A Conservative Policy Solution to Slow Down Climate Change?

[daylen]

Bending the meaning of true or false to support your argument is the most basic logical fallacy.

The most basic communication fallacy is presuming all agents must use the same definition of true/false.

[classical_Liberal]

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[Hristo Botev]

@CL: Admittedly I know very little about the Quakers, which is a shame because they've got a meeting house almost across the street from me. But certainly they are by everyone's perspective fantastic neighbors.

[Swerty]

FWIW, my original calculation of my target spending was based on the global footprint (based on Wackernagel's work which shortly thereafter become that Global Footprint Network) in 2001 insofar spending was distributed equitably and sustainably among all humans, that is, how much could each person spend so as not to make someone else living either presently or in the future have less? The answer back then was $6000/year/capita. I reran the calculation in 2018 as inflation, footprint (remaining ecological and resource reserves), and population had all changed and the answer was $6750/year/capita.

I hope I'm not late to the party, but can you please share your calculation?

[jacob]

Easy enough: personal limit = global GDP / global population / number of Earths used. You can find the last number somewhere on https://www.footprintnetwork.org/ or just base it on the earth overshoot day which usually receives at least some media attention each year. E.g. if the overshoot day is 156 days into the year, the number of 365/156 = 2.3 Find the date on https://www.overshootday.org/

Add: You could also just take GDP / national population / number of Earths "if everybody lived like your nation".
That's probably a better (more accurate) way but that's not how I did it.

[Jean]

The most basic communication fallacy is presuming all agents must use the same definition of true/false.

I'de rather Say that elements in a story, have a meaning for your counsciousness, and an other meaning for a deeper part of you. There are therefore two stories being told, one