The threshold to join the top 10% of global wealth (the measure used in this study) is a net worth of $93,170 USD. To join the top 1%, it's $871,230. (Both numbers from a 2018 Credit Suisse study)
Most HN readers are likely in the global top 10% or will be within a few years of a tech-related career. Many will be in the global 1% simply by saving for retirement over time.
This study refers to the "global rich", but that means it's referring to most of us.
The article specifically refers to income, not wealth.
I'm sure you pointed it out with good intentions, but it's fairly obvious why wealth and income are completely orthogonal when it comes to CO2 emissions.
When it comes to flying many people will choose worse service or worse flight times if they get a lower price. $100 per ticket can make a big difference in a price sensitive industry.
Lots of people will read this headline and think 'rich' doesn't apply to them. Judging by the income thresholds in the article, I think most HN readers might be in the top 10% and therefore in the most polluting group that should take action.
Personally, I'm getting tired of these kind of articles - they seem to serve no useful purpose other than letting people endlessly debate who should act first (spoiler: the answer is always "not me").
Let's first implement carbon tax with actual teeth, and go from there. And please no talk of "Ahh but what about America/China/India/Global rich/Corporations/whatever?" For god's sake, America can start first. Or China can start first. Or we can all finger-point each other and merrily claim "I'm not gonna do anything until that guy moves first!" while the world is heating up.
The total water usage of residents is < 0.2% last year, still they say "conserve water" and waste money on public service announcements etc... businesses, govt, industrial use is the other 99.8% and it's just business as usual for them....
I'm fine with a carbon tax, but this entirely ignores that it may end up being regressive in the US since so many people in lower income brackets depend on older cars, and can't just upgrade to a Tesla if gas gets more expensive.
> V. To maximize the fairness and political viability of a rising carbon tax, all the revenue should be returned directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates. The majority of American families, including the most vulnerable, will benefit financially by receiving more in “carbon dividends” than they pay in increased energy prices.
Co-signers include the then-former Federal Reserve chairs: Greenspan, Bernanke, Volcker, Yellen. Plus a bunch of Nobel laureate economists (Fama, Schiller, Scholes, Sharpe, etc).
An alternative market-based™ approach would be cap-and-trade, which was done under Bush41 for acid rain (and which California is doing for its carbon emissions IIRC).
See also "The Conservative Case For Carbon Dividends" [1] whose authors include James Baker (Secretary of State under GHW Bush, Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan), Martin Feldstein (chairman of Council of Economic Advisors under Reagan), N. Gregory Mankiw (chairman of GW Bush's Council of Economic Advisors), and Henry Paulson (GW Bush's Secretary of the Treasury), George Shultz (Reagan's Secretary of State, and Secretary of Treasury under Nixon).
My problem with a carbon tax, and carbon credits, it's that they're displacing the problem, and unless they translate to equivalent carbon capture, the net carbon emissions remain nearly the same.
The goal is reducing carbon emissions, not paying for emitting them. Stricter emission limits, and heavy fines/less subsidies for the biggest offenders would do wonders in this regard.
I always assumed that people who sequester carbon get negative carbon tax, i.e. a payout. If you increase the carbon price to eventually match the cost of sequestration things should work out to net zero emissions.
So far these people have not made a dent with their carbon capture. It's awesome if these carbon credits are advancing research on carbon capture, but that's not helping with reducing carbon emissions now, these shouldn't cancel actual emissions.
So far we don't have a carbon price that is anywhere close to the cost of sequestration, so I'm not surprised that neither a lot of sequestration nor a quick reduction in emissions is going on.
Most people who are in favor of a carbon tax are also in favor of a carbon dividend, where most of the carbon tax money is paid out again. Since poor people usually emit below average amounts of carbon, they'd come out ahead in such a scheme.
I don't understand this - emitting an "average" amount of carbon is still too much.
I mean, if a person is so poor that they are emitting less than the average amount emitted before the industrial revolution, then yes, maybe they should come out ahead. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're not aiming at a comfortable rate of adding carbon to the atmosphere, we actually have to stop increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
Using it to transition our economy to carbon neutral and bringing back manufacturing? Sure. Financing ever ballooning bureaucrats pension funds? No thanks.
