Making America Carbon Neutral Could Cost $1 Trillion a Year (bloomberg.com) 384
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Democrats have introduced a host of plans designed to make the U.S. carbon neutral. Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke outlined a $5 trillion scheme to reach that target by 2050, and other candidates are expected to follow suit. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other backers of the Green New Deal are calling for an even more aggressive timeline: net-zero emissions by 2030. Meanwhile, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who's basing his run for the Democratic presidential nomination on fighting climate change, has released a "100% Clean Energy for America Plan." Any U.S. effort to cut net emissions to zero would "be a massive project over decades," says Alex Trembath, deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, California-based environmental research group. The goal of 2050 is "a reach, but it's perfectly feasible in terms of technological innovation and scaling," Trembath adds, but 2030 "is functionally impossible."
It would also be costly. Cleaning up U.S. industries may require investments amounting to more than $1 trillion annually by 2050, according to the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, a global collaboration of energy research teams led by the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development & International Relations and the United Nations-backed Sustainable Development Solutions Network. That's in line with an estimate by BNEF that found achieving the Green New Deal's goals of de-carbonizing the U.S.'s energy, transport, and agriculture sectors would cost roughly $980 billion a year. Critics say the costs would be even higher, and would unfairly penalize the U.S. economy given that China, India, and other carbon dioxide-emitting countries in the world aren't doing their share. The report goes on to note that doing nothing to mitigate the effects of climate change could cost companies $1.2 trillion during the next 15 years, "and if everyone does nothing, everyone's economy will be penalized."
It would also be costly. Cleaning up U.S. industries may require investments amounting to more than $1 trillion annually by 2050, according to the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, a global collaboration of energy research teams led by the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development & International Relations and the United Nations-backed Sustainable Development Solutions Network. That's in line with an estimate by BNEF that found achieving the Green New Deal's goals of de-carbonizing the U.S.'s energy, transport, and agriculture sectors would cost roughly $980 billion a year. Critics say the costs would be even higher, and would unfairly penalize the U.S. economy given that China, India, and other carbon dioxide-emitting countries in the world aren't doing their share. The report goes on to note that doing nothing to mitigate the effects of climate change could cost companies $1.2 trillion during the next 15 years, "and if everyone does nothing, everyone's economy will be penalized."
That'd be great for GDP (Score:2, Funny)
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Don't think about how horrible it is do do right by the world, think of how much your GDP will sky rocket. Everyone knows GDP is a be all and end all international score card. All the money is made up anyway so who cares how it's paid for.
I hope to hell that's mocking sarcasm.
Because there are way too many who actually believe what you posted is true.
Some of them apparently have degrees in Economics, earned with honors, and managed to be elected to Congress even.
1 trillion per year... that is the Trump Deficit (Score:2, Informative)
So, turns out that this isn't a problem, it's just making America great.
Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/c... [forbes.com]
Or CBO ("The CBO also said in Thursday's report that the cumulative deficit over the next decade would add up to $9.9 trillion") https://thehill.com/policy/fin... [thehill.com]
Or The Balance: https://www.thebalance.com/us-... [thebalance.com]
Re: 1 trillion per year... that is the Trump Defic (Score:5, Informative)
One trillion dollars per year is exactly the deficit under the Trump administration.
Obama spent even more money.
The original post said deficit. Trump's deficit is way above Obama's. It is, in fact, a trillion dollars a year.
Trump follows the Republican model: Deficits don't matter (* except when Democrats are in office). --> yes, "deficits don't matter" is a real quote, from Dick Cheney, GW Bush's vice president. The exact quote was "“You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due".
...
So, turns out that this isn't a problem, it's just making America great.
Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/c... [forbes.com]. Or CBO ("The CBO also said in Thursday's report that the cumulative deficit over the next decade would add up to $9.9 trillion") https://thehill.com/policy/fin... [thehill.com]. Or The Balance: https://www.thebalance.com/us-... [thebalance.com]
Fossil fuels about a trillion a year (Score:3, Interesting)
So, overall, it looks like about a wash.
