These are all good ideas, but the ferocity of change worries me. And I'm the sort of person who thinks climate change is the single biggest policy issue facing our country (and all the other countries) and and spending big $ personally to reduce my impact.
My fear is that we take a big sledgehammer to the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure, and in so doing also take a big sledgehammer to our entire economy. So big in fact that we face a generational backlash against de-carbonizing.
It takes time to make big shifts like this. People can't switch from fossil-dependent careers to renewable-dependent careers in a week, or even a year. We have to ramp up the renewable infrastructure at the same pace we wind down the legacy infrastructure, and in a way that doesn't bankrupt entire towns and even states.
Maybe it's not possible to tackle this without great pain to a lot of people. Maybe if we had a 'Pearl Harbor' type event that galvanized a super majority of americans into action and sacrifice...
I'm pessimistic that we'll have that moment, that we'll change that many minds, or that we'll have the fortitude and resolve to do what must be done.
But I'm glad Inslee is doing what he's doing, and working through the policies we'd need to get there, not just talking about doing "something".
> My fear is that we take a big sledgehammer to the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure, and in so doing also take a big sledgehammer to our entire economy. So big in fact that we face a generational backlash against de-carbonizing.
It still seems like the best solution is a revenue-neutral carbon tax, i.e. a carbon tax which is merely refunded to everyone in the form of a fixed tax credit.
Then the average person pays e.g. $5000 in carbon tax but receives a $5000 tax credit. But the person who burns a disproportionate amount of carbon pays $7000 and still only receives the $5000 credit, meanwhile someone who burns less carbon pays only $2000 and actually turns a profit after the tax credit.
Then we don't need all of this command and control. People have the right incentives, so they buy electric cars and heat pumps and solar panels, and the problem solves itself. The only real thing you have to tweak is the amount of the tax/credit, to adjust the trade off between being too fast/disruptive and too slow/ineffective.
Revenue neutral carbon taxes are a fantasy, because they are pushed by progressive politicians, yet are deeply regressive in their impact.
Inslee admits this, and simply wants to add a new tax, and refund it selectively to people who he thinks deserve the money/access to electricity, and outlaw the use cases which don't.
Purely coincidentally this is the same effect as making the tax system more progressive, but actually it's all about climate change.
> Revenue neutral carbon taxes are a fantasy, because they are pushed by progressive politicians, yet are deeply regressive in their impact.
I don't understand where you're getting that they're regressive. The poor don't have big mansions, they have little studio apartments which take less fuel to heat. They don't drive big SUVs with a single passenger, they take the bus or the subway. They don't travel by air or own stock in oil companies.
But they get the same tax credit as anyone else, so they pay less than average while receiving the same amount. That's not regressive at all, it's a net transfer to the poor.
They also can't just move out of cold climates and buy high-efficiency windows whenever they like. And many of them live in rural places where they do drive inefficient vehicles and have almost no public transportation.
> They also can't just move out of cold climates and buy high-efficiency windows whenever they like. And many of them live in rural places where they do drive inefficient vehicles and have almost no public transportation.
Except that they get a big tax credit with which they can buy high-efficiency windows and a more efficient vehicle. Which then saves them even more in the long run because it remains more efficient indefinitely.
Moreover, the argument you're making is that regions that use more carbon will be impacted more by measures to reduce carbon emissions. No kidding. That's true of any solution. But what does that have to do with income level? If anything it's the opposite -- there are more affluent people in cold places like the Northeast and suburbs with poor mass transit, and more poor people in the South and Southwest where it's warmer and commutes are shorter for the poor because real estate costs less so people can live closer to their jobs.
>Except that they get a big tax credit with which they can buy high-efficiency windows and a more efficient vehicle.
They will? It sounded like people with less efficient vehicles/heating would get smaller tax credits, not larger. So why would they get a big tax credit? It seems to me that the people getting a big tax credit would be those who have no children, live in warm climates, and have modern high-efficiency homes and vehicles. Not sure why anyone would think that includes poor people...
>Moreover, the argument you're making is that regions that use more carbon will be impacted more by measures to reduce carbon emissions.
The argument that I am making is that knowing a person is 'poor' is not sufficient to predict their emissions or amenities, and extrapolating the lifestyle of one poor straw person onto all of them is stupid.
>If anything it's the opposite -- there are more affluent people in cold places like the Northeast and suburbs with poor mass transit, and more poor people in the South and Southwest where it's warmer and commutes are shorter for the poor because real estate costs less so people can live closer to their jobs.
> They will? It sounded like people with less efficient vehicles/heating would get smaller tax credits, not larger.
Everyone gets the same tax credit. It's the people who burn more carbon that pay more taxes. But if you use your tax credit to reduce your carbon footprint to below average, or if it already was, then you're receiving more than you're paying. And buying those things save you money in general (nobody gains from losing heat to poor insulation), so you come out ahead twice, at the expense of Richie Rich now paying twice as much to fly around in a private jet without changing his behavior.
> have no children
You're assuming the children (or their parents) don't get the tax credit. There is no reason that would have to be the case. It should be a fixed amount per-person and children are people.
> The argument that I am making is that knowing a person is 'poor' is not sufficient to predict their emissions or amenities, and extrapolating the lifestyle of one poor straw person onto all of them is stupid.
Then the argument you're making has nothing to do with whether a carbon tax is regressive or not. Finding one poor person with a high carbon footprint doesn't tell you anything about the average. And poor people in general do not consume more resources in absolute terms than more affluent people -- that's nearly the definition of being poor.
