
Climate change and the 75% problem - adenadel
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-change
======
daxfohl
In reality, does anyone see anything other than a bad ending to all of this? I
wish I could start a poll here, but does anyone really think there's still
time? Really?

Political-economic forces, they're just not going to cave until it's too late.
10 years? Unless the economy fumbles soon Trump will have the next six of
those. So, four left. Four damn years to change everything. I think a lot of
the focus goes on reducing energy emissions because it's easy political blame
gaming. But it's too late and it's not going to work. We're going to destroy
the Earth while bickering about it.

Assume consumption will continue to rise, assume that oil will continue to own
politicians. People will continue to consume, expect to maintain their
standard of living off cheap goods shipped from China, heating for ever-larger
homes, buying from companies with huge carbon footprints, and blaming others.

I think the reasonable thing to do is invest more in the cleanup scenario. But
that doesn't score political gotcha points and it's not profitable /right
now/, so that probably won't happen either.

~~~
tomjen3
Agreed. I wouldn't be so skeptical about the effects[0] if it wasn't because
those researchers weren't being paid by big government, while recommending new
taxes[1].

[0] it seems unlikely that humans have no influence on the environment. It
equally seems improbable that we can predict sea levels half a century from
now with any accuracy.

[1] before anybody puts words in my mouth, I reserve the same skepticsm for
any other report coming out of the mouth of an institution which advocates it
should have more funding...

~~~
profunctor
[0] sounds like you're saying "my gut says its improbable that we can detect
sea level rise 50 years ahead". Why does it seem that way? These scientists
are using evidence for these estimates so they are not pulled out of the air.

[1] Are you going to remain skeptical without looking into it, seems more like
you're dismissive rather than skeptical but maybe I am reading this wrong.?
How could any researcher ever make the claim that something is a big issue and
needs to be investigated further and fixed without triggering this skeptical
reflex?

~~~
beat
They're repeating the quasi-conspiracy theory that the reason climate
scientists raise the issue of climate change is greed - they want more
research money, so they can make more fake research, so they can get more
money, because science is such a lucrative profession... sigh.

There's nothing more prestigious in science than being the one who proves the
conventional wisdom of the scientific community is wrong. That's how you get
your name in the history books. But this is lost on those who think of
everything in terms of money.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
"They" never look at the reverse situation though. The money to be made from
government grants into scientific research pales in comparison to the profits
made by the fossil fuel industry. An industry that a lot of the worlds most
powerful people, corporations, and countries are heavily invested in.

------
Geee
My suggestion is that every product should include environmental fact sheet,
so that consumers could make better decisions. Every product should be tracked
through the supply chain and every process including energy production and
transportation would be included in the final product fact sheet.

If consumers would buy more environmentally friendly products, markets would
direct every producer and supplier to be more environmentally friendly,
without any other government intervention or sanctions. Just make it mandatory
to be transparent and to include this information in every product. Put
warning labels on products that have missing information.

~~~
bendavis381
Not just that. Companies should have to pay for their emissions. Like how we
have to pay local government to take our garbage, companies should have to pay
to pollute the planet. It's insane that Starbucks et al can produce as much
waste as they want without any requirement to pay for the damage.

~~~
codeulike
Good luck getting the oil industry to pay for their externalities

~~~
harryh
The challenge isn't the oil industry, it's regular people. A carbon tax would
just make gas more expensive and people don't want that. Keep in mind that in
order to be effective we're not talking about "people just pay more," we're
talking about "the price is so much higher, people buy a lot less gas."

~~~
bendavis381
I would rephrase it as "the price is so much higher, suppliers are forced to
develop alternative products to satisfy demand". Energy suppliers have been
given massive subsidies for decades because they don't have to factor in the
negative externalities. A carbon cost should be a part of the balance sheet in
the way raw materials are. Given that, suppliers will have to innovate their
way to bring price back down to equilibrium, or go out of business.

~~~
whatshisface
Option one: build solar panels. Option two: poor people no longer drive, and
their standard of living falls. Capitalism, if given a pricing signal to
"reduce emissions," will pick a completely merciless combination of the two.

~~~
umanwizard
Well, good. Our collective standard of living needs to fall in order for the
planet to survive.

If you don’t want it to hit poor people specifically you can subsidize the tax
for them.

~~~
whatshisface
Well, there's always option three: keep things going and pray for a technical
miracle. That's the default choice and probably the road we're on.

------
dmm
> Cattle are a huge source of methane; in fact, if they were a country, they
> would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases!

Imagine how opposed to a carbon tax the beef industry would be.

~~~
beat
Legit question, though - are cattle actually carbon-neutral? I mean, where
does their carbon come from? Eating plants, that were grown specifically to
feed the cattle.

Which gets to another question, since I'm not bothering to research before
asking... how much worse is methane than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, per carbon
atom involved? Because that's basically what cows do. They convert atmospheric
CO2 (via plants) into atmospheric methane (via farts).

