We did not simply make "behavioral choices". Whole swathes of humanity were ordered indoors! It was achieved at untold cost (actually, much greater than the trillions of dollars that have been given away already by governments) that will be paid by generations to come. Only people who were lucky to hold a job that wasn't affected made a conscious decision to cut down.
I am willing to bet that come 2022 or so, emissions will rebound and exceed peaks as people 'catch up' on travel, including simply visiting near and dear ones, that they have missed out on.
This is just evidence of what we already know: our current society is unsustainable.
> will be paid by generations to come
I think you're pretty optimistic about how the future will develop given that we have not only just demonstrated our society is unsustainable, but that we are not capable of making serious progress towards a sustainable society.
Large portions of are planet are soon to become uninhabitable by humans. Major disruptions in our food supply are likely not that far off. The idea that we need to get back to "business as usual" means these things are all the more certain.
You should spend some time researching the estimated carrying capacity of the Earth for humans without fossil fuels.
Last I check most agreements were around 1 billion people. We’ve artificially bumped that up with an unsustainable energy source that we have no viable pathway for replacement.
It doesn’t matter if growth caps off soon, we’ve already exceeded the bounds. We’re in overtime now seeing how limited resources plays out.
No not that, there's a very strong negative correlation between birth rate and development. The more a society develops, the lower its birth rate. Down to well below replacement rate of 2.1, for instance in the US (1.7), Canada (1.5), Japan (1.42), Finland (1.41). Without immigration those populations would dwindle in just a few generations. [1]
Yea, but it’s still an open question when or if this stabilizes. A global population of between something like 100 million to 10 billion could sustain an advanced technical society capable of innovation. But, where slowly oscillating between say 1 and 2 billion people would be fine, regular massive population crashes could represent a great filter which generally prevents interstellar civilizations.
And the more a country develops, the more resources they consume per capita. One individual in a developed country consumes orders of magnitude more than one in a less developed country.
wiki: "An invasive species is a non-native species that has become naturalized and negatively alters its new environment."
Seems about right.
No predator. Also yes.
Multiplying exponentially. In the past century, yes. It seems to be slowing down, and so one might argue that it is a logistic growth.
If we exceed the limits of the environment we either suffer massive problems and eventually a die-off, or we manage to invent some new tech that expands the carrying capacity of Earth.
This is all pretty much factually correct. So, can someone explain the down votes?
We're no longer invasive. Almost every wild animal on every continent has evolved an innate fear of humans as a defense mechanism. We have been the apex predator across the world for a long long time and animals have evolved to deal with this fact.
Only in small islands cut off from humanity for eons will you find wild animals that feel no fear against humans.
So every species on the face of the earth that ever expanded its territory is invasive? That's basically every living thing on the face of the earth.
Make no mistake, almost every living thing that expanded its territory had a negative effect on that territory that was expanded into which will make every species "invasive" under your hair brained extreme technical definition.
Most humans can catch the drift of what I'm trying to convey though. I'll spell it out for you because you seem to be a savant... too intelligent to understand the obvious subtleties of normal human communication.
Invasive species only refer to a subset of species under temporal conditions meaning the current ecosystem which the species invades has not YET adapted to the invasion. If all animals have died/evolved and changed to accommodate for the situation the species is no longer invasive it is the status quo.
If what I said above isn't part of the definition then it makes every freaking thing on the face of the earth invasive. So it's unspoken but Obviously invasive refers to a temporal phenomenon.
Because your a savant too intelligent for mure mortals like me, let me give you an example why what I said above isn't included in the wikipedia definition. Think of the word 'thief.' If a child steals some candy from the store he is a thief. If the child grows up to be 50 years old and never steals anything again for the rest of his life typical humans no longer call him a thief. This means thief refers to a temporal phenomenon and most humans are able to recognize this even though webster's dictionary doesn't include it in the definition. We humans call this "obvious."
But someone like you who can't figure out what typical people find "obvious" must mean that your beyond human. A person of such extraordinary logic that subtleties of human language are irrelevant to you. That or your just making up logic to support some agenda, because it's utterly clear what I'm talking about.
