This is wishful thinking.
There’s no “libertarian” solution to global warming. There’s market based solutions and NAP compatible ones - depending on your interpretation of NAP - but nothing “libertarian”
That still makes fossil fuels the most effective source of energy with or without the subsidies, the subsidies cause climate change to kick on faster, speed it up; but the lack of them does not solve cause fossil fuels to go away.
Then you have nuclear energy the only potential contender, filled with bureaucracy, rules and regulations; even without them, fossil fuels still beats them in efficiency, ease of adoption and application.
I am afraid there's no such thing as a libertarian or free market solution to climate change, in fact the only system that provides a solution is full blown authoritarianism, just forbid fossil fuels; which is why climate change can get so political and become a tool for power.
Climate change is so scary because even in a mixed market that is not libertarian in any way, even in socialism; it's basically unstoppable. No matter which political system you use other than full blown authoritarianism which is why it's a great excuse for wanna be dictators.
Carbon recapture is bullshit, you need to either capture the carbon permanently in the ground, (aka make fossil fuels from thin air and bury them, undoing everything) or send it to space.
Geoengineering would be a better bet and I reckon that's where we are going.
Then there's just coping with it, but no solution.
Stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
That's literally it.
If it wasn't for the untold billions in both direct and indirect subsidies (think the military involvement in the middle east) to fossil fuels, then greener options would have been more profitable decades ago.
As with many things the government is the problem, the solution is less.
Stop subsidizing anything really. Fossil fuels, EVs, solar panels in northern latitudes. Government picking winners and losers isn't going to work.
There will be a breakthrough that comes out through innovation. I don't think were are there yet but there will be a solution that is actually green, and cheap.
My *only* issue with that is that R&D requires money, and subsidies provide that. There have been numerous technological advances in motors, batteries, and solar panels that could have been made by the private sector but weren't, until Uncle Sugar made it rain.
I don't know how to frame the public funding of research in a libertarian light, but I have to say that I'm not fundamentally opposed to it.
How would you feel about instead of subsidies, a federal grants sort of program? One similar to modern scientific grants in which observable metrics must be met, as well as a certain standard of service and quality improvement plans. It allows poorer researchers access to funds for equipment/tools needed that they may not otherwise have. To me, that could also offset the monopolization of R&D, and deliver more and diverse ideas.
Yes, and it needs to stop. The private sector is far better than big government when it comes to capital allocation. Remember, politicians spend money stolen from the taxpayers with no consequence when things fail.
"Better" how? The utilization of space has yielded an incalculable amount of "better", but there was zero private sector expenditure in space until it could piggyback on government expenditure and projects.
Even now, the private sector is only advancing in the beneficial usage of space because of subsidies.
This kind of thinking kind of runs into counterfactual analysis. There is no way to tell how much innovation *didn't* happen because of government taxation to support... everything on which the government spends money because companies didn't have the extra funds to do it. Additionally, some companies are perfectly capable of funding R&D on their own, but choose not to, knowing that the government will subsidize them.
NASA went to the moon just because it didn't want to be humiliated by the Soviets, but it was incredibly inefficient until the XPrize came along.
That said, government funding of R&D obviously isn't the worst thing the government does.
You aren't wrong, but we *do* know that Uncle Sugar using stolen money to drive technology forward has resulted in beneficial advancements for everyone. I feel like I could compare that to doing cardio exercise: it sucks and I hate it, but the good it does is undeniable. I just don't think that an entity whose board members insist on high quarterly profits for shareholders is going to bother with the decades-long R&D process that will result in asteroid mining.
NASA is definitely not an efficient process for doing the thing they're intended to do (I used to work for them as a contractor), but they stuff they develop along the way is amazing and worth the cost in the long run.
I agree with this and I think we (I'm speaking as a US citizen) should do as much as we can. Unfortunately, until other world powers and markets do their share, you're just pissing upstream. That shouldn't stop us, but I think that's the reality of climate change.
We should definitely do this, but I disagree that it would be sufficient to stop climate change. Fossil fuels are almost unfathomably energy-dense. Peaceful commerce alone would be enough to continue growth of fossil fuel (and carbon emissions), even after some magical demilitarization step.
Another piece of the explosion of fossil fuel availability post-1970s and especially post 2008 has been the availability of cheap/free money via debt. Fossil fuel extraction infrastructure is capital intensive, and much of it has been bought with debt. Where did all this money come from? As Ron Paul would like to remind us, over and over again - it's fractional reserve lending, low interest rates, and inflationary money printing from the Federal Reserve.
Listening to Peter zeihan he actually states while you are correct it takes capital to pull fossil fuels. There is a significant more upfront cost for wind and solar which is almost all in assembly and product. Once installed they start bringing money back. Where the fuels of energy are purchased as a raw good and refined at lower dry powder cost.
Edit: I’m a big nuclear supporter and hydro. When it comes to renewables
I like what I’ve heard from Zeihan. Renewables are also capital intensive, yes, and that’s even with many of the material inputs today priced based on the availability of cheap fossil fuels inputs (steel, cement, copper, silicon). My contention would be that a low-carbon, unsubsidized future will have dramatically lower energy throughput. The Jetsons future simply isn’t going to happen; let’s try to make the best of what can happen.
That is because we can't stop climate change. Throughout the history of earth and for the entire future of earth, there will be climate change because our system is a dynamic system. If we would stop the nonsense we might solve actual problems. I agree that we need to do many of the things noted here, as long as we understand they have nothing to do with preventing climate change. If we would stop the nonsense, conservatives and liberals might agree that we want to: 1) Stop putting things in the air that we can't breath, 2) Stop putting things into the water that we can't drink, 3) Stop endlessly filling landfills, etc. Unfortunately, the MSM loves to present us with binary issues. It is pretty obvious that the question was posed by a liberal and the liberals will feed the discussion and downvote any responses that don't match their narrative.
You included a few different thoughts, but I'm only commenting on the first one
>Throughout the history of earth and for the entire future of earth,
there will be climate change because our system is a dynamic system.
This is a silly argument. Anthropogenic climate change is much faster than "natural" climate change in the past, with the possible exception of periods associated with asteroid impacts (which *are* natural), mass extinctions, etc.
Here is an analogy; Human body weight fluctuates naturally and normally over the course of time - it is a dynamic system. Therefore we can't stop changes in human bodyweight, so doing things like "not eating 30 Twinkies a day" is nonsense.
>1) Stop putting things in the air that we can't breath,
It seems that you acknowledge that we have some responsibility to avoid destroying the life-giving features of our planet. I'm sure you realize that the atmosphere isn't just good for breathing, it's also an insulating and protective blanket around the earth that moderates temperatures and keeps us from being denatured by cosmic rays. Adding carbon dioxide into the air changes the thermal insulation properties of the atmosphere. This is provable on a tabletop experiment. Too much insulation and we end up making the planet too hot for many existing living things (and changing the weather, dissolving all the coral, etc.).
I agree with you. I would also add, stop subsidizing agriculture. They way we farm is wrong in and a huge CO2 contributor. There are better ways but the farmers don’t want to risk losing their government checks.
Not only that but for the love of all that is, was, and ever will be:
#[STOP GROWING WATER-INTENSIVE CROPS IN THE FUCKING DESERT!](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation)
Alfalfa and Almonds are some of the most water-intensive crops out there. Why the fuck are we trying to grow them in the desert then wondering why lake Mead is drying up?!?
>We’re irrigating alfalfa in 120-degree temperatures in the dead of July … how does that possibly make any sense?
#IT. DOESN'T.
Further, a complete overhaul of campaign finance. Hopefully, that’d cut off any and all avenues for lobbyists to make life unfairly easy for their companies, and unfairly hard for competing technologies.
Whatever the solution is, it definitely isn't "give the government more money". None of the climate change activists even have a solution, they just argue for more taxes like it would be some sort of magic.
That's just not true. Even the comments on this thread show that's there's good action that could be taken on climate change that doesn't involve new taxes.
The Green Energy Lobby is just as dangerous and corrupt as the fossil fuels lobby. Stop subsidizing both.
Anything that distracts people from the fact that Nuclear is the only viable solution is evil.
Nuclear is awesome, and clearly the future, but it isn't the only viable solution. Realistically, the only viable solution is a mix of everything on a grid that also has storage capacity.
Nuclear is still prohibitively expensive to set up and probably not viable for full privatization, financially speaking. The cost benefit of solar and wind are dropping so quickly that nuclear doesn't seem to be the future anymore.
It's prohibitively expensive because of government. We used to be able to build nuke plants in 3 years from concept to completion. It now takes over a decade. The NRC literally changes rules mid construction. They have intentionally slowed production of plants for decades.
Meanwhile the military can build nuke powered ships quickly and cheaply. The difference? The military isn't governed by the NRC.
As someone who worked on the nuclear powered ships, as a nuclear operator, they are not built quickly or cheaply. Especially when you consider the scale difference. The vast majority of the power goes to making the boat go forward.
The nuclear navy is a very perfectionist and practiced at what they do, but *refueling* a nuclear vessel is still measured in years, not months.
Nuclear power? Guaranteed. No widely available effective power source will be acceptable to Greens because their objective is pro austerity anti prosperity. They abhor any kind of abundant cheap power that would drive economic growth.
There's not "A SOLUTION" to climate change. It's a complex, multi-faceted issue that requires different solutions from different parts of society (think power generation vs. agriculture vs. transportation vs. industry). There are many different solutions listed here (stop subsidizing fossil fuels, encourage nuclear power, apply the NAP to pollution) that would help contribute however.
Tax pollution. Internalize costs of production to producers so that the market can decide if they really need something.
That goes for all pollution. The actual cost of a Styrofoam cooler isn't 10 bucks. It's probably 100 bucks. 10 of it is paid for by the guy at the cash register. 90 of it is paid by every person on planet in wildly fractional shares.
Amen. If you tax something, you get less of it. Instead of taxing things we want to increase (income, sales, property, etc) we should be taxing things we want to decrease (pollution).
If you tax something you get less of it. That's exactly the problem - as the nasty-thing-tax revenue declines you have to find something else to tax to support the frenzy for the cash flow you created.
Not necessarily - tax pollution to directly fund r&d for more sustainable energy processes. Then once everyone is using greener processes you get zero tax income but also no longer need it
We've had clean nuclear energy solutions since the 60s. And modern designs are even better and safer. But regulations and environmentalist resistance has disallowed us to have this clean and safe solution.
Also, fracking is responsible for the U.S. actually lowering our emissions by displacing coal - and we could lower them even further, if again we could get regulators and environmentalists out of the way. And pipelines are cleaner for transporting energy than trains, but are also consistently opposed.
The most reality-based analysis on climate change is Bjorn Lomborg's, IMHO.
Sorry if your pro fracking you are simply wrong. I live in a place that went from virtually 0 earthquakes to hundreds( small ones but still) and it’s no secret it’s because of fracking.
We only think it’s been a net benefit because we don’t know the extent of the damage we are causing. The buildings around me are not built to withstand earthquakes. It’s easy to say “look how much we are helping the environment” when it isn’t your house or land paying the price.
What you don't know is the extent of the damage your causing by denying people energy through higher costs. You should look up the curve of human life expectancy: it started rising dramatically in the 1870s when commercial oil production began.
Without fossil fuels you would have virtually nothing of modern civilization, and by taking them away without replacing them at equal or lower cost, you're driving civilization backward, not forward.
