The Change needed is refused by the people. We would rather die and kill most of the biological world than face economic austerity, so we get what we order.
> In this study, we conducted a representative survey across 125 countries, interviewing nearly 130,000 individuals. Our findings reveal widespread support for climate action. Notably, 69% of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute 1% of their personal income, 86% endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action.
Yes, in surveys everyone is always generous and ready to sacrifice their own interests, then price of gas increases some 10-20% and you have protests and riots.
We need 2-6% of GDP each year spend on this. For the next 30 years.
This is an amount of money we could just create by monetary policy or Quantitative Easing as the like to say. Nobody needs to get poor when money is spend.
Too bad they're not running the US, India, and China because poll results are meaningless if people have no actual ability to effect change and they don't.
This is definitely encouraging but I’d rather see a study about people forgoing consumption or voluntarily imposing self austerity rather than what their opinions are.
It's not a matter of the environment vs economic austerity, rejected by the people, it's the environment vs corporate abuse, rejected by those in power.
It is actually worse than that. Even the relatively small amounts of money we are willing to spend to combat this are often not spent well.
One example, is rooftop solar. Rooftop solar is very, very, expensive compared to utility grade solar. A dollar that goes to subsidize residential rooftop solar is a dollar that would go much, much further if it was used to subsidize utility grade solar or wind.
Another example of poor decision making is Germany which decided to start shutting down nuclear power plants while they were still burning coal. So last year hard coal and lignite still produced 35.3 percent in German power production (compared to 35.2% from renewables. (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany). Before the phase out of nuclear, it generated about 25% of the electricity. It is all really hard to believe...
1) Does the extra cost of rooftop solar go to installers doing a lot more manual work per panel?
Installers who need a source of income to live anyway?..
2) As I see it a lot of the pollution in the world is due to fear of people loosing their jobs. One could scale down many sectors, or more aggressively shift to a greener economy, if it wasn't for the fear of people/voters loosing their jobs.
--
So when considering options I think one needs to give smaller weight to salaries ("somone had to feed that person anyway") and more weight to natural resource extraction needed...which is the "real" cost. Basically count further CO2 emissions invested, not work hours.
> Another example of poor decision making is Germany which decided to start shutting down nuclear power plants while they were still burning coal. So last year hard coal and lignite still produced 35.3 percent in German power production (compared to 35.2% from renewables. (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany). Before the phase out of nuclear, it generated about 25% of the electricity. It is all really hard to believe...
That article is from January 2023, so the numbers in there are 2022, not last year, and even then it says that nuclear produced only 11.7%. In any case, comparing to the official numbers[0], those seem to be closer to the 2021 numbers than the actual 2022 numbers: 31.3% coal, 6% nuclear, and 44% renewable. For 2023, coal was down to 26.22%, nuclear (which was only phased out in April) was down to 1.5%, and renewables were at 56%. Nuclear has not contributed more than 20% to electricity generation since 2011[2].
I literally dream about Sovereign Solar. If the Canadian government was like "yo, we're doing a crown corporation and we're gonna transition the country to solar wind and tidal" - that's my actual pipe dream.
Polls consistently show that people think someone somewhere should do something as long as it doesn't actually cost them any money.
"IPSOS found that just 25 percent of Americans said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to address climate change. A 2019 Reuters poll asked specifically whether respondents would pay $100 to fight climate change and only a third said yes"
Meanwhile, Joe Biden while claiming to believe we are steering towards climate disaster, decided to protect the economy and preserve his geriatric political career and reduce oil prices yet again by depleting strategic reserves.
I think the return on investment on most proposed “changes” is negative. I don’t see any evidence that most of the biological world is hurdling towards destruction from climate.
If we turned off the fossil fuel tap today, I think life on earth would get markedly worse for humans, with negligible/no impact on fauna.
