I'm not the parent commenter, but you seem smart and passionate enough that I want you to engage with my points.
"Climate change" is a misnomer in that it is a stand-in for a larger set of environmental issues that all have their root in cheap, subsidized consumption. If you become too narrow minded and focus on a small set of factors, say transport emissions and crypto mining costs, you end up losing sight of the interrelationships which actually carry the causal weight of ecological collapse (with or without temperature changes.)
For instance, the most cost-effective carbon sinks we have control over are forests. Rather than doing forest farming to coexist with existing resources, and allowing more variance in our diet even if its caloric volume will have to decrease (something we already have too much of and waste too much food with anyway), we would rather destroy this land for monocropping purposes, which also leads to climate change problems which further feeds ecological collapse. It's a backward set of expectations and it's rooted in our greed.
If the technological means are available like you say they are, and I don't disagree with this, then social coordination problems are what's leftover. You can't use tech to evade them, but you discount them here by saying it's "a different thing". Yet if it's the limiting factor because the technology is already available, then it's the only thing that could matter.
And you can't just process these issues in terms of utilitarian calculus because if you think like a utilitarian, and you aren't in a position of influence, you will weigh out your individual contribution to collective problems as being marginally irrelevant.
This is why some environmentalist moralizing is necessary. Because if individuals don't take satisfaction in just doing the right and virtuous thing, even if it's a sacrifice, even a small one, they won't see a point to contributing to the commons at all.
Technology can stave off the need to make these sacrifices but it can't go on indefinitely. And even if it could, innovation takes time, which as I outlined in my comment to the grandparent post is what makes the difference between delivering energy just in time to turn the climate around, or overshooting until you can't even do that. Slowing down helps.
1. Climate Change and Environmentalism are usually conflated and used interchangeably. They are two different concepts - climate change is about putting excess carbon in the atmosphere, faster than the earth can re-absorb it. Environmentalism is a moral judgement on how much resources humans are entitled to consume.
For example, I can drive an EV powered by nuclear power and live in a large detached house. There are no carbon emissions, but I consume lots of resources. People may disagree with my taking up so much land, but that doesn't mean I'm changing the climate while taking up land.
2. We do not need to emit carbon to enjoy high standards of living. Our usage of fossil fuels to power our lifestyles is a historical leftover. We did it because our primitive technology made it easy and and cheap to level-up civilization by burning them. And we did. But today, we can use more advanced technology to stop emitting carbon.
So climate change will be solved with advanced technology, allowing us to replace all instances of carbon in all areas of the economy, which will take decades, but is quite doable. We will still take up land, consume resources etc. Asking (and eventually mandating) that people switch technologies is reasonable. Asking that people give up their lifestyles isn't. It is so unreasonable, you can take it as a given that it just won't happen.
Moral judgements are important and we should consider our broader impact, but such a thing cannot be "solved", we can only work on convincing other people of our position gradually over time.
I really feel that climate change is totally irrelevant. There is so much other pollution out there and it's all a symptom of massive over consumption, planned obsolescence, negligent/unplanned obsolescence and consumerism.
The quest for things, the newest things, the newest non-upgradable things, is leading us into disaster. We can't keep throwing away phones after two years or purchasing new laptops instead of fixing what we have. We don't have the raw materials to replace the millions of gas cars on the roads with electric/hybrids.
Things like rail, consuming less, paying more for longer lasting devices, smaller factories that produce fewer yet higher quality goods, etc. etc. will fix the underlying problems. Things like CO2 emissions, the massive plastic patches in the oceans, heavy metal in our water supplies, toxic waste--these are all symptoms and not the root problem itself.
It requires a massive change in thinking, advertising and economies. For example, Intel should be happy when it has a massive growth reduction because it means they created something that lasts a long time, is still valuable and is non-disposable. Companies need to be rewarded for things that simply last longer or can be upgraded, recycled or refurbished. The fundamental role of money and its representation of resources has to change. Our values about what is valuable needs to change.
Climate change is just a runny nose out there that people try to plug up with pseudoephedrine when the real problem is the virus that's killing your body.