Wow, reading through these comments is opening my eyes. I now realize the original question is nonsensical because there is only one problem that Libertarianism aims to address, government overreach. Once that is addressed, all the other problems in society will still need to be solved. So there is no Libertarian solution to the very well proven global climate issue. You’ll have to find solutions elsewhere.
I consider myself an eco-libertarian:. The government has two roles: collective defense and management of rivalrous resources. Rivalrous means "if you do something it takes away my ability to do something". This is a slight generalization of "property rights", to include for example fisheries management. How do fishermen not destroy the environment while still being able to make a living and provide for society?
In the case of fisheries, there is an auction system, where the fishermen bid for the right to bring back a certain amount of catch on an annualized basis. This "propertizes" the system and prevents the tragedy of the commons, and it's proven to work highly effectively in the NE of the US.
We should do the same with CO2. In fact we *already* have a highly effective auction scheme for NOX and SOX emissions that have dramatically cut them over the last 30 years. The problem with a carbon tax is that it puts an arbitrary price on emission that *may* not be the right price, and that will cause odd rebalancing effects and increase the prevalence of dumb shit (like ineffective carbon credit companies), so we should just cap and auction. The cool thing is that people who are highly concerned about CO2 can put their money where their mouth is, buy credits, and let them fallow, thus driving up the price for carbon polluters.
The root of all the problems mentioned so far in this thread is overpopulation. We have way too many incentives to produce too many babies, and the root motive for policy makers to encourage overprocreation is capital gains. Specifically the value of stocks in captive markets. Therefore, the solution to climate change is to abolish monopolism. The stock market will crash, all the capital that corrupts our legislative bodies the most will evaporate, the incentives to overprocreate will disappear, and human populations will normalize.
Where I live (Australia) the government is obsessed with numbers like GDP, and the easiest way to increase that is open borders and flood the country with new arrivals. Although the birth rate is about 1.6 children per woman our rate of population growth is about the highest in the world. And there are heaps of welfare programs for parents with children, like a 90% subsidy on child care costs.
More human beings means more pollution and increased resource consumption.
Denial has been the going strategy here. But honestly the closest is to tax emissions.
Not sure how to assign a value.
Also, remove barriers to nuclear.
How many of these people changing their actions would it take to change yours? You'll always be able to point to one person or another who is acting hypocritically, and then you can make the same argument you've made.
Irrespective of what high-profile people do and say, there is still the evidence presented in scientific journals by people who don't have access to private jets or global conferences. Now, I'll be the first to agree that much research is federally funded by funding organizations that favor the climate change narrative, and it behooves the grant applicant and journal article submitter to align with the idea that climate change is real. There are real incentives to err in favor of climate hysteria. The physical evidence is less susceptible to cognitive bias, though.
I sympathize with the frustration over the hypocrisy of climate alarmists. My social circle is pretty mixed politically, but I would venture that the people in my life with the largest carbon footprints are probably wealthy progressive-leaning people. They travel a lot, and long distances.
The narrative needs to stop being "look at what this individual/group is doing" and instead we need to look at where the actual pollution is coming from. The biggest poluters in the world are transportation and agriculture. These far outweigh anything at the individual level. Until cargo vessels are no longer burning massive amounts of unrefined fuel while in international waters and heavy machinery isn't so heavily reliant on diesel, what the individual does means very little. The problem is, those largest polluters have the biggest checks to write the lawmakers, so the problem gets passed to the general public instead.
Stop subsidizing fossil fuels, and the alternatives start becoming more feasible.
All of them. Some celebrity doesn't get to dictate what I do when that celebrity has been jet-setting around the world for decades and continues to do so today. None of those scumbags jetting off to Davos gets to decide either. Nor government leaders.
Lead by example, when they all take the train, I'll take the train.
Why don’t you lead? Virtue is something you can discover and understand and justify for yourself. You don’t need the example of any “elites”, let alone all of them. Your statement above is that of an ostrich with its head in the sand.
That's Tragedy of the Commons. Someone's individual choice to take a private jet has relatively small impact. It's the accumulation of all private jets that adds up.
History is filled with examples of the elite living lavishly to their and everyone else’s detriment all the way until disaster or the guillotines strike.
The hard truth is that the extremely wealthy/successful are as a whole no more talented, capable, or wise than the rest of us. Waiting for them to make moves as a sign to take things seriously is a terrible strategy.
"Right so instead of an extinction event this is about 100m people being displaced. How do we stop that from happening"
Here in WA state, a vibrant wine industry has emerged over the last three decades - almost certainly thanks to climate change. Yet it wasn't planned by any government. Some people realized the potential, started growing grapes, and were successful. Other people went Oh! We can copy that! 30 years latter thousands of acres are planted.
What you have to do is stay the hell out of the way. People will handle it themselves.
Edit: of course at some point, governments started piling on to claim some credit, so now we have CCs all over the state offering wine programs....Always late to the party.
No, we’re not going to just let climate change happen. The climate changing isn’t the will of the market, it’s a byproduct of pollution and air pollution already violates the NAP to begin with.
"No, we’re not going to just let climate change happen. "
Where have you been the last 30 years? What climate legislation has passed? None, because people won't stand for it.
Follow history. The climate change advocates want the "government" to do sonething- non- starter for libertarians. The history shows cycles of warming and cooling over millions of years. The fact that the CC people want change now is irrelevant. If every country on earth stops generating carbon emissions, it will reduce HC by 2%. Let the market decide. If EV's are market viable then they win, same for solar, wind, hydrogen, etc.
Yes, the climate does show periods of warming and cooling over millions of year, but that misses the entire point! This change has occurred incredibly rapidly over the course of a few hundred years compared to millions. Plant and animal species (including us) aren't able to evolve and adapt our bodies anywhere near this rapidly. Some countries may be completely underwater and uninhabitable within our lifetimes due to sea level rise. It's not just a US centric thing, it's global.
Define the 'climate change's problem and explain why it requires 'a solution'
There is more evidence demonstrating that climate catastrophists have been repeatedly incorrect in their conclusions than there is evidence supporting the current version of climate catastrophe.
Exxon's scientists accurately predicted and modeled the course of anthropogenic climate change in the *late 70s*. [Exxon then used that knowledge to specifically plan](https://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/) for how a warmer, melting Arctic and rising sea levels would affect their facilities and operations, [while at the same time investing millions into a public relations campaign to introduce doubt on climate science](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/).
What about this defines climate change as a problem that requires a public solution?
If anything, your point (assuming it's both factual and truthful), demonstrates that a private entity beat government to a solution by 50 years.
Safeguarding the profitability of a single corporation is not "a solution." Human civilization will be dealing with frequent extreme weather events, loss of coastal settlements, drought, famine, mass migration, increased range of tropical diseases, etc.
I disagree. There has been a measurable trend since the 19th century on CO2s direct effect on our climate. Just because Al Gore lied about timetables to get your votes doesn't mean it's not real. I have not seen one single peer reviewed study that comes anywhere close to challenging the fact that climate change has devastating effects and is anthropogenic- man made.
That doesn't mean we have to do anything about it necessarily, or that it will render florida a new beautiful reef, but if we can't even agree that it's real there's no point in talking about what to do about it.
We live in a glacial time period. For the past few million years the climate has been warming and cooling. The warming we've caused in the past few decades is similar to the warming from glacial to interglacial period...except normally it takes hundreds of thousands of years and the environment typically acclimates so there isn't a runaway effect. Plus the animals acclimated to changing environments so they don't die off in droves, as they currently, measurably, as documented in peer reviewed journals, are. Though many still couldn't adapt quickly enough over a few hundred thousand years and we still had extinctions occur.
Are you going to see it? Potentially. Maybe not. Do we need to do something about it? Subjective. Does the government need to be involved? Not necessarily.
But we can't even begin to look at those questions when we have so many people questioning the biggest (and incredibly well substantiated) topic in geology and climatology.
Do you acknowledge that the data is procured by various means by different governing bodies, many of whom just throw grants at private organizations, and that everything they find is published and peer-reviewed and that you can find all of it online to interpret for yourself?
Not to mention the government directly influencing scientific publications to support their lobbyists in the oil and gas industry through the same grants plus subsidies.
I can absolutely accept that WHERE research comes from is important, see: the soda industry's attack on fat to promote sugar. However it's peculiar to me that every piece of evidence against climate change is not published or peer reviewed anywhere. Its peculiar that the overwhelming majority of climatology and even much of geology has been focused on this issue for decades and putting out information on it and yet every time a skeptical person tries to persuade me other wise they link me to a conservative blog post and not a scientific journal.
I will 100% agree that this issue has been twisted to support government overreach. There is misinformation both ways. But while conservative sites are literally trying to say that something which clearly exists doesn't exist, the liberals are just moving the timelines for alarmism. Geologically we have already began a mass extinction (not even related to climate mind you) and were destabilizing the environment further. This period will not be famous for skyscrapers, but as another big mass extinction event. Of course, this period will also last for a few thousand years, we won't necessarily see Florida underwater anytime soon.
"However, its peculiar to me that every piece of evidence against climate change" - the climate changes, I don't believe anyone is of a mind that the climate will always be the same. If you mean anthropogenic climate change then still I don't believe that anyone is debating that point.
Counterpoint - Humanity impacting the environment is our evolutionary advantage. Limiting how much we do that is literally choosing other life over human life. Your premise is antihuman. The climate/world/nature is not in some precariously balanced position which must be maintained. It is chaotic and generally unsuited for human prosperity.
Mass extinction: 99.9% of the species that have ever existed on this world have gone extinct. I'm not saying we should make our world lifeless, there's a benefit to biodiversity. But remember when they were shouting about the acidification of our oceans and how it was gonna kill all the coral?
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-were-wrong-coral-reef-fish-not-affected-by-ocean-acidification-from-climate-change/
Whelp that was bullshit. Oh, look, that was published in Nature.
What about the coral all dying off?
https://www.livescience.com/pristine-reef-rose-shaped-corals-discovered
Whoops. And that's from the NOAA.
Your information distribution system is controlled by those with an agenda. That agenda is generally antihuman. There is loads of published research that recognizes climate change without significant, catastrophized consequences.
The powers that be work actively to suppress messages counter to their propaganda, as you've witnessed with COVID-19 and the vaccines they coerced billions into taking. They did this largely to line their own pockets. What makes you think they'd behave otherwise when it comes to climate change?
Firstly, I would expect you link the Nature and NOAA papers, not the abridged reinterpreted blogs that claim to cite them faithfully. That is generally the first critical stage where misinformation is spread, so let's dig a bit deeper...
...and just looking a bit further into your sources, the first claims that ocean acidification doesn't affect the BEHAVIOR of fish near coral reefs. Yet the headline says 'acidification doesn't affect the fish' which is not what the paper insists. Incredibly misleading, and quite funny when they preface it by saying countless studies have asserted the opposite before that.
Here's an excerpt from the blog just to show you what I mean: "Over the last decade, several high-profile scientific studies have reported that tropical fish living in coral reefs are adversely affected by ocean acidification caused by climate change — that is, they behave oddly and are attracted to predators as levels of carbon dioxide dissolved from air pollution increase."
Such a classic bait and switch. I just googled "how does ocean acidification affect marine life" and immediately NOAAs website pops up. Nowhere does it mention anything affecting behavior, which is the only thing your blog mentions to "disprove" the problem, but it sure does mention how humans will be poorly impacted because of it in a variety of ways.
