Bill Gates gets it. We need to step on the gas and deploy boatloads of wind, solar, nuclear, batteries, pumped hydro, long-distance transmission, energy efficiency measures, CCS, demand response, and whatnot.
Yes, it will cost a lot. But leaving our children with an increasingly hostile planet isn't a tenable option either (and one which will be even more expensive as well).
I think the fact that it isn't cheap shouldn't be that much of an issue (although I know it currently is) because the price we (not even our children) will pay because of climate change would be much higher (in pure economic costs, before we start talking about more moral and environmental costs like animal extinction).
But I think the problem is that people care about today a lot more then they care about tomorrow, or next year (and definitely more then their potential future descendants).
> I think the fact that it isn't cheap shouldn't be that much of an issue...
EDIT: Apologies for the combative tone below, what I'm trying to say is, it's not as simple as monetary cost.
I'm afraid that's looks like first world thinking. For countries still developing lives are literally at stake right now. Rolling back environmental impact means lower economic growth, poorer infrastructure and therefore people dying in poverty.
It's not all bad news on this front. Modi committed India to opening a swath of new coal power stations before coming into office, but has since changed tack with the collapse in the cost of solar energy[1]. Still, this will be new solar capacity and while it's better than more coal it's still environmentally worse than no new energy generation at all.
All I'm saying is that new capacity to meet an increased demand has an environmental impact even if it is solar.
More broadly my point is we cannot expect developing countries to simply stop developing. That's not an acceptable short term cost, as I pointed out when I said lives are at stake. I'm pointing out some complexities in the issue. How you can get from that to me saying poor people should suffer in the cold confuses me.
Rolling back environmental impact means lower economic growth, poorer infrastructure
This isn't true. It just requires a different development path than Europe and Asia have followed. For example, local power generation can bootstrap a small, isolated economy without requiring massive investments in a nation-wide energy grid. And renewable power (solar or wind) lends itself much better to small-scale deployments than fossil fuel generators.
All of those increase environmental impact, they just do it less than historical approaches. Actually rolling back environmental impact is another thing altogether.
The last ten years' experience with renewables has shown that local-scale generation is underwhelming and large-scale deployments are the way to go.
With the exponential recent declines in production cost, most of the cost of solar is now in deployment, not manufacturing the cells. This has made huge desert installations much cheaper per watt than rooftop -- as a result, large-scale installations is where almost all the growth is coming from.
As for wind power, efficiency increases superlinearly with blade length. As a result of this, and improving material science and production/deployment tech, turbines have been getting enormous (Eiffel-tower-sized or more) and no longer fit outside of dedicated wind farms.
As for nation-wide grids, they're are a central part of the solution to solar/wind intermittency (because weather patterns average out over long distances).
> But I think the problem is that people care about today a lot more then they care about tomorrow
Absolutely, and to change that, you need to ask why this is the case.
There are many reasons for that. Some people are selfish, some are merely short-sighted. This needs to be fixed by changing the mindset.
But to me the (by far) biggest problem is that too many people simply cannot afford to think otherwise.
Climate change in X years means nothing to someone living in, or close to poverty today. "Green" means nothing to someone hungry today, and it would be absurd and apathetic to expect otherwise. And a very large share of the global population today are poor.
Given that the poorest are not disproportionately consuming the least-clean energy, I think the poverty issue is minimal.
My parents smoked heavily. Even after the causal connection with lung cancer was well-established. Even though both of them lost their father to lung cancer. Even though their child (me) suffered from asthma, to the extent of being hospitalised. I know addiction is a thing. But there was no sense that those choices were made because of the physical compulsion. There were no attempts to quit. The biggest addiction was mental: a lack of any interest in trying.
I don't think it is helpful to claim we are 'addicted' to high-carbon energy. But whatever the label, there is mind-boggling inertia in the human soul.
Nobody drives a shitty, old, inefficient, dirty gas guzzler because they are addicted to them. They drive them because they can't afford something better.
A solar panel is probably an unaffordable object for at least a quarter of the world's population.
No, but plenty of people drive brand-new, expensive,
inefficient gas guzzlers. Poor folks are much more likely to buy a cheap small engine Honda than a 200 cu.in. un-aerodynamic brick. Guzzling gas is expensive.