Also throwaway usernames are against the rules in HN.
Most species on earth have a habitat, a well defined reproduction rate and population capacity, and relationship to other species.
When you take a species out of its habitat and introduce it to another habitat, and they start cause harm to other species and their relationship to other species, we call them invasive species.
It is not that hard to understand. Humans are an animal species after all.
You brag about your soft skills, but are unable to explain a simple concept succintly and without aggression. That is prime evidence of poor soft skills.
Btw, name calling is also against the rules, and invoking the rules is against the rules.
>You brag about your soft skills, but are unable to explain a simple concept succintly and without aggression.
I never bragged about my soft skills. I targeted you as someone who's using the extreme technicality of a definition to serve your agenda. It appears to be an intelligent maneuver but it is not.
>Btw, name calling is also against the rules, and invoking the rules is against the rules.
Name calling? You mean Savant? You know a savant is a genius right? It's a compliment..
>Most species on earth have a habitat, a well defined reproduction rate and population capacity, and relationship to other species. And when you take them out of their habitat, they may cause harm to other species and their relationship to other species.
Yeah and it's not that hard to understand that global human expansion already occurred millions of years ago. The harm as an "invasive" species was already done because ecosystems have already evolved features and qualities designed to fend off humans. My example of all wild animals basically having an instinctual "fear of humans" is evidence for this. Predators actively avoid hunting humans even though many hikers are vulnerable due 100% to this instinct.
The harm to the environment we're seeing today is not the result of "invasion" which already occurred eons ago, but the result of technological change.
Savants are mentally impaired people with unusual abilities perfect memory and calculator-like ability to compute math operations, etc. Calling people mentally disabled is not a compliment.
Then, anatomically modern humans did not start expanding millions of years ago. And most species do not have an innate fear of humans.
Pretty much everything you said is a bunch of nonsense. I regret having read that. Clearly the educational system failed you. I do not have an agenda. Preserving the environment is not a political agenda (or at least, it should not be), it is an extension of our survival instinct. Just like food security is not treated as a politically charged topic because everyone can agree that they need food.
> Savants are mentally impaired people with unusual abilities perfect memory and calculator-like ability to compute math operations, etc. Calling people mentally disabled is not a compliment.
I focused on the perfect memory and calculator like abilities of the savant as a descriptive analogy for the level of intelligence you're displaying. It is indeed a compliment of untold proportions.
>Then, anatomically modern humans did not start expanding millions of years ago. And most species do not have an innate fear of humans.
No other species has been called "invasive" after millions of years have passed. Look it up. Most apex predators do have an innate fear of humans:
>Preserving the environment is not a political agenda, it is an extension of our survival instinct. Just like food security is not treated as a politically charged topic because everyone can agree that they need food.
But talking about things that are clearly not true to serve your agenda is wrong. Humans are not invasive. We are destroying the environment through technological development not by being invasive.
>Pretty much everything you said is a bunch of nonsense. I regret having read that. Clearly the educational system failed you. I do not have an agenda.
I'm a environmental biologist by trade, aka scientist. All I did was point out your mistaken attribution to humans being "invasive."
You can come up with alternative definitions of a word if you want, but that doesn't change the definition of the word. The word you used is an insult in most settings, as it refers to mentally disabled people.
Then, if you are truly a scientist then, please go and publish about how humans spread around earth millions of years ago, at a time where Homo sapiens sapiens didn't even exist yet. The only citations you will get will be from comedians.
When humans move into an area, other species lose their habitat. This happens every day. We are an invasive species, we disrupt ecosystems. If you want to feel better with yourself and believe in stupid fairy tales about how we humans are special, then go and create another concept for it. I don't care. In the end, what matters is understanding that we are ruining the environment everywhere we go, and causing the extinction of species everywhere we go.
> You can come up with alternative definitions of a word if you want, but that doesn't change the definition of the word. The word you used is an insult in most settings, as it refers to mentally disabled people.
