[HN Gopher] Satellite finds methane leaks from gas pipelines
___________________________________________________________________
Satellite finds methane leaks from gas pipelines
Author : pseudolus
Score : 377 points
Date : 2022-02-04 11:47 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > EDF is planning to launch its own methane-detecting satellite
| in about a year, which will take much sharper pictures, showing
| smaller leaks. Other organizations are developing their own
| methane detectors.
|
| When this does launch, the images taken should be open to public
| consumption, preferably on a website. Once we put these companies
| on blast with the hard facts, things will begin to change. Very
| quickly.
| gostsamo wrote:
| You read the part of the article where they mentioned Russia
| and Turkmenistan, right? The executives there won't be
| impressed by a protest.
| yoavm wrote:
| I am assuming some of those companies are selling their gas
| and oil in Europe? We would need to trace that and just stop
| buying until they fix it.
| edf13 wrote:
| We have an energy (mostly gas related) crisis here in
| Europe. Turning off supplies is not an option
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The days when Europe was the dominant oil and gas customer
| are long, long gone.
| belorn wrote:
| We are currently in a situation where people are discussing
| if a military invasion is enough of a reason to stop buying
| gas. Germany in particular does not want to turn off the
| gas, and has invested a lot of money, infrastructure and
| political capital in order to use Russian gas in the next
| few decades.
| yoavm wrote:
| Ah cynical German could argue that Russia invading to
| Ukraine is none of their problems, but emitting methane
| sure is.
|
| To clarify however, I didn't mean to say that Europe is
| clearly going to stop buying from these sources, just
| that _there are other means_. Too often with the climate
| crisis, options are there, but the nature of how we
| humans organized ourselves seem to stand in the way of
| taking them. Thinking of this as "well there's nothing we
| can do because it's in Turkmenistan" might sometimes be
| just a way to clear our conscious while not doing
| anything.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>and just stop buying
|
| That's incredibly naive, if you excuse me saying so. 300
| million people depend on Russian gas supplies, yes, most EU
| countries have emergency supplies for few weeks in case of
| a major disruption, but those are for emergencies - not for
| threats of "do X or else".
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And those reserves (not even for emergencies, just to
| stabilize supply) have not been replenished since last
| year's severe winter, causing gas prices to spike in the
| past few months.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Since Europe is in a gas shortage they aren't going to not
| buy it. However, they are in talks to impose a carbon
| border tax on imports. This would make producers that
| didn't have leaks have a price advantage over those that
| do.
| mc32 wrote:
| Stop buying means not turning on the heater in winter... so
| go back to hearth and fireplace for heat to combat...
| pollution?
| dmm wrote:
| Calling for individual action is a deliberate strategy to
| shift responsibility from corporations.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Electric is an option, but we've already switched from
| coal to gas... which is the problem.
|
| And nuclear energy, while having no carbon emissions, has
| the problem that nobody wants it in their backyard. Plus,
| huge upfront investments and costs.
| tremon wrote:
| Actually, I would seriously consider putting a small-
| scale nuclear reactor in my backyard if it were possible.
| My neighbours might object, but since you said my
| backyard: I'm perfectly ok with that.
| baud147258 wrote:
| Aren't fireplaces much more polluting when compared to
| burning gas for heating?
| roywiggins wrote:
| Plausibly better for the climate (it's not fossil carbon,
| it's much more recent carbon) but _much much much_ worse
| for immediate human health, since it spews all sorts of
| nasty particulates out the chimney and also into the
| home.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/07/firep
| lac...
| gefhfffh wrote:
| Buying somewhere else, using alternatives, such as green
| gas or heat pumps ...and then never go back
| dirtyoldmick wrote:
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Buying somewhere else
|
| Where? And how?
|
| >>using alternatives, such as green gas
|
| You mean synthetic gas? There is absolutely no capacity
| to produce anywhere near enough to satisfy even a single
| percent of European needs.
|
| >>or heat pumps
|
| Heat pumps are not a universal solution, they don't work
| in all climates, or they require digging trenches or
| wells to actually be efficient - again, not possible
| everywhere and for everyone.
|
| And even if it was - with what money? Where I'm from in
| Poland I know lots of people who still heat their houses
| with coal, purely because gas is too expensive as it is.
| And you want to switch their source of heat to an even
| more expensive one? I'm sure they will be super happy to
| do that, sure.
| [deleted]
| henearkr wrote:
| I know many electric-only houses: you can heat yourself
| without methane.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The Netherlands wants to push towards electrification -
| probably to reduce dependency on Russian gas - but the
| power grid cannot handle it, and it'll take years and
| billions to increase its capacity.
|
| I mean electric boilers, heating panels, ranges and car
| chargers will easily increase peak loads by 15-25
| kilowatts per house, that's 2-4x as much as they
| currently pull. Do that times hundreds of thousands of
| houses and you see the issue.
| henearkr wrote:
| What you are right about is that both consumer and
| production endpoints transitions must be synchronized.
| But they should still happen very fast.
|
| The right conclusion is that now they need to buff up the
| power grid extremely quickly TOO (it needs not take such
| a long time, some choices like solar or wind are quite
| quick to install).
|
| Both the consumer endpoints and production endpoints have
| to change, of course.
|
| As for the billions required for the transition, since
| when absolute figures make for good decisions? What is
| required is a comparison with alternatives. And one sure
| thing is that the cost of a failed transition, of a
| climate catastrophe, or indirect consequences like wars,
| are tremendously more expensive.
| mc32 wrote:
| That's fine for a long ye strategy. But asking people who
| are fitted for gas to go electric?
|
| Politicians tend to make delusional promises which can
| never happen. Something like this is a long term thing
| it's not... stop using gas now!
| henearkr wrote:
| I think that's the right time to ask people to make the
| change, on the contrary, as it's the middle of the gas
| crisis (through geopolitical reasons).
|
| Governments are trying hard to artificially keep the
| prices low, but the reality is that the market really
| really wants people to give up on fossil fuels.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > The countries where bursts of methane happened most
| frequently included the former Soviet republic of
| Turkmenistan, Russia, the United States, Iran, Kazakhstan and
| Algeria. Lauvaux says they found relatively few such releases
| in some other countries with big gas industries, such as
| Saudi Arabia.
|
| Russia and Turkmenistan might not care, but what about the
| companies in Algeria and the United States? Don't let the
| perfect be the enemy of the good.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Drop Algeria as well. The only viable place remains the US
| and the lobby there is such that I'd be buying popcorn to
| watch how Texas will try to regulate the local industry.
| rq1 wrote:
| Don't have such prejudices.
|
| Russia will be on the first line of climate change, they
| have quite few incentives to make the right call.
|
| Algeria for what I know is corrupt like hell and this
| undermines everything. Public policies if decided, won't
| have any impact.
|
| In the US the federal gvt can have quite a huge impact if
| the chambers follow. But you need indeed to convince a
| lot of people with conflicting interests.
| vkou wrote:
| > Russia will be on the first line of climate change,
| they have quite few incentives to make the right call.
|
| Russia has incentives, but the Russian government does
| not. Its fortunes are entirely tied to the petro-ruble.
|
| And when it comes to choosing between what's good for
| Russia, and what's good for whomever is governing Russia,
| Russians will choose the latter eight times out of ten.
| yyyk wrote:
| There are quite a few Russian analysts which believe
| Russia will _gain_ from climate change (unblocked
| Northern route, more workable soil, lower heating
| expenditures). Don 't expect any help from Russia on
| this.
| rq1 wrote:
| No they won't. The methane contained in their soils will
| just finish us.
|
| As if you were saying that you'd gain Alaska if you get
| rid of the permafrost. Yeah sure but you'll lose all the
| rest.
|
| The biggest issue with global warming is that it's a non
| linear phenomenon.
|
| There's threshold effects involved followed by
| exponentially worsening situation until we reach a new
| equilibrium.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I wish that you are right.
| hannob wrote:
| A lot of this is already commercial. Kayrros is e.g. selling
| services: https://www.kayrros.com/ (though they only use public
| satellite data, but they have their own algorithms to analyze
| it)
|
| This is an interesting situation. Some companies in the space
| want to sell serices, with the oil and gas sector being a
| likely customer (thus huge conflict of interest flag).
| rq1 wrote:
| > "For years, every time we had data [on methane emissions]
| -- we were flying over an area, we were driving around -- we
| always found more emissions than we were supposed to see," he
| [the LSCE researcher] says.
|
| That means that the data used by the company you mentioned
| will likely underestimate it.
|
| So it's not commercially available yet. I don't know if EDF
| has plans to open or sell their data in the future.
| Demiurge wrote:
| Check out www.carbonmapper.org
|
| This is already a thing using Airborne data:
| https://methane.jpl.nasa.gov/
|
| And California is already trying to regulate some of the
| emitters: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-
| work/programs/methane/ab1496-rese...
|
| CarbonMapper is planning to launch 30 satellites in partnership
| with JPL and Planet for 30m resolution from space.
| ecdouvhr wrote:
| Yeah, just like how we started boycotting China when we found
| out about the human rights violations against their own
| majority population, and outright atrocities against their own
| people.
|
| At worst, these sattellite images will cause an outrage on
| Twitter until the mob finds something else to be angry about.
| People are too dependent on their product to do something that
| would actually hurt these businesses.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >At worst, these sattellite images will cause an outrage on
| Twitter until the mob finds something else to be angry about.
|
| Before the mob finds something else a small guy is gonna be
| made a scapegoat out of, like that one small-ish bank that
| got prosecuted over subprime lending. What message does that
| send to the real offenders?
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Yeah or a country taking over part of another country and
| shooting down a passenger plane and no-one gave a crap. I am
| surprised there is so much hub-hub about the UA this time
| around, happily surprised for sure, but I kind of gave up.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Yeah or a country taking over part of another country and
| shooting down a passenger plane and no-one gave a crap.
|
| Is this about MH-17 shot down over Ukraine? There's arrest
| warrants out for the people responsible at the moment; they
| know what happened and who was responsible.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I think that's the point. It was 2014, a long time ago,
| and those people are still free. Russia is spoiling for a
| war in the region and clearly doesn't care about the part
| they played.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is a pretty low value comment. The fact that we can do
| something about gas leaks has nothing to do with China.
|
| Also: the party owning the pipeline has a pretty strong
| incentive to stop those leaks, it costs them money.
| dylan604 wrote:
| We should check their tax filings to see if they use these
| leaks as losses on the balance sheets. Maybe the leaks are
| actually a benefit to the company?
| bmitc wrote:
| Depending on the specifics, companies often don't fix
| things because it would be more expensive, perceived or
| real, to fix the issue(a) than just dealing with the
| consequences of whatever it is being broken. Companies
| don't operate on morals or principles outside of what makes
| them more money or what they think makes them more money.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Gas leaks have the potential of resulting in serious
| damage to the pipes, besides the losses.
| DerArzt wrote:
| That word right there "potential" is the culprit here. As
| long as that potential is within "acceptable" ranges of
| unlikely to happen, nothing will be done.
| throwthere wrote:
| According to the article most "leaks" are intentional
| venting.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, those are problematic. This tends to happen when a
| pipeline changes payloads. I know a little bit about
| this: typically what they try to do is to shuttle the
| 'interface' to a segment long enough to contain it
| completely, then vent that section by opening a valve at
| the end of the section, then push new material in until
| the mixture reaches a certain level of purity.
|
| Unfortunately, the mixture is useless and vented into the
| atmosphere. There ought to be a burden of responsibility
| to deal with that in a more ecological way on the
| pipeline operators, but these tend to be in bed with the
| nation states that are home to the pipes.
|
| A pipeline carrying a single substance or single mixture
| of substances can still vent, usually that is to deal
| with pressure excursions and is a safety measure.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Or how we started boycotting the United States when we found
| out about the war crimes where they put and tortured
| prisoners of war in 'dark sites' and concentration camps in
| no man's land (gitmo) without trial or basic human rights and
| dignity for two decades.
|
| Or where they separated refugee parents from their children
| and put them in concentration camps where they had to sleep
| on concrete floors and beg for basic supplies, then 'lost'
| these children.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| The whataboutism is right on cue today as always. Surely
| you're not suggesting a moral equivalency between
| Guantanamo Bay and the Uhygur concentration camps in
| Xinjiang?
| ecdouvhr wrote:
| It's not really whataboutism; plenty of countries and
| businesses commit terrible crimes without ever facing
| actual concequences. The Twitter mob won't actually do
| anything, and in the real world business goes on as
| usual.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why do they have to be the same? Both are vile, just in
| differing/varying ways. "Don't judge a man for a spec in
| his eye while you have a plank in yours", "those in glass
| houses..." etc etc.
|
| I'm not saying that condemnation isn't deserved in either
| direction, I'm agreeing that it is deserved in both
| directions simultaneously. For country A to tell country
| B they shouldn't do anything, they should absolutely
| expect country B to say what about X that you country A
| are doing.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| Because there are differences in scale and severity. As
| an analogy, let's say I'm arguing with my neighbor over
| the loud parties he throw every night. My neighbor
| counters with the fact that he can hear my dog barking
| every morning when I take him out for a walk. My neighbor
| might be correct here. But he isn't engaging in good
| faith whatsoever -- instead, he's trying to conflate
| issues of very different scale to purposefully muddle the
| conversation. This is the problem of "whataboutism" and
| it's more complicated than just throwing stones in glass
| houses.
|
| Part of the issue is that it's a problem that only exists
| in _context_. If I 'm playing golf with my neighbor and
| he brings up my dog barking first, it's different than if
| he brings it up as a counterargument to my complaint
| about his loud parties. e.g. if someone on hacker news is
| bringing up criticisms of the US (e.g. Guantanamo Bay) in
| an unrelated topic, there's nothing wrong with that.
