The rich are to blame for climate change

[nereo]

Recognizing outright that several here are not posting in good faith, this entire discussion is an excellent example of how correlations and averages can lead you to some false assumptions.

Yes, there's a strong correlation between wealth and carbon emissions, but having money doesn't cause an increase in CO2, and critically not all wealthy people have the same massive carbon footprint. (Just as it's also true that many lower-income individuals can have an outsized carbon footprint). If you have trouble conceptualizing this, consider what would happen if you gave an environmentally-conscious mustachian a few extra million $.  Would s/he automatically become one of the most polluting people on the planet? Of course not.  Sure, their carbon footprint might increase modestly, but not the orders of magnitude that some are predicting from a correlation. It's even entirely possible for that (already eco-minded) person's impact to go down, as it will open up opportunities like going net-zero or gobbling up land to put into conservation/

It gets even more convoluted because increased wealth is correlated with decreased family size. If we want to curb our global population, the three best ways of doing so are through women's education, raising people out of poverty and improving basic health services.  Which means if we are convinced that our fundamental problem is too many humans, we ought to work hard to raise as many people out of poverty and get them to live longer (which the correlationists say will increase their carbon-footprint by an order of magnitude or more).

So rather than make ill-informed extrapolations (Kill the rich!  No, just the Americans! Or sterilize entire segments of the global population!!) we can acknowledge that correlations isn't causation, and instead use those trends to inform us on how we can manage these challenges going forward.  For example, it's clear from the data @PDXTabs imbedded that some developed countries have far lower emissions than others.  At an individual level it's also clear that there's an absolutely massive range in carbon emissions among the very wealthy.  How can we shift the most problematic while continuing to make progress on even the relatively 'green' countries and individuals.

[Michael in ABQ]

I'm glad that so many people that know better than me how to live my life, don't actually have the power to compel me to do so. That's what this all comes down to after all. Climate change is just the latest in a long line of issues that provide an excuse to tell others how to live their lives.

[uniwelder]

Yes, there's a strong correlation between wealth and carbon emissions, but having money doesn't cause an increase in CO2, and critically not all wealthy people have the same massive carbon footprint. (Just as it's also true that many lower-income individuals can have an outsized carbon footprint). If you have trouble conceptualizing this, consider what would happen if you gave an environmentally-conscious mustachian a few extra million $.  Would s/he automatically become one of the most polluting people on the planet? Of course not.  Sure, their carbon footprint might increase modestly, but not the orders of magnitude that some are predicting from a correlation. It's even entirely possible for that (already eco-minded) person's impact to go down, as it will open up opportunities like going net-zero or gobbling up land to put into conservation/

I think the main problem of your argument is that you're making an example out of the exception.  An environmentally conscious mustachian is already in the top tier of global wealth and highly polluting, so of course giving them some more money isn't going to change much. It might be better to look at someone in a developing country that gains some cash and then buys a car, and air conditioner, etc.

Another question regarding increasing world population---- Yes, I hadn't really thought much about how most of that growth is from people considered as low carbon footprint, but does that definition include the effects of growing the population?  The amount of deforestation that occurs to expand living area, crop fields, and animal pasture is tremendous.  As an example, I'm thinking of Ghana, which had a 25% population growth in the last 10 years and lost 7% of its forest area during that time.  The more people you have, the more intensely you need to exploit natural resources to provide for them.

[uniwelder]

I'm glad that so many people that know better than me how to live my life, don't actually have the power to compel me to do so. That's what this all comes down to after all. Climate change is just the latest in a long line of issues that provide an excuse to tell others how to live their lives.

Pretty shitty attitude.  As long as everything going well for you, just fuck everyone else.

[GuitarStv]

I'm glad that so many people that know better than me how to live my life, don't actually have the power to compel me to do so. That's what this all comes down to after all. Climate change is just the latest in a long line of issues that provide an excuse to tell others how to live their lives.

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

[maizefolk]

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

I absolutely disagree. There is plenty of hope.

The whole reason we organize our societies with governments is because collective action that depends on every single person listening to others and voluntarily changing their actions, even when that change is in everyone's best interest, doesn't work. If I told myself from a decade past that the US would be adding 23 gigawatts of wind power a year, that electric cars would have moved from a weird niche (I think Tesla had sold a few hundred roadsters at that point) to more than 1M/year in the USA alone last year, I wouldn't have believed it. Yet these things did happen, and they happened between we as a society had our government set incentives to encourage them.

[GuitarStv]

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

I absolutely disagree. There is plenty of hope.

The whole reason we organize our societies with governments is because collective action that depends on every single person listening to others and voluntarily changing their actions, even when that change is in everyone's best interest, doesn't work. If I told myself from a decade past that the US would be adding 23 gigawatts of wind power a year, that electric cars would have moved from a weird niche (I think Tesla had sold a few hundred roadsters at that point) to more than 1M/year in the USA alone last year, I wouldn't have believed it. Yet these things did happen, and they happened between we as a society had our government set incentives to encourage them.

While I agree that individual action is doomed to fail on this sort of issue, to date there has been no government intervention or action that provides reason for hope.  None of the things you mention come anywhere close to even stabilizing out of control carbon emissions . . . let alone reversing them back to where they need to be.  In fact, in that time we have increased our waste and carbon footprints by all measurable metrics I'm aware of.

[sixwings]

I'm relatively bullish that climate change will be solved in the next 10-15 years through technology that sucks CO2 out of the air and stores it somewhere, lab grown meat taking off, stuff like that. But that's addressing the symptom not the disease.

What I think is going to continue to be a disaster, and is the actual disease, is the ramp up in consumption/consumerism and the increases in plastic that creates. That's not solveable through technology and plastic working it's way into every facet of the ecosystem is likely going to be a disaster. Microplastics now evaporate and end up in clouds and come down in rain, we eat a credit card of plastic a week (and that's only going to increase), micro-plastics are in the plankton and being fed to babies in the womb as microplasctics are now in most womens placenta. This is just the beginning. IMO, the plastic crisis is far worse, and far less solveable through technology, than climate change.