>If you want to feel better with yourself and believe in stupid fairy tales about how we humans are special
I'm not, I am correcting a technical mistake you made. We cannot be an invasive species because we already invaded practically every habitat eons ago. The term no longer applies.
There is an increasing amount of evidence for the MRH (multi-regional hypothesis) which contradicts the idea that "our species originated in Africa." That's not to say that thinking of anatomically modern humans as "an invasive" species is a useless frame, but I think it does weaken the footing your argument stands on.
The foregone economic activity in just one year of lockdowns in the US is a significant fraction of cumulative worldwide damages anticipated from climate change through 2050.
So loosing a large part of Bangladesh to the sea by 2050 and then loosing more to the sea by 2051, and even more by 2052, etc. with no hope of recovering... displacing therein tens to hundreds of millions of people that will need new homes, and new infrastructure that is requiring housing, feeding and transporting those people is going to cost less then then a year and a half of pandemic?
I mean, sure... if we count to 2050 and then stop counting... maybe. But that is not how the world works. We need to count beyond 2050 to get a good estimate. If (and that is a big if; ’cause I don’t really trust this number) the climate impact is gonna cost 7.9 trillion dollars by 2050, I’m sure it will cost $8.4tr by 2051, and $12.5tr by 2055, $22tr by 2060 and then $120tr by 2070. And then maybe by 2100 the economy as we know it will have collapsed and any cost estimate is void.
The climate impact is getting more severe at an exponential rate, and—unlike the pandemic—it is not gonna get better in the foreseeable future.
> “While it is true that we estimated damages as high as 10% of GDP annually at the end of the century for warming of 15°F above pre-industrial levels, the odds of a temperature change that would drive damages of this magnitude are slim,” he wrote. “In fact, they are less than 1-in-100 by our original calculation.”
It’s worth spending a lot of money to avoid a 10% GDP loss. But it’s not worth spending the kind of money you’d be willing to spend if you thought the economy was going to collapse completely otherwise.
I have never read any serious research that proposes what you are proposing: that climate mitigation is going to cost more than the consequences of failing to mitigate it.
We're on the path to a 4C world by something like 2100. An increase by that much might possibly wipe out the species. If it fall short of that forecast the damage will be far greater.
Not to mention that pandemic shares the same root cause as climate change. Destroying our ecosystem has increased the incident of zoonotic spillover. We'll see more pandemics as we continue on this path. And the costs of these are not separate from the costs of climate change.
Note that's a 14.3% hit compared to what GDP would be in 2100. That's a big impact. It's equivalent to going from 3% annual GDP growth between then and now to 2.7% annual GDP growth.
Now, the numbers hide some really terrible costs. The Florida and Gulf coast will become uninhabitable, destroying half the economy in those areas. To put it into perspective the 2018 California wildfires cost 0.75% of GDP. So this is like 20 times worse. It's bad! But it's not an "untold cost." It's not an outcome worth spending any amount to avoid.
Scientists don't think mitigation will cost more than the damages from climate change, because scientists aren't proposing to mitigate climate change by shutting down the economy the way we did during the COIVD lockdown. That's an insanely inefficient way to achieve mitigation. I mentioned the economic loss from COVID lockdown not to suggest that is actually how we would reduce emissions, but to put into perspective what the expected costs of climate change are.
Saying that climate change will have "untold cost" is problematic because it makes you believe that mitigation strategies that will have massive costs will be justified to avoid climate change damages. It's worth the U.S. spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on climate-change mitigation. The EU is planning on spending 260 billion euro annually by 2030. That's roughly the scale of Biden's plan.
But the "World War II-style" mobilization of the economy that Green New Deal advocates want will hurt economic growth by more than climate change will. If we go from 3% annual GDP growth to 2% annually we'll shoot ourselves in the foot.
All of the RCP scenarios assume large scale carbon capture and storage, a technology we have no pathway to scaling.