|
| Whenever there is discussion of Guantanamo online,
| Xinjiang is almost never brought up. Here's a few (I
| promise not cherry picked, they're the first 3 results on
| google search for "hacker news Guantanamo" with more than
| a handful of replies) hacker news threads on Guantanamo
| to show this point: [0], [1], [2]. Not one mention of
| Chinese war crimes. There are debates over how bad they
| are, sure, but no whataboutism saying "Guantanamo is bad,
| but what about X issue in Y country?"
|
| In contrast, there's _not a single large thread about the
| Uyghur concentration camps in Xinjiang_ on hacker news
| (or any other major site) that isn 't filled with
| comparisons to the United States of America and its
| current and historical problems (and thankfully people
| calling them out for whataboutism). It's a pattern, and
| it's a real problem, and I won't hesitate to call it out
| when I see it.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28500597
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28195746
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28986757
| RomanAlexander wrote:
| It's ironic the cliche you use is contextually moral
| equivalency, the plank being more morally evil than the
| spec. Why do you absolutely think no one should be a
| recipient of moral condemnation given that no one is an
| angel? Do you think we should never hold people
| accountable?
| dylan604 wrote:
| The whole point of the parable is that if you aren't
| faultless yourself, don't go pointing out faults in
| others. That's why I used it. It seems self-evident that
| it's making fun of those that acuse others of doing the
| very things (or similar) themselves. The man was making
| fun of gaslighting 2000 years ago.
|
| Where do you get that I'm suggesting otherwise?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| We have evidence from the past that pointing out these leaks
| does lead to them being fixed. Financially, and
| environmentally, they are bad. That makes bad PR for the
| company.
|
| Did you know California does a "Methane survey"?
|
| https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/8/4383/2015/
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/18/2129
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab7b99/.
| ..
|
| https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2020/EGU2020-9923.
| ..
| dannyz wrote:
| It is starting to be understood that there is a huge need for
| global methane measurements. Lot's of companies are starting to
| (or already have) move into this space, and I've seen several
| mentioned in the comments here. But I think it is worth
| mentioning that measuring methane (and other greenhouse gases)
| from space is an extremely hard problem. The precision/accuracy
| requirements to be able be able to globally characterize methane
| sources/sinks, which is one of the goals of TROPOMI (the
| instrument used here), are extremely stringent. These commercial
| methane sensors are mostly designed with the goal of identifying
| sources, rather than rigorously determining their influence on
| the global methane budget.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| But remember to reduce your personal carbon footprint! /s
|
| We're expected to shave off a few kilos of CO2 here and there,
| usually at significant personal expense, while nothing is being
| done about these releases that a) could be avoided relatively
| easily b) have a much bigger impact.
|
| The abstract mentions ~8 million metric tons of methane per year.
| Using a GWP of 28 (which seems to be the value from the IPPC's
| AR5) that's equivalent to around 224 million tons of CO2.
|
| That's 224 billion kg CO2e, or around 28 kg CO2e for every human
| on the world, just from the large leaks (not from the ongoing
| smaller leaks which are >10x as big according to the article). So
| yeah, go ahead and tell me (and everyone else) to go vegan for a
| month [1] or make similarly impactful changes just so companies
| can continue venting methane.
|
| To avoid being only negative: The obvious solution would be to
| require companies to buy emission certificates for those
| emissions, with a penalty factor that accounts for the
| probability of detection if they didn't accurately self-report
| and had to get caught. This would create an immediate incentive
| to reduce those easily avoidable emissions, and should be
| relatively easy to implement if we can get accurate enough data
| from satellites or aircraft. It would also ensure these emissions
| are accounted for in the emissions trading framework, so we don't
| emit the allocated amount elsewhere and are then surprised by the
| unaccounted-for emissions.
|
| [1] Assuming I replace 250 kcal from pork per day with Tofu
| (around 100g of pork which seems to be considered "one serving"),
| this would be savings of ~1 kg CO2e per day:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore
| Boritanian wrote:
| The leak is a cost of doing business of delivering gas to YOU
| the consumer. So the leak is actually part of your carbon
| footprint.
| pokot0 wrote:
| I think the point is that the leaks are only hunted and fixed
| if it is economically beneficial and not environmental
| beneficial. This is something that the consumer has no direct
| control over. Leaks are not required to provide me gas. It's
| just an unfortunate side effect that can be addressed and
| drastically reduced if prioritized.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This is what infuriates me about those so quick to criticize
| the "personal footprint" concept.
|
| All of these things are done so that _you_ can be provided
| with cheaper consumer goods. It 's not some entity entirely
| divorced from your own complicity.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| But I have no control over the leak part. I have no option to
| pay more to close the leak. In fact, most consumers don't
| even know about the leak. So I'm entirely unable to make a
| choice. It's irrational to expect that anyone would prefer to
| go vegan over just fixing these leaks.
|
| This problem will remain till we have a proper carbon tax
| globally.
| mrtksn wrote:
| You can always vote for the politicians that are willing to
| go after the gas leaks, you can choose to buy from
| companies that are sourcing from leak-free gas pipes or use
| renewable energy sources etc.
|
| Just because you don't have direct access to the pipelines
| so you can close the leaks with your bare hands doesn't
| mean that you have no power over it. None of us have any
| control beyond 2 meters of our existence because that's how
| far away we can reach with our hands but because we live in
| a society the things we say or choices we make have impact
| everywhere on the globe.
|
| That's also why we can eat things that are further away
| than a few meters from us and the leak in question is from
| the machinery that facilitates all that.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > You can always vote for the politicians that are
| willing to go after the gas leaks, you can choose to buy
| from companies that are sourcing from leak-free gas pipes
| or use renewable energy sources etc.
|
| None of these things are true for me. I'm not allowed to
| vote where I live and even if I could, the US election
| system doesn't offer a practical voice that reflects this
| (the broken voting method is arguably is the biggest
| problem the US needs to solve). I also only have a doctor
| gas company. So my alternative would be to switch my
| furnace, water heater and stove to electric. That's
| actually on my wishlist, but now we are talking
| significant money. People who live in apartments or even
| condos likely at best have control over the stove.
|
| Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying that individuals
| shouldn't take responsibility. In fact I've moved to a
| largely vegan diet both due to carbon emissions and
| animal cruelty concerns. I feel guilty every day and
| wonder if my positive contributions outweigh the damage
| that my existence does to our environment and the harm
| and pain climate change will ultimately cause for other
| people as well as coastal cities behind uninhabitable, we
| see unrest over climate refugees, famines, etc.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| This assumes the leaks are unavoidable. They're not. There's
| lots of technology the companies can use to find and fix the
| leaks. However the lack of regulation/enforced regulation
| means that it's a race to the bottom. When I see these
| companies being proactive and pressing for legislation that
| raises the bar, I'll buy the personal responsibility argument
| a little more.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Foxcon's worker's deaths are a cost of doing business of
| delivering iPhones to YOU the consumer. Their blood is on
| YOUR hands.
|
| Or you know, Foxcon and the pipeline companies are
| responsible for what they do.
|
| Add in the fact that we have regulators and environmental
| regulations that we voted for and funded to try and stop
| things like this shows that the average person does not want
| this to happen.
| gruez wrote:
| >Foxcon's worker's deaths are a cost of doing business of
| delivering iPhones to YOU the consumer. Their blood is on
| YOUR hands.
|
| Is it not? If you buy conflict diamonds do you get to wash
| your hands and say "there isn't any blood on my hands
| because it's the local warlord's choice to use child
| soldiers, not mine"?
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Do people go out of the way to buy conflict diamonds? or
| is it more people try to buy cheap diamonds?
|
| Even if you don't go looking for cheap diamonds, how can
| you be sure your diamond is conflict free?
|
| >"Nearly nine years after the Kimberley Process was
| launched, the sad truth is that most consumers still
| cannot be sure where their diamonds come from", Global
| Witness founding director Charmian Gooch told BBC World
| Service's World Business Report.
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-16027011
|
| For fungible goods, you can not guarantee where and what
| made the product you are using. That is why we (try) to
| have systems in place to do so.
| gruez wrote:
| > Do people go out of the way to buy conflict diamonds?
| or is it more people try to buy cheap diamonds?
|
| I don't think apple is going out of their way to find
| sweatshops either.
|
| >Even if you don't go looking for cheap diamonds, how can
| you be sure your diamond is conflict free?
|
| Are you arguing for nihilism here? ie. "we can't really
| be sure that even conflict free diamonds are conflict
| free, so it's fine for me to buy diamonds from a random
| diamond dealer in Sierra Leone"?
| arichard123 wrote:
| Focusing on personal responsibility is a worthwhile thing to
| say to persons for whom their only contribution can be their
| own personal consumption. Also, in democracies, this will lead
| to political pressure for companies and government to make
| efforts that suit their status.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| That seems overly cynical to me. People can tell when they
| are being guilted.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > People can tell when they are being guilted.
|
| And it is an _extremely_ effective way to alienate them and
| make them vote for the opposition party.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Your math seems to be off, 250kcal apparently yields 8.8kg
| difference a day.
|
| Anyway, the idea that personal consumption has no use is
| absurd. It portrays a false idea that these pipes and factories
| and what not are made for the personal use of the affluent when
| in fact all these machinery produce items demanded by the
| masses. That's why the owners are rich, they produce(facilitate
| could be a better word) the stuff we want and we give them
| money to receive the output. Obviously, reducing personal
| consumption or making choices directly reduces the output of
| the machinery of the rich.
|
| If you want to blame a class, you are better off blaming
| private jets, mega yacht and golf courses if you are after the
| rich. These are the only emissions that are significantly
| different from the rest.
|
| Then you come to transportation and large homes of the middle
| class in western countries, especially the USA.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| The point is that they could still produce the exact same
| thing, and just _plug their leaks_, and everybody would be
| better off.
| SilasX wrote:
| But it _wouldn 't_ produce the exact same thing. Going by
| the original figures, which were yearly, methane leaks have
| a harm magnitude of 28 kg/person/year, while the vegan
| switch would be 1 kg/day, which is 365 kg/person/year,
| still much more impactful than the savings from sealing
| leaks.
|
| With that said, the OP's [tgsovlerkhgsel's] general point
| is still sound, that there is much lower hanging fruit for
| reducing emissions that would be revealed by a neutral
| penalty system applied universally, and also show lifestyle
| changes to be a disproportionately burdensome measure.
| jcranberry wrote:
| the article says thats 10% of methane emissions.
|
| Good progress but not enough.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Why do you think they don't do that? Could it be because
| they are evil or because not enough people will care enough
| to pay for the price difference due to clean production
| efforts?
|
| It comes down the masses demanding it or not demanding it.
| You say that personal consumption doesn't make a difference
| then those who believe you go for the cheaper option even
| if they can afford the cleaner option. You say that
| personal efforts can't make a difference then they vote for
| the party that promises tax reductions instead of the one
| that promises to enforce fixed gas leaks.
| mojzu wrote:
| Are there that many industries where consumer choice
| would encourage companies to make those kinds of pro-
| humanity choices? I'd like to buy electronics that aren't
| manufactured in part by children but it isn't like
| companies advertise whether they do that or not. So
| outside of occasional investigative journalism or
| assuming that they (or one of their suppliers) probably
| do what choices am I left with?
| mrtksn wrote:
| They actually do, that's why some companies also engage
| in Greenwashing, which is the practise of pretending to
| be environmentally friendly when you are actually not.
|
| Because the brand of these companies is so valuable, once
| exposed they actually take steps to fix issues.
| Perfection is enemy of the good though, but things are
| actually moving for the better when there is a trend to
| demand the better.
|
| There's of course counter trends, like eat more meat burn
| more fuel, screw the foreigners etc. I bet you, if these
| become dominant, the same brand will be all over it. "For
| every phone you buy from us, we kill a baby seal and
| throw a battery in the ocean" could be the next campaign
| if the ant-environmentalism catches up.
| mojzu wrote:
| I agree this kind of consumerism moves the needle,
| however I'm not sure that this mechanism can be relied on
| at the scale required to help with problems like climate
| change. Millions of consumers in many countries would
| have to be convinced to do research/change their
| purchasing habits and potentially inconvenience
| themselves or even increase their cost of living, even to
| environmentally concious people I'd guess that's a hard
| sell
| keymone wrote:
| Well guess what, a tax on ghg emissions will make both
| those that don't care about environment and those that
| pretend to care about it, suffer economic consequences.
|
| Win-win, isn't it?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| "because not enough people will care enough to pay for
| the price difference" the emissions are invisible, and
| thus people don't have the choice whether to pay more or
| not.
|
| Especially as a lot of the consumption is indirect - you
| don't buy the gas, but you buy a meal in a restaurant
| that was cooked using that gas, or a car whose
| manufacturer bought the dashboard from a company that
| bought the plastic from a company that made it using gas
| from the national gas market, where all gas is fungible
| and it doesn't matter how it was produced.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Why do you think they don 't do that?_
|
| Because they're a company, and the regulatory authorities
| (EPA & MMS successors) don't have enough funding and will
| for reliable enforcement.
|
| There are already branches of government tasked with
| doing this. They just need Congressional support and/or
| prodding to make it a higher priority.
| titzer wrote:
| The personal carbon footprint is just a dodge for the elite,
| a way to push the problem off onto us rubes. The reality is
| that the producers have far more power over CO2 output than
| consumers ever will. "Let the market decide" does not work
| with large, hugely imbalanced indirect externalities.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Seems like a good fallacy to keep running a old diesel and
| est meat at every meal because "the corporations do it" to
| me
| adamrezich wrote:
| it only seems that way because you've been conditioned to
| feel shamefully personally responsible for things far
| outside of your control
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| "the corporations" have spent hundreds of millions in
| marketing and advertising pushing the idea of a personal
| carbon footprint. Just so we can point our fingers at
| eachother rather than them.
|
| Money well spent I guess.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >The personal carbon footprint is just a dodge for the
| elite, a way to push the problem off onto us rubes.
|
| Some other questions that come to mind:
|
| Who decides what the carbon footprints of everyone's
| behaviors are?
|
| What level of surveillance is needed to enforce everyone's
| behaviors?
|
| To what extent will carbon credits markets be subject to
| regular market events like boom/bust cycles, speculators
| and other market manipulators?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > Your math seems to be off, 250kcal apparently yields 8.8kg
| difference a day.
|
| The difference per 1000 kcal seems to be 5.15 - 1.17 = 3.98
| kg. Where do you get 8.8 kg per 250 kcal? Maybe you were
| looking at the least-efficient beef? 8.8*4 = 35.2 kg per 1000
| kcal would match the "beef (beef herd)" value.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Yeah sorry, I was looking at beef. For some reason I kept
| reading pork as beef. So it's not 9 or 1 but 4, we met at
| the middle.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 4 per 1000 kcal, so 1 per 250 kcal.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| About "personal carbon footprint".
|
| Life is not an Avengers movie. You and I are not superheroes
| that can save the world. What you or I do in our personal lives
| have, by any remotely realistic measure, exactly zero impact on
| the problem.
|
| Thinking otherwise is to me - and I wish I had a less negative
| term for it - a form of "Delusion of grandeur". It's harmless
| in a sense, except that people could use the effort they spend
| to actually improve things for themselves and people around
| them.
|
| In reality global problems are solved on the global level.
| Things like carbon taxes, technical innovation etc.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| There is one thing everyone living in a democracy can do to
| make a huge difference -- write your elected official
| (specifically 6-12 months before an election) & include
| climate stance in your vote calculus.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Isn't a global solution to get everyone to do what they can
| personally? Why is it global when it applies to corporations
| but not when it applies to regular people?