The people always do the right thing when it is almost too late. Same thing as World War II, we Americans ignored and avoided the war as long as we possibly could. I still wonder at the miracle of Japan attacking Pearl Harbor, had they not, it is likely that we'd be in the middle of a Nazi new world order. For this climate challenge, perhaps we can hope for some disastrous flood, or horrific hurricane, to help convince your average voter that this is not something that will just go away by itself and we need to take it seriously.
>> it is likely that we'd be in the middle of a Nazi new world order.
Ask people born in a former soviet union country who they thought "won" WW2. It is not likely in any scenario that the US would be in the middle of a Nazi world order if Pearl Harbor wasn't attacked, calling it a miracle is disgusting.
Fwiw I have direct family that fought in WW2 in the Pacific.
abdullahkhalids|2 years ago
> In this study, we conducted a representative survey across 125 countries, interviewing nearly 130,000 individuals. Our findings reveal widespread support for climate action. Notably, 69% of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute 1% of their personal income, 86% endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action.
And an interview of the authors [2]
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01925-3
[2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/interview-why-global-support-for...
caskstrength|2 years ago
oezi|2 years ago
This is an amount of money we could just create by monetary policy or Quantitative Easing as the like to say. Nobody needs to get poor when money is spend.
asadotzler|2 years ago
Phenomenit|2 years ago
jdub|2 years ago
cuu508|2 years ago
opo|2 years ago
One example, is rooftop solar. Rooftop solar is very, very, expensive compared to utility grade solar. A dollar that goes to subsidize residential rooftop solar is a dollar that would go much, much further if it was used to subsidize utility grade solar or wind.
Another example of poor decision making is Germany which decided to start shutting down nuclear power plants while they were still burning coal. So last year hard coal and lignite still produced 35.3 percent in German power production (compared to 35.2% from renewables. (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany). Before the phase out of nuclear, it generated about 25% of the electricity. It is all really hard to believe...
dagss|2 years ago
1) Does the extra cost of rooftop solar go to installers doing a lot more manual work per panel?
Installers who need a source of income to live anyway?..
2) As I see it a lot of the pollution in the world is due to fear of people loosing their jobs. One could scale down many sectors, or more aggressively shift to a greener economy, if it wasn't for the fear of people/voters loosing their jobs.
-- So when considering options I think one needs to give smaller weight to salaries ("somone had to feed that person anyway") and more weight to natural resource extraction needed...which is the "real" cost. Basically count further CO2 emissions invested, not work hours.
mmarx|2 years ago
That article is from January 2023, so the numbers in there are 2022, not last year, and even then it says that nuclear produced only 11.7%. In any case, comparing to the official numbers[0], those seem to be closer to the 2021 numbers than the actual 2022 numbers: 31.3% coal, 6% nuclear, and 44% renewable. For 2023, coal was down to 26.22%, nuclear (which was only phased out in April) was down to 1.5%, and renewables were at 56%. Nuclear has not contributed more than 20% to electricity generation since 2011[2].
[0] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris... [1] https://www.smard.de/page/home/topic-article/444/211756 [2] https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/STR...
neom|2 years ago
ZeroGravitas|2 years ago
freddie_mercury|2 years ago
Polls consistently show that people think someone somewhere should do something as long as it doesn't actually cost them any money.
"IPSOS found that just 25 percent of Americans said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to address climate change. A 2019 Reuters poll asked specifically whether respondents would pay $100 to fight climate change and only a third said yes"
tinco|2 years ago
pstuart|2 years ago
notadoomer236|2 years ago
If we turned off the fossil fuel tap today, I think life on earth would get markedly worse for humans, with negligible/no impact on fauna.
oezi|2 years ago
jaybrendansmith|2 years ago
mlrtime|2 years ago
Ask people born in a former soviet union country who they thought "won" WW2. It is not likely in any scenario that the US would be in the middle of a Nazi world order if Pearl Harbor wasn't attacked, calling it a miracle is disgusting.
Fwiw I have direct family that fought in WW2 in the Pacific.
djmips|2 years ago
faeriechangling|2 years ago