Coal fired electricity plants STILL account for 20% of the US's electricity supply. That EV will do no good if its being powered by a coal or natural gas plant. Our first priority should be banning coal electricity, and convincing the world to as well. But the US must take the first step. It's unacceptable to have coal or natural gas power when we have nuclear and renewables.
Carbon emissions are simple. We're digging stuff up, and putting it into the air. Dig up less and start putting stuff back into the ground. It's possible to get to negative carbon emissions without making overly harsh cuts on consumption. For example, flying releases 1/4 tons of CO2 per hour. BECCS negative carbon emission prices vary, but I've seen estimates at $200 per ton on the high side. This means you'll add $200 to the operating cost for a carbon neutral four hour flight, which sounds extremely doable to me.
> Coal fired electricity plants STILL account for 20% of the US's electricity supply. That EV will do no good if its being powered by a coal or natural gas plant.
If you replace a large number of ICE cars with EVs getting all their electricity from a coal or natural gas power plant, it can still be a big win because all the fossil fuel burning for all of them is now in one fixed location instead of a large number of mobile locations. That gives you a lot more flexibility is adding system to capture the emissions, and more flexibility to upgrade as future, better, systems are developed.
It says the top 1% emit 15%, and then basically says they need to reduce that to essentially zero.
Then the bottom 50% who collectively emit 7% could triple their emissions.
Is it me, or is 100% - 15 + 7*3 > 100?
Either the UN report is not talking about reducing CO2 emissions or the reporter greatly misunderstood it.
Later the reporter puts great emphasis on airplane travel almost to the point of saying that just cutting that alone would be enough - yet airplane travel (all of it) is 2.5% of emissions.
This article pretends to be about CO2, but is really about inequality.
Crazy idea outlaw billionaires. Take 100% of anything they have that brings their total assets above 1 billion. They can keep 999 million. That's IT. Also maybe ban use of yachts and private jets until this is fixed....
Instead maybe the rich could ride-share on boeings where they have a little more security and privacy and get first class to themselves or something....
>This year's economic shutdowns have done little to reduce the world's carbon emissions.
This is misleading. 2020 saw a 7 percent drop from fossil emission levels in 2019 [1]. That is a huge number YoY which only exposed mass consumerism as the true culprit for the increase in CO2 emissions. Not to mention that China and India are the number one polluters and as usual the UN and other supranational organization will look the other way. Goes to show how our central planners are simultaneously waving the contradictory specters of global warming and deflationary economics.
From previous discussions I've seen on pollution, but possibly not CO2 specifically, the global shipping industry is one of the bigger contributors. While we may have driven and flown less in the past year I'm pretty sure we didn't buy significantly less so there are still lots of ships out there.
Concrete production also takes a lot of energy. Based on the current costs of other building materials in North America I doubt we've slowed that down either.
Even if everyone in the top global 1% was driving electric cars right now we'd still be contributing a lot to CO2 emissions in other ways.
>the global shipping industry is one of the bigger contributors
Well, what are they shipping? Goods that supply the consumerist chain at every level. We definitely did buy significantly less given that money velocity has plummeted in 2020, and I would argue this was reflected in the global shipping industry slowdown.
>Based on the current costs of other building materials in North America I doubt we've slowed that down either.
Current costs reflect the reopening boom, not last year's slowdown which witnessed a commodity drawdown!
Maybe we should require that retail get 80% or more of their products from shipping locations that are in North America or the country of origin.
Globalization as always seems to cause a lot of major pains for the world. Global Warming, lower wages in the USA, legal sweat shops in other countries, etc...
> China and India are the number one polluters and as usual the UN and other supranational organization will look the other way
US: 16t per capita
China: 8t per capita
India: 2t per capita
I think it is pretty clear who is fucking things up right now. Yes, there are a lot of Indians, but that only means that the US (and their rich peers) have to move even further to stop being the bad guy.
I wrote pollution, e.g. what goes straight into the ocean [1,2] which is a good proxy for pollution at large, not carbon dioxide emission alone. I mentioned that in passing to illustrate the hypocrisy of the UN and other environmentally conscious organizations. CO2 is just one component, and if those organizations can't even get the rest right there is no reason to expect them to be consistent on that issue either. I hope this makes sense.
