I suspect a lot of Don't Knows will return to the Tories on the back of all the positive headlines. The trick will be keeping them there. I always add the Tory and Reform numbers together. If you do that with the Techne and BMG polls you start getting close to a number that would prevent a Labour majority. That said, tactical voting is the great unknown. With so many people online and with more targeted info available, it is going to be easier than ever to do.
Good morning
Any improvement in polling is likely to be slow but as the activities I outlined yesterday come along it would be surprising if a poll bounce did not happen over the late spring
10th March - Sunak travels to France to discuss the boat issue and closer cooperation with Macron then following on to Germany for discussions with Scholz
15th March - Budget day with Hunt addressing the economy and energy help
6th April - 10.1% rise in pensions, benefits plus rise in minimum wage
10th April - Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with possible visit of Biden to UK
6th May - The coronation
Also Sunak needs to resolve the public sector strikes, especially the nurses, pass his Windsor Framework agreement not matter what the ERG and DUP object to and continue to act professionally and put to the sword Johnson and his followers
On Sunak I am very pleased that he is a grown up in the role and while he has a mountain to climb I believe he is the conservative party's only credible leader going into GE 24 and may well mitigate the result
Confirmation of accession to CPTTP? Could be another handy milestone for him
Yes, thank you I overlooked that news yesterday that agreement is due in the next couple of months and of course that would be a huge story as it would end the debate on rejoining the EU
Or, CPTTP only reminds everyone of the catastrophic Truss AuzNZ farming deal. The direction of travel is back to reality - accepting that the EEA is our biggest market and despite the damage we have done to trade its primacy isn't under threat.
. . what's not to like, unless you're a protectionist who thinks looking after producer interests matters more than the public?
So you’d be happy for a French plumber to move to Warrington and set up business offering cheaper boiler installations than ‘local’ plumbers”
Absolutely, I have no objection to that, and since I'm not a racist I think that should happen on a level playing field for the French plumber getting a visa getting than with Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian or Philippine plumbers or plumbers from anywhere else in the world.
Tell you what though: I'm in the middle of a barn renovation in France at the moment and if I brought in a Polish (or worse, English) plumber to do part of the work I'd be immediately outcast from polite society. Indeed if I used a plumber from Paris or even Lyon rather than the surrounding 20 km or so I would be equally outcast. I had enough trouble convincing them we should buy some sanitary ware from the internet instead of the apparent monopoly supplier "Espace Aubade" on the basis it was an identical brand and model but half the price (because "assurance" or more likely it broke some long established unspoken social convention).
Much as I love France I have experienced the same. When house hunting I was told not to hire a car with a Parisian number plate (hated in rural France) and of course the free movement of labour didn't really work when it came to ski instructors or even ski guides. It might have been legal, but that didn't help you if you got roughed up a bit.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true.
It may be that new technologies developed in the next couple of decades we suddenly can't live without will actually make things worse. Imagine if for some reason the Internet was entirely and non-interchangeably reliant on coal power, would we stop using it and go back to the 90s, or would we shovel ever increasingly large amounts of coal into furnaces to feed our twitter habits? My guess is the latter. TL;DR, there are green technologies, but not all new technologies are green.
One area I think that will change things a lot is quantum computing, rather than AI. It'll enable us to crunch complex equations that are beyond the realm of possibility at the moment, and that will be able to improve the efficiency of existing industrial processes substantially, thus reducing waste and impact.
I assume Leon's point is that our new AI ovelords will very quickly decide to dispense with the need for humans and so the problem will simply go away
While not inevitable, that's actually a very real concern. It's fun to decry the obvious limitations of the current state of the art, but that's really missing the point.
The point should be what some humans are doing to other humans now, not some scifi, Asimov fan, Californian, pseudo-cosmic, Boys' Own bullsh** about the possibility that programmed machines will wipe the human species out because it's not logical enough or it doesn't have enough binary digits or CPU cycles per nanosecond or something. Yes yes, we get it that many programmers feel their lives are empty... Why could this possibly be?
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
The hardest problem, and the one on which least effort has so far been expended, is enabling low impact growth in lesser developed countries.
On the Hancock leaks, I think it's a bit of a non-story. What I've read so far is not particularly interesting, surprising or revelatory. Given the nature of the Covid crisis, it's hardly news that there were disagreements between those involved - that would have been the case whoever was in power.
I'd be much more interested if somebody could leak all the messages and emails relating to Covid contracts - PPE, test and trace, and others. I reckon that's where the real scandal would be, as the rich managed to line their pockets.
I note that James Bethell (HoL Minister with responsibility for test and trace, and with links to the Paterson/Randox affair), admitted on R4 yesterday that he has been unable to pass all his messages on to the Covid Inquiry as he 'accidentally' lost them when he got a new phone. Yeh, right.
My reaction too. Oh look, things were shambolic under Johnson. Thanks for that. More on the rampant corruption would indeed be more interesting and useful.
One revelation that did bug me though. Johnson was apparently in the habit of reading Spectator articles about Covid and then wasting everyone's valuable time floating ideas he got from there.
Once I'd stopped trembling it got me thinking. Should a PM even be allowed to read the Spectator?
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
We can always mine for more. I hear Scotland has extensive reserves....
Quite so. That inside info on the Hezza & Megz show was pure gold.
That it isn't yet in the public domain doesn't mean it isn't right.
I will expect a grovelling apology in due course.
Yeah, right.....
Nope, the tiny chubby you got for ‘revealing’ something to the public domain will be your full recompense.
Will the DT publish anything related to Johnson that shows him in a poor light or will those messages be safely tucked away by his cult members at the paper ?
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Please do not use up all the sarcasm in the country on one post.
No doubt the resulting national sarcasm shortage will be blamed on Brexit!
Whilst somehow forgetting that we've just had Covid, which used massive amounts of sarcasm reserves, not to mention all the sarcasm we've had to supply to Ukraine.
We can always mine for more. I hear Scotland has extensive reserves....
Indeed, but Nationalists are making great play of having to supply the UK with such a valuable natural resource, and are campaigning on a platform of keeping all the sarcasm in Scotland.
I'm really tickled pink by northern_monkey using the phrase "unicorn-hunting bullshit" this week of all weeks when the "unicorn" is real. We've had the likes of @Scott_xP posting stupid meme after stupid meme for years about how Brexiteers like myself preferred solution for NI is a unicorn and yet the unicorn is real and has happened.
A throwback to everyone's favourite European Twitter commentator during Covid19 and FBPE Favourite Dave Keating, from when I was opposing Theresa May's deal, is well worth looking back at today: https://twitter.com/davekeating/status/1053224418653159425
Dave Keating @DaveKeating 19 Oct 2018 So what exactly is the Irish border backstop problem in the #Brexit talks? I break it down on France 24. [video] In other words, the #Brexit trilemma:
What solution do we have today to the Trilemma?
Not quite.
“When goods move from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, they will now move without customs bureaucracy, they will move without routine customs checks,” he told Radio 4.
But that’s not quite what the Windsor Framework says. The 26-page agreement contains provisions for bureaucracy that would not apply to goods moving between, say, England and Wales.
For example, the Framework says businesses will have to provide “commercial data” to an official body to move goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
Later, the Framework says that a lorry entering Northern Ireland from England, Wales or Scotland would need a “document confirming that goods are staying in Northern Ireland and are moved in line with the terms of our internal market scheme”...
A very light touch border, sure. But more of a border than between, say Portsmouth and the Isle of WIght.
Rishi has done very well. But when you overclaim, you risk creating trouble down the line.
My take. It hasn’t dealt with the problem border, but moved the problem to the most worrying place for it to be, the reason it was in the sea in the first place.
Sunak’s deal will not end EU law in Northern Ireland, nor ultimate oversight of EU judges in some circumstances, so for certain Northern Island is still on a different course from mainland UK. This means the “green lane” removing Irish Sea border merely kicks that problem back to increased market surveillance on North-South Ireland border, especially as the EU and UK increasingly diverge - this is exactly where everyone but the DUP fear it being!
So is that border problem really resolved, as some claim, or just MOVED to a more worrying place for it to be in the coming years of divergence going forward?
Yes and no.
First thing to note is that there's a long line of British PMs doing Brilliant Deals With Europe that turn out to be oversold. Something about our national psyche needs a win, rather than a high-scoring draw that ensures both teams progress to the next round of the competition. And sucessful negotiations that stick tend to be win-win.
As for the border question, I think the border stays where it was, because it's the only sane and safe place to put it. As you say, putting it between NI and the Republic pleases the DUP (c'mon, it's a chunk of why they backed Brexit all along) and terrifies anyone else. My guess (provincial physics master, me) is that, as long as they get the computer access, the EU can get the info they need from the Irish Sea checks and there's space to tighten or relax if the green lane gets abused.
Something similar with the ECJ cushioning and the Stormont Lock. They're not just symbolic, but when push comes to shove the ECJ seems to have the powers it needs in the end. And the Stormont Lock might never be activated; the threshold and costs are just high enough to make it more hassle than it's worth. See Norway- they've done exactly one veto, I think.