Re:Fossil fuels about a trillion a year (Score:5, Insightful)
Coincidentally, the fossil fuel industry is about a one trillion dollar a year.
So is Trumps corporation tax cuts, which will eventually lead to disaster.
Bank bailouts because of the rich destroying the economy a few years ago? A couple of trillion.
Overall, making the USA carbon neutral looks quite cheap and will lead to huge benefits in the future. Why aren't you doing it already?
Revisionist history of credit crisis (Score:3)
Bank bailouts because of the rich destroying the economy a few years ago? A couple of trillion.
Those bailouts were paid back and the U.S. government actually made money on them.
The "rich" alone were not to blame for the housing crisis, it was caused by various policies, organizations and individuals. You had Congress pressuring banks to extend credit to more and more people. Banks were issuing mortgages with no documentation required and people were lying about their income in order to get more credit to buy bigger properties to "flip" for a profit. Underwriting agencies weren't doing their jobs
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I think you missed the part about "every year". Imagine a bank bailout every year. Yeah, that's what is being asked. Of course, unlike the tax cuts, there aren't any offsetting economic gains from the reduced costs.
I don't know why you say that there are no offsetting economic gains. Of course there are offsetting economic gains. This is investment; investment has payoff. In this case, the investment is in efficiency and in energy.
Not the mention the economic gain from not paying a trillion dollars a year to the fossil fuel industry.
Re:Fossil fuels about a trillion a year (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay. "Solyndra" is Fox News code for "Democrats throwing money at losers". Yes, Solyndra went bust. But it was part of a larger set of investments that mostly panned out. Doesn't mean Solyndra shouldn't have been vetted - or managed - better. But it also means 'government investment in clean energy' isn't the dirty word that Koch-funded news and 'think tanks' want you to believe it is.
Re:Fossil fuels about a trillion a year (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to forget it is not some war industrial complex black hole investment where money goes to die, this is an investment in infrastructure with real long term capital and environmental value. Why not invest in the best possible infrastructure and the healthiest possible environment, there is real capital value there and it the investment will go straight back into the economy. It's like a high speed rail link or an aircraft carrier, which is better for the environment, which will provide an economic boost and which adds to life and which takes away from life.
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If we let pollution continue and we all get sick and spend all our money on doctors (and lawyers to get other people to pay for it), grand construction projects to fight the sea, and a Canadian invasion to claim their newly-awesome farmland, etc, that'll increase the GPD too. Pollution can be every bit as good for the GDP as a hurricane, war, plague or any other disaster, so let's not be so quick to dismiss its virtues.
Harm is good.
Well, enough Slashdot for today; time to get back to hitting my head with
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Re:That'd be great for GDP (Score:5, Informative)
All the money is made up anyway so who cares how it's paid for.
If money is all made up, then you should be able to quit your job and still have all the money you need from your imagination!
That'd be nice but unfortunately only banks get to pull it out thin air. Go figure.
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That'd be nice but unfortunately only banks get to pull it out thin air.
And the banks only do that for loans, and only when there's some kind of collateral, which means that the amount of money naturally follows the value of the economy.
Re:That'd be great for GDP (Score:4, Informative)
That'd be nice but unfortunately only banks get to pull it out thin air. Go figure.
Explain please, because the Fed is the only institution that can create new bills - and it must be offset by a matching amount of US Federal Government Treasury bills that are authorized by Congress. The Fed can play with what is out there, but only to the limit as defined by Congress. No other bank can simply create mony out of thin air.
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That'd be nice but unfortunately only banks get to pull it out thin air. Go figure.
Explain please, because the Fed is the only institution that can create new bills - and it must be offset by a matching amount of US Federal Government Treasury bills that are authorized by Congress. The Fed can play with what is out there, but only to the limit as defined by Congress. No other bank can simply create mony out of thin air.
