Until climate change starts affecting our base hierarchy of needs, it's doomed to get more lip service than action. Outside of war efforts, have societies ever made sacrifices for the greater good?
Banning CFCs to fix the ozone hole over Oceania/Antarctica. Scientific consensus was CFCs were directly responsible for the problem, countries around the globe got together and mandated the use of different refrigerants with the Montreal Protocol in 1987. Every single member of the UN ratified the agreement. It's regarded as one of if not the most effective international environmental agreement ever. Potentially saved millions of lives with reduced skin cancer cases.
Banning CFCs were a win/win for industry/environment because industry had alternatives for CFCs that they could charge a premium for. No such option exists for fossil fuels.
that's absolutely not true though. there are countless alternatives from DAC/CCS coupled with anything, endless variations of nuclear (even fusion too), T shaped dams in the sea, wind, solar.
the problem is about collective action, and justice/fairness/negotiation/geopolitics. like the iterated prisoner's dilemma. defectors get cheap energy, but then the next round your exports get a big tariff added, but then defectors of that get cheap shit, the next round they might get tariffs too, but then you hit a ceiling on this.
Sacrifice for the greater good is the wrong way of framing it. It’s not a sacrifice at all. It’s a prudent investment.
If a huge tree next to your house is starting to lean and is in danger of falling and causing tens of thousands worth of damage to your roof and exterior, is paying a few thousand to remove the tree a sacrifice?
Yes we could adapt to climate change but investing now in non-carbon-based technologies would be far cheaper and safer.
This wrong framing is actually the fault of the environmental movement which from the start has framed this like a moral panic and reform crusade. I credit that to the movement emerging from a culture with protestant puritan DNA. We got “forgive me nature for I have sinned” which is bullshit.
George Carlin gave a good retort. “Stop saying save the Earth! The Earth will be fine. We are fucked.”
We are what we are trying to save. “Nature” will be fine.
On who we put the cost of the prudent investment about things we do not have certainty about? I have been hearing bad news about climate change since the 90s and none of those happened.
I think this has a lot more than simple science into it.
I am willing to pay the cost of transition as long as they give me dates and signa a contract saying they will give me my money back if things do not happen as in their calendar with a reasonable amoubt of flexibility.
At the same time, it's interesting to consider whether the CFC ban would have been politically possible today. I honestly don't know, but it seems likely it would have been turned into a bludgeon.
R12 and R22 phaseouts cost money, required some equipment changes, stocking of multiple refrigerants, all of which represent varying levels of sacrifice to solve the problem.
We're not going to see major sacrifices, much to the chagrin of activists that conflate sacrifice with effectiveness, but we are seeing significant improvements from existing climate action already. Most of it doesn't make as much noise as highly visible yet ineffective actions like bans etc. which activists prefer.