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| The way you get everyone to do things in a society is not
| by setting an example and doing it yourself but by getting
| the government to set taxes, incentives, penalties,
| negotiate treaties - so that people have a clear incentive
| to behave properly (financial or otherwise).
|
| This presupposes competent governments who care, obviously,
| which is the crux.
| chimprich wrote:
| That kind of thinking leads to conclusions like "voting is
| worthless", or "throwing litter in the bin rather than street
| makes no difference".
|
| > exactly zero impact on the problem
|
| Exactly _not_ zero. Small, perhaps, and smaller than global
| initiatives, but lots of coordinated small actions at scale
| do make a difference.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Genuine question. Is there any evidence that the thousands
| of Americans who have gone vegan over the last few years
| have reduced the carbon footprint of the meat producing
| industry at all? I checked us beef production, and the
| numbers are basically flat since 2000 increasing slightly
| since 2014.[1]
|
| If thousands of people going vegan don't reduce the beef
| production in this country at all, have they really saved
| any carbon at all? Would love to see someone with a good
| data science background look into this.
|
| It's all well and good to talk about personal consumption
| as if it has fixed carbon cost associated with it, but you
| have to remember that not consuming doesn't reduce the
| emissions unless it affects production.
|
| It's still probably good to reduce consumption because it
| could affect the production, but it may not be enough to
| cause any change at all.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/194687/us-total-
| beef-pro...
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's tautological. If more people go vegan, then there
| will be less meat consumed. I don't think we need charts
| to show that..
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Do you realize that the consequences of spreading this
| message (to the degree it's successful) is, ironically, to
| hand over all power to the corporations.
|
| You are encouraging people to believe they are powerless and
| stop doing anything themselves. Action and collective action
| are very powerful and have changed the world. The Internet
| should empower that (and did, such as during the Arab Spring)
| but sadly, it is now used to shut it down through this kind
| of messaging.
|
| Who does that messaging - despair, you are powerless, you are
| nothing - who does it serve? There you will find its source,
| I think.
| antisthenes wrote:
| It serves the consumers of course. Because the first thing
| it does is absolve all of them of any personal
| responsibility whatsoever.
|
| No power --> no responsibility --> throw hands up in the
| air and keep accomplishing nothing, while pointing the
| finger back at everyone saying it's their fault.
|
| It's the mindset of an 8-year old child.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| While I agree that we blaming individuals is ridiculous,
| actually addressing this issue and getting towards zero
| emissions anywhere near enough time will make:
|
| > significant personal expense
|
| Look like luxury living.
|
| Our economy _is energy_ , and currently the vast majority of
| the energy comes from hydrocarbons. We simply cannot scale
| renewables up high enough, fast enough, to avoid catastrophe
| without a change in live style so severe that most people would
| over throw governments in protest.
|
| People on this site think wearing a face mask during a pandemic
| is a material injustice.
|
| We aren't going to address climate change.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I dispute that the economy is energy or even proportional to
| it. California, as inefficient as it is on a global scale,
| has substantially decoupled its economy from energy
| consumption over the last thirty years.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| You can't look at local energy usage and make this claim.
| It's not only the goods and services that come into the
| state that require energy in other countries, but all of
| the capital the flows in as well that ultimately has it's
| source in energy someplace else on the globe.
|
| I recommend reading Smil's _Energy and Civilization_ for a
| better picture of this.
| jeffbee wrote:
| California has similar consumption import patterns as
| other U.S. states like Texas, but compared to those other
| states the economy of California has departed from their
| energy/gsp ratios.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _The obvious solution would be to require companies to buy
| emission certificates for those emissions_
|
| Reality check: The companies the article talks about are in
| Russia and Turkmenistan. How would you impose these emission
| certificate regulations without invading them and/or toppling
| their governments?
| tazjin wrote:
| Your comment reflects a strange perspective, as if the
| community to which you're talking is only from a single place
| and somehow excludes Russia/Turkmenistan/US/whatever. That's
| not the case, HN is an international forum.
|
| These laws need to be implemented in each country.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Russia and Turkmenistan are both run by a single strongman.
|
| I suppose HN comments _could_ influence Putin or
| Berdimuhamedow, but I feel safe assuming they do not.
| tazjin wrote:
| This is already getting coverage in Russian media.
|
| Your assumption that our politicians need a lot of
| influencing to care about this is probably wrong,
| especially since these leaks lead to financial losses.
|
| I'd be more surprised if the US did something about it
| than Russia, to be honest.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Trade agreements conditioned on acceptance and economic
| sanctions and embargos if not. It's an economic measure you
| want, you obviously can motivate them economically.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| a) Ask them whether they want to participate in the scheme to
| ensure the actual emitters pay their fair share.
|
| b) If they decline, allocate the emissions from these sources
| to the products the country exports and impose import duties
| that correspond to (or exceed) what the certificates would
| cost.
| keymone wrote:
| "Personal footprint" is propaganda by oil/gas/coal industries,
| it's absolutely idiotic. There should be a worldwide tax on
| producing greenhouse gas. Extreme economic, business, travel,
| etc, isolation on every country/corporation that doesn't
| subscribe to it. Bankrupt them into the ground.
| duped wrote:
| I mean at the end of the day attempting to shift blame to
| "the corporations" for emissions is neglecting the fact that
| the corporations are emitting in order to (ultimately) supply
| consumers.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It is BP that shifted the blame to consumers back in the
| 00s. And they spent hundreds of millions on this marketing
| campaign - more than they did on fixing their own house.
| The idea of a personal carbon footprint didn't exist before
| this.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The corporations are emitting to supply consumers because
| emitting is often a cheaper way to supply consumers.
|
| The solution isn't to not supply consumers, it is to supply
| them in a more sustainable way.
|
| In some cases this may not be possible, but in many cases
| it is. We shouldn't push to destroy our quality of life, we
| should push to make it sustainable.
|
| This can only happen through regulation, because as a
| consumer, you can't really choose to pay 10% more to get
| e.g. a laptop where the aluminium was smelted using
| renewable energy.
| simion314 wrote:
| >I mean at the end of the day attempting to shift blame to
| "the corporations" for emissions is neglecting the fact
| that the corporations are emitting in order to (ultimately)
| supply consumers.
|
| They want to make big money, the fact they give you
| products it is not the goal. Is it still legal to just burn
| the gas at the oil pumps?I remember videos of burning
| flames on top of this oil pumps and I don't think we the
| consumers asked for that, it is just that a billionaire oil
| dude won't invest into fixing the issue when he can open
| more oil/gas drilling sites and make more billions.
| duped wrote:
| Right, but the point is that it's only more profitable to
| open more oil and gas extraction facilities without
| repairing the broken one because there's demand for oil
| and gas in the first place.
|
| As an example, about 20% of the emissions in the US stem
| from residential energy usage (0). Blaming energy
| companies for these emissions is ignorant of the fact
| that it's supplying the demand of the American citizens
| who are using that energy in the first place - and while
| shifting that blame off to some faceless corporation or
| billionaire villain might result in some good policy
| decisions to reduce emissions (for example, making gas
| and oil so expensive to extract or use for energy
| production that residential energy providers switch to
| renewables) but it goes too far from absolving consumers
| from the fact their demand creates the market that
| generates emissions in the first place - which leads to
| bad policy decisions like leaving homes to use natural
| gas for heating and cooking.
|
| All I'm saying is that when it comes to emissions and
| climate change we need to look at it holistically, rather
| than come up with these mythical comic book villains.
|
| (0) https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19122
| Goronmon wrote:
| >As an example, about 20% of the emissions in the US stem
| from residential energy usage (0).
|
| Sounds like we need to focus on the much larger 80% of
| emissions first to me, as that's where the vast majority
| of the problem lies, by definition.
|
| I don't buy the idea that unless we attempt to solve 100%
| of the problem on the first try, we can't start working
| on a solution.
| opan wrote:
| >Sounds like we need to focus on the much larger 80% of
| emissions first to me, as that's where the vast majority
| of the problem lies, by definition.
|
| Alternatively... What if we do both in parallel? I'm also
| of the opinion that you can more likely change things in
| your own life than get a big corporation to change
| something, so you could make small gains within the next
| year as far as reducing personal impact, and still keep
| on fighting for the bigger problem to be solved at the
| same time.
| simion314 wrote:
| >All I'm saying is that when it comes to emissions and
| climate change we need to look at it holistically, rather
| than come up with these mythical comic book villains.
|
| I agree that someone that keeps the lights or TV on while
| he is not using them is also at fault but it is not
| possible to catch the person that is doing this , where
| it is easy to make illegal the behavior that is easy to
| control for. Maybe the gas will cost a bit more but this
| might encourage new technology to appear or green energy
| to take over.
|
| I am curious if this happens somewhere in US and if there
| are results or is too socialist to ever happen? In my
| country(Romania) there is a tax for polution (for ex cars
| with old or big engines pay a bigger tax), this tax money
| goes into green programs, like persons can install solar
| panel or isolate their homes and the government will give
| you some money up to 90%. (I am expecting comments like
| the poor pay for the rich solar panels but IMO you could
| make the rules to add limits on who can benefit.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > someone that keeps the lights or TV on while he is not
| using them is also at fault but it is not possible to
| catch the person that is doing this
|
| Punishment is not the only, and in fact one of the worst,
| means of changing behavior. You can also educate people,
| who despite the current devotion to cynicism, generally
| will do the right thing. Lots of people turn the lights
| off.
|
| > I am curious if this happens somewhere in US and if
| there are results or is too socialist to ever happen?
|
| How do you define socialist? There are many regulations
| and fines in the US. Climate change has been politicized
| by one party here in order to, afaict, make it to
| inflammatory to agree on any action.
| slavik81 wrote:
| The guy that forgets to turn a light off is pretty
| irrelevant, but you can look downtown in my city and see
| countless office buildings with all the lights on 24/7.
| They're literally keeping me up at night with the light
| that's shining in my windows. It would be relatively easy
| to create and enforce a rule for the largest wastes.
| klyrs wrote:
| IIRC, flaring methane is better for the environment,
| because pound for pound, methane is a significantly more
| potent greenhouse gas than the CO2 that is produced.
| Capturing the CO2 would be preferable, of course, but
| this one's a bit counterintuitive.
| soperj wrote:
| I think methane lasts for less than a decade in the
| atmosphere before it's broken down into C02, so
| considering this has been likely going on for a long
| time, reducing it would probably have an immediate
| effect.
| gruez wrote:
| >I think methane lasts for less than a decade in the
| atmosphere before it's broken down into C02
|
| Source? Google info box says:
|
| >Methane is a powerful greenhouses gas with a 100-year
| global warming potential 28-34 times that of CO2.
| Measured over a 20-year period, that ratio grows to 84-86
| times.
| soperj wrote:
| >Methane, by contrast, is mostly removed from the
| atmosphere by chemical reaction, persisting for about 12
| years. Thus although methane is a potent greenhouse gas,
| its effect is relatively short-lived.
|
| I was off slightly, but not an order of magnitude.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/green
| hou...
| simion314 wrote:
| But you could burn it with a purpose, like in a
| generator.
| bumby wrote:
| That assumes there's use for a generator out near the
| pump. I don't think that's generally the case, meaning
| the methane would need to be stored and transported.
| Considering it's literally these companies' business to
| store and transport fuel, I'd assume if it were
| economically viable to do so, they would. That's not to
| say something like a carbon-tax wouldn't sway the
| economics toward that side, but it's not just as simple
| as "burn the fuel in a generator"
| keymone wrote:
| The generator can power local bitcoin mining farm: no
| need to store/transport, frees up electricity in other
| places by making miners there less profitable.
| bumby wrote:
| Do you think there are local bitcoin mining in the middle
| of, say, the Permian Basin?
|
| One of the points missed in this conversation is that a
| lot of oil/gas drilling occurs in remote or inhospitable
| regions.