The short version is when you go for a loan or whatever the bank has to have capitol, but it only really has to have a percentage of that. So say you want a 100 grand mortgage and the rule at the time is banks need to hold 10% they need 10 grand on the books and can pull out the other 90 from nowhere. It's called fractional reserve banking and its not new. The idea is they aren't going to need all the cash at once so as long as they have a fraction of it they are all good. It got really lax a few years back
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Re:That'd be great for GDP (Score:5, Informative)
That'd be nice but unfortunately only banks get to pull it out thin air. Go figure.
Explain please, because the Fed is the only institution that can create new bills
Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Every time banks make a loan, they create 90% of the money they lend from thin air. So when they loan you $100,000 to buy a house, they're actually only putting $10K at risk. Although they only really lent $10K to you, they earn interest on the entire amount that you spent on the house, including the $90K they invented. So at a 4% interest rate, they earn $4,000 per year on a $10,000 "investment" in you (simplified because your interest doesn't stay constant; it gets paid down as you make payments, as does their reserve commitment).
This is why lending is very profitable, even when the interest rate is not much higher than inflation. For banks, anyway. No one else gets to invent money this way.
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Actually it is, in general much worse. The AC is probably a moron anyway.
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Is asserting without evidence worse than dismissing without evidence?
Yes. The burden of proof is on the person who makes the assertion.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)
Could Cost $1 Trillion (Score:2)
Re:Could Cost $1 Trillion (Score:4, Insightful)
...probably $4t by the time it's all said and done, at least when using Government math.
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So... a bit like all those taxpayer bailouts a few years ago that were caused by the bankers making themselves into billionaires?
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Or not.
I'm guessing the *real* numbers are more, a LOT more. But they need to keep the cost under some perceived doable number, so they undershoot for political reasons. "Why it's ONLY a Trillion dollars, how can we afford NOT to do this?"
Stupid Article (Score:5, Interesting)
Articles like this belong in middle school debate clubs and no where else. It basically takes an extreme situation and juggles number presentation to make the problem seem larger than life so that people won't attempt it. We all know that perfection is never feasible and it's costs grow exponentially. So of course it going to cost 1 trillion to get 95% of the way there.
It's far worse than Bill Nye's "The world is on fire" that was posted else where.
Our attempts to reduce CO2 emissions should not be based on the _achievability_ of zero emissions! The news organizations are doing a HUGE disservice and are just as guilty as the fragrant violators of environmental laws by even presenting this argument.
No burgers? No farming? THATS your argument for not discussing how to reduce emissions? Shame on you asshats at Fox News!
So the article says transit, energy prod, and farming are the top three emitters. Are you REALLY telling me that in 30 years we can't cut 60% of the emissions from all three? Current transit & farming hasn't been around for a 100 years! Coal plants for less than 150.
Are people honestly saying we can't speedup 2-3 iterations of these technologies in 1/3 to 1/5 their lifetimes?!?
In 3 decades, they will naturally go through atleast 3 iterations. We just need to focus and nudge things along. We did the same for the moon and do it all the time for the military!
Ohh noes (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of the jobs (Score:2)
This is what the Green New Deal is really about. It's a jobs program. It's also why the elites don't like it. It would be a huge shot in the arm for the middle class, but that also means much hire wages for everybody. Wealthy elites don't like paying high wages. I mean, why would they?
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Even if you ignore these costs, it seems that every estimation about the "cost" of going renewable seems to exclude the cost of operating fossil fuel stations. Case studies from the past several years are showing that in most situations, renewables pay themselves off in reduced operational costs very quickly. In some cases, just adding batte
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OMG Yes it's gonna cost! (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is that money going to go? To the Sun? Is it just going to evaporate? It's going to to back into the economy!!! And maybe, just maybe those with capitol can loosen the purse strings and let the money flow to the folks actually doing the work, rather than sitting in their giant money bins.
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Where is that money going to go? To the Sun? Is it just going to evaporate? It's going to to back into the economy!