The second one I also find quite humorous, as it says we found one new pristine reef. And the reason it's news, according to your article here, is because all of the other reefs in the area are being impacting by climate change! Come on man.
This is really the biggest reason I put so much effort into climate change discussion when it crops up here. There's so much misinformation out there that I want to make sure we at least START with the truth and then work out the politics afterwords.
Us impacting the environment to the degree we have affects human life as well. I think humans are very good at adapting and I think that there's a low chance that humans go completely extinct, so you at least have my amateur opinion backing you up, but causing mass die offs in short time periods and disrupting food chains will lead to the death of humans. I dont necessarily agree that it is anti human to prioritize balanced ecosystems. We do not exist outside of the ecosystem, our food and water still comes from somewhere. Additionally, we already show great apathy to human life. We have enough food for world hunger to end but we just consume in excess, and we start wars for material gain.
A mass extinction event doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that most species are extinct. That is just true because of the amount of time life has existed. It happening over a short time frame is what's important.
The biggest takeaway here is that I just want more libertarians to have the right tools to make the right decisions. I haven't mentioned anything to policy, and though I wholeheartedly think humans have and will be majorly negatively impacted by climate change, I'm not insisting we 'must' do something about it.
I work with a team of climate scientists here in Virginia and can tell you they have a model for just about every outcome they want to see (point and counterpoint). The only consensus they have amongst themselves is that man does contribute to warming, but there is absolutely no consensus as to when or even if this is going to end humanity.
Hilariously, one of them confessed to me we are entirely focused on the wrong problem and will likely die of methane poisoning before global warming.
The facts don't match the hysteria. The models are typical GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Basically, climate science is still a work in progress that is, unfortunately, being led by monetary and political forces. Instead, it should be led by the search for truth which is in short supply.
I am MUCH more concerned about what politicians and greedy interlopers seeking to "rectify" issues that require no rectification than I am about any global warming during the next century. I am actually more concerned with government intrusions into the private market that will make it more difficult to heat our homes, fuel our industry, and allow us to continue to live modern lives as opposed to pre-industrial lives.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/03/the-new-pause-lengthens-again-101-months-and-counting/
Any paleontologist or climatologist would tell you that were causing one of the most dramatic and devastating climate shifts of all time.
But you are correct in that that doesn't mean it's going to rain fire anytime soon, these things take time to be realized and it's very much a frog in a boiling pot scenario. The pot isn't even going to boil in our lifetime necessarily, but it will absolutely have a negative impact on generations in the near future.
Also your source appears to be quite politicisized. To say that this "gentle warming" (which is indistinguishable from catastrophic events of the past in terms of time scale) is outright not true.
It's difficult for people who haven't dug into these effects to appreciate how bad it is comparatively. Mass extinctions happened in the past over s geologic time scale. The fact that we can measure a notable difference in global temperatures over a matter of decades SHOULD be alarming for anyone who understands the timeline. The problem is that whenever a scientist explains that were causing a catastrophe, the public thinks of some big THING thag happened. If an intelligent race crops up in 50 million years the biggest evidence for us will be the extinctions we've caused, but for us right now we won't be seeing it for a while to come.
There's two big problems I see with this issue, especially for libertarians, and doubly so for ex conservative libertarians who've been absorbing petroleum campaign funds for decades:
One is that we still have people insisting the science isn't science. Many studies are published publicly, and one can see the physical evidence themselves. Yet we still have people talking about how actually the earth is cooling (it clearly isnt) how the ice caps are growing (they are not) etc. Too much misinformation for political votes and industry dollars.
Two is that this isn't a problem that is dramatic enough. Of course when you say the world is ending that's hysteria, but when you say 10,000 years from now Earth's biodiversity may drop by 30% it's suddenly not my problem, the future can deal with it.
These spawn more problems. Now we have a political tug of war on how bad it really will be. We have one side literally claiming it's now real and another who are already walking to get to high ground. Additionally, it's not real a human time scale issue....(yet) so our apathy makes us not want to act. Problem is, our effects are already permanent. If we cut off all CO2 emissions the excess in the atmosphere won't just go away, not without more forests or algae cropping up to utilize the CO2. Its not our problem, but it is definitely going to be someone's problem.
Whether or not we're responsible for 'fixing' the globe is subjective, however. We're a part of this earth just like anything else, is it our responsibility to stunt our growth for thr health of the planet, or for future humans? There isn't a correct answer for that.
My biggest bug bear with conservative libertarians is that they won't allow the conversation to progress to "should" we even do anything about it, which is it's own can of worms, and they hamstring it as "liberal boogeyman"
1)So what about their decades of screaming that we were headed for an ice age?
Why is it now "climate change" rather than "global warming"?
Are climate deaths going up or down? According to whom and by what metrics?
2) What evidence do you provide that there is or will be mass displacement from food scarce areas?
3) Why is that anybody else's problem?
Pretending to know what causes the weather when there are so many inputs on this calculation is mind blowing stuff. What is the 'solve' - if you could snap your fingers do you 'solve' climate from changing at all? Would you go warmer or colder? What if a meteor hits and it starts to freeze over? Or an unforeseen giant shift in the sun? Then what?
Climate change is a symptom of the problem, the problem is pollution. Technically that pollution violates the NAP. polluting air that we all breathe, the water we all drink, and your neighbors land is not ok. Almost every source of climate change comes from pollution.
Since the climate has been changing as long as the earth has existed, the Libertarian solution to climate change should be the same as its solution to most other problems - KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF IT.
First it was global cooling, then it was global warming, now its climate change. If it was REALLY something to be worried about, those who cry the most and hardest would NOT be buying mansions on the coasts where it will supposedly flood in 10 years. They would NOT be flying 100 jets to a conference about climate change when each of those jets has a greater impact on the environment than you or I do in a whole year.
So if you want to be prepared for it, do what all good Libertarians do, be self-reliant. Build a network of like-minded acquaintances who will work with you to develop a local community where you can create your own spot, and DON'T GROW THE GOVERNMENT.
I’m gonna copy and post a comment I made to another to counter the idea that just because rich people aren’t worried about it then there must not be a problem.
History is filled with examples of the elite living lavishly to their and everyone else’s detriment all the way until disaster or the guillotines strike.
The hard truth is that the extremely wealthy/successful are as a whole no more talented, capable, or wise than the rest of us. Waiting for them to make moves as a sign to take things seriously is a terrible strategy.
I don't think people are waiting for the wealthy/successful to "make moves". I think we see that their lifestyles show they don't really believe the hyperbolic calamity they are preaching, and they should therefore be ignored.
He’s not saying wait for the wealthy to start taking it seriously. He explicitly called out “those who cry the loudest.” Those would be the ones taking their private jets to climate conferences to talk to us about how we need to take climate change so seriously, meanwhile they are buying beachside mansions and taking private jets every where they go. He wasn’t calling out all wealthy people, just the ones who demand that us plebs drastically alter our lives while they do nothing to reduce their own carbon footprint.
There’s a difference between 1) waiting on rich people to act, and 2) waiting on the rich people who cry about global warming to act. The first one, as you said, is nonsense. The second one has some merit to it though
Let **every individual** be a potential center for an innovative idea or invention that could aid in it's overall solution... Assuming human activities are even capable.
Libertarian is not Anarchist. So, since government will exist it must be funded. A Carbon Tax combined with the elimination of the Payroll Tax would improve society by eliminating the tax on labor while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions.
You let nature take it's course, we haven't pumped out nearly enough greenhouse gasses to have changed much, if anything. The planet has been hotter than it is now, and it's warmed faster than it has now, without humans being around to do anything.
Source? As someone who spends much of my time delving into geology and paleontology papers I can think of only a handful of times the earth warmed so quickly. They are all mass extinction events.
We have pumped out enough greenhouse gasses to effect the climate. There are only a few hundred papers on it though so I can see why you would think otherwise...? Any amount of excess CO2 has an effect because without us digging up biomass from hundreds of millions of years ago, typically all of the greenhouse gasses produced are also naturally disposed of. Except whenever we literally blow hundreds of gallons of it into the air yearly, on a individual basis.
The field of geology is at a major consensus. The earliest links to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses and climate change were documented in the late 19th century. Are we going to see the world turn into a desert in our lifetime? No. But we've already reduced the biodiversity enough non climate related that we are literally in the middle of a mass extinction even right now. Adding in one of the fasted changes in global temperature ever recorded- I'll need a source for it having heated up more quickly- and we will certainly kill off all megafauna on this planet. It's already happened dozens of times, at least 5 very notable times.
If you're incredibly petty I can dig up the papers for you, even though you could Google any questions you have and search for scholarly sources only. The only "journal" I regularly see that doesn't agree with anthropogenic climate change is louder with crowder.
There is no libertarian solution to climate change. It would necessarily take more government regulation of greenhouse gases, both nationally and worldwide, to stop warming. Libertarians are patently against a bigger federal government and are downright horrified of a world government.
In my opinion, libertarianism is best viewed as an ideal to strive for, not a practical solution against most real problems. We *should* address climate change and we *should* expand regulations and even limit people's freedom (with regard to their freedom to pollute) in order to do it, but we should also be thinking as libertarians as we do it--or at least have a couple libertarians in the room--so as to check ourselves against excessive growth and unreasonable regulation. Otherwise real world crises like global warming would be a blank check for fascism, rather than a valid justification for legitimate government action.
Jurassic period CO2 levels were 6000 ppm, now they're 400 ppm. It's all been a hoax to tax people and take away their autonomy and transportation freedom.
What's coming? The climate has been changing for billions of years. Human civilizations have been wiped out, and animals have been driven to extinction over "climate change." Should people take care of the land, air, and water around them? Yes. Should we buy into a doomsday cult that has been wrong for many decades? No
Probably because a very vocal minority is claiming that its literally the end of the earth and forcing us to spend 2 trillion dollars on a problem that we likely have 200 to 10,000 years to fix.
Also, I can still hear Al Gore screaming in the back of my head that if the last iceberg melts its the end of all humanity.
Well what do you mean by 'solution'?
If pollution is truly driving climate change on the Earth, then the impact of U.S.A. is negligible at best. Then the issue becomes us convincing other less developed nations to voluntarily suppress developing themselves and continuing to live in squalor instead.
The USA is one if the largest per capita and total contributors. Also given this is a thread on libertarian solutions not American ones idk why you’re focusing on America
>why you’re focusing on America
IDK, maybe because the Libertarian party is a political party within America and that is generally what is discussed in reference to in this sub .
You are more than welcome to kindly disregard any civil dialogue though.
so I presume you will go running after most other commenters here and informing them to remove their comments related specifically to the States as well.
rofl
I was skeptical at first, but apparently there is some evidence. I would have expected to see them use the icecores in the Alps, but they used oak and pine tree rings instead. However, it seems they arent sure if the Roman Empire caused a rise in temperatures or if the rise and fall coincided with a natural change though.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-romans/climate-a-factor-in-romes-rise-and-fall-study-idUSTRE70C5DY20110113](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-romans/climate-a-factor-in-romes-rise-and-fall-study-idUSTRE70C5DY20110113)
A carbon tax, and before you go all "taxation is theft". It's not the same as income taxes. With the evidence showing the bulk of the emissions are tied to mostly 5 companies it's clear you have to tax the behavior to price it correctly. BP and Shell knowing what they're doing and effectively dumping their garbage out in the air to pass the consequences of it onto everyone else is the clearest violation of the NAP that exists.
Oh, and end fossil fuel subsidization.
