In short, this is probably because climate economic modeling has traditionally focused on estimating more knowable, quantifiable impacts, and acknowledging but not including potential (maybe even probable!) impacts that are too difficult to model based on current knowledge.
Tail risk is a big area that has traditionally not been modeled well leading to a very likely underestimate to the social cost of carbon (SCC):
https://www.volts.wtf/p/economists-have-quantified-the-econo...
It’s not just tail risk, even things like geopolitical instability and crop failure were often not historically included… you can see why the headline statement seems to conflict with intuition, and it’s because of the narrow view taken on the impact of the fossil fuel scenario on GDP.
There is one more important element, and that is the distinction between economic activity (which GDP measures) and economic welfare. Natural disasters often don’t have much of an impact on GDP in part because the rebuilding activity counts in GDP. But it’s obvious to see why a future where we are spending an increasingly larger share of our effort to mitigate and rebuild losses is a much worse one. So GDP may not be the best measure here:
https://www.economy.com/economicview/analysis/296804/How-Nat...
If you live in California, even if electricity generation cost nothing at all it would still only lower your bill by ~15%. Transmission & distribution of electricity is the expensive part not generating it. It doesn’t need to be expensive, yet here we are.
Unfortunately hydrogen has really low energy density, electrolyzers are slow, and it is also pretty explosive. I don’t see hydrogen fuel cells being nearly as attractive as EV retrofits or CCS as an interim solution until battery tech cost curves improve to the point of making full electrification a no brainer (probably not that far away…)
To be clear, those three categories combined probably represent (spitball) less than 7% of total global emissions. We have a pretty clear path towards eliminating 80%+ of overall emissions, and that would buy us some time to figure out solutions for the remaining 20%.
But since you asked:
1- Freight trucks, for now, will likely be either carbon capture, or a clever EV retrofit like SixWheel. Batteries probably aren’t quite there (in 2022) to go full EV for all applications but the learning curve slope is such that that could conceivably be only 5 years away.
2- Aircraft are most certainly going to be SAF eg a green/renewable fuel until battery tech improves by an order of magnitude (10-20 years?)
3- Similar story for sea vessels on the batteries front, though for those CCS is likely to be the most promising interim solution.
For all of the categories you mentioned there are relatively promising 10-30 year prospects for full electrification and much more short term prospects for emissions mitigation. And these are part of the hardest 20% of emissions.
Long story short the situation is not nearly as bleak as you make it out to be.
> To be clear, those three categories combined probably represent (spitball) less than 7% of total global emissions. We have a pretty clear path towards eliminating 80%+ of overall emissions, and that would buy us some time to figure out solutions for the remaining 20%.
This is a problem that is going to take care of itself. World population is peaking and there's nothing that will get the world back to replacement fertility (2.1 children per woman) in the near term. As the world takes its long gentle slide into depopulation, carbon emissions will taper off. Problem solved.
"Making a living" is simply doing something that enough people find value in -- the more people and the greater the value provided, the more money you make.
Many artists focus on the process of art as one that is for themselves, which is completely fine - but don't expect to make a living out of it unless you are lucky and what you like is also what a lot of other people find value in.
Some of the art/music that the author describes as "mediocre" really should be "mediocre to me". Lots of popular music, for example, seems to find a common denominator that can appeal to the preferences of a large number of people with pretty divergent artistic/musical tastes, knowledge, education, preferences, etc. Many people find the music to be very enjoyable -- the author not included, obviously.
In that way, art and music can diverge. While successful music often provides somewhat smaller value to a large number of people, successful art can provide large value to a smaller number of people who can afford it.
In either case, understanding your target market, their characteristics, preferences, etc, is extremely worthwhile, because if you want to make a living from it, you need to be providing value to others and not just yourself.
That's not to say that all art has to be for others, just that you probably shouldn't expect to make a living on it if you have a target market of one.
i think its a little incongruous how people are much more open to the idea of pure science research, or math research, than the equivalent in music or art. both cases can yield untold benefits down the line.