And the poorest ¼ of the world contribute way way way less than ¼ of our CO₂ emissions.
I guess culture just has to change, so that a gaz guzzler isn't a status symbol. Say, a sailing yacht? Or a telescope in your front yard (for watching the stars, of course, not spying on the neighbors getting it on). Or bling-bling to hang around your neck?
I mean, plenty of ways to show your wealth without it having to be a big FU to the planet.
This is true, a great deal of good can be accomplished supplying electricity and light and clean water to those who don't have access now. However, the carbon footprint of poor individuals is vastly less per capita than of rich individuals. Every rich person, and you are most likely rich in a global sense, must realize their luck and their lifetime carbon footprint and do their part for decarbonizing, given we are those who emit the most.
This is called "eating your seed corn". Do you go somewhat hungry during winter, and possibly starve now? Or do you eat your seed corn now, and have nothing to harvest later, and certainly starve later?
Our ancestors figured this out. Some of them did starve during winter. But we're the descendants of the lucky and prepared.
Because the time scale of our situation is different. Those threatened by starvation in winter aren’t the same people who will need the seed corn in spring. That disconnect creates an immediate, imposed suffering on some for the future, anticipated benefit of others.
I haven't read the estimates, but that would be relocation only, correct? Assuming that's true, you need to add the costs of terraforming on top of that.
Correct. I kinda assumed the people who moved would build up domed habitats while there until it counted as “done”. Multiply by ten if you want to do it directly, I think?
Why can't we just do that on Earth though? If we're going to live in underground caves , like we would have to on Mars, then why don't we just do it on Earth?
Well, yes, I agree — Antarctica in winter and the peak of Mt. Everest are both vastly more hospitable than Mars, but Mars is there if we want to try it.
We don't "have other planets" in any useful sense. We know there are other planets out there. We're a long way from knowing with even a shred of certainty whether we will ever be capable of relocating to them, let alone when it may become feasible or what it will cost.
So it will only take 37 years in impossibly perfect conditions? Unless people are willing to sacrifice themselves to let others survive this scenario is never going to happen.
That’s literally moving the entire population of the planet — you’d only do that in a very unusual circumstance when most people were going to die anyway if you didn’t leave, and building domes over your cities does nothing to help.
Most people don’t even move more than, what, a hundred miles from where they’re born? Just because I fancy giving it a go doesn’t mean I expect people to go to Mars en masse even if it was free.
Apart from being uncharitable, that's just not a reasonable generalisation of human behaviour. Plenty of old people with no relatives have died wealthy wile living very simple lives, giving their wealth to charity. Wealthy retirees with lots of relatives have left all their money to their cat, or whatever. It's just not possible to paint big swathes of humanity with a single broad brush.
I’m not intending to be uncharitable - I agree that there are plenty of people of all sorts. My point is that there will be some people who really don’t care - these could be younger or older, childless or whatever. I am not sure if there is going to be much more than anecdotal evidence on who causes the most damage to the environment and who is likely to change their behaviour due to climate change.
I’m also not saying anybody would be wrong to not care about the future. It’s quite understandable to me someone using their freedom to say f the world, question is if everyone needs to be on board to make necessary changes then how do you achieve that.
In other words the point isn't the (admittedly unjustifiable) generalisation, it's that there are people who are not going to be on board unless they see something in it for them. Could be a wealthy childless retiree, or it could be someone in their thirties with four kids travelling round the world for work racking up air miles for their career to support their family.
A wealthy retiree without kids contributes less to climate change than basically anybody that will have kids. His climate impact stops with him, it doesn't for people with kids.
I just want to point out that "our children" here is literally us and our actual children. It's not some far future hypothetical human population.
If you're under 30, you will probably live to see large swaths of the plant that were previously inhabitable become unlivably hot due to human created carbon emissions. Factor in increased natural disasters, and the effects of a warmer climate on our ability to produce food, this is an incredibly serious problem that will affect you and people you know and love.[0]
Now is the time to act and get involved. Look into groups like the CCL[1] or local Green New Deal organizers. Call your congress-person, get involved at the state and local level. Make this a priority.
