Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[HVC]

Johnson doing his part to exasperate climate change by opening up a new coal mine. Josq must be torn

[Valmy]

I'm guessing transportation. A lot of clothes are made in developing countries and then shipped.

In a way that exceeds the entire emissions of international shipping and international flights? No there has to be something else doing this. Is manufacturing clothing particularly energy intensive?

[Valmy]

Johnson doing his part to exasperate climate change by opening up a new coal mine. Josq must be torn

So much great environmental work done by the legendary environmentalist hero Margaret Thatcher being undone.

I presume this is being done to offset Russian Gas?

[HVC]

I'm guessing transportation. A lot of clothes are made in developing countries and then shipped.

In a way that exceeds the entire emissions of international shipping and international flights? No there has to be something else doing this. Is manufacturing clothing particularly energy intensive?

Hmm, good point. How far back in the chain do they go? Growing and harvesting cotton, producing synthetic fabric? Extracting oil to produce said fabric?

[crazy canuck]

So shouldn't Congress come in take care of that issue? Shouldn't the executive branch make those decisions? Are we supposed to just argue in court about what constitutes a significant impact? What is the legal definition of significant impact in the context of Constitutional law? And does that mean in the future Congress would have to insert some clause saying that they are cool with significant impacts?

What you are talking about is the dismantling of the modern state.  Congress cannot possibly run the administrative machinery in place of the many administrative bodies needed to perform that task.

That seems to be the end goal of the right wing lunacy started in the 80s.

[Valmy]

So shouldn't Congress come in take care of that issue? Shouldn't the executive branch make those decisions? Are we supposed to just argue in court about what constitutes a significant impact? What is the legal definition of significant impact in the context of Constitutional law? And does that mean in the future Congress would have to insert some clause saying that they are cool with significant impacts?

What you are talking about is the dismantling of the modern state.  Congress cannot possibly run the administrative machinery in place of the many administrative bodies needed to perform that task.

That seems to be the end goal of the right wing lunacy started in the 80s.

Well Congress is specifically not supposed to do that. That would violate the concept of separation of powers.

[The Larch]

Anyone understand why fashion emits so much carbon?  It's not readily apparent to me.

Logistics, production of synthetic fabrics, most of the world's production is concentrated in SE Asian countries where electrical power comes mostly from coal, and then there's the incredible, sheer scale of the industry, mostly since "fast fashion" became the order of the day.

Tbf, I wouldn't associate the fashion industry with such high CO2 emissions either. The main environmental impacts of the industry that would come to my mind would be in terms of water consumption, water pollution and generation of waste.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah and I think there's a tonne of ethical/moral issues with the emergence of the fast fashion industry as you say. Climate is part of it but not the worst thing.

[The Larch]

Yeah and I think there's a tonne of ethical/moral issues with the emergence of the fast fashion industry as you say. Climate is part of it but not the worst thing.

Oh indeed. Work conditions at some of the operations in countries like Bangladesh are terrifying.

[Sheilbh]

Johnson doing his part to exasperate climate change by opening up a new coal mine. Josq must be torn

So much great environmental work done by the legendary environmentalist hero Margaret Thatcher being undone.

I presume this is being done to offset Russian Gas?

No the UK has basically zero exposure to Russian gas in terrms of power. Ironically, at least until the war, we actually imported far more Russian coal than gas.

It's been in the works for years and it's one of those issues that I think highlights the challenges around climate policies. There is a large campaign against it on the principle that we should not be extracting more fossil fuels and that it is contrary to our net zero commitments.

Basically it's a coal mine in Cumbria that is not producing coal for general energy consumption, but coal for use in the steel industry. Currently we import that coking coal from Russia but also the US and Australia.

In the 2010s there was government intervention to save the British steel industry and broad support for continuing to keep it going. In part I think that's become more important in recent years. Steel is important in so many industries and sectors, we've seen global supply chain pressures, over 50% of steel is made in China - so I think there is an argument that it is important to maintain a national steel industry. That policy has the support of the Tories and Labour too.

My view is that given that I support maintaing a steel industry here I should also support opening the coal mine here. We can impose our own environmental requirements, we will reduce the carbon impact of shipping it from Australia and the US, but also I don't think it's necessarily principled or good from an environmental perspective to stop us building the mine and being responsible for the coal mine (if it's viable in other ways) if it just means someone else is doing the mining and we're just outsourcing the environmental impact.

But as I say there is a very strong campaign against it. Labour are against it too which I think is not consistent with their policy on British steel.

[crazy canuck]

So shouldn't Congress come in take care of that issue? Shouldn't the executive branch make those decisions? Are we supposed to just argue in court about what constitutes a significant impact? What is the legal definition of significant impact in the context of Constitutional law? And does that mean in the future Congress would have to insert some clause saying that they are cool with significant impacts?

What you are talking about is the dismantling of the modern state.  Congress cannot possibly run the administrative machinery in place of the many administrative bodies needed to perform that task.

That seems to be the end goal of the right wing lunacy started in the 80s.

