
Transitioning to a sustainable economy is fiscally conservative. Why can't we? - ngottlieb
https://sacredheadwaters.substack.com/p/sacred-headwaters-6-new-climate-economy
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tony_cannistra
> "If the projected costs of climate change are real and if the projected
> economic benefits of investing in a sustainable future are genuine, why
> hasn’t the global economy begun a more rapid shift? Why aren’t businesses
> and governments working harder to support this transition when it’s the
> fiscally conservative move?"

For a while I've wondered this, and I can't help but think that we're lacking
actual trustworthy valuations of climate risk. The work of orgs like Jupiter
Intelligence ([https://jupiterintel.com/](https://jupiterintel.com/)) is extra
relevant in this case.

------
briandear
> when you start considering the revenue saved by mitigating the projected
> costs of climate change

According to Nat Geo, it costs us billions per year. However those “billions”
include damage from storms, and suggesting that damage from storms is because
of human caused climate change is very disingenuous— that’s suggesting that
“stopping” climate change will also stop expensive storms, which is completely
denying that destructive storms existed for as long as there has been an
earth. So which storms are CO2 caused, and which aren’t? Which highly
destructive storms would have occurred anyway but their dollar costs are high
because of where people choose to live as opposed to the actual intensity of
the storm.

My point is that attributing storm costs to human-caused climate change is
simplistic and misleading because we would need some baseline to determine
which storms would not have existed if it weren’t for human CO2. That delta is
what the real savings would be, not just the raw number. But getting that
number is almost impossible because we would have to accept the argument that
the climate has always changed so when would we start measuring to get our
“pre-CO2” storm destruction baseline.

The article is assuming facts not entered into evidence.

The problem with climate activism is that it has become economic activism of a
certain political stripe rather than actual environmentalism. Otherwise why
try to move the mountain of capitalism and instead focus on attainable and
politically non-controversial (mostly) goals such as keeping benzene out of
the water, preventing of overfishing, or ending toxic waste dumping. When
climate activists suggest solutions and nuclear power isn’t one of them, then
I stop listening — because it becomes clear it isn’t about the climate
anymore. When climate activists suggesting taxing Americans and Europeans more
but never mention tariffs against China or India or other highly polluting
countries, then it’s clear they aren’t after fixing the problem of climate,
but fixing what they perceive to be a problem with capitalism. They’ll tax
some car driver in California, but ignore the container ships of goods at the
Port of Long Beach filled with Chinese goods made under some of the most
polluting conditions on earth.

Want to reduce CO2? Start creating policies that favor domestic businesses and
reduce reliance on places like China or India for consumer goods.

But let’s not try to argue fiscal conservatism using “savings” based on
misleading economic costs that aren’t legitimately quantified. They are either
“projected” or just completely made up.

~~~
to11mtm
> Want to reduce CO2? Start creating policies that favor domestic businesses
> and reduce reliance on places like China or India for consumer goods.

Ding ding ding!

There's like 15 ships that produce more emissions than every car out there per
year.

The counterargument is that these are very efficient by volume. This is true.
But... do we still need that? In my neck of the woods (middle of USA) You're
still going to need to transport the car over land... If it was built more
locally we wouldn't need nearly as much shipping in the equation.

An interesting question I've had: What about the supply chain itself? As an
absurdist example are we shipping raw iron from the US to China by boat for
them to refine, only for them to then build it into a car and ship it right
back to us? That one probably is not true, but...

I wonder what cases we have where raw materials are being shipped to countries
where labor is cheaper, lengthening the distance from raw to product, thus
increasing emissions.

~~~
jvanderbot
What you describe is a system that values the generation of wealth, and uses
seemingly-logistically-foolhardly supply chains to exploit cost-of-labor
imbalances to maximize profit.

And likely as long as it is profitable to do this, we will, at massive non-
financial costs.

~~~
brmgb
> And likely as long as it is profitable to do this, we will, at massive non-
> financial costs.

Note that there is a simple solution to this. You just need to price in the
generated externality. That's what a carbon tax does.

The fact that basicaly no country has one tells you a lot about what
governments really think of the climate crisis.

