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0 pointstptacek3y ago0 comments

That's not the point of the comment you're responding to.

Climate-driven austerity isn't going to happen, because it's an intractable global-scale collective action problem.

If you believe that anthropogenic climate change is going to be a global disaster, you should probably reasonably assume that some country in the world is going to allocate serious resources to mitigating it.

There are 50 countries in the world with resources exceeding that of Portugal or New Zealand. Any of those countries could fund and implement a large-scale geoengineering project. No mechanism exists to ensure that any of those countries get permission to do so.

So it doesn't much matter whether we think it's a good idea. Either:

(1) Anthropogenic climate change isn't going to impose unacceptable costs on the industrialized world, and we'll just blow it off, or

(2) Some country is going to intervene directly in the climate.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

wizofaus3y ago· 1 in thread

What sort of geoengineering project could a country the size of NZ undertake on its own though? Certainly nothing that will make any difference to global climate - at best they might find ways to control cloud-cover and/or rainfall over its own territory. And "legal permission" mightn't be an issue, but if one country decides to undertake a geoengineering project that's fully expected to have a significant negative impact on other ones, they can certainly expect military retaliation.

tptacekOP3y ago

Those are two coherent rebuttals. "But it will do harm than good" or "it will have unintended consequences", on the other hand, aren't.

But in the thought exercise here, consider that military retaliation just pushes the moment that a climate-threatened country will respond with geoengineering into the future --- to the point where the cost of military intervention is lower than that of climate change.

I don't know, though, I'm just noodling.

connorgutman3y ago· 1 in thread

"If you believe that anthropogenic climate change is going to be a global disaster, you should probably reasonably assume that some country in the world is going to allocate serious resources to mitigating it."

Not when mitigating it requires ending and reversing economic growth. You're assuming there's a single nation on Earth run by good-faith actors. Furthermore, if climate-drive austerity doesn't occur, the Earth will kill billions of people until it reaches a new equilibrium.

tptacekOP3y ago

My understanding of the point being made is, if anthropogenic climate change is a global catastrophe threatening countries around the world, each of those threatened countries will, at some point, have no choice but to invest in the implementation of geoengineering projects. There won't be a choice.

So the only real question is, when the moment comes that the first sufficiently industrialized country is pushed to the edge by climate catastrophe, what options will they have available to them? If the only options are bad things that are likely to cause more harm than good, that won't matter --- it'll still happen, because what else could happen?

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4 comments · 2 top-level

wizofaus3y ago· 1 in thread

tptacekOP3y ago

Those are two coherent rebuttals. "But it will do harm than good" or "it will have unintended consequences", on the other hand, aren't.

I don't know, though, I'm just noodling.

connorgutman3y ago· 1 in thread

tptacekOP3y ago

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