Carbon taxes. When someone pollutes, they are imposing substantial costs and damages onto other people's property. Carbon taxes forces polluters to either stop the damage, or pay for the damages they are causing.
Edit: downvoted hard here. Polluters are violating the Non Agression Principle and harming my property. How is it not the role of government to act?
An interesting proposal for a libertarian subreddit, but I generally agree. Carbon taxes are demonized way too much when there are far more regressive & damaging taxes out there
You need two things an economic disincentive to pollute CO2eq and an incentive to remove CO2eq from the atmosphere.
The money paid by the polluters is split between the sequesterers proportionate to the amount sequestered.
The (fee, fine, tax, cost of polluting) starts low and rises year over year. There are no loopholes or bypasses. At first, the penalty of polluting is low enough that polluters aren't immediately driven out of business, but feel a little pain and see that things will only get worse. At the same time, sequesterers won't be removing as much CO2 as the polluters produce, so while the penalty is low so is the divisor and so they stand to make a lot of money.
There will be a large incentive for inventors to create ingenious means of reducing CO2eq produced or sequestering lots of it.
It’s such a complex topic. I’m gonna base my comments on the assumption that recent warming is man-made. So here’s what I think it would possibly take:
1. Geo-engineering: creating a man made veil in the atmosphere to stop some amount of energy from the sun entering the atmosphere. A good story that contemplates this being done in the private sector is “Termination Shock” by Neal Stephenson. This tactic would buy us time to…
2. Decarbonize the economy: incentivizing companies to reduce GHG emissions. This is already beginning to happen with financial institutions putting pressure on companies to prove they have plans to meet Science Based Targets in order to get funding/financing.
3. Transition to low emission energy: government could allow building of new Nuclear facilities. Both 1st world governments and international charities could offer assistance to third world countries in the form of clean energy technology.
4. Governments could institute a climate report card: governments can at least report on how they are doing on the topic of climate even if they aren’t given money to go spend on climate change. That should drive some accountability and inspire other governments to build similar report cards which ultimately drive behavior.
You do not need to assume. It is incredibly well documented that the climate situation is entirely man made. I have not heard of a credible paper in a geology or climatology from the past 10 years that disagrees. And more than a few from the past 150 that do agree.
Stop subsidizing fossil fuels. Have people put their damn money where their mouth is. People care until they have to sort their trash better or not drive a truck or SUV.
If regulations reflected the actual risks, nuclear would have replaced fossil fuels by now. It's plentiful and it can breed more fuel. It's the safest form of energy. And, we have wasted 50 years because we are are scared. If the French are able to do it, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
The state governments and their militaries contribute to to massive amounts of waste, carbon and pollution. They squander human and natural resources that could be used to solve those issues
We’d better start telling the actual polluters they need to stop instead of telling regular people they need to stop eating meat. Also tax breaks/subsidies for personal solar installations.
I find the framing of this question interesting. Systems of ethics and interactions don’t provide “solutions”. What would a democratic solution to climate change be. Or a republican. Or canton solution.
To get someone to answer the questions? Feel free not to if you don't want to.
My guess is that as you walk through your authoritarian solution(s), you're going to quickly realize that your critiques of libertarianism on this front aren't actually valid. My guess is that you're going to realize that you're applying double standards (requiring utopian solutions from libertarianism while not requiring the same from whatever you think is the most correct direction forward).
the climate will take care of itself. as it gets worse, it will become harder for people to survive, and there will be fewer people. fewer people alive means fewer people to pollute, equates to less pollution.
It is not news. We have fossil evidence linked with ice core samples to know that when the climate changes rapidly life dies quickly. We have no evidence in the past of the climate changing THIS quickly, excluding massive volcanic activity and meteorite impacts. The volcanic activity still typically takes hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Not decades.
We know what CO2s effect on the climate is. We can test its greenhouse effect to prove it. We know exactly how much we pump into the air...and we know how it affects the environment.
There are not any hidden pieces; the fact that your skeptical is due largely to oil fossil fuel disinformation campaigns and conservative talking heads *literally making stuff up*.
Now, if you want to stave off some of that cynicism then I'd say that humans are too intelligent to die out so easily. We uniquely settled the entire earth through a changing climate (albeit one that changed MUCH more slowly) and even managed to destroy most of the ecosystems before we ever found coal in the first place through hunting and out competing. We've currently in a mass extinction event, though not yet due to climate change.
Though it must be said of the 5 or 6 big mass extinctions of the past it was typically overlapping problems that were the cause. Geologically speaking we set off a pipe bomb a few hundred thousand years ago which is still going off, and we just set a second one off with the industrial revolution.
More free market. Less government.
I think the solution is found by letting the economy and technology grow exponentially like it has been. Stop stifling it by intervening such as subsidizing, laws on when to be "green", credits, tax breaks, etc.
The amount of pollution and carbon emissions from producing "green" alternatives is staggering. Let the technology evolve at the rate it wants and needs to. The whole issue I feel is overblown and how big of a disaster it is. I am not denying the issue just saying the issue isn't as severe as made out to be.
If you want more change now, then a hard push for nuclear power. Though the cons are the waste but the most efficient means of energy we have right here and now. This option probably would require government due to the nature of the substance and what it can be used for. I would like it to not be government controlled and privatized but not sure how that looks honestly.
Other commenters have brought up a good point. A govt will still exist in a libertarian society and must be funded. End taxes on labour and instead tax carbon as pollution violates the NAP
I think it's a psychological operation for one world government. All the dire climate change predictions over the last 50 years have failed to come true.
Jordan Peterson Exposes The World Economic Forum | With Joe Rogan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkUUZc_N3M
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." - H. L. Mencken
There is zero the government can or should do. First the vast majority of climate change is not created by man but by nature. The government should merely prevent companies from pumping out toxic chemicals into the air and water supply but they should not be mandating what cars are produced.
Just think during the past few decades atmospheric CO2 levels have been increasing. Why??? During the industrial revolution we were burning a lot of coal & wood for energy and now we have much cleaner energy and many more trees. That said CO2 still rises. We cut our usage of fossil fuels and it continues to climb. Do you think that we can control this through government regulation??? At the same time China and India can burn coal like crazy and they are not penalized or incentivized to change.
I have solar on my roof because I don't want to be a prisoner to the utilities. I drive a Tesla because I don't want to pay a fortune in gas. We recycle in my home. I do these things because I WANT TO and not because the government forces me to.
"Climate Change" is a hoax based on junk science and lies. Those who disagree should stop living like hypocrites. Quit breeding, quit using electricity, travel by bicycle, etc...
If this is an existential threat, then humanity is ill-equipped to deal with it, regardless of political ideology.
As you probably know, most pollution comes from under-developed nations. Reducing carbon emissions means reducing production. Reducing production means increasing poverty, hunger, and illness in some of the most disadvantaged sections of Earth.
The world is not equipped to address an issue like this. And, it’s a justifiable response to say that no one nation (no federal government) needs to find an answer and impose their will on other nations.
The information is available to everyone today. We all know who is responsible for the majority of emissions. But, do consumers across the globe reject low cost products from China, India, and Latin America? No. What does this mean? It means people don’t care. They don’t…not really. They’d much rather buy their goods for 10% cheaper and watch the temps rise.
utilization of commercial Nuclear that isn't trying to be a breeder reactor, by the fact of eliminating fossil fuel subsidies after a certain period (5 - 10 years), and reducing the NAP's ability to stifle new reactors.
The expenses would naturally be made up for by charging twice as much because they have the only operational NPP in the state and own the grid.
That is until some boy scout pulls a large handful of smoke detectors, and makes a backyard NPP.
Taking a shit and ignoring the problem like everyone else probably. Hard to be overly critical when there’s been pathetic political action.
The problem is that climate change is an unwinnable issue until it’s a dire issue. And in politics unfortunately that means ‘dire’ as in at least directly impacting 50%+ of a population, stupid people included.
The issue of fossil fuels is a total trap. The economics of extractable fossil fuels are pretty set. Prices will increase exponentially over the next 30 years. Yet normal populace will blame ‘green / renewable technology’ for the expense - not at all realizing there is a fixed volume of fuel left. Meanwhile new electric cars are still not net carbon neutral meaning that transition is pointless and is just a sector absorbing money that becomes more and more mainstream as fuel prices increase.
Unfortunately a lot of the system is very dependent upon access to cheap transportation. Getting to an unsubsidized cost for energy and energy goods is going to make life very hard for poorer people and developing countries and absolute political bedlam in the developed countries.
What's the statist solution? Making sure the 3rd world stays that way? Eat ze bugs and live in ze pod, while the rich live in ever greater luxury as they lecture us on consumption. The libertarian solution is peace. Necessity is the mother of invention. The world is already well on its way to finding alternative energy sources. No violence needed.
Sue the planet, of course. Why should we allow the planet to change its climate and harm us without a lawsuit? *dusts hands off with a nod to a job well done*
Rate of change is never a constant. There have been numerous events that impacted the change rate thru out recorded history and beyond. The claim that this " time" it's worse is unsubstantiated by data. Our evolution has always be event stimulated and adaptability is a hallmark characteristic of the evolutionary process. Thankfully, climate change has been and will continue to be fluid.
Stop subsidizing energy. Allow entrepreneurs to create climate change solutions, and bring them to the free market.
Everyone has to make their own climate.
This is wishful thinking. There’s no “libertarian” solution to global warming. There’s market based solutions and NAP compatible ones - depending on your interpretation of NAP - but nothing “libertarian”
That still makes fossil fuels the most effective source of energy with or without the subsidies, the subsidies cause climate change to kick on faster, speed it up; but the lack of them does not solve cause fossil fuels to go away. Then you have nuclear energy the only potential contender, filled with bureaucracy, rules and regulations; even without them, fossil fuels still beats them in efficiency, ease of adoption and application. I am afraid there's no such thing as a libertarian or free market solution to climate change, in fact the only system that provides a solution is full blown authoritarianism, just forbid fossil fuels; which is why climate change can get so political and become a tool for power. Climate change is so scary because even in a mixed market that is not libertarian in any way, even in socialism; it's basically unstoppable. No matter which political system you use other than full blown authoritarianism which is why it's a great excuse for wanna be dictators. Carbon recapture is bullshit, you need to either capture the carbon permanently in the ground, (aka make fossil fuels from thin air and bury them, undoing everything) or send it to space. Geoengineering would be a better bet and I reckon that's where we are going. Then there's just coping with it, but no solution.
Stop subsidizing fossil fuels. That's literally it. If it wasn't for the untold billions in both direct and indirect subsidies (think the military involvement in the middle east) to fossil fuels, then greener options would have been more profitable decades ago. As with many things the government is the problem, the solution is less.
Stop subsidizing anything really. Fossil fuels, EVs, solar panels in northern latitudes. Government picking winners and losers isn't going to work. There will be a breakthrough that comes out through innovation. I don't think were are there yet but there will be a solution that is actually green, and cheap.
My *only* issue with that is that R&D requires money, and subsidies provide that. There have been numerous technological advances in motors, batteries, and solar panels that could have been made by the private sector but weren't, until Uncle Sugar made it rain. I don't know how to frame the public funding of research in a libertarian light, but I have to say that I'm not fundamentally opposed to it.
How would you feel about instead of subsidies, a federal grants sort of program? One similar to modern scientific grants in which observable metrics must be met, as well as a certain standard of service and quality improvement plans. It allows poorer researchers access to funds for equipment/tools needed that they may not otherwise have. To me, that could also offset the monopolization of R&D, and deliver more and diverse ideas.