> Lol. Maybe facts are actually important here.
Indeed. So who burns more carbon per capita in actual fact, people with more money or people with less money? It would be quite surprising to discover it was the latter. But it isn't:
Poor people are poor. They don't have money to afford things. That's what it means to be poor, and that's who we're talking about when we're talking about poor people.
So it is a matter of definition that poor people cannot afford to decrease their carbon footprint. I've said nothing to compare poor people to affluent, or made any argument dependent upon demographics whatsoever. (In fact, I've been arging that the only thing safe to assume about poor people is that they are poor.) And poor people cannot afford new cars and homes.
Given this, they will not be getting new cars and homes unless someone else pays for them. If you give them a tax credit and then immediately charge them for having inefficient homes/cars, then you haven't changed anything. They still can't afford new cars or homes, because they are still poor. Certainly they will not spend their <$5000 on highly efficient cars and homes.. both because this is not enough money for such things, and because they have more pressing needs to spend that money on.
The only way a tax policy will not be regressive is if you give more money to poor people than to rich people. Giving people discounts for taking specific actions does not achieve this in any way, because rich people always have more options, more easily taken, than poor people.
> I've said nothing to compare poor people to affluent, or made any argument dependent upon demographics whatsoever.
Which is where you're going wrong, because if the tax is structured in this way then who comes out ahead depends entirely on where they are in relation to other people. It's revenue neutral but results in net transfers to those who burn less carbon than average -- and the poor characteristically burn less carbon than average.
> If you give them a tax credit and then immediately charge them for having inefficient homes/cars, then you haven't changed anything.
Poor people start off with lower carbon footprints, because being poor means they had less money to spend burning carbon to begin with. So they start by paying e.g. $2000 in carbon tax while receiving $5000 in credit, leaving $3000 to spend reducing their carbon footprint even more.
> Certainly they will not spend their <$5000 on highly efficient cars and homes.. both because this is not enough money for such things, and because they have more pressing needs to spend that money on.
It is enough, and they're not stupid.
Currently a used hybrid uses e.g. $1000/year less fuel than a different used car that costs $1500 less. If the fuel cost difference doubles to $2000/year but they get a $5000/year credit, they use the first $1500 to trade their car for the hybrid because now it saves them $2000/year, which is more than $1500. The logic of doing this has nothing to do with what else you have to buy; either way it nets you $500 more this year and $2000 more next year.
> The only way a tax policy will not be regressive is if you give more money to poor people than to rich people.
Not so. It is also possible to do it by giving the same amount to everyone while the rich pay more in taxes.
Revenue neutral carbon taxes are the most pro-market, libertarian friendly answer thus far to the reality of climate change. They're pushed by progressive politicians only because of the factual urgency of climate change. The USA can limp along with shitty healthcare forever, but irreversible climate damage is irreversible, and we don't have time for the partisan bullshit.
The high order bit is the complete disengagement from the American right on this issue. The carbon-tax-with-dividend is meant to be table stakes. The onus is on the other side to show up to the table at all.
> It still seems like the best solution is a revenue-neutral carbon tax, i.e. a carbon tax which is merely refunded to everyone in the form of a fixed tax credit.
A revenue neutral carbon tax means that government is dependent for funding for operations (or, if you follow MMP, “is dependent for extracting sufficient money from the economy for the current degree of inflation control”) on continued carbon emissions at the present level.
> A revenue neutral carbon tax means that government is dependent for funding for operations (or, if you follow MMP, “is dependent for extracting sufficient money from the economy for the current degree of inflation control”) on continued carbon emissions at the present level.
Not if the amount of the tax credit in a given year is tied to the amount of revenue the tax generates, i.e. it remains revenue-neutral. Then it automatically phases itself out as less carbon is burned.
Certainly much more feasible than stopping manufacturing of all non-military steel products and asking people to donate steel for manufacturing tools, weapons, and vehicles for WW2.
The issue isn't that it's a huge task. The issue is that the current industries and governments are dragging their feet trying to mik every penny they can from their current dynasty.
> People can't switch from fossil-dependent careers to renewable-dependent careers in a week, or even a year.
Or ever, perhaps. I can no longer remember where, but I recently read an article about a backlash by California Democrats against Green New Deal-type ideas. What stood out was someone saying that the idea of retraining workers for other types of jobs was offensive. If people in the oil and gas industry liked their job, then they ought to be allowed to keep it until they retired.
That's a tough thing. Imagine someone was telling you that you had to change your career because people decided it's no good. What will you do? Put your life on hold and go retrain for something you never intended to train for? Possibly (probably) earn less? Potentially need to move for work? It's complicated.
I think it needs to happen. The US and Canada both spend major subsidies on oil and gas, and that money would do wonders in supporting and retraining these works. However, we'd need a very good plan and very good acceptance of it amongst the work force and tax payers. This would all be incredibly expensive. People would resent the retraining because it would cost tax payers to benefit a small subset of people, while less oil production equals higher prices for... Everything. People would be very upset, both workers and citizens.
It's going to be so hard to get people on the same page. I hope the disasters that push us to act aren't too awful.
Do we also need to ensure jobs for carriage makers?
