I think you're right here, but what tends to get lost from those who stop at "Sounds like a problem for future taxpayers" is that those taxpayers might be them if they're young enough, but will certainly be their children and grandchildren and the other citizens of their country (and the Earth itself).
That’s an awful lot of long term thinking based on projections of future impacts that may never come true. Hard to pay attention to if you’re worried if you’re going to be solvent next quarter.
Right, which is why (and I think this would just naturally arrive via a filtering mechanism) this is such an insidious problem. It's going to happen, and it is happening, but humans aren't very good (not incapable) at such long-term thinking especially on a planetary scale. I live in Ohio, freak ice storms and power problems in Texas might as well be in Pakistan where they had that recent flooding (note I'm just using these as examples and not attributing them specifically to climate change although they may be related). As long as the mall is still open and I have a job it's like.. what climate change?
And then when you add in both reasonable and unreasonable disagreement, you just get stuck... and if the problem is real and is going to cause big problems, well you're really betting the farm that you'll be able to come up with a planetary level solution in short order or else you're just hopelessly stuck with whatever happens to you.
As I look at the situation what I see are a few scenarios:
1. It's not bad and there won't be any long term effects.
2. It's pretty bad but the long term effects won't be that bad.
3. It's very bad and the long term effects will be quite bad.
4. (some combination including small/medium impact, etc.).
The thing is that it doesn't really cost much to address 1. and 2. and we get some nice benefits anyway like lower levels of pollution, maintenance of resources like fisheries or forests or whatever. But if it's 3. and we don't do anything we are mega fucked or we will need a very lucky and well-timed solution. Elon said something to the effect of "let's not find out if we get lucky or find a solution" and to that I wholeheartedly agree.
The most likely scenario is one you’re not considering because you’re a pessimist: It’s very bad and the effects won’t be that bad because people will come up with solutions you can’t predict.
Like when we were supposed to run out of Europium, or the population was supposed to exceed the food supply, or any number of doomsday scenarios.
I’m not saying the climate/resource predictions aren’t true based on what we know, I’m saying they aren’t true based on what we don’t yet know.
It’s certainly possible you’re right, but you’re not giving any attention to the possibility that you’re wrong.
Eh I’m not really a pessimist so let’s go ahead and dismiss that.
What you’re saying here is that the most likely scenario is that we’ll have global climate change but the effects won’t be that bad because we’ll invent technology to address those effects.
Sure that’s certainly possible.
What I don’t understand is the desire to roll the dice that we will invent technology to mitigate the effects of climate change versus just not having climate change and thus not leaving to chance that we will create technology to mitigate these effects?
Certainly I think you’re overestimating that this is a pure technology problem to be solved versus a political and cultural problem of which technology is but just another actor on the stage.
You’re also discounting short and intermediate term instability which will lead to increased human suffering while we attempt to resolve political and cultural problems and invent new technology. How many future wars may be fought over resources because we said “eh someone will figure it out”? It’s a quasi-religious faith in technology as universal problem solver.
Alternatively we could just start working on the problem now and not explore a path that bets civilization for no real gain.
The reason you see the hesitation is because with current technology 'stopping climate change' will require massively disruptive measures, likely leading to rather extreme loss of life. Inventing something new seems a whole lot easier, and fits with the general human tendency to 'do more' to work ourselves out of a problem.
Every part of the worlds economy is currently dependent on fossil fuels. Global trade (aka China and the US's economy, and most others too), International and most Domestic Travel, National Energy Grids (including heating in cold countries and literally keeping the lights on for large swaths of the year), and every major Army, Navy, and Air Forces basic operations.
Some countries or regions in countries have made progress towards zero carbon on SOME of those fronts. NONE of them are not reliant on fossil fuels at least some part of the year for something critical. As in, people will die, sometimes a lot of people (10-100k+).
And that isn't counting things like nitrogen fertilizer production, which have knock on effects everywhere.
To 'stop' global warming, we'd need to stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere essentially now, and start pulling CO2 out, correct?
So:
1) That currently is impossible for anyone to do without people dying.
2) It's likely to be a decade or more before the earliest adopters and wealthiest countries could get there (not counting Military, which is likely even longer - 50+ unless there is a major war first).
3) The BRICs on the list are relatively poor, and don't have as much ability to capitalize such a change. Most of the other countries struggle to keep their lights on as-is, with cheap oil. They aren't going to be able to capitalize converting their entire grid to solar, they can't even capitalize their current grid!
So, we essentially have two choices if we want to actually stop it now:
1) Figure out a way to fix our current situation, knowing that the majority of the worlds population isn't going to change what they are doing in time.
2) Go to war, and destroy anyone who won't stop doing what they're doing that causes CO2 release (and other GHG).
Which #2 would currently require even MORE expenditure of CO2 with current technology, assuming it's even winnable. China is a nuclear power after all, and the #1 global CO2 emitter (and one of the largest beneficiaries of global trade, which largely don't count in that number).
That's also of course putting aside ethical concerns about 'killing them to save them', and pre-emptive war to stop a problem that so far people are only feeling the barest twinge of issues from.
My gut feeling for what is going to happen is a lot of hand wringing, a lot of natural disasters that steadily build up pressure to actually do something, and a gradual transition and mitigation at great expense over a century+. This will likely completely screw the poor countries, and moderately screw the wealthy ones.
I think the issue boils down to known and controllable disruption (i.e. you are an active participant) or unknown and uncontrollable disruption in which you just receive whatever happens as it happens. The problem is nobody will vote for controllable disruption and many will actually vote to accelerate and grow the problem so we're stuck rolling the dice. Examples of this are things like municipalities, or counties, or states (in the US) banning construction of new wind turbines in their county (this happened in Ohio recently) and then funneling government money into subsidizing fracking or oil and gas production.
We're going to get these wars anyway because countries with a military will just start conflicts over resources and where nations break down many will just resort to anarchy and suffering there. We're already seeing this with Russia invading Ukraine where there are fascist goals but also geographic goals with control the fertile Donbas region and then also the subsequent usage of gas as a weapon against Europe. This is just the beginning.
It's hard to see how technology will solve this problem because it's a political and social problem and not a technology problem. No amount of carbon capture technology can build solar power in India while they're at war with China over water from the Himalayas ya know? No amount of technology can stop (at this time) Republican governments from banning EV installations or using government money to incentivize oil and gas industry development for donors.
Wars over resources are far different than a ‘war on global warming’, which is what I was referring to.
The technology would have to be similarly transformative as nitrogen fertilizer was - which is what avoided the whole Malthusian population trap in the first place.
We don’t know what we don’t know there, frankly, so hard to say if it exists or not.
Co2 capture and most GHG emissions though have a serious thermodynamic challenge which says ‘not easily’. Once the clock spring is unwound, it’s really hard to wind it back again.
That's like saying if I go and paint my house in leopard stripe paint that since my mortgage isn't going up the only cost to my net worth was the cost of the paint + labor.
If it doesn’t stop you from doing it and no one involved (including you) ever does any analysis resulting in a change in behavior - you’re basically correct, economically.