[nereo]

Yes, there's a strong correlation between wealth and carbon emissions, but having money doesn't cause an increase in CO2, and critically not all wealthy people have the same massive carbon footprint. (Just as it's also true that many lower-income individuals can have an outsized carbon footprint). If you have trouble conceptualizing this, consider what would happen if you gave an environmentally-conscious mustachian a few extra million $.  Would s/he automatically become one of the most polluting people on the planet? Of course not.  Sure, their carbon footprint might increase modestly, but not the orders of magnitude that some are predicting from a correlation. It's even entirely possible for that (already eco-minded) person's impact to go down, as it will open up opportunities like going net-zero or gobbling up land to put into conservation/

I think the main problem of your argument is that you're making an example out of the exception.  An environmentally conscious mustachian is already in the top tier of global wealth and highly polluting, so of course giving them some more money isn't going to change much. It might be better to look at someone in a developing country that gains some cash and then buys a car, and air conditioner, etc.

Nope, you missed it.  I'm not making an argument at all, though you seem to be getting bogged down by how universally applied a specific example can be applied (in this case it's not meant to - it's specifically there to point out how a trend won't properly describe many individuals.  Or to put it most simply: correlation isn't causation.

I'm glad that so many people that know better than me how to live my life, don't actually have the power to compel me to do so. That's what this all comes down to after all. Climate change is just the latest in a long line of issues that provide an excuse to tell others how to live their lives.

Of course they do.  Like it or not we live in a society of laws and regulations.  Those rules can do everything from ban substances (e.g. leaded gasoline, cocaine, DDT) to restrict their use (fuel-efficiency standards, products produced in Iran, etc.).  Frankly, I don't wan't to experience a society where such rules don't exist or have no teeth.  Thankfully we also live in a representational democracy where we get to participate in the governmental process which ultimately decides these rules and regulations.

[former player]

I'm glad that so many people that know better than me how to live my life, don't actually have the power to compel me to do so. That's what this all comes down to after all. Climate change is just the latest in a long line of issues that provide an excuse to tell others how to live their lives.

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

It must be uncomfortable to be reminded of the facts on climate change if your past decisions make it impossible for you to now remake those decisions in ways that do less damage.

[use2betrix]

It isn't the rich, it is people having more than a sustainable amount of children (which is something like 2, maybe 3 at most)

Every child creates a shit ton of greenhouse gases during their lifetime.  A condom could be the greatest green invention ever.

I would challenged to find a better response to this. I’ve read countless studies and articles over the year and it seems that overpopulation is the biggest root cause of these issues. If we started declining in population (or even maintaining) that would be a huge progress vs the current growth and it’s environmental impact.

Alternatively - instilling STONG, environmentally conscious belief’s in children would also make a huge impact, although not as much as have less/no children..

Lastly, encouragement of adoption would also be helpful.

[Cool Friend]

I'm glad that so many people that know better than me how to live my life, don't actually have the power to compel me to do so. That's what this all comes down to after all. Climate change is just the latest in a long line of issues that provide an excuse to tell others how to live their lives.

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

It's an article about Covid, but you can mad-lib climate change in here and it works just as well: https://defector.com/private-choices-have-public-consequences/

For these people, having to do something other than whatever they want to do, at any moment and for any reason, really is a much more urgent threat than sickness or death; to be without the agency to make the same stupid non-choices, every day, is not fundamentally different than being killed, because making those facile choices is for them what it means to be alive.

...

With masks as with the vaccine, some minimal personal imposition delivers both personal and broader social benefits, but they just can’t get past that first part. The result is that the vast majority of people are effectively the hostages of the most selfish people the world has ever seen.

...

But for all the convoluted and cosmetic suspicion of the politics and the opacity of their oafish paranoid patois, this all resolves to the precariousness that all those false choices are designed to obscure—to the suspicion that it is unfair and somehow wrong that any element of their all-important personal convenience might be contingent upon or even related to anyone else’s, and to the fear that their holy ease will be threatened by some other greater responsibility. You truly will not ever convince these people that this is Still About A Virus, because they never once believed that anything is ever about more than their own sour selves, and a jealous world’s conspiracy against their comfort.

[Chris22]

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

I absolutely disagree. There is plenty of hope.

The whole reason we organize our societies with governments is because collective action that depends on every single person listening to others and voluntarily changing their actions, even when that change is in everyone's best interest, doesn't work. If I told myself from a decade past that the US would be adding 23 gigawatts of wind power a year, that electric cars would have moved from a weird niche (I think Tesla had sold a few hundred roadsters at that point) to more than 1M/year in the USA alone last year, I wouldn't have believed it. Yet these things did happen, and they happened between we as a society had our government set incentives to encourage them.

Tesla to me is a fantastic example of the market working. Tesla used government loans/incentives, yes, but then they went out and built an actual compelling product that people want, that is also good for the environment. And look at that, it sells like hotcakes, and is considered very aspirational. Contrast that with basically every other EV until very recently; they were shitbox compliance cars that no one but the biggest cheapskates or EV nerds would actually WANT (looking at you, Leaf and Bolt). 

Tesla gave us the blueprint; make compelling products that people want, and with just the right application of government incentives, people will flock to them.

Or treat environmentalism as some sort of smug nannyism (“buy this because it’s all you need, we know better than you what works best for you”) and people will ignore you or actively resist.

[GuitarStv]

The idea that selling/buying more shit is going to get us out of environmental problems is fundamentally misguided.  The problem is the new stuff and the consumption.

[maizefolk]

Tesla to me is a fantastic example of the market working. Tesla used government loans/incentives, yes, but then they went out and built an actual compelling product that people want, that is also good for the environment. And look at that, it sells like hotcakes, and is considered very aspirational. Contrast that with basically every other EV until very recently; they were shitbox compliance cars that no one but the biggest cheapskates or EV nerds would actually WANT (looking at you, Leaf and Bolt). 

Tesla gave us the blueprint; make compelling products that people want, and with just the right application of government incentives, people will flock to them.

