Environmental concerns

[mtbc]

The more I learn about the Paris Agreement the more inadequate it seems. My impression is that we could do a lot more to boost renewable energy generation, both in means and adoption, and to reduce our carbon footprint, than we already do, and that's without having to live in caves and yurts and raise chickens and entertain ourselves by playing charades and chess. The obstacles at this point look to be more political than technological. I wonder if civilizations really do tend to follow the invention of the steam engine and transistor with large-scale self-destruction as their potency exponentially outstrips their wisdom. We seem keen to maintain the status quo for the sake of shorter-term profit. Ironically, it seems to me that the development of the Internet should be more enabling of low emissions given improvements in low-power computing and online collaboration.

It almost makes me wish for Soviet-style central planning, whether it is about mass-producing solar panels and selling and exporting them tax- and tariff-free or putting far more effort into trying to build the ARC fusion reactor, sustainable space habitats, etc.: aggressively reducing our dependence on both fossil fuels and the Earth itself, maybe even aiming to someday spread humanity out among the stars (long round-trip time doesn't mean one-way travelers can't benefit from time dilation).

Domestically, I have been quite disappointed both in the Conservatives' austerity plans hitting renewables so hard and in the lack of outcry about that. Indeed, the government seem positively regressive: for example, I pay a carbon tax for the wholly renewable electricity that I buy for our home (even some of our gas is renewable) and a fracking project for shale gas has just been approved. Industry might fuss and lobby about the enormous costs that would arise from heavily taxing environmental externalities but my sense is that it is already too late for half-measures and that the overall economic costs of large change in policy would transpire to be nowhere near as great as present entrenched interests predict. But, I am not holding my breath for society choosing to do more than a token fraction of what's required: history will judge us poorly.

Update: The Conservatives' environmental policy may well pale in comparison with that of the new Trump administration. What a disaster.

Comments

[damerell]

ETA: The good news is that history won't judge us badly because no-one will be alive to do it, hooray?

Well, the Tories have two problems here. Obviously any political party is crippled by short-termism - we need something akin to WW2 levels of austerity and without a disaster akin to Nazi Germany waiting to arrive in the next 5 years it's impossible for them to do anything. [1]

But the Tories are additionally set back by their decision post-Brexit to solve their UKIP defection problem by adopting the bits of the UKIP platform that aren't overtly racist; most of May's recent rhetoric has been along these lines. That necessarily includes climate change denialism until the point London is under water.

[1] I don't accept the argument that we can't do anything because the USA etc etc; we can clearly make unilateral statements that if the USA does X so will we, offering a half-signed treaty to agree to do X, and encourage other countries to do so.

[mtbc]

Inasmuch as the Tories may remain the party of big business I suppose that there is probably commercial lobbying against environment regulation and taxing too, if there's enough similarity for there being any validity in drawing an analogy with the more Trump-ian and Ryan-ian Republicans.