It's amazing and wonderful how much environmental damage seems to be recovering. Air pollution is down, carbon emissions are down as much as 17%, fish and sharks are repopulating shorelines and beaches - and to think, all it took was the most severe public health crisis in 100 years, a catastrophic global recession, and an overpowering wave of human misery and death
Another point to balance the "how much environmental damage seems to be recovering":
CO2 in the atmosphere has a long inertia. The (reduction of) emissions in the past few months will not have any effect on the global warming for a few decades.
Basically in the short/mid-term, CO2 emissions are accumulated to previous emissions, not replacing them
This only shows that, while CO₂ concentrations are the dominant control variable in the question of our long-term survival, the overall health of the environment is influenced by many, many more things, especially short-term. Now it is especially clear that protecting the environment and mitigating the climate crisis are two different, and only partially aligned efforts. Frequently, they're in opposition - which is why it's extra important not to confuse them.
The example I tend to use is plastic pollution. Interventions like switching from single-use plastic bags and bottles to reusable woven bags and glass bottles may very well help with the amount of plastics (and microplastics) present in the environment, but they're also a climate disaster, because plastic bags and bottles are ridiculously efficient to make at scale. And so here, I also worry that despite the environment taking a break from us during COVID-19, this will turn out to be a huge step back climate-wise - as soon we'll have to start rebuilding, and there will be less money and will around to fund R&D and deployment of less carbon-intensive solutions.
> protecting the environment and mitigating the climate crisis are two different, and only partially aligned efforts
I wish more people understood this. Too many times conversation are hijacked by the CO2 discussion when really in the short term we should be focusing 99% of our efforts on bio-diversity preservation.
I sort of meant the reverse. You make a good point about importance of biodiversity downthread, but wrt. things like plastic pollution vs. CO₂, I'd argue we should just ignore the former. The reasoning is:
- We know the ecosystem is thoroughly polluted by microplastics, but there is no evidence that it's in any way harmful. It may be, but we haven't seen it so far.
- We know that without mitigation, climate change is an existential threat to civilization, that will materialize within the lifetime of many of us here.
Given that, we really can deal with microplastics later. Let's first stop the house from being on fire, and then focus on tyding it up.
Really interesting reasoning. I'm almost tempted to say "extremely unscientific".
1. "no evidence of microplastics being harmful" sounds very much like WHO's "no evidence of human transmission". Personally, I'd say that in both scenarios, the outcome we should be most worried about is tail risks - what if we suddenly realize the situation is much worse than we imagined, but it's already too late...
2. Is "climate change" so bad? I mean, would it be really so bad if the Earth warmed up a bit, and all of Siberia, Greenland and the Antartic became livable (and arable) land? More food, more space for new humans, ... all good! Except, obviously, 2 things - biodiversity (which you want to ignore) and tail risks - what if the Earth warms up too much, and we "trigger" some unexpected process (e.g. thawing of permafrost releases vast quantities of extremely potent greenhouse gases).
I think most people are simply really confused about their reasoning process. Microplastics? Ignore tail risks. Global warming? Tail risks! GMOs? Ignore tail risks. 5G? Tail risks! Vaccines? Ignore tail risks. Endocrine disruptors? Tail risks! (Of course, the exact configuration of positions is highly correlated with one's political orientation.)
2. Of course it's incredibly bad. It will displace entire populations and alter permanently entire ecosystems. The effects will be cascading all over the world and we have no idea what the consequences will be in the long term.
You've articulated perfectly something I've been struggling with on conversations here on hackernews in your last paragraph. People can be incredibly short termist when it suits their agenda but some things are dangerously irreversible if we get them wrong. I liken it to a child dismantling a toy to see how it works and then not being able to put it together again but on a civilisation impacting level.
I'd argue the two basic heuristics I apply in this and similar cases are pretty scientific:
1) Strong effects are obvious in the data; conversely, if you have to dig deep and play with statistical significance to prove there's a connection, the effect is very weak - it's a scientific curiosity, sure, but "to zeroth order of approximation" you may as well say it doesn't exit.
2) When ascertaining the possible impact of something in the future, your estimate will be more accurate if you have a clue about mechanisms of action involved.
Microplastics seem to fail both heuristics at the moment - there isn't any obvious impact that we've measured, and there isn't any obvious mechanism of action that could imply serious danger. There most likely are issues caused by them - however, we've been living with them for decades now, so if this was an emergency-level threat, we'd probably see something by now.
Compare that with worrying whether coffee/red meat/artificial sweetener/vaccine/5G will give you cancer - maybe it will, maybe it won't, but if the chance of it was remotely worth worrying about, it would be blindingly obvious in the data by now. Contrast that with "no evidence of human transmission" - not enough data to check heuristic 1, fails heuristic 2 due to similarity to other coronaviruses with known mechanisms of human-to-human transmission.