No, that's the broken window fallacy. If we break $1 trillion worth of windows in a year, and we fix them all, the money is still there, but that doesn't change the fact we wasted a bunch of resources and labor that we could have used on something better.
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Where is that money going to go? To the Sun? Is it just going to evaporate? It's going to to back into the economy!
No, that's the broken window fallacy. If we break $1 trillion worth of windows in a year, and we fix them all, the money is still there, but that doesn't change the fact we wasted a bunch of resources and labor that we could have used on something better.
If you're breaking windows, sure. If you're remediating the biosphere that we all depend upon for survival, it's not a broken window. The window was broken in the industrial revolution. Do you propose to simply leave it broken?
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It is not enough to point out that money just circulates in the economy and wrong to think that it therefore doesn't matter how it is spent.
It does matter, but there are actually benefits no matter how you spend it, because some of the money will wind up in the pockets of the masses just because the people associated with the expenditure will eat lunch and so on. Cleaning up the CO2 will certainly involve a lot of labor, so it actually is going to put some significant percentage of the money spent into the hands of the citizenry. If you take the money from those who have the most, and spend it on environmental remediation, you will benefit the
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Interesting typo
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Hey, if I steal your wallet, that money isn't gone. I just get to choose how to spend it instead of you! It's really not a loss at all!
So, give me your wallet. Or else...
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It's going to to back into the economy!!!
As always, the bulk of the wealth will go into the pockets of those strategically positioned to profit from it, particularly holders of patents and government contracts.
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Not likely. I would love to see a switch from fissile flues to more sustainable sources, but if read the fine print. Most of these come at the cost of freedom , with energy and industry controlled by a few powerful interested under the guise of being controlled by the communally by the 'populace'.
Re:OMG Yes it's gonna cost! (Score:5, Interesting)
But the point is that it's not a working system.
The currently "working" system is externalizing the costs of environmental harm and forcing other parties to deal with it.
These "Costs" that everyone complains about just forces them to pay for those non-obvious external costs, and internalize them, while creating a new market of opportunities for others to fix the issues.
And once that market exists, it can work to find efficient ways to keep environmental interests in order, and provide more job opportunities.
Critics are wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Critics say the costs would be even higher, and would unfairly penalize the U.S. economy given that China, India, and other carbon dioxide-emitting countries in the world aren't doing their share.
India and China are doing a lot. It is very common to suggest otherwise but it simply isn't true. It is true that China's total CO2 emissions are higher than those in the US, but the US is the next highest, and is above India. https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html [ucsusa.org], and if one looks at per a capita CO2 then the US is well above both of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita [wikipedia.org]. More to the point, both India and China are doing a lot of work to reduce CO2 emissions.
Let's look at India first. India has been putting in a lot of solar power, with a goal of 100 GW solar by 2022 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/power/solar-water-pumps-can-help-india-surpass-100-gw-target-report/articleshow/65214158.cms [indiatimes.com]. There's good reason that the International Solar Alliance is based in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Solar_Alliance [wikipedia.org] . And while there's always an issue with people focusing on solar and wind power while ignoring or removing nuclear power (cough, cough Germany), India is building more nuke plants also http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/india.aspx [world-nuclear.org].
The story in China is similar. China has a massive amount of solar power installed, and is installing more. They are also using a lot of direct solar heating of water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China [wikipedia.org]. The percentage of nuclear power which is in China is low, at around 4%, but has been consistently growing the last few years and if targets continue may even hit as high as 10% in a decade https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.aspx?current=CN [iaea.org].
If any country isn't doing its fair share here of these three, it is the US.
Re:Critics are even wronger than you think (Score:3)
It is not the present day emissions that should be compared, but the *cumulated* emissions. US is the leader by a wide margin and should consequently decarbonize first as well.
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Sorry all the helps provided by the US to Europe and japan have been already compensated by accepting that the dollar is the international reference currency. Practically the US gets a free loan for trillion of dollars circulating worldwide since WWII. These dollars could buy all the US assets many times.