It does lead to wry amusement; the angriest comments today seem to be from those who welcome RIshi's deal as the foundation to pile more Brexit upon the Brexit that's already secured. Everyone else seems to be saying "the deal looks fine and it's nice to have a UK government who isn't trying to get their way by headbanging."
Maybe the opportunity to headbang was the point all along.
I note what you are saying. But Note how some are posting tonight, if Scotland was independent, in EU and Euro, as is ROI we would need a hard border between England and Scotland.
I am sticking with the big take out of Sunak’s deal is it doesn’t solve the problem of a border in the Irish Sea, it merely kicks ongoing unresolved problem back to increased market surveillance on North-South Ireland border, as the two markets diverge - exactly what many feared and warned of long before we even voted for Brexit. as we consider how time plays out with this deal in place.
Sunak’s Agreement doesn’t really resolve all the issues he is claiming it resolves. And it leaves us sadly with nothing now in the offing that can reopen Stormont and get Good Friday Agreement back on track. 😕
It’s quite a colossal failure really.
Some of it's sadly inevitable. If the DUP don't want to play ball with Stormont and enough of their voters like that, there's not much the rest of us can do. And, despite what some would claim, the Irish trilemma has been shrunk, but it's still present.
But this is better than what was there before, and sometimes better is all you can hope for.
It it better though? My whole argument is, aside from pets plants and parcels in many ways it worse, not better!
Let me explain in bullet points.
Sunak’s deal will not end EU law in Northern Ireland, nor ultimate oversight of EU judges in some circumstances. That’s asking the DUP to permanently now accept Second Class Sovereignty, not live in an anomaly for a while everyone promises to sort out. It’s very easy to dismiss DUP as never satisfied, but they are being asked to accept Second Class Sovereignty in their own country, are they not. New EU laws they can do nothing about, no real brake or Veto to stop their country divulging away from the UK with new EU law and rules.
In fact this deal bolsters EU because it enshrines more NEW EU law in future without NI politicians being able to stop it. It enshrines the right of EU to take 'appropriate remedial measures' to protect their market whenever they don’t get their way.
It does not resolve the problem of border in Irish Sea. It transfers the unresolved problem back to increased market surveillance on North-South Ireland border, as the two markets diverge. This in turn allows an Independent Scotland to ask for exactly the same. It’s actually shining a pathway and inspiring Scottish Independence.
How can it better this week, when last week there was the hope, based on long time promise, all these things would be properly sorted out, not fudged behind a wall of spin. That hopes gone. The hope these issues properly sorted out and Stormont resuming at last, is now gone. How can that leave us in a better place post deal than pre deal?
No it doesn't. It gives a green lane for goods between GB and NI as long as NI remains in the UK. The red lane for significant checks only applies to GB goods going to the Republic of Ireland. If NI ever left the UK the hard border would be transferred to the Irish Sea again.
Just as a hard border would be constructed between England and Scotland complete with customs posts if it ever left the UK to rejoin the EU
MoonRabbit's posts have got increasingly far from reality when HYUFD is the one spitting facts.
“Far from reality”? 🤣
My posts are constructed from what mainstream news are saying.
There’s a “they who get to microphones first shape picture of actual thing” that always go on, isn’t there, which we have to take into account on a balanced board like this. Plus of course on this board arn’t just balanced people like me, but spinners who actually are “they who want to get to the microphones first and spin it as an obvious slam dunk”.
Hence my fickle foil for chopping up bs 😇 Like most the stuff you post Wiggy to be honest, as proven fact just by look at your post here, attacking me, discredit me as detached from reality, without any comeback on what I’m actually saying, Because mainstream news saying same as me now. The spin game you are playing bit too transparent isn’t it 😁
Will the DT publish anything related to Johnson that shows him in a poor light or will those messages be safely tucked away by his cult members at the paper ?
When the Times publishes anything negative on Sunak I suspect.
Would be good to know for betting purposes whether 27 lead or 14 lead is accurate.
If its the former hard to see even SKS blow that (although May did). If its 14 its all to play for and the NOM is of interest.
Suspect currently its high teens or low 20s but I find it inconceivable come a GE that there wont be a lot of shy Tories return, whether its enough to stop SKS time will tell.
Ideally Corbyn forms a Party and gives Socialists someone to vote for if so I reckon enough would vote for it to split the Lab vote and although it might only end up with 1 seat might foil SKS4PM
I assume Leon's point is that our new AI ovelords will very quickly decide to dispense with the need for humans and so the problem will simply go away
Just as we can decry Matt Hancock for apparently not being aware of Oakeshott's record, have the manufacturers of AI systems never seen a movie?
Terminator, The Matrix, Ex_Machina...
Noone with any sense will go anywhere near Oakshott ...and her threats against him make me despise her more than him.
I said the same thing yesterday, but many replied that we have been here before and said the same before. Let's hope that both you and I are correct this time. Don't hold your breath though.
On the Hancock leaks, I think it's a bit of a non-story. What I've read so far is not particularly interesting, surprising or revelatory. Given the nature of the Covid crisis, it's hardly news that there were disagreements between those involved - that would have been the case whoever was in power.
I'd be much more interested if somebody could leak all the messages and emails relating to Covid contracts - PPE, test and trace, and others. I reckon that's where the real scandal would be, as the rich managed to line their pockets.
I note that James Bethell (HoL Minister with responsibility for test and trace, and with links to the Paterson/Randox affair), admitted on R4 yesterday that he has been unable to pass all his messages on to the Covid Inquiry as he 'accidentally' lost them when he got a new phone. Yeh, right.
The Hancock leaks are nothing really, confected outrage from Susannah Reid on GMB about them considering, for a few minutes, having to get the nations cats put down.
So what. They mentioned it, never did it. It's irrelevant.
Even Kevin Maguire couldn't find it in him to rant about it.
Gavin WIlliamson thinks Teachers dont like work. We could have worked that out.
What it does prove is Hancock has pretty poor judgement in trusting Oakshott. He deserves what he has got as a consequence.
Australia collapsed from 186/4 to 197 all out this morning.
That's the sort of collapse Labour need to experience for the Tories to get a lead.
22 wickets in less than a day and a half? I don't like easy batting pitches, but in India, they've decided that the pitch should turn square on day 1.
Yes, this is a joke. If even the Indian players are struggling to play the likes of Nathan Lyon there is something very wrong somewhere.
Indian batters were struggling to play the spin of Joe Root a couple of winters ago.
Joe Root is underrated. He has 50 odd test wickets as a part time spinner. That’s a pretty good haul. Of course turning pitches help, but I don’t think I’d take wickets with my gentle tweakers.
I think it probably helps that batsmen don't rate him, so they don't always play the right shot. Mark Waugh used to pick up wickets for much the same reason.
Speaking of wickets, Kemar Roach is really bowling well here.
Saffers doing a good job of handing the match back to the Womens Institute. 76-7 now.
Btw, I don't often advise bets on here now but I think the spread on India 2nd innings is way out. You can sell at 203. Neither side beat 200 in the first innings and the pitch ain't getting any better.
They're at tea so you have a few moments to think about it.
The instant Pujara is out, you would expect India to implode. Unless he does something really special, as in Laxman-style special, you would think 200 is way beyond them.
Pujara out for 59. India 155-9.
I would draw attention to my earlier advice but editorial policy requests that we show due modesty in such matters.
On the Hancock leaks, I think it's a bit of a non-story. What I've read so far is not particularly interesting, surprising or revelatory. Given the nature of the Covid crisis, it's hardly news that there were disagreements between those involved - that would have been the case whoever was in power.
I'd be much more interested if somebody could leak all the messages and emails relating to Covid contracts - PPE, test and trace, and others. I reckon that's where the real scandal would be, as the rich managed to line their pockets.
I note that James Bethell (HoL Minister with responsibility for test and trace, and with links to the Paterson/Randox affair), admitted on R4 yesterday that he has been unable to pass all his messages on to the Covid Inquiry as he 'accidentally' lost them when he got a new phone. Yeh, right.
My reaction too. Oh look, things were shambolic under Johnson. Thanks for that. More on the rampant corruption would indeed be more interesting and useful.
One revelation that did bug me though. Johnson was apparently in the habit of reading Spectator articles about Covid and then wasting everyone's valuable time floating ideas he got from there.
Once I'd stopped trembling it got me thinking. Should a PM even be allowed to read the Spectator?
As long as he didn’t float the rubbish Brexit is like having a baby guff
It's #NationalPigDay! Dating back to the early 60s, a prank played by carriers in the Mediterranean was to surprise their relieving carrier by releasing greased pigs on the flight deck. This 1986 video is of a helicopter from USS America dropping off pigs on USS John F. Kennedy. https://twitter.com/NavalInstitute/status/1631075489669341184
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Firstly what is “lead into single figures”? Just one of the pollsters giving Tories the better polls finding just one of 9? Possible but unlikely. Or, as far as we can know actual lead by averaging all polls, come down to single figures. Nope. Not in this parliament.
The average of Tory vote share isn’t getting much above 30% for the rest of this parliament, that means no single digit lead, and probably for quite some time after the next election too.
