[danepowell]

> This move feels radical

My understanding is that, at least depending on your goal, this isn't nearly radical enough. Some experts think we not only need to stop selling gas-powered cars _immediately_, but also actively remove existing fossil fuel cars/appliance from the economy.

I found this podcast helpful in understanding the level of effort needed to decarbonize in the near future: https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/8/27/21403184/saul-griffit...

[kristopolous]

15 years is nonsense because it's beyond the time horizon of political office. Future politicians won't feel obligated by their predecessors commitments and current ones will just kick the can on meaningful action.

Unless there's actual measurable promises made by politicians that can be falsified before their next election, it's mostly puffery. Make hard, publicly verifiable 6, 12, and 18 month commitments otherwise it's just fluffy words to get votes.

Also this can't be a politics-only solution. We have to dip into ye olden term of "political economy" - that second term is integrally tied to the first. The restructuring has to happen at how the politics And economy operates otherwise it doesn't work - there's no way to do anything meaningful, it's just words on paper if we only look at politics.

Personally I think profit maximization for the energy sector has to go. It's not how we run our fire, parks, library, courts, postal service and it can't be how we do energy, at least not right now. Greenhouse gas minimization has to determine things.

It's possible. The best universities for instance, aren't determined by the highest profits and the best police aren't the ones that hand out the largest fines and the best parents aren't the ones that extract the highest value labor from their children. We can restructure how energy is done as well.

[ogre_codes]

> 15 years is nonsense because it's beyond the time horizon of political office. Future politicians won't feel obligated by their predecessors commitments and current ones will just kick the can on meaningful action.

Living in California over the past month feels apocalyptic.

This year isn't isolated and it's likely to repeat, refreshing in voters minds why this policy was put in place.

[kristopolous]

It'll certainly get far worse. The rapidity of the increase has fundamentally destabilized the global climate

The Arctic was 65 degrees above average this summer with days reaching over 100.

The temperature difference between the latitudes that governed the jet streams and global sea circulation has been fundamentally disrupted

That's why you're getting muggy 80 degree nights in California now.

Meanwhile that cooling system has wobbled lopsided like a melting hat bringing arctic cold weather and crop failure to a bunch of northern latitudes.

In the mid-latitudes, the tropical glaciers in places like the Himalayas that are the water supply for over a billion people are in an accelerating decline causing unprecedented flooding, soil erosion and soon, starvation.

Meanwhile ocean acidification is making the bottom of the food chain unable to survive and thus causes a cascading effect leading to a global ocean dieoff.

At the same time, the ice sheets are breaking up so rapidly that glaciologists can't even keep up with it and at least one fell to his death this year because things are happening to quickly to survey.

And then there's that insect apocalypse. All the while humans are making bold proclamations and patting themselves on the back while they point fingers at the "other countries" as if it's a game.

Global feedbacks due to the emissions have chains of effects that can be mapped out over decades. If we magically stopped all emission right now, there's still years of warming and disaster baked in until any kind of stability (reversal in our lifetime is frankly out of the question)

We're not doing that though. Instead, pipelines slated to last 40 years are being constructed as I type this. Exploratory missions for drilling that wouldn't even start until years from now are still being done. More coal power plants were funded and greenlit just last month. They won't even start until years from now.

We're still committing ourselves to an oil future despite all of this. Over half the greenhouse gases were emitted After we started the annual global climate summits. It has done effectively nothing.

So yes, things will be getting worse. These are the good days.

Look up "alien resurrection deleted ending"... Except for the space crafts, I don't think the depiction is inaccurate unless we take major life altering action immediately. The window to start an "ambitious" 15-year transition closed somewhere around 1990.

The world will eventually recover. The carbon dioxide emitted from the car that just rolled down the street, 90% of it will finally be gone in 100,000 years. The coral reef will recover in 2,000,000 years from the ocean acidification since 1950. We'll get to a level of biodiversity equal to 1930 by about 10,000,000AD. Even the amount of fossil fuels we burned in the past 200 years will eventually come back in 400,000,000 years --- but that's only if we somehow stop today. We're not doing that.

[ogre_codes]

> but that's only if we somehow stop today. We're not doing that.

There is literally nothing we can do to stop what's going to happen over the next hundred years. Elimination of emissions and massive investment in CO2 capture over the next hundred years might make the next hundred less terrible?

So my philosophy is to try and enjoy what we have as much as I possibly can and vote and support what little change I can.

Sadly, as climate declines, I suspect there will be a negative feedback loop. Economies will decline and the capability & willpower to invest in the future will decline along with the funds needed to improve the world.

[kristopolous]

We have a responsibility to those not yet born to shepherd this world.

I wish for future generations to look back at our time and say it was humanity's finest hour.

It's our duty to be nothing less. Our time is now, we are our only hope.

[ogre_codes]

> I wish for future generations to look back at our time and say it was humanity's finest hour.

Finest hour? It's 90 seconds to midnight... if we're gonna shine, we don't have an hour!

I'm with you though.

[raytracer]

It's possible to actively support positive change at the same time as having little hope our collective actions will avert catastrophic climate change.

[dimnsionofsound]

Agreed. I'm not having kids and trying not to get too down on the daily about the future of our species. Based on what I know about human nature I see almost no realistic way out of this without some sort of technological deus-ex-machina to come and save us.

[raytracer]

Thanks for the summary.

> These are the good days.

Yep. I'm beginning to feel this is true. 2020 has been a crap year in many ways. But I expect 2020 will be one of the better years compared to what is coming.

[syshum]

This year problems also was not caused by Climate Change (at least not the primary cause) but rather decades and decades of Poor forest management and poor infrastructure maintenance which has nothing to do with eliminating gas burning cars.