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Re:Critics are wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The key thing to understand about China is that it's on a curve. The same curve that the US and other developed nations are on. It's just that we are on the down side, and they are still on the up side.
As China develops the per-capita emissions will go up. Asking them to stop developing is unrealistic and pointless. But that doesn't meant they are doing nothing. At the rate they are going they will peak well below where we did, and then come down again just like we are.
The people screaming about China are the same ones screaming about environmentalists trying to drive them back to the stone age. But actually environmentalists are the pragmatic ones, who got China to sign up to something entirely achievable and economically sound.
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I have been to China a few times. Parts of it are quite modern, parts of it not so much.
One thing that really struck me is that the whole country is a building site. You can travel for hours and hours and it's just non-stop building work.
Re:Critics are wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
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Eastern Europe certainly gets a bit more understanding than the more developed western European countries, sure.
Where about are you going? There is a huge difference between places like Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xiamen and more rural areas like parts of Fujian. Like compare Fuzhou with Zangping and the villages around there.
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So, raping the people and the environment within China by the ruling class elite (CCP) whom turn around and lock up the stolen nations wealth overseas is environmentally pragmatic and economically sound??!!! Dude, WTF ever!
I never said they were saints, but you can't deny that they have more renewable energy than any other country by quite a stretch, for example. They also hit peak coal 5 years ago and have been on a steady decline ever since.
I would add that a lot of that was due to outside pressure, not necessarily China's leaders caring particularly about the environment. For example, the EU exerts quite a lot of pressure on China by having exported manufacturing and imports contribute to domestic company's emissions numbe
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If any country isn't doing its fair share here of these three, it is the US.
That's not fair; we're doing our part to address the population problem by consuming lots of meth, opiates and Taco Bell.
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And look who is in the Whitehouse calling climate change 'fake news', along with all the bobble-heads on the right side of the aisle.
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But the point is that the rest of the world is changing?
The developments so far have made renewable energy (PV and wind turbines) cheaper than coal, and the cost is still falling.
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Why? If the Earth is literally on fire because of CO2 emissions, and more emissions would make the situation worse, why do it your way? Let's say you are on a boat, and you have two holes in it. One hole lets in 1 liter per second; the other hole lets in 2.3 liters per second. Which do you address? If CO2 is the problem, then does it matter that 300 million people emit twice as much per capita, as compared to another nation with 1.4 billion people who collectively emit 2.3 times as much CO2? Does the
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Total emissions. But what is the easiest, and fairest way to cut emissions? Is it to say to the poor living in China and India that they will have to keep using their bicycle forever because they can't have a small car so that US-Americans can continue to drive their SUV 15 000 miles per year?
It just doesn't make sense. You cut in the fat, not in the muscle. The fat is in the USA, not in China. At some point, if the per capita emissions of China surpass those of the USA, I'll reverse my stance and say that
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Key Word: Investment - lots of cost reduction (Score:5, Insightful)
Reducing oil demand in the US will lower the price of oil and screw over Russia and the Middle East, so there's that!
Finally, lets' be real. This is a jobs program. Lots of people will be hired to install new solar panels, windmills, insulation, etc. This will be a massive boost to the economy. Once it is over, it will reduce our run rate tangibly.
Every successful business focuses on efficiency and reducing costs (think Amazon's push to automation). Why do we hesitate to make our own country run more efficiently?
There are a million reasons beyond carbon emissions to support this investment. To me it is as clear as can be. This is much a much better investment than military spending or tax cuts for the US economy, just from a financial perspective.
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Well, one thing's for sure, if the US doesn't develop something like this, Europe will, considering they're already pumping a lot of money that way. And sooner or later people will want technology that keeps them cold in Summer, preferably technology that uses less power and is hence cheaper to run than an AC. We're already using different materials when building houses that let us lower our heating & cooling bills, and those materials are not cheap to build with but save you money in the long run. So e
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false, this is not a plan at all. it does NOT build a clean energy infrastructure, and only has vague ideas for transition.
clean energy requires real leadership, not shoveling money towards what hasn't been working. It means building the power plants, of whatever tech that might be
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An investment so good, it requires the government to force us to invest! If all this is such a good investment, we wouldn't need any government mandates, carbon tax, or cap and trade schemes.
