this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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@MrMakabar @XTL we have the tools, but governments wedded to profit and growth won't use them, and certainly won't use them quickly enough.
We'll need a wave of revolutions to improve our democracies; shortening terms, dispersing power to communities and as much as possible moving from electing representatives who can be easily captured and subverted to truly democratic decisions which are harder to manipulate.
Degrowth basicly tries to limit change the size of the economy to one, which stays within planetary boundaries. One of the most important ones of that is certainly greenhouse gas emissions. So something like the emissions trading systems of the EU are inherintly degrowth policies. They cap emissions and lower that cap over the years. Some industries are already in some trouble due to that, namely the coal electricity industry, but a lot of other heavy industry in the EU has problems as well due to that policy right now.
Another big one is increasing wild space, which the EU also has passed a law, forcing its members to rewild a few percent of their land. That is limiting resource use for sure.
There are also a lot of other enviromental regulations doing similar things. The problem is not moving fast enough and still believing in economic growth, but there are policies, which go very much in the right direction and are more then just token policies. Obviously a lot more is needed, but change within the current system is certainly possible. However you are right, the fear of a drop in gdp has to go and be replaced with a the idea of improving quality of life. Obviously having a strong economy helps with that, but still it should be an option, if the econmy shrinks.
@MrMakabar emissions trading schemes don't reduce emissions, they just change where those emissions take place. Until we calculate emissions based on consumption all we'll do is outsource emissions to places with looser regulation, and there's no incentive for those places to change.
The EU re-wilding provisions were neutered, and even if they hadn't been, it wouldn't have come close to meeting land use requirements to offset current emissions.
@MrMakabar Political capture will prevent meaningful change until it's far too late, because the money that finances political parties or provides jobs for their constituents has a profit incentive that can never be squared with climate action.
The world will need to change. We either seize the day and change it ourselves or we watch it spiral into resource wars and 100s of millions dead or displaced.
We're already past the point where capitalism can innovate its way out of the crisis.
You mean something like CBAM, which adds tariffs as high as emissions would cost in the EU to goods imported by the EU minus emissions pricing within the country of origin. That is imho one of the best policies you can come up with. It pretty much all EU goods to have emission pricing and has a real insentive for other countries to have one to as to not pay tariffs to the EU, but get the money themself.
That bill passed already and will be enforced by 2026.
@MrMakabar I used to be in favour of that system until I realised it only works when there are alternatives, and there aren't for most goods and services. If you can't swap to something clean, then all it does is raise the price.
It increases the burden on the worst off in society, without in any way impacting the wealthiest; like all eco-austerity policies.
For a lot of it there are working alternatives. Electricity is pretty obviously renwables and nuclear. For transport there are electric vehicles like trains and battery powered road vehicles, as well as not using them. Shiping is more difficult, but fuel can be saved using sails and electric ships are a thing. Heating and cooling can be done using heat pumps and district heating fairly well. Large heat pumps are also a good solution for quite a few industrial processes. For iron and steel production we do know how to do it using hydrogen for decades and there are a lot of steel plants using this, but the hydrogen is produced using natural gas. That is over half the energy related emissions we do know how to cut. There is even more then that, if you look at some other industrial processes, which emit, but are not huge sources. Basicly we know how to go most of the way.
Also important to say that carbon inequality is massive. The richest 10% of Germans emited 29.6t per capita in 2020. the bottom 50% of Germans emitted 5.5t per capita. That btw is down from 13.9t in 1990. The 40% missing had emission of 11.9t per capita. Average emissions of all Germans was at 10.2t. Same story of every other country as well. So the rich are taxed much more then the poor. The only thing necessary is that the money is used smartly.
@MrMakabar the issue is that those solutions won't be brought onboard before its too late, and as you identified, they're the low hanging fruit.
Taxes on the rich won't discourage them from emitting.