On interesting side note, is it the gap opened up among pollsters and when they tend to report during month, which creates the saggy boobs and smile faces that now leap up at us from the polling chart?
I assume Leon's point is that our new AI ovelords will very quickly decide to dispense with the need for humans and so the problem will simply go away
Just as we can decry Matt Hancock for apparently not being aware of Oakeshott's record, have the manufacturers of AI systems never seen a movie?
Terminator, The Matrix, Ex_Machina...
Noone with any sense will go anywhere near Oakshott ...and her threats against him make me despise her more than him.
The world tends to equilibrium, and I feel Oakeshott is the perfect journalistic counterbalance to Carole Cadwallr.
Idea for new TV show. Oakeshott and Cadwallr are pitted against each other in a quest to defeat a handpicked list of male right wing politicians. What will prevail: the sheer force of FBPE outrage and legal tenacity, or the crafty double dealing of the false friend? Like a modern day fable of the north wind and the sun.
On the Hancock leaks, I think it's a bit of a non-story. What I've read so far is not particularly interesting, surprising or revelatory. Given the nature of the Covid crisis, it's hardly news that there were disagreements between those involved - that would have been the case whoever was in power.
I'd be much more interested if somebody could leak all the messages and emails relating to Covid contracts - PPE, test and trace, and others. I reckon that's where the real scandal would be, as the rich managed to line their pockets.
I note that James Bethell (HoL Minister with responsibility for test and trace, and with links to the Paterson/Randox affair), admitted on R4 yesterday that he has been unable to pass all his messages on to the Covid Inquiry as he 'accidentally' lost them when he got a new phone. Yeh, right.
My reaction too. Oh look, things were shambolic under Johnson. Thanks for that. More on the rampant corruption would indeed be more interesting and useful.
One revelation that did bug me though. Johnson was apparently in the habit of reading Spectator articles about Covid and then wasting everyone's valuable time floating ideas he got from there.
Once I'd stopped trembling it got me thinking. Should a PM even be allowed to read the Spectator?
As long as he didn’t float the rubbish Brexit is like having a baby guff
I can imagine that quite easily, I'm afraid. It's bang on his wavelength.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
Firstly what is “lead into single figures”? Just one of the pollsters giving Tories the better polls finding just one of 9? Possible but unlikely. Or, as far as we can know actual lead by averaging all polls, come down to single figures. Nope. Not in this parliament.
The average of Tory vote share isn’t getting much above 30% for the rest of this parliament, that means no single digit lead, and probably for quite some time after the next election too.
On interesting side note, is it the gap opened up among pollsters and when they tend to report during month, which creates the saggy boobs and smile faces that now leap up at us from the polling chart?
The biggest gap seems to be between pollsters who polled before the last election and those that are new since it. If I get a chance I'll do dome analysis to see how big a gap that is.
It's #NationalPigDay! Dating back to the early 60s, a prank played by carriers in the Mediterranean was to surprise their relieving carrier by releasing greased pigs on the flight deck. This 1986 video is of a helicopter from USS America dropping off pigs on USS John F. Kennedy. https://twitter.com/NavalInstitute/status/1631075489669341184
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Is it too puerile to suggest that her looks have gulled the adulterer into thinking he could trust her?
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Is it too puerile to suggest that her looks have gulled the adulterer into thinking he could trust her?
On the Hancock leaks, I think it's a bit of a non-story. What I've read so far is not particularly interesting, surprising or revelatory. Given the nature of the Covid crisis, it's hardly news that there were disagreements between those involved - that would have been the case whoever was in power.
I'd be much more interested if somebody could leak all the messages and emails relating to Covid contracts - PPE, test and trace, and others. I reckon that's where the real scandal would be, as the rich managed to line their pockets.
I note that James Bethell (HoL Minister with responsibility for test and trace, and with links to the Paterson/Randox affair), admitted on R4 yesterday that he has been unable to pass all his messages on to the Covid Inquiry as he 'accidentally' lost them when he got a new phone. Yeh, right.
The Hancock leaks are nothing really, confected outrage from Susannah Reid on GMB about them considering, for a few minutes, having to get the nations cats put down.
So what. They mentioned it, never did it. It's irrelevant.
Even Kevin Maguire couldn't find it in him to rant about it.
Gavin WIlliamson thinks Teachers dont like work. We could have worked that out.
What it does prove is Hancock has pretty poor judgement in trusting Oakshott. He deserves what he has got as a consequence.
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Is it too puerile to suggest that her looks have gulled the adulterer into thinking he could trust her?
Wow. Amazing revelations about Matt Hancock. Absolutely unbelievable. You need at least a basic level of judgement and common-sense for a career in politics, esp as a cabinet minister, and this guy clearly never had it. Everyone - literally everyone - knows you don't trust Isabel Oakeshott.
It is so sad. Matt Hancock and Isabel Oakeshott are such find upstanding people that it is sad and rather upsetting to see their untrammelled reputations being attacked in this way.
Is it too puerile to suggest that her looks have gulled the adulterer into thinking he could trust her?
I assume Leon's point is that our new AI ovelords will very quickly decide to dispense with the need for humans and so the problem will simply go away
Just as we can decry Matt Hancock for apparently not being aware of Oakeshott's record, have the manufacturers of AI systems never seen a movie?
Terminator, The Matrix, Ex_Machina...
Noone with any sense will go anywhere near Oakshott ...and her threats against him make me despise her more than him.
The world tends to equilibrium, and I feel Oakeshott is the perfect journalistic counterbalance to Carole Cadwallr.
Idea for new TV show. Oakeshott and Cadwallr are pitted against each other in a quest to defeat a handpicked list of male right wing politicians. What will prevail: the sheer force of FBPE outrage and legal tenacity, or the crafty double dealing of the false friend? Like a modern day fable of the north wind and the sun.
Finding honest journalists, is just as difficult as finding honest politicians.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Well, that depends. Can I sell my allowance to someone who needs it?
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Manufacturing aviation fuel from zero carbon sources is already in the trial stage.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Ultimately we just need a lot fewer humans on the planet (a pandemic wiping out 99% rather than 1% would do the trick in the short term).
Of course most of the academics banging on about rationing long haul flights would exempt themselves - just had to go to that in person conference in Hawaii, after all I need to be in person to save the world.
I also think that if we cracked nuclear fusion today, and could build all the power plants we need for the entire world in the next ten years, and get a fully circular economy going for commodities (no need to mine anything, just recycle) then some would hate it, absolutely hate it, because you are right - ultimately they hate capitalism.
Yesterday I said nobody would touch Oakshott with a barge pole again, to which several of you replied 'they said that the last time'. Yep I have looked those up and I have liked each and every one of those posts that I noticed who put me right.
It is difficult to believe people can be so stupid to confide in her.
There is a public interest case sometime and possibly this time, but she is clearly very untrustworthy and a nasty piece of work.
The Chris Huhne/Vicky Price cases is interesting. It is difficult to understand how people get themselves into these positions. I can only assume they think it is a little white lie and its not important and the issue spirals out of their control. Jeffery Archer similarly. I have sympathy in both cases, but if you are going to commit perjury you have to take the consequences. I'm sure both thought at each stage they had to go on with the deception, but if they had their time again would never have started it. In the case of Chris Huhne why the hell didn't he just take the driving ban. He had a bucket load of points already. It was just a matter of time and why did it matter so much. Bonkers.
It seems to have started a chain reaction at Sky with Burley and others asking those interviewed if they would like their What's App messages displayed in public, and each and everyone unanimously said no
The problem with this is that, apart from a terrible betrayal of trust and by her own admission a beach of the non disclosure notice, each and everyone of us and every political party would not like their private What's app messages put in the public domain
We have to remember that Oakeshott is the partner of Tice of Reform which has an anti lockdown agenda and she thinks this will help their cause, when as serious politicians are saying the public enquiry is the correct place for this to be revealed
If you don't want your private opinions exposed to the public then don't give them to a journalist.
Sadly, yesterday my longest running contract came to an end. Having worked there on and off for 13 years but always been kept on their email system during times I wasn't working I have several tens of thousands of emails relating to operational decisions all carefully filed and organised. When previous contractors or staff have left we have had a lot of issues accessing their emails which often contain the background to important decisions because of GDPR rules. Anticipating this I have made a point of making sure the company knows they can and should give full access to the Ops team going forward and that I have nothing of a private nature on the email system. This is simple and obvious professionalism. In any walk of life, anything related to your professional work for a client, undertaken on their behalf and using their comms systems should be considered their property. So keep your private stuff off there.
Surprising that company access to all company email accounts is not written into contracts (if it is not - I'd have to check mine, but assumed it would be). I wouldn't have thought GDPR would be an automatic block to this, although an over-cautious information officer might take it to be.
(My organisational emails are subject to FoI requests anyway, so I don't put anything personal on there).