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...but also the many carcinogens in the emissions, including benzene. Lowering cancer rates by merely 1% would save the country billions per year.
Big Pharma can't be too happy but perhaps the chemical industries can come up with some newer-gen 'fucked up shit' and save the day.
Economy destruction (Score:2)
Finally, lets' be real. This is a jobs program.
No, it isn't. It would destroy the economy. The temporary jobs it claims to create would have to be paid for by borrowing vast amounts of cash, because it chokes off the tax revenues being collected from all the people who are doing productive work today. And there's no basis for the claim that it would actually provide enough energy.
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yes, but will it be centralized or will it be distributed. I can see a lot of value in a decentralized, deregulated green energy grid. The problem with most of these proposals, like health care, is they put the control into the hands a few wealthy corporations and the elected officials that pay for them to take office.
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But the real roadblock is the Conservative mindset. They don't want to change anything, ever. In fact they chafe against the changes already made in the last 50 years and furthermore want to go back to at least 1950, sociologically and technologically.
Then there's the religious nutjobs, who are a subset of the above, who actually believe that The End Of The World has to happen, so Zombie Jesus will come back and take them to Heaven; they don't give a fuck about t
Net exporter != no imports (Score:5, Insightful)
We (the US) currently have no dependency on foreign oil, as we are a net exporter (which explains why OPEC doesn't have the clout that it used to have.)
Are you intentionally misleading people? Net exporter doesn't mean we don't import. It just means we sell more than we import. We get a lot of gasoline overseas. If we reduce that, it lowers our costs and lowers the cost of petroleum....which no matter how much green energy we produce we still need for manufacturing plastics, industrial lubricant, and many other industrial uses.
We're also only presently a net exporter. It hasn't always been that way and it is unwise to assume it will be 30 years down the road. This is still an investment and the end result is that we burn less fossil fuels through a mix of alternative energy (including nuclear) and reduced consumption.
The end result is reduced costs. It's so weird. Nothing could be more textbook conservative than reducing costs, yet conservatives are so eager to do anything but that.
If I install too many solar panels on my roof and generate a surplus of electricity on a sunny mild day, I don't open the windows and run the AC at the same time out of spite, I sell it back to the grid. It is still smart to insulate your home and turn off lights/TV when you're not using them...even if you're a net exporter of electricity.
Money doesn't make sense at these scales (Score:4, Insightful)
$1 trillion is off the scale even for megaprojects. The Apollo program cost $100B, infrastructures like interstate highways and high speed train lines are in the tens of billions. Perhaps the only thing that could match it would be the entire F35 program, but the F35 is expected to last until 2070, and here, it is $1 trillion per year.
You don't just write a $1 trillion per year check.
Seen from another angle, the GDP of the US is around $20 trillions. A trillion a year is 1/20, which essentially means that 1 in 20 people in the US will devote their entire life to making the US carbon neutral. The reason I think talking about money doesn't really make sense is that it is so huge that is is more about shifting human a natural resources than buying stuff. For example, if you want solar panels, the limit is how much you can pay for them. If the US wants to spend a trillion in solar panels, the problem will be among the lines of "do we have enough mining sites for the raw materials". Jobs will be created, others will be destroyed. What happened to Detroit with runaway growth and decline may happen elsewhere. That's the kind of effect a trillion per year mean, it goes much further than a paycheck.
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Seen from another angle, the GDP of the US is around $20 trillions. A trillion a year is 1/20, which essentially means that 1 in 20 people in the US will devote their entire life to making the US carbon neutral.
