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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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I chose that one because of the low threshold for getting a relative idea of carbon footprint. Getting a clear idea is much more involved and I felt it would keep most people from checking. It's also the reason I mentioned there are a lot out there.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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I see the "per capita" as dissolutionary.
I mean if a country has an airport, like India, every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets charged for the Aviation's footprint. Even if Tom, Dick, or Harry never even has been to an airport.
And who should be considered for all the cargo ships lining our docks? The consumers? Or The Dealers?
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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dissolutionary?
If you bought it you have everything to do with it.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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^^^ again dissolutionary!
are you trying to hold me responsible for all that it took to put that 'miracle' drug in my doctors hands? How could i ever be aware of whatever means it took to harvest whatever it is in that little pill, or what torture/death another species had to endure so that i might be healed? Your sayin i own that? i don't know how you think i am to be that aware? If in fact that pill a day does keep my heart goin and saves my life. Say years down the road its build up in my brain and causes me to forget who i am.
should i own that too?
maybe i'm really arguing over "Liability"?
i really don't see how a consumer should be held responsible for what he purchases off the shelf, or any detriment it may cause when used under instruction..
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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In this 19 min TED Talk, Bhutan's Prime Minister, Tshering Tobgay, explains how he plans to keep his country Carbon negative...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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The battery problem could (?help me Ed Hartouni) be addressed by using hydrogen for energy storage once the boom factor is figured out. We can do this right?
Not an expert in these technologies, but all technologies have to be judged not just on their carbon emissions, but on the totality of carbon emissions used in the life cycle of the technology.
When you do that the margins become a lot thinner. Mining is energy intensive, rock has to be brought to the surface. Ore has to be processed, and then shipped to manufacturers that fabricate the products.
The net carbon footprint of any proposed mitigating technology is the important thing to look at...
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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I don't know about that. You could fly a lot of miles before you would equal the impact of having kids.
AH! That's the solution! We all have no kids, and only humans become extinct, so we don't need to worry about our progeny or the earth.
John
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patrick compton
Trad climber
van
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Any Murican that breeds is reproducing themselves, so of course the carbon footprint is bigger. I laugh at Priuses with children in the backseat.
However, if only climate change deniers keep breeding then, then there will only be stupid, inbred Trump voters aka Idiocracy.
so, load up your Sprinter with cheap fuel and burn baby burn. Enjoy the fun while it lasts.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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a carbon tax which is international in scope
the cost of dumping CO₂ into the atmosphere can be estimated (with provisions for updating that estimate)
a tax is set based on that cost
the tax is then used to mitigate the effect of CO₂ exhaust.
Part of the revenue would be used to fund the various international studies and monitoring, part to national entities to promote R&D in reduced emission energy technologies (including conservation), localities would also be involved as regional response to decreasing emissions would be eligible for funding from the revenue (e.g. rapid transit, urban/suburban planning, increased tele-commuting, etc).
A tax credit might be available for negative emission activities, those that take CO₂ out of the atmosphere (Dyson's favorite "tree planting" mitigation).
You are free to continue to choose to do whatever you do, you will pay an increased amount for those things that dump more CO₂ into the atmosphere than other things.
The taxes are assessed on the annual release of CO₂ into the atmosphere from nations, who might also base their tax assessment on regional (state) release estimates (including negative emission).
the costs now range from about $40/ton to $220/ton...
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/january/emissions-social-costs-011215.html
taking data from the World Bank
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.ADJ.NNTY.PC.CD
for both the per capita emissions and the net national income we find that at the $40/ton the additional annual tax represents 2.5% of the net income... at the larger number this is 13.8% for the US the smaller number is 2% and the large 9% if you could save a chunk of that 9% by altering your behavior by your own choice you might put a big dent in the emission CO₂ into the atmosphere
The top 10 ranked taxed countries are:
Trinidad and Tobago
Oman
Uzbekistan
Equatorial Guinea
Mongolia
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
South Africa
Iran, Islamic Rep.
Vietnam
which have a mix of interesting issues related to the "fairness" of the tax which would have to be negotiated.
The top 10 ranked emitters per capita:
Qatar
Trinidad and Tobago
Kuwait
Brunei Darussalam
Aruba
Luxembourg
United Arab Emirates
Oman
Saudi Arabia
Bahrain
(US is number 11th, China is 47th, India is 117th)
devising a "fair" tax plan that would achieve the desired outcome (reduced CO₂ into the atmosphere) is an interesting exercise... maybe JE could opine...
the top ten revenue sources based on these taxes are:
China
United States
India
Russian Federation
Japan
Germany
Iran, Islamic Rep.
Korea, Rep.
Indonesia
Saudi Arabia
the total dollars are staggering, but reflect the central role that energy production plays in human society as well as the essential role the atmosphere plays in the Earth's environment.
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AE
climber
Boulder, CO
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Mixed feelings about this incredibly complex issue being debated here, where polarized mindsets meet-and-greet over sundry topics perhaps 1% actually have any grounded expertise with. (Mr. Sumner, I believe claiming Wasilla excludes you from any scientific validation, but that's just MHO.)
