[HN Gopher] Illegal CFC emissions have stopped since scientists ...
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Illegal CFC emissions have stopped since scientists raised alarm
Author : samizdis
Score : 243 points
Date : 2021-02-10 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| afarrell wrote:
| How influential was the fact that Margaret Thatcher:
|
| 1. Studied chemistry in university.
|
| 2. Was respected by Ronald Reagan.
|
| to creating consensus to act among political leaders?
| josefresco wrote:
| My baseless prediction: A major conflict will be fought in the
| next 20 years over a direct "environmental pollution"
| disagreement. I used the word "direct" because there have no
| doubt been many conflicts that involve environmental concerns,
| mainly about resource protection.
| ISL wrote:
| I suspect that the conflicts will be mostly-economic. If enough
| countries can get together to form a carbon-taxation bloc, they
| can begin to impose duties upon countries and companies that
| don't participate.
|
| Barring a quantum leap in technology, it is a social innovation
| like that one that might allow us to successfully address the
| climate crisis.
|
| From a climate/environmental perspective, I believe one of the
| worst things that can happen is a global-scale war. When short-
| term survival is threatened, countries will think little of
| devastating natural reserves and cutting through environmental
| protections.
| hntrader wrote:
| That's a very interesting resolution to the tragedy of the
| commons issue that heterogeneous state actors face. As long
| as you have a bloc sufficiently large enough that's willing
| to impose import duties on non-complying countries, then
| you've effectively brought everyone along for the ride.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The Transatlantic Slave Trade was shut down largely by the
| UK unilaterally declaring it illegal (although this was
| done in the context of the US planning on doing so as
| well), and then sending in its navy to force other
| countries to also agree to ban slave trading or seize ships
| that were violating it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > If enough countries can get together to form a carbon-
| taxation bloc, they can begin to impose duties upon countries
| and companies that don't participate.
|
| This is the only way humans will ever beat climate change.
|
| It'll work because as soon as that bloc is operational, the
| bloc can charge ultra high tariffs for importing carbon-
| including goods. Supposedly those will cover the fact the
| amount of embedded carbon is hard to measure, but actually
| because it benefits all the countries in the bloc to
| overestimate the carbon of imports to the detriment of
| countries outside the bloc.
|
| I predict that as soon as such a bloc is near to formation,
| politics will move super fast and within a few years
| _dramatic_ economic changes will occur because no country
| wants to be last to get an invite to the bloc (and the more
| countries join, the more stringent joining requirements will
| become).
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I heard this as the only way to get China/India to
| voluntarily start doing their own internal carbon program.
|
| Essentially, you charge them when they try to import into
| your country a tax to account for that. They come back and
| say "this tax really stinks...how can we make it stop"? You
| then reply "start your own carbon tax and we'll remove it".
| They then have two options 1.) Pay a tax to another
| government, or 2.) Take care of it internally
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Plenty of wars have been fought throughout history for stupider
| reasons.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Try 5 years. The CCP is diverting the Himalayan headwaters to
| Xinjiang from several neighbors, including India and Pakistan.
| Half of their populations rely on that water.
| caymanjim wrote:
| That's not environmental pollution, but you're not wrong
| about the potential for conflict. War could erupt between
| Egypt and Ethiopia at the drop of a hat over the GERD.
| Usually cooler heads prevail, but water is going to displace
| oil as the primary driver of resource wars. Arguably it
| already has, but we're simply in a resource war lull for the
| moment.
| rjsw wrote:
| Turkey, Syria and Iraq are other candidates.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I had to look up GERD. This refers to the Grand Ethiopian
| Renaissance Dam, an under-construction hydropower dam on
| the Nile that is controversial due to its potential
| negative effects on Egypt's water access.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I mean ideally, the Nile would be made navigable all the
| way up there, allowing Egypt to benefit from Ethiopian
| trade (as Ethiopia is landlocked).
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| Ethiopia will boom in the next decade. It houses many
| institutions of the African Union and Addis Abbaba is the
| sister city of both Bejing and Washington.
| ouid wrote:
| I know it as gastro-esophageal reflux disease, so I'm
| glad you commented with this clarification
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I've always felt these things to be true, and understood the
| logic, but for some reason this is the immediate moment I had
| an emotional reaction to it and feel very anxious that indeed
| something needs to be done.
|
| Population is growing. There are limited resources. One day
| someone's going to dam up someone else's water and wars will be
| fought.
|
| I'm optimistic that technology AND population control can save
| us.
| spawarotti wrote:
| > After the Russian annexation of Crimea during the 2014
| Crimean crisis, Ukrainian authorities greatly cut the volume
| of water flowing into Crimea via the canal, citing a huge
| outstanding debt on water supplies owed by the peninsula.
| When the Russian government offered to pay the debt, the
| Ukrainian government refused. This caused the peninsula's
| agricultural harvest which is heavily dependent on irrigation
| to fail in 2014.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Crimean_Canal#2014_Crime.
| ..
|
| A video with some narrative around it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqq8clIceys
| camgunz wrote:
| Is there a population control policy that isn't just,
| terrifying or deeply harmful to lower income / poor people?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Development.
|
| The population of China is projected to drop by hundreds of
| millions over the course of this century, for instance.
| mlyle wrote:
| > One day someone's going to dam up someone else's water and
| wars will be fought.
|
| One day? Not a _major_ conflict, but still...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_over_Water_(Jordan_river)
| kleton wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da.
| ..
| tehchromic wrote:
| I like this topic especially with the theory that wars are
| never fought over resources, they are always fought over
| status. These two can appear to be the same thing especially
| when it's impossible to separate the resource from the status
| it symbolizes in the conflicted parties. Add it's often the
| practical case, in which case war is inevitable.