None of the RCP scenarios consider potential positive feed back loops. This is understandable because from a climate modeling perspective these are complex and involve a lot of uncertainty/unknowns. However historical evidence suggests that in all mass extinction events involving rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 there is a point at which CO2 concentrations appear to start to dramatically increase due to some systemic trigger. We don’t know what exactly that may be, but many climate change concerns are happing “faster than expected”.
Events that cause positive feedback include things like increased CO2 emissions from wild fire, destruction of the amazon rainforest, increased albedo from melt arctic sea ice, methane release from melting permafrost, etc. We really don’t know how to account for all of these but past climate/co2 events suggest there is a “tipping point” for radical climate change.
It is also worth pointing out that climate change is only one of the ways in which our current system is completely unsustainable.
Our current economy demands perpetual growth. We are already living unsustainably. The consequences for this are obvious, and if we were remotely capable of surviving in a way remotely resembling our current standard of living we would have to immediately start scaling back production and consumption. The green new deal is a joke, and we clearly are incapable of changing our path.
No, all the scenarios do not assume carbon capture and storage. The RCP 8.5 scenario is actually a high emissions scenario that experts think overestimates carbon emissions given existing trends.
As to the other point, the IPCC has studied the possibility of positive feedback loops and has concluded they’re unlikely.
Does that scenario include destabilization of societies and war? If the current level of migration is causing political strife in the US and EU, do you think that orders of magnitude more might cause much more severe problems?
> Saying that climate change will have "untold cost" is problematic because it makes you believe that mitigation strategies that will have massive costs will be justified to avoid climate change damages
I’m not aware of any existing technology capable that will mitigate the harm that the current trajectory of the climate disaster is projected to cause.
Hoping for new technology that can save us from the harm 30 year from now is naive. Thirty years ago we had quantum computers, microwaves, GMO, lithium-ion batteries, etc. VTVL rockets are a 25 year old technology already. Hoping for something that doesn’t exist already will save us is simply a disillusion.
In honesty “shutting down the economy” is still a better option then “business as usual”. Although, honestly, I thing there is a better option: Investing in green infrastructure, along with International agreements, and carbon taxes, which we could integrate into existing societal systems to at least slow down the harm until technology is available that can save us from this catastrophe.
By mitigation I don’t mean “after the fact cleanup” I mean to reduce the amount of climate change that happens. (Saying “stopping” or “averting” climate change seems wrong in this context since we’re definitely going to hit 1.5 or probably 2C).
Shutting down the economy is not better than business as usual. Business as usual is worse than cost-effective mitigations. Scientists estimate those could cost up to $1 trillion per year, worldwide, by 2030. That’s under 2% of GDP. Damage from climate change in an RCP 8.5 scenario will be many times that, 7-15% in the US by 2100. But it still won’t be nearly as bad as the COVID shutdowns, which wacked 30% off GDP while they were in effect.
So by “cost effective mitigation” I presume you mean something akin to: Investing in green infrastructure, international agreements, and carbon tax, right?
Yes, that’s what I meant to refer to in my post above:
> It's worth the U.S. spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on climate-change mitigation. The EU is planning on spending 260 billion euro annually by 2030. That's roughly the scale of Biden's plan.
I’m not arguing against those investments. My point is that saying climate change will have “untold cost” suggests that massive economic shutdowns or “war time mobilization of the economy” will be worth it to avoid climate change. They won’t be. In particular, anything that jeopardizes economic growth through Green New Deal-style government takeover of vast sectors of the economy will cause more harm than it averts.
I think we have a different understanding of what a green new deal means. For me it means investing in green infrastructure, an amount that the global economy is already spending on carbon polluting ventures (including the military).
I can’t possibly see how reducing (in my opinion) stupid and corrupt business investments and increasing in sustainable infrastructure that will lower our carbon footprint can cause more harm then good. For me this fact is obvious. I think we there must be some fundamental difference between us for us to arrive at such different conclusions.
It advocates a “World War II” style mobilization, of the sort that existed back when the federal government took over almost half the entire economy.