Per capita is meaningless, the Vatican could pollute more but only has 500 people. I do not trust calculations of hard to measure items like the CO2 footprint of an entire country (which could easily be an order of magnitude worse or better). In any case the effects are so far removed from the cause that many politicians and business leaders will simply ignore making any rational changes, since demanding change will affect them sooner (no votes or less money) rather than later (their grandchildren suffer, maybe the human race vanishes). Rational discussions are unlikely without immediate reaction (even then as in India with Covid an in your face nightmare can't motivate some people).
Figure out a way to breed whales - lots of them... 1 whale = thousands of trees... though the real cause is they help increase phytoplankton... if we could make boats that somehow release the same stuff the "whale pump" does while they travel, perhaps we could raise phytoplankton numbers... or some other mechanism to do the same...
1. Deal with it being not only hotter, but also there being enough CO2 in the air to significantly reduce human intellect
2. Kill 97% of humans (or whatever percentage, as that’s not what the headline actually means)
3. Geo-engineering to deal with the heat, but keeping all the cognitive impact of the CO2
4. Invent something to suck CO2 out of the air so cheaply that it can be cracked into the carbon-rich fuels people want to burn for a lower cost than just digging it out of the ground
Well, if you're an "average Joe" in a Western country, you're already likely to be in the top 10% globally, wealth-wise. An average HN reader? Probably closer to the top 5%.
Everybody needs to cut their carbon footprint by 100% if we want to stop global warming. The rich probably should go first, but in the end everybody has to.
Not necessarily 100% — more CO2 in the air does boost plant growth rate, so a small non-zero net CO2 emission rate may be compatible with an equilibrium between the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentration and today’s atmospheric CO2 concentration.
97% reduction might be enough? Dunno, but I can believe it.
That's a false premise, not to mention incredibly de-motivating and unhelpful. We can slow current trends and dramatically delay the negative impacts of climate change without having to eradicate every last ICE on the planet (to name just one hopelessly radical and unrealistic part of a fantasy world with literally zero carbon emission). And slowing the current trends should be the goal, both because it is sufficient and, perhaps more importantly, because it is plausible.
That's an important point, and I think those points should be included more when we communicate about these ideas, because it's very easy to turn people off when we imply that we need
to decommission all classic cars or ban camp fires or end air travel.
So what you're saying is that it's impossible to stop global warming. Wouldn't it be more productive to just give up and start thinking about how to survive in the apocalypse you've been predicting?
Why do you think it's impossible to stop burning fossil fuels? We already have the necessary technology, we just don't want to spend the money to build enough of it.
Carbon neutral in paper, it depends on how efficiently these offsets are used to capture carbon, otherwise the net emissions remain the same. The goal is reducing emissions, not paying to emit them.
More importantly, it can only work as far as reducing all carbon emissions to zero in a world in which there are enough carbon removers to offset all the producers, so that every producer can buy enough carbon offsets (which basically means: every emitter of carbon can find someone whom they can pay to remove an equal amount of carbon).
In the long run we're all dead. Yes, it's also true that as buying carbon offsets becomes more popular, the opportunities will become more scarce and they will be come more expensive. But that would be a very good problem to have, because we're nowhere near that point currently. Right now they are cheap and widely available. We bought ours from cooleffects, and we are doing it while simultaneously working to reduce our emissions. Plus, buying carbon offsets also spurs investment in finding more carbon offset opportunities.
You may be underestimating the 'carbon footprint' of retail shopping; I have never seen a clear comparison of the two, but I am not sure one would be significantly 'better' than the other.
Everyone knows that online shopping is much worse in terms of footprint. First, think of all the items that are returned. Second, think of the incentive it creates to buy more stuff.
Do you have any idea of how many emissions are caused by people driving 'across town' to buy very little? What about people who drive to the store to buy one thing? How about the air conditioning in the mall?
Warehouses are much more efficient places to store things than malls and stores.
Consumers are very bad at logistics, whereas logistics companies (like couriers) are very efficient at logistics.
