Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

Anymore detail on this? I tried to google Jared Diamond and New Guinea but didn't really see much apart from his work and interest in New Guinea.

Well I've got the book so I could give you plenty of detail.  What are you interested in?

[Admiral Yi]

I mean, I directly said the person who is claiming this and showed the evidence of this... Is that what vague is?

I was not able to find anything in my post immeditely preceding the one in which you talked about "the bit above this" that I think a reasonable person could interpret as "100% of the blame goes to the consumers."

Well thats evasive.
So just to make it clear; do you think the use of fossil fuels is 100% the fault of the end user? - not the power plant, the oil company, the government, or any other factor, its all the fault of you sitting there in your room using your computer?

I do not.

[garbon]

Anymore detail on this? I tried to google Jared Diamond and New Guinea but didn't really see much apart from his work and interest in New Guinea.

Well I've got the book so I could give you plenty of detail.  What are you interested in?

Just a clarification of the example. I've not read the book so unclear on example about the New Guinea highlands.

[Admiral Yi]

Just a clarification of the example. I've not read the book so unclear on example about the New Guinea highlands.

No central authority, weak or nonexistent hierarchy, no one to give orders.

Jared claims that thousands of years ago the inhabitants figured they needed to terrace, provide drainage, plant some special tree, etc.  Off the top of my head I can't remember what system they used for population control.  All to prevent erosion, weakening of the soil, silting of river beds, etc., which destroyed many other cultures that he describes in the book.

[garbon]

Thanks

[mongers]

You. As in the bit above this in your post.

Please be a little more vague.

I mean, I directly said the person who is claiming this and showed the evidence of this... Is that what vague is?

It's certainly not 100% the responsibility of the oil companies.

Well thats evasive.
So just to make it clear; do you think the use of fossil fuels is 100% the fault of the end user? - not the power plant, the oil company, the government, or any other factor, its all the fault of you sitting there in your room using your computer?

People have agency, that's self-evident or are we all just consumerist automata with no option but to carry on the same way, marching into the jaws of this crisis?

Much time is being wasted in a blame game, it's highly convienient to externalise all responsiblity to others, be that big organisation/institutions or groups of people we don't like or approve of, so we don't have to do anything inconvienent in our own lives.

My suggestion, we all take some responsibilty; so where possible act socially and politically to pressurise institutions/businesses into taking action now.
But also to examine one's own actions and make significant changes into how we and our families pollute our shared climate and environment.

At this point in the crisis to do nothing, blame others and continue to enjoy the unsustainable luxuries of some modern lifestyles smacks of hypocrisy.

[Josquius]

You. As in the bit above this in your post.

Please be a little more vague.

I mean, I directly said the person who is claiming this and showed the evidence of this... Is that what vague is?

It's certainly not 100% the responsibility of the oil companies.

Well thats evasive.
So just to make it clear; do you think the use of fossil fuels is 100% the fault of the end user? - not the power plant, the oil company, the government, or any other factor, its all the fault of you sitting there in your room using your computer?

People have agency, that's self-evident or are we all just consumerist automata with no option but to carry on the same way, marching into the jaws of this crisis?

Much time is being wasted in a blame game, it's highly convienient to externalise all responsiblity to others, be that big organisation/institutions or groups of people we don't like or approve of, so we don't have to do anything inconvienent in our own lives.

My suggestion, we all take some responsibilty; so where possible act socially and politically to pressurise institutions/businesses into taking action now.
But also to examine one's own actions and make significant changes into how we and our families pollute our shared climate and environment.

At this point in the crisis to do nothing, blame others and continue to enjoy the unsustainable luxuries of some modern lifestyles smacks of hypocrisy.

"Agency" is a bit of a myth of the right. There's no such thing as society and all that.
The fact is we are all a product of our environment. We all think we're rational independent actors making our own decisions free of any outside influence but if that was the case why does so many billions still get pumped into marketing and sales?