I understand that’s not what you support, but people do support massive efforts like this to combat climate change. My point is simply that when you say climate change will have “untold cost” you make it impossible to understand why the programs you support might be worth it, while a World War II-style mobilization would do more harm than good.
Have you considered that someone might use an extreme starting point in a political negotiation in order to achieve something less extreme but generally in the same direction?
In a real negotiation, you select a high opening bid to leave yourself some wiggle room, but not one that’s extreme because that signals to the other side you’re unreasonable and it’s not worth negotiating.
I think the lockdowns could be revealed as a costly mistake and there is a great hubris among the well off in thinking that because they aren't struggling everything is fine.
But this is particular argument is unsustainable. A lockdown can have generations of consequences - what doesn't? - but it cannot be paid for by generations to come. It was paid for now, resources were reallocated and consumed.
The risk is more subtle. If a group of people develop who have nothing to lose, then they lose nothing by being very violent and destroying stuff. Physical destruction of assets is something that can cause long-term damage. The lockdowns take away options from people who don't have many.
I'm talking about the debt incurred by the Government in order to provide assistance to the unemployed and the businesses that were struggling. Trillions of dollars of debt (in addition to 20-30 trillion dollar debt already incurred) is not something that one generation can manage.
I'd guessed. Lets say they wait one generation then just say "nah, we're not paying. Just ignore that debt". Who loses? Did the losers deserve to win? These are tricky questions.
There isn't a reason to think that the US taxpayer is going to pay back their debts (in real terms). The numbers have gotten large enough relative to GDP that they aren't realistically going to honour those promises.
It may get ugly, but that debt isn't going to last generations.
As I have argued elsewhere in this thread, default or monetizing the debt has consequences, including permanently higher borrowing costs that will exact a heavy price from future generations if they choose to go those routes. That's what history teaches us.
The biggest loser will be the (US) general public, because it holds the majority of the debt. Foreign adversaries (such as China) hold a much lower percentage of the debt (and USD-denominated instruments).
> ...including permanently higher borrowing costs that will exact a heavy price from future generations ...
Seems unlikely. Nobody makes reference to poor behaviour by someone's father's father when deciding to lend.
And it is already embarrassingly obvious that the US isn't actually going to pay their debts back. The people taking on the loans at the moment have hopefully accounted for that.
Is all this debt bad? Yes. Will it affect the prospects of future generations? Only if it spirals into a war and something spills over into the physical world destructively.
One can wish, but I know that there is huge pressure on the current administration to appease the left wing of the party. Keystone XL is canceled, and the US has rejoined the Paris agreement on the first day of Biden's Presidency. A multi-trillion dollar Green New Deal that will further saddle future generations with debt is looking likely at this point. Whether it will provide the benefits it purports to do is far from certain.
Once you incur debt, it must be serviced. If you forego revenue via a couple of channels (income tax, inheritance tax), you can either (a) raise debt to replace the revenue you lost or (b) provide incentives so that the revenue foregone is invested (efficiently and judiciously) to spur growth, which brings in revenue or (c) raise revenue via other channels.
You can do some combination of the above. The point being, you have fewer options at hand once you incur debt, because default has dire consequences (ask Russia or Argentina), and printing money also has less desirable consequences (indiscriminate tax on everyone including those on fixed incomes and savers).
It's actually pretty much the same. As long as the government programs you are funding aren't too wasteful - and if they are the solution is to fix the waste - incurring sovereign debt is not that much different from foregoing revenue. The difference is that if you forego revenue from the top 1% you get worse outcomes than if you tax them or cut useful government spending or print debt.
Unironically, yes. Remember tax cuts isn't money just given away, the 1% didn't cause the spending part of the equation. You just think 1% should pay that tab.
The most effective way to cut emissions for a family is to have ({desired amount of children} - 1) children. Maybe if we would have let nature claim that 1%-2% of obese unfit greedy consumers then we could have achieved a more sustainable reduction of CO2.
I am willing to bet that come 2022 or so, emissions will rebound and exceed peaks as people 'catch up' on travel, including simply visiting near and dear ones, that they have missed out on.