←back to thread

Humans have caused 1.5 °C of long-term global warming according to new estimates

(www.lancaster.ac.uk)
399 points gmays | 7 comments | 17 Nov 24 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
Show context
oezi ◴[17 Nov 24 19:06 UTC] No.42166179[source]▶
Looking into the numbers a couple if months ago I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.

On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roughly 100-200% of global yearly GDP. Or 2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050. This could well be provided by printing money at all the federal reserve banks.

This investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts.

Without such investments the downstream costs in climate change adaptation will be very expensive

replies(15): >>42166197 #>>42166228 #>>42166244 #>>42166268 #>>42166281 #>>42166295 #>>42166298 #>>42166311 #>>42166377 #>>42166407 #>>42166458 #>>42166521 #>>42166737 #>>42167052 #>>42167400 #
tinco ◴[17 Nov 24 19:19 UTC] No.42166311[source]▶
Only 1% of GDP is agriculture, yet 100% of society relies on agriculture for survival. Because we don't have food shortages right now, GDP is heavily slanted towards things that don't really matter. You can't take that sort of monopoly money and try to influence the real world, if it were that easy then governments would be changing gas prices to win elections a lot more effectively.

Not disagreeing that there should be a lot more funding of climate change reducing endeavors, I just don't think that GDP should/could be an anchor to base that on.

replies(2): >>42166390 #>>42166442 #
marcosdumay ◴[17 Nov 24 19:36 UTC] No.42166442[source]▶
There's no immediate bottleneck for reducing fossil fuel consumption. More money will translate into more effect, at most delayed by some half of a decade for any foreseeable effort.

At some point we will find a series of bottlenecks. But up to a 30% reduction (with ~100% clean electricity) it's obviously clear, and it looks doable up to ~90% (electricity, transportation, heating, and some industry converted).

replies(1): >>42166691 #
1. tinco ◴[17 Nov 24 20:04 UTC] No.42166691[source]▶
Yeah that sounds right, I'm just wondering where the materials and the labor come from. We don't just have 5% of GDP worth of those laying around, they're currently allocated to other things. Not saying it's impossible, but it's hard to estimate the repercussions.
replies(4): >>42166951 #>>42167028 #>>42168283 #>>42169095 #
2. ClumsyPilot ◴[17 Nov 24 20:31 UTC] No.42166951[source]▶
> materials and the labor come from. We don't just have 5% of GDP worth of those laying around

You have to make up your mind, if you are concerned about real resources or fictional ones.

If we want to optimise for real resources we would round up all the people who’s job is to destroy real resources, like casino pit bosses and the managers of Prada and fast fashion that destroy clothing to create artificial scarcity.

And we would kick them out in the rain to do tree planting.

Climate change threatens a lot more than 5% of real reseouces - in fact what happens when the Middle East and American Midwest runs out of underground water reserves?

replies(2): >>42168373 #>>42185822 #
3. marcosdumay ◴[17 Nov 24 20:40 UTC] No.42167028[source]▶
Oh, certainly, if we are to make a serious effort, it requires dealocating a bit of resources from other areas.

Energy investments are some 3% of the GDP, diverting those is an almost complete non-brainier. But we'd need to get about as much from other places.

4. throwup238 ◴[17 Nov 24 23:27 UTC] No.42168283[source]▶
The (vast) majority of labor on this planet is underutilized and there’s plenty of material still left in the ground if there was demand to extract it. There are two billion people living on subsistence farming alone whose labor could be unlocked by raising them out of poverty and feeding them via mechanized agriculture. Then there’s the massive logistics of modern militaries that could be retooled towards climate change diplomacy.

Unfortunately it’s all part of the same tragedy of the commons and coordination problem.

5. defrost ◴[17 Nov 24 23:43 UTC] No.42168373[source]▶
> what happens when the Middle East and American Midwest runs out of underground water reserves?

It's not a neck and neck race, what has happened is one region drains its aquifers first and then silently raids the other's ...

* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-ar...

* https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizon...

6. consteval ◴[18 Nov 24 02:06 UTC] No.42169095[source]▶
> I'm just wondering where the materials and the labor come from. We don't just have 5% of GDP worth of those laying around

IMO for labor, I'd say ~80% of jobs are more or less completely worthless. Many, many industries don't produce anything at all, they just move intellectual stuff from point A to point B, slap their existence on it, and shave off a few cents for themselves.

7. tinco ◴[19 Nov 24 17:16 UTC] No.42185822[source]▶
Those are very weirdly specific examples that don't destroy much real resources at all. What resources does a casino pit boss destroy but time? And surely Prada has one of the smallest resources to money spent ratios you could imagine? Half a calf's worth of leather for a $10k bag?

Anyway, that's what my sort of point is. Much of the GDP is spent on dumb stuff like holding stocks, gold, art and Prada bags. When you divert a percentage of that to be spent on real resources it can have major effects. Kind of like how when leisure travel became affordable for regular people, suddenly air travel and cruise ships started to have an outsized effect on climate.