As I keep saying nothing is black and white.
Its perfectly valid to criticise the oil companies for their role in climate change because their part of it is so very huge.
This doesn't mean people should just kick back and wait for all problems to be solved. We should do what we can as well. But the idea that we can all just choose to live in a perfectly sustainable way overnight is simply naiive.
You'll know yourself from your experiences avoiding cars, cycling and taking trains in the UK that things really aren't made easy for those who want to take these steps.

[Barrister]

Customers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.

When in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.

In 1979 the WHA was involved in merger discussions with the NHL, which would have seen teams in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Quebec City join the NHL (together with Hartford).  The NHL owners voted 12-5 in favor of the merger, but league rules required a 3/4 majority.  One of the "no" votes was from Montreal, which was owned by Molson's brewery.

Canadian hockey fans responded by boycotting Molson's beer.

The league quickly held a second vote and the merger was approved.

Now solving global climate change is just slightly harder than forcing a hockey merger, but it is my absolute favourite example of where customer action resulted in real and meaningful change.

[Jacob]

Jared Diamond gives a few examples of bottom up ecosystem preservation and population stabilization in his book Collapse.  The New Guinea highlands is the best example.

It's an interesting example, thanks for sharing. Re: the current situation it misses the mark a bit in that the New Guinea highlands didn't really have a modern consumer society in the time period, and we have (I believe) little understanding in what drove the society to make the required changes - was it individual families deciding to do their bit on their own? Was it some sort of religious movement? Was it dictatorial imposition by a ruling class?

I was looking for situations where modern societies had successfully enacted transformative solutions in the faces of impending crisis based on relying on individual consumer purchasing decisions, especially absent robust government action which you seem to suggest. BB's charming example notwithstanding I don't think we have any evidence that such an approach has ever worked on a significant scale, nor that it is likely to be effective.

Conversely, we have plenty of evidence of consumer and industry behaviour changing in response to government action.

Please not you have shifted the goalposts.  I said oil companies are not the only ones to blame for climate change, the end users bear just as much.

Agree that oil companies do not have 100% of the responsibility. Disagree that end users bear a significant amount of responsibility, except in their roles of voters (in democracies).

The other major holder of responsibility are governments (and by extension voters, in democracies). But oil companies - in this particular situation - do bear more responsibility than industry normally does, in that they knew the scope of the problem early and took concerted efforts to cloud the issue and undermine preventative action (and significantly, they succeeded).

Consider a carbon tax.  This would work by making carbon emitting goods more expensive and induce individuals to switch their consumption basket to goods who's production emits less carbon.  But if this possible with the existence of a carbon tax, it is just as possible without one.

In the realm of abstract hypotheticals, yes. In actual practice, no.

Anyone with the cash can switch out their gas stove for an electric one.  A ban on gas stoves is not a necessary precondition for this action.

It's not a necessary precondition, no, but it will massively impact the uptake - and thus effectiveness - of the switch.

You're obviously going to see significantly greater uptake of electrical stoves if the cost of running them are 10% of running gas stoves, compared to a scenario in which gas stove costs are 10% of electric stove costs. And if gas stoves are banned and a 100% tax is slapped on domestic gas, then we'll see usage drop significantly faster than if we leave things up to individual consumer preference. Now, there may be other reasons why such drastic action is a bad idea, but lack of efficacy is not one.

So if we think switching to electric is going to help address climate change, we absolutely should take steps to incentivize that rather than rely on the body of consumers to make "moral" consumption choices in the market. The market already has a specific incentive structure in place for individual actions. We can - and should, in time of crisis - change that incentive structure.

[Jacob]

People have agency, that's self-evident or are we all just consumerist automata with no option but to carry on the same way, marching into the jaws of this crisis?

Yes we have agency, but the impact of individual consumer agency is trivial compared to the impact of government action (driving market action, driving individual action at scale).

For argument's sake let's assume the adoption of electric vehicles is a useful action:

1. Prior to the availability of consumer electric vehicles, consumers had zero ability to make a choice to drive them. Obviously.

2. The development of consumer grade EVs has absolutely benefitted from government subsidies. Even in terms of pursuing shareholder value, government action (and potential government action) has been a massive influence - "we expect government regulation in key markets will incentivize EVs and penalize CEVs, therefore the EV market will likely grow. We should get in on that market and make sure we're competitive."

