s 1 in 1,000 people, no that’s an edge case not a solution.
Hell, actually living on a farm is even more efficient, which is why it’s what the overwhelming majority of farmers do. You only brought it up because you found it interesting not because it was actually relevant to the discussion.
PS: Also, at least in the US if someone is living in a town that’s considered an urban area. The threshold for town is higher than the qualifications for urban area.
Well duh, that's an edge case. Obviously I don't expect literally every single person to give up driving, but most people who use this website are white collar workers, or at least people who don't need to haul things on a regular basis.
Okay? Last I checked, it's not 1988 anymore.
It’s an inherent tradeoff, where significant emissions was required to lift them out of extreme poverty. It’s one thing to suggest developing economies shouldn’t have industrialized, but it’s unconscionable to accept the suffering that would have resulted.
2050 is only 26 years away, though.
It included a moderate amount of money as stimulus to commercial companies which manufacture clean(? clean-er?) tech.
The Biden administration has also "balanced" this by allowing for massive amounts of further drilling for fossil fuels.
And even without the "balancing" - this is not remotely like an actual plan to convert the US to near-zero-emission energy production, in the immediate future, which is what's actually necessary.
https://jabberwocking.com/elon-musk-knows-nothing-about-gove...
It is impossible to cut government expenses as much as Musk claims. It was akin to Trump claiming he would replace the ACA with something better or that Mexico would pay for the wall.
"The secret plan I'm hiding behind my back" is not a plan at all.
It is also small in terms of the extent of expenditure needed for such a conversion of the US energy production system. A cost estimate from 2019 suggested somewhere between $4.5T - $5.7T over the whole period:
* https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/cost-of...
* https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/renewable-us-gr...
so $400B - even if we could assume that all goes directly to achieving the goal, which it does not - is under 10%:
Also, you can't look at the entire budget, entitlements like Medicare and Social Security dwarf everything else, you need to look at the discretionary part.
Anyway, I would say that "La propriete, c'est le vol" [1], so not much sentiment for the taxed. It _is_ a problem that US tax burden lies mostly on workers and very little of it on the rich and the larger corporations.
[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_propriété,_c'est_le_vol_!
Anyway, to your earlier point, I’m very much in favor of more resources into fighting climate change than what has been put into it, but I don’t think that what is needed is anywhere near what is considered acceptable by most, and given that, I’m quite happy with what this administration was able to put forth. Of course it’s a compromise.
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1. The fact you cited is weird to me, since the top tax brackets in the US are pretty close together, and overall, rather low:
https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brac...
but - I guess I should have accounted for the skewed distribution of income in the US... for the top 10% to pay 75% of income tax, let's do some cocktail-napkin math to see how bad this is.
So, if we have a flat tax rate, this situation would mean that the top 10% make 3x more in total than the bottom 90%, or, 27x more per capita.
Assuming the average tax rate on the bottom 90% is, say, 12%, and on the top 10% is 36%, that would mean the average income in the top decile is 9x higher than in the average in the other 9 deciles. According to this:
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
the average and median for the bottom 90% should be about similar, meaning that the average (not median) top-decile person makes 9 x $45,000/annum = $405,000/annum. The median top-decile person makes $201,000/annum, or about 4.5x than the median person on the bottom 90%. If we were to compare with the median person over the entire population - the median top-decile person makes 4x as much as the median person overall. Ouch.
2. I was naively interpreting this:
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/gover...
i.e. that individual income tax accounts for 51% of US federal income, while corporate income/earnings tax accounts for 4%. I mistakenly assumed that the vast majority of workers pay the majority of taxes.
I wonder, though, how that chart accounts for Capital Gains tax.
But yeah, specialist doctors and white shoe lawyers can pull down 10-20x that median, so they're paying a lot of income tax. The standard deduction really dings the effective tax rate of that median earner, not so much for the doctor.
Classic, “fuck the middle class carrying the societal tax burden, hur hur”.