Climate change passes both #1 and #2. There is known, first-principles mechanism of action that you can dig into like into a fractal, if you want to explore consequences for various aspects of the ecology and society. There is a known mechanism of action that makes it into an actual threat - food shortages, mass migrations, political unrest, leading to wars, starvation, suffering and death. We know how fragile our civilization is (present COVID-19 situation makes a lot of weak points clearly visible). There's lot of historical data supporting the above and the threat evaluation - for instance, we're seeing how increasing average temperatures are impacting agriculture and habitability of some regions on Earth.
One more clarification: the reason climate change is dangerous is not because it threatens plants and animals. It's because it threatens human civilization. We care about nature not because it is, but primarily because we need it to live. Moreover, since almost no one would enjoy suddenly being thrown back to preindustrial age on a thoroughly broken planet, we can safely say that the concern is about survival of existing civilization, not survival of human species (not to mention, you can't fix the damage without technology, and you won't have technology when civilization collapses). Human civilization is very fragile.
Also: just saying "tail risks" isn't meaningful. You have to actually estimate the sum of the tail to determine whether it's even worth paying attention to. Which circles us back to heuristics #1 and #2, which - in my opinion - say that microplastics are a secondary issue to climate change.
What are the benefits of focusing on biodiversity preservation? I can think of some things like food security but would global warming not also impact on those?
>What are the benefits of focusing on biodiversity preservation?
They're not always aligned. There's many more issues that come out of low biodiveristy than just those affected by climate change. One important one that's unrelated would be high biodiversity environments have more rich soils that are better for farming. Similarly more biodiverse environments are more resistant to disease; Ash dieback disease that affects the Ash in Europe appears not be fatal to the tree in mixed diverse forest [1].
Diverse ecosystems are also more resistant to climate change [2], so there's that too.
>but would global warming not also impact on those
Other way around. By focusing on biodiversity preservation we increase the robustness of the ecosystem and stop the dominoes from falling. Removing biodiversity cascades through the whole ecosystem and accelerates climate change. Also once bio-diversity is gone it's impossible to get back but we can always invent technology to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Remember most of the species we're losing we don't even know they exist.
Everything is connected in nature, for example if we lose bees the effects will be devastating. Most seemingly "useless" animals actually have a very important role in their ecosystem. Without healthy ecosystems we are doomed.
I feel that most of cleantech work is still essentially a luxury, which will be hard to justify in a recession market. I also didn't mention the other aspect - how many of existing environmental protections and standards will have to be suspended because everyone will argue they can't afford to survive and recover if they have to stay clean?
Which means large corporations get to influence policies, even without any lobbying. "Dear senator, what do you mean those environmental protection regulations apply to us? The regulations of the neighbour country $x, that also invited us to build our 10 000 jobs worth plant on their soil, are nowhere near as onerous. We might need to take them up on their offer. Perhaps at least you can cut us a tax break?"
"Well, dear corporation, if you want to sell your products to our citizens, you have to play by our rules. We'll let you know that your direct competitor already agreed to these rules yesterday."
"I'm sorry Senator, you must be confused. Our products meet the health&safety standards prescribed by yours as well as international regulations in this region. You cannot, legally, stop stores from reselling our products, nor you can prevent customers from ordering them on-line. Meanwhile, if you're satisfied with the smaller plant of 2000 jobs of our competitor, we'll happily set up shop at your neighbour's.
It was nice dealing with you. I hope you don't mind if I mention your name at the press conference we'll call soon to announce signing of the deal for our new plant with your neighbour."
"We have and will use our authority to prevent the sale or re-sale of products that do not conform to the rule of law. Please be so kind to mention my name at your press conference, so that my citizens know their government stands up for their rights."
I know that the above response might seem like a pipe-dream to some, but let me assure you that there are governments and government officials that do stand up for the rule of law, and that are not easily bought by the highest bidder.
Yeah, but what I meant by my response is that, in this hypothetical scenario, the products themselves are fine. Nice, clean, safe, recyclable, whatnot. It's the manufacturing process that's polluting. You can't ban a product from being sold in your country on the grounds that manufacturing it in another country is an ecological disaster. Meanwhile, all those jobs are highly desirable (not just for your personal benefit as a politician, but also for the benefit of your constituents and your nation's economy). So there's an incentive to relax the environmental protection rules a little bit. A corporation can use this to play countries off each other - if you stand fast by your existing rules, and your neighbour does not, all the plants and all the jobs and all the economic boost will go to your neighbour, making your country weaker on the international scene.
There's no bribing involved in this scenario. Just plain market competition at nation-state level.
Well, it depends on the size of the country, does it? And on the mindset of the population.
