Less a Climate Warning, More a Prediction
June 6, 2023 7:07 PM Subscribe
A ProPublica piece that looks at an article from Nature Sustainability Quantifying the human cost of global warming that dares to ask what if the human cost was the lens that we used to evaluate climate change impacts?
It's really only governments who could make meaningful change, due to Jevons' paradox, markets, etc.
Yes, the article mentions how developed nations emit more per capita, but that's "personal responsibility" for our political priorities, who we elect, where we invest, etc, not the lifestyle story promoted by oil companies.
It's subtle even without oil company bullshit: GWP cannot decouple form energy usage. Energy usage could decouple from carbon emissions, but only under massive economic contraction. We typically argue people's lives should be improved in less energetic ways to enable some voluntary or democratic transition, which makes sense.
At the same time, we've many activists like Jason Hickel who run off the rails here, by arguing that developing nations could still increase their emissions some, if developed nations reduce even more. We've no idea what's actually possible politically here, but international fairness sounds like a counter productive tactic. It's increasingly physically unrealistic too:
- IPCC says 1.5°C demands rapid deep emissions cuts from All economic sectors across ALL global regions
- Developing countries are responsible for 63% of current carbon emissions
- China emissions exceed all developed nations combined (historical)
- India cracks down on critics of coal
It's true emissions were outsourced by developed nations, but once infrastructure exists somewhere then it'd typically continue being used there, even if its original consumer stops buying.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:56 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yes, the article mentions how developed nations emit more per capita, but that's "personal responsibility" for our political priorities, who we elect, where we invest, etc, not the lifestyle story promoted by oil companies.
It's subtle even without oil company bullshit: GWP cannot decouple form energy usage. Energy usage could decouple from carbon emissions, but only under massive economic contraction. We typically argue people's lives should be improved in less energetic ways to enable some voluntary or democratic transition, which makes sense.
At the same time, we've many activists like Jason Hickel who run off the rails here, by arguing that developing nations could still increase their emissions some, if developed nations reduce even more. We've no idea what's actually possible politically here, but international fairness sounds like a counter productive tactic. It's increasingly physically unrealistic too:
- IPCC says 1.5°C demands rapid deep emissions cuts from All economic sectors across ALL global regions
- Developing countries are responsible for 63% of current carbon emissions
- China emissions exceed all developed nations combined (historical)
- India cracks down on critics of coal
It's true emissions were outsourced by developed nations, but once infrastructure exists somewhere then it'd typically continue being used there, even if its original consumer stops buying.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:56 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's a good article and has points worth thinking about. I do think it tips really sharply, maybe unintentionally, toward language that insinuates that personal responsibility is going to alleviate climate change when it's really sharp and drastic governmental intervention in the carbon markets that are the only way we will legitimately cut emissions enough to solve anything.
I think there's an important distinction between our individual responsibility as part of political collectives and our individual responsibility as consumers. It is the latter which was created as PR trickery, not the former. So I feel accountable as part of the political collectives of the UK, The Netherlands, Western Alliance System, and the Global Core in turn - not all of which are coherent political entities I got to vote for directly of course and I feel that is the nexus of personal action. I bear a share of responsibility for how our global system works, even if I personally do not use disposable plastic bags. We should all act politically and collectively through whatever means for action is locally appropriate, in my case that is principally through party politics as a voter, letter writer, and party member. For some people that is through trade union membership and collective action. I also have a pretty senior energy related job so I do actually have material personal agency - but again, not as a consumer! Compelling a board vote to adopt a particular emissions reductions goal is a much more effective method of action for me than turning my home thermostat down a degree. [for the record I do that as well though]
I also think that it's important we keep a clear head in terms of accounting for the benefit of emissions. We should align our view of where emissions are assigned with where the benefits fall - that means on people and groups of people. Unlike Mitt Romney, I don't think corporations are people. Shareholders are people and returns to capital benefit them but saying that "BP" or "PetroBras" is responsible for a unit of emissions is like saying that Baal is responsible for it - it might be a useful organising principle for society to regulate certain things at the level of the "corporation" but morally it's a nullity, they're just little paper vessels for things to flow through.
Governments are the same. It makes sense to use government (and corporations!) as organising tools for reducing carbon, we certainly used them pretty extensively for building our existing energy system. What we shouldn't do is start thinking that because "the government" is the tool we collectively should use to do X, "the government" therefore has some existence that is separate from us collectively.