The people that pollute are not the ones stuck with the tax burden. Your incentives are completely misaligned here which means costs bloat and problems don’t get solved.
Meanwhile the number of infants globally peaked around 2013-2017 and according to revised estimates overall population will peak late this century reaching 10.4bln - largely in countries with a small carbon footprint anyway.
We're going to blow past that 2°C target and millions will die due to extreme weather, but I firmly believe life on Earth and our species will survive, especially now that the "business as usual" scenario is considered highly unlikely due to how differently e.g. China's coal usage changed compared to projections.
Few people are doubting that. The issue is that
> millions will die due to extreme weather
and due to climate-related wars, and life in general will become less pleasant. Just breathing air with higher CO2 concentration already isn’t that great.
Or less O2. I wonder if there any study that does show any impact already or these are still speculations?
Moreover, there's no physiological impact whatsoever until you drop several percent.
I think this is a more marketable concern than CO2 as without O2 most know that you can’t live.
Nothing is going to turn that tide meaningfully.
I'd like to know how anyone with an ounce of reality thinks we're going to reduce emissions substantially faster than we already are.
Rome wasn't built in a day.
Depends on what you mean by "ounce of reality".
In reality, there's little that can be currently done mainly because of political policy. That's unlikely to change.
But, assuming policy could be changed, then there is actually quite a bit that could reduce emissions substantially much faster. Carbon taxes, better policies around railways (perhaps nationalizing and expanding ala india), more subsidies for renewable generation and battery production (perhaps funded by carbon taxes?). Stronger regulations on private vehicles (perhaps ban personal private ownership of large trucks and suvs?). But also trade deals and modernization efforts/investments with lagging countries to help them develop carbon free economies.
Now, I don't think policy change is likely. I do however think there are quiet a few policies that could significantly drive change faster than it is already going.
But I agree, it's something that'd have to be delicately done. Ideally phased in over time.
I also agree, probably wouldn't be fast enough, just faster to significantly faster than what we are currently doing.
We only have a day.
> I'd like to know how anyone with an ounce of reality thinks we're going to reduce emissions substantially faster than we already are.
The problem is political. The idea that politics is fixed, unchangeable, is obviously false. For example, look at the radical changes since 2015.
The construction of "renewables" requires massive amounts of emissions. "Renewables" do not move us towards 'net zero', because the critical part of the NET is the removal and storage of tens of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, every year. Forever. At least that's my non-technical understanding of what "net zero" means.
> I'd like to know how anyone with an ounce of reality thinks we're going to reduce emissions substantially faster than we already are.
For anyone with "an ounce of reality"' we aren't reducing emissions. We haven't reduced our emissions at all. It's the opposite, they've gone up every year, I believe around 50-60 % since 1990 when we agreed to reduce them.
Cars are still petrol but we've gone from 50k km / year to 10k km / year most made in a tiny 1 litre car (the other is a Prius). We don't have enough solar to cover that and the electric mix here is carbon intensive enough that we're better off using the petrol car until it needs replacing before switching to electric.
Hopefully at some point America will start taking their emissions seriously; it's crazy that you guys are so inefficient.
Arguably it provided bugger all actual physical good for society in return for its consumption. It got some fat cats rich and employed a half dozen humans. It consumed insane amounts of resources.
Your consumption is nothing compared to these ends of industry, they just try and make you think it does. Industrial industries worldwide need drastic changes.
I need to cut meat (and food) consumption and cut reductions from our heating. Also as I do want to travel in ways which are not workable without flying (too much of the world to see).
Of course it is hurting. If we really want people to change then we need to understand human psychology.
We need to create hope and not fear. Ask Kamala how fearmongering worked for her.
Guess Evil Putin and calling people fascists (even if they are) cause less fear than plots about fluoride in the toothpaste turning people gay, immigrants eating pets and communist Xi. But fearmongering is what elected Trump.