If we do a green new deal type of thing, I think it will work out in aggregate. There will be a massive increase in training for people to work on the manufacturing/installation of renewable energy production and another large need for engineers to design the new manufacturing components, electrical grid, and the large scale installations. Many manufacturing and installation jobs for fossil fuels will be lost but many similar jobs will also be created with renewables.
We generally seem to be ok with saying "eh, screw em" when people's livelihoods become obsolete. I don't see why this should be any different, given the stakes.
Just for perspective, coal mining employs about half as many Americans as Whole Foods. That’s one specialty grocery chain. The amount of attention given to coal miners is absurd.
It's much the same here in BC, Canada. Mines, forestry, fishing - different resource extraction jobs have fluctuated enormously over the last century and we effectively have ghost towns all over. Some places look absolutely dead and you wonder why anyone lives there. At one point, most of them were booming. The gold rush was probably the original boom, and from there many others stemmed. Forestry is probably the most tragic, long-tailed bust in this province though.
The market does this anyways in the energy industry: oil people don’t have jobs when oil prices are low, my dad was in nuclear and got hit in the late 80s (didn’t need to retrain, but his career was stagnate until retirement).
I see your point. You don't want to wallop an entire industry but at some point it kind of has to happen.
"The second piece is phasing out fossil fuel production more broadly. Inslee would establish a “Presidential Commission on Energy Transition” (including the secretaries of several federal agencies) that will be “tasked with identifying and setting in motion the implementation of federal policies to phase out domestic fossil fuel production.” The commission will have a special focus on a “just transition” for fossil fuel workers and communities."
My biggest concern here. Hope it is more comprehensive than this vox outline.
Incrementalism is definitely safer, but it also doesn't work because every 4-8 years, global warming fans take over and unwind all the incremental improvements that have been made and kick us further down the slope towards complete disaster. Observe how in the US renewables investments and climate progress are being undone while the current political leaders are talking about bringing back coal. No amount of incremental progress will help if that stuff happens repeatedly. We have to fix it soon and fix it thoroughly so that our incremental progress doesn't just get undone in 4-8 years while the rest of the world is still sorting out their part of the climate crisis.
Thirty years is a long time. Think about how different the economy was in, say, 1930 compared to 1900. Or 1840 to 1870. How much fossil fuel infrastructure lasts for thirty years? We could almost do it by just using the natural replacement cycle.
This right here is why nothing will happen and we're hosed.
> It takes time to make big shifts like this.
We have 11 years to cut global CO2 emissions by 50%, and even that may not be enough.
> Maybe it's not possible to tackle this without great pain to a lot of people.
That might have been possible if we'd started in earnest 30 years ago. Now, we have a choice between serious lifestyle discomfort in the short term or famine and death in the long term. I expect we'll opt for our grandchildren's generation to starve.
CO2 has already dropped by nearly 20% in the US over the past decade naturally, as renewables becoming cheaper and buildings, appliances, and manufacturing becomes more efficient.
Your second chart shows China appears to be leveling off, at a total level that is a little less that twice the total US emissions.
Since they have more than 4x the US population, that means they have quite a bit lower per capita emission, which is a more useful metric than total emissions when assessing how well a country is addressing the issue, since the atmosphere doesn't care about arbitrary political boundaries.
China also produces much less per capita for that emission. A better metric is productive output per unit of emissions. The metric that matters isn't the per capita emissions but the amount of value generated relative to emissions.
Productive output by what measure? Probably the most immediately obvious choice would be GDP, but upon closer examination I don't think that works.
By that measure, using a given amount of emissions running a factory that builds expensive, fossil fuel burning luxury boats for rich playboys is better than using that same emissions to provide winter heat for public schools.
Another problem with using a measure of productive output is that it screws developing counties. As I said earlier, the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary political boundaries.
There is some global maximum emissions per year that we can allow if we want to keep climate change from getting out of hand. If we make each country's share of that global pool proportional to their productive output, we are in effect saying that the rich countries get to continue to take advantage of cheap high emission things (like coal), and the poor counties have to forego that for clean but more expensive things, because there is a pretty good correlation between the wealth of a country and its productivity.
Since the rich countries are, to a large extent, rich because they exploited those cheap but dirty resources before we knew how harmful that was, it seems to make more moral sense for the rich countries to have to clean up first and/or subsidize the costs to poor countries of going clean.
Probably what would be better would be to figure out the total worldwide emissions allowed per year, allocate that among countries on an equal per capita basis, and allow countries to trade their shares.
> Unfortunately none of the US/EU cuts will matter in the end with the track China is on.
There's an obvious solution to this. Carbon tariffs.
If Trump can tariff China for largely nationalistic, non-sense, sore-loser reasons, we almost certainly have the ability to tariff China with actionable reasons (Reduce your carbon emissions, and we will lift the tariffs.)
Unfortunately, we actually need to reduce our emissions (Or apply similar penalties to domestic polluters), before we can do something like that.
> Now, we have a choice between serious lifestyle discomfort in the short term or famine and death in the long term. I expect we'll opt for our grandchildren's generation to starve
It's statements like this, which are completely absurd, which are hindering our progress of making meaningful change.
Please stop using armegeddon like language to describe climate change. It doesn't help if you sound like a crazed cultist.
I heavily disagree with your rather mild assessment of climate change. As an example, I suggest you look at the drought in India in 2019 [0], its effects on South Africa [1], and its role in the Syrian crisis. [2]
> It's statements like this, which are completely absurd, which are hindering our progress of making meaningful change.