If the EU tells you you can't produce anywhere in the EU because of how dirty your factory is, you can still produce it in the US or Russia and then ship it to the EU. However, your supply lines have just gotten more complicated, expensive, and error prone (because of distance) - so that's one part of the equation that a company has to take into consideration as well.
On top of that, I'm fairly sure there are quite a few Europeans who will applaud politicians who stand up against polluting or otherwise unethical companies, and who look down on (and not vote for) politicians who do shady deals with polluting companies.
So, as always - it's not so simple, and there's more than one dynamic at play.
> You can't ban a product from being sold in your country on the grounds that manufacturing it in another country is an ecological disaster.
Why not? Constituents like it because it brings back the jobs that left because moving them out allowed companies to avoid environmental regulations, which they can now not avoid either way if they want to sell in your country and so might as well bring the jobs back.
> Constituents like it because it brings back the jobs that left
If it succeeds.
I guess you could do that; a sovereign state can try whatever they like. But has that ever actually happened? I can't think of any case where a country banned import of a product on the grounds that its manufacturing isn't up to environmental standards, even though the manufacturing happens in a different sovereign nation, and is compliant with that other nation's standards. I imagine trying to do that would quickly escalate the issue from business to international politics.
There are already rules about things like labor standards of where the product was made. Like if a company uses slaves to manufacture a product, the purchasing company doesn't just through up their hands and say "What can we do? It is not our labor standards they have to comply with." No reason we couldn't add environmental standards to the list.
Edit: I am getting a lot of down votes so let me clarify: if external costs are not internalised, humans will ignore it.
Internalising the cost does not even need to mean tax. Many clothing brands in my country, even the budget brands (think Walmart), have been pressured by consumers into using more ethical factories. The same could be done by forcing companies to disclose what factories they use and the factory carbon footprint.
It could have been non-polluting, but instead of redesigning, it's easier now to get nations to compete against each other for the location of that plant - and as part of that competition, relax the environmental protections. The "freedom of movement" for corporations (freedom of movement of capital?) has plenty of benefits, but this is one of the negative side effects.
My solution is for all governments to take responsibility, tax pollution and for consumers to understand the environmental costs of products, possibly by forcing disclosure.
I don't understand what your solution is. Ban importing goods? Tax imported goods based on factory pollution and standards?
Knowing the solution is the easy part. The hard part is how to get there, and how to keep the solution working.
"All governments taking responsibility simultaneously" is not something that ever happens. And even if it did, in a moment of selfless reflection of all global leaders, weaker economies will still have a powerful incentive to relax the standards to compete better with stronger economies. I don't have a solution, I'm just saying how things are. Restricting the ability of multinationals to play countries against each other would help in this matter, but it would probably gum up the economy too hard to be worth the attempt (not to mention, it would have to be another thing most governments would have to agree on simultaneously, otherwise the ones to attempt it immediately lose).
The overall point is: it is a tragedy of the commons, just not a local one - an international one. The solution to tragedy of the commons is to have a higher authority unilaterally force participants to limit their use of the commons. But we don't have any higher authority above nation states, so we're ill-equipped to solve tragedies of the commons at international level.
Yes, What is difference between ie. CO2 and other thrash we already producing (as society). So far we didn't accepted that we need 'pay' or handle CO2 as rubbish (while PPM constantly growing). But take your dog poo in park or pay fine (Plastic anyone?). Again, What is difference ?
Even assuming they are capable of that (I am doubtful), reaching consensus on the idea seems quite a bit of a long shot. Something likely needs to be done though, somehow.
Imagine - what will happen when next big virus/bacteria pandemic hits the earth...Other species will stand a chance when human population makes some room ...it probably sounds bad but unfortunately the humans are the problem - not the CO2 or something else (they are just consequence) - proof is how nature thrives around Chernobyl
And the bad news is that, to reach our climate goals, we need to do much more. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30797/...: “the required cuts in emissions are now 2.7 per cent per year from 2020 to year- 2030 for the 2°C goal and 7.6 per cent per year on average for the 1.5°C goal.”
With the help of this year’s crisis, that 2°C goal seems in sight, but 1.027¹⁰ is about 1.3, so even if that “as much as” is globally, we would need about 10% more, so we still would have to find new ways to decrease emissions. I don’t even see us keep our current gains.
That 1.5°C goal certainly is way out of sight, IMO.
A month or so back I thought I was going crazy because I began to notice just how clear the NYC skyline appeared from where I live. It's always been visible, but the clarity is what struck me.
Well, the day that humans manage to wipe themselves off the face of the planet will be a day of rejoicing for all species other than rats, raccoons, and cockroaches.
Plus rodents survive in hiding. If they come back up to the surface to seek food, then they will become targets of owls, foxes, etc. But Thule they live in the sewers, that gives them protection.