That's funny given the amount of subsidies we push in the direction of the fossil fuels industry. But then we know 1 in 20 people in the USA are devoting their life to emitting carbon, we can see that in the atmosphere. Maybe if we just get them to stop everyone would be happy.
How to scare stupid people (Score:2)
Mention any number that refers to a national or global problem, without any reference.
By definition, it will sounds HUGE.
1 trillion a year for the US,a country whose GDP is 20 trillion and who has a defence budget of over 0.7 trillion.
So we are talking about 5% of the GDP, and only about 30% more than we are willing to spend on defence. The number is a bit high, but not unreasonable.
Doing nothing costs you your grandchildren (Score:2)
Not that conservatives would care if their own grandchildren suffer.
The Conservative Golden rule is "Profit is morality."
USA! USA! (Score:2)
Should be: Avoiding carbon neutral will cost $1.2T (Score:2)
Ah, Bloomberg, always considering the cost to the incorporated company and its shareholders.
The real story is $1.2 trillion if you stay as you are and don't become carbon neutral.
There is no cost-free option. You can't wriggle out of this one. That's a new idea for corporate America built on externalising cost to someone else.
And losing cities would save money? (Score:2)
Look at the coastal cities, you lose New York City and Boston, how much will that cost, not to mention Florida and the cities right on the Gulf of Mexico? Yea, those ending up being flooded continually isn't going to cost more money? Do they put up a huge sea wall to keep the water level down, how much would that cost? How about all those huge storms that hit the midwest?
So? (Score:2)
Safety Glasses On (Score:2)
Also, goes don't fart, they burp.
Well (Score:2)
The US uses 20.5 million barrels of petroleum per _day_ and they kill thousands of people per year.
Going green will be cheaper, no matter how you look at it.
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Has that claim been debunked?
I've never heard that claim but it's fucking retarded.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/magazine/dirt-save-earth-carbon-farming-climate-change.html/ [nytimes.com]
Because I know you are too fucking stupid to get past the url, here is the headline for you moron. " Can Dirt Save the Earth? Agriculture
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But, YOU BEING THE FUCKING RETARD. You didn't take the time to even check out the subject.
There's another group besides retards who'd have a reason to not check out your "subject" but you can be forgiven for not grasping that (the blind desperation and emotional irrationality betrayed by your use of caps suggests we ought to be patient with you). ;)
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Re:Isn't the US a net carbon sink? (Score:5, Informative)
It seems unlikely: in order to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, you have to not merely grow vegetation, but kill it and stockpile the dead wood somewhere that it does not decay. Otherwise, you don't have a net loss of carbon, you are just cycling it through vegetation and returning it to the atmosphere.
We put out something like 18 tons of carbon dioxide per capita. Hard to believe that we each stockpile that much dead trees.
But I'd be interested in seeing data.
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Dunno - we do harvest and sell shitloads of timber (it's one of our bigger exports), and most timber products do get 'sequestered' in the form of construction materials, paper, and etc.
No idea if any of that has been cited, but it'd be interesting to find out.
Re:Isn't the US a net carbon sink? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems unlikely: in order to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, you have to not merely grow vegetation, but kill it and stockpile the dead wood somewhere that it does not decay. Otherwise, you don't have a net loss of carbon, you are just cycling it through vegetation and returning it to the atmosphere.
(Im going to get voted down for this one but am posting it to show how it really works)
I see this posted a lot but it is not true. Plants take the C02 and break it down into carbon and Oxygen. It then bonds the carbon to into a variety of substances from C6H12O6 to (C6H10O5)n
Even if you burn the tree to ash, ash is CaCO3 removing some carbon. Heck in most cases burning, leaves charcoal which is carbon.
If the tree is left to decay, in most cases the bacteria and fungus breakdown the compounds in the tree and recombined them into new things. Most wood fungus breaks down the cellulose and turns it into chitin C8H13O5N
All in all it is not as simple as saying you have to keep the wood or trees for ever.