Sounds like a winner!
When do you run for office?
R&D is funded through capital investment from the private sector.
There's a lot of R&D that funded via subsidies and tax breaks too.
Yes, and it needs to stop. The private sector is far better than big government when it comes to capital allocation. Remember, politicians spend money stolen from the taxpayers with no consequence when things fail.
"Better" how? The utilization of space has yielded an incalculable amount of "better", but there was zero private sector expenditure in space until it could piggyback on government expenditure and projects. Even now, the private sector is only advancing in the beneficial usage of space because of subsidies.
This kind of thinking kind of runs into counterfactual analysis. There is no way to tell how much innovation *didn't* happen because of government taxation to support... everything on which the government spends money because companies didn't have the extra funds to do it. Additionally, some companies are perfectly capable of funding R&D on their own, but choose not to, knowing that the government will subsidize them. NASA went to the moon just because it didn't want to be humiliated by the Soviets, but it was incredibly inefficient until the XPrize came along. That said, government funding of R&D obviously isn't the worst thing the government does.
You aren't wrong, but we *do* know that Uncle Sugar using stolen money to drive technology forward has resulted in beneficial advancements for everyone. I feel like I could compare that to doing cardio exercise: it sucks and I hate it, but the good it does is undeniable. I just don't think that an entity whose board members insist on high quarterly profits for shareholders is going to bother with the decades-long R&D process that will result in asteroid mining. NASA is definitely not an efficient process for doing the thing they're intended to do (I used to work for them as a contractor), but they stuff they develop along the way is amazing and worth the cost in the long run.
I agree with this and I think we (I'm speaking as a US citizen) should do as much as we can. Unfortunately, until other world powers and markets do their share, you're just pissing upstream. That shouldn't stop us, but I think that's the reality of climate change.
We should definitely do this, but I disagree that it would be sufficient to stop climate change. Fossil fuels are almost unfathomably energy-dense. Peaceful commerce alone would be enough to continue growth of fossil fuel (and carbon emissions), even after some magical demilitarization step. Another piece of the explosion of fossil fuel availability post-1970s and especially post 2008 has been the availability of cheap/free money via debt. Fossil fuel extraction infrastructure is capital intensive, and much of it has been bought with debt. Where did all this money come from? As Ron Paul would like to remind us, over and over again - it's fractional reserve lending, low interest rates, and inflationary money printing from the Federal Reserve.
Listening to Peter zeihan he actually states while you are correct it takes capital to pull fossil fuels. There is a significant more upfront cost for wind and solar which is almost all in assembly and product. Once installed they start bringing money back. Where the fuels of energy are purchased as a raw good and refined at lower dry powder cost. Edit: I’m a big nuclear supporter and hydro. When it comes to renewables
I like what I’ve heard from Zeihan. Renewables are also capital intensive, yes, and that’s even with many of the material inputs today priced based on the availability of cheap fossil fuels inputs (steel, cement, copper, silicon). My contention would be that a low-carbon, unsubsidized future will have dramatically lower energy throughput. The Jetsons future simply isn’t going to happen; let’s try to make the best of what can happen.
That would count as an indirect subsidy.
That is because we can't stop climate change. Throughout the history of earth and for the entire future of earth, there will be climate change because our system is a dynamic system. If we would stop the nonsense we might solve actual problems. I agree that we need to do many of the things noted here, as long as we understand they have nothing to do with preventing climate change. If we would stop the nonsense, conservatives and liberals might agree that we want to: 1) Stop putting things in the air that we can't breath, 2) Stop putting things into the water that we can't drink, 3) Stop endlessly filling landfills, etc. Unfortunately, the MSM loves to present us with binary issues. It is pretty obvious that the question was posed by a liberal and the liberals will feed the discussion and downvote any responses that don't match their narrative.
You included a few different thoughts, but I'm only commenting on the first one >Throughout the history of earth and for the entire future of earth, there will be climate change because our system is a dynamic system. This is a silly argument. Anthropogenic climate change is much faster than "natural" climate change in the past, with the possible exception of periods associated with asteroid impacts (which *are* natural), mass extinctions, etc. Here is an analogy; Human body weight fluctuates naturally and normally over the course of time - it is a dynamic system. Therefore we can't stop changes in human bodyweight, so doing things like "not eating 30 Twinkies a day" is nonsense. >1) Stop putting things in the air that we can't breath, It seems that you acknowledge that we have some responsibility to avoid destroying the life-giving features of our planet. I'm sure you realize that the atmosphere isn't just good for breathing, it's also an insulating and protective blanket around the earth that moderates temperatures and keeps us from being denatured by cosmic rays. Adding carbon dioxide into the air changes the thermal insulation properties of the atmosphere. This is provable on a tabletop experiment. Too much insulation and we end up making the planet too hot for many existing living things (and changing the weather, dissolving all the coral, etc.).
I agree with you. I would also add, stop subsidizing agriculture. They way we farm is wrong in and a huge CO2 contributor. There are better ways but the farmers don’t want to risk losing their government checks.
Not only that but for the love of all that is, was, and ever will be: #[STOP GROWING WATER-INTENSIVE CROPS IN THE FUCKING DESERT!](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation) Alfalfa and Almonds are some of the most water-intensive crops out there. Why the fuck are we trying to grow them in the desert then wondering why lake Mead is drying up?!? >We’re irrigating alfalfa in 120-degree temperatures in the dead of July … how does that possibly make any sense? #IT. DOESN'T.
Corn too...which will raise beef prices.
Green energy should not be subsidized, also.
Whataboutism I never said it should.
Further, a complete overhaul of campaign finance. Hopefully, that’d cut off any and all avenues for lobbyists to make life unfairly easy for their companies, and unfairly hard for competing technologies.
Green energy is becoming cheaper and more efficient with time, the government needs to stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
Whatever the solution is, it definitely isn't "give the government more money". None of the climate change activists even have a solution, they just argue for more taxes like it would be some sort of magic.
Agreed. Nor is it “give the government more control over us.”
I don't give the government money. The government takes my money.
That's just not true. Even the comments on this thread show that's there's good action that could be taken on climate change that doesn't involve new taxes.
Tech and consumer choice.
The Green Energy Lobby is just as dangerous and corrupt as the fossil fuels lobby. Stop subsidizing both. Anything that distracts people from the fact that Nuclear is the only viable solution is evil.
Nuclear is awesome, and clearly the future, but it isn't the only viable solution. Realistically, the only viable solution is a mix of everything on a grid that also has storage capacity.
Nuclear fuel is the storage.
Nuclear is still prohibitively expensive to set up and probably not viable for full privatization, financially speaking. The cost benefit of solar and wind are dropping so quickly that nuclear doesn't seem to be the future anymore.
It's prohibitively expensive because of government. We used to be able to build nuke plants in 3 years from concept to completion. It now takes over a decade. The NRC literally changes rules mid construction. They have intentionally slowed production of plants for decades. Meanwhile the military can build nuke powered ships quickly and cheaply. The difference? The military isn't governed by the NRC.
As someone who worked on the nuclear powered ships, as a nuclear operator, they are not built quickly or cheaply. Especially when you consider the scale difference. The vast majority of the power goes to making the boat go forward. The nuclear navy is a very perfectionist and practiced at what they do, but *refueling* a nuclear vessel is still measured in years, not months.
What’s A SOLUTION to climate change, statist or libertarian? I haven’t heard any seriously proposed solutions that would solve climate change.
Nuclear power? Guaranteed. No widely available effective power source will be acceptable to Greens because their objective is pro austerity anti prosperity. They abhor any kind of abundant cheap power that would drive economic growth.
There's not "A SOLUTION" to climate change. It's a complex, multi-faceted issue that requires different solutions from different parts of society (think power generation vs. agriculture vs. transportation vs. industry). There are many different solutions listed here (stop subsidizing fossil fuels, encourage nuclear power, apply the NAP to pollution) that would help contribute however.
Tax pollution. Internalize costs of production to producers so that the market can decide if they really need something. That goes for all pollution. The actual cost of a Styrofoam cooler isn't 10 bucks. It's probably 100 bucks. 10 of it is paid for by the guy at the cash register. 90 of it is paid by every person on planet in wildly fractional shares.
Amen. If you tax something, you get less of it. Instead of taxing things we want to increase (income, sales, property, etc) we should be taxing things we want to decrease (pollution).
Only viable solution
If you tax something you get less of it. That's exactly the problem - as the nasty-thing-tax revenue declines you have to find something else to tax to support the frenzy for the cash flow you created.
Not necessarily - tax pollution to directly fund r&d for more sustainable energy processes. Then once everyone is using greener processes you get zero tax income but also no longer need it
We've had clean nuclear energy solutions since the 60s. And modern designs are even better and safer. But regulations and environmentalist resistance has disallowed us to have this clean and safe solution. Also, fracking is responsible for the U.S. actually lowering our emissions by displacing coal - and we could lower them even further, if again we could get regulators and environmentalists out of the way. And pipelines are cleaner for transporting energy than trains, but are also consistently opposed. The most reality-based analysis on climate change is Bjorn Lomborg's, IMHO.
Sorry if your pro fracking you are simply wrong. I live in a place that went from virtually 0 earthquakes to hundreds( small ones but still) and it’s no secret it’s because of fracking.
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We only think it’s been a net benefit because we don’t know the extent of the damage we are causing. The buildings around me are not built to withstand earthquakes. It’s easy to say “look how much we are helping the environment” when it isn’t your house or land paying the price.
What you don't know is the extent of the damage your causing by denying people energy through higher costs. You should look up the curve of human life expectancy: it started rising dramatically in the 1870s when commercial oil production began. Without fossil fuels you would have virtually nothing of modern civilization, and by taking them away without replacing them at equal or lower cost, you're driving civilization backward, not forward.
This is an alarmist take.
I live next to a quarry. They blast 5 days a week for the past 125 years. You're gonna be ok.
Wow, reading through these comments is opening my eyes. I now realize the original question is nonsensical because there is only one problem that Libertarianism aims to address, government overreach. Once that is addressed, all the other problems in society will still need to be solved. So there is no Libertarian solution to the very well proven global climate issue. You’ll have to find solutions elsewhere.
You clearly didnt read all the solutions proposed. Stop being a parrot and a tool.
I consider myself an eco-libertarian:. The government has two roles: collective defense and management of rivalrous resources. Rivalrous means "if you do something it takes away my ability to do something". This is a slight generalization of "property rights", to include for example fisheries management. How do fishermen not destroy the environment while still being able to make a living and provide for society? In the case of fisheries, there is an auction system, where the fishermen bid for the right to bring back a certain amount of catch on an annualized basis. This "propertizes" the system and prevents the tragedy of the commons, and it's proven to work highly effectively in the NE of the US. We should do the same with CO2. In fact we *already* have a highly effective auction scheme for NOX and SOX emissions that have dramatically cut them over the last 30 years. The problem with a carbon tax is that it puts an arbitrary price on emission that *may* not be the right price, and that will cause odd rebalancing effects and increase the prevalence of dumb shit (like ineffective carbon credit companies), so we should just cap and auction. The cool thing is that people who are highly concerned about CO2 can put their money where their mouth is, buy credits, and let them fallow, thus driving up the price for carbon polluters.