| latchkey wrote:
| There are companies that have solutions:
| https://ezblockchain.net/
| keymone wrote:
| I don't think there is, but then if we're talking about
| putting waste flare to use rather than release it into
| the atmosphere and pay hefty tax, I can totally see
| remote (even ocean) sites carry a standard container-
| worth of miners - potentially would pay for itself.
|
| Edit: dropped a word
| bumby wrote:
| I'm curious why you think they haven't done so already?
| My guess is that the volatility of crypto creates too
| much risk for the infrastructure investment.
| keymone wrote:
| It's too radical right now, while people mistakenly think
| that consumption of energy equals production of energy
| from dirty sources it probably won't become the norm. But
| eventually it will.
| simion314 wrote:
| For sure if you can transport liquids and gas you can
| transport some electricity to the nearby villages/city
| you pollute with your gases. I think you can make profiit
| but not big profit from this so why bother. It is like
| tech giants, why bother with a good product with paying
| customers if it does not make obscene amount of money.
| bumby wrote:
| Sure, but this is one of those arguments that only works
| well in theory.
|
| Oil and gas companies are usually distinct from the
| utilities (regulated monopolies) that provide
| electricity. If you want the O&G companies to subsidize
| the local populations energy, it makes more sense for
| them to do so with their existing infrastructure rather
| than forcing them to use some inefficient process. It
| will be cheaper for all involved.
|
| The better solution is to just price the externality with
| regulation.
| nefitty wrote:
| You nudge the drug addicts and prosecute the drug dealers.
|
| Also, re: veganism. Go vegan to reduce suffering.
| theptip wrote:
| I think "blame" for emissions is the wrong lens here to get
| to a solution.
|
| I do think there is a bit of asymmetry here and there is
| some blame to dish out, in that there are corporations
| (e.g. Big Oil) that are spending large sums lobbying to try
| to distract the public from implementing effective
| solutions that would eat into their profits. There isn't
| really a propaganda machine that's as focused on
| misdirection in defense of special interests in the other
| direction. (I suppose the Fox News retort would be that the
| IPCC are being alarmist to inflate their grant budgets? But
| I think we're many orders of magnitude off in terms of
| $-weighted harms here vs. emissions from the oil & gas
| industry.) I wouldn't say we should blame the corporations
| for their emissions, just for their shady astroturfing,
| self-interested lobbying, and other activities that
| misdirect the public dialog on the harms of their
| emissions.
|
| At the end of the day, the high-level solution is simple
| (not easy): rather than thinking about emissions as
| something that is the "fault" of companies or individuals,
| if we tax the externality that we care about (CO2
| emissions) at a consistent price, then the market will work
| out the rest. The CO2 tax will get baked in to the price of
| every good, and people will naturally shift their
| consumption away from goods that are unreasonably
| CO2-producing (as they will become unreasonably expensive).
|
| I'm not a free-market maximalist, but this is one of the
| cases where markets are the best solution to the problem.
|
| This isn't an easy solution to implement though, as it
| requires strong international coordination to prevent
| emissions from being offshored to countries that either
| don't sign up to the carbon tax, or that do sign up but
| enforce laxly. If the US was really on board with achieving
| this, they could probably team up with the EU and succeed.
| willturman wrote:
| Massive negative externalities are exactly what the levers
| of policy and taxation should be pulled to address.
|
| If corporations pass the tax to consumers and the price of
| their product becomes undesirable using current mechanisms
| of production, who cares? That's an unsustainable business.
| If the product is a necessity, run it as a non-profit
| government utility or businesses can adapt with technology.
| space_fountain wrote:
| I don't think the person you're replying to is saying
| anything else, but consumers could, if they decided in
| mass, do literally everything the government can do
| around pricing in externalities. Pricing in externalities
| isn't just forcing companies to pay for the price of
| their externalities, it's also forcing consumers. And
| honestly consumers do need forced. We aren't solving this
| through personal responsibility. But it's also ridiculous
| to say something like just 100 companies responsible for
| 71% of global emissions when those companies are just
| fossil fuel extractors. I'm responsible for burning gas,
| not the company that just happened to pull it out of the
| ground.
| ruined wrote:
| >consumers could, if they decided in mass, do literally
| everything the government can do
|
| this is kind of an aside, but i keep noticing this weird
| dissonance that keeps cropping up in conversations about
| regulation where people seem to assume:
|
| consumers organizing to exercise power normally allocated
| to a government is somehow preferable to the existing
| government exercising power according to civil mandate
|
| in a representative democracy, the latter is presumably
| the ideal. in the former situation, any context, you're
| talking about dual power, which is not politically
| stable, to put it mildly.
|
| when people say "it's not my personal responsibility" to
| make all the personal choices necessary to reduce carbon
| output, they are stating an expectation that a
| responsible society would systematically account for
| these externalities and other obligations.
|
| there is a bit of reason to this already discussed.
| markets by definition are not able to account for
| externalities, it's not possible for individuals to
| gather enough information to make these decisions
| reliably, etc. this political choice _is_ an organized
| consumer choice, asking the socially approved bodies that
| have this information and power, to surface the results
| in a way that consumers can understand and react to.
|
| when this political/consumer choice is undone or blocked,
| or dismissed as irresponsible in preference to individual
| consumer behavior, it encourages individuals to organize
| dual power and take direct action.
|
| you can see this organizing developing through pipeline
| resistance and train sabotage and the like. sure, people
| could theoretically just buy gas from the least evil gas
| station or whatever, but once you've got enough people
| thinking about consumer choice to be effective, you've
| got enough people to literally just go and take apart the
| thing you don't like.
|
| so this dismissal of regulation is necessarily combined
| with repression against people advocating for organized
| action.
|
| i'm not sure everyone talking about this understands it
| or will like where it leads.
| space_fountain wrote:
| Yeah I think these are very good points. I think maybe
| what I'd like to have more clarity about is that fixing
| global warming does look like consumers making different
| choices. They may be forced to make different choices by
| the government in some way (carbon taxes, bans,
| incentives, ect), but it isn't like there are companies
| that can decide to do better, stop polluting and just
| stop it all. Part of fixing these issues will mean less
| European vacations as jet fuel gets more expensive. Part
| of fixing this might involve driving less or taking
| public transit more. There aren't tradeoff free solutions
| to these problems that are being withheld and while tech
| might fix some of this, developing that tech will come at
| the expensive of developing some other tech and that
| choice will impact consumers.
|
| And just because you aim a policy on paper at big
| companies doesn't actually mean it doesn't impact
| consumers. You can say there are just 100 companies
| responsible for most global warming, but if you went and
| made them stop everyone would starve, and if you tax them
| everyone will find themselves not able to buy as much as
| they otherwise would. You can of course also accompany
| any of these policies with a redistribution of wealth,
| either by printing money, or by some tax scheme, but you
| are reducing the pie.
|
| Obviously though we should still do this, the long term
| impacts of not doing it will be worse and also impact
| consumers
| moron4hire wrote:
| How can you be responsible for the burning of the gas
| when there is no meaningful alternative? I don't ask to
| have my food shipped across country. I don't ask my
| electric company to burn oil. All I want is food. All I
| want is heat in my house. But the only places to get
| those things from are burning carbon fuels.
| space_fountain wrote:
| There are meaningful alternatives. You can choose to pay
| more and get an electric car and pay for net 0
| electricity. For a bit more you could shop from a local
| farm. If enough people did that it would incentive those
| options to get better, but they are all choices I could
| make today
|
| edit: and in fact if we want to solve these issue the
| sort of actions we will need to take. There isn't anyone
| who could fix these problems easily without sacrifices
| and is choosing not to
| moron4hire wrote:
| Ah, yes, I will do this with all the free money I have
| laying around.
| space_fountain wrote:
| I guess my point is not to shame people and maybe
| responsibility gets a bit convoluted at some point, but
| the reason fixing global warming is so hard is that it
| does require a sacrifice of living standards. We can
| probably develop tech to make it less painful and ideally
| not even painful at all but that will come at the price
| of some other tech we could be having worked on. People
| prefer to frame this as a few bad actors who just need
| forced to do the right thing because they would rather
| not admit that they themselves are making the economic
| choices leading to global warming and I do really think
| most people on here could be sacrificing to lower their
| emissions
| wingworks wrote:
| I'll volunteer the Facebook devs, there are plenty of
| talented people working on roles that I think most of us
| would be happy to do with out.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Not only that, but _even then_ the 100 companies thing is
| complete BS. That 's a measure of consolidation of energy
| companies, nothing more. If they all merged into a single
| gigantic hyper-corporation, it wouldn't change emissions.
| If they split into a million companies, all with 1/10000
| the market share of the 100, again, the same.
|
| The statistic is _completely_ meaningless in the context
| of emissions. The only relevant statistics are total
| emissions. The atmosphere doesn 't count a carbon atom
| differently by the market cap of the company that dig it
| up. It doesn't even count them differently if a person
| emits a tonne or 1000 people emit 1kg each.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This depends.
|
| Well, kinda. We banned plasic straws to "save the seas",
| while most of the palstics in the seas are from industrial
| and fishing equipment, that are not affedcted by the banned
| straws.
|
| Custumer wants a cooked burger, and sure, some emissions
| come from cooking burgers (and all the other processes,
| from the animals birth to a burger patty in the restaurants
| fridge), but I'm pretty sure none of the customers wanted
| gas leaks.
|
| Same with plastics... we banned straws, so it seems that
| "the government is doing something", while most of the
| plastics in the seas are either fishing/industrial
| equipment, or trash from a few rivers in asia. Just look at
| the amount of plastic packaging that is used and discarded
| from production to retail of many items, even paper "eco"
| straws (if nothing else, the amount of plasic foil used to
| package the straws on the pallet).
| dahfizz wrote:
| I want to consume good. In order to consume good, I must
| purchase good from company. I have no say in how good was
| produced.
|
| The goal is to align incentives such that companies can
| produce goods without destroying the planet. The goods
| themselves are not the issue.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > In order to consume good, I must purchase good from
| company. I have no say in how good was produced.
|
| You can buy from a different company, or a subsitute
| good, or not buy it. We aren't powerless at all.
| Companies live and die by consumer purchasing decisions.
|
| > The goal is to align incentives such that companies can
| produce goods without destroying the planet. The goods
| themselves are not the issue.
|
| It depends on the goods. Some can't be produced without
| destroying the planet.
| jrgoff wrote:
| It is not feasible for consumers to be informed at that
| level about all of the goods they consume and for most of
| us there I doubt there is a practical way to be informed
| about these sorts of things for most products even if we
| were to try. Furthermore, even if we were informed for a
| particular product there may be no better behaved
| alternatives in the marketplace for something we consider
| to be a necessity.
| keymone wrote:
| Yes, that is exactly what the "personal carbon footprint"
| propaganda wants you to believe. Majority of the planet
| is close to living in poverty, majority don't have the
| luxury to go for the more expensive option because of
| their love of the environment.
| dibujante wrote:
| Yep! Just buy from a non-emitting company. They wouldn't
| lie to you and claim to be non-emitting, because that
| would be mean.
| wildzzz wrote:
| You personally don't have a say but the market does. If
| it artificially costs more to produce a good, the market
| would ideally find a way to produce the same good in a
| manner that doesn't involve heavy carbon taxes. For
| carbon taxes, the company can either eat the cost and cut
| into profits or pass it onto the customer and hope their
| goods are inelastic enough to still make the same
| margins. If the demand was elastic, a company may decide
| to either not make that product any more or find a way to
| make it so that it costs less than the carbon taxed
| version. Unfortunately, researching new processes costs
| money and a company may just decide it's cheaper in the
| short term (which is only what Wall St thinks in) to just
| continue business as usual.
|
| The problem is that at the end of the carbon tax
| equation, what does the money go towards? Can we
| significantly offset carbon emissions with the tax
| income? Is it already too late? Without some significant
| rebalancing humanity's greed and feelings towards nature,
| I'm not even sure any of this would ever work.
| Symmetry wrote:
| No, but the cost is still predictable. If you want a
| concrete patio then the process of making the cement for
| it will have produced a ton or so of CO2 given current
| technology even though you never touched the fossil fuels
| involved. If you want to fly to Europe and back that's
| two tons produced even though you never bought the jet
| fuel.
|
| The per capita carbon emission of the US is about 14 tons
| or so. Of those, 4 are things the government or other
| entities are doing on your behalf that you don't have any
| control over but 10 are going towards your own
| consumption of things like patios and plane flights and
| beef. You can't realistically get that down to 0 but you
| can certainly cut back a whole want if you want to. Or
| you can pass laws that prevent corporations from
| producing carbon and offering you the things you want to
| consume, given the collective action that way makes a lot
| of sense.
|
| Now, for some things like methane leaks there are obvious
| ways to reduce the carbon cost of our consumption out of
| proportion to the reduction in our consumption. But for
| others, like plane flights, we don't have any means yet
| of doing that.
|
| In the end if we want large reductions in our carbon
| footprints without large technological innovations it's
| going to have to mostly result in us consuming less.
| Xelbair wrote:
| But to solve that we could for example regulate companies
| instead of creating sham feelgood campaigns about reducing
| 'personal footprint'.
| keymone wrote:
| First of all, "attempting to shift blame" is exactly the
| kind of propaganda I'm talking about, so kudos.
|
| Second, virtually nothing consumers require is _inherently_
| ghg-emitting, it's just the cheapest way to satisfy the
| need, which is why trying to satisfy in a less ghg-
| intensive way is economically unviable until you start
| punishing ghg-intensive processes.
|
| There is zero blame on consumers as I see it - they want
| something inherently ghg-intensive, they'll have to pay
| higher price.
|
| Incentives work on all levels but you need to start with
| the source - producers. They must pay for externalities.
| gruez wrote:
| >Second, virtually nothing consumers require is
| inherently ghg-emitting, it's just the cheapest way to
| satisfy the need, which is why trying to satisfy in a
| less ghg-intensive way is economically unviable until you
| start punishing ghg-intensive processes.