Shepherds can believe the commons are being depleted without it altering the incentive to graze their own sheep there. It would be nice if the option were between
a) cut back on carbon emissions personally, and climate change will be undone
b) do nothing and let climate change take its course
but the reality is the option for your average consumer is
a) cut back on carbon emissions personally, and whatever happens to the world will happen regardless because you're only a microscopic contribution to the problem/solution
b) do nothing, and whatever happens to the world will happen regardless because you're only a microscopic contribution to the problem/solution
You're describing people as if they are selfish and don't care about the future of humanity. That's not what this is. This is a tragedy of the commons. Virtually no single person has the power to combat climate change. If I could make a meaningful difference, I would happily trade my comfortable existence to save the planet. But I can't. Nothing I do will make a difference. So why should I reduce my carbon foot print or make any other sacrifice, when the world will be just the same with or without my sacrifice?
And there you go, a few billion people thinking like me and suddenly this group has real (negative) impact.
Action on climate change is not about a reasonable discuss. I mean we can save the future of the earth for lets say worst case 20% of our productivity and it is not like the money will be just gone, it will just go to other people.
And that is the point, the people that are benefitting from the current system wants to do so as long as possible and are powerful enough that governments listens mostly to them.
The climate change issue is mostly a political problem, as sustainable ways of modern living have been known for decades, created by society and politicians not caring about the global impacts of local decisions. The almost-dystopian socialmedia/pervasive-ads/misinformation/compromised-democracy internet landscape is mostly a technological problem, an outcome of computer scientists and engineers just building things without thinking of the ethics of their technology. Nobody campaigned to build facebook, like they campaigned to build another coal power plant or another highway. The nerds and politicians alike are on their way to destroy the world - one compromising our minds, the other poisoning our air.
The failure of our times has been just this. Not realizing that when what you are doing has global impact you need to think hard about its effects and be crystal clear on the ethics of it all. Perhaps the original sin was not pushing for more hands-on ethics training for every child and college student.
I agree with you that that is the point of the article.
But I think the article misses the point. In a classic Tragedy of the Commons problem, the participants don't need to abstain from feeding in the commons in order to organize a ban on it.
In fact, such self-abstainments are self-defeating because they cause the good actors to lose economic power and then have less ability to force systemic change.
I find that telling people to live with low CO2 footprints to be a whataboutism distraction to have them economically nerf themselves, hence silencing their economic power to force systemic change.
...now imagine that on a global international level. The ability to force change is correlated to economic power - which "good actor" countries are sacrificing, and "bad actor" countries are filling the void.
For these reasons, change can only happen with a global international accord that has an enforcement mechanism. ...and hence one of the reasons, I personally don't think Climate Change will be stopped.
Given that it's such a small change... Surely this is not a problem for our generation. It definitely does not appear to be a problem that's worth destroying financial opportunities on a massive scale and enabling totalitarian governments in the current era.
The way I see climate change activism is that elites want to fix the climate at the expense of the lower classes of society... In a time when wealth inequality is at an all time high and without the consent of the lower classes. This is incorrect.
First, we have to fix inequality problem so that the pain of the transition will fall more or less evenly on everyone's shoulders... Then once this is the case, everyone should have more time to think about climate problems and we can expect broad support.
Of course, 'we' will all be long dead by then. I feel totally fine and morally justified in leaving this problem to a future generation. Most people in my generation have way too many concrete personal problems concerning their own survival in a week's time to worry about abstract problems such as the survival of the human race in a few hundred years.
...Not to mention that in a few generations' time, if we focus on maximizing access to opportunities, through the resulting innovation, we will probably end up with extremely efficient renewable energy which will be able to fight climate change far more effectively with no sacrifices necessary.
It seems literally like a no-brainer to me to just let the free market do what it does best in terms of innovation. Shut down government money printers and dismantle policies that are harmful to the free market and which centralize opportunities and create tech monopolies to control the masses. That's not the way. It needs to be done honestly.
What's the point of even allowing the human race to survive if it turns the global economy into a squid game and only the most dishonest, manipulative people will remain?
Climate change is a story of excess. It's not just eating meat three times a day. It's not just having two cars per household or buying a new phone/laptop/TV/everything every two years.
