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from the don't-let-the-changes-get-you-down dept.
Why our continued use of fossil fuels is creating a financial time bomb:
We know roughly how much more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere before we exceed our climate goals—limiting warming to 1.5° to 2° C above pre-industrial temperatures. From that, we can figure out how much more fossil fuel we can burn before we emit that much carbon dioxide. But when you compare those numbers with our known fossil fuel reserves, things get jaw-dropping.
To reach our climate goals, we'll need to leave a third of the oil, half of the natural gas, and nearly all the coal we're aware of sitting in the ground, unused.
Yet we have—and are still building—infrastructure that is predicated on burning far more than that: mines, oil and gas wells, refineries, and the distribution networks that get all those products to market; power plants, cars, trains, boats, and airplanes that use the fuels. If we're to reach our climate goals, some of those things will have to be intentionally shut down and left to sit idle before they can deliver a return on the money they cost to produce.
But it's not just physical capital that will cause problems if we decide to get serious about addressing climate change. We have workers who are trained to use all of the idled hardware, companies that treat the fuel reserves and hardware as an asset on their balance sheets, and various contracts that dictate that the reserves can be exploited.
Collectively, you can think of all of these things as assets—assets that, if we were to get serious about climate change, would see their value drop to zero. At that point, they'd be termed "stranded assets," and their stranding has the potential to unleash economic chaos on the world.
Do you agree with this arguably pessimistic assessment of the situation, and have we already run out of time to take the action necessary to avoid exceeding climate goals? Criticism is easy, but what solutions do you have to the problem?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 15 2022, @12:27AM (9 children)
I disagree. The assumptions aren't that extreme. An assumption of infinite growth is little different from an assumption of finite growth for a few decades (and really humanity has been growing for many centuries making that assumption much less of a assumption).
And freely available resources? The real assumption is that all resources are scarce and have cost. We even have posters here criticizing the assumption because they think it's an obstruction to a genuine, post-scarcity economy.
And geopolitical stability remains pretty stable even with covid and Russian misbehavior. It's not much of an assumption.
The "fuck you, poors" are getting considerable cheap shit out of this, so I'm just not seeing the problem.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 15 2022, @05:12PM (8 children)
Why do you use so many words and say so little? You haven't rebutted anything I've said, obviously or otherwise. You've stuck your fingertips in your ears and started shouting the Gospel According To Mammon According to Mr. Hallow. Economics isn't some kind of magic spell, Hallow. Chanting and repetition won't save you in the face of shifting reality. Everyone and everything bows before physics.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 15 2022, @10:52PM (7 children)
Should I be rebutting what you say?
My take is that you might actually have an interesting point here, should you choose to think about what you're talking about rather than waste time spinning silly yarns about the mean people on the internets.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 16 2022, @04:58AM (6 children)
Your "take" is hot dogshit, and almost completely void of any actual substance.
Wake the fuck up. Humans are not rational actors, resources are not infinite, growth cannot be infinite or even "close enough" as you're putting it, and deliberately producing massive amounts of stranded assets with what capacity we have left is outright evil at this point.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 16 2022, @11:33AM (4 children)
Except of course, humans are often rational enough for those "rational actor" approximations, growth can indeed be close enough (and has been for centuries, not just every now and then!), and those assets need not be stranded - but as Phoenix666 noted, if they are, it's not downright evil, but an opportunity to repurpose those assets so that they are no longer stranded (and help the poorest in the process).
This is a classic straw man argument. You don't even say why these assumptions/evils are even supposed to be something we should talk about.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:54AM (3 children)
Trickle-down economics doesn't work, Hallow. At this point there's more evidence for creationism than trickle-down, which is to say, we have real-time and constant disproofs of Reaganomics unfolding in front of our very eyes day to day. And, again, your "repurpose those stranded assets to help the poor" idea is another manifestation of this; it's like saying "the way to solve food insecurity is to feed rich people until they throw up, and then let the poor eat the vomit."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 18 2022, @02:37AM (2 children)
Aside from you, who in this thread has talked about trickle-down? Sorry, neither Phoenix666 nor I did that. You did.
Reagonics is about a particular tax policy from the 1980s - favoring the wealthy (that is, we tax rich people less so that poor people can benefit indirectly). We're not talking tax policy, but the development of productive assets that has as a side effect that it can be repurposed afterward.
This also gets to my point about leverage. Such reuse lessens moderately the amount of leverage since there's some recovery possible even if the fossil fuel assset/infrastructure builders got this completely wrong.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 18 2022, @04:44PM (1 child)
And all of that is trickle-down. All of it amounts to "make the rich richer so they invest in the country on a private level." That is the textbook definition of trickle-down economics. This is a really bad look for you, Hallow. Your economic religious views are being exposed for the hollow, self-destructive puffery they are.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday May 18 2022, @11:41PM
No, it's not. Phoenix666's original post simply pointed out that there's not a lot of drama to a transition away from fossil fuels - due to such ready tools as that market that Phoenix666 mentioned. In other words, your breathless concerns like the load of "stranded assets" just aren't that significant. We already have it figured out.
Then change your optics. You haven't given any reason (not just in this thread - for many years, let us note) that I should care about how things look to you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 20 2022, @03:38AM
Thinking about this post some more, this is just plain dumb. Why would rich people deliberately produce massive amounts of stranded assets? They're not in this to lose money. Sure, I can see something like an idiotic government policy to create said stranded assets, but that can happen with any sort of asset.
Instead we have considerable evidence that we actually have overly strong incentives against producing those assets (at least in the Western World where the concerns of this "financial bomb" are discussed) - like very few refineries built since the 1970s (I see repeatedly the claim that no refinery with "significant downstream unit capacity" has been constructed since 1977) and the obstructing of oil transportation infrastructure (like the successful blocking of Keystone XL). Not much point to worrying about stranded assets when the real problem is a dearth of said assets.