|
| You could say the same for corporations. There's nothing
| about an incorporated legal entity that _requires_ the
| emission of greenhouse gasses.
|
| >There is zero blame on consumers as I see it - they want
| something inherently ghg-intensive, they'll have to pay
| higher price.
|
| There is zero blame on corporations as I see it - if
| consumers don't want something inherently ghg-intensive,
| they'll have to pay higher price.
| keymone wrote:
| > There's nothing about an incorporated legal entity that
| requires the emission of greenhouse gasses.
|
| Except profit maximization, you mean?
|
| > if consumers don't want something inherently ghg-
| intensive, they'll have to pay higher price.
|
| And they will, that's the point. Doesn't shift an ounce
| of blame off of corporations to customers - they will
| proceed to destroy the environment because short term
| profits are more important than long term survival.
| gruez wrote:
| >Except profit maximization, you mean?
|
| that just goes back to your previous comment. There's
| nothing about consumers that require them to emit
| greenhouse gasses, but they do so because it's the
| cheapest.
|
| >they will proceed to destroy the environment because
| short term profits are more important than long term
| survival.
|
| they won't emit greenhouse gasses if there's a market for
| non greenhouse gas emitting products. See for instance,
| all the GMO-free/organic/vegan/free-range/fair trade
| products at your local supermarket. I'm not sure about
| all the labels, but I know for a fact that organic
| products have better margins than conventional ones.
| keymone wrote:
| > nothing about consumers that require them to emit
| greenhouse gasses, but they do so because it's the
| cheapest.
|
| Profit maximization requires them to use the cheapest
| method if they can get away with it.
|
| > they won't emit greenhouse gasses if there's a market
| for non greenhouse gas emitting products
|
| Except for pretty much the entire market of products that
| exist currently, you mean?
|
| > I know for a fact that organic products have better
| margins than conventional ones
|
| Right, because the 5-10% of consumers that are able to
| afford it and are shamed into "personal carbon footprint"
| mindset choose to take on economic harm in order to
| produce even more profits for the same scammy
| corporations that often own those "eco-friendly" brands.
|
| It's mind boggling you don't see anything wrong with all
| this.
| gruez wrote:
| >Profit maximization requires them to use the cheapest
| method if they can get away with it.
|
| well, not really. Just like consumers can be shamed into
| buying fair trade coffee rather than the non-fair trade
| coffee, corporations can be shamed into being zero
| emission. There's quite a few wealthy tech companies that
| do just that.
|
| >Except for pretty much the entire market of products
| that exist currently, you mean?
|
| And who's on the other side of those markets? Are
| consumers buying oil because oil companies has drilled
| them out of the ground and need to unload them, or do
| consumers want oil (and don't care much where it comes
| from) and oil companies are fulfilling that demand?
|
| >Right, because the 5-10% of consumers that are able to
| afford it and are shamed into "personal carbon footprint"
| mindset choose to take on economic harm in order to
| produce even more profits for the same scammy
| corporations that often own those "eco-friendly" brands.
|
| >It's mind boggling you don't see anything wrong with all
| this.
|
| Flip side of this is that 90-95% of consumers can't
| afford it and/or don't care about the environment that
| much to pay for zero carbon gasoline or whatever, but
| you're unhappy with that and you want the government to
| step in and force them to switch to zero carbon gas.
| keymone wrote:
| > Blah blah consumers want oil
|
| Do you drink oil? Do you eat it? Does your organism
| require it, so that you create this supposed INHERENT
| DEMAND FOR OIL? Of course not, but given how dishonest
| you've been so far, I foresee you trying to find some
| roundabout way to argue even that position.
|
| > you're unhappy with that and you want the government to
| step in and force them to switch to zero carbon gas.
|
| No, I want government to reduce profits of those who
| benefit off destroying the environment and use that money
| to subsidize environmentally friendly produce for
| consumers who wouldn't be able to afford it.
| gruez wrote:
| >Do you drink oil? Do you eat it? Does your organism
| require it, so that you create this supposed INHERENT
| DEMAND FOR OIL?
|
| Does my body need oil? No. Do I want a convenient and
| cheap mode of transportation that allows me to get me
| from my white picket suburban house (which I also want)
| to other places I have to be? Yes. Do I also want a cheap
| source of energy to power various creature comforts in my
| white picket suburban house? Also yes.
|
| >No, I want government to reduce profits of those who
| benefit off destroying the environment and use that money
| to subsidize environmentally friendly produce for
| consumers who wouldn't be able to afford it.
|
| "We're going to [do thing to fix problem] and make
| [maligned entity] pay for it!"
| keymone wrote:
| > Do I want a convenient and cheap mode of transportation
| that allows me to get me from my white picket suburban
| house (which I also want) to other places I have to be?
| Yes. Do I also want a cheap source of energy to power
| various creature comforts in my white picket suburban
| house? Also yes.
|
| Neither of those _requires_ unsustainable energy
| production.
|
| > We're going to [do thing to fix problem] and make
| [maligned entity] pay for it!
|
| Got other ideas to address externalities? Or are you just
| like all libertarians going to pretend they don't exist
| until it's too late and nothing can be done about it?
| moron4hire wrote:
| Except the corporation has visibility into their
| production methods. I, the consumer, standing in a store
| looking at a tomato, have no way of knowing how it was
| grown, where it came from, how it got to my store, how
| the store is powering the lights to show me the tomato.
| All I want is a tomato. The fact it got drove across an
| entire country to get to me is conveniently hidden.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| So if my municipal water company, through its incompetent
| failure to maintain infrastructure, damages a road due to a
| water main break, that's my fault because I need to drink?
|
| It's pathetic that the thought process of corporate PR
| flacks has sunk into the brains of normal people.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > the thought process of corporate PR flacks has sunk
| into the brains of normal people
|
| I think it's the opposite: Saying that poeple are
| powerless, and entirely dependant on corporations, is the
| thought process and message of the corporations. We are
| just helpless subjects of the aristocracy.
|
| > It's pathetic
|
| It's sad that people add these words, which rationally
| only indicate a lack of argument, and practically tell us
| nothing and inflame discussion on the Internet - where it
| hardly needs to be inflamed.
| bumby wrote:
| Not your fault, but in part your responsibility to fix it
| which would likely be incurred by higher rates in the
| future to pay for maintenance. Those maintenance costs
| can be an externality for end-users as well. Fines and
| costs will trickle down to consumers (that's not to say
| they are unwarranted).
| Johnny555 wrote:
| No consumer asks for methane to be vented to the
| atmosphere.
|
| Consumers have certain needs/desires (cooking, electricity,
| etc), but they don't have a need/desire for greenhouse gas
| emissions.
|
| It may be most cost effective to allow gas leaks while
| delivering the gas, but that shouldn't be equated to demand
| leading to gas leaks.
| hokkos wrote:
| but even cooking with fossil methane release a lot of
| fossil methane at the consumer home :
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-
| gas/
| Johnny555 wrote:
| But again, no one is asking for a stove that leaks
| methane. They may be asking for gas cooking (though
| inductive cooktops are a reasonable alternative), but no
| consumer said "Give me a stove that leaks natural gas
| into my house every time I use it (and even when I
| don't)".
| soperj wrote:
| Only way that happens is if the USA leads it. Couldn't even
| get you guys onto the metric system, what do you think the
| chances are that you'll subscribe to this?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The USA does quite a number of good things. Don't buy into
| the hopelessness; it's just a message of the reactionary
| movement (which they successfully have many others
| repeating), to shut down their competition.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >There should be a worldwide tax on producing greenhouse gas.
| Extreme economic, business, travel, etc, isolation on every
| country/corporation that doesn't subscribe to it. Bankrupt
| them into the ground.
|
| But this punishes poor countries trying to modernize.
| Shouldn't the US pay for the ~412 billion tons of co2 it has
| dumped into the atmosphere since its inception? Same goes for
| EU.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| It's exactly the same playbook the drink companies used to
| keep pumping out unlimited plastic bottles: it's on the
| consumer to recycle them.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Exactly. Milk is treated like toxic waste because of cow
| farts, but incompetent oil companies spew waste or flare gas
| for operational reasons. Trivial issue to fix.
|
| I bet US companies get tax breaks for the lost product.
| [deleted]
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| It doesn't even make sense because it ignores the fact that
| we literally cannot reduce our personal footprints to a level
| that would prevent significant climate change.
|
| There is no sustainable level of emissions. In order for me
| to reach net zero I'd have to sell my house, car, give up all
| of the food that I eat (yes - all of it - my oat milk has a
| nonzero footprint that is not capturable), etc.
|
| The only actual solution is to institute a carbon tax so that
| we develop technological solutions to all of these problems.
|
| Basically, you can't choose to go net zero as an individual.
| bumby wrote:
| Where are you getting the idea that personal footprints
| have to be reduced to zero or less? That assumption only
| holds if there are no carbon sinks.
|
| What you're really saying is you can't reduce your
| footprint and keep the same quality of life. The problem
| is, in part, when we define the quality of life by the
| amount of shit we consume. Some consumption is necessary or
| great, but probably not the amount seen in many
| industrialized nations.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Well, sure, fair enough, we need to get to the level at
| which our averaged personal consumption is
| (all_carbon_sinks / human_population).
|
| As far as I know that's such a tiny figure that it may as
| well effectively be zero compared to what everyone I know
| is doing at the moment, not only in the UK but in less
| wealthy countries around the world.
| space_fountain wrote:
| I was going to reply something similar, but I think the
| core of the comment you're replying to is that this is a
| collective action problem. Making any changes on my own
| will be harder on me than if everyone made a change. Both
| because technology can solve a lot of this, and because I
| look and feel worse positionally if it's just me making a
| change.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I don't think it's merely _hard_, I think it's
| fundamentally impossible for us to do it without
| technological advancement or at least greater application
| of existing technology.
|
| I don't think that 7 billion people can live net zero
| without us building loads more solar panels, nuclear
| plants, changing a bunch of industrial processes, etc.
|
| These are things that individuals literally cannot do.
| Even trivial things like - I can't buy a net zero fork to
| eat my dinner with. I mean, I'm sure one or two things I
| could, but at the scale of my entire life it would become
| a full time job.
|
| I guess I could start a co2 capture company, that is
| actually feasibly possible. But I don't think that's what
| people are getting at with the personal responsibility
| stuff. It's all - "which brand of tape are you using to
| fix the leak in your roof?"
| bumby wrote:
| > _I can 't buy a net zero fork to eat my dinner with._
|
| I mean, one argument is that removing yourself from the
| demand side and using a fork that already exists is
| essentially net zero. Is buying an EV _really_ helping
| when it displaces a perfectly functional car? Or is it
| just sustainable theater? I 'm sure there's a balance
| somewhere, but probably not near our current lifestyle in
| the west. Net zero is a lot harder when you have an
| economy predicated on the constant churn of consumerism.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I agree that consumerism is bollocks and is something we
| could easily get rid of whilst generally increasing our
| happiness.
|
| Sure, so that works for a fork. And yeah, we can probably
| do it for all of the forks, so that's scalable.
|
| How about rice? Laundry liquid? Humour me - surely you
| can think of things we use all of the time that are not
| possible to make net zero at present?
|
| I mean, I can't even get off the gas in my boiler without
| putting in a heat pump that uses carbon to produce and
| maintain and repair. Even that one isn't fixed!
| bumby wrote:
| Yes, that's precisely the point. Save it for the items
| that _really_ bring value to our lives. The reason we 're
| so dependent on technology to help is because we dug a
| hole by doing the opposite.
|
| And I'm not equivocating that it's easy. Your heat pump
| analogy is the perfect example where life-cycle effects
| should come into play. I think it would be very
| interesting to see a study of something like comparing a
| new EV with the impact of maintaining an older ICE car. I
| suspect a lot of EV purchases are about status veiled in
| sustainability.
|
| I want energy to be spent on big impact things like
| healthcare and food and sanitation. But considering
| ~60-70% of the economy is based on consumerism
| bumby wrote:
| I agree, there's some tragedy of the commons here. But
| while I think technology will be one of the big factors,
| I also think it's used as a reason for people to avoid
| the cognitive dissonance of hard choices. Why should I
| have to do something unpleasant when I can just wait for
| technology to save us? We don't apply that same thinking
| to something like cigarette smoking ("why quit when I can
| just count on medical technology to save me?").
|
| In abstract problems I think policy is needed to drive
| such collective action. The best outcomes seem to be when
| regulation and the market coexist toward the same goal.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I think you're muddling the directionality here.
|
| What is your proposed "hard choice" that results in, say,
| my city being net zero or even drastically reducing its'
| emissions?
|
| I can independently do it, probably by using a lot of
| land, finding a favourable spot to plop my passivhaus,
| and wiping the balance sheet clean at some point (e.g. I
| pretend that all of the material going into the solar
| panels, the wood etc 'doesn't count').
|
| But what do the other ten million people do? Demolish all
| of the existing buildings and rebuild from scratch with
| far more insulation etc? Move in with each other and
| leave half of the buildings to rot?
|
| This isn't intended as snark by the way, I just don't see
| the answer here. Is your point that we could slow down
| climate change a bit whilst we wait for the technology to
| catch up? Because it's definitely a hard requirement.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't think there is a single person that can do that
| and I'm not sure anyone would suggest there is. But
| saying a single action doesn't matter is not the same as
| saying a collection of single actions don't matter. Just
| like people shouldn't think working out once will
| magically make themselves fit, but string enough of those
| actions together and you can make an appreciable
| difference. The point is those other ten million people
| would need to make similar choices. Saying you can't
| control those other people comes across as just hand-
| washing yourself of responsibility.