This article is trying really hard to avoid one of the problems, which the author seems to have a personal interest in.
The fact that society can't even shift to sustainable technologies that are available today goes to show how your point is naïve at best, dishonest at worst.
There are many people dying today from effects of climate crisis that would disagree with this whole affair being easier to manage, if only they could speak.
Climate change is, in a sense, a massive store of value that you can take from without the consent of those who pay. Which makes it very hard for economics-minded thinking to overlook as a lazy way to thrive.
Your argument is a different one already, yes we're definitely not doing much against climate change, and yes some moral responsibility to fight this global issue is badly needed.
But that does not validate the pseudo-moral arguments blaming technology & industry like the one above, this is guaranteed to fail.
Exactly. Climate change is the wrong conversation to the environmental problem. It's diverts time, money and energy that could be directed at addressing real environmental problems like air and water quality.
The very best thing you can do on climate change, right now, for free, is stop suggesting people "do their part" by flying less or eating less or making any other kind of individual sacrifice. Erase that proposition from your brain and never mention it again.
Climate change is a collective action problem. It can't be solved by voluntary sacrifice or any other kind of uncoordinated action. Suggesting that it can is harmful in two ways:
1. It puts the focus on solutions that don't work and won't even help.
2. Framing it in terms of sacrifice—which, again, won't even work—makes people less inclined to help in ways that might work, like lobbying for more effective policy.
"Eat your vegetables" is not the answer. People won't—no matter what. You might, your friends might, but people won't, and that's what matters.
Climate change is classic tragedy of the commons. It's the quintessential example of it.
There are two ways out of tragedy of the commons. The first is that everyone recognizes we're all better off not destroying the world with CO2 and everyone stops burning coal. That works perfectly fine if that's what everyone does.
But if you'll notice the comment I was responding to was arguing that not everybody would. Which is possible. In which case only the second option works, which is for the victims of harm to exert power until the perpetrators submit. And that can lead to war -- which is why everyone should stop burning coal now.
This is one of the problems with the mainstream obsession about climate change.
The environmental destruction wrought by gigantic, inhumanely scaled monocrop farming is direct, immediate, obvious, and worthy of huge mobilization to resolve.
Instead, we hear, as you say here, that if the carbon emissions are low, it's Great For The Environment!
Climate change is a result of overpopulation and overconsumption, though. It's right there in the name. The climate is changing as a result of anthropogenic activity. I fail to see how eco-fascism affects the outcome here, if we do not cut our population and consumption the planet will do it for us.
"Climate change" is a misnomer in that it is a stand-in for a larger set of environmental issues that all have their root in cheap, subsidized consumption. If you become too narrow minded and focus on a small set of factors, say transport emissions and crypto mining costs, you end up losing sight of the interrelationships which actually carry the causal weight of ecological collapse (with or without temperature changes.)
For instance, the most cost-effective carbon sinks we have control over are forests. Rather than doing forest farming to coexist with existing resources, and allowing more variance in our diet even if its caloric volume will have to decrease (something we already have too much of and waste too much food with anyway), we would rather destroy this land for monocropping purposes, which also leads to climate change problems which further feeds ecological collapse. It's a backward set of expectations and it's rooted in our greed.
If the technological means are available like you say they are, and I don't disagree with this, then social coordination problems are what's leftover. You can't use tech to evade them, but you discount them here by saying it's "a different thing". Yet if it's the limiting factor because the technology is already available, then it's the only thing that could matter.
And you can't just process these issues in terms of utilitarian calculus because if you think like a utilitarian, and you aren't in a position of influence, you will weigh out your individual contribution to collective problems as being marginally irrelevant.
This is why some environmentalist moralizing is necessary. Because if individuals don't take satisfaction in just doing the right and virtuous thing, even if it's a sacrifice, even a small one, they won't see a point to contributing to the commons at all.
Technology can stave off the need to make these sacrifices but it can't go on indefinitely. And even if it could, innovation takes time, which as I outlined in my comment to the grandparent post is what makes the difference between delivering energy just in time to turn the climate around, or overshooting until you can't even do that. Slowing down helps.
reply