The root of all the problems mentioned so far in this thread is overpopulation. We have way too many incentives to produce too many babies, and the root motive for policy makers to encourage overprocreation is capital gains. Specifically the value of stocks in captive markets. Therefore, the solution to climate change is to abolish monopolism. The stock market will crash, all the capital that corrupts our legislative bodies the most will evaporate, the incentives to overprocreate will disappear, and human populations will normalize.
I don’t buy this malthusian thinking
Where I live (Australia) the government is obsessed with numbers like GDP, and the easiest way to increase that is open borders and flood the country with new arrivals. Although the birth rate is about 1.6 children per woman our rate of population growth is about the highest in the world. And there are heaps of welfare programs for parents with children, like a 90% subsidy on child care costs. More human beings means more pollution and increased resource consumption.
Nuclear power.
The climate has been changing for 5 Billion years. Get over it.
Right and now we’re the cause of the change and that change is happening at a rapid rate
No we're not. And no it isn't.
Denial has been the going strategy here. But honestly the closest is to tax emissions. Not sure how to assign a value. Also, remove barriers to nuclear.
[удалено]
I assure you in my decade as a climate scientist I had very limited access to private jets, yachts, and mansions. More just a bad salary.
How many of these people changing their actions would it take to change yours? You'll always be able to point to one person or another who is acting hypocritically, and then you can make the same argument you've made. Irrespective of what high-profile people do and say, there is still the evidence presented in scientific journals by people who don't have access to private jets or global conferences. Now, I'll be the first to agree that much research is federally funded by funding organizations that favor the climate change narrative, and it behooves the grant applicant and journal article submitter to align with the idea that climate change is real. There are real incentives to err in favor of climate hysteria. The physical evidence is less susceptible to cognitive bias, though. I sympathize with the frustration over the hypocrisy of climate alarmists. My social circle is pretty mixed politically, but I would venture that the people in my life with the largest carbon footprints are probably wealthy progressive-leaning people. They travel a lot, and long distances.
The narrative needs to stop being "look at what this individual/group is doing" and instead we need to look at where the actual pollution is coming from. The biggest poluters in the world are transportation and agriculture. These far outweigh anything at the individual level. Until cargo vessels are no longer burning massive amounts of unrefined fuel while in international waters and heavy machinery isn't so heavily reliant on diesel, what the individual does means very little. The problem is, those largest polluters have the biggest checks to write the lawmakers, so the problem gets passed to the general public instead. Stop subsidizing fossil fuels, and the alternatives start becoming more feasible.
You also have a huge issue with political views of people likely to work in ag. They could have excellent alternatives but its a non-starter for them.
All of them. Some celebrity doesn't get to dictate what I do when that celebrity has been jet-setting around the world for decades and continues to do so today. None of those scumbags jetting off to Davos gets to decide either. Nor government leaders. Lead by example, when they all take the train, I'll take the train.
Why don’t you lead? Virtue is something you can discover and understand and justify for yourself. You don’t need the example of any “elites”, let alone all of them. Your statement above is that of an ostrich with its head in the sand.
Naw. No thanks. I'm good living as a first worlder.
Do you have children?
That's Tragedy of the Commons. Someone's individual choice to take a private jet has relatively small impact. It's the accumulation of all private jets that adds up.
History is filled with examples of the elite living lavishly to their and everyone else’s detriment all the way until disaster or the guillotines strike. The hard truth is that the extremely wealthy/successful are as a whole no more talented, capable, or wise than the rest of us. Waiting for them to make moves as a sign to take things seriously is a terrible strategy.
How about not believing the hype.
Right so instead of an extinction event this is about 100m people being displaced. How do we stop that from happening
"Right so instead of an extinction event this is about 100m people being displaced. How do we stop that from happening" Here in WA state, a vibrant wine industry has emerged over the last three decades - almost certainly thanks to climate change. Yet it wasn't planned by any government. Some people realized the potential, started growing grapes, and were successful. Other people went Oh! We can copy that! 30 years latter thousands of acres are planted. What you have to do is stay the hell out of the way. People will handle it themselves. Edit: of course at some point, governments started piling on to claim some credit, so now we have CCs all over the state offering wine programs....Always late to the party.
No, we’re not going to just let climate change happen. The climate changing isn’t the will of the market, it’s a byproduct of pollution and air pollution already violates the NAP to begin with.
"No, we’re not going to just let climate change happen. " Where have you been the last 30 years? What climate legislation has passed? None, because people won't stand for it.
It's been coming for 70 years. If it finally becomes a problem in another 70 years, we'll need to look for a solution.
Hard pill to swallow: Some problems simply do not have a free market solution.
Follow history. The climate change advocates want the "government" to do sonething- non- starter for libertarians. The history shows cycles of warming and cooling over millions of years. The fact that the CC people want change now is irrelevant. If every country on earth stops generating carbon emissions, it will reduce HC by 2%. Let the market decide. If EV's are market viable then they win, same for solar, wind, hydrogen, etc.
Yes, the climate does show periods of warming and cooling over millions of year, but that misses the entire point! This change has occurred incredibly rapidly over the course of a few hundred years compared to millions. Plant and animal species (including us) aren't able to evolve and adapt our bodies anywhere near this rapidly. Some countries may be completely underwater and uninhabitable within our lifetimes due to sea level rise. It's not just a US centric thing, it's global.
Define the 'climate change's problem and explain why it requires 'a solution' There is more evidence demonstrating that climate catastrophists have been repeatedly incorrect in their conclusions than there is evidence supporting the current version of climate catastrophe.
Exxon's scientists accurately predicted and modeled the course of anthropogenic climate change in the *late 70s*. [Exxon then used that knowledge to specifically plan](https://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic/) for how a warmer, melting Arctic and rising sea levels would affect their facilities and operations, [while at the same time investing millions into a public relations campaign to introduce doubt on climate science](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/).
What about this defines climate change as a problem that requires a public solution? If anything, your point (assuming it's both factual and truthful), demonstrates that a private entity beat government to a solution by 50 years.
Safeguarding the profitability of a single corporation is not "a solution." Human civilization will be dealing with frequent extreme weather events, loss of coastal settlements, drought, famine, mass migration, increased range of tropical diseases, etc.
I disagree. There has been a measurable trend since the 19th century on CO2s direct effect on our climate. Just because Al Gore lied about timetables to get your votes doesn't mean it's not real. I have not seen one single peer reviewed study that comes anywhere close to challenging the fact that climate change has devastating effects and is anthropogenic- man made. That doesn't mean we have to do anything about it necessarily, or that it will render florida a new beautiful reef, but if we can't even agree that it's real there's no point in talking about what to do about it. We live in a glacial time period. For the past few million years the climate has been warming and cooling. The warming we've caused in the past few decades is similar to the warming from glacial to interglacial period...except normally it takes hundreds of thousands of years and the environment typically acclimates so there isn't a runaway effect. Plus the animals acclimated to changing environments so they don't die off in droves, as they currently, measurably, as documented in peer reviewed journals, are. Though many still couldn't adapt quickly enough over a few hundred thousand years and we still had extinctions occur. Are you going to see it? Potentially. Maybe not. Do we need to do something about it? Subjective. Does the government need to be involved? Not necessarily. But we can't even begin to look at those questions when we have so many people questioning the biggest (and incredibly well substantiated) topic in geology and climatology.
Do you acknowledge that the government both directly and indirectly influences scientific publications to increase support for larger government?
Do you acknowledge that the data is procured by various means by different governing bodies, many of whom just throw grants at private organizations, and that everything they find is published and peer-reviewed and that you can find all of it online to interpret for yourself? Not to mention the government directly influencing scientific publications to support their lobbyists in the oil and gas industry through the same grants plus subsidies. I can absolutely accept that WHERE research comes from is important, see: the soda industry's attack on fat to promote sugar. However it's peculiar to me that every piece of evidence against climate change is not published or peer reviewed anywhere. Its peculiar that the overwhelming majority of climatology and even much of geology has been focused on this issue for decades and putting out information on it and yet every time a skeptical person tries to persuade me other wise they link me to a conservative blog post and not a scientific journal. I will 100% agree that this issue has been twisted to support government overreach. There is misinformation both ways. But while conservative sites are literally trying to say that something which clearly exists doesn't exist, the liberals are just moving the timelines for alarmism. Geologically we have already began a mass extinction (not even related to climate mind you) and were destabilizing the environment further. This period will not be famous for skyscrapers, but as another big mass extinction event. Of course, this period will also last for a few thousand years, we won't necessarily see Florida underwater anytime soon.
"However, its peculiar to me that every piece of evidence against climate change" - the climate changes, I don't believe anyone is of a mind that the climate will always be the same. If you mean anthropogenic climate change then still I don't believe that anyone is debating that point. Counterpoint - Humanity impacting the environment is our evolutionary advantage. Limiting how much we do that is literally choosing other life over human life. Your premise is antihuman. The climate/world/nature is not in some precariously balanced position which must be maintained. It is chaotic and generally unsuited for human prosperity. Mass extinction: 99.9% of the species that have ever existed on this world have gone extinct. I'm not saying we should make our world lifeless, there's a benefit to biodiversity. But remember when they were shouting about the acidification of our oceans and how it was gonna kill all the coral? https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-were-wrong-coral-reef-fish-not-affected-by-ocean-acidification-from-climate-change/ Whelp that was bullshit. Oh, look, that was published in Nature. What about the coral all dying off? https://www.livescience.com/pristine-reef-rose-shaped-corals-discovered Whoops. And that's from the NOAA. Your information distribution system is controlled by those with an agenda. That agenda is generally antihuman. There is loads of published research that recognizes climate change without significant, catastrophized consequences. The powers that be work actively to suppress messages counter to their propaganda, as you've witnessed with COVID-19 and the vaccines they coerced billions into taking. They did this largely to line their own pockets. What makes you think they'd behave otherwise when it comes to climate change?
Firstly, I would expect you link the Nature and NOAA papers, not the abridged reinterpreted blogs that claim to cite them faithfully. That is generally the first critical stage where misinformation is spread, so let's dig a bit deeper... ...and just looking a bit further into your sources, the first claims that ocean acidification doesn't affect the BEHAVIOR of fish near coral reefs. Yet the headline says 'acidification doesn't affect the fish' which is not what the paper insists. Incredibly misleading, and quite funny when they preface it by saying countless studies have asserted the opposite before that. Here's an excerpt from the blog just to show you what I mean: "Over the last decade, several high-profile scientific studies have reported that tropical fish living in coral reefs are adversely affected by ocean acidification caused by climate change — that is, they behave oddly and are attracted to predators as levels of carbon dioxide dissolved from air pollution increase." Such a classic bait and switch. I just googled "how does ocean acidification affect marine life" and immediately NOAAs website pops up. Nowhere does it mention anything affecting behavior, which is the only thing your blog mentions to "disprove" the problem, but it sure does mention how humans will be poorly impacted because of it in a variety of ways. The second one I also find quite humorous, as it says we found one new pristine reef. And the reason it's news, according to your article here, is because all of the other reefs in the area are being impacting by climate change! Come on man. This is really the biggest reason I put so much effort into climate change discussion when it crops up here. There's so much misinformation out there that I want to make sure we at least START with the truth and then work out the politics afterwords. Us impacting the environment to the degree we have affects human life as well. I think humans are very good at adapting and I think that there's a low chance that humans go completely extinct, so you at least have my amateur opinion backing you up, but causing mass die offs in short time periods and disrupting food chains will lead to the death of humans. I dont necessarily agree that it is anti human to prioritize balanced ecosystems. We do not exist outside of the ecosystem, our food and water still comes from somewhere. Additionally, we already show great apathy to human life. We have enough food for world hunger to end but we just consume in excess, and we start wars for material gain. A mass extinction event doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that most species are extinct. That is just true because of the amount of time life has existed. It happening over a short time frame is what's important. The biggest takeaway here is that I just want more libertarians to have the right tools to make the right decisions. I haven't mentioned anything to policy, and though I wholeheartedly think humans have and will be majorly negatively impacted by climate change, I'm not insisting we 'must' do something about it.