|
| My point is that I think a lot of people use the
| technological argument to reduce any personal
| responsibility. It's true that I don't think we can
| simply conserve ourselves to net zero, but I do think
| it's a part of the solution. I often see people use the
| technological excuse as a way to not change and just keep
| the status quo so they don't have to feel the pain of
| sacrifice. It's easier to keep the problem in the
| abstract where one doesn't have to make concrete personal
| choices. Sometimes those tough choices are supporting
| policies that may align against your own personal, short-
| term self-interest.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Yes, but what's the _point_?
|
| Is your position that it at least slows climate change so
| that we have more time for the technology and political
| atmosphere to catch up?
|
| If so, fine, that makes sense. But without some endgame
| it kind of just feels as if you're ideologically invested
| in the concept of personal responsibility.
|
| I don't even think we disagree, I just find it bizarre to
| call reliance on other advancement an "excuse". It's a
| hard requirement, you can't not rely on it. The personal
| stuff is a bonus.
| bumby wrote:
| Do you litter? If not, why? Littering makes your life
| easier and has an immediate upside at the individual
| level. You can easily claim that your one cigarette butt
| makes statistically no difference.
|
| I assume you don't because you realize if everyone makes
| that same choice it has a downside for everyone, because
| nobody wants to live in a trash heap. If the reason is
| simply because it's illegal, I'm not sure that's a very
| principled stance.
|
| Climate decisions are harder because they're more
| abstract in effect and the uncertainty is greater. But
| they should be rooted in similar principle if we consider
| ourselves moral agents in society.
|
| If you agree that collective conservation will have an
| impact (maybe that's where we disagree), then the only
| way it will have an impact is if people make the induvial
| choice unless policy forces that decision. I personally
| think that's a bit of an immoral choice if one recognizes
| it's the right thing to do but chooses not to, just like
| the litterer who knows better.
|
| I'm not sure what your point is? Is it that it's best to
| wait until everyone collectively decides to make the
| choice to conserve? Because, ironically, that strikes me
| as the scenario where your choice has marginal impact at
| the individual level as well. That perspective is very
| much stuck in an individualistic mode of thinking that
| doesn't recognize collective efforts take many individual
| choices.
|
| Circling back to the littering analogy, cultural values
| spring from many instances of individual choices. Having
| a culture of conservativism (or at least mitigated
| consumerism) is every bit as possible as having a culture
| of non-littering. But it does take the correct choices at
| the individual level to create the social pressure that
| brings along people who are less willing.
|
| That last point is important. I'm reminded of a study
| where they tested three different modes of convincing
| people of energy conservation: 1) they focused on how
| much money it saved, 2) they focused on the positive
| impact of the environment, and 3) they focused on the
| fact that the majority of their neighbors were already
| enrolled in the program. The only method that made a
| significant impact on energy usage was #3. We're social
| creatures and social pressure is important to nudge
| collective action.
|
| I agree, we need technology. But it shouldn't be an easy
| excuse for us to sit on our laurels with other choices,
| because, you know nuclear fusion has been 10 years away
| for the last 50 years.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I don't litter, no. But that's an example of a tiny and
| trivial change which has outsized impact. If no-one
| litters, it's not really that hard, and the world would
| be super clean.
|
| This isn't at all comparable to the sorts of changes that
| are required to lower one's carbon footprint. You would
| have to take literally every single thing most of us do
| every second of every day and change it dramatically.
|
| I grow tired of having these debates online because it's
| just so frustrating, sorry. It's not a good faith debate
| because you're just bouncing between trivialities and
| non-trivialities.
|
| I use more than the global average just to heat my house.
| Like, that's _one thing_. And you can argue that I can
| change that, and I can.
|
| But my entire country is built with these houses. It's
| total and utter bollocks to pretend that some sort of
| 'culture of conservation' could change this.
|
| Technology might allow me to heat it without emitting
| CO2. Otherwise, we need to knock it all down and start
| again. I suspect we will, but not by choice.
| bumby wrote:
| I'm sorry you don't feel it's in good faith; it
| absolutely is. Ironically, I feel you were underscoring
| this strawman of zero emissions when I've stated early on
| that shouldn't be the goal but I gave you the benefit of
| the doubt that you were engaging in good faith.
|
| Littering was used as an example not because it's a
| trivial gotcha but because it's trivial enough to
| understand immediately. I think analogies work best that
| way. Your claim about an "outsized impact" is exactly
| what I'm talking about with climate being more abstract
| and thus harder to connect individual choices to impact.
| Littering only seems like an outsized impact because you
| can literally see it change over the course of days or
| weeks on a small enough scale we can wrap our minds
| around. IMO we need policy to drive these issues because
| we did not evolve to think on the scale of worldwide
| effects. That doesn't negate individual responsibility
| though.
|
| > _But my entire country is built with these houses. It
| 's total and utter bollocks to pretend that some sort of
| 'culture of conservation' could change this._
|
| Ok. Maybe that's fine for you. But please understand
| there are other parts of the world that are having these
| exact conversations. Some are limiting single family
| homes because they are inefficient. They recognize their
| previous assumptions have all kinds of externalities that
| need to be addressed. Interestingly, facility energy
| conservation is one of the easiest areas to make an
| impact. Maybe that doesn't fit with your culture but that
| may be, at least in part, about what your cultural values
| are. And one way of defending those values is to say
| "I'll wait for technology so I don't have to change."
| That's what my whole point is about. So if you're banking
| on technology so much have you actually done anything
| about it? Do you invest in companies that are working on
| that tech, or maybe quit your job to focus on ushering it
| into being? Or is that someone else's responsibility too
| so you wouldn't have to change the status quo?
|
| The world is full of people who are comfortable saying
| the big problems are someone else's problem. I'm saying
| those aren't the type of people I'd want my children to
| grow up to emulate. That means they would seek to take
| some ownership of the problem, even if it's on a small
| scale.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| It's not "fine for me". I in fact do all of those other
| things that you're suggesting.
|
| And neither am I "banking on technology". There's no
| hedge, I'm just as fucked as you are.
|
| My original claim, which I stand by, is that individual
| action (in the sense of "just do fewer things") is
| trifling in the face of this. That's the only claim I'm
| making.
|
| I've explained why, and you're coming back with bullshit
| about my culture. Mate, it's not my 'culture' to eat food
| and put the heating on in my house, everyone does it in
| every country in the world.
|
| My argument is that we solve this politically and via
| collective action in things like basic research and
| development and not by joining support groups to tell
| each other about how many light switches we've turned off
| today.
| labster wrote:
| > Where are you getting the idea that personal footprints
| have to be reduced to zero or less? That assumption only
| holds if there are no carbon sinks.
|
| This is not really correct thinking, because you need to
| account for both sinks and sources of carbon. For
| instance, you could emit methane locally enough to, say,
| intensify a forest fire or dissolve methane clathrates.
| Then a forest somewhere else absorbs the original weight
| in carbon dioxide. This is net zero emissions for you,
| but certainly causes more warming. The best way to think
| of it is as a system with sources, sinks, and feedbacks.
|
| But really, the biggest adjustment to your life to reduce
| carbon emissions is to get involved in politics. Everyone
| reducing to net zero at home would make a tiny dent in
| the problem. The big users are transportation and
| concrete and metals.
| bumby wrote:
| I agree with you on all of these points. I was simply
| advocating a system viewpoint (perhaps poorly) but you
| did a better job explaining.
|
| (One exception: I believe when you combine commercial and
| residential facilities, their respective energy use
| surpasses transport)
|
| By concrete, do you mean cement specifically? Or is there
| additional CO2 from the process of using aggregate?
| danans wrote:
| > but remember to reduce your personal carbon footprint! /s
|
| The best way to reduce your carbon emissions is to upgrade your
| life at the same time by electrifying it, as your economics
| permit.
|
| Along with a silent zippy electric car, you get the added
| benefit of improving your local and hyper local air quality.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > But remember to reduce your personal carbon footprint! /s
|
| Why not both? I work to reduce my personal carbon footprint out
| of principle.
| __s wrote:
| That's nice, me too, but it's important to not drown out the
| conversation with deflection. Ultimately it's difficult to
| rally people behind one thing, nevermind multiple things. So
| policy discussions should focus on matters with high return
|
| It's also easier for discussions accusing people of being
| wasteful slobs to degenerate into partisan mud slinging
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Very good point. I think you're right. It's more likely to
| succeed with a pragmatic and undiluted message of targeting
| the worst offenders first.
| ballenf wrote:
| Because it's like trying to get to Mars by both jumping
| really high and building a rocket.
| tjoff wrote:
| Maybe jumping is the only signal politicians have that
| people are willing to pay for a rocket.
| paulluuk wrote:
| First of all let me say that I do absolutely agree with you
| that the whole concept of taking "personal responsibility" for
| our CO2 footprints is insane and we should clearly be creating
| tougher regulations on an international level.
|
| However, from the perspective of "okay, but what can I actually
| do?", it's still worthwhile to do things like going vegan,
| flying less, isolating your house, etc. And on top of that:
| vote for green parties (if you country has any). If there are
| no such parties in your country, then vote for whichever
| politicians are in favor of regulation of industrial pollution.
|
| I'm not implying that you don't know this, just putting it to
| text in case anyone reads this and thinks "yeah indeed, why
| would I have to change anything if those companies don't?!".
| cute_boi wrote:
| To be honest, politicians are emperors without clothes.
|
| Many Americans expected dems would fix the climate issue.
| Alas, it was all just talk. Joe Biden has allowed more oil
| drills than trump.
|
| Seems like corporatism overshadows politics in countries like
| the USA which can make an impact in terms of Climate.
| SECProto wrote:
| "Vote for the green party" in my country would, in many
| ridings, be the difference between the only climate-change-
| denying party winning a seat, and one of the three climate-
| change-believing-and-respond-to-it parties winning a seat.
| Which is less than helpful when it comes to addressing
| climate change.
| datameta wrote:
| Hearing that this distribution of parties exists somewhere
| is great to hear. It's a proper baseplate for improvement.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you can do other things as well as Vote.
| It's not like voting is so all encompassing that you'd be
| unable to work/participate in other areas at the same time.
| SECProto wrote:
| I wasn't suggesting that, I was just responding to the
| parent comment. Voting for the green party can actually
| cause anti-environmental outcomes (in my jurisdiction).
| RealityVoid wrote:
| What about green parties that are against nuclear? They are
| green, but, IMO, in a retrograde way.
|
| Not to mention these parties tend to attract some people with
| severe naturalistic fallacy biases that run _strongly_
| counter to my techno-optimistic outlook. I feel getting
| greens in power would get them what they want but not what
| the world needs.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The great thing about living in a democracy is that you can
| join these parties and change them from within or you can
| create your own party. There doesn't have to be single
| green party, if you believe that nuclear power should be
| considered green you have plenty of options to make it
| reality. Beyond direct involvement You can protest, you can
| campaign for it.
|
| For some reason, in countries with strong democracies and
| pathways for impact the youth tends not to vote. It's
| beyond my why they think that they are powerless.
| nautilius wrote:
| In many European countries, these green parties gained a
| significant boost during first hand experience of failing
| nuclear power during the explosion of the Chernobyl plant.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Chernobyl doesn't seem like a great example of failing
| nuclear power. It looks a lot more like crappy design and
| foolish incompetence.
| just_steve_h wrote:
| You literally just described most operating nuclear power
| stations. The GE Mark I reactors had an OPTIONAL system
| to vent hydrogen from secondary containment, as but one
| example.
| nautilius wrote:
| I don't know, _a nuclear power plant exploding_ and
| raining fallout all over Europe sure does look like a
| failure of nuclear power, certainly for those who
| experienced it.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| They are not really green then.
| marliechiller wrote:
| As a side, note, I'd like to point out that you should go vegan
| predominantly for the moral ethics of killing something for 5
| mins of taste pleasure rather than purely environmental
| concerns (although valid)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Why is killing animals bad?
| hervature wrote:
| For the same reason we don't have gladiators anymore. We
| are at a point in time where humans can meet all of our
| dietary needs through plants as we now understand what
| things need to be fortified and which don't. Eating meat,
| for many people, boils down to killing another being for
| one's own pleasure "tastiness" (I put it in quotes because
| most people butcher cooking meat at home). If one has no
| qualms with killing animals unnecessarily, then we should
| really be feeding all the stray dogs to the homeless but
| obviously this does not happen. Why? Because people have
| moral issues with killing dogs and cats. Not eating meat is
| simply an extension of this.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I would say the reason it's a taboo to eat predators and
| scavengers like cats and dogs and rats and bears and
| sharks and coyotes and tigers and lions and what have you
| is because predators and scavengers accumulate parasites
| and toxins.
|
| At any rate, you're still not explaining why, merely
| pointing out an inconsistency across animals as a whole.
| What if it is wrong to eat dogs but right to eat cows?
| Why couldn't it be so?
| hervature wrote:
| Where I come from, eating bear was not considered taboo.
| Many places also with sharks. I'm not sure what kind of
| response you are looking for, but "thou shall not kill"
| is a pretty universal rule in all societies around the
| world. I think the onus is on you to explain why that
| rule should be broken. For instance, going to war to stop
| tyranny could be a justification.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Couldn't this line of reasoning also be extended to
| plants? Why is it wrong to eat a hamburger but not to mow
| your lawn or treat a bacterial infection? Surely, if all
| killing is equally wrong, then how can we go on living?
|
| One could even claim to be righteously executing the
| murderous cow because it spends all day maiming and
| murdering innocent plant matter.
| marliechiller wrote:
| One could, but with that argument it equates all life as
| being equal. If that is the case, why is it wrong to
| murder?
|
| Personally, I can very clearly see that a cow or a dog is
| concious whereas a plant (if concious at all) is very
| much further towards unconcious than a human
| understanding of conciousness. Therefore I opt to reduce
| the suffering as much as possible.