Yep we were surprised to find this as well. I think part of the problem is that it may be written into staff contracts but is often overlooked in consultant contracts. And the IT departments are terrified of getting it wrong and so tend to simply lockdown any and all email accounts once people have left. I am not even sure that my written permission is going to be enough to allow my colleagues access to my emails based on past experience.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
It's not human nature at all. Most people are prepared to undergo short-term discomfort in exchange for long term benefits for themselves or their children. It's just (?) a matter of selling it properly. Blood, sweat and tears won WW2.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
Example - electric cars. Accelerate like a super car. No nasty particulates coming out if the exhaust. Higher reliability possible because of mechanical complexity being reduced.
In a relatively few years, the prices will drop below that of new ICE - batteries are getting cheaper, steadily.
So faster, better, cheaper.
Edit: the Cold Fusion comedy was fun for one reason. The pure terror the thought of infinite, clean energy produced in certain people.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Manufacturing aviation fuel from zero carbon sources is already in the trial stage.
Sadly Sky are reporting that there is no clear net zero alternative to jet fuel.
Quite like the reference to guilt free flying. I never feel guilty flying. Far from it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Ultimately we just need a lot fewer humans on the planet (a pandemic wiping out 99% rather than 1% would do the trick in the short term).
Of course most of the academics banging on about rationing long haul flights would exempt themselves - just had to go to that in person conference in Hawaii, after all I need to be in person to save the world.
I also think that if we cracked nuclear fusion today, and could build all the power plants we need for the entire world in the next ten years, and get a fully circular economy going for commodities (no need to mine anything, just recycle) then some would hate it, absolutely hate it, because you are right - ultimately they hate capitalism.
The people you mention in the last paragraph are almost as bad as those who would let the world burn rather than engage in any sort of collective action.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
It's not human nature at all. Most people are prepared to undergo short-term discomfort in exchange for long term benefits for themselves or their children. It's just (?) a matter of selling it properly. Blood, sweat and tears won WW2.
Yeah, because it was easy to sell "we're fighting Hitler, an evil man who wants to kill us".
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Manufacturing aviation fuel from zero carbon sources is already in the trial stage.
Sadly Sky are reporting that there is no clear net zero alternative to jet fuel.
Quite like the reference to guilt free flying. I never feel guilty flying. Far from it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
It isn't particularly illogical. In fact, it seems good insurance against error.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
Example - electric cars. Accelerate like a super car. No nasty particulates coming out if the exhaust. Higher reliability possible because of mechanical complexity being reduced.
In a relatively few years, the prices will drop below that of new ICE - batteries are getting cheaper, steadily.
So faster, better, cheaper.
Edit: the Cold Fusion comedy was fun for one reason. The pure terror the thought of infinite, clean energy produced in certain people.
Indeed. As long as they can solve the problem of charging - I can get a month's "charging" on my current car in less than 10 minutes anywhere in the country then I'll certainly consider electric for my next car, much though I hate automatics.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
It's not human nature at all. Most people are prepared to undergo short-term discomfort in exchange for long term benefits for themselves or their children. It's just (?) a matter of selling it properly. Blood, sweat and tears won WW2.
Yeah, because it was easy to sell "we're fighting Hitler, an evil man who wants to kill us".
Climate change is a less immediate but just as real a threat as Hitler was. It's the lack of immediacy that makes selling the need for possibly unpopular measures to counter it difficult, but they are no less necessary.
It's #NationalPigDay! Dating back to the early 60s, a prank played by carriers in the Mediterranean was to surprise their relieving carrier by releasing greased pigs on the flight deck. This 1986 video is of a helicopter from USS America dropping off pigs on USS John F. Kennedy. https://twitter.com/NavalInstitute/status/1631075489669341184
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Its an absolutely preposterous, nonsensical idea.
Zero carbon long haul flights on the other hand are a sensible idea.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
It is already rationed - on price.
Which shows just who might benefit from any "degrowth" initiatives. I'm sure you would applaud a system whereby only those who can afford the extra cost you presumably seek to impose on non-green activities are able to use them while everyone else cannot.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
I always thought the (Lib Dem) policy of frequent flyer taxation was a great idea, if enforceable. If you only fly once or twice a year the tax on the flight / APD is low or zero, but it ramps up progressively with each extra flight you take as an individual, or a business takes (based on flights / headcount).
It wouldn't punish "hard working families" taking a summer holiday to the Med but it would ensure the full environmental externality of frequent flying was priced in. The one tricky issue would be people with family abroad - indeed that was a group who suffered a lot during the Covid travel restrictions. But that's the only real objection I can think of.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Its an absolutely preposterous, nonsensical idea.
Zero carbon long haul flights on the other hand are a sensible idea.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Manufacturing aviation fuel from zero carbon sources is already in the trial stage.
Sadly Sky are reporting that there is no clear net zero alternative to jet fuel.
Quite like the reference to guilt free flying. I never feel guilty flying. Far from it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
It's not human nature at all. Most people are prepared to undergo short-term discomfort in exchange for long term benefits for themselves or their children. It's just (?) a matter of selling it properly. Blood, sweat and tears won WW2.
Yeah, because it was easy to sell "we're fighting Hitler, an evil man who wants to kill us".
Climate change is a less immediate but just as real a threat as Hitler was. It's the lack of immediacy that makes selling the need for possibly unpopular measures to counter it difficult, but they are no less necessary.
Here's the thing. Your immense and superior intellect notwithstanding, why do you think it is that the majority (it seems) of people don't share the urgency of your quest to undergo discomfort, or de-grow (yuk)?
People are on the whole well-informed and have all the available facts to hand and have evidently decided that they don't want to do as you say they should.
I mean it is a cheap and hackneyed jibe to point out your fossil fuel usage in posting green comments on an internet chatroom but you could at least set an example by not doing so. Or are you someone (thinking Emma Thompson here) who believes their mission is too important not to engage in the very activities you are counselling against?
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
You're right, future adversity should be countered by measures that also provide future benefits.
The idea that future adversity can or will be countered by measures that remove benefits is completely illogical.
I notice that you failed to answer my question to you before. How do you get to Net Zero by reducing consumption by a small amount. What proportion of global emissions are you talking about removing?
If we want to remove all emissions, net, then are you talking about removing all consumption? No food for anyone? No clothes for anyone? No travel, architecture, steel? No books?
Only clean technologies can get us to zero, reducing consumption can not touch the sides.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
I always thought the (Lib Dem) policy of frequent flyer taxation was a great idea, if enforceable. If you only fly once or twice a year the tax on the flight / APD is low or zero, but it ramps up progressively with each extra flight you take as an individual, or a business takes (based on flights / headcount).
It wouldn't punish "hard working families" taking a summer holiday to the Med but it would ensure the full environmental externality of frequent flying was priced in. The one tricky issue would be people with family abroad - indeed that was a group who suffered a lot during the Covid travel restrictions. But that's the only real objection I can think of.
Its logical and depending on implementation could be good, but a clear vote loser.
Just like taxing private schools properly, it wont move the votes of 90%+ of the population, but there will be a few percent who are most impacted financially and dead set against it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
It's not human nature at all. Most people are prepared to undergo short-term discomfort in exchange for long term benefits for themselves or their children. It's just (?) a matter of selling it properly. Blood, sweat and tears won WW2.
Yeah, because it was easy to sell "we're fighting Hitler, an evil man who wants to kill us".
Climate change is a less immediate but just as real a threat as Hitler was. It's the lack of immediacy that makes selling the need for possibly unpopular measures to counter it difficult, but they are no less necessary.
I'd agree with that, except that I think "difficult" is an understatement.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
I always thought the (Lib Dem) policy of frequent flyer taxation was a great idea, if enforceable. If you only fly once or twice a year the tax on the flight / APD is low or zero, but it ramps up progressively with each extra flight you take as an individual, or a business takes (based on flights / headcount).
It wouldn't punish "hard working families" taking a summer holiday to the Med but it would ensure the full environmental externality of frequent flying was priced in. The one tricky issue would be people with family abroad - indeed that was a group who suffered a lot during the Covid travel restrictions. But that's the only real objection I can think of.
Even people with family abroad generally wouldn't fly more than a couple of times a year, would they - Christmas and summer?
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
I always thought the (Lib Dem) policy of frequent flyer taxation was a great idea, if enforceable. If you only fly once or twice a year the tax on the flight / APD is low or zero, but it ramps up progressively with each extra flight you take as an individual, or a business takes (based on flights / headcount).
It wouldn't punish "hard working families" taking a summer holiday to the Med but it would ensure the full environmental externality of frequent flying was priced in. The one tricky issue would be people with family abroad - indeed that was a group who suffered a lot during the Covid travel restrictions. But that's the only real objection I can think of.
If you're looking from an environmental perspective its an absolutely stupid idea.
The only way to remove the impact that flights have on the environment, is to make flights not impact the environment, by clean technologies.
If you achieve that, you reduce the emissions by flights by 100%. If you don't achieve that, then reducing flights by 1% via austerity and taxation for flights reduces emissions by 1%.
If you're serious about tackling climate change, rather than using it as a fad and excuse to do what you want to do anyway, then only technology is a solution. Taxation, if you're serious about the environment, should be about encouraging clean technologies and discouraging dirty ones - not discouraging consumption.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Manufacturing aviation fuel from zero carbon sources is already in the trial stage.
Sadly Sky are reporting that there is no clear net zero alternative to jet fuel.
