this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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BP abandons goal to cut oil output, resets strategy (www.reuters.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] spidermanchild 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm just having trouble imagining the sort of global cooperation required for something like this. It seems significantly more difficult than a carbon tax, which is practically impossible already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Cap systems like this are about equivalent to carbon taxes in terms of difficulty in cooperating around, but give certainty about total emissions instead of about future prices. They're mostly not implemented because they make it clear that you need to actually decarbonize.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The US wouldn't actually need to cooperate with other countries, the US GHG footprint is huge. Even considering just the US military, such a scheme would make a massive difference.

If implemented US-wide, it would obviously be an issue how you then tax (cheap) imports made with fossil fuels (which incidentally is a question the EU is already pondering) and what to do about your exports. But it should definitely be possible.

[–] spidermanchild 1 points 1 month ago

That's a fair point. It still seems like focusing on the supply side would just result in higher prices (I'm thinking just oil imports), while enriching other countries that still pump. So money is sent abroad, Americans pay more and are pissed off and are back to being dependent on global markets. Whereas a tax would lower demand in an "artificial" way that keeps the money in the borders to be used on stuff that benefits people, like enabling the transition itself. Taxes are simple and they work. I imagine we'd have to be basically off oil already before moratoriums would be feasible politically. Gas is a bit different than oil because it's not really a global market, but I'm no expert on this stuff. I just want to the fossil fuels to stay in the ground one way or another.