I could go into a lot more detail about what happens to trees. Out BY my ranch there is 5000 acres of trees are all destine to become paper, dimensional lumber, etc. Most of that carbon will be sequestered for decades or longer.
Personally, I keep my ranch as a carbon sink. I just maintain it as needed and let everything grow wild.
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Hard to believe that we each stockpile that much dead trees.
One man's "begging of incredulity" is another's total retardation, and [possibly] still another's flat-out fucking lie...
At the end of the day, the idea that we're net carbon negative here in the States (and there must be a magic process occuring where all that extra carbon is getting shunted somewhere... maybe into "abiotic oil").
(/snicker)
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If you want to see double digit unemployment.
Oddly enough, the opposite is true.
Turns out that spending money decreases unemployment.
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Fewer than 100 unemployed? Is that in your town or the whole of the US?
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Yeah, but it goes to the wrong pockets. I.e. NOT MINE!
--signed, Fossil Fuel Ltd.
Re:...and the cost for not becoming carbon neutral (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate Change is a "frog in the kettle" problem. The changes are happening slowly enough that uninformed skeptics can dismiss the impacts. And the impacts are hitting poverty-stricken areas of the world the hardest, where there is already a delicate balance of life. You know, those areas of the world that we in the first world don't give a fuck about because we're cozy in our middle class lives. But those impacts will eventually catch up to us.
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You know, those areas of the world that we in the first world don't give a fuck about
Human selfishness and greed isn't going away and a realistic approach to climate change will take that into effect. The whole idea that the majority of the burden of dealing with climate change should be on the 1st world is severely flawed because it's not taking human nature into account.
But those impacts will eventually catch up to us.
The big one I've always heard is migration. However, wouldn't it cost a lot less than $1T per year to secure our borders?
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I do, and outside of mismanaged forests, hobos with matches looking for three hots and a cot, and the occasional power company fsck-up... what are you talking about?
Nye's little video was a massive hyperbole, and the only thing that was really on fire was the massive army of strawmen he kept tossing, often in twos and threes, into the inferno of bad logic powered by his decidedly non-scientific ego.
Re: ...and the cost for not becoming carbon neutra (Score:5, Informative)
Don't tell anyone, but positive changes are already being made
And yet, CO2 concentration keeps growing at same pace, so whatever these positive changes are, it's not enough.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/... [noaa.gov]
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Re:smh tbh (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism is a mental illness
You are absolutely right... and it's pretty damned ugly. Well, it's ugly until you see the even more horrific alternatives that we, as a species, have tried to date (only to have others tell us that said alternatives weren't really tried correctly, and that in spite of the bloodshed and misery they induced and continue to induce, maybe we should give some of them another go.)
But please, continue.
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NO! Please do not continue.
These fantasy believing socialists do not understand that once socialism is set it, all theft starts becoming theft against the state and considered treason and usually punishable by death... and they think that minorities are suffering now? Police will be given even more permission to kill people not following the laws and history shows that police love having power and authority of this kind and like to get as much of it as they can.
To solve the disease of socialism for 1 year
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Exactly! Mod this man through the roof. Has everyone forgotten the HORRORS of family communalism that dominated human life for 50,000+ years before the invention of currency, or mathematics! It is an absolute FACT that until currency was invented, humans were amoral horrors who starved to the point of extinction because they foolishly tried to feed each other instead of looking after only their own selfish instincts! I mean, they did invent language and agriculture and art BEFORE economics, but it wasn'
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Energy Policy and Corporatism (Score:2)
Capitalism is a mental illness
Yeah, look at all the fans who have given their lives for socialism.
Capitalism is terrifying in it's true form, socialism is the expression of mind control as culture and communism is a means to convert capitalism into feudalism.
What we have now isn't capitalism anymore, it's corporatism. A covert form of feudalism that merges the state into a series of covert fiefdoms who prop each other up. You can almost see nuclear vs coal and oil playing out in the structure of law as they position themselves for tax incentives voted for by generously funded candidates who high