~~~
seabee
About 30x worse: [https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/2014/03/26/a-more-
poten...](https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/2014/03/26/a-more-potent-
greenhouse-gas-than-co2-methane-emissions-will-leap-as-earth-warms-nature/)

As far as carbon neutrality goes, you’re drawing a conclusion about the value
based only on the first derivative. If you hold livestock numbers constant
(they’re increasing, alas, but let’s not worry about that yet) then there will
be a rough equilibrium. However, the gas is in the atmosphere for some time
until it gets fixed back into the soil, and continues to have a warming effect
in the meantime.

Any carbon tax has to punish emissions. Net zero emissions isn’t enough
anymore.

~~~
beat
Actually, they're not increasing. I looked it up. The number of cattle in the
world has held steady (about one billion) since the 1970s. Given that the
population has from about 4B to 7B in that time, and incomes have increased
substantially as well, it suggests that beef consumption is level (which means
per-capita consumption is shrinking).

And given a 9 year lifespan for methane, it's probably been stable for a long
time.

Now, if you're taking the position that "net zero emissions isn't enough" as
justification for a carbon tax, you need to focus on the goal. Is it carbon
reduction, or puritanical punishment? Need to ask that, because there's a lot
of people who want the latter but claim the former.

If the goal is carbon reduction, then a carbon tax is only a means to an end,
and we have to ask if it will be effective. Can we carbon-tax beef enough to
see a major reduction in its consumption, leading to a major reduction in the
number of cattle? (Oh, and you'd better carbon-tax dairy while you're at it.)
Does this seem like a reasonable conclusion? And if people aren't eating beef,
what else will they eat instead, and what are its carbon costs?

I'm not rejecting the position, but I'm trying to think it through.

~~~
tomp
> Actually, they're not increasing. I looked it up

> And given a 9 year lifespan for methane

Can you please provide your sources? If this is true, it's not _that_
worrying...

~~~
beat
Someone else referenced wikipedia on methane in the thread somewhere.
Surprised me, too.

For cattle, got the numbers from the industry, which doesn't seem to have a
particular agenda in this link... [http://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-
inventory-year-0-111...](http://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-
year-0-111523)

------
esotericn
It's not clear to me that these issues don't simply boil down to energy
problems.

The limiting case: an endless source of free energy. Using this, it seems
obvious that any carbon-emitting procedure can be mitigated, by capturing the
emissions and storing them.

The question is whether concrete, cement and so on are viable building
materials under this model; whether meat is viable; and so on.

Essentially, these are uncaptured externalities. If you tax the emissions at a
higher rate than it costs to capture them, they will be captured, the question
is whether demand decreases as a result of increases in cost.

~~~
mbbutler
Exactly. Gates is being too cute by half here.

He starts by claiming that only 25% of greenhouse gases come from making
electricity; a fact that is technically true but very misleading. He then goes
on to name the contributors of the other 75% and almost all of them (with the
exception of methane from farming) produce carbon through using energy in the
form of fossil fuels.

Solving the energy production problem solves the vast majority of these other
problems.

------
barrad0s
This is interesting for cattles, think I saw it here a few weeks back.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cows-seaweed-
metha...](https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cows-seaweed-methane-
burps-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions-climate-change-research-a8368911.html)

~~~
plopz
I wonder how long it would take to scale up production of seaweed/algae if
that turns out to be effective.

~~~
netfire
The linked article indicates that only a small amount of seaweed needs to be
added to their diet to be effective and that seaweed is easy to grow, so it
doesn’t sound like it would take long to scale.

~~~
giarc
Not that it would eliminate the gains, but cows and seaweed are generally far
apart geographically. Therefore you would need to ship the seaweed product to
where the cows are.

------
petermcneeley
Remote work tackles so much of this: Less cars on the road. Less cars being
created. Smaller roads. Less gas/electric on transport. Fewer offices/smaller.
Significantly less stress. Less stress eating. Fewer cows consumed.

~~~
perfunctory
Not only remote work but also just working less in general. I don’t see why we
as a sosciety can’t go to working 4 or even 3 days a week and still maintain
the same standards of living. Or even improving those standards.

~~~
andrewmcwatters
Because wages for most people are tied to labor and time, and when you
decrease the amount of time worked, you produce less labor. Convincing people
with money to pay you more for less work is futile.

Why the hell would I pay more money to a contractor to work on my home for
half the time? I don't understand this thinking. Believe it or not, there are
people in the world that want to get shit done.

~~~
petermcneeley
Paying per hour is a great way to increase hours on something. If your really
into the free market you should understand the incentive structure. Many
workers have different intensities of working.

------
perfunctory
I am wary of all this talk about breakthroughs. It diverts attention from the
hard choices we have to make. Namely change diet, drastically reduce
consumption, emphasise circular economy etc. Those breakthroughs may never
come.