"Technology professionals from many companies — such as Google, Facebook, Tumblr, Etsy, Github, SoundCloud, Lyft and many more — are coming together under the banner of ClimateAction.tech to find ways to accelerate solutions to climate change."
There are lots of interesting projects and support in the slack workspace.
This will cost a lot, and this is not even the hardest step. We use energy for electricity, but also transportation, heating, fertilizer production/agriculture, cattle produces GHG, A/C recycling, and what not.
The USA will need to reduce meat consumption, improve public transportation (electric cars if produced at scale will introduce lots of other environmental issues), relocalize industries. They are late to the transition in every domain.
I just want to take a note (and please do not take this as a critique).
Not OP, but when I personally talk on reducing meat consumption for environmental reasons - I do not have animal farts and burps in mind. The process of growing meat requires a lot of resources by itself and at current human population scales we are wasting vast amounts of resources (energy, land, etc.) to grow meat instead of spending those resources to feed ourselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_perc...
IMO, feeding animals unusual foods won't solve the main issue and produce more challenges. It's anecdata (cannot cite anyone), but as much as I've read about ecological farming, problems with animal health and infamous though prevalent use of antibiotics in industrial animal farming is due to the diets of the animals. Animals grown in ecological open farms with habitats natural for the animal grow healthier. But as mentioned in first paragraph - at current human population scales - meat consumption must be reduced rapidly.
P.S. I will digress, but as the problem is insanely big human population (and it's exponential growth), it would be great if people globally won't procreate at such rates.
Of course I have seen stuff like this. How much seaweed needs to be produced, won't this have other ecological repercussions? Why is this presented as a kill-all-worries innovation?
A much simpler and less crazy solution is simply to have more grass-fed beef. Their manure and body shade can help recreate green pastures in desertic regions, and this would be pretty much CO2-neutral. It's just more expensive, so nobody does it.
Solutions are here, and they're not that hard. People just don't want to implement them because it impacts their profits and abilities to eat tasteless meat 3 times a day for next to nothing.
Just like growing soy to feed beef, like we do now, except that we found out that the cheapest way to do that was to cut down trees in the amazon forest, grow it there and ship it to the US.
Uncontrolled innovation may have unexpected results.
When no one can forecast plausible consequences for global warming that have any consistency, it's very hard to have any idea. We have wild apocalyptic visions of the world ending in twelve years, or Mad Max resource scarcity causing the downfall of society, massive sealevel rises wiping out coastal cities. Or it could be an adjustment of a degree or two upward, to bring us in line with the averages for the Medieval Warm Period and other previous climate optimums.
Nor do we have any real understanding of the equilibrium effects of the climate, and many who are pushing climate models are quite obviously ignorant of shifts in global temperature and atmospheric composition on a paleontological scale.
Nobody really knows what the hell is going to happen, and when presented with rank fear-mongering, it's prudent to puzzle yourself with the classic question, cui bono?
Applying the classic question, I'd conclude that the confusion is probably exactly what those who 'bono' the most from inaction are actively creating, and I'd put my money on the many scientists across disciplines who seem to be panicking instead.
Pain now or in the near term always seems far more severe than pain in the further future. Let's suppose that unrestrained global warming will reduce agricultural production to the point where it's no longer viable to grow any meat (or maybe 1% as much). Alternatively we could reduce our meat consumption in the near future by 90%, as part of a broad sustainability program, and be able to maintain that level of meat production indefinitely.
That's the sort of tradeoff we might be looking at.
The difference is that if it's a consequence of nature then people will just accept it. If it's a consequence of politics, then people will fight wars over it. How are you going to stop a sovereign country from growing food that they want? If your trade deals can't offer them more than what your restrictions on them are, then the only option is to intervene by force and institute an authoritarian rule.
Politics isn’t all about coercion. Persuasion and consensus can work just fine. Nobody’s about to start a war over other countries growing too much cattle on their own territory, but as the direct and tangible consequences of climate change become increasingly apparent, I expect the imperative for change to become more broadly accepted. The Paris agreements show that there is broad agreement internationally already.
There’s also no need to draconian enforcement. We can start with a ramped increasing environmental tax on meat products, reductions in farm subsidies on the same, etc. 50 years ago smoking was ubiquitous as a core social and recreational activity, now it’s marginalised. The same could happen to meat eating.