Most people I know who voted for Biden stayed at home this time. Fear causes paralysis, hope drives action.
China sees this as an opportunity and delivering on it. Meanwhile majority of Americans voted for Trump, the sentiment is anti climate change and 'drill baby drill!'.
The cheaper Solar and batteries become, the more they get deployed. Like we solved hole in the Ozone, I'm optimistic we'll transition to a net zero energy future but pessimistic that US may get left behind and it'll be too late for many of the industries to compete with China. We are too short term focused.
I wouldn't be surprised if China overtakes the US completely in science and technology with the way things are going.
Yes, China has many problems by their rise is exemplary. Especially in being the world's factory and having such a large export surplus. Their foray into dominating steel, high speed rail, solar panels, batteries, electronics e.t.c
They seem to be making good bets on the future, while US is holding on their bets from the last century.
Doomerism leads people to go ahead and buy a ridiculous gas hog SUV they don't need because why not, we're all gonna die. Doomerism means we should cancel all our green and next-generation nuclear development because it doesn't matter. We're all gonna die.
Look up the Moore's law like progress of solar, wind, and batteries. Look up how much renewable energy we're adding, the uptake rate for EVs, etc. We are not doing enough but we are not doing nothing.
The previous poster is right. The global average is below the threshold and the global average is the only number that matters re: physics. Physics doesn't care about politics. The goal now must be to keep chipping away at those higher numbers in developed economies and to make sure the developing world gets renewable and nuclear energy before they decide to industrialize with coal like China did.
Either that or at least make sure we're cutting emissions in mature economies as fast or faster than developing economy emissions are increasing so the average does not exceed the limit.
Think about the illegal immigration hawks talking about how people will cross the borders and start raping and pillaging everything in their path. When that of course turns out to be false, people dismiss their position entirely rather than look at actual issues.
this flies in the face of a lifetime of experience talking about immigration with family who lives in a southern border state...
Seems to me the answer is a global plan that will actually control emissions in a cost effective way - say taxes on carbon, free trade in solar/batteries/evs and trade tariffs for countries that try to ignore that. I'd vote for that.
Failing that, me cancelling the trip to Thailand is not going to make a noticable difference, so whatever.
In the UK we mostly do dumb stuff to make our electricity almost the costliest in the world, kill industry and make no global dent in CO2. Stuff like that is why emissions have gone from 22 to 40 gt/y.
US+China+Europe+Australia have cumulatively emitted 70% of all historical emissions. They are still 3x the world average and the estimated target. That's why they are on the list.
China is there because it is a common villain in these discussion. The low-(middle)-income countries are, in my opinion, never going to emit much more than they do now. They will never contribute to the problem but will feel all the effects.
You said we need to have 5.4tCO2/person/year on average across the world. You then presented a table that shows that we are in fact _under_ this target (4.7t). In your follow-up comment you claim that the lower-income countries are "never going to emit much more than they do now". So by your argument the world average will probably stay below the 5.4t goal and we're on target.
Real world reductions (or increases) won't follow a linear path. Global population is also increasing. The number is just a rough estimate to show which countries are dropping the ball.
"If we assume that we get to net zero by 2050,"...
It's hard to tell the poorer countries that they should stay poor so as to keep the world under budget, but using fossil fuels for many of them is the only to become not poor in a reasonable timeframe with their existing resources.
Just considering the welfare of their own citizens and their own resources their best path will often be a rapid increase in fossil fuels to get to a reasonable level of wealth and then start emphasizing renewables.
Since it is unlikely that the existing wealthy countries can reduce emissions enough to keep the world under budget as the developing countries follow the aforementioned path, we probably need the wealthy countries to help out the poorer countries to try to speed things up so they go through the fossil fuel phase faster.
Well… ok I guess I won’t stress about it too much since I can’t change it? I was already powerless but now effort is futile.