|
| I would hope if an alien species that was much more
| concious than we could comprehend were to stumble across
| earth, they would not cause us suffering and eat us
| merely because we are not as intelligent as they are.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Your argument also hinges upon the lack of specificity in
| "thou shalt not kill" in extending it from humans to
| animals. Why is it wrong to murder conscious things but
| not unconscious ones?
|
| > Therefore I opt to reduce the suffering as much as
| possible.
|
| Isn't suffering an unavoidable part of life itself? If
| this is the aim, then we must immediately kill everything
| that is alive. That will end suffering the fastest.
| marliechiller wrote:
| > Why is it wrong to murder conscious things but not
| unconscious ones?
|
| This is a bit pedantic isnt it? I would hope you can come
| to a conclusion which isnt borderline psychopathic
|
| Yes, suffering is an unavoidable part of life which most
| organisms seek to reduce as much as possible. Given we
| all have existence bias and presumably dont want to end
| our lives prematurely, why would you knowingly want to
| increase it for others? I should have taken the hint from
| your initial response of "why is killing animals bad"
| that this would have been a pointless discussion. Why is
| killing anything bad?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > This is a bit pedantic isnt it? I would hope you can
| come to a conclusion which isnt borderline psychopathic
|
| If we want to find the truth, we must be brave and see
| what conclusions our line of reasoning result in. If our
| investigation leads somewhere too unpalatable, then no
| doubt one of the assumptions leading down the path is at
| fault.
|
| > Yes, suffering is an unavoidable part of life which
| most organisms seek to reduce as much as possible. Given
| we all have existence bias and presumably dont want to
| end our lives prematurely, why would you knowingly want
| to increase it for others? Why is killing anything bad?
|
| Couldn't this be from ignorance? The same way many people
| fear and avoid the dentist for a long time even though it
| brings them far greater suffering than the dentist would,
| couldn't avoiding death too be running away from
| something that is ultimately good?
| Rury wrote:
| >This is a bit pedantic isn't it?
|
| This is an ad hominem fallacy. Mentioning it doesn't
| serve to invalidate the argument.
|
| Anyhow, I think the point trying to be made here, is that
| you're arbitrarily drawing the line on what should be
| allowed to be killed based upon your own personal moral
| philosophy. What makes you the righteous one to get to
| dictate where to draw the line? Nothing but pure opinion
| (and that goes for anyone else too).
| blakesley wrote:
| Not sure where you're coming from here, but this 1-sentence
| comment sounds like something a serial killer would say.
|
| If someone murders your dog, no big deal to you? And sure,
| this dog was YOUR dog, but you would probably still agree
| that, in general, dogs shouldn't be killed, right? I'm not
| saying this line of thinking extends to all living
| organisms, but surely you can acknowledge there's SOME gray
| area between bacteria and "organism as smart as a human".
|
| Another useful thought experiment: what would aliens who
| are way smarter than us think of us? Mightn't they think of
| us as so dumb that our lives don't matter to them? How
| would you try to convince them otherwise?
| MayeulC wrote:
| > you should go vegan
|
| Don't force anybody please. As for moral ethics, those are
| really different depending on where you come from, your
| current outlook on life, etc. Ethics are not universal. I'm
| personally 98% vegetarian due to the lesser ecologic impact.
| It's also healthier, not killing animals, and has a lot of
| side-benefits. But don't assume the reason you specifically
| picked will work for everyone.
| marliechiller wrote:
| You misunderstand. I'm not forcing anyone. I was replying
| directly to the original posters comment. Also to your last
| point, please dont assume that I am assuming.
|
| Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, dairy and eggs
| still contribute to mass slaughter and suffering so your
| point about not killing animals on a your stated diet is a
| bit misinformed.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| What moral ethics? A natural predator will eat its prey while
| it still lives, providing a slow and painful death. While I
| agree that livestock living conditions mostly suck, at least
| we provide a quick and painless death.
| lelandfe wrote:
| I think you will be hard pressed to assign a positive spin
| on the treatment of livestock as it stands today. The best
| take one could reach for is perhaps that it's a necessary
| evil for feeding the planet right now.
|
| > at least we provide a quick and painless death
|
| Without trying to sound like I'm on a pulpit, "quick and
| painless" is not how I would describe sow stalls. The
| prevalence of ag-gag laws speaks to this.
|
| This is a subject that I don't have a good answer to, and I
| eat meat too, but I think we should at least call a spade a
| spade to start.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Last I heard the standard practice was that animals were
| stunned and then dealt a killing blow. Is this not true?
|
| > but I think we should at least call a spade a spade to
| start.
|
| Watching r/natureismetal and David Attenborough
| documentaries I find myself far more taken aback at the
| viciousness of some predators (even some trees!) than
| anything I read in Fast Food Nation, and sections of that
| book were absolutely disgusting
| lelandfe wrote:
| This is a strange, myopic argument.
|
| The moral quandary around factory farms does not
| generally stem from how quickly abattoirs perform their
| job, as it is economically prudent to kill livestock
| quickly. There is not much incentive to treat them well
| beforehand.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| And my point is that the bucolic pastoral life only
| exists as created by humans. Everywhere else almost all
| animals are subject to the whims of the food chain, which
| can be as cruel if not more cruel than we humans. It's a
| much wider variation, for sure, but I simply do not
| understand the moral superiority that animal rights
| activists feel.
|
| Like, veganism because methane emissions are accelerating
| global warming? I can get behind that. Veganism because
| of some dietary need someone has? Sure. But veganism
| because we are mean to animals? You're stretching it...
| lelandfe wrote:
| We're doing animals a favor, see!
|
| You're making the argument that cruelty to penned
| livestock is fine as the wild is also cruel. It is
| curious, then, that factory pigs live out just a fraction
| of their effective lifespan[0] - typically around 10
| months. Wild boars have average lifespans measured in
| years.
|
| There is a lot of nuance between the agricultural
| extremes we have now and what environmental activists
| desire, but I think your argument is specious, and the
| bar for how we treat livestock should probably be higher
| than "at least we kill them quickly."
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7286991/
| figure/...
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > We're doing animals a favor, see!
|
| Hardly. I'm simply arguing that some combination of
| current agricultural practice is little worse than the
| natural alternative of having to spend one's life
| constantly on-guard so that they don't become another
| animal's lunch. And then becoming lunch eventually (and
| viciously), anyway.
|
| Can our practice be improved? Sure. But the "moral
| ethics" of "killing something for 5 minutes of taste
| pleasure" are not so black-and-white. I think your
| argument is unsustainably idealistic, and that you would
| deny people their "5 minutes of taste pleasure" because
| of that idealism
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > usually at significant personal expense
|
| IME, it's usually at no expense. Many/most of the things I've
| changed are merely a change of habit; some are easier and
| better. For simple example, I wash my clothes on a delicate
| cold cycle - the clothes come out just as clean, and suffer
| less wear, and my energy bill goes down. Overall, changes like
| that have reduced my energy bill by 70% with almost no impact
| on my lifestyle.
|
| > We're expected to shave off a few kilos of CO2 here and
| there, usually at significant personal expense, while nothing
| is being done about these releases that a) could be avoided
| relatively easily b) have a much bigger impact.
|
| The fact that someone else should do more has nothing to do
| with the impact and responsibility of what I do. Powerful
| people can do awful things, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't
| and won't do my best to do what's good and excellent. If we
| accept the lowest common denominator as our standard .... Why
| would you follow the worst of others. Look for the best, the
| most inspiring.
|
| It's trendy to mock collective and individual action, including
| democracy itself - to give all our power, good or bad, to
| corporations (and mockery isn't an argument, just a signal that
| people lack one). They are happy to hear it.
|
| > go vegan for a month [1] or make similarly impactful changes
| just so companies can continue venting methane.
|
| That's not why.
| odonnellryan wrote:
| [1] Assuming I replace 250 kcal from pork per day with Tofu
| (around 100g of pork which seems to be considered "one
| serving"), this would be savings of ~1 kg CO2e per day:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore
|
| I think most people get more than 250kcal a day from meat.
| Seems like a strong argument to go vegan to me.
| friedturkey wrote:
| > But remember to reduce your personal carbon footprint! /s
|
| Where do you think the demand for gas pipelines comes from?
|
| Spoilers: our collective desire for it drives the development
| of pipelines.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| It's not as if PG&E has a checkbox like "Pay 5% more for us
| to fix gas leaks?" or gas stations have an octane selection
| that pollutes less. Consumers have the choice in some cases
| to consume less, but we need to affect one very specific
| thing (better maintenance) that companies with lower demand
| would, I'm sure, be happy to just pocket in additional
| savings or profit if they don't have a damn good incentive to
| care.
|
| Then on a political level, at least here in the US, the
| choice for politicians who could hope to influence this is
| between a party of "we don't believe climate change is real
| // it's real but not a big deal // inevitable / natural
| causes" and "climate change is real but we still won't make
| much real change" or maybe even "climate change is real and
| we demand real change but Congress won't pass anything even
| mildly changing the calculus for companies because 49% is the
| party who doesn't care / is on the climate-affecting
| companies payroll and the other 1% required to swing the vote
| can be bought for 1/100th the price the proposed legislation
| would cost us".
|
| It's frustrating, and the result is that the world burns and
| everyone just argues about whose fault it is while trying to
| do any small things they can to help while companies and
| politicians continue to not really care that we're rapidly
| heading towards a non-inhabitable planet in a few
| generations.
| tremon wrote:
| "We" do not demand leaky pipelines.
| friedturkey wrote:
| But people sure do want cheap fuel and electricity.
|
| Cheapness comes at a cost, and people consistently choose
| the cheapest providers when given a choice. Absolving
| ourselves is responsibility is why progress has stalled for
| decades.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Which is why the leakers should be financially punished
| so that they are no longer cheap. If their prices are so
| cheap they are unable to afford basic mantainence or
| quality builds, then a) maybe pay the C-suite people a
| little less (they can't afford it), b) they are not
| charging enough to actually run a business.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| People want cheap everything. They also want clean water
| and air, that is why they vote for people who enact
| regulations.
|
| Take software for example, people want cheap software.
| Paid software declines vs software with ads or tracking
| in it. People are upset because they don't want ads and
| tracking. Maybe regulations are enacted and paid software
| comes back.
|
| Maybe it moves to a different model.
| kajika91 wrote:
| I heard about this topic from the excellent youtube channel
| 'Engineering with Rosie' some months ago :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuQLJIqFjkk
|
| If you are interesting about energy and environment I think this
| channel is very good.
| maddentim wrote:
| Her explanation of wind turbines is awesome
| jacquesm wrote:
| That whole channel is gold.
| PaywallBuster wrote:
| > Gas companies simply vented gas from pipelines or other
| equipment before carrying out repairs or maintenance operations.
|
| Not a regular "leak"
| nashashmi wrote:
| Don't forget the article is a hit piece on oil gas companies.
| The rest of it supposition and narratives and anecdotes, not
| evidence, that promote the premise of the article.
|
| In fact there is very little objectivity in the telling of the
| findings.
| cascom wrote:
| Seems like a great example where a carbon tax would incentivize
| the right behaviors.
| baq wrote:
| oil and gas companies should be paying for building, launching
| and operating these birds and the data should be publicly
| available - this way they'll have at least somewhat proper
| incentive structure in place.
| davemp wrote:
| Oil and gas companies could easily do better right now (likely
| cheaper than the method in the OP). I know someone who worked
| at a fluid analysis modeling company and they claimed that
| pipelines could easily detect and fix leaks. Pipelines just
| don't care until it passes a certain disturbingly high
| threshold where it affects profitability.
|
| The evil and greedy people at the helm of these companies
| cannot be trusted with the responsibility of managing our
| planets resources without oversight.
| joncrane wrote:
| They should pay for it but an independent body should be
| responsible for building, launching, maintaining, calibrating,
| etc.
|
| What we need is an incentive for the O&G companies to be
| squeaky clean and to rat each other out.
|
| Align the incentives.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Nope, that would be a conflict of interest; they cannot be
| trusted to do all of these on time and adequately. They would
| need so much oversight that it'd be just as expensive to have
| an independent company run these things.
|
| I mean pay for it by all means, but that's where they stop. And
| even that's dubious, because it's never as simple as them
| handing over money; there will be terms and conditions.
|
| And of course, corruption would be widespread; the people
| working for this company monitoring methane emissions would get
| money or other benefits offered to them. And when you think
| about it, relatively speaking, people don't cost much.
|
| I'm confident I'd be up for hiding some data or other dodgy
| shit if the money was right. Think getting a bigger house kind
| of money.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > it's never as simple as them handing over money; there will
| be terms and conditions.
|
| The "terms and conditions" would be "pay the tax or go to
| jail".
| jbkiv wrote:
| First, hats off to "Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de
| l'Environnement". I looked them up, it is a research lab based in
| France
| https://www.lsce.ipsl.fr/Phocea/Vie_des_labos/Ast/ast_servic...
|
| They do research but also higher education with 60 PhDs at any
| given time. Compared to US standards they are very small. Our
| National Labs have probably a budget 1,000 times bigger.
|
| It is not a think tank like the ones we have in Washington DC
| where you just "buy opinions" augmented with political
| endorsements (= lobbyists ready to "fund the political campaign"
| of any politician, Republican or Democrat).
|
| That shows that good research teams with limited budgets can
| produce great output. Unfortunately everything is in French, so
| their audience is limited.
|
| As for the culprits we know WHO they are and WHERE they are. But
| like the war on illegal drugs against Mexican and Colombian
| cartels we should not forget that they would not exist without
| consumers. Consumers who are mostly in the US.
|
| We can target the polluters in Kazakhstan or anywhere else. The
| White House will issue a press release "condemning those
| irresponsible operators" and providing reassurance that "we will
| do everything we can to bring that activity to a complete stop".