Or treat environmentalism as some sort of smug nannyism (“buy this because it’s all you need, we know better than you what works best for you”) and people will ignore you or actively resist.

I agree. But I'd definitely put wind power into the same bucket. Government created an incentive for the market and the market has brought down the price so much that now the change has become self sustaining.

It definitely takes a lot of political effort and pressure to put the incentives in place to begin with, but it's an awful lot easier than trying to convince every single individual to voluntarily make changes.

[maizefolk]

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

I absolutely disagree. There is plenty of hope.

The whole reason we organize our societies with governments is because collective action that depends on every single person listening to others and voluntarily changing their actions, even when that change is in everyone's best interest, doesn't work. If I told myself from a decade past that the US would be adding 23 gigawatts of wind power a year, that electric cars would have moved from a weird niche (I think Tesla had sold a few hundred roadsters at that point) to more than 1M/year in the USA alone last year, I wouldn't have believed it. Yet these things did happen, and they happened between we as a society had our government set incentives to encourage them.

While I agree that individual action is doomed to fail on this sort of issue, to date there has been no government intervention or action that provides reason for hope.  None of the things you mention come anywhere close to even stabilizing out of control carbon emissions . . . let alone reversing them back to where they need to be.  In fact, in that time we have increased our waste and carbon footprints by all measurable metrics I'm aware of.

Huh. "No reason for hope." So why am I feeling this hope if there is no reason for it? Climate change isn't a yes/no outcome. Every bit of reduced emissions means the a smaller temperature change and a modicum less human suffering as a result. In the USA we're producing something like 4 tons less carbon per person than we were in the year 2000. That's a 20% decline.

Is it enough to prevent climate change? Absolutely not.
Is it on the right track to prevent climate change if we assume linear rather than exponential change? Also no.
Is it already preventing more current and future human suffering than doing nothing, and moaning that all hope is lost? Yes.

[nereo]

It isn't the rich, it is people having more than a sustainable amount of children (which is something like 2, maybe 3 at most)

Every child creates a shit ton of greenhouse gases during their lifetime.  A condom could be the greatest green invention ever.

I would challenged to find a better response to this. I’ve read countless studies and articles over the year and it seems that overpopulation is the biggest root cause of these issues. If we started declining in population (or even maintaining) that would be a huge progress vs the current growth and it’s environmental impact.

Alternatively - instilling STONG, environmentally conscious belief’s in children would also make a huge impact, although not as much as have less/no children..

Lastly, encouragement of adoption would also be helpful.

There's total (global) population growth and there is local/region/country-specific growth.  Many developed countries are already at rates of reproduction too low for population growth (sans immigration), including the US/Canada, the UK, China and most western European nations.  There's a few dozen with sky-high reproduction rates - mostly in Africa and SE Asia - that continue to push the global population higher.  Targeting those areas would have the greatest impact on population for the next several decades, and the most tried-and-true methods for reducing a population's birth rate is education of women, access to basic healthcare and raising people out of poverty.  It's not a coincidence that the Gates foundation is working in these very areas on these very issues.

Also, it's not an either/or proposition (above you said "alternatively").  The most effective approach won't be the same everywhere.  We can (and should) instill a strong environmentally conscious belief - particularly in regions where it is lacking - while also addressing population, land use, and all the other aspects mentioned.  Trying to find some 'silver bullet' is what's making this seem like such an impossible problem to many.  It's not going to be any one solution (or emerging technology) - but several dozen or hundred processes working simultaneously.

[chaskavitch]

It isn't the rich, it is people having more than a sustainable amount of children (which is something like 2, maybe 3 at most)

Every child creates a shit ton of greenhouse gases during their lifetime.  A condom could be the greatest green invention ever.

I would challenged to find a better response to this. I’ve read countless studies and articles over the year and it seems that overpopulation is the biggest root cause of these issues. If we started declining in population (or even maintaining) that would be a huge progress vs the current growth and it’s environmental impact.

Alternatively - instilling STONG, environmentally conscious belief’s in children would also make a huge impact, although not as much as have less/no children..

Lastly, encouragement of adoption would also be helpful.

There's total (global) population growth and there is local/region/country-specific growth.  Many developed countries are already at rates of reproduction too low for population growth (sans immigration), including the US/Canada, the UK, China and most western European nations.  There's a few dozen with sky-high reproduction rates - mostly in Africa and SE Asia - that continue to push the global population higher.  Targeting those areas would have the greatest impact on population for the next several decades, and the most tried-and-true methods for reducing a population's birth rate is education of women, access to basic healthcare and raising people out of poverty.  It's not a coincidence that the Gates foundation is working in these very areas on these very issues.

Also, it's not an either/or proposition (above you said "alternatively").  The most effective approach won't be the same everywhere.  We can (and should) instill a strong environmentally conscious belief - particularly in regions where it is lacking - while also addressing population, land use, and all the other aspects mentioned.  Trying to find some 'silver bullet' is what's making this seem like such an impossible problem to many.  It's not going to be any one solution (or emerging technology) - but several dozen or hundred processes working simultaneously.

Reading Melinda Gates' book about her role in the Gates Foundation was eye-opening for me. 

It's amazing that empowering women in lower income countries by giving them access to more education, resources, and family planning has been shown to increase crop yields, lower birth rates, and raise the age when women have their first children.  Yes, raising people out of poverty technically gives them access to more technology that will likely increase carbon emissions, but overall it's the best option. 

[GuitarStv]

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

I absolutely disagree. There is plenty of hope.

The whole reason we organize our societies with governments is because collective action that depends on every single person listening to others and voluntarily changing their actions, even when that change is in everyone's best interest, doesn't work. If I told myself from a decade past that the US would be adding 23 gigawatts of wind power a year, that electric cars would have moved from a weird niche (I think Tesla had sold a few hundred roadsters at that point) to more than 1M/year in the USA alone last year, I wouldn't have believed it. Yet these things did happen, and they happened between we as a society had our government set incentives to encourage them.