The Paris agreement probably doesn't gave informed consent of the population. I know very few people who are okay with increasing meat prices and reducing their consumption. Finding consensus on this where the people, not just the elite (politicians), agree is going to be difficult. Some countries are just going to disagree. Some are going to use these kinds of talks and rules to play political games etc. How are you going to force a country like China to follow this?
>50 years ago smoking was ubiquitous as a core social and recreational activity, now it’s marginalised.
Meat is the easiest way to get a reasonably balanced diet. There's a reason why we've eaten meat for longer than we've been humans. You're not going to curb that anywhere as easily as smoking. I would even be willing to bet that there are many many many people in the world who would be willing to fight to be able to eat meat.
A lot of this thread leads like the dreams of authoritarians.
not sure youre being sarcastic or not... of course the disruption due global warming will be vastly greater than the disruption caused by trying to prevent it, that much is a given
The wealthier will be disrupted relatively more by mitigating climate change as they consume more and have the means to invest. The poor will be disproportionately affected by climate change and are less able to adapt. So even if everyone is worse off overall without mitigation measures against climate change now, the rich would be relatively stronger and so may consider later adaptation preferable to present mitigation.
I don't think this is true, unless when you say "the rich" you mean "90% of the population of the West".
Resource consumption happens by a person. There's only so many resources a person will use while being rich. A rich person might consume far more resources than a poor person, but rich people collectively have a much smaller impact than the poor, because there are far fewer of them. This means that if you start tackling climate change and the impact is that food becomes more expensive, then poor people will be far more affected by this than rich people.
I think this probably needs a proper analysis either way, but Oxfam (I realise not a source everyone agrees with) claims 50% of emissions come from the top 10% (this wouldn't just be the "West" - Middle East oil states, rich Asian countries, and rich people worldwide generally all contribute and some in the West probably maintain relatively low carbon lifestyles).
There would be an impact on poor people as you say, but this depends on the exact policies adopted. A study such as the one summarised and linked here: http://bruegel.org/2018/11/distributional-effects-of-climate... would be needed to confirm either way - their conclusion is that climate change mitigation efforts are potentially but not necessarily regressive with respect to wealth distribution.
Without climate change inequalities might well increase, but with it they will increase more. I’m also saying that the wealthy may not actually be better off, but they may be relatively better off compared to the less wealthy (e.g. absolute wealth might decrease but relative inequality might increase). For example poorer people may lose land to flooding and go from subsistence to poverty.
Edit: lots of articles about this online, but e.g. http://time.com/5575523/climate-change-inequality/ has some sobering statistics on the likely impact of climate change: e.g. "A 2015 study in the journal Nature projected that the average income in the poorest countries will decline 75% by 2100 compared to a world without warming".
I don't know any simulations of either scenarios, so I can't tell if the disruptions are comparable or not. It was just my thought at the pretty harrowing and grand scale list of sacrifices we would need to make to stop global warming. Maybe the alternative is worse, I don't know.
Even if the actual disruption was the same magnitude - if you have control over the disruption, it is much more pleasant one than the one you don't have any control over.
Is it though? Because if humans have control over it, then you can be sure that humans will fight over it. How would the US tell Russia to pollute less?
Easy. This has actually been done many times during Cold War.
You do it yourself, and so well, that their citizens will demand it too.
There were many social advances in the West that were imported (usually in a crippled way, but still) to the communist countries (I was born in one). Things like 5-day work week, education improvements, recycling, ecological laws, nuclear proliferation treaties... usually it's very small things, but they do make difference.
But these aren't advances. We're talking about a reduction in quality of life. If we want to reduce the amount of meat people eat because it's a major contributor to climate change, then we'll have to do this through taxes or other such means. If Russia doesn't want to go along with it and has their people eat as much meat as they want then the US would be powerless.
What you suggest only works if you're talking about improving quality of life.
That's not true. Things like ecological or workplace safety regulations are improvements to quality of life at the expense of economic production. Averting global warming also does increase quality of life.
> has their people eat as much meat as they want
It's not healthy to eat that much meat anyway.