I’d like a real straw I guess
In my experience, it’s the prospect of having to give up expected or dreamed about large homes, large vehicles, non seasonal/local fruits and vegetables, cheap electronics, and vacations involving flights.
Arguing to your neighbor why they should recycle their plastic water bottle can at most make an infinitesimal difference.
Creating a legal responsibility for Coca Cola to clean up the billions of plastic bottles it produces annually, on the other hand, could change the world.
It’s both. We need corporations to emit less, and they are the biggest emitters, and they do what they do for two reasons:
1. They are permitted to. Yes, government needs to intervene and prevent some of the things they do.
2. People keep giving them money, rewarding their bad behavior and providing them the means and motive to keep doing it.
We need the populace to want to make change, by voting for legislators that pass laws limiting corporations and by voting with their wallets. These usually go hand in hand.
I know there are people who vote for legislators/laws that limit consumption, who don’t make any effort to limit consumption themselves, but I don’t think there’s that many. People generally don’t want laws that change the way they are living, they want laws that make other people live the way they are living.
We don’t need to shame people for consumption, that isn’t helpful, but writing off personal responsibility is also unhelpful.
There is nothing wrong with this behavior. I will vote today for everyone to curb consumption, but I see no reason to make the sacrifice alone.
There are examples that would show me wrong, like plastic grocery bag bans. But on the other hand, there haven’t been very many such bans, and banning plastic bags is a relatively minor inconvenience, and does very little to slow climate change.
This is assuming that the dissonance is hurting more than the renunciation. People are already quite good at ignoring dissonances. And the causal effects are so removed from daily experience that often there isn’t that great of a dissonance in the first place.
It’s not about “the dissonance is painful, so they seek to correct it by not voting for reduced consumption”.
It’s “voting to reduce consumption takes effort, in knowing what to vote for and in actually casting a vote, and people are unlikely to put in that effort if they are not putting in any effort elsewhere”.
“Dissonance” was a poor choice of words for what I was trying to communicate.
With emphasis on "One".
There's 8 billion of us; our diets have varied environmental impacts; and collectively agriculture is, though not the biggest problem, a big enough problem that we can't solve climate change without also fixing it.
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
Also, the problem with framing it as the fault of corporations, is that the corporations do what they do in response to demand.
And the laws come with costs: this is a perennial issue during elections and "over-regulation" has been the battle cry of UK and US conservatives for as long as I've been paying attention to politics — so sure, if I was world dictator I could make it happen (and build a global power grid for green energy, we don't even need superconductors for that), but that's not the world we live in.
Making a convincing reason for consumers to demand different things, or for business to choose sustainability just because it's cheaper, or shifting the Overton Window so the relevant laws aren't just a political football, that's hard.
It would change the world in a sense of Coca Cola either going bankrupt, or shrinking to the point of irrelevance, succumbing to competitive pressure of corporations that aren't forced to do such cleanups.
The days of letting companies do whatever the fuck they want and doing nothing to steer their incentives in the right direction are gone. It doesn't work, end of. We need to nudge them to do the right thing, and the only thing humans care about is money.
1) I have no reason to think the carbon intensity per calorie would change
2) it doesn't take much overeating per day to build up, so I'd assume semaglutide based weight reduction reduces calorie intake by about 25% per day unless someone gives me a study (can't find myself as search results biased to news not science)
and 3) all agriculture combined is about 12% of emissions
multiply together and that would be about 3% of global emissions, which is a start, but not sufficient — we need to target 99.9% for long term sustainability
Cages?
Who is even suggesting that?
We've let blatant lies and science denial get way too far. We currently have people completely detached from reality running our nation states, and we have droves of people who will believe them when they say the sky is green. From a sociopolitical perspective, it's bad.
I think back to when better lights were hitting the market. People would regularly scold folks for having their current lights on too long. "Just turn your lights out to save energy" was a common view. It was comically misguided, though. Modern lights use a laughably low amount of energy.