While I agree that individual action is doomed to fail on this sort of issue, to date there has been no government intervention or action that provides reason for hope.  None of the things you mention come anywhere close to even stabilizing out of control carbon emissions . . . let alone reversing them back to where they need to be.  In fact, in that time we have increased our waste and carbon footprints by all measurable metrics I'm aware of.

Huh. "No reason for hope." So why am I feeling this hope if there is no reason for it? Climate change isn't a yes/no outcome. Every bit of reduced emissions means the a smaller temperature change and a modicum less human suffering as a result. In the USA we're producing something like 4 tons less carbon per person than we were in the year 2000. That's a 20% decline.

Is it enough to prevent climate change? Absolutely not.
Is it on the right track to prevent climate change if we assume linear rather than exponential change? Also no.
Is it already preventing more current and future human suffering than doing nothing, and moaning that all hope is lost? Yes.

Different perspectives I suppose.  We're in a bus that is accelerating into a brick wall.  You feel hope that (while still accelerating) we've fractionally let our foot off the gas.  I feel no hope because we aren't even considering using the brakes yet, and by all estimates the change required to avoid hitting the brick wall entirely is currently impossible.

That 4 tons less per person is what?  Less than 1% of the change required to begin to address the problem?

[Chris22]

This type of reasoning is exactly why climate change is an unsolvable problem.  If people are unwilling to listen to others and make changes to their life then there is no hope.

I absolutely disagree. There is plenty of hope.

The whole reason we organize our societies with governments is because collective action that depends on every single person listening to others and voluntarily changing their actions, even when that change is in everyone's best interest, doesn't work. If I told myself from a decade past that the US would be adding 23 gigawatts of wind power a year, that electric cars would have moved from a weird niche (I think Tesla had sold a few hundred roadsters at that point) to more than 1M/year in the USA alone last year, I wouldn't have believed it. Yet these things did happen, and they happened between we as a society had our government set incentives to encourage them.

While I agree that individual action is doomed to fail on this sort of issue, to date there has been no government intervention or action that provides reason for hope.  None of the things you mention come anywhere close to even stabilizing out of control carbon emissions . . . let alone reversing them back to where they need to be.  In fact, in that time we have increased our waste and carbon footprints by all measurable metrics I'm aware of.

Huh. "No reason for hope." So why am I feeling this hope if there is no reason for it? Climate change isn't a yes/no outcome. Every bit of reduced emissions means the a smaller temperature change and a modicum less human suffering as a result. In the USA we're producing something like 4 tons less carbon per person than we were in the year 2000. That's a 20% decline.

Is it enough to prevent climate change? Absolutely not.
Is it on the right track to prevent climate change if we assume linear rather than exponential change? Also no.
Is it already preventing more current and future human suffering than doing nothing, and moaning that all hope is lost? Yes.

Different perspectives I suppose.  We're in a bus that is accelerating into a brick wall.  You feel hope that (while still accelerating) we've fractionally let our foot off the gas.  I feel no hope because we aren't even considering using the brakes yet, and by all estimates the change required to avoid hitting the brick wall entirely is currently impossible.

That 4 tons less per person is what?  Less than 1% of the change required to begin to address the problem?

Interesting article in the WSJ about this today. Behind a paywall so I won’t reproduce the whole thing but

/A bigger moment of truth will come with a book by Steven Koonin, a theoretical physicist and chief scientist of the Obama Energy Department, demonstrating what the science—the plain, recognized, consensus science—says about climate change: It won’t be catastrophic. It’s unlikely to be influenced in a major way by policy actions. The costs will be large in relation to everything except the future, richer economy that will easily pay for them.

The jist of the article is basically that:

A drumroll moment was Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peter’s 2020 article in the journal Nature partly headlined: “Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome.”

We’re not in a bus speeding towards a brick wall. And standing on the metaphorical street corner screaming that we are is hysterical and not productive.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-media-vs-climate-science-11618355224?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

[ericrugiero]

Yes, there's a strong correlation between wealth and carbon emissions, but having money doesn't cause an increase in CO2, and critically not all wealthy people have the same massive carbon footprint. (Just as it's also true that many lower-income individuals can have an outsized carbon footprint). If you have trouble conceptualizing this, consider what would happen if you gave an environmentally-conscious mustachian a few extra million $.  Would s/he automatically become one of the most polluting people on the planet? Of course not.  Sure, their carbon footprint might increase modestly, but not the orders of magnitude that some are predicting from a correlation. It's even entirely possible for that (already eco-minded) person's impact to go down, as it will open up opportunities like going net-zero or gobbling up land to put into conservation/

There is probably a much larger correlation between the amount of money you SPEND and your carbon footprint than there is between the amount you HAVE and your carbon footprint.  A person who makes a lot and spends it all on planes and yachts will have a larger carbon footprint than someone with much more wealth that lives more modestly.  Think of Warren Buffet and his relatively modest home.  The only issue with a Warren Buffet type person is that they could leave the money to someone who DOES spend it recklessly.  (I don't that is his plan, just that others might)

[the_gastropod]

It isn't the rich, it is people having more than a sustainable amount of children (which is something like 2, maybe 3 at most)

Every child creates a shit ton of greenhouse gases during their lifetime.  A condom could be the greatest green invention ever.

The problem with this line of reasoning is people are vastly disproportionately impacting the climate. China and India are frequently cited as problematic, because they have larger CO2 emissions than the U.S. The silliness with this is, of course, that China and India have significantly more people than the U.S. Americans have this kind of colonialist attitude where we think we are more deserving of exploiting Earth's resources than those other people living elsewhere. So we make these kinds of arguments, and just blame it on the global population. Or on China and India's growing middle class. We avoid the obvious absurdity of our own extremely excessive exploitation of nature.

To believe this is to believe the problem in an arts-and-crafts class of 16 where 1 kid has 10 pairs of scissors, and half the class has none, that the problem is there's too many kids in the class. That's clearly not the problem.

I'm glad that so many people that know better than me how to live my life, don't actually have the power to compel me to do so. That's what this all comes down to after all. Climate change is just the latest in a long line of issues that provide an excuse to tell others how to live their lives.