|
| For this reason I like the project of ecological wealth-making
| as a planetary concern and a sort of pan-cultural tonic. I'm
| not sure it can apply in time to these particular cases - if
| someone takes your water, that's a fight. But I do think it's
| really the only global solution to resource wars. And it's a
| problem with both a technical and aesthetic solutions.
|
| Not gonna be easy tho.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > I like this topic especially with the theory that wars are
| never fought over resources, they are always fought over
| status.
|
| You're not exactly wrong about status and its perception, but
| it's more nuanced.
|
| Japan in WW2 wanted to colonize Asia for resources, but they
| were also not happy with their treatment by the Allies after
| WW1.
|
| And Germany in WW2 did invade Norway for iron ore, and wanted
| Alsace back. And then the Treaty of Versailles.
|
| But when somebody takes your water, that is mainly a resource
| issue. And dams are fragile.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Both are essentially about control one way or another
| essentially - if it is people or objects varies by situation
| and level of scope between personal and societal. Do they
| want gold because it gets them prestiege or because of crude
| evopsych "the trend gets them laid with ideal partners"?
|
| Modern resource wars among major powere as a projection
| personally puzzle me. Raw resources tend to be the cheapest
| part period and expensive goods have many inferior
| subsitutes. Essentially even relatively lousy means of
| acquiring resources like say desalination would be cheaper
| than first world water wars that often are projected as
| doomsday scenarios. The undeveloped world engaging in them?
| That is sadly plausible and unfortunately not exactly novel.
|
| History unfortunately shows people will happily screw over
| the weak and think it actively moral even if it harms
| themselves while thinking angering the strong immoral even if
| it makes things better for all. They wouldn't be neccessary
| for the developed world but they may be tempted if they see a
| vulnerable enough nation.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I like this topic especially with the theory that wars are
| never fought over resources, they are always fought over
| status.
|
| Couldn't it be that the wars are actually fought over
| resources, but are sold to the public of all involved
| countries (including the historians and philosophers) as
| being about status?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Could it be that wars are fought for no good reason, but
| that they are always justified in terms of something that
| sounds attractive or valuable to whoever they're being
| justified to at the moment? (This is in the context of
| modern, useless wars, not pre-1950s conquests which were
| obviously about stealing as much as possible.)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Why do you assume no good reasons when there were obvious
| economic and political incentives for the attacking
| parties in said "modern, useless wars" conflicts?
|
| Note it doesn't have to be _one_ obvious incentive. A
| government has many parties with differing incentives.
| But sometimes, a lot of those parties stand to
| simultaneously benefit from a war.
|
| Basically, Hanlon's handgun[0], not Hanlon's razor.
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21691282
| unhijo wrote:
| It could be that wars are fought for many reasons and we
| cannot abstract a general rule that is valid for all or
| even most wars.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I yearn for the heady days back when politicians used to
| attempt to justify wars, now the media just pretends we
| aren't in what seven? of them currently.
| jnurmine wrote:
| I'd predict a slightly different viewpoint, though also related
| to the environment.
|
| If the circular economy and recycling of expired electronic
| devices back into raw materials cannot be solved in a
| satisfactory way, the next wars will be fought over the control
| of the deposits of various strategic minerals like PGMs and
| rare earths.
|
| This will be even more important once nations and supranational
| entitites start increasing their strategic capability in e.g.
| chip fabrication.
|
| To be clear, I don't mean WWII firebombing of Dresden level of
| war-making. I mean war as in grayzone "separatist"/"freedom
| fighter" vibe with the eventual "topple the government"
| actions.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Indeed. There are a lot of countries, some with very large
| militaries, who will not hesitate to choose war over economic
| stagnation.
|
| The most vocal about climate change seem to think this isn't
| their problem.
| [deleted]
| inter_netuser wrote:
| When will china bring up environment protections up to par?
| garmaine wrote:
| When it harms the ill-gotten profits of party insiders, and not
| sooner.
| scythe wrote:
| >par?
|
| What's par? Many countries in China's income quantile have
| environmental problems. China happens to be especially large,
| and India especially environmentalist, so they stick out like a
| billion sore thumbs.
|
| Move just a little down the list and Indonesia and Brazil have
| both been all over the news for environmental destruction,
| while in Mexico, Pakistan and Nigeria, environmental issues are
| overshadowed by simmering civil wars.
| passerby1 wrote:
| Mind sharing links on India being especially
| environmentalist?
| nend wrote:
| Well, if you want actual data, here's one (composite) metric.
|
| China performs poorly, compared to par/GDP here, similarly to
| India. Brazil meanwhile ranks better.
|
| https://epi.yale.edu/
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| That report places India behind the following countries in
| terms of political stability - Colombia, Bahrain, Tunisia,
| Burkina Faso, Togo. A country which got democracy 7 years
| ago is ranked higher than one that got it almost 60 years
| ago. That data point alone makes me question the rest of
| the report.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The age at which you got democracy isn't necessarily
| correlated with the quality of that democracy. Ask the
| US.
| [deleted]
| zests wrote:
| Brazil, Indonesia and other countries with similar levels of
| development are simply "late to the game" in regards to
| environmental destruction. Countries that developed sooner
| destroyed their own environments before there was scrutiny.
|
| If western countries want to stop developing countries from
| using their own resources, some financial compensation should
| be involved.
| passerby1 wrote:
| How about sanctions + aircraft carrier? It works for almost
| all developing countries.
| A12-B wrote:
| When other people stop relying on them for all imports? Have to
| have a new iphone every year, right?
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