Well Congress is specifically not supposed to do that. That would violate the concept of separation of powers.

The  executive is also entirely I'll equipped to replace all of the administrative decisions made by the many administrative decision makers.

I don't know what you are suggesting.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting report from the UK's independent Climate Change Committee (which reviews policies against our net zero commitments). Basically we're still not there on our policies despite numerous initiatives over the last 12 months and hosting COP. The big gap is basically any policies that will have an impact on people's daily lives - but this is their assessment of where we are on surface transport (okay), electricity supply (pretty good), buildings (pretty bad), manufacturing (not great), agriculture (really bad) and engineered removals (pretty bad):


Some of this I think can be aligned with the cost of living crisis - increased moves to electric vehicles and better insulated and heated homes would have a big impact on two of the biggest chunks of our carbon emissions. They would also improve people's cost of living by reducing dependence on gas and probably help the economy - because there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

But there's not yet a credible plan on that and basically huge risks over who pays/bears the costs. I think there's also really important lessons from the yellow vests on that in that people might be willing to pay a bit but it needs to be distributed fairly and be seen to be distributed fairly - a bit issue with the fuel tax rise that Macron proposed was that it was seen as unfairly hitting the poor, especially rural and non-urban France.

The other big point is that basically current gas prices have absolutely transformed the cost/benefit analysis of spending money on buildings and to a lesser extent EV infrastructure:


Given that I think a large chunk of that 2021 energy crisis price is because Asia has transitioned to gas and is a permanently higher price I think it really strengthens the argument to spend a significant amount on buildings and EV now - to get households out, as much as we can, of that market which I think is going to be permanently more expensive.

[grumbler]

I think the biggest issue with DAC and DAC-like technologies is that they will be used as an excuse to not actually tackle reducing emissions.

Best case estimates are that sequestering a tonne of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere will cost something like 2-3 times the amount of simply not releasing it to begin with. The problem is that releasing those gasses generates profits and money, but sequestration is just a cost disassociated with those making fat shareholder value from ignoring those costs. We know that as humans we are absolutely, consistently, and completely terrible at making objective decisions about these things.

A carbon cap and trade neatly solves that problem. Emitters will choose the most efficient way to reduce net carbon. Usually, this will be to change some of the production practices/methods, then on-site capture, then sequestration, because those are the increasingly expensive ways to do it.  Companies with the ability to exceed their emissions reductions have an incentive to do so, because they can trade their unused allotment.

This worked extremely well for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and mercury emissions in the US; reductions are in the 90-95% range compared to 1990.

[crazy canuck]

Shielbh, yeah farming practices are going to be the most difficult (the most politically sensitive).  It's going to require convincing farmers that they will get good/better results using other techniques.

[viper37]

Anyone understand why fashion emits so much carbon?  It's not readily apparent to me.

Nice to have at least one area where i can say I'm doing my part.

From the article:
    The fashion industry consumes one tenth of all of the water used industrially to run factories and clean products. To put this into perspective, it takes 10,000 liters of water  to produce one kilogram of cotton or approximately 3,000 liters of water for one cotton shirt. Furthermore, textile dyeing requires toxic chemicals that subsequently end up in our oceans. Approximately 20% of the wastewater worldwide is attributed to this process, which accumulates over time. As many  factories moved overseas as stated previously, they may be in countries without strict environmental regulations, resulting in untreated water to enter the oceans. Regrettably, the wastewater created is extremely toxic and in many cases, cannot be treated to become safe again. 
Plastic Microfibers
     Next,  synthetic materials are the primary culprits that cause plastic microfibers to enter our oceans. To be exact, approximately 35% of all microplastics are from these synthetic materials.  To further lower the price, producers turn to materials that may be of low quality. For example, many of the fibers are made of polyester, consisting of plastic and tend to release far more carbon emissions than cotton. Furthermore, plastic is slow to degrade in the ocean until a long time has passed. When plastic finally breaks down, it creates a toxic substance with a [color=rgba(3, 92, 0, 0.6)]harmful impact on the marine ecosystems. As these plastic microfibers cannot be removed, they end up in the human food chain through aquatic life, causing many negative health effects. There are a variety of ways they can enter our ocean - most commonly from our usage of the washing machine. Though it is evident that the washing machine has been an essential appliance in our households, it's important to wash full-loads when possible to minimize excess consumption of water.[/font][/size][/color]
[...]
  From the beginning of cellulosics, viscose was introduced in 1890 as a cheaper alternative to cotton for production. Viscose, also known as rayon, is a common cellulosic fiber made from wood pulp. It has extremely detrimental effects on the environment such as the usage of harmful chemicals and the unethical resourcing for the material. As the companies use toxic chemicals, others are worried about other impacts beyond environmental factors For instance, the carbon disulphide that is used in viscose fiber production leads to lethal health side effects on workers as well. Thus, perhaps it is not surprising that viscose consequently results in a larger amount of greenhouse gas emissions than cotton production. 

[/quote]

Also, lots of excess use of clothes that ends up in landfills.