This is a pretty non-argument argument. I hope you'd agree that this is not a great argument for: slavery, children workforces, leaded gasoline, interracial marriage bans, same-sex marriage bans, driving at any speed you want, refusing to wear a mask during a pandemic, etc. Libertarianism is all fine and well until other people's behavior impacts your life.

[Roland of Gilead]

The problem with this line of reasoning is people are vastly disproportionately impacting the climate. China and India are frequently cited as problematic, because they have larger CO2 emissions than the U.S. The silliness with this is, of course, that China and India have significantly more people than the U.S. Americans have this kind of colonialist attitude where we think we are more deserving of exploiting Earth's resources than those other people living elsewhere. So we make these kinds of arguments, and just blame it on the global population. Or on China and India's growing middle class. We avoid the obvious absurdity of our own extremely excessive exploitation of nature.

The problem is more that people are still shitting in the streets in India (ok, and Seattle, but I digress).  When the vast population of India decides they want some of the comforts of the west, then you will have USA levels of carbon footprint per capita in a country with 4x the population.  Do you see the problem with ignoring large populations of developing countries just because they currently are in the stone age and have low carbon footprints?

[nereo]

We’re not in a bus speeding towards a brick wall. And standing on the metaphorical street corner screaming that we are is hysterical and not productive.

It's an interesting dilemma.  In some regards it depends on where you said the threshold for "a catastrophe" - and modern reporting/opinion certainly doesn't do us any favors, where the passage of a particular law, the election of an official, or a market drop of 20% are all relentlessly billed as "a catastrophe" by some.  Consequentially we've lost the ability to discuss major issues without having consensus on when appropriate superlatives should be used. 

It's clear that climate change is already costing developed countries such as the US tens of billions annually, and that amount will continue to grow, perhaps substantially.  it's also clear that some regions and groups will suffer disproportionately more than others. Whether that's 'catastrophic' is largely up to the individual.

Until very recently we were forced to go through this non-sensical debate about whether climate change was even occurring, which no doubt pushed a lot of people towards using words like 'catastrophic' and 'crisis' and 'game-over'.  After all, when one side refuses to even acknowledge the problem, the natural tendency is to highlight how big and scary all encompassing it is until that defense is dropped.

I can't help but think if only we had been able to have rational discussions two decades ago we could have made so much more progress and avoided (or at least delayed) much of the hardship we are enduring now. I think that pattern explains a lot of GuitarStv's feelings that we will not do anything to address this issue sufficiently to prevent it from getting substantially worse in the next few generations.

[Chris22]

Yes, there's a strong correlation between wealth and carbon emissions, but having money doesn't cause an increase in CO2, and critically not all wealthy people have the same massive carbon footprint. (Just as it's also true that many lower-income individuals can have an outsized carbon footprint). If you have trouble conceptualizing this, consider what would happen if you gave an environmentally-conscious mustachian a few extra million $.  Would s/he automatically become one of the most polluting people on the planet? Of course not.  Sure, their carbon footprint might increase modestly, but not the orders of magnitude that some are predicting from a correlation. It's even entirely possible for that (already eco-minded) person's impact to go down, as it will open up opportunities like going net-zero or gobbling up land to put into conservation/

There is probably a much larger correlation between the amount of money you SPEND and your carbon footprint than there is between the amount you HAVE and your carbon footprint.  A person who makes a lot and spends it all on planes and yachts will have a larger carbon footprint than someone with much more wealth that lives more modestly.  Think of Warren Buffet and his relatively modest home.  The only issue with a Warren Buffet type person is that they could leave the money to someone who DOES spend it recklessly.  (I don't that is his plan, just that others might)

Buffet, uh, also has a plane. And owns NetJets.

So I wouldn’t say he’s some model of low consumption just because he famously has a modest house in Omaha.

[maizefolk]

Different perspectives I suppose.  We're in a bus that is accelerating into a brick wall.  You feel hope that (while still accelerating) we've fractionally let our foot off the gas.  I feel no hope because we aren't even considering using the brakes yet, and by all estimates the change required to avoid hitting the brick wall entirely is currently impossible.

That 4 tons less per person is what?  Less than 1% of the change required to begin to address the problem?

US emissions were 20 tons per person per year in 2000. 4 tons per person is already 20% of the way to 0. Even if the goal is to get all the way to carbon capture and negative emissions, we're much MUCH more than 1% of the way there.

What I cannot understand if why you seem to view this as a problem where either we solve it entirely and nothing bad happens or everyone dies (e.g. a bus driving towards a brick wall). That's not how climate change works. We're on a sinking ship and we've already managed to improvise more lifeboats than it looks like we had two decades ago. Sure, if we don't manage to build any more, an awful lot of people are still going to suffer or die, but fewer than if we'd just given up at the start. And we're not done building lifeboats yet. Not by a long shot. And you're saying it is hopeless and we should just give up because we're not building lifeboats fast enough (yet) to be on track to save everyone.

Edit:

Correction: Emissions per capita in 2000 were 20.98 tons per person per year and were 15.52 in 2019 before the coronavirus and the huge rise in telecommuting [1]. So five and a half tons less per person per year over two decades, a 26% reduction, not 20%.

[1] Pulling data from here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-person/

[Roland of Gilead]

Buffet, uh, also has a plane. And owns NetJets.

So I wouldn’t say he’s some model of low consumption just because he famously has a modest house in Omaha.

And Bill Gates has some gigantic ass house in Medina on lake Washington.   You could probably fit 1000 mustachians in it.

Elon sold all of his houses I think...although he probably spurts out a fair bit of methane byproducts with his rockets.

But hey, I am using a paper straw so doing my part.

[nereo]

The problem is more that people are still shitting in the streets in India (ok, and Seattle, but I digress).  When the vast population of India decides they want some of the comforts of the west, then you will have USA levels of carbon footprint per capita in a country with 4x the population.  Do you see the problem with ignoring large populations of developing countries just because they currently are in the stone age and have low carbon footprints?

Wow.  That's some serious cultural slandering you are dishing out there.
To get this out of the way, India is not "currently in the stone age" nor have they simply not yet decided that 'they want some of the comforts of the west'.  Yes they have an enormous population living in poverty, but a great deal of their society rivals or exceeds our own.