Quite like the reference to guilt free flying. I never feel guilty flying. Far from it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
Example - electric cars. Accelerate like a super car. No nasty particulates coming out if the exhaust. Higher reliability possible because of mechanical complexity being reduced.
In a relatively few years, the prices will drop below that of new ICE - batteries are getting cheaper, steadily.
So faster, better, cheaper.
Edit: the Cold Fusion comedy was fun for one reason. The pure terror the thought of infinite, clean energy produced in certain people.
I used to car share with Prof in Mechanical Engineering (older than me - in his late 50's or early 60's). He was hugely skeptical about electric cars - a sentiment echoed by many of his colleagues (including the automotive academics). And yet its happening. There are huge challenges - they are not cheap, yet. Recharging is not as easy as slopping in fuel. You sometimes get issues with no being able to access a charge point. Range is not always as good.
But all of those points have answers. Most journeys are under 20-30 miles. You rarely need the range that your current petrol/diesel vehicle has. More chargers are being installed, all the time. I imagine the first petrol cars had similar issues in the early years of the 20th century.
Sometimes people cannot imagine the change - its too big. The pandemic was a bit like that - few people ever imagined anything on the lines of 'lockdown' - shutting down society. Leon thinks AI is another example (I'm skeptical, but maybe I am just playing the role of my car share here?)
Lastly - I still remember the cold fusion story breaking - we were on holiday in Scotland. It genuinely felt like we could be on the verge of something huge. I think there is something going on somewhere, but its more likely to be some weird physics, rather than the way to power the world with seawater.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Manufacturing aviation fuel from zero carbon sources is already in the trial stage.
Sadly Sky are reporting that there is no clear net zero alternative to jet fuel.
Quite like the reference to guilt free flying. I never feel guilty flying. Far from it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
You're right, future adversity should be countered by measures that also provide future benefits.
The idea that future adversity can or will be countered by measures that remove benefits is completely illogical.
I notice that you failed to answer my question to you before. How do you get to Net Zero by reducing consumption by a small amount. What proportion of global emissions are you talking about removing?
If we want to remove all emissions, net, then are you talking about removing all consumption? No food for anyone? No clothes for anyone? No travel, architecture, steel? No books?
Only clean technologies can get us to zero, reducing consumption can not touch the sides.
I don't claim that we can get to net zero by reducing consumption a small amount. But getting to net zero is likely to involve both technological solutions and lifestyle changes. Long haul flying, in particular, is one area in which net zero is difficult to achieve by technological means, so it seems almost inevitable that there will need to be less of it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Ultimately we just need a lot fewer humans on the planet (a pandemic wiping out 99% rather than 1% would do the trick in the short term).
Of course most of the academics banging on about rationing long haul flights would exempt themselves - just had to go to that in person conference in Hawaii, after all I need to be in person to save the world.
I also think that if we cracked nuclear fusion today, and could build all the power plants we need for the entire world in the next ten years, and get a fully circular economy going for commodities (no need to mine anything, just recycle) then some would hate it, absolutely hate it, because you are right - ultimately they hate capitalism.
The people you mention in the last paragraph are almost as bad as those who would let the world burn rather than engage in any sort of collective action.
Well that's a fair point. However collective action can be organised over Zoom/Teams etc nowadays. I'm pretty sure that we will get even better at remote meetings (Avatars like ABBA?)
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Manufacturing aviation fuel from zero carbon sources is already in the trial stage.
Sadly Sky are reporting that there is no clear net zero alternative to jet fuel.
Quite like the reference to guilt free flying. I never feel guilty flying. Far from it.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
You're right, future adversity should be countered by measures that also provide future benefits.
The idea that future adversity can or will be countered by measures that remove benefits is completely illogical.
I notice that you failed to answer my question to you before. How do you get to Net Zero by reducing consumption by a small amount. What proportion of global emissions are you talking about removing?
If we want to remove all emissions, net, then are you talking about removing all consumption? No food for anyone? No clothes for anyone? No travel, architecture, steel? No books?
Only clean technologies can get us to zero, reducing consumption can not touch the sides.
I don't claim that we can get to net zero by reducing consumption a small amount. But getting to net zero is likely to involve both technological solutions and lifestyle changes. Long haul flying, in particular, is one area in which net zero is difficult to achieve by technological means, so it seems almost inevitable that there will need to be less of it.
No, it's likely to involve only technological solutions. Lifestyle changes don't touch the sides. You come across as wanting to inconvenience people and harm consumption purely for the sake of it and not for the planet.
Whether you like it or not long haul flying is going to be happening. Getting rid of long haul emissions via clean technologies is a difficult challenge, sure, however getting rid of long haul emissions by preventing flights is impossible.
Once you get rid of the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
If you're serious about removing the long haul emissions from flights the truth is the ONLY solution is clean flights. So get our tax system incentivising clean flights and associated R&D not restricting consumption.
In local news, there's an interesting double by-election in Littlemore & Rose Hill today, one of the more working class parts of Oxford. Both city and county seats are up for election. Both were held by Labour, though by two different councillors (the county one was beyond hopeless and had, I believe, the worst attendance record on the whole council; I don't know the city one at all; it seems curious that they resigned at the same time).
Littlemore has one of Oxford's much-discussed Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes. There's an Independent standing on a platform of opposition to it, and the Tories have come out against it too (even though they pushed LTNs, and implemented several, while in control of the county council).
The LibDems and Greens aren't making much of an effort - Littlemore isn't fertile territory for either of them. As usual for East Oxford there are TUSC candidates too.
I think it'll come down to Labour vs Independent, and if pushed I'd say Labour will hold it, but it's far from a done deal.
As well as these in Oxford there are 4 others. There is a Lab defence in Newcastle and a Con defence in Staffordshire. Unusually there are also 2 Ind elected as Con by-elections - in Kent and Tamworth.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
Example - electric cars. Accelerate like a super car. No nasty particulates coming out if the exhaust. Higher reliability possible because of mechanical complexity being reduced.
In a relatively few years, the prices will drop below that of new ICE - batteries are getting cheaper, steadily.
So faster, better, cheaper.
Edit: the Cold Fusion comedy was fun for one reason. The pure terror the thought of infinite, clean energy produced in certain people.
I used to car share with Prof in Mechanical Engineering (older than me - in his late 50's or early 60's). He was hugely skeptical about electric cars - a sentiment echoed by many of his colleagues (including the automotive academics). And yet its happening. There are huge challenges - they are not cheap, yet. Recharging is not as easy as slopping in fuel. You sometimes get issues with no being able to access a charge point. Range is not always as good.
But all of those points have answers. Most journeys are under 20-30 miles. You rarely need the range that your current petrol/diesel vehicle has. More chargers are being installed, all the time. I imagine the first petrol cars had similar issues in the early years of the 20th century.
Sometimes people cannot imagine the change - its too big. The pandemic was a bit like that - few people ever imagined anything on the lines of 'lockdown' - shutting down society. Leon thinks AI is another example (I'm skeptical, but maybe I am just playing the role of my car share here?)
Lastly - I still remember the cold fusion story breaking - we were on holiday in Scotland. It genuinely felt like we could be on the verge of something huge. I think there is something going on somewhere, but its more likely to be some weird physics, rather than the way to power the world with seawater.
The price is solely down to the battery, now. And that is falling. The rest of the car and the power train is simple and already efficient.
If you are on the Tesla chargers - it just works. The other setups are crapulent by comparison.
Not long from now, every other lamppost will be a charger. Literally.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
I always thought the (Lib Dem) policy of frequent flyer taxation was a great idea, if enforceable. If you only fly once or twice a year the tax on the flight / APD is low or zero, but it ramps up progressively with each extra flight you take as an individual, or a business takes (based on flights / headcount).
It wouldn't punish "hard working families" taking a summer holiday to the Med but it would ensure the full environmental externality of frequent flying was priced in. The one tricky issue would be people with family abroad - indeed that was a group who suffered a lot during the Covid travel restrictions. But that's the only real objection I can think of.
Whether fair or not, it would be quickly categorised as discriminatory against those with family abroad ... and hence probably racist. My guess is that it would be a substantial vote loser, so no surprise it is LibDem policy
I don't have any objection to it myself, but it seems just as equitable to argue that those flying should just pay the full cost (including the environmental cost) of their flights ....
.... irrespective of whether they are hard working families going to the Med or they are singletons heading for sun and sex in Thailand, or businessmen allegedly doing something vital for British industry, or families in the diaspora.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
I always thought the (Lib Dem) policy of frequent flyer taxation was a great idea, if enforceable. If you only fly once or twice a year the tax on the flight / APD is low or zero, but it ramps up progressively with each extra flight you take as an individual, or a business takes (based on flights / headcount).
It wouldn't punish "hard working families" taking a summer holiday to the Med but it would ensure the full environmental externality of frequent flying was priced in. The one tricky issue would be people with family abroad - indeed that was a group who suffered a lot during the Covid travel restrictions. But that's the only real objection I can think of.
If you're looking from an environmental perspective its an absolutely stupid idea.
The only way to remove the impact that flights have on the environment, is to make flights not impact the environment, by clean technologies.