Only the degree of certainty of the statement is exaggerated. The content is well within any reasonable scenario-planning approach. Near-term catastrophe may not be the most likely outcome, but on all accounts it is likely enough to be the most genuinely alarming threat we've yet faced. You may not like the tone, but surely you can muster the courage to set aside your personal taste with regard to something so important?
Yikes, this and your previous comment are bannable offences on HN. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines, and sticking to the spirit of this site when posting here? We're hoping for a bit better than internet median: thoughtful, substantive comments, basically.
We tiptoed around these issues for years, using names like "global warming" and "climate change". It's time we started using the right names: we are in a crisis and we have an impending catastrophe.
Funny, that you say that.
I actually think, policy based deprecation is the biggest possible boost the economy could get.
Think CDs Vs Vinyl, VHS to DVD.
Or more on point: Catalytic converters.
Having to buy new stuff drives the economy, being content with "what works" throttles it (e.g. mobile devices, laptops).
Sure, there might be a backlash, but it's not like there isn't any opposition now.
Being to cautious (i.e. slow) bears the risk that people resist change because you are slowly (ergo constantly) changing things, and they don't see the benefit of the policy change.
I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure it's analogous. Lets say the cost of gasoline triples in the next 5 years because we're killing all subsidies, ending federal leases, etc., enough to justify everyone to make investments in electric cars. We literally can't make them fast enough. Making a million CDs was easy, but our heavy industries take a lot longer to tool up. Tesla is struggling to scale their supply chain, and they're consuming almost half the world's battery supplies right now to make a few hundred thousand cars per year.
And that's just cars - not including semi-trucks, farm equipment, buses, trains, shipping, etc.
Best case we need a decade to start manufacturing those things at scale and two decades to manufacture them at a pace that can start replacing all the existing vehicles. That's a long time for anyone stuck paying for gas.
And it's a similar situation for the Electricity sector, Cement and construction, and dozens of other industries that emit carbon. It's a really complicated transition - far more than switching media formats.
Making a million CDs involved building entire new factories to meet demand. Making a lot more electric vehicles could reuse a lot more existing factories (and/or recently shuttered factories) if demand shifted enough away from internal combustion to retool a lot of existing lines in place. The difference between an EV and an ICE car on the factory floor are fewer than between a cassette tape and CD.
Whether or not, say, Detroit is still capable of making a rapid shift to such a demand change is certainly a new question, and indeed supply chains would have to follow. On the other hand, again, the supply chains are a lot closer between EVs and ICE Vehicles, and if anything EV supply chains are simpler on paper with one big exception (batteries). But that big exception is one that is already busy scaling drastically and generally seems to know how to scale to demand (because it touches so many other industries such as computing).
It's a chicken-and-egg nightmare, certainly, that heavy industries aren't going to scale it unless they have no other choice, and the reasons to give them no other choice may have some transitional hiccups. That said, the capability to make that rapid shift is theoretically in a really strong place, we have the technology and wherewithal if we made it a priority.
The real issue here is that there is a natural market replacement rate. You sell a million cars a year even though there are 25 million of your cars on the road. That means it will take 25 years to replace all of the cars even if you switch 100% to the new type. If you want to replace them all in 15 years then you would have to sell below cost in order to induce more than the typical amount of demand for new cars.
So replacement at the natural rate is economical, replacement at a faster rate gets expensive quickly. To do that you have to force people to replace cars they otherwise wouldn't have, which either means more subsidies (expensive) or taxes (expensive), or both. On top of that it requires the resources spent on the existing car to be lost when it gets removed from service before its natural end of life, and it causes you to have to build excess manufacturing capacity to build more than the natural amount of new cars, which then goes idle and has to be written off once all cars are of the new type and the measures to artificially stimulate demand are discontinued.
All this to say that it's quite important that the transition starts now with as many electric vehicles as possible, because the more we do now the less we have to compress the timeline later and pay all of these costs.
I think that's part of what I was getting it: that precisely because it would be a useful challenge for our somewhat complacent heavy industries, it may be something useful to force their hands, because they probably aren't likely to do it until it is too late unless forced. Because it would be a challenge isn't a reason not to force it. It's a "Moon shot" problem, we can go to the moon this decade, but we need to be forced.
The problem right now is that carbon isn't priced and there consequently isn't much incentive for individual companies to do it at all, much less right away. Change that and there is suddenly much more demand for new vehicles that don't burn carbon, at which point industry knows perfectly well how to manufacture to meet market demand.
I agree. We should have been taxing carbon as far back as at least the 70s around when the idea was first proposed. Establish cap and trade then too if we are asking for ponies that were PRed to death by business men to avoid externalities.
I've personally made the following investments to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide I'm directly emitting -- and these are the sorts of things we'll need millions of people to do in the coming years:
* 6kw of solar panels (no A/C): $22,000
* Powerwall batteries to power house when not sunny: $18,000
* Whole house insulation as part of remodel: $15,000
* Conversion of all kitchen appliances from gas to electric: $5000
* Replace gas water heater with electric heat pump: $3-4000
* Electric car: $30k+ (mine was $50+)
The remaining gas-powered appliance in the house in our furnace, which I'll get to replacing in the next few years (est $15k) - at which point we'll probably also have a second electric car, and need to increase our solar production as well to keep up.
How many people can afford the above list for their homes? In 10 years if the above items cost half what they do now, how many can afford it then? How many landlords are going to make these investments for rental properties?