|
| But we are consumers, and the US more specifically is a voracious
| consumer. We have built cities out of nowhere in places where the
| temperature is so high that you can't live without A/C. We have
| golf courses in the middle of the desert and ice hockey teams in
| places that have seen ice. Our gigantic houses, our culture
| around freedom (=individual cars and pathetic public
| transportation systems)
|
| Sure we drive a Bolt, a Tesla or a Prius in San Francisco. But it
| is our second, third or fourth car. The others are pickups or
| large SUVs to go skiing on weekends. Uber instead of public
| transportation, private jets for work or extended weekends,
| vacations with the family on the other side of the world at least
| 2-4 times/year. Ask our beloved Senator in California, Nancy
| Pelosi, who commands a military jet when she heads back home from
| DC for the weekend.
|
| I don't know what the solutions are. Shame the largest consumers?
| Shame and uncover politicians who condemn the pratices? Heavy
| taxes on gas (very impopular)? Honestly I don't think I will
| witness any significant change in my lifetime.
|
| Note: gas in the US is petrol, not natural gas.
| parenthesis wrote:
| It's like valgrind for the real world.
| flerchin wrote:
| If we just charge them for the pollution, they'll fix it. The
| cost of fixing their equipment will actually save them money, but
| they won't fix it right now because they don't have the
| activation energy. This is easy, let's do it.
| usgroup wrote:
| I think a satellite product able to detect methane at a sub km
| resolution, layered by data products able to add meta such as the
| business it is related to, or show timeseries of emissions, would
| be splendid.
| Gadiguibou wrote:
| Turns out this exists! The company I worked at last summer,
| GHGSAT [1], focuses exactly on this.
|
| They have a fleet of satellites and aircraft taking high-
| resolution (1-25m ground resolution) pictures of critical
| infrastructure on demand that allow oil and gas companies and
| landfills, notably, to identify those leaks and either patch
| them to recover the methane or torch the methane, greatly
| reducing the impact of the leak.
|
| The figures mentioned in the original article are very much
| what we observed as well. It wasn't all that uncommon to see
| leaks releasing 12 tons of methane per hour be left unpatched
| for *weeks*.
|
| Thanks to pressure from investors and to the additional revenue
| gained from identifying and patching those leaks, a lot of
| governments and the biggest oil companies have started paying
| for this service.
|
| [1]: https://www.ghgsat.com/en/
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Seems like the obvious first step would be requiring
| companies to buy emission certificates to cover those leaks.
| It'd very quickly become profitable to fix them.
| Gadiguibou wrote:
| I agree that we should have larger financial
| incentives/pressure on these companies, but I don't know
| how good of a solution it is to tax at the emitter like
| this considering how hard it is to track those leaks still.
|
| The size of the images taken from GHGSAT's satellites could
| never cover a whole region reliably and they still require
| a lot of processing to allow for the detection of smaller
| leaks. I think that would create a situation where
| companies would underreport those leaks and the government
| wouldn't have a reliable way to check if they did.
|
| I think it'd be much more efficient to tax consumers in
| general for the oil they purchase and "let the free market
| do its thing". The transition or rather, letting the
| polluters pay their fair share, needs to happen much
| quicker than what we're seeing today and half-assed
| measures aren't getting us there anytime soon.
| gefhfffh wrote:
| Totally wasted "carbon" budget ...
| formvoltron wrote:
| kmlx wrote:
| wait, you're advocating killing the executives of these
| companies because of methane leaks? or just bombing their
| homes? both feel completely disproportional, and completely
| divorced from reality. not only that, but i think this comment
| represents a crime in most jurisdictions across the planet.
|
| is advocating killing someone allowed on HN? what about droning
| their homes?
|
| @dang?
| aaron695 wrote:
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I want to understand strikes as people stopping to work.
|
| I hope.
| CPLNTN wrote:
| What are you talking about? It totally isn't, this generate
| profit! /s
| antocv wrote:
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I'm surprised we haven't seen it yet, it strikes me the
| environment is something people could become fanatical about.
| Bancakes wrote:
| >(in Minecraft)
| [deleted]
| spenrose wrote:
| Source paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.06387.pdf
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Is there an API/webpage available to access this satellite data?
| alexose wrote:
| The specific satellite referred to in the article is Sentinel
| 5P, and has a website here:
| https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/sentinel/missions/sentin...
| .
|
| Technically the methane product is a combination of data from
| Sentinel 5P and Sentinel 2. It's available via Google Earth
| Engine: https://developers.google.com/earth-
| engine/datasets/catalog/...
|
| The resolution is... less than I expected. The GHGSat-D
| satellite seems to have much better resolution, and has a nice
| public-facing map here: https://pulse.ghgsat.com/
| okl wrote:
| Kind of puzzling to me that this wasn't done earlier. Seems to be
| a low-hanging fruit, doesn't it?
| henearkr wrote:
| They needed the launch of specialized observation satellites,
| that doesn't sound like "low hanging" to me...
| okl wrote:
| Sure, but why didn't they come up with it 5-10-20 years ago?
| Technological reasons?
| baq wrote:
| need somebody with money. oil and gas companies are
| certainly interested in not paying for this.
| dannyz wrote:
| The short answer is yes. To characterize sources like this
| you need a very small pixel footprint size on the earth,
| which reduces the magnitude of the signal you actually
| observe, leading to higher technological requirements.
| mturmon wrote:
| It's a long road. I'll enlarge a bit on @dannyz's
| explanation you can see nearby.
|
| I happen to know one thread of work on the space-based CH4
| detection problem...here is one early publication, from
| 2011:
|
| https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/20
| 1...
|
| Not sure if the paper is behind a paywall for you, but you
| can see the xCH4 maps in Figs. 14 and following, on a 30km
| (1/3 degreee) grid. xCH4 = total air-column concentration
| of CH4, integrated from ground to top-of-atmosphere. The
| first author of the above paper, who is remarkably
| talented, continues to work on this problem all these years
| later.
|
| The maps you see there average many years of measurements
| to decrease noise. The signal is there, but you have to
| average a lot of measurements to extract it, and then your
| resolution is not helpful for the "real-time-detection"
| (leak) problem (small spatial/temporal footprint =>
| averaging washes it out).
|
| The xCH4 signal is noisy partly because the CH4 is being
| measured spectroscopically, so you have to get a (bunch of)
| very fine slices of spectrum to see the CH4 absorption
| lines. There just aren't that many photons, and the
| detectors weren't that efficient. So yes, that's a
| technological/fabrication problem. Lots of people have
| worked to improve spectroscopic detectors over the
| meantime.
|
| Additionally, you have to disambiguate the CH4 signal from
| others that are much more impactful on spectra, like H2O
| vapor and CO2. You end up with a nonlinear inversion
| problem ("fiddle with the gas concentrations to optimize
| the fit of an atmospheric radiative transfer model to the
| observed spectrum"). This is a technical/modeling and
| algorithms problem, and again, lots of people have worked
| to improve models and methods, and on validation that they
| work.
|
| There has been a succession of instruments of higher
| capability launched to address this problem (OCO-2 by NASA,
| Tropomi by ESA as seen in OP). Usually you fly them in
| planes (https://avirisng.jpl.nasa.gov) and move them to
| space as they are shown to work.
|
| And also a succession of very impactful papers in PNAS,
| Science, and Nature that discuss advances. And there will
| be more.
| go_elmo wrote:
| Interesting ted talk [0], tl;dr fastest way to slow down global
| warming is exactly this
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/tlWuP7wESZw
| jacquesm wrote:
| That and reduction in cattle. (And the elephant in the room,
| that uncomfortable truth: consideration of the number of
| humans, which we sooner or later will have to address, even
| though that will be fraught with many ethics issues and is ripe
| for abuse).
| go_elmo wrote:
| amount of people is irrelevant. Amount of people wanting to
| live US standard is the problem. Order new shitty clothes 3x
| a week and other consumption bs? Costs 300x of an average
| person in the developping world
| joshspankit wrote:
| "Oil and gas companies lie about the environmental damage they
| are causing intentionally"
|
| I feel like I've been reading some version of this headline for
| decades. How have we not been measuring and keeping them
| accountable every step of the way (and doubling down every time
| they get caught)?
| arbitrage wrote:
| The regulating organisations were compromised & captured
| decades ago.
|
| Yes, all of them.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The oil operations in Russia and Turkmenistan are not what we
| usually mean by "the oil companies".
| papito wrote:
| You know that phrase, "small government"? A _lot_ of money is
| spent to convince the masses that if only we had small
| government, everything would be amazing. The opposite is true.
| "Small government" means a gutted system, with castrated
| agencies that cannot do proper investigation, enforcement, and
| prosecution.
|
| The new book, Flying Blind, described how the underfunded
| revolving door that is the FAA effectively gave up oversight
| responsibilities to a bunch of Jack Welch trained vulture
| capitalists, who made short work of an amazing company like
| Boeing, gave us the Max, killed hundreds of people, and walked
| away with massive bonuses.
|
| Those people - LOVE small government.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Because they do their worst pollution in countries that don't
| actually crack down on them.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In the last 50 years we got a lot better with the types of
| localized damage the average voter can see, like polluting
| rivers. For everything else the incentives for politicians (in
| democracies) don't align: there's no upside for them to fixing
| something nobody complains about, but lots of potential
| downsides (worse relations with affected companies which might
| affect future jobs or favors, potential damage to the industry
| compared to international competitors resulting in job losses,
| etc).
|
| Studies like this that widen the range of damage we can see are
| an obvious step in the right direction. When enough voters see
| the damage and care about it it can be regulated. It's far from
| guaranteed, but without visibility it's basically guaranteed
| not to be fixed.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| These companies only know the language of money.
|
| ICC can prosecute environmental destruction as a crime
| against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute. We just
| need to have a world class case against these companies for
| present and future damage against humanity. Make this so
| financially catastrophic that you will eventually see change.
|
| Methane acceleration of global warming is a palpable damage
| to the environment and humanity. These leaks are lack of duty
| of care.
| dewey wrote:
| > How have we not been measuring and keeping them accountable
| every step of the way
|
| The answer is: money
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| Most of the country hates any form of regulation.
| smm11 wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but I bet that human farts account for the
| majority of green house emissions. And if vegan, even more so.
| opensores wrote:
| about a month ago I stopped midway on a x country ski session,
| for a beer at a commercial venue. they had these natural gas
| flames in the outdoor seating area (very popular in the US).
| Nobody else was sitting there; it was a pretty windy and cold
| night/evening. I noticed a sound and smelled the distinct odor of
| city natural gas (a sulfur marker element added to the methane).
| There was a poorly functioning nozzle where the flame had been
| snuffed by the wind. This had probably been going on for hours if
| not almost the whole day. (I did manage to reignite the flame,
| but given that the nozzle wasn't functioning well and the windy
| conditions, who knows how long that fix lasted).
|
| I think key is that populations should be very aware of the
| problem that strong greenhouse gases cause. NG and petrolium
| poducers should be required to do a lot of monitoring, and get
| fined if they are ineffective at catching issues. Commercial
| venues such as above, should also be very aware of this.
| Basically, everyone should be aware.
| FpUser wrote:
| >But remember to reduce your personal carbon footprint! /s
|
| Same as taxes. It is us peasants who pay mostly.
| ekanes wrote:
| I'm pretty frustrated that we're societally focused on plastic
| straws and shopping bags when things like this or needless empty
| flights are happening
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29818050)
| qqqwerty wrote:
| You are being overly cynical. Single use plastics are a
| pollution problem. I spend many hours a year volunteering at
| beach cleanups to try and help keep these things out of the
| ocean. It is absolutely absurd that we use single use
| disposable items that will pollute the environment for
| thousands of years.
|
| I also work in the clean energy industry and have devoted my
| entire career trying to fight climate change. I fully support
| efforts to curb single use plastic, and I fully support efforts
| to fight climate change. There are over 8 billion people in
| this world, we have more than enough human capacity to try and
| tackle both problems at once. The limiting factor is government
| inaction. So if you would like to point fingers, I suggest you
| aim them towards the politicians that have allowed the Oil and
| Gas companies to continue to pollute for so long.
| strainer wrote:
| You are being blind. Those campaigns were fig leafs from the
| outset and if you are interesting in real action on shutting
| down single use plastic economy, you should know better than
| to wag your finger at those who complain about how ridiculous
| focus on carrier bags and tooth picks has been. Those
| campaigns only antagonise some consumers against the general
| concept, and gave others a false sense of inclusion and
| progress. They could never have achieved any _practical_
| impact on the single use plastic economy and this is why they
| got singled out for attention. Since the 90s a great social
| fuss has been raised over whether feather-light plastic
| carrier bags are used to help carry a shopping load (and
| eventually bin the remains). While since then, essentially
| everyone has rather been forced to continue to buy products
| which include ever increasing amounts of plastic packaging,
| amounts which utterly dwarf a couple of bags or straws or
| toothpicks or whatever the latest prescribed moral obsession
| is supposed to be. Ever increasingly, small portions of food
| are sold in thick plastic packets, every individual snack
| /bar is contained in plastic, and every pack of bars in
| another layer. It is even increasingly rare and difficult to
| source tea bags, tissues, and surprising products like
| toothpaste without plastics manufactured into them. The
| dissolution of the un-compostable and practically un-
| recyclable plastics economy, can not wait until everyone
| agrees to dutifully avoid the latest convenience item where
| 'effort' is systematically focused. Every little counts ->
| LITTLE. And that is what the wider industry counts on when it
| comes to these campaigns. They are nonsense obsessions
| promoted to waste attention. I spent last year cleaning up a
| beach too btw - fishing and shipping garbage overwhelmingly.
| ekanes wrote:
| All totally fair. But I guess what bothers me is the feeling
| we're playing at Environmental Theater, just like at the
| airport we play at Security Theater.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater
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