If you achieve that, you reduce the emissions by flights by 100%. If you don't achieve that, then reducing flights by 1% via austerity and taxation for flights reduces emissions by 1%.
If you're serious about tackling climate change, rather than using it as a fad and excuse to do what you want to do anyway, then only technology is a solution. Taxation, if you're serious about the environment, should be about encouraging clean technologies and discouraging dirty ones - not discouraging consumption.
Where does your 1% figure come from?
Here's a different 1% figure:
"Data also supports that a minor share of air travelers is responsible for a large share of warming: The percentile of the most frequent fliers – at most 1% of the world population - likely accounts for more than half of the total emissions from passenger air travel. "
On topic: It's a bit like back in the 90s and early 00s when ICM would have the Labour lead significantly lower than the likes of MORI, Gallup and NOP.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Rationing long-haul flights is hardly "hairshirt" - there are loads of people who have never been on a long-haul flight in their lives - and seems like a very sensible idea in some form.
Manufacturing aviation fuel from zero carbon sources is already in the trial stage.
Sadly Sky are reporting that there is no clear net zero alternative to jet fuel.
Quite like the reference to guilt free flying. I never feel guilty flying. Far from it.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
There aren't any clean flights. So outlaw dirty flights=outlaw flights. Maybe a good idea, but a bit extreme.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
There aren't any clean flights. So outlaw dirty flights=outlaw flights. Maybe a good idea, but a bit extreme.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
Example - electric cars. Accelerate like a super car. No nasty particulates coming out if the exhaust. Higher reliability possible because of mechanical complexity being reduced.
In a relatively few years, the prices will drop below that of new ICE - batteries are getting cheaper, steadily.
So faster, better, cheaper.
Edit: the Cold Fusion comedy was fun for one reason. The pure terror the thought of infinite, clean energy produced in certain people.
I used to car share with Prof in Mechanical Engineering (older than me - in his late 50's or early 60's). He was hugely skeptical about electric cars - a sentiment echoed by many of his colleagues (including the automotive academics). And yet its happening. There are huge challenges - they are not cheap, yet. Recharging is not as easy as slopping in fuel. You sometimes get issues with no being able to access a charge point. Range is not always as good.
But all of those points have answers. Most journeys are under 20-30 miles. You rarely need the range that your current petrol/diesel vehicle has. More chargers are being installed, all the time. I imagine the first petrol cars had similar issues in the early years of the 20th century.
Sometimes people cannot imagine the change - its too big. The pandemic was a bit like that - few people ever imagined anything on the lines of 'lockdown' - shutting down society. Leon thinks AI is another example (I'm skeptical, but maybe I am just playing the role of my car share here?)
Lastly - I still remember the cold fusion story breaking - we were on holiday in Scotland. It genuinely felt like we could be on the verge of something huge. I think there is something going on somewhere, but its more likely to be some weird physics, rather than the way to power the world with seawater.
The price is solely down to the battery, now. And that is falling. The rest of the car and the power train is simple and already efficient.
If you are on the Tesla chargers - it just works. The other setups are crapulent by comparison.
Not long from now, every other lamppost will be a charger. Literally.
A partially informed observation is that small electric cars for small and medium sized journeys seem a good solution, but big electric cars with big range don't, particularly. You seem to need a much bigger battery to drive that weight of vehicle that range, the weight of which means you need a bigger battery still. This big car may be electric, but it's not particularly environmentally friendly (not least because of the particulates from a big heavy vehicle). I can see a future where, for my family, we only own one car - a small electric - which now the kids are out of car seats we can all fit in comfortably. When we go on a big holiday to Cornwall, we hire a big car for two weeks. Doing this for the four weeks or so a year we need it for will be far cheaper than owning it. Such a future would need car hire arrangements (car clubs?) to be much more flexible than at present though!
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
There aren't any clean flights. So outlaw dirty flights=outlaw flights. Maybe a good idea, but a bit extreme.
A number of planes have been flow on zero carbon sourced fuel. The issue is cost and availability.
Straw in the wind - F1 motor racing is moving to 100% synthetic zero carbon fuel by 2030. Pilot production is running now.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
There aren't any clean flights. So outlaw dirty flights=outlaw flights. Maybe a good idea, but a bit extreme.
There aren't any clean flights, yet. There are clean cars today but weren't in the past.
So start by incentivising it. To start with abolish air passenger duty and replace it with a carbon duty instead.
Which should attract more tax: A flight London to NYC carrying 300 passengers which emits 500kg of CO2
A flight London to NYC carrying 100 passengers which emits 1000kg of CO2
Correct me if I'm wrong but the former will attract three times the duty than the latter, despite the latter proportionately having 6x the emissions per person.
Discouraging long haul flights won't significantly impact the emissions. Encouraging cleaner technologies, until we arrive at Net Zero ones, will though.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
Example - electric cars. Accelerate like a super car. No nasty particulates coming out if the exhaust. Higher reliability possible because of mechanical complexity being reduced.
In a relatively few years, the prices will drop below that of new ICE - batteries are getting cheaper, steadily.
So faster, better, cheaper.
Edit: the Cold Fusion comedy was fun for one reason. The pure terror the thought of infinite, clean energy produced in certain people.
I used to car share with Prof in Mechanical Engineering (older than me - in his late 50's or early 60's). He was hugely skeptical about electric cars - a sentiment echoed by many of his colleagues (including the automotive academics). And yet its happening. There are huge challenges - they are not cheap, yet. Recharging is not as easy as slopping in fuel. You sometimes get issues with no being able to access a charge point. Range is not always as good.
But all of those points have answers. Most journeys are under 20-30 miles. You rarely need the range that your current petrol/diesel vehicle has. More chargers are being installed, all the time. I imagine the first petrol cars had similar issues in the early years of the 20th century.
Sometimes people cannot imagine the change - its too big. The pandemic was a bit like that - few people ever imagined anything on the lines of 'lockdown' - shutting down society. Leon thinks AI is another example (I'm skeptical, but maybe I am just playing the role of my car share here?)
Lastly - I still remember the cold fusion story breaking - we were on holiday in Scotland. It genuinely felt like we could be on the verge of something huge. I think there is something going on somewhere, but its more likely to be some weird physics, rather than the way to power the world with seawater.
The price is solely down to the battery, now. And that is falling. The rest of the car and the power train is simple and already efficient.
If you are on the Tesla chargers - it just works. The other setups are crapulent by comparison.
Not long from now, every other lamppost will be a charger. Literally.
A partially informed observation is that small electric cars for small and medium sized journeys seem a good solution, but big electric cars with big range don't, particularly. You seem to need a much bigger battery to drive that weight of vehicle that range, the weight of which means you need a bigger battery still. This big car may be electric, but it's not particularly environmentally friendly (not least because of the particulates from a big heavy vehicle). I can see a future where, for my family, we only own one car - a small electric - which now the kids are out of car seats we can all fit in comfortably. When we go on a big holiday to Cornwall, we hire a big car for two weeks. Doing this for the four weeks or so a year we need it for will be far cheaper than owning it. Such a future would need car hire arrangements (car clubs?) to be much more flexible than at present though!
Even with current electric car designs, they hover up and filter out more particulates than are created (mainly tires).
A lot of the particulate stuff is an attempt to find a reason that cars evil in the post ICE world, by watermelon greens.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
You're right, future adversity should be countered by measures that also provide future benefits.
The idea that future adversity can or will be countered by measures that remove benefits is completely illogical.
I notice that you failed to answer my question to you before. How do you get to Net Zero by reducing consumption by a small amount. What proportion of global emissions are you talking about removing?
If we want to remove all emissions, net, then are you talking about removing all consumption? No food for anyone? No clothes for anyone? No travel, architecture, steel? No books?
Only clean technologies can get us to zero, reducing consumption can not touch the sides.
I don't claim that we can get to net zero by reducing consumption a small amount. But getting to net zero is likely to involve both technological solutions and lifestyle changes. Long haul flying, in particular, is one area in which net zero is difficult to achieve by technological means, so it seems almost inevitable that there will need to be less of it.
I agree, but there is a dilemma there. We live in a world of diaspora, whether Brits in USA, Middle East, or Australasia; Indians, Philippines, Africans etc here. I am sure that we accept international migration as both fact, and to a greater or lesser extent desirable, but it is unreasonable to expect people to migrate and never see their family again. This isn't the nineteenth century.
My own grandparents moved here in 1932, and only got back "home" to Australia twice in 60 years to visit, but most migrants now wouldn't accept that. A lot of retired folk in Leicester winter abroad, whether Canaries or Gujerat.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
Currently there is no such thing as a clean flight, nor is there likely to be for some time. But a good start on would be to simply tax aviation fuel at the same level as car fuel. That would help to encourage the development of alternatives.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
There aren't any clean flights. So outlaw dirty flights=outlaw flights. Maybe a good idea, but a bit extreme.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
There aren't any clean flights. So outlaw dirty flights=outlaw flights. Maybe a good idea, but a bit extreme.
A number of planes have been flow on zero carbon sourced fuel. The issue is cost and availability.