The transition we face is potentially economically stimulating (there's a lot of stuff to replace!), but also has really high up-front costs (and sunk costs) that will have to be managed. This goes both for national infrastructure all the way down to people's homes.
Pretty much nobody can afford to do that. At best you could stop selling new gas appliances and gas cars at some point and then wait 20 years for the old ones to naturally fall out of use. But a corollary is that you have to slowly ramp up carbon prices over 20 years.
But I think part of why you were accused of short term thinking here is that if we don't spend the carbon to build things like solar panels now, we'll never move off a carbon economy. We have to accept that manufacturing of anything isn't entirely green right now, but the solar panels we make now will enable the next solar panels to be built with less carbon, which will enable the next batch to be built with less carbon, etc.
Carbon will power the innovations that get us off carbon - no way around that. But we still have to do it so we can get to that end state where entire supply chains are electrified with renewable energy.
To add to this, which I think is entirely correct, it took the effects of spending on arming for WW2 that finally brought the world out of the Great Depression. Unemployment went down and the economy surged. The US New Deal helped but it wasn't nearly enough.
Edit: Is this controversial somehow? I thought it pretty standard and well known history.
There's an old remark: "Recession and depression are the easiest things in the world to cure -- just print money.".
The cause of our recessions and depressions was suddenly too little money. That is, a lot of money was destroyed. How? When the banks, etc. got in trouble, the multiplier effect enormously reduced the money supply.
Soooooo, have some new regulations on reserve ratios, etc. for banks and then print the missing money. The new regulations will keep the banks, etc. from using the newly printed money and the multiplier effect to create too much money and inflation.
Many millions of people died before these ideas were accepted.
How to print money? One way is for the Federal Reserve to buy bonds from the US Treasury. Then the Treasury has the money and the Federal Government can spend it, e.g., on roads, bridges, dams, etc. Another way is for the Federal Reserve to loan money to the member banks, and the banks loan the money to people who want to buy houses, cars, commercial buildings, etc.
How did WWII get us out of the Depression? Once people started shooting at us, we were willing to print money for the war. But we printed about the right amount since after the war we didn't have massive inflation.
The US Government started printing money as you say for government projects as early as 1930, 12 years before the war. Hoover dam for example. So are you saying it takes 12+ years for your theory to work? Also, how many millions more have died due to over-printing of money? MMT is a disaster waiting to happen because at the end of the day Credit=Trust and you can only borrow so much before you lose that trust. Trust is everything and debt is an incursion.
They printed money starting in 1930? Yup, the dam. But they didn't print enough.
And Bernanke didn't print enough fast enough -- we were in the Great Depression for about 12 years and nearly that long in the Great Recession. Bummer.
You are correct about the threat of inflation. But we know how to stop inflation: Reduce the money supply, e.g., by raising interest rates. Then the member banks will return their loans from the Fed.
So MMT stands for <i>modern monetary theory</i>? Uh, I tend to avoid any theories from economists and stay with simple observations.
If you look at debt between 1920 and 1945 you see that between 1940 and 1945 the war economy resulted in private and corporate debt replaced almost entirely by Federal government debt.
After 2008 the Chinese government dealt with falling demand and exports by building 10,000km of high speed rail network.
In either case despite dire predictions of economists the sky didn't fall in.
Also riddle this: The US spent about 2% of gdp to send a dozen men to the moon. And the sky didn't fall in either.
The US can certainly spend a couple of single digits worth of GDP on renewables without everything falling apart.
> The US can certainly spend a couple of single digits worth of GDP on renewables without everything falling apart.
Yup, not everything would "fall apart". Yup.
But 50 projects each taking just 2% of GDP would take 100% of GDP! 2% of GDP is a lot, e.g., what the NATO countries are supposed to have been spending on defense but long didn't.
Let's see: IIRC Trump is spending about $807 billion a year on defense, and just now from Google the US GDP per year is about $19.39 T. Sooooo,
100 * 807 / 19,390 = 4.162
says that we are spending just over 4% of GDP on defense. So, a "couple of single digits", i.e., if I read you correctly, would be 2% of GDP and about half of defense -- definitely not small potatoes.
I have a friend with a lot of money in a family with a lot of money. Whenever anyone asks him to spend some of his money, his first question is "Why should I?". Without a good answer, he doesn't.
I was super happy to see this article and excitedly opened up the HN comments. Really disappointed by these comments.
What is unscientific or extreme about Inslee's position?
Ending fossil fuel subsidies does not mean fossil fuels are disappearing overnight. It means that the prices on fossil fuel derivatives will reflect their true prices, and consumers and the free market will adjust their consumption accordingly.
Don't feel sorry for the status quo. It has plenty of momentum, lobbyists, and big money to keep going the way it's going.
Inslee proposes to shift government incentives to what we wish to see more of. The fact that the technology does not exist now, is an even STRONGER reason to provide government incentives and deadlines for R&D.
How we get on the moon in a decade? A leader shared a vision. People had the courage to believe and make it happen.
We should EXPECT positive change and big vision from our leaders. Don't give up on the system!
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” ― Alice Walker
Agreed on probably all points. Though I’m reasonably convinced that the technology does exist.
On price, oil prices have a significant, direct, and negative effect on market productivity. We could actually put ourselves into a depression by raising prices highly. This is both a reason to get ourselves off fossil fuels ASAP and a hurdle to doing so.