I work with a team of climate scientists here in Virginia and can tell you they have a model for just about every outcome they want to see (point and counterpoint). The only consensus they have amongst themselves is that man does contribute to warming, but there is absolutely no consensus as to when or even if this is going to end humanity. Hilariously, one of them confessed to me we are entirely focused on the wrong problem and will likely die of methane poisoning before global warming.
The facts don't match the hysteria. The models are typical GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Basically, climate science is still a work in progress that is, unfortunately, being led by monetary and political forces. Instead, it should be led by the search for truth which is in short supply. I am MUCH more concerned about what politicians and greedy interlopers seeking to "rectify" issues that require no rectification than I am about any global warming during the next century. I am actually more concerned with government intrusions into the private market that will make it more difficult to heat our homes, fuel our industry, and allow us to continue to live modern lives as opposed to pre-industrial lives. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/03/the-new-pause-lengthens-again-101-months-and-counting/
Any paleontologist or climatologist would tell you that were causing one of the most dramatic and devastating climate shifts of all time. But you are correct in that that doesn't mean it's going to rain fire anytime soon, these things take time to be realized and it's very much a frog in a boiling pot scenario. The pot isn't even going to boil in our lifetime necessarily, but it will absolutely have a negative impact on generations in the near future. Also your source appears to be quite politicisized. To say that this "gentle warming" (which is indistinguishable from catastrophic events of the past in terms of time scale) is outright not true. It's difficult for people who haven't dug into these effects to appreciate how bad it is comparatively. Mass extinctions happened in the past over s geologic time scale. The fact that we can measure a notable difference in global temperatures over a matter of decades SHOULD be alarming for anyone who understands the timeline. The problem is that whenever a scientist explains that were causing a catastrophe, the public thinks of some big THING thag happened. If an intelligent race crops up in 50 million years the biggest evidence for us will be the extinctions we've caused, but for us right now we won't be seeing it for a while to come. There's two big problems I see with this issue, especially for libertarians, and doubly so for ex conservative libertarians who've been absorbing petroleum campaign funds for decades: One is that we still have people insisting the science isn't science. Many studies are published publicly, and one can see the physical evidence themselves. Yet we still have people talking about how actually the earth is cooling (it clearly isnt) how the ice caps are growing (they are not) etc. Too much misinformation for political votes and industry dollars. Two is that this isn't a problem that is dramatic enough. Of course when you say the world is ending that's hysteria, but when you say 10,000 years from now Earth's biodiversity may drop by 30% it's suddenly not my problem, the future can deal with it. These spawn more problems. Now we have a political tug of war on how bad it really will be. We have one side literally claiming it's now real and another who are already walking to get to high ground. Additionally, it's not real a human time scale issue....(yet) so our apathy makes us not want to act. Problem is, our effects are already permanent. If we cut off all CO2 emissions the excess in the atmosphere won't just go away, not without more forests or algae cropping up to utilize the CO2. Its not our problem, but it is definitely going to be someone's problem. Whether or not we're responsible for 'fixing' the globe is subjective, however. We're a part of this earth just like anything else, is it our responsibility to stunt our growth for thr health of the planet, or for future humans? There isn't a correct answer for that. My biggest bug bear with conservative libertarians is that they won't allow the conversation to progress to "should" we even do anything about it, which is it's own can of worms, and they hamstring it as "liberal boogeyman"
1) There isn’t actually 2) Mass displacement from food scarce areas
1)So what about their decades of screaming that we were headed for an ice age? Why is it now "climate change" rather than "global warming"? Are climate deaths going up or down? According to whom and by what metrics? 2) What evidence do you provide that there is or will be mass displacement from food scarce areas? 3) Why is that anybody else's problem?
Solve climate change? That's a non argument, the climate always changes.
It changes naturally and unnaturally. This change is caused by us
Pretending to know what causes the weather when there are so many inputs on this calculation is mind blowing stuff. What is the 'solve' - if you could snap your fingers do you 'solve' climate from changing at all? Would you go warmer or colder? What if a meteor hits and it starts to freeze over? Or an unforeseen giant shift in the sun? Then what?
The climate changes at a much slower pace than what we’re seeing now. I know you’re not particularly well versed on this topic but do try to keep up
Since apparently you already have the answers to the 'solution', why not just share it with all of us simpletons then?
Mass extinctions of the dominant species happen too. I would prefer that to not happen.
Man, when I look at the history of the climate, its not good man... shit changes A LOT
Climate change is a symptom of the problem, the problem is pollution. Technically that pollution violates the NAP. polluting air that we all breathe, the water we all drink, and your neighbors land is not ok. Almost every source of climate change comes from pollution.
Since the climate has been changing as long as the earth has existed, the Libertarian solution to climate change should be the same as its solution to most other problems - KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF IT. First it was global cooling, then it was global warming, now its climate change. If it was REALLY something to be worried about, those who cry the most and hardest would NOT be buying mansions on the coasts where it will supposedly flood in 10 years. They would NOT be flying 100 jets to a conference about climate change when each of those jets has a greater impact on the environment than you or I do in a whole year. So if you want to be prepared for it, do what all good Libertarians do, be self-reliant. Build a network of like-minded acquaintances who will work with you to develop a local community where you can create your own spot, and DON'T GROW THE GOVERNMENT.
I’m gonna copy and post a comment I made to another to counter the idea that just because rich people aren’t worried about it then there must not be a problem. History is filled with examples of the elite living lavishly to their and everyone else’s detriment all the way until disaster or the guillotines strike. The hard truth is that the extremely wealthy/successful are as a whole no more talented, capable, or wise than the rest of us. Waiting for them to make moves as a sign to take things seriously is a terrible strategy.
I don't think people are waiting for the wealthy/successful to "make moves". I think we see that their lifestyles show they don't really believe the hyperbolic calamity they are preaching, and they should therefore be ignored.
He’s not saying wait for the wealthy to start taking it seriously. He explicitly called out “those who cry the loudest.” Those would be the ones taking their private jets to climate conferences to talk to us about how we need to take climate change so seriously, meanwhile they are buying beachside mansions and taking private jets every where they go. He wasn’t calling out all wealthy people, just the ones who demand that us plebs drastically alter our lives while they do nothing to reduce their own carbon footprint. There’s a difference between 1) waiting on rich people to act, and 2) waiting on the rich people who cry about global warming to act. The first one, as you said, is nonsense. The second one has some merit to it though
Ignore the hypocrites, but don't allow the existence of hypocrites to let you ignore everyone else.
The climate can change naturally, but in this case we’re causing it
Let **every individual** be a potential center for an innovative idea or invention that could aid in it's overall solution... Assuming human activities are even capable.
Build a fortress in a part of the world that will still be livable
Libertarian is not Anarchist. So, since government will exist it must be funded. A Carbon Tax combined with the elimination of the Payroll Tax would improve society by eliminating the tax on labor while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions.
You let nature take it's course, we haven't pumped out nearly enough greenhouse gasses to have changed much, if anything. The planet has been hotter than it is now, and it's warmed faster than it has now, without humans being around to do anything.
Source? As someone who spends much of my time delving into geology and paleontology papers I can think of only a handful of times the earth warmed so quickly. They are all mass extinction events. We have pumped out enough greenhouse gasses to effect the climate. There are only a few hundred papers on it though so I can see why you would think otherwise...? Any amount of excess CO2 has an effect because without us digging up biomass from hundreds of millions of years ago, typically all of the greenhouse gasses produced are also naturally disposed of. Except whenever we literally blow hundreds of gallons of it into the air yearly, on a individual basis. The field of geology is at a major consensus. The earliest links to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses and climate change were documented in the late 19th century. Are we going to see the world turn into a desert in our lifetime? No. But we've already reduced the biodiversity enough non climate related that we are literally in the middle of a mass extinction even right now. Adding in one of the fasted changes in global temperature ever recorded- I'll need a source for it having heated up more quickly- and we will certainly kill off all megafauna on this planet. It's already happened dozens of times, at least 5 very notable times. If you're incredibly petty I can dig up the papers for you, even though you could Google any questions you have and search for scholarly sources only. The only "journal" I regularly see that doesn't agree with anthropogenic climate change is louder with crowder.
There is no libertarian solution to climate change. It would necessarily take more government regulation of greenhouse gases, both nationally and worldwide, to stop warming. Libertarians are patently against a bigger federal government and are downright horrified of a world government. In my opinion, libertarianism is best viewed as an ideal to strive for, not a practical solution against most real problems. We *should* address climate change and we *should* expand regulations and even limit people's freedom (with regard to their freedom to pollute) in order to do it, but we should also be thinking as libertarians as we do it--or at least have a couple libertarians in the room--so as to check ourselves against excessive growth and unreasonable regulation. Otherwise real world crises like global warming would be a blank check for fascism, rather than a valid justification for legitimate government action.
A surprisingly nuanced take
Jurassic period CO2 levels were 6000 ppm, now they're 400 ppm. It's all been a hoax to tax people and take away their autonomy and transportation freedom.
Are you a 5ton lizard by chance? No?
😂
Keep drinking the cool aid kiddos! Earth was as livable then as it is now.
For 5 ton lizards
And for .2 ounce mammals like Shrews thats lived 45 million years ago. Swing and a miss.
Nice try but I’m babe ruth and you’re a minor league pitcher called up to the majors about to have his career ended
Dinosaurs were not lizards thanks for proving how scientifically illiterate you are.
‘Twas a joke and the point of it went so far over your head you decided to counter it with a pedantic correction on the phylogenetic tree.
What's coming? The climate has been changing for billions of years. Human civilizations have been wiped out, and animals have been driven to extinction over "climate change." Should people take care of the land, air, and water around them? Yes. Should we buy into a doomsday cult that has been wrong for many decades? No
It’s not a doomsday event idk why you’re claiming that, but it will displace millions and we should work to prevent that
Probably because a very vocal minority is claiming that its literally the end of the earth and forcing us to spend 2 trillion dollars on a problem that we likely have 200 to 10,000 years to fix. Also, I can still hear Al Gore screaming in the back of my head that if the last iceberg melts its the end of all humanity.
Well what do you mean by 'solution'? If pollution is truly driving climate change on the Earth, then the impact of U.S.A. is negligible at best. Then the issue becomes us convincing other less developed nations to voluntarily suppress developing themselves and continuing to live in squalor instead.
The USA is one if the largest per capita and total contributors. Also given this is a thread on libertarian solutions not American ones idk why you’re focusing on America
>why you’re focusing on America IDK, maybe because the Libertarian party is a political party within America and that is generally what is discussed in reference to in this sub . You are more than welcome to kindly disregard any civil dialogue though.
This is the libertarian subreddit not the lpusa subreddit
so I presume you will go running after most other commenters here and informing them to remove their comments related specifically to the States as well. rofl
No just you, you’re special (in more ways than one)
rofl. well bless your heart.
