Climate justice issues facing Americans does have to do with their communities breathing toxins and being impacted by hazardous waste disproportionately. They have a right not to have industry profits trump health, safety and equity.
With my ear to the ground -- the breaking news is about “Affordable housing” and where to build it is now the hottest NIMBY issue in America. Class issues with suburbanites “do not want the projects built in their neighborhoods.” Because what low income brings with it e.g. mental heath, health issues etc.
As climate crisis displaces more people, more layoffs, and Low wages and lack of shelter that is becoming scarce because of high rents. The System is breaking down and homelessness at a crisis level. There is no plan for a social safety net for the vulnerable people that now includes The middle class. There is no plan to adapt and no plan to cut the misery of the next catastrophe that we can now predict.
Drawing down emissions now demand a feasibility studies, and adaption planning wrapped in cultural change best practices.
Every conversation to draw down emissions now must be anchored with a doctoral thesis on planning for future resiliency.
It’s getting harder and more complicated to solve this problem - that’s the #scalemonster.
Can you expand a bit on the scale problem in regards to carbon capture?
The NPR story I heard on carbon capture did acknowledge the scale challenge. But to me, it sounded like just a matter of money. To illustrate, check out this story....
Americans plan to spend nearly $26 billion this Valentine’s Day
Even at an ideal cost of $100/ton to sequester, the daily cost would be 10 billion dollars to put the carbon back into the ground from the daily emissions. The global annual emissions are 38 billion tons - or 3.8 trillion dollars to keep CO2 levels from continuing to rise.
1) Ok, so we can't get the job done with carbon capture alone, and still need to reduce emissions substantially. This seems widely agreed. This reduces the 3.8 trillion by some amount.
2) Surely there must be some way to reduce the unit cost. Economies of scale? Improved technology? If true, 3.8 trillion reduced further.
3) The cost of emission reductions by any method should presumably be offset to some degree by reduced environmental damage. 3.8 trillion reduced further.
4) If we can afford $26 billion on candy and flowers for a single holiday, there must be tons of more money which can be squeezed out of the economy. 3.8 trillion reduced further.
5) 1% of Americans own about a third of the nation's wealth. A substantial rise in taxation on this group would not affect their lifestyle in any meaningful way. 3.8 trillion reduced further.
6) Your calculation is for global annual emissions, so whatever the cost winds up being it can be shared by all developed economies. 3.8 trillion dollars not so scary sounding now.
7) I thought of these ideas as fast as I can type. Surely they could be substantially improved upon by others?
My real question is....
Is this a ##$%$# crisis, or not? Could elites please make up their minds? One day they give a speech telling us climate change is a crisis, and the next day they're hoping on a plane, burning jet fuel, and pumping out more CO2, so they can attend some conference on the other side of the world that they could have attended online.
There was a big security conference in Europe recently. All the big shots flew in, and then sat there in the audience watching speeches on a big screen. I asked a former ambassador to Russia about this on his blog. Nice guy, but he had no useful explanation. The brain dead status quo lives on.
More Greta Thunberg, and fewer "experts". That's my vote.
It's not that carbon capture is a "one true way", it's just that technological fixes are something we're good at. And carbon capture is something that's easy to understand in principle. Thus, it seems that carbon capture is an action the public might be willing to support enthusiastically, ie. pay for.
Compare that to the attempt to change human behavior, for example, trying to persuade everyone to go vegetarian. Or, as I whined above, getting elites to stop burning jet fuel. It's harder to have confidence in attempts to change human behavior.
There's a lot of doomer despair about climate change, particularly among young people. They haven't been offered a solution vision that they can believe in, and so many of them are giving up, disengaging.
Carbon capture isn't THE ANSWER, but it might be an unrealized political opportunity. Nobody has asked me to donate to a carbon capture project. Why?
I'll send you over (belatedly, sorry!) to my discussion of carbon capture way back in 2009 with the world's deepest-diving energy and resource wonk, Vaclav Smil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIjlZQf28I He vividly explains the CCS #scalemonster.
Ok, I get it, capturing ALL the CO2 as fast as we create it isn't going to happen. That sounds reasonable. But if climate change is really a crisis (is it?) then it seems we'd be focusing on capturing what we can.
An argument against any carbon capture might be that there are far more effective ways to spend that money. Is that it? If yes, like what?
What about requiring every fossil fuel producer to pump the equivalent amount of CO2 back in to the ground? So the price of oil goes way up. That's good, isn't it?
Andy Revkin, you never give up on what is a many-sided, big monster of a problem! And i am thankfull for that. Carolyn R.
What’s with the NIMBY
And The #scalemonster?
Are you referring to David and Goliath?