> then the US would be powerless
And you shouldn't panic. The US is far from powerless. There are many countries in Europe that for example do not have nuclear weapons. Does it make them dead? No, they continue to live, in fact often with high quality of life.
This worry that you somehow "lose the race", it's such a nonsense (reminds me of "mineshaft gaps" from Dr. Strangelove).
Yep. IPCC AR4 report claims that climate change will cost about 5% of GDP by 2100. That comes to a net present value of about 0.1% of GDP (assuming 3% growth).
Relocalizing industry is a controlled process, where the direction of the flux of people is known, and housing and infrastructure sizing can be planned and handled, and people won't follow the industry if they can't get acceptable living conditions.
Mass migrations from climate change are due to unexpected meteorological events either directly (floods, heat waves, etc), or indirectly (food scarcity, drinkable water shortages, political instability, etc). The scale, location and time are unpredictable. The people concerned will need to migrate and have to live in unsanitary housing camps.
At the risk of injecting extra negativity into the thread: what about the recent revelations that a lot of (if not most) recycling is really shipping the trash to poorer nations to be dumped there?
Yeah ... I've not investigated that yet. But I have seen some of our local recycling facilities and they seem to be operating rather than secretly filling shipping containers.
It does trouble me visiting my town's rubbish dump, there is so much usable stuff in the skips, so much waste.
Presumably China now refusing other country's trash is shedding new light on these issues.
I think we have to fix our entire economic systems in order to solve this, and I don't think that's going to work readily because people will always exploit others for financial/political gain at the expense of the environment. We're going to have to seriously curtail individual freedoms that allow people to make excessive use of resources. We can't do that under our current market-based systems.
Take a simple example, fleece fabric is great, cheap, used widely but is a massive source of microplastic pollution - we're going to have to make it expensive, and stop people from throwing it away, and use the income to do proper filtration and recycling.
We're going to need to start treating fraud wrt environmental issues as akin to manslaughter - actually put businessmen in jail who are responsible (knowingly, or unknowingly through negligence) for things like shipping recycling abroad and not confirming it is recycled, or lying about car MPGs, or failing to filter effluent, or allowing runoff to poison water sources, ....
We probably need something akin to a global one-child policy as well. We can't go on increasing population and just expect resources to stretch. Things are going to break much harder with population rates left as they are.
Hah, don't worry about /rant, I agree with you. In particular wrt. treating environmental fraud issues akin to manslaughter, or at least intentionally causing bodily harm. Because that's what it is, except stretched over time and applying to more people. We have an issue like this close to home - apparently in Poland there are people who offer very cheap disposal of toxic waste. They take that waste and just dump it illegally. I'd like to see them - and those who in full knowledge use their services - to be dragged in front of the courts and jailed.
Yes, in UK too. AIUI we've implemented a system of tracking the waste to the originators, who can't use the excuse "I paid someone" as they are jointly responsible for safe disposal. Waste disposal operatives have therefore to have licenses and domestic users must check the license so they can be assured the waste will be disposed of, use unlicensed operators, get fined. It seems to be working to some extent but as costs for proper disposal increase the "benefits" of fraud for the waste operatives increase too.
That's one of the most important jobs of a politician. Make the hard decisions and convince people that they are needed, even if they don't see it right now. Politicians who don't do that don't do their job. And yes, that means we are in the West (and probably elsewhere) in a veritable political crisis. Not because we have some nutjobs run around "it's all a myth! we don't need to do anything!" but because politicians don't work anymore against it and instead take the lazy path to votes and just agree with it, even if the long-term consequences will be disastrous for humanity.
These initiatives will create a lot of jobs: engineers, administrators, electricians, construction workers. Many of those in areas that were hit hard by manufacturing moving away.
> How could be people convinced about importance of this if it doesn't or won't impact them enough?
As engineers, I feel it's our responsibility to make environmentally friendly solutions that are simply more economically viable than the unclean/unsustainable alternative. I'm working on the oceanic shipping industry myself.
One thing that might help is that longevity research is going on well. Hopefully in 10-20 years it will produce enough results for the general public to start believing that saving the Earth is not just about their children.