Straw in the wind - F1 motor racing is moving to 100% synthetic zero carbon fuel by 2030. Pilot production is running now.
Plus it has recently been discovered that contrails are at least as bad as aviation fuel burning; so you can make air travel considerably less dirty just by altering flight plans.
So... Greta Thurnberg. Apparently the climate emergency is so vast that we must all change the way we live, at a vast cost to economies and people's welfare.
Yet wind turbines cannot be built on the land of indigenous peoples in Norway, for ... reasons.
“Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people,” Thunberg told Reuters on Monday."
Why do only the rights of indigenous people matter? Why should any of us suffer by progressing green energy faster than the economy can sustain?
(Dons flameproof coat)
You feel she's insufficiently fanatical? The consensus view among most people concerned about climate change is that we do need to take substantial action including lifestyle changes, but not that absolutely no other considerations can be made. We can argue about whether indigenous rights are important (I'm not much bothered about them, but Scandinavians do tend to feel differently), but it doesn't invalidate her position to concede the need for some exceptions.
Or Welsh Labour's stupid cancellation of the entire road building program.
I'm not arguing against work to prevent climate change; just that we have to pick a pace that doesn't help send people into food and other types of poverty, and allows us to grow and improve as a country and society.
It's probably better to pick a pace that actually avoids disastrous climate change. You don't win a war by dedicating only enough resources that still allow you to "grow and improve as a country and society"; you dedicate enough resources to win it, even if that means some hardship in the short term.
Good. So when people complain about not being able to afford energy bills, or food (growing and transporting food requires energy), you'll accept that these policies have a detrimental effect? Or will it all be the government's fault?
I am not against trying to combat climate change. It's just that we need to balance that with the needs of the people.
Obviously we need to combat climate change in a way that mitigates hardship as far as possible, but in the end the necessary pace needs to be dictated by the desired result rather than the need to avoid inconvenience. Otherwise our epitaph may be, "Sorry we messed up the world kids, but it turned out there was no way that we could stop it without compromising our standard of living." That's not really a good look.
If the world economy grows at ~3.5% per annum, it doubles in size approximately every twenty years. The unpleasant truth is that if we want to tackle climate change in a meaningful way, we need to pursue degrowth, both of the economy, and of the global population. Not only does that mean an inevitable decline in living standards, it also creates a demographic problem for the future - too many old people and not enough bum wipers, essentially.
But moreover, it's also a thoroughly western-centric attitude that says "hey, we got rich burning dead dinosaurs, now, rest of the world, you've got to accept declining living standards even though you never attained western standards of wealth and prosperity". And most of the developing world simply is not going to accept that.
To be honest, the developed world isn't going to accept declining living standards, either. People in democracies aren't going to vote for policies that make them worse off, no matter how well intended.
That leaves technological advancement as our sole route out of this, whether that be carbon capture, fusion technology, even weather control (I know, I stray into the realms of science fiction here). But in any climate change scenario you need to start from the base case that people will not accept declining living standards without voting out / overthrowing their governments, and accept that developing nations will not accept de-growth foisted on them by western powers.
AI is going to make all of this irrelevant in good and bad ways. You’re worrying about the rural economy on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution
AI as we currently have it, LLMs and ChatGPT, won't make our economy greener - the simple fact is that if the world economy doubles in size every 20 years or so, the amount of resources we consume becomes much bigger. AI isn't gonna stop the developing world wanting cars, fast food and air conditioning. Sure, maybe AGI will come along in the next few years and it will be all powerful and all knowing and it will teach us fusion technology and the like in minutes. But belief in the singularity is a little bit of hand waving and faith in an AI god.
Many of the most important technological advancements of the 20th century - the production line, the automobile, etc, did not reduce our impact on the enivronment. Rather, thay made it orders of magnitude worse. Of course, there are some technologies - nuclear power etc - that reduce our impact on the environment. But to suggest that more technology = less environmental impact as the default state simply isn't true...
It's not a default - but clearly technology, and in particular cheap power from renewables, enables all kinds of possibilities. Energy production is at the root of the climate change problem, and will also determine if and how it is solved.
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
Look at the academic literature and you'll see an emerging consensus among the intelligentsia for hair shirts and degrowth. I'm not saying that's right, but I am saying that's where you can see a consensus is emerging.
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The bottom line is that there isn't a hope in hell of selling "you need to be worse off to fight global warmingclimate change the climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.
The idea that future adversity should only be countered by measures that also provide current benefits is completely illogical.
Welcome to human nature.
It's not human nature at all. Most people are prepared to undergo short-term discomfort in exchange for long term benefits for themselves or their children. It's just (?) a matter of selling it properly. Blood, sweat and tears won WW2.
Yeah, because it was easy to sell "we're fighting Hitler, an evil man who wants to kill us".
Climate change is a less immediate but just as real a threat as Hitler was. It's the lack of immediacy that makes selling the need for possibly unpopular measures to counter it difficult, but they are no less necessary.
Here's the thing. Your immense and superior intellect notwithstanding, why do you think it is that the majority (it seems) of people don't share the urgency of your quest to undergo discomfort, or de-grow (yuk)?
People are on the whole well-informed and have all the available facts to hand and have evidently decided that they don't want to do as you say they should.
I mean it is a cheap and hackneyed jibe to point out your fossil fuel usage in posting green comments on an internet chatroom but you could at least set an example by not doing so. Or are you someone (thinking Emma Thompson here) who believes their mission is too important not to engage in the very activities you are counselling against?
I wouldn't say people on the whole are well informed about climate change.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
There aren't any clean flights. So outlaw dirty flights=outlaw flights. Maybe a good idea, but a bit extreme.
A lot of green politics fails to resolve the contradiction between wanting to reduce access to something with a desire to increase equality.
The mistake watermelon Greens make is thinking "something must be done, this is something, so this must be done". Or that people who disagree with their proposed solutions want to see the world burn. Neither is true.
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
Currently there is no such thing as a clean flight, nor is there likely to be for some time. But a good start on would be to simply tax aviation fuel at the same level as car fuel. That would help to encourage the development of alternatives.
There isn't yet, but there will be.
Absolutely I 💯 agree that abolishing air passenger duty and replacing with higher taxes on emissions would encourage the development of alternatives.
That's why talk about reducing flights is such folly. Reducing emissions should be the goal, and if the flight uses less emissions, or can carry more people for same emissions so lower emissions proportionately, then we should be encouraging that.
Comments
Terminator, The Matrix, Ex_Machina...
I don't disagree with your point that massive lifestyle changes will be necessary. I just don't believe that all of them are necessarily going to be negative ones.
The hardest problem, and the one on which least effort has so far been expended, is enabling low impact growth in lesser developed countries.
One revelation that did bug me though. Johnson was apparently in the habit of reading Spectator articles about Covid and then wasting everyone's valuable time floating ideas he got from there.
Once I'd stopped trembling it got me thinking. Should a PM even be allowed to read the Spectator?
This is not a good idea.
My posts are constructed from what mainstream news are saying.
https://news.sky.com/story/windsor-framework-what-role-will-eu-rules-continue-to-play-in-northern-ireland-12822023
https://news.sky.com/story/new-uk-eu-deal-on-northern-ireland-might-not-be-the-slam-dunk-the-pm-is-hoping-for-beth-rigby-12821735
There’s a “they who get to microphones first shape picture of actual thing” that always go on, isn’t there, which we have to take into account on a balanced board like this. Plus of course on this board arn’t just balanced people like me, but spinners who actually are “they who want to get to the microphones first and spin it as an obvious slam dunk”.
Hence my fickle foil for chopping up bs 😇 Like most the stuff you post Wiggy to be honest, as proven fact just by look at your post here, attacking me, discredit me as detached from reality, without any comeback on what I’m actually saying, Because mainstream news saying same as me now. The spin game you are playing bit too transparent isn’t it 😁
Would be good to know for betting purposes whether 27 lead or 14 lead is accurate.
If its the former hard to see even SKS blow that (although May did). If its 14 its all to play for and the NOM is of interest.
Suspect currently its high teens or low 20s but I find it inconceivable come a GE that there wont be a lot of shy Tories return, whether its enough to stop SKS time will tell.
Ideally Corbyn forms a Party and gives Socialists someone to vote for if so I reckon enough would vote for it to split the Lab vote and although it might only end up with 1 seat might foil SKS4PM
So what. They mentioned it, never did it. It's irrelevant.
Even Kevin Maguire couldn't find it in him to rant about it.
Gavin WIlliamson thinks Teachers dont like work. We could have worked that out.
What it does prove is Hancock has pretty poor judgement in trusting Oakshott. He deserves what he has got as a consequence.
I would draw attention to my earlier advice but editorial policy requests that we show due modesty in such matters.
I will therefore remain silent.
https://twitter.com/NavalInstitute/status/1631075489669341184
The idea of rationing petrol, long haul flights, even meat consumption, would have been laughed out of the room even a decade ago. Now, it's an idea that's being taken seriously in academia.
Personally, I think such ideas are borne out of an institutional hatred towards capitalism and an inherent bias against consumption as being bourgeois and decadent. But that doesn't mean these ideas will not be taken very, very seriously by higher ups.