Climate justice issues facing Americans does have to do with their communities breathing toxins and being impacted by hazardous waste disproportionately. They have a right not to have industry profits trump health, safety and equity.
With my ear to the ground -- the breaking news is about “Affordable housing” and where to build it is now the hottest NIMBY issue in America. Class issues with suburbanites “do not want the projects built in their neighborhoods.” Because what low income brings with it e.g. mental heath, health issues etc.
As climate crisis displaces more people, more layoffs, and Low wages and lack of shelter that is becoming scarce because of high rents. The System is breaking down and homelessness at a crisis level. There is no plan for a social safety net for the vulnerable people that now includes The middle class. There is no plan to adapt and no plan to cut the misery of the next catastrophe that we can now predict.
Drawing down emissions now demand a feasibility studies, and adaption planning wrapped in cultural change best practices.
Every conversation to draw down emissions now must be anchored with a doctoral thesis on planning for future resiliency.
It’s getting harder and more complicated to solve this problem - that’s the #scalemonster.
Can you expand a bit on the scale problem in regards to carbon capture?
The NPR story I heard on carbon capture did acknowledge the scale challenge. But to me, it sounded like just a matter of money. To illustrate, check out this story....
Americans plan to spend nearly $26 billion this Valentine’s Day
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/29/americans-plan-to-spend-nearly-26-billion-this-valentines-day.html
$26 billion on candy and flowers, and we can't afford carbon capture??
Even at an ideal cost of $100/ton to sequester, the daily cost would be 10 billion dollars to put the carbon back into the ground from the daily emissions. The global annual emissions are 38 billion tons - or 3.8 trillion dollars to keep CO2 levels from continuing to rise.
Thanks Mike, appreciated.
1) Ok, so we can't get the job done with carbon capture alone, and still need to reduce emissions substantially. This seems widely agreed. This reduces the 3.8 trillion by some amount.
2) Surely there must be some way to reduce the unit cost. Economies of scale? Improved technology? If true, 3.8 trillion reduced further.
3) The cost of emission reductions by any method should presumably be offset to some degree by reduced environmental damage. 3.8 trillion reduced further.
4) If we can afford $26 billion on candy and flowers for a single holiday, there must be tons of more money which can be squeezed out of the economy. 3.8 trillion reduced further.
5) 1% of Americans own about a third of the nation's wealth. A substantial rise in taxation on this group would not affect their lifestyle in any meaningful way. 3.8 trillion reduced further.
6) Your calculation is for global annual emissions, so whatever the cost winds up being it can be shared by all developed economies. 3.8 trillion dollars not so scary sounding now.
7) I thought of these ideas as fast as I can type. Surely they could be substantially improved upon by others?
My real question is....
Is this a ##$%$# crisis, or not? Could elites please make up their minds? One day they give a speech telling us climate change is a crisis, and the next day they're hoping on a plane, burning jet fuel, and pumping out more CO2, so they can attend some conference on the other side of the world that they could have attended online.
There was a big security conference in Europe recently. All the big shots flew in, and then sat there in the audience watching speeches on a big screen. I asked a former ambassador to Russia about this on his blog. Nice guy, but he had no useful explanation. The brain dead status quo lives on.
More Greta Thunberg, and fewer "experts". That's my vote.
All good points, we can fix the problems we face - if we choose to!
It's not that carbon capture is a "one true way", it's just that technological fixes are something we're good at. And carbon capture is something that's easy to understand in principle. Thus, it seems that carbon capture is an action the public might be willing to support enthusiastically, ie. pay for.
Compare that to the attempt to change human behavior, for example, trying to persuade everyone to go vegetarian. Or, as I whined above, getting elites to stop burning jet fuel. It's harder to have confidence in attempts to change human behavior.
There's a lot of doomer despair about climate change, particularly among young people. They haven't been offered a solution vision that they can believe in, and so many of them are giving up, disengaging.
Carbon capture isn't THE ANSWER, but it might be an unrealized political opportunity. Nobody has asked me to donate to a carbon capture project. Why?
I'll send you over (belatedly, sorry!) to my discussion of carbon capture way back in 2009 with the world's deepest-diving energy and resource wonk, Vaclav Smil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIjlZQf28I He vividly explains the CCS #scalemonster.
Hi Andy!
Ok, I get it, capturing ALL the CO2 as fast as we create it isn't going to happen. That sounds reasonable. But if climate change is really a crisis (is it?) then it seems we'd be focusing on capturing what we can.
An argument against any carbon capture might be that there are far more effective ways to spend that money. Is that it? If yes, like what?
What about requiring every fossil fuel producer to pump the equivalent amount of CO2 back in to the ground? So the price of oil goes way up. That's good, isn't it?