Politically, possibly the strongest and quickest change to the political system in the US would be passing the side stepping of the electoral college system across the states. It’s already over half way there. The House is more responsive to the democratic vote than the senate. The electoral college is the undemocratic influence on the President. So that change would make the 2/3rds of the federal government more democratic than current.
My feelings exactly. Depressing to see so many smart people here on HN saying "We need to do something about climate change!" But then when a presidential candidate rolls out an ambitious, comprehensive, soup-to-nuts proposal that fixes the problem, they say "No, not like that!"
I want clean energy as much as the next guy, probably more (it's one of my top concerns). But plans like this are extremely naive. I agree, we need to get the of fossil fuels as fast as possible. But very few articles like this mention what we'd replace it with. Wind, solar, and hydro are all fantastic, but hydro is the only one that can produce constant output. It is also difficult to throttle the other two and bring up demands for surge. There's a big reason fossil fuels are still around and it isn't just politicians lining their pockets (not denying this is happening) and big oil conspiracies.
The fact of the matter is we don't have the technology to replace it. Batteries aren't just there yet. Can we wait for them and hope? I'm not convinced considering we needed to start building things decades ago. I'm pro nuclear because of this, because it's the only current technology that can be built anywhere (yes, this is a major issue) and can throttle output. But people are scared of it. It deserves the fear, but what should be scarier is it's basically the safest form of energy we have. But it is also expensive and we can't just pretend that we'll get economies of scale right away.
So what do we do? I think we push out fossil fuels as fast as possible. We heavily invest in battery tech. We minorly relax nuclear regulations to allow us to build newer generation reactors that are safer and hopefully cheaper. We go harder at researching fusion. And most importantly, we dump a lot into sequestration research. I think this is a safe bet, but it is still a bet. It's not a fool proof plan but it diversifies the portfolio and reduces risk of failure. But it'll be costly. Definitely not as expensive as a mass extinction event, but costly. And it is hard to get people to realize costs from an existential crisis.
I mean look at the article. When we talk about climate we still aren't listening to the scientists and are talking past one another. So what do we do?
Thermal solar can produce constant output. As can any system with sufficient storage capacity, be it battery or otherwise.
It seems like most critiques of alternate energy come from a place of ignorance about alternative energy. No offense, it's just frustrating to hear people say "I care so much!" and then they don't even understand the basic landscape about which they claim to be so deeply concerned.
It also seems to be the one area of technology where people suddenly lose all capacity to understand that technology changes, that the solutions we have today are not the solutions we will have tomorrow, and more investment always leads to more solutions. So many prefer to throw their arms up and say "It's impossible! Sometimes the wind doesn't blow so we're doomed!"
Problem with solar thermal is the cost of PV solar and wind has dropped so far it'd be cheaper to just heat your molten salt reservoir with electricity from PV or Wind. Worst case you get 50% of the energy back. Which means you only need to resell the stored power at ~2X plus overhead and capital costs to make a profit. Out of my kiester make it 2.5X then.
Buying PV solar for $50/MWH during the day and reselling it for $125MWH at night seems like a perfectly reasonable business model.
Much as I dislike reflexive 'free markets will solve all our problems' this seems like a case where that would work 'fine'.
Okay, but I'm a scientist and I do interact with climate scientists.
I specifically addressed your storage capacity comment. Be realistic, we just aren't there YET. We're close, but not there as of the writing of this comment. Energy is extremely complex. There is no easy solution like you're suggesting. Solar thermal won't work everywhere in the US. Wind doesn't work everywhere either.
I'm tired of people that counter nuanced comments by saying "you're so dumb. Here's a singular technology that'll solve all those problems. You're clearly not as smart as me." I'll give you a hint, no singular technology is ever going to solve all the energy problems. People live in vastly different climates. These different areas have very different constraints on them.
And in no way is my comment anywhere close to throwing up my arms and saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's difficult. Really REALLY difficult.
So yes, I do take offense. Everything you wrote is specifically addressed. For example I said we can't bet on batteries solving the problem, hence the hedge to nuclear (but also putting more funding into battery research). It's an all your eggs in one basket problem. You need to diversify. I don't know any energy or climate researcher that doesn't think you don't need to diversify. Or a single one that thinks we can solve the problem with current solar (including solar thermal), wind, hydro, and current battery technology. Not a single one.
I'm not saying we're doomed (come on, that's a really disengenuous statement and I expect better out of HN). But I am saying that this is a really difficult and complex problem that millions of man hours a year are being put into and we still haven't solved it. It isn't some conspiracy that's preventing it from being solved, it is the difficulty of the problem. Every day we get a little closer (and it is a converging solution) but it's naive to claim we have it solved, even in the theoretical sense.
So please, if you're going to call people naive doomsayers, please actually read the comments you are responding to, digest them, and do talk to the actual scientists.
You're so dumb here is a multitude of technologies that will work in concert that'll solve all those problems: lithium batteries, polymer and vanadium based flow batteries, thermal storage, compressed air storage (both offshore and onshore), power2gas(hydrogen and methane), not burning natural natural gas until needed(oh a classic!), hydro dams, conventional pumped hydro and hydraulic hydro, gravity battery cranes.
The solutions are out there if we put the money into it. It's that simple. The only thing needed is really battery technology which research had been promising. We put a man on the moon in less than a decade doing all calculations by hand and doing all physical testing. All that's needed is funding and the drive.
> The solutions are out there if we put the money into it.