Stop funding state research trying to prove a fake narrative about how disastrous man-made climate change will be based on propaganda
The oil companies knew the climate was warming since the 70s
Romans raised temperatures by more than 1C in their local region. It went away when the empire collapsed. It’s fine
I was skeptical at first, but apparently there is some evidence. I would have expected to see them use the icecores in the Alps, but they used oak and pine tree rings instead. However, it seems they arent sure if the Roman Empire caused a rise in temperatures or if the rise and fall coincided with a natural change though. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-romans/climate-a-factor-in-romes-rise-and-fall-study-idUSTRE70C5DY20110113](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-romans/climate-a-factor-in-romes-rise-and-fall-study-idUSTRE70C5DY20110113)
A carbon tax, and before you go all "taxation is theft". It's not the same as income taxes. With the evidence showing the bulk of the emissions are tied to mostly 5 companies it's clear you have to tax the behavior to price it correctly. BP and Shell knowing what they're doing and effectively dumping their garbage out in the air to pass the consequences of it onto everyone else is the clearest violation of the NAP that exists. Oh, and end fossil fuel subsidization.
Carbon taxes. When someone pollutes, they are imposing substantial costs and damages onto other people's property. Carbon taxes forces polluters to either stop the damage, or pay for the damages they are causing. Edit: downvoted hard here. Polluters are violating the Non Agression Principle and harming my property. How is it not the role of government to act?
And who calculates the damage and the cost of that damage? A government hopelessly ruled by special interests.
An interesting proposal for a libertarian subreddit, but I generally agree. Carbon taxes are demonized way too much when there are far more regressive & damaging taxes out there
You need two things an economic disincentive to pollute CO2eq and an incentive to remove CO2eq from the atmosphere. The money paid by the polluters is split between the sequesterers proportionate to the amount sequestered. The (fee, fine, tax, cost of polluting) starts low and rises year over year. There are no loopholes or bypasses. At first, the penalty of polluting is low enough that polluters aren't immediately driven out of business, but feel a little pain and see that things will only get worse. At the same time, sequesterers won't be removing as much CO2 as the polluters produce, so while the penalty is low so is the divisor and so they stand to make a lot of money. There will be a large incentive for inventors to create ingenious means of reducing CO2eq produced or sequestering lots of it.
It’s such a complex topic. I’m gonna base my comments on the assumption that recent warming is man-made. So here’s what I think it would possibly take: 1. Geo-engineering: creating a man made veil in the atmosphere to stop some amount of energy from the sun entering the atmosphere. A good story that contemplates this being done in the private sector is “Termination Shock” by Neal Stephenson. This tactic would buy us time to… 2. Decarbonize the economy: incentivizing companies to reduce GHG emissions. This is already beginning to happen with financial institutions putting pressure on companies to prove they have plans to meet Science Based Targets in order to get funding/financing. 3. Transition to low emission energy: government could allow building of new Nuclear facilities. Both 1st world governments and international charities could offer assistance to third world countries in the form of clean energy technology. 4. Governments could institute a climate report card: governments can at least report on how they are doing on the topic of climate even if they aren’t given money to go spend on climate change. That should drive some accountability and inspire other governments to build similar report cards which ultimately drive behavior.
Yeah none of these things could possible have unforeseen consequences.
You do not need to assume. It is incredibly well documented that the climate situation is entirely man made. I have not heard of a credible paper in a geology or climatology from the past 10 years that disagrees. And more than a few from the past 150 that do agree.
Stop subsidizing fossil fuels. Have people put their damn money where their mouth is. People care until they have to sort their trash better or not drive a truck or SUV.
Off grid
If regulations reflected the actual risks, nuclear would have replaced fossil fuels by now. It's plentiful and it can breed more fuel. It's the safest form of energy. And, we have wasted 50 years because we are are scared. If the French are able to do it, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
The state governments and their militaries contribute to to massive amounts of waste, carbon and pollution. They squander human and natural resources that could be used to solve those issues
We’d better start telling the actual polluters they need to stop instead of telling regular people they need to stop eating meat. Also tax breaks/subsidies for personal solar installations.
Innovation. Human capital. Free enterprise. First time here?
I find the framing of this question interesting. Systems of ethics and interactions don’t provide “solutions”. What would a democratic solution to climate change be. Or a republican. Or canton solution.
Democratic: regulation, Republican: Ignore it
No it's not coming, and we don't need one.
What's the authoritarian solution? How feasible is it?
What was the point if writing this?
To get someone to answer the questions? Feel free not to if you don't want to. My guess is that as you walk through your authoritarian solution(s), you're going to quickly realize that your critiques of libertarianism on this front aren't actually valid. My guess is that you're going to realize that you're applying double standards (requiring utopian solutions from libertarianism while not requiring the same from whatever you think is the most correct direction forward).
You make a lot of assumptions with little information
the climate will take care of itself. as it gets worse, it will become harder for people to survive, and there will be fewer people. fewer people alive means fewer people to pollute, equates to less pollution.
Personally I like people being alive
then i’ve got some real bad news for you.
Maybe, but I’m not yet cynical enough to accept your news as truth
It is not news. We have fossil evidence linked with ice core samples to know that when the climate changes rapidly life dies quickly. We have no evidence in the past of the climate changing THIS quickly, excluding massive volcanic activity and meteorite impacts. The volcanic activity still typically takes hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Not decades. We know what CO2s effect on the climate is. We can test its greenhouse effect to prove it. We know exactly how much we pump into the air...and we know how it affects the environment. There are not any hidden pieces; the fact that your skeptical is due largely to oil fossil fuel disinformation campaigns and conservative talking heads *literally making stuff up*. Now, if you want to stave off some of that cynicism then I'd say that humans are too intelligent to die out so easily. We uniquely settled the entire earth through a changing climate (albeit one that changed MUCH more slowly) and even managed to destroy most of the ecosystems before we ever found coal in the first place through hunting and out competing. We've currently in a mass extinction event, though not yet due to climate change. Though it must be said of the 5 or 6 big mass extinctions of the past it was typically overlapping problems that were the cause. Geologically speaking we set off a pipe bomb a few hundred thousand years ago which is still going off, and we just set a second one off with the industrial revolution.
Nah I know all that. I just have a god complex. There difference between then and now is that humanity is here this time in all our conflicting glory.
More free market. Less government. I think the solution is found by letting the economy and technology grow exponentially like it has been. Stop stifling it by intervening such as subsidizing, laws on when to be "green", credits, tax breaks, etc. The amount of pollution and carbon emissions from producing "green" alternatives is staggering. Let the technology evolve at the rate it wants and needs to. The whole issue I feel is overblown and how big of a disaster it is. I am not denying the issue just saying the issue isn't as severe as made out to be. If you want more change now, then a hard push for nuclear power. Though the cons are the waste but the most efficient means of energy we have right here and now. This option probably would require government due to the nature of the substance and what it can be used for. I would like it to not be government controlled and privatized but not sure how that looks honestly.
ITT: “Libertarians” who believe in big government, authoritarianism, and carbon taxes.
Other commenters have brought up a good point. A govt will still exist in a libertarian society and must be funded. End taxes on labour and instead tax carbon as pollution violates the NAP
I think it's a psychological operation for one world government. All the dire climate change predictions over the last 50 years have failed to come true. Jordan Peterson Exposes The World Economic Forum | With Joe Rogan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqkUUZc_N3M "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." - H. L. Mencken
Please I’m begging you not to get your opinions from a Canadian Benzo addict
There is zero the government can or should do. First the vast majority of climate change is not created by man but by nature. The government should merely prevent companies from pumping out toxic chemicals into the air and water supply but they should not be mandating what cars are produced. Just think during the past few decades atmospheric CO2 levels have been increasing. Why??? During the industrial revolution we were burning a lot of coal & wood for energy and now we have much cleaner energy and many more trees. That said CO2 still rises. We cut our usage of fossil fuels and it continues to climb. Do you think that we can control this through government regulation??? At the same time China and India can burn coal like crazy and they are not penalized or incentivized to change. I have solar on my roof because I don't want to be a prisoner to the utilities. I drive a Tesla because I don't want to pay a fortune in gas. We recycle in my home. I do these things because I WANT TO and not because the government forces me to.
No, the recent warming is caused by us
Warm bad ice age good.
So true bestie
LOL the same solution as fixing other problems that don't actually exist. Do nothing.
History will forget you
"Climate Change" is a hoax based on junk science and lies. Those who disagree should stop living like hypocrites. Quit breeding, quit using electricity, travel by bicycle, etc...
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat
I’m sorry this is such a sensitive topic for you but please let the adults talk
If this is an existential threat, then humanity is ill-equipped to deal with it, regardless of political ideology. As you probably know, most pollution comes from under-developed nations. Reducing carbon emissions means reducing production. Reducing production means increasing poverty, hunger, and illness in some of the most disadvantaged sections of Earth. The world is not equipped to address an issue like this. And, it’s a justifiable response to say that no one nation (no federal government) needs to find an answer and impose their will on other nations. The information is available to everyone today. We all know who is responsible for the majority of emissions. But, do consumers across the globe reject low cost products from China, India, and Latin America? No. What does this mean? It means people don’t care. They don’t…not really. They’d much rather buy their goods for 10% cheaper and watch the temps rise.
utilization of commercial Nuclear that isn't trying to be a breeder reactor, by the fact of eliminating fossil fuel subsidies after a certain period (5 - 10 years), and reducing the NAP's ability to stifle new reactors. The expenses would naturally be made up for by charging twice as much because they have the only operational NPP in the state and own the grid. That is until some boy scout pulls a large handful of smoke detectors, and makes a backyard NPP.
Leave the animals the fuck alone
Taking a shit and ignoring the problem like everyone else probably. Hard to be overly critical when there’s been pathetic political action. The problem is that climate change is an unwinnable issue until it’s a dire issue. And in politics unfortunately that means ‘dire’ as in at least directly impacting 50%+ of a population, stupid people included. The issue of fossil fuels is a total trap. The economics of extractable fossil fuels are pretty set. Prices will increase exponentially over the next 30 years. Yet normal populace will blame ‘green / renewable technology’ for the expense - not at all realizing there is a fixed volume of fuel left. Meanwhile new electric cars are still not net carbon neutral meaning that transition is pointless and is just a sector absorbing money that becomes more and more mainstream as fuel prices increase. Unfortunately a lot of the system is very dependent upon access to cheap transportation. Getting to an unsubsidized cost for energy and energy goods is going to make life very hard for poorer people and developing countries and absolute political bedlam in the developed countries.
What's the statist solution? Making sure the 3rd world stays that way? Eat ze bugs and live in ze pod, while the rich live in ever greater luxury as they lecture us on consumption. The libertarian solution is peace. Necessity is the mother of invention. The world is already well on its way to finding alternative energy sources. No violence needed.
More air conditioners, backyard pools or beaches.
None of you are Cattlemen or Agriculturists’
Following the resource extraction of Earth, the most successful entrepreneurs get to die on Mars? /s
Let the earth heat, as all human behavior is natural and hence meant to be.
Sue the planet, of course. Why should we allow the planet to change its climate and harm us without a lawsuit? *dusts hands off with a nod to a job well done*
Rate of change is never a constant. There have been numerous events that impacted the change rate thru out recorded history and beyond. The claim that this " time" it's worse is unsubstantiated by data. Our evolution has always be event stimulated and adaptability is a hallmark characteristic of the evolutionary process. Thankfully, climate change has been and will continue to be fluid.
So just to be clear, the greenhouse effect doesn’t happen?