Even if you reverse all carbon output today, if you do not change the forest management you will still have massive fires, and if you do not improve infrastructure maintenance you are still going to have brown outs and black outs in summer

[kristopolous]

Ok, why then are the largest fires in Russia, Australia, Canada, and Bolivia? Is that also bad management from the Democrats?

Cool let's look at US only, because that will be your reply. We have the 2004 Alaska fire, the 2017 Montana wildfire or the fires in Idaho and Georgia in 2007 that were over 500,000 acres. Are those also meddling Democrats and Environmentalists?

What about the largest fire in Kansas history that went into Oklahoma in 2016. The largest fire in Utah was in 2007 as well.

When doing a proper survey, there's literally not a shred of empirical evidence to back your claim. This is a global phenomena exhibiting exactly zero bias towards any particular political party.

We're at the anger/bargaining stage of denialism with some people. Which is fine, but it shouldn't be used as a basis for public policy.

[syshum]

I never claimed a political party was to blame, and It is not a CA only problem, the US Forest Service has had decades of bad management as well under both Republicans and Democrats

It is a GOVERNMENT problem, both parties are terrible.

>>We have the 2004 Alaska fire, the 2017 Montana wildfire or the fires in Idaho and Georgia in 2007 that were over 500,000 acres

Isnt that kinda of the point, the claim is that Climate change is the cause, but fires of this kind have been happening for decades

Fire happen in forests, and proper forest management will lessen their impact (it will not prevent them)

Forest fires have been happening since before humans existed on this plant, and they will continue to happen long after we have killed ourselves with our own stupidity

[kristopolous]

Of course they will. People die naturally without smoking cigarettes as well. Smoking however, has a real effect.

This is a matter of frequency, ferocity, and number of locations, that's why it's "instability"; the 60 degree change in Colorado over 8hrs for instance.

Or the multiple hurricanes at once phenomena recently almost like they're lined up in a queue. Or that crazy one in New York, or that disastrous one in Houston, rare extreme events are increasing in frequency due to climate disruption.

The statement "hurricanes happen" is about as valid as saying "people die" in order to dismiss the health concerns of cigarettes.

Nobody is claiming they don't. The claim, to use cigarettes, is that statistically speaking, a significant amount die when they usually wouldn't. Early deaths dramatically increase in frequency. Also pointing to the climate equivalent of the 100 year old smoker doesn't discredit things either. This is a statistical argument, not an absolute one.

If a better sports team has an upset defeat, they're still the better team because of their statistical performance.

The claim here isn't that these things didn't exist but that they're more numerous, more dramatic, and occur more often, globally, in every country. The numbers clearly back that story.

[ogre_codes]

> This year problems also was not caused by Climate Change

The abnormally hot and dry summer was absolutely a root cause of the fires.

> if you do not change the forest management you will still have massive fires, and if you do not improve infrastructure maintenance you are still going to have brown outs and black outs in summer

"Forest Management", the classic euphemism for "Aggressive Logging" is at least partially responsible for the explosive spread of the Holiday Farm Fire and many of the fires which have been part of this year's disastrous wild-fires in Oregon. In the Holiday Farm Fire, 76% of the lands burned were previously clear cut, most of it was private forest and heavily logged BLM land. The national forests adjacent which have a far lighter "management" burden, less logging and much more healthy 1st and 2nd growth trees didn't burn near as much. The difference is so stark, the fire line almost ends at the boundary between heavily managed land and the National Forest.

[Robotbeat]

I'm not sure that makes sense, actually. We didn't remove the profit motive from CFC production or refrigerator companies. We just banned CFCs and moved on.

Honestly, we do need a more aggressive approach, but climate won't be the catalyst for totally changing the economy that many on the left hope it will be.

[Brakenshire]

Yes, it will be interesting whether this includes any meaningful action within his term of office. In the EU and UK there are requirements for average emissions for each manufacturer, which get tougher every year, and already are requiring about 5-10% of vehicles to be electric.

[ars]

> Some experts think we not only need to stop selling gas-powered cars _immediately_, but also actively remove existing fossil fuel cars/appliance from the economy.

That's targeting the wrong side of the supply/demand equation. Which is also why this initiative of California's will not work.

Just keep building better power sources!! You will never reduce demand, you can only make a better supply.

Nuclear nuclear nuclear. There's nothing else that can do it fast enough.

If California actually cared about the environment that's what they would do, instead it's only lip service.

[bobthepanda]

This is not true.

Even today, where we haven't done all that much with electric efficiency, US power generation has been virtually flat for over a decade since the last recession: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38572

Considering how much low-hanging efficiency fruit there is still lying around, reducing demand is a perfectly valid strategy for reducing carbon emissions.

[ars]

Scroll down a bit on that page you link.

The entire difference is due to heavy industry moving to other countries.

[bobthepanda]

No, it's not.

In the second graph, industrial sales flatline then decline after 2000, which doesn't match up with the peak electricity generation in 2007. Both residential and commercial slow or stop growing after 2007.

[cure]

> Nuclear nuclear nuclear. There's nothing else that can do it fast enough.

Maybe in theory, but not in practice. How much new nuclear generation has been brought online in the last decade in the US? How much solar/wind?

Clearly, the only carbon-free power generation that is actually actively being brought online is solar/wind. With batteries, we'll actually get somewhere with the decarbonization of our power generation.

It still won't be fast enough at the current pace, though...

[ars]

> It still won't be fast enough at the current pace, though...

Isn't that exactly the point? Nuclear could be fast enough, solar wind can't.

Of course we'll need to bring down nuclear costs, not a lot, but at least some.