------
hackeraccount
There's something about the way most people talk about climate change that
strikes me as really off. They talk about consumption and growth being the
root cause of the problem. They also have a way of talking about wealth that
makes it sounds like it means nothing.

There's something wrong with that world view. I'm unconvinced that the
solutions to climate change are going to revolve around lack of growth and
curtailing consumption. It seems more likely that they will come from applying
wealth to the problem. Growth and wealth are tightly linked. Saying that we'll
solve this problem by curtailing growth seems to me that we'll solve it
without wealth - I don't think that will happen.

------
Anth-ny
Investing in alternatives is laudable but Bill Gates should support the only
credible path to avert an unlivable earth: a worldwide progressive ban on
fossil fuels and plastics made with fossil fuels. Then invest billions in
alternatives.

------
acscott
Saw this last night: [http://www.anotesark.com/](http://www.anotesark.com/)
Had never heard of Kiribati (pronounced roughly Kiribahs). That country could
be the canary in the coal mine for the rest of us. Glad there are people such
as Gates who are not waiting around.

------
abledon
Wow took the quiz at the end. Switching to plant base diet for 1 yr is only
half as effective as not doing a transatlantic flight. In the future I think
we’ll agree to not take so many self indulgent vacations to other countries
far away or have some sort of global ‘travel credit’ system to keep track

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
vegans will be the only people allowed to travel :D

------
1001101
Bill's putting his money where his mouth is with investments in Beyond Meat
and Memphis Meats (meat alternative startups).

------
catchmeifyoucan
There are cow backpacks. We can harness the energy from cows and we have an
alternative clean energy source. We'd be tackling an electricity problem and
the cattle issue.

~~~
catchmeifyoucan
I'm not making this up: [https://www.fastcompany.com/3028933/these-backpacks-
for-cows...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3028933/these-backpacks-for-cows-
collect-their-fart-gas-and-store-it-for-energy)

------
kilotaras
We would make a progress on some environmental challenges by simply taxing
externalities and letting the market do it's work.

Climate change - carbon tax.

Trash Pollution - packaging and recycling tax.

------
claydavisss
Bill Gates lives in a house that is SIXTY SIX THOUSAND SQUARE FEET.

Bill Gates flies in a private jet.

Bill Gates has a lot of work to do just to get his carbon footprint in line
with the average multimillionaire let alone the national average.

Bill Gates should realize that the fundamental challenge is getting people to
consume less than they can.

Maybe his net blog post should detail his personal impact relative to the
average citizen and what he is doing to make his impact below average.

We don't need more blog posts. We already know everything we need to know to
plot a course of action.

~~~
black6
Isn’t it fantastic to be lectured from up on high by the hypocritical elite?
Us dirty, common, poor people are the problem, and people like Gates could be
assured of living in utopia for eternity if only we’d listen to their “Do as I
say, not as I do” platitudes.

EDIT: His house is much larger than his and Melinda's _needs_. His blog easily
uses 20x more energy than it _needs_ (uBlock origin counts 19 attempted
connections). He doesn't _need_ to fly anywhere for conferences/meetings with
the power of the Internet and teleconferencing. Is he a vegetarian/vegan
again, or was that just something he tried in his 20s? He doesn't _need_ to
eat meat. He wants everyone else to sacrifice while he himself isn't willing
to give up his lavish lifestyle. It's gross, hypocritical, and no amount of
cashy-money donations make up for him not following his own preachings.

~~~
gaius
Right. I’m not saying climate change isn’t happening. But it’s clear that most
celebrities don’t act as if they believe it is themselves. No compromises in
their own lifestyles. My own carbon footprint probably isn’t 1% of 1% of 1% of
the average super rich jetsetter like Gates or Bono or Al Gore. Leaders lead
by example.

------
gaius
_I’ll be in Brussels this week_

A 10,000 mile trip to save the environment, hmm

~~~
Brockenstein
Travel, commerce, civilization isn't going to stop because of global warming.
That's childish hyperbole to suggest one person traveling on a plane or train
that's going to be going anyway somehow undermines the goal of getting the
whole world to address this issue in a meaningful and serious way.

~~~
harryh
But addressing the issue in a meaningful and serious way will probably require
people to travel A LOT less by air.

------
sergiotapia
When did "global warming" become "climate change"? Did the boys in marketing
decide its time to update.

~~~
bendavis381
Even though your question has been deservedly downvoted, it still deserves an
answer. Global warming implies that our effect on the planet is restricted to
an upward trend in global temperature. Although that's the principal result of
human emissions, the issue manifests itself in many other ways, including but
limited to: sea level rise, extreme weather events, substantial changes and
extinction of flora and fauna, loss of coral reefs, loss of ice sheets, etc.

Climate change includes the broad ecological changes that stem from a warming
planet, rather than a narrow focus on the warming itself.

~~~
vixen99
'effect' on the planet.

~~~
bendavis381
4 hours of sleep doesn't do anyone any good.