3. Once EVs were more widely available we can compare uptake in markets where government incentivizes their use (direct financial incentives/disincentives, infrastructure support, signals about future penalties for CEVs) vs those where they do not. I'm pretty sure the evidence shows that uptake is much bigger in areas where there's clear government action to encourage that uptake.

The same is broadly true when it comes to the adoption of solar/ wind/ hydro/ nuclear vs burning gas/ coal for electricity.

Much time is being wasted in a blame game, it's highly convienient to externalise all responsiblity to others, be that big organisation/institutions or groups of people we don't like or approve of, so we don't have to do anything inconvienent in our own lives.

While this is true, I think that people will embrace the inconvenient on a much larger scale if it's rendered less inconvenient while the alternatives are made much more inconvenient in turn.

Relying on volunteerism in the face of massive but seemingly remote danger is ineffective.

My suggestion, we all take some responsibilty; so where possible act socially and politically to pressurise institutions/businesses into taking action now.

But also to examine one's own actions and make significant changes into how we and our families pollute our shared climate and environment.

At this point in the crisis to do nothing, blame others and continue to enjoy the unsustainable luxuries of some modern lifestyles smacks of hypocrisy.

Sure, that's fair.

Conversely, to continually focus on the need for individual morality based actions while eschewing concerted government action smacks of being ineffective.

... and given that the actual climate will respond to the effectiveness/ ineffectiveness of our measures while it doesn't respond to hypocrisy (or the absence thereof), I think we should focus on what is most likely to be effective.

[Sheilbh]

I think just on Jake's Exxon point that there's also been leaks from BP and Shell - that they were not just aware of climate change before it was commonly understood (before the first UN conference on it for example), but were doing models of no action v mitigation in the 70s and 80s. I can't find the article but we are currently broadly on the no action path - I think that was BP and they didn't take the mitigation actions in the 70s or 80s when looking at that.

Oil and gas companies did, however, fund climate skeptic think tanks and PR firms for the last 40-50 years.

They may not be solely responsible but I think there is a case that they're not a million miles from the tobacco companies or the Sacklers in terms of knowing more, earlier and actively trying to move attention away.

[Maladict]

Customers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.

When in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Netherlands_v._Urgenda_Foundation
How about a bunch of concerned citizens taking the government to court over failing to legislate against climate change, and thereby putting the population at risk? And winning, forcing the government into policy it is afraid to make?

[crazy canuck]

Customers are not powerless.  They have total discretion on how they travel, how they heat and cool their housing, what foods to buy, etc., etc., etc.

When in the history of the modern world has customer action resulted in a noticable impact on a sustained crisis absent significant government policy? [I'm also interested in pre-modern examples as a nerdy tangent, but I don't think they're going to be particularly relevant to the current situation, if they exist]

If the solution to the climate change crisis is to rely on individual customer action, I hope you can point to a relevant example where that approach has been successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Netherlands_v._Urgenda_Foundation
How about a bunch of concerned citizens taking the government to court over failing to legislate against climate change, and thereby putting the population at risk? And winning, forcing the government into policy it is afraid to make?

That supports Jacob's point.  It is government action that is required.

Also people need to take Diamond's theories and observations with a large grain of salt.  He has been heavily criticized by Anthropologists for making claims not supported by the evidence or just plain being wrong.

[Admiral Yi]

... and given that the actual climate will respond to the effectiveness/ ineffectiveness of our measures while it doesn't respond to hypocrisy (or the absence thereof), I think we should focus on what is most likely to be effective.

Neither does the climate respond to our heaping all the blame on oil companies.

[Jacob]

Neither does the climate respond to our heaping all the blame on oil companies.

No doubt.

But it might respond to actions that disincentivizes the the use of fossil fuels on industry- and nation- wide bases.

... and holding oil companies responsible for their malfeance may be an effective part of such disincentives; much more so than repeating "you know you could decide to by an electrical stove if you really cared."