If you're suggesting with putting that money into research and solving the problems then yes, I 100% agree (not sure how this wasn't conveyed in my post. In fact every time I post something like this I'm surprised people still respond this way. What am I doing wrong?). If you're saying with existing technology well... maybe. But I'm assuming the former because of the moon analogy (where we had to invent a lot of stuff).
What I was saying was that there's a lot of research and prototypes already available for battery tech and they just need funding to put into production. The batteries are the last mile to clean energy for evening out the supply. Is a problem that's 90% solved and will make clean energy wholly viable. The issue isn't the tech, it's the commitment to admitting we're in a bad spot as a civilization and actually doing something about it rather than half hearted handwavy attempts to keep dirty energy in business as long as possible.
Again, how am I conveying that I'm only pointing out problems? I literally ended my OP with a scenario of how I'd go about it with a diversified energy and research portfolio. At this point I feel like others are putting words in my mouth and ignoring 90% of my statements. It is very hard to have discussions where people are arguing with points I agree (or mostly agree) with.
As to the mostly agree part, yes, 90% there. But that last 10% is hard. And the other part is that we don't just need to be carbon neutral, we need to be carbon negative. It also needs to become cheap enough that other countries can implement these technologies. On these two points I wouldn't say we're 90% there, but maybe 60%.
After 40 years of concern trolling (aka FUD), I'm fresh out of goodwill. Any one still not 100% onboard is the rump of the loyal opposition, or serves it, by default or design.
PS- Thread is arguing PV & batteries, problems which wind and direct current will solve. Just assume smart people have already figured this stuff out and you're not in the loop. Remaining obstacles are wholly political.
There’s a link between market growth and oil prices and production. Ie higher prices mean lower growth and vice versa. Meanwhile, renewables can conceivably grow at whatever rate we decide to fund. Sure, there’s only so much sun or wind power available, for instance, but not so much for nuclear. The upper limits are also pretty high. Moving to renewables should open up greater growth than staying on fossil fuels in the longer term.
There is no shortage of energy storage technologies. I don't know where this idea comes from. There is a lack of commercialisation of those technologies because you can't make a profit if your competitor is being subsidized for destroying the environment.
Change the word "plan" with "dream" and the article looks a lot less like a one-sided editorial.
Articles like this start off from the angle of "we should do this" and in my opinion that's a BS way to frame a news story. Fossil fuels, especially natgas, serve a very specific function and the idea of putting the US at a disadvantage just so we can pat ourselves on the back as the rest of the world beats us in energy is ludicrous.
The rest of the world is already beating us on energy. We are winning a game that is already over. We can keep patting ourselves on the back for generating and using so many fossil fuels so very well, or we can admit that a new game has started and get our asses on the field to compete.
Seems like the whole world is getting ahead of the US with all this feet dragging. That's the real disadvantage. Every major issue the country faces, the answer is "well it's a lot easier to just sweep this under the rug because I have an election coming up and gives I can upset so let's just not do anything about this". And now every corner of the US is crumbling, from healthcare to infrastructure.
I would go further and lower the voting age to 16 and not let anybody over 60 vote. Call it undemocratic, call it a violation of rights but theyre not going to be here when shit hits the fan and they're going to vote accordingly and in doing so they will prevent anybody under 18 from making it to their age on a planet that anywhere near resembles the one they have devoured. That's an even more egregious violation of rights but nobody talks about it because there can be no accountability. Like putting a bag a flaming shit on somebody's doorstep and then running. Rather keep the shit where it is now then step in it later, thank you.
Just saw an episode of American Pickers where they at some guys farm going through all of his 1920's era car collection. There was a little side part where they talked about how common electric cars were in the late 1880's and early 1900's before Henry Ford and the discovery of Texas oil.
Made me think about where we could be if we had not made the wholesale switch to gas powered cars and instead focused on building a more cost effective electric car.
> before Henry Ford and the discovery of Texas oil
There is a book called Internal Combustion which claims that Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were working together on an electric car but that in 1914 Edison's battery facility was destroyed in a massive blaze of very suspicious origin. With this setback and the beginning of WWI, the electric car was lost. You can read that book and make your own conclusions, of course :)
Imagine the wonderful world we could be living in if someone had banned personal cars? Instead of roads everywhere we would have parks on instead, places for kids and adults to exist. Instead of urban sprawl we could have had walk able and cyclable cities, with a lot less pollution. Instead of 40,000 dead every year in the US we could have them living. Instead of 100,000s seriously injured, we could close down hospitals. Etc...
unfortunately Inslee doesn't seem to have the fortitude to defy the DNC's ban on "outside" (uncontrolled?) climate debates. and for good pragmatic reason, imo: the DNC could probably ruin his future political career.
I am hoping for something which might have similar effects: that the EU will get its act together first and implement a carbon taxation scheme, imposing tariffs on imports from countries that do not implement a carbon tax.
The US, unfortunately, seems to be in denial of the climate crisis. I wonder if in 30 years we will be putting todays climate deniers in courts (like the Nuremberg trials) for crimes against humanity.
It doesn't have to be just the US - the sanctions can be against any country which continues to subsidize fossil fuels, equal to the amount of their subsidies.
There is a reason that candidates likes this are all at the margin - they never consider the second order effects of their ideas. While his goal may be laudable, it would harm way more people than it would help.