Same goes for a lot. People love to complain that things don't last as long. Ignoring that energy use is plummeting on things. It is still largely valid that you should not replace a car on a whim. I think justifying my 2000 truck is getting harder every year.
Granted, to your point, seeing Buttigieg have to defend encouraging electric vehicles was frustrating.
To that end, I'll push it is less shame that is needed, but more accountability. Especially at the leadership level.
So, the world average is currently below the ration, and thus as long as we're actually headed for that net zero we're going to be in reasonably good shape?
>Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.
Oh, this is actually about calling people bad because of what country they live in, never mind where the innovation is going to come from that would actually make net zero possible (assuming it actually is).
Carry on, then, I guess.
Russia is not far behind that top 5 list, at 12.5t/person/year, by the way.
Only as long as we actually reach net zero by 2050, is my understanding.
If you think about it, that's disrespectful towards people living there; they are not noble savages.
They are people just like you and me who are just a little bit behind in the development curve and they will surely want to have all the goodies that we have and emit all the greenhouse gasses associated with that lifestyle.
Countries who are currently high emitters but also applying active measures to curb it must be praised instead of pointing fingers. The political will to improve things is fragile and people can easily vote for populists that will easily exploit resistance towards guilt shaming.
The hope is that whatever the developed world has settled on by 2050 to achieve net zero, lower-income countries will be able to switch to directly instead of going through a phase of fossil fuel consumption. China was too early; India for example might see a much healthier trajectory. The association of greenhouse gasses with the lifestyle of the richest countries is hoped to be only incidental.
In any case, that's the result of continuous improvement and progress and my point was that we cannot get there by just shaming countries that are making that incremental progress right now.
Of course we should all do what we can. (I eat less meat than I used to, and don't drive.)
> Saudi Arabia 18.2 t
> Australia 15.0 t
These are all pretty low population though so net CO2 from these countries is not the largest.
In terms of per capita, what drives this? These places are hot, is it the 24/7 Air conditioning running?
Australia 14.5t
United States 14.3t
Canada 14.0t
The more likely explanation for the first two is that plenty of fossil fuels are available so they are used inefficiently.
FYI, I edited list with latest numbers after your comment.
Transport is also about a quarter. So Canada can indeed cut emissions in half with present day tech by fixing these two sectors. Still a long way to go.
Also note that Estonia is at 7.3t, Finland 5.6t, Sweden 3.5t (Sweden was 8.6t in 1980). So climate is not really an excuse. It is just politics.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t...
Tar sands are an issue, as is other oil.
Well according to your own data which shows the average comfortably below the target number, nothing will happen and nobody will suffer?
> Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.
Low income countries also don’t have good tracking or data. I’ve seen lots of practices in developing countries that are really damaging environmentally (GHGs and other things) that probably don’t get reported or tracked anywhere, because they’re so local (things like illegal refineries, manufacturing operations with no waste disposal, stubble burning, etc). But they exist. In part those damaging practices are here because of globalism (economic pressure) and changing lifestyles, so it’s not their fault. But my point is we probably just need a global reduction in luxury and quality of life ultimately.
Yes, there are uncertainties in these numbers, and it is quite unfortunate that OWID does not state them. However, I don't think the uncertainties are that high. Emissions from fossil fuel burning or agriculture are most of global emissions (>90%) and are quite easy to track in bulk.
Of all proposed political policies, "degrowth" is the standout for being the most ludicrous ask of developing countries. A lot of people don't like hearing it, but human quality of life on a global scale is measured in energy consumption. Trying to convince anyone to accept a lower quality of life, especially people who were subsistence farmers a generation ago, is a losing proposition.
There are 8.2 billion humans, so about 140tCO2/person left on average. If we assume that we get to net zero by 2050, that means the average person can emit about 5.4tCO2/person/year from today to 2050 (hitting 0tCO2/person/year in 2050). This is what emissions look like currently [2]
Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.[1] Page 82 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics