Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Barrister]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds

Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds

Trillions of dollars a year are 'adding fuel to the fire' of the climate crisis, experts say

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were "adding fuel to the fire" of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

Studies like this really piss me off.

'not pricing fuels to reflect environmental costs' is not a subsidy!

Look, I'm all for carbon taxes, and think hydrocarbon prices should reflect their environmental cost.  But when you call such a subsidy you just undermine your own position.

[Syt]

Studies like this really piss me off.

'not pricing fuels to reflect environmental costs' is not a subsidy!

Look, I'm all for carbon taxes, and think hydrocarbon prices should reflect their environmental cost.  But when you call such a subsidy you just undermine your own position.

It's costs covered by the community, i.e. tax payers.

[The Brain]

Explicit subsidies that cut fuel prices accounted for 8% of the total and tax breaks another 6%. The biggest factors were failing to make polluters pay for the deaths and poor health caused by air pollution (42%) and for the heatwaves and other impacts of global heating (29%).

They should pay for the right to kill people? Er... how about not releasing stuff that kills people?

[Barrister]

Studies like this really piss me off.

'not pricing fuels to reflect environmental costs' is not a subsidy!

Look, I'm all for carbon taxes, and think hydrocarbon prices should reflect their environmental cost.  But when you call such a subsidy you just undermine your own position.

It's costs covered by the community, i.e. tax payers.

They're externalities, sure.

But never heard of an externality being called a subsidy.

[DGuller]

But never heard of an externality being called a subsidy.

That doesn't mean it's wrong to do so, it just means that you're not falling victim to status quo bias.  An externality not being internalized is a subsidy in all the important ways that a more narrowly defined subsidy is. 

[Valmy]

A lot of the costs of the energy transition are not going to come directly from the government.  You're not going to have a new electric car because the government buys you a new car, for example.  With the right pushes and pulls the economy will transition itself because it makes more economic sense to do so.  Not that the government won't be spending a lot of money in those pushes and pulls of course.

Well energy is already a centrally planned government managed sector in about 99% of the world, so it kind of has to at least in that sector.

[ulmont]

-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

You kinda hit on Matt Yglesias's latest article, which boils down to "we need practically unlimited green energy and then we can not only zero out new greenhouse gas production but remove current production above historical averages": https://www.slowboring.com/p/energy-abundance

[Berkut]

But never heard of an externality being called a subsidy.

That doesn't mean it's wrong to do so, it just means that you're not falling victim to status quo bias.  An externality not being internalized is a subsidy in all the important ways that a more narrowly defined subsidy is. 

No, actually it is not. Words have actual meaning and definitions. The definition of a subsidy is:

a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive.
"a farm subsidy"

There are good reasons to be very concerned with negative externalities. They are not subsidies. Calling them subsidies so you can have some breathtaking story about how the US spend more subsidizing fossil fuel companies then it spends on education is stupid bullshit that is misleading and suggests something to most people that is absolutely not true, and when people figure out that it is not true, just erodes their trust on the media organizations that make such silly claims.

...and then we wonder why people don't trust the IPCC consensus...

[viper37]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/06/fossil-fuel-industry-subsidies-of-11m-dollars-a-minute-imf-finds

Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds

Trillions of dollars a year are 'adding fuel to the fire' of the climate crisis, experts say

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were "adding fuel to the fire" of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.

Studies like this really piss me off.

'not pricing fuels to reflect environmental costs' is not a subsidy!

Look, I'm all for carbon taxes, and think hydrocarbon prices should reflect their environmental cost.  But when you call such a subsidy you just undermine your own position.

It is a subsidy.  And it prevents other technologies from breaking through because they cost more than fuel.

[crazy canuck]

I wonder how they do the accounting for the amount of the subsidy.

Take a non climate example.  A factory has unsafe equipment which injures 10 employees per period of time and they can no longer work.

The cost of installing safer equipment which would drop that number to 0 costs 1M.  But they don't because there is no incentive (in this hypothetical)

The injuries and life long disability income is paid through some third party - here it would be the province's workers compensation scheme - to the tune of say 5M

Are they using the 1M or 5M?

To BB's point.  The conduct in this hypothetical is of course heavily regulated so that the employer is not subsidized by either figure.  If they did not pay the 1M themselves to install the safe equipment they would pay much more than the 1M in fines, damages and penalties.  Which is the point of the IMF study.

It is a subsidy.  And it prevents other technologies from breaking through because they cost more than fuel.

The difficulty is that some people here have a more narrow understanding of what that word means.

[crazy canuck]

...and then we wonder why people don't trust the IPCC consensus...

It is pretty clear the reason is ignorance.

[Berkut]

-The excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity are generally a stock not a flow. The current problem is the result of a couple centuries of industrialization and even cutting global emissions to absolute zero for all time doesn't remove what we've already put in the atmosphere, and there are even models showing that there is a positive feedback loop that could cause additional greenhouse gas to be naturally released based on elevated global temperatures. The current crisis is what is already in the atmosphere, and of course we are adding greenhouse gases at increasing rates on a global basis. So it seems the ultimate solution is going to need to be a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

You kinda hit on Matt Yglesias's latest article, which boils down to "we need practically unlimited green energy and then we can not only zero out new greenhouse gas production but remove current production above historical averages": https://www.slowboring.com/p/energy-abundance

Exactly.

I don't think there is ANY chance that the crisis has any possible solution based on reducing human energy consumption, or even significantly slowing its growth. Pretty much all of human history has been a never ending story of "how to we figure out to produce and use more energy?"

At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....

[ulmont]

At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....

Ultimately everything is nuclear, with solar being just one step removed and then most other energy production more attenuated from that.

[crazy canuck]

At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....

Ultimately everything is nuclear, with solar being just one step removed and then most other energy production more attenuated from that.

Depends where you are.  With better battery storage tech hydro, solar and wind can be built more quickly and inexpensively and provide complete coverage.  Keep in mind BC hydro supplies all the power needs of BC, and exports power - and this province is about the size of France and Germany combined.   For areas where that is not possible, they likely have to go nuclear.  But with transmission of energy also becoming more efficient, proximity to the source may not be an issue. necessary.

[Berkut]

At the end of the day, I have to think solar is the answer. After all....basically all energy on the Earth being produced today comes back to solar anyway....

Ultimately everything is nuclear, with solar being just one step removed and then most other energy production more attenuated from that.

Depends where you are.  With better battery storage tech hydro, solar and wind can be built more quickly and inexpensively and provide complete coverage.  Keep in mind BC hydro supplies all the power needs of BC, and exports power - and this province is about the size of France and Germany combined.   For areas where that is not possible, they likely have to go nuclear.  But with transmission of energy also becoming more efficient, proximity to the source may not be an issue. necessary.

ulmont is pointing out that solar energy is actually nuclear energy.