I am not sure which mode of shopping is more 'energy intensive', I'm just pointing out reasons why online shopping may not be worse than retail shopping.
What if online (and retail) shopping was more expensive the farther it had to be transported from? Some things would be expensive enough for local businesses to make a profit.
BS journalism (i.e. typical). Of course, it begins with a false premise: "Researchers have long known that carbon emissions are closely tied to income.". Really? What about poor, developing countries with little or no policy over factory emissions don't count?
The narrative conveniently shifts from focus on countries' industrial activities and ecological policies to ... of course, a focus on individual wealth and "inequality". I guess the inequality angle sells more ads these days; plus, it's so Trump-like to criticize nations, so let's not do that, right?
I happen to live in the US, so maybe you can enlighten me. What federal regulations about CO2 emissions here are you talking about? As far as I am aware, factories can emit as much carbon as they wish.
> The Clean Air Act sets national air quality standards to lower pollutants that cause smog, acid rain and other health dangers. It's never been used for greenhouse gases, but environmental groups now hope EPA might finally use it after ignoring the option for 11 years.
The top 100 companies don't exist in a vacuum. They provide services and goods to tens of million customers, most of whom are average Joes.
If you hold them responsible, whatever that means, they're almost guaranteed to pass on the extra costs to the consumer, leading to reduced demand and less utility distributed to the end recipient.
While it sounds better to hold a mega-corporation responsible rather than the average consumer, the end result is that the consumer ends up taking a cut either way, either through paying more for the same good or reducing their consumption.
It's a great example of bikeshedding the problem, while the world heats up.
> If you hold them responsible, whatever that means, they're almost guaranteed to pass on the extra costs to the consumer, leading to reduced demand and less utility distributed to the end recipient.
This is precisely the point. Let's face it, most people will buy what's bad for the environment if the thing is convenient. If the thing is no longer offered, or too expensive, they will pay the premium or buy something else.
We can relearn to live without fresh fruits in winter, or cheap Asian clothing. It will be a step backwards for the comforts of our modern world, but also a step backwards from worldwide disaster.
Holding the 'top 100 companies' 'responsible' would just be a boon to less efficient, slightly smaller companies. If you want to reduce carbon footprints, you need to re-shape the processes (of production and consumption) which cause the emissions.
Bill Gates worries about global warming. His house is 66,000 sq ft. I find the hypocrisy astounding and it helps global warming deniers to claim that 'if the people worrying about it are not acting as though they're actually concerned, why should we worry'.
He built it before he was concerned about global warming. What can he do about it now? Selling it won't help. Tearing it down is also a waste. Might as well use it.
There is this wonderful technology that is not man-made which can control the carbon footprint in the least-cost, most-efficient, and least-overhead manner: it is called a "tree".
> A 2019 study of the global potential for tree restoration showed that there is space for at least 9 million km^2 of new forests worldwide, which is a 25% increase from current conditions. This forested area could store up to 205 gigatons of carbon or 25% of the atmosphere's current carbon pool by reducing CO2 in the atmosphere and introducing more O2.
Due to trees being dark, afforestation has a weaker impact on climate change than the stored carbon would make you think. They also evaporate a lot of water, which is also a GHG.
Forests only store carbon when they're young -- mature forests are in a steady state, the rotting wood releases carbon at the same rate that it is absorbed by growing trees.
Mature forests also release methane, which is 25X worse a greenhouse gas than CO2.
This, however, ignores actively managing the forest by clearing dead trees. On the other hand, some amount of dead wood is really important to the forest ecosystem and should be left to rot.
Most trees planted in the world are already cut down too young, while they're still net carbon sinks. A tree planted right now is going to absorb carbon for at least a hundred years. And most timber is used in ways that releases all the stored carbon much sooner than it would happen in a natural forest. Basically the only reasonably sustainable ways to use timber is to either build something lasting out of it or bury it underground.
If it's true they could capture carbon at a cost of $10/ton by weathering rocks it should be much more efficient than trees. It also de-acidifies the oceans.
Most HN readers are likely in the global top 10% or will be within a few years of a tech-related career. Many will be in the global 1% simply by saving for retirement over time.
This study refers to the "global rich", but that means it's referring to most of us.