Indeed, it's not cost but investment. There's a return on investment and it's not just getting rid of carbon. IMHO the easiest way to get the world moving to mostly wind + solar is continuing to lower the cost (unsubsidized). Lower cost of energy enables new use cases.
People seem to be talking about replacing existing energy suppliers with clean ones. Instead we need to be talking about what it will take to generate 10-100X the amount of energy in a few decades and what that would enable. Cheap clean energy enables a lot of things that are currently too expensive/polluting to consider. Countries that manage this will be able to grow more rapidly economically. China looks like it is well positioned for that.
I'm not against nuclear but it will have to come down in price and upfront investment cost for that to have meaningful impact short term. As long as people still dream about maybe being cost competitive with coal/gas one day, the ambitions are simply not high enough. It needs to be vastly cheaper than that. 2-3x would keep it competitive with solar and wind for some decades.
IMHO any price comparisons against current prices are in any case effectively obsolete since those are likely trending down for solar and wind for some time to come. If prices drop by another few double digit percentages, a lot of home owners will do the math and put some solar on their roof.
Carbon capture schemes only make sense when the combined cost of that and keeping the carbon producing stuff they offset functioning is lower. However, even without carbon capturing a lot of these solutions are already problematic in terms of cost and making them more expensive will only speed up their demise. With coal, that has already happened. Natural gas will last a bit longer. However, when wind and solar bids start undercutting these solutions consistently the same will happen there. There's a real chance that remaining gas plants switch to clean sources of gas (i.e. generated using solar/wind/nuclear) when that gets cheap enough.
I wouldn't take offense, it's rare for our personal pet technologies to make it into high level documents. These are just Gates' opinion of the best ones after all.
But I would put my money on reflow batteries in the long run if they weren't so far behind, simply the decoupling of storage capacity from power density feels like an engineering perfect storm to me. I was lucky enough that my pet technology made it in =)
Why do you think inertial storage might be superior? I've talked to a fair number of people working on it and it sounds totally doable but I'm unclear that it actually costs less per joule stored or why it would. Granted a flywheel costs less per unit mass and compressed air is cheap, but on a capacity and fabrication basis? Maybe. I don't think I'd call it a shoo-in though and wouldn't invest in it myself.
> Granted a flywheel costs less per unit mass and compressed air is cheap, but on a capacity and fabrication basis? Maybe. I don't think I'd call it a shoo-in though and wouldn't invest in it myself.
Its power and energy density is next to nothing in the industry.
Fabrication, cost on the market? Even most basic flywheels like one used as industrial UPSes can be used right away for grid storage, and be more or less competitive with their high round-trip efficiency.
This just shows that how low a commercial opportunity for energy storage as such is. You need truly monstrous daily variations in energy price to make people put money it it.
Why would we settle for the "natural" outcome? Jeff Bezos' dream for Blue Origin is that population and civilization growth can continue in Space, where there's plenty of space and resources.
So we make our own planet, a space in the universe we are literally evolved to use, unlivable at some point.
The solution is that we'll magically figure out how to make space, an already hostile environment, livable?
Honestly, space settlement makes for nice headlines for the new ruling class to pat themselves on the back with, but for the rest of us, the natural outcome of unlimited growth is population crash.
> The solution is that we'll magically figure out how to make space, an already hostile environment, livable?
Well, potentially yes, because it would offer us to relieve the pressure on Earth - and the spin-offs from the process of creating space infrastructure and space habitats would be mightily useful for fixing the damage we've already done to Earth.
We didn't break Earth out of spite; before technological civilization, life on Earth was shit. We're breaking the planet out of desire to make our lives better, and we might fix Earth out of the same desire - but only if we get the chance to do it in time.
Not magically, intelligently. Earth exists in Space and is livable, therefore it is possible.
I mean, what else do you want? You don't want the mass death of population crash, nobody has the power to order billions of people to stop wanting things and live in poverty, no one person or group can change government policy of all nations, and we can't keep polluting and increasing energy use at current rates.
There's no way back to an ideal perfect before-time. The only way is forward, and the only way forward without mass death is more technology. I hope someone can work out a way to put the polluting energy intensive things away from where we live.
Yes, it will cost a lot. But leaving our children with an increasingly hostile planet isn't a tenable option either (and one which will be even more expensive as well).