The thing about science or math is that people do in fact not pay for those things. The government does most of the times (Universities) or cooperations do (research labs). I do not know a person that funds research themselves.
By the way, at least in my country (Austria) the government also spends money on artists, though I will admit that I am not aware of how big that part of the budget is. Most likely smaller than R&D though.
But in general most people also indirectly fund these things. Want a better camera in your phone? For that you will need better sensors, for that you need better factories, etc. At some point you reach the mathematicians or other scientists that are somewhat far removed from the product.
Generally solved by incentivizing large lush green lawns for single family housing in large tracts. The lawns have the added benefit of capturing carbon and increasing air quality.
Mandating one 18-hole golf course for every 2K people in municipalities would also create positive offsets to impervious surface and add to the benefit.
Let’s not get defeatist and give up. Europe is implementing a carbon border adjustment, and the U.S. is discussing this as well. If implemented correctly this should reduce the financial incentive to offshore emissions and create one for other countries to reduce their own.
Can you tell me more about why you are equating the mining of metals for solar/batteries with climate changing GHGs - eg why are they both equally as bad? I’m not disagreeing with you, I am genuinely curious to hear your perspective.
I do generally agree with you on your second point that it might not be the most productive action to take - for the time being it would probably be better for most people to focus on electrifying their homes paired with switching over to 100% clean energy (many utilities allow you to choose this option).
This might be accurate today, but it ignores our ability to make technological progress to make our current activities low or no impact.
Further, this line of thinking - that you need to sacrifice your lifestyle in order to save the planet - is IMO one of if not the major reason we haven’t made progress on addressing climate change to date. Plainly put, people tend to be short term selfish, even often at the expense of their own long term interests, and they tend to not want to change their behavior / habits.
We should instead focus on the technological progress that we need to make in order to be able to not only maintain our current lifestyles but possibly have them be better (eg a Tesla is a better car, a heat pump is more comfortable than a furnace, an induction stove boils water faster and has more precise control, etc). To be clear, most of this isn’t technological invention it’s implementation - a lot and a lot of implementation.
I don't think we can wait on technological magic bullet to deus ex machina save us from disaster.
Economy got us into this mess. Economy needs to get us out.
Climate change would be already solved if somebody figured out how the richest could earn more money when the energy is more expensive rather than when it is cheaper.
Billionaires would singlehandedly legislate all the necessary laws that would make energy as expensive as it really is to our planet. An our livestyles would change against our selfish preference. You wouldn't fly abroad for vacation if it costed more than your annual salary.
People in the developed world would need to be much poorer in relative terms to save the planet from global warming.
Tradeable right for emitting CO2 are great mechanism, because they let rich get richer by driving up the price of CO2 and the high price changes behaviors of energy consumers, producers and whole economy.
Agreed that we can’t wait. The large majority of the technology we need already exists, we just need to accelerate the adoption that would happen naturally.
A focus on this “punitive” side of things - that we need to pay for our transgressions through a dramatically reduced lifestyle - is just going to ensure that we drive straight off the cliff.
And yes, the economy is going to need to get us out of this. We need to make sure that the incentives are properly structured for the majority of the transformation to happen via the distributed market mechanisms vs being centrally planned.
Here’s a historical overview of the situation with some links to the latest research: https://impactlab.org/research-area/social-cost/
It’s not just tail risk, even things like geopolitical instability and crop failure were often not historically included… you can see why the headline statement seems to conflict with intuition, and it’s because of the narrow view taken on the impact of the fossil fuel scenario on GDP.
There is one more important element, and that is the distinction between economic activity (which GDP measures) and economic welfare. Natural disasters often don’t have much of an impact on GDP in part because the rebuilding activity counts in GDP. But it’s obvious to see why a future where we are spending an increasingly larger share of our effort to mitigate and rebuild losses is a much worse one. So GDP may not be the best measure here: https://www.economy.com/economicview/analysis/296804/How-Nat...