Let’s look at a couple simple things that getting rid of oil production would impact. (and keep in mind I’m keeping this short because typing on a mobile device sucks)
1 - price of electricity would go up (due to fuel costs)
2 - price of concrete would go up (due to both carbon usage and energy usage)
3 - price of steel would go up (probably way up due to the energy Use)
4 - price of plastic would go up (because of higher material cost)
Other third-order effects would happen too:
5 - price of food would go up (because of higher fuel and material cost)
6 - housing costs would rise (due to energy costs and things like PVC which make up huge portions of any modern plumbing system)
7 - inflation would rise (due to energy, food, and materials price increases)
And it just gets worse, hitting those on a budget or low income especially hard.
Again, the ideas may be laudable, but changes like this take decades - like 5+ decades, not just one or two.
Those prices going up is necessary and good. It creates a huge market pressure against all activities (including stuff like food sources) that produce a lot of carbon.
If it damages our atmosphere to create a steel, then that factor NEEDS to be accounted for and COMPENSATED for at steel creation. Fortunately, in addition to driving down the appeal of high-pollution foods/materials, it'll also stimulate the market for green solutions by pumping huge financial incentives in.
Does this mean life is harder for the poor? Yes. That's why proposal like this or green-new-deal often have a plan for that too.
We are already paying those higher prices. We’re just paying a lot of it in economically inefficient ways, though damage to the ecosystem and to people’s health. Getting people to pay for them with money would be better.
> Easy solution. Prices go up, people get more money.
Uh,it doesn’t work that way. If it did, Zimbabwe would rule the planet with their hyperinflation that your line of thinking created for them.
The missing piece - the money has to come from SOMEWHERE. Look in your wallet - where is that going to come from? I know in my wallet, I’m going to have to cut back on something - probably eating out. So now the restaurants near my house are going to have less business. Some of them will probably cut back on the hours of the waiters, or even let them go. Unemployment goes up. Etc.
These things have to be done over longer time horizons. People do not adapt well to dramatic short-term changes. If they did, then 2008 would have been just another year, instead of tagged with “global financial crisis”.
Fossil fuel will be phased out when economically rational. Look at what natural gas did to carbon emissions in the US [0]
Some Gov intervention may accelerate the change. But overall I’m weary of their efforts.
[0] “Natural gas, which emits about half the amount of CO2 as coal, is being used more extensively due to its lower price and is displacing coal-fired generation...” https://www.c2es.org/content/u-s-emissions/
Uh... it's already economically rational... It's called a "negative externality" and the economic consensus is that the correct way to make a market efficiently operate is by applying a tax on those who generate "negative externalities" (i.e. damage the world around them) that can offset the damage.
This is very basic and undisputed economics, so I'm not sure why you're waiving that phrase around.
A tax would have to be enforced globally to be effective. Are you advocating for an International tax collector?
To add to that, you could be the arbiter of “negative externalities” since you have such a good handle on theoretical economics. You could then use your authority to tax and save the world.
Just want to say I’m very thankful you are here to share your intelligence via undisputed and very basic facts. I didn’t know reality was so black and white until you showed up. Thank you!
Since the US only accounts for about 15% of global CO2 emission, even if through some political miracle all of this plan came to pass, it wouldn't slow down global warming very much.
We need solutions that will actually scale to be adopted by the whole planet. That means we need to make wind and solar cheaper, or possibly figure out how to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Any solution that costs a whole lot of money and involves no technological innovation isn't going to work.
Wow this is the first time I've seen this argument used for the USA. "Only" 15% of global emissions - out of 195 countries. It's still the world's second biggest emitter - I think it would slow down global warming a lot if the US cut emissions.
Usually this argument is trotted out in Australia, which is responsible for 1% of global emissions.
We need both! In the meantime, I like the idea of ending subsidies for fossil fuels since it incentivizes building a moonshot technology that everyone can adopt, and curbing our reliance on them so that we have time to build better technology.
Inslee’s plan sounds like a door in the face technique to rile up extremist support. Who wants the nation to be heavily reliant on imports while the world develops alternatives? Besides our friends the Russians, Saudis, Iranians, and Venezuelans of course.
It’s possible but entirely impractical, in the same way that removing all plastic from one’s household is possible.
The problem is that there is no real solution. All of these plans involve ripping fossil fuel dependency out by its roots and just hoping that we have something to replace it.
The end result will be skyrocketing prices that only the wealthy can afford and a broken economy. I can't imagine any politician even thinking about sponsoring this as the devastation will be linked to them by their political rivals for many years to come.
It's only being used as a talking point right now to get votes.
How are we going to replace gasoline based cars in the US, when there is no infrastructure setup? We should concentrate on this first.
My fear is that we take a big sledgehammer to the fossil fuel industry and infrastructure, and in so doing also take a big sledgehammer to our entire economy. So big in fact that we face a generational backlash against de-carbonizing.
It takes time to make big shifts like this. People can't switch from fossil-dependent careers to renewable-dependent careers in a week, or even a year. We have to ramp up the renewable infrastructure at the same pace we wind down the legacy infrastructure, and in a way that doesn't bankrupt entire towns and even states.
Maybe it's not possible to tackle this without great pain to a lot of people. Maybe if we had a 'Pearl Harbor' type event that galvanized a super majority of americans into action and sacrifice...
I'm pessimistic that we'll have that moment, that we'll change that many minds, or that we'll have the fortitude and resolve to do what must be done.
But I'm glad Inslee is doing what he's doing, and working through the policies we'd need to get there, not just talking about doing "something".