It also means that when we recognise that China emits a lot to produce goodies for the whole world and Qatar emits a lot to liquefy gas to ship to China (to make those goodies!) and to Europe, that doesn't mean that the dastardly Chinese and Qataris are Doing Us Dirty.
When I heat my house with Qatari LNG, only the CO2 emitted by my boiler gets counted by conventional territorial attribution, all the energy to liquefy and move it sits with Qatar or with the international shipping category.
That's like saying that Jeff Bezos' pilot is a high emitter. I mean yeah, but also: no.
- Developing countries are responsible for 63% of current carbon emissions
Well, sort of. I know there are official definitions of these things but putting China and Uruguay in the same category of "developing" as Mali is perhaps slightly too reductive.
To go back to my point above, I think when we're attributing responsibility we need to think of benefit. Since the link between economic output and energy is so tight it it logically more or less impossible to be both poor and responsible in a moral sense for a large amount of emissions - if you're poor then definitionally you're not benefitting from a lot of economic output.
At the same time, we've many activists like Jason Hickel who run off the rails here, by arguing that developing nations could still increase their emissions some, if developed nations reduce even more.
Isn't this inherent in the original Paris goals of "net zero" by 2050 for wealthy countries, 2060 for middle income countries, and 2070 for the least developed countries?
posted by atrazine at 9:45 AM on June 7, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think there's an important distinction between our individual responsibility as part of political collectives and our individual responsibility as consumers. It is the latter which was created as PR trickery, not the former. So I feel accountable as part of the political collectives of the UK, The Netherlands, Western Alliance System, and the Global Core in turn - not all of which are coherent political entities I got to vote for directly of course and I feel that is the nexus of personal action. I bear a share of responsibility for how our global system works, even if I personally do not use disposable plastic bags. We should all act politically and collectively through whatever means for action is locally appropriate, in my case that is principally through party politics as a voter, letter writer, and party member. For some people that is through trade union membership and collective action. I also have a pretty senior energy related job so I do actually have material personal agency - but again, not as a consumer! Compelling a board vote to adopt a particular emissions reductions goal is a much more effective method of action for me than turning my home thermostat down a degree. [for the record I do that as well though]
I also think that it's important we keep a clear head in terms of accounting for the benefit of emissions. We should align our view of where emissions are assigned with where the benefits fall - that means on people and groups of people. Unlike Mitt Romney, I don't think corporations are people. Shareholders are people and returns to capital benefit them but saying that "BP" or "PetroBras" is responsible for a unit of emissions is like saying that Baal is responsible for it - it might be a useful organising principle for society to regulate certain things at the level of the "corporation" but morally it's a nullity, they're just little paper vessels for things to flow through.
Governments are the same. It makes sense to use government (and corporations!) as organising tools for reducing carbon, we certainly used them pretty extensively for building our existing energy system. What we shouldn't do is start thinking that because "the government" is the tool we collectively should use to do X, "the government" therefore has some existence that is separate from us collectively.
It also means that when we recognise that China emits a lot to produce goodies for the whole world and Qatar emits a lot to liquefy gas to ship to China (to make those goodies!) and to Europe, that doesn't mean that the dastardly Chinese and Qataris are Doing Us Dirty.
When I heat my house with Qatari LNG, only the CO2 emitted by my boiler gets counted by conventional territorial attribution, all the energy to liquefy and move it sits with Qatar or with the international shipping category.
That's like saying that Jeff Bezos' pilot is a high emitter. I mean yeah, but also: no.
- Developing countries are responsible for 63% of current carbon emissions
Well, sort of. I know there are official definitions of these things but putting China and Uruguay in the same category of "developing" as Mali is perhaps slightly too reductive.
To go back to my point above, I think when we're attributing responsibility we need to think of benefit. Since the link between economic output and energy is so tight it it logically more or less impossible to be both poor and responsible in a moral sense for a large amount of emissions - if you're poor then definitionally you're not benefitting from a lot of economic output.
At the same time, we've many activists like Jason Hickel who run off the rails here, by arguing that developing nations could still increase their emissions some, if developed nations reduce even more.
Isn't this inherent in the original Paris goals of "net zero" by 2050 for wealthy countries, 2060 for middle income countries, and 2070 for the least developed countries?
posted by atrazine at 9:45 AM on June 7, 2023 [7 favorites]
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posted by eustatic at 1:51 AM on June 7, 2023