Now moving on... there's good reason to think that fast-developing nations like India will NOT see USA levels of carbon footprint per capita, precisely because they are building their infrastructure for the 21st century, in a much more densely-populated region, with far fewer legacy systems and lobbying groups to string along.
Why would you assume that they would mirror the US and not Denmark or Japan?

[the_gastropod]

The problem is more that people are still shitting in the streets in India (ok, and Seattle, but I digress).  When the vast population of India decides they want some of the comforts of the west, then you will have USA levels of carbon footprint per capita in a country with 4x the population.  Do you see the problem with ignoring large populations of developing countries just because they currently are in the stone age and have low carbon footprints?

Beyond being a bit xenophobic here, you're also making the incorrect assumption that "some of the comforts of the west" requires US-levels of CO2 emissions. Let's look at, for example, Costa Rica. The per capita CO2 emissions in Costa Rica are about 1/10th of the U.S. Despite this, Costa Rica has higher measured happiness, longer lifespans, and lower infant mortality rates. France, Sweden, Switzerland also have ~1/3rd of ours emissions or less, and maintain similar quality of life advantages over the U.S. The Earth is more than capable of sustaining a fantastic standard-of-living for all its inhabitants. The problem is, the global north is vastly exceeding its fair share.

[bacchi]

I'm glad that so many people that know better than me how to live my life, don't actually have the power to compel me to do so. That's what this all comes down to after all. Climate change is just the latest in a long line of issues that provide an excuse to tell others how to live their lives.

This is a pretty non-argument argument. I hope you'd agree that this is not a great argument for: slavery, children workforces, leaded gasoline, interracial marriage bans, same-sex marriage bans, driving at any speed you want, refusing to wear a mask during a pandemic, etc. Libertarianism is all fine and well until other people's behavior impacts your life.

Many of the libertarian thinkers consider pollution a negative externality.

The vital fact about air pollution is that the polluter sends unwanted and unbidden pollutants–from smoke to nuclear fallout to sulfur oxides–through the air and into the lungs of innocent victims, as well as onto their material property. All such emanations which injure person or property constitute aggression against the private property of the victims.

Hayek, too, recognizes that pollution and deforestation are negative externalities.

Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, or of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories, be confined to the owner of the property in question or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation. In such instances we must find some substitute for the regulation by the price mechanism.

The "I can pollute if I want!" belief, without any tax or fee, is anarchism. Or perhaps Republican corporate socialism.

[Roland of Gilead]

It looks like the USA is in a decent decline in CO2 emissions

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions

Costa Rica is in a uptrend, as well as India

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CRI/costa-rica/carbon-co2-emissions

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/carbon-co2-emissions


I mean yes maybe this time is different and they will not transition to higher carbon footprint as the wealth of the population increases.  I don't specifically see what is vastly different about the average person in the USA versus the world though.   Given more wealth, I think it is human nature to consume more, at least to a point.   There is a reason you don't see Bill G.  living in a 1bd 1 bath apartment like my wife and I are.

[the_gastropod]

It looks like the USA is in a decent decline in CO2 emissions

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions

Costa Rica is in a uptrend, as well as India

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CRI/costa-rica/carbon-co2-emissions

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/carbon-co2-emissions

Yes. India is increasing. But Costa Rica? Their emissions today are lower than they were in 2007. While the past few years are trending back upward, it's hardly a significant upward trend like India's.

But again, I think you're muddying the point. Costa Rica is using far less than their "fair share" of natural resources, with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. It's fair game if they increase their emissions. And that goes double for India.

It's great that the U.S. is cutting its emissions. It's fine and good to celebrate that. But we've got a long ways to go.

I mean yes maybe this time is different and they will not transition to higher carbon footprint as the wealth of the population increases.  I don't specifically see what is vastly different about the average person in the USA versus the world though.   Given more wealth, I think it is human nature to consume more, at least to a point.   There is a reason you don't see Bill G.  living in a 1bd 1 bath apartment like my wife and I are.

Perhaps your definition of "vastly" differs from mine. But when average person in country A emits 10x more than average person in country B, I'd call that "vastly different".

[Roland of Gilead]

Wow.  That's some serious cultural slandering you are dishing out there.

slander noun
Definition of slander (Entry 2 of 2)
1: the utterance of FALSE charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation

"A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report says more than half a billion people in India still "continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27775327

[nereo]

It looks like the USA is in a decent decline in CO2 emissions

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions

Costa Rica is in a uptrend, as well as India

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CRI/costa-rica/carbon-co2-emissions

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/carbon-co2-emissions


I mean yes maybe this time is different and they will not transition to higher carbon footprint as the wealth of the population increases.  I don't specifically see what is vastly different about the average person in the USA versus the world though.   Given more wealth, I think it is human nature to consume more, at least to a point.   There is a reason you don't see Bill G.  living in a 1bd 1 bath apartment like my wife and I are.

I'm not sure what you are missing here.  At the same level of wealth, people in the United States tend to have a carbon footprint that is vastly larger than in many other developed countries, period. This is true among people of lower economic status and people at the higher end of the spectrum.

Emissions in the US are coming down, as we've discussed upthread.  But they are coming down from an extremely high level, both in absolute and per capita terms.

As for Bill Gates (and why you keep fixating on him) - you aren't also running an international aid organization largely out of your home.  AT a higher level, you seem to be searching for people who have a larger carbon footprint than you as some sort of excuse to do what you like. That's one of the weakest arguments and biggest fallacies in existence. 

[Cool Friend]

You can lead an ass to info, but you can't make him think.

[nereo]

Wow.  That's some serious cultural slandering you are dishing out there.

slander noun
Definition of slander (Entry 2 of 2)
1: the utterance of FALSE charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation

"A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report says more than half a billion people in India still "continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27775327

To point out what should be obvious, I've never discussed public defecation.  You brought it up in your post about India(and I quote) "currently being in the stone age", and again by quoting a WHO report.