I will reinforce a couple points previously made tho'. One, the world's population was 3.5 billion when I climbed the Nose in 1976; it's 7 billion now. Conservation may be nice, but clearly one cannot 'conserve' enough to merely make room for twice as many people every 40 years. Population is the core problem, period. I think of global economic systems as a sort of Pyramid scheme, wherein the richest fraction depends on the resources produced by the rest, from cheap minerals to cheap food to cheap labor for finished goods, etc. The poorest and fastest growing areas force millions into the marginal areas where effects of global warming impact them most, like low coastal or river areas subject to floods, or arid areas where droughts decimate crops and so on.
Misguided politicization of scientific aspects has stalled focus on the only viable solution for a non-impactful energy source, ie nuclear fusion; all other 'solutions' are at best temporary tactics, from vegetarian/vegan ideals to wind or solar dependent of the highest level of modern technology, etc.
ZPG or zero population growth was briefly the most high-profile 'Green' movement in the 60's/70's; so WTF happened? Boomers aged, decided to work, and have six kids? There is no single action you or I individually can take with greater positive future impact, than not having kids. Failing that, simply pledging a one-year moratorium, reconsidering every year, will at least postpone your personal contribution to the world's growth. We are the only species self-aware enough to decide how to limit ourselves, and yet clearly we are not intelligent enough to accomplish this. We don't yet know exactly what the punchline's gonna be, but we know already the final joke's on us.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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When I first started studying the issue, trying to determine a fair tax for greenhouse gas emissions seemed impossible because efforts to measure the marginal cost of those emissions were so imprecise as to render them useless. That has changed markedly over the last 15 years, to the point where, as Ed suggests, we can measure the cost of those emissions - and even the likely marginal cost of their reduction - to the point where we can make some useful conclusions.
By way of background, greenhous gas emissions form a specific case of an economic externality. An externality is either a cost or benefit from a particular trnasaction that is not borne by the market participants in that transaction. In this case, emission of greenhouse gases is free to the emitter, but has a cost borne by society at large.
The classical economic cure for externalities with known marginal costs or benefits, is to tax the transactions (if the externality is a cost) at the marginal cost of the externality. That way, the price signals to the market participants match the cost to society as a whole.
This approach has a long and successful history. The first example with which I became familiar was in the Ruhr basin. The Ruhr had become so polluted it killed the fish. The affected governments enacted effluent charges (e.g. pollution emission taxes) that they set at a high enough rate to make sure any pollution emitted was too little to kill the fish. It worked, and has a huge advantage over its alternative of governmental regulation in minute detail. Under the tax/charge regime, the people deciding what to do are those who bear the cost of their actions, and who probably have the greatest knowledge of the details of their operations. Under minute regulation, we leave the decision to bureaucrats who lack the detailed knowledge of means and costs, and who don't bear the costs of their decisions.
A carbon or similar "tax" really does not function as a true tax, but as a user fee. Unless the user (in the this case the emitter of the greenhouse gas) bears the marginal cost of that action, the tax won't function properly. How you spend the money it generates, and what taxes you reduce to make the tax revenue-neutral, are political and macroeconomic questions that are really outside the scope of this discussion. The important thing is that the charge for emitting a greenhouse gas needs to equal the marginal cost of doing so. As long as this happens, you will get the optimal amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
John
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Population is the core problem, period.
Yup. Solid post, AE.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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The greatest shortcoming of the human race is an inability to understand the exponential function
Great Challenge:
"Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"
Albert Allen Bartlett
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Population is the core problem, period.
i would just say, the core problem as being the unequilibrium of co2's man has recently introduced to the atmosphere. ImO, the population growth since the 1800's has little to do with it. And has just about everything to do with the industrial revolution.
heck, we prolly could blame the industrial revolution for the population explosion, eh?
you saw the Bhutan vid. If earth were populated by only Bhutanian's, she could prolly handle 25-30 bil humans. Don't ya think? Atleast 10-20 anyway..
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Here's a novel that, at its base, is about overpopulation:
Laced into the thriller are some pretty grim numbers on our numbers.
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ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
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what a colossally stupid thread
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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TT posed the challenge;
"Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"
and DMT obliquely answered it:
"...no human population explosion, no you and me, either."
the answer to many disparate trends is that the human population has been expanding, rapidly, in this past century. What that brings along with it are people with attributes that span a much greater range of capabilities at the same time than had previously existed.
So one has to consider this time period rather unique... the "exponential growth of technology" is due to the exponential growth of the population... same things with economies, they grow because the population grows, and the energy market also.
The cessation of population growth will bring the world into a very different state, for instance, once everyone has everything they need what relevance does "supply and demand" have? What displaces the "market economy?"
My feeling is that the exponential growth of humans, which is not sustainable even if playing by Bhutanese rules, has been a major benefit to humans. And there will be very major changes as we limit to the "carrying capacity." And many possible challenges that could confront humans in the future may be insurmountable due to the limited capabilities of the then existing population.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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What displaces the "market economy?"
maybe what the Bhuntanese emperor was saying about "Value" would fulfill this regard?
business only "values" making more dollars! Therefor quality is questionable. The more we become a "throw away world" the less Value we'll be able to reconize.
edit; what kinda business besides monkey business that don't make money?
vvvvvv
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