While there are some mitigations, e.g. clean power, circular economy, EVs etc, the fact is the vast majority of the developing world wants a western-style lifestyle and that will necessitate orders of magnitude more consumption in the next 50 years or so.
It's my belief that development of green technologies will not substantially mitigate the massive increase in consumption in developing economies. Then again, nor will wearing hair shirts and reducing our own consumption in the west make a significant impact. This is why, earlier in the thread, I said I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Firstly what is “lead into single figures”? Just one of the pollsters giving Tories the better polls finding just one of 9? Possible but unlikely. Or, as far as we can know actual lead by averaging all polls, come down to single figures. Nope. Not in this parliament.
The average of Tory vote share isn’t getting much above 30% for the rest of this parliament, that means no single digit lead, and probably for quite some time after the next election too.
On interesting side note, is it the gap opened up among pollsters and when they tend to report during month, which creates the saggy boobs and smile faces that now leap up at us from the polling chart?
Idea for new TV show. Oakeshott and Cadwallr are pitted against each other in a quest to defeat a handpicked list of male right wing politicians. What will prevail: the sheer force of FBPE outrage and legal tenacity, or the crafty double dealing of the false friend? Like a modern day fable of the north wind and the sun.
global warmingclimate changethe climate emergency" to the public. The key has always been to find measures that are good for the environment but also have benefits to people and sell those benefits.The big split in the run-up to 1997 was ICM (who I think invented Spiral of Silence) vs. the rest.
The ICM leads were always much lower than the rest- mostly in the high teens/low twenties. That swung back to 12.5% on the day.
So who has the right methodology this time?
https://nationaltoday.com/national-pig-day/
I bloody Love piggies I do
Of course most of the academics banging on about rationing long haul flights would exempt themselves - just had to go to that in person conference in Hawaii, after all I need to be in person to save the world.
I also think that if we cracked nuclear fusion today, and could build all the power plants we need for the entire world in the next ten years, and get a fully circular economy going for commodities (no need to mine anything, just recycle) then some would hate it, absolutely hate it, because you are right - ultimately they hate capitalism.
In a relatively few years, the prices will drop below that of new ICE - batteries are getting cheaper, steadily.
So faster, better, cheaper.
Edit: the Cold Fusion comedy was fun for one reason. The pure terror the thought of infinite, clean energy produced in certain people.
Quite like the reference to guilt free flying. I never feel guilty flying. Far from it.
https://news.sky.com/story/crash-landing-for-dream-of-guilt-free-flying-scientists-find-no-clear-alternative-to-jet-fuel-12821900
I love piggies too.
Zero carbon long haul flights on the other hand are a sensible idea.
Which shows just who might benefit from any "degrowth" initiatives. I'm sure you would applaud a system whereby only those who can afford the extra cost you presumably seek to impose on non-green activities are able to use them while everyone else cannot.
It wouldn't punish "hard working families" taking a summer holiday to the Med but it would ensure the full environmental externality of frequent flying was priced in. The one tricky issue would be people with family abroad - indeed that was a group who suffered a lot during the Covid travel restrictions. But that's the only real objection I can think of.
People are on the whole well-informed and have all the available facts to hand and have evidently decided that they don't want to do as you say they should.
I mean it is a cheap and hackneyed jibe to point out your fossil fuel usage in posting green comments on an internet chatroom but you could at least set an example by not doing so. Or are you someone (thinking Emma Thompson here) who believes their mission is too important not to engage in the very activities you are counselling against?
The idea that future adversity can or will be countered by measures that remove benefits is completely illogical.
I notice that you failed to answer my question to you before. How do you get to Net Zero by reducing consumption by a small amount. What proportion of global emissions are you talking about removing?
If we want to remove all emissions, net, then are you talking about removing all consumption? No food for anyone? No clothes for anyone? No travel, architecture, steel? No books?
Only clean technologies can get us to zero, reducing consumption can not touch the sides.
I am on Australia at 5/11 so hopefully not
The battle of the 35yr old and 37 yr old spinners looks to be crucial
Ashwin needs to match Lyons 8 for in the 2nd innings to give India a chance,
Two great Cricketers 7th and 8th on the all time Test Wickets list. Wonder if either will make 500 before they retire?
Lyons on 479 Ashwin 466 currently
Just like taxing private schools properly, it wont move the votes of 90%+ of the population, but there will be a few percent who are most impacted financially and dead set against it.
The only way to remove the impact that flights have on the environment, is to make flights not impact the environment, by clean technologies.
If you achieve that, you reduce the emissions by flights by 100%.
If you don't achieve that, then reducing flights by 1% via austerity and taxation for flights reduces emissions by 1%.
If you're serious about tackling climate change, rather than using it as a fad and excuse to do what you want to do anyway, then only technology is a solution. Taxation, if you're serious about the environment, should be about encouraging clean technologies and discouraging dirty ones - not discouraging consumption.
For example, thermal depolymerisation of the waste from a chicken processing plant has been proven
Another interesting idea looked at bacteria fed on sewage. You get sewage treatment, with the oil substitute as a bonus
But all of those points have answers. Most journeys are under 20-30 miles. You rarely need the range that your current petrol/diesel vehicle has. More chargers are being installed, all the time. I imagine the first petrol cars had similar issues in the early years of the 20th century.
Sometimes people cannot imagine the change - its too big. The pandemic was a bit like that - few people ever imagined anything on the lines of 'lockdown' - shutting down society. Leon thinks AI is another example (I'm skeptical, but maybe I am just playing the role of my car share here?)
Lastly - I still remember the cold fusion story breaking - we were on holiday in Scotland. It genuinely felt like we could be on the verge of something huge. I think there is something going on somewhere, but its more likely to be some weird physics, rather than the way to power the world with seawater.
I think Ashwin is a better bowler than Lyon though.
Whether you like it or not long haul flying is going to be happening. Getting rid of long haul emissions via clean technologies is a difficult challenge, sure, however getting rid of long haul emissions by preventing flights is impossible.
Once you get rid of the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
If you're serious about removing the long haul emissions from flights the truth is the ONLY solution is clean flights. So get our tax system incentivising clean flights and associated R&D not restricting consumption.
If you are on the Tesla chargers - it just works. The other setups are crapulent by comparison.
Not long from now, every other lamppost will be a charger. Literally.
I don't have any objection to it myself, but it seems just as equitable to argue that those flying should just pay the full cost (including the environmental cost) of their flights ....
.... irrespective of whether they are hard working families going to the Med or they are singletons heading for sun and sex in Thailand, or businessmen allegedly doing something vital for British industry, or families in the diaspora.
And this is much easier to implement.
Here's a different 1% figure:
"Data also supports that a minor share of air travelers is responsible for a large share of warming: The percentile of the most frequent fliers – at most 1% of the world population - likely accounts for more than half of the total emissions from passenger air travel. "
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307779
Tell people not to fly and they'll ignore you. If flights reduce marginally, that won't help the planet.
Tell people to fly on a clean flight and they might. Tax dirty flights so clean flights are cheaper, or outlaw dirty flights so only clean flights happen, and people will take clean flights.
If you're serious about climate change, get serious. Technology is serious, "lifestyle" to beat climate change is like homeopathy to beat cancer.
I can see a future where, for my family, we only own one car - a small electric - which now the kids are out of car seats we can all fit in comfortably. When we go on a big holiday to Cornwall, we hire a big car for two weeks. Doing this for the four weeks or so a year we need it for will be far cheaper than owning it.
Such a future would need car hire arrangements (car clubs?) to be much more flexible than at present though!
Straw in the wind - F1 motor racing is moving to 100% synthetic zero carbon fuel by 2030. Pilot production is running now.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/01/sun-rays-cool-overheating-earth-james-hansen-scientists-letter
Fine and bright here in N Essex.
So start by incentivising it. To start with abolish air passenger duty and replace it with a carbon duty instead.
Which should attract more tax:
A flight London to NYC carrying 300 passengers which emits 500kg of CO2
A flight London to NYC carrying 100 passengers which emits 1000kg of CO2
Correct me if I'm wrong but the former will attract three times the duty than the latter, despite the latter proportionately having 6x the emissions per person.
Discouraging long haul flights won't significantly impact the emissions. Encouraging cleaner technologies, until we arrive at Net Zero ones, will though.
A lot of the particulate stuff is an attempt to find a reason that cars evil in the post ICE world, by watermelon greens.
My own grandparents moved here in 1932, and only got back "home" to Australia twice in 60 years to visit, but most migrants now wouldn't accept that. A lot of retired folk in Leicester winter abroad, whether Canaries or Gujerat.
Yes, that explains it...
There are very few electric planes (or planes which are 'clean') now. But there were very few electric cars 30 years ago. And now there are.
But the technology does need a bit of a kick to arrive.
Absolutely I 💯 agree that abolishing air passenger duty and replacing with higher taxes on emissions would encourage the development of alternatives.
That's why talk about reducing flights is such folly. Reducing emissions should be the goal, and if the flight uses less emissions, or can carry more people for same emissions so lower emissions proportionately, then we should be encouraging that.