Either you are getting your wires crossed or you are deliberately (and falsely) misrepresenting what people have said, including me.

[bacchi]

Either you are getting your wires crossed or you are deliberately (and falsely) misrepresenting what people have said, including me.

It's almost as if some people in this thread are arguing in bad faith.

[maizefolk]

I don't specifically see what is vastly different about the average person in the USA versus the world though. 

I realize you intended this in a narrow sense, but people in the USA are different in a whole host of ways. We're less social, give each other much large bubbles of "personal space", are much more likely to live alone, we place much more emphasis on the importance of getting ahead in life, work many more hours per year, are much more religious than you'd expect of a country with our per capita income, and we're much less likely to know how to drive a stickshift. We drink icewater (even in winter!) and keep our buildings much colder year round than people in even other rich countries.

I'm not saying any of those factors are necessarily good or bad, but they, and a whole host of others, mean we're frankly a not particularly useful model for predicting how people in other countries will act or what choices they will make.

[Roland of Gilead]

I pretty much have not argued anything in bad faith.

People who are in poverty have a lower carbon footprint than people who are rich.

If you bring a bunch of people out of poverty, you will increase the overall carbon output.

There isn't really an argument here.

[uniwelder]

Wow.  That's some serious cultural slandering you are dishing out there.

slander noun
Definition of slander (Entry 2 of 2)
1: the utterance of FALSE charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation

"A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report says more than half a billion people in India still "continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27775327

To point out what should be obvious, I've never discussed public defecation.  You brought it up in your post about India(and I quote) "currently being in the stone age", and again by quoting a WHO report.

Either you are getting your wires crossed or you are deliberately (and falsely) misrepresenting what people have said, including me.

To be fair, something like 20% of people in India don't have electricity access.  Certainly 'living in the stone age' isn't to be taken literally, but you should recognize the current state of living for a lot of people.

[bacchi]

To be fair, something like 20% of people in India don't have electricity access.  Certainly 'living in the stone age' isn't to be taken literally, but you should recognize the current state of living for a lot of people.

I see 95.2%, as of 2018. That's better than South Africa, which is generally considered a modern, developed, country.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS

[GuitarStv]

Different perspectives I suppose.  We're in a bus that is accelerating into a brick wall.  You feel hope that (while still accelerating) we've fractionally let our foot off the gas.  I feel no hope because we aren't even considering using the brakes yet, and by all estimates the change required to avoid hitting the brick wall entirely is currently impossible.

That 4 tons less per person is what?  Less than 1% of the change required to begin to address the problem?

US emissions were 20 tons per person per year in 2000. 4 tons per person is already 20% of the way to 0. Even if the goal is to get all the way to carbon capture and negative emissions, we're much MUCH more than 1% of the way there.

What I cannot understand if why you seem to view this as a problem where either we solve it entirely and nothing bad happens or everyone dies (e.g. a bus driving towards a brick wall). That's not how climate change works. We're on a sinking ship and we've already managed to improvise more lifeboats than it looks like we had two decades ago. Sure, if we don't manage to build any more, an awful lot of people are still going to suffer or die, but fewer than if we'd just given up at the start. And we're not done building lifeboats yet. Not by a long shot. And you're saying it is hopeless and we should just give up because we're not building lifeboats fast enough (yet) to be on track to save everyone.

Edit:

Correction: Emissions per capita in 2000 were 20.98 tons per person per year and were 15.52 in 2019 before the coronavirus and the huge rise in telecommuting [1]. So five and a half tons less per person per year over two decades, a 26% reduction, not 20%.

[1] Pulling data from here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-person/

Not very convincing.  How much of the 20% per person reduction comes from the US importing 450% more goods from China since 2000?

From the same website - https://www.statista.com/statistics/187675/volume-of-us-imports-of-trade-goods-from-china-since-1985/

Although it's not counted in your stat, all that consumption (and all the other consumption from countries with minimal pollution controls) still directly impacts the climate.  Things stop looking as rosy if you look at the whole picture.  We'll see if the covid telecommuting thing (which is certainly good for the environment) remains a thing in coming years.

I'm saying it's likely hopeless because of our previous track record regarding environmental issues.

[uniwelder]

You can lead an ass to info, but you can't make him think.

Either you are getting your wires crossed or you are deliberately (and falsely) misrepresenting what people have said, including me.

It's almost as if some people in this thread are arguing in bad faith.

I'm assuming these comments are directed to Roland.  You might not agree with his viewpoint, but I feel you're being inappropriate, as if he's trolling or the like.

[uniwelder]

To be fair, something like 20% of people in India don't have electricity access.  Certainly 'living in the stone age' isn't to be taken literally, but you should recognize the current state of living for a lot of people.

I see 95.2%, as of 2018. That's better than South Africa, which is generally considered a modern, developed, country.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43946049  this article tells a decent story of what electrical access means in India.  "A village is considered electrified if 10% of its homes and all public buildings are connected to the grid."

edited to add--- my definition of electrical access vs India's are different.

[nereo]

I pretty much have not argued anything in bad faith.

I pretty much did the dishes.

I pretty much have not cheated on my wife.

I pretty much paid my taxes.

"I pretty much have not..." isn't exactly a definitive defense.

You certainly did attribute statements about public defecation to me when I never mentioned them.  Further, no one here has argued that higher economic levels do not correspond to higher carbon footprints on average, only that the US is wildly different than many other developed nations when comparing income and carbon footprint.

To repeat a question I posed to you earlier, why do you think India would be more likely to become like the United States with regards to carbon usage than other developed nations with similarly high standards of living?

[maizefolk]

Things stop looking as rosy if you look at the whole picture.  We'll see if the covid telecommuting thing (which is certainly good for the environment) remains a thing in coming years.

I'm saying it's likely hopeless because of our previous track record regarding environmental issues.

GuitarStv, all things being equal, do you agree that emitting less carbon means less human suffering than emitting more? Or do you think if we don't hit some magical number that there is absolutely no benefit to cutting emissions by less than that? You keep saying "hopeless" but I'm trying to figure out what exactly it is that you are hoping for that is go gosh darn important that if you don't get it there is no point is trying to minimize human suffering and misery.

About imports from China, industrial emissions are only about 23% of total carbon emissions, so even if we'd shut down and outsourced EVERY industry completely to China it still wouldn't be enough to explain the decline that we're seeing. In fact US industrial emissions have been largely flat over the last 20 years (which is still a modest decline per capita). The big reductions in emissions we have achieved have come from electricity and transportation which have both declined in both absolute and per capita terms and are sectors where outsourcing really isn't feasible.

The best numbers I can find are that in 2019 americans used 11% less electricity per capita than in 2000 and the electricity we still do use emits only 70% as much carbon per kilowatt hour.

[GuitarStv]

Things stop looking as rosy if you look at the whole picture.  We'll see if the covid telecommuting thing (which is certainly good for the environment) remains a thing in coming years.

I'm saying it's likely hopeless because of our previous track record regarding environmental issues.

GuitarStv, all things being equal, do you agree that emitting less carbon means less human suffering than emitting more?

Of course it's better.  As mentioned, there is a slight reduction of pressure on the gas pedal.

Or do you think if we don't hit some magical number that there is absolutely no benefit to cutting emissions by less than that? You keep saying "hopeless" but I'm trying to figure out what exactly it is that you are hoping for that is go gosh darn important that if you don't get it there is no point is trying to minimize human suffering and misery.

Keeping things down to a 2 degree global rise in temperatures by 2100 would be a bad but manageable scenario.  Unfortunately, it seems to be unobtainable by most current estimates - it's the bare minimum change that can be expected.  4 degrees globally starts to look a little apocalyptic (https://www.carbonbrief.org/what-is-a-4c-world).  A 1.1 meter world wide rise in sea level coupled with “unprecedented heatwaves, severe drought and major floods in many regions”.  This impacts our ability to grow crops, damages harvests available through the ocean, increases the rate of species extinction that we're causing, it increases likelihood of pandemics, it significantly increases likelihood of war as people become more and more desperate.

You also run into the positive feedback loop issue of the artic warming much faster than the rest of the world . . . and all the billions of tons of trapped CO2 in that arctic permafrost being released in addition to the shit we're burning directly (https://www.voanews.com/science-health/new-study-suggests-melting-arctic-permafrost-poses-big-climate-threat):

Prior to this study, scientists estimated that global emissions must fall by 7.6% every year over the next 10 years to meet the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. But the authors of the study note that their new estimates of emissions from permafrost melting are currently "unaccounted for in global emission scenarios and implies that the remaining anthropogenic carbon budget to keep warming below 1.5 or 2 °C ... may need to be even more constrained."

"Even with the current mitigation pledges fully implemented, there is roughly a 20% likelihood of exceeding 4°C by 2100. If they are not met, warming of 4°C could occur as early as the 2060s"

- http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/865571468149107611/pdf/NonAsciiFileName0.pdf

The UN has been regularly reporting an increasing (not decreasing) gap between the the carbon emissions needed to keep warming below 4 degrees by 2100 and what is being produced world wide.  By every measure, we seem to be pretty well fucked and have made no progress that matters.  We can all pat each other on the back for buying a new tesla, or using 20% less electricity from a world high of consumption . . . but that's seems a lot like re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic.


Maybe the past 60 years of ignoring the problem (or not doing enough to matter) will totally turn around and we'll magically care enough in time.  Maybe we'll create a magical new technology that kicks the can a few more years down the road (we're really good at this one!).  I'm pulling for the magical solution . . . but just wouldn't bet on it.  I put more faith in Musk's concerted attempts to flee the burning planet.

[nereo]

As someone who spends most of my time dealing with climate-change shifts I share your skepticism @GuitarStv but I do retain some optimism.  Just a decade or so ago we were still in this quagmire of debating whether climate change was occurring despite a preponderance of evidence. That dam seems to have finally broken.

While the current changes, commitments and global trajectory remain woefully insufficient, ask yourself "what would I expect the initial phase of a shift to look like?"  I'd argue its basically what we are seeing now. The question (now that we seem to finally have scientific and cultural agreement that our climate is changing rapidly) now becomes: can we take these moderate changes and steadily accelerate them?

I don't know. But I'm also not giving up.  I think enough large entities (i.e. corporations) are finally realizing that not acting will ultimately cost more than acting where we can no longer maintain the status-quo.  Or you could be right and we'll just steadily plow into that proverbial wall...

[beee]

It's interesting to see how many people in the US/Canada don't even notice the single simple fact that contributes to more driving, more infrastructure, more time wasted in traffic, more consumption overall.

That fact is that 3/4 of the population lives in single-family houses.
Which are a massive luxury and a colossal waste of resources.

But it's a subsidized type of living (low property taxes), so it is just a default choice.

[the_gastropod]

As someone who spends most of my time dealing with climate-change shifts I share your skepticism @GuitarStv but I do retain some optimism.  Just a decade or so ago we were still in this quagmire of debating whether climate change was occurring despite a preponderance of evidence. That dam seems to have finally broken.

While the current changes, commitments and global trajectory remain woefully insufficient, ask yourself "what would I expect the initial phase of a shift to look like?"  I'd argue its basically what we are seeing now. The question (now that we seem to finally have scientific and cultural agreement that our climate is changing rapidly) now becomes: can we take these moderate changes and steadily accelerate them?

I don't know. But I'm also not giving up.  I think enough large entities (i.e. corporations) are finally realizing that not acting will ultimately cost more than acting where we can no longer maintain the status-quo.  Or you could be right and we'll just steadily plow into that proverbial wall...

I hope you're right. But I look at our response to the COVID pandemic, and don't have a whole lot of hope, myself. I see a lot of parallels between these kinds of problems. We couldn't get a significant enough portion of the U.S. to do something as trivially simple as wear a piece of cloth on their faces when around other people. That we'll be able to get them to drive less, eat less red meat, live in smaller homes, wear appropriate clothing, travel less, etc. seems less likely. I'm not confident we're ready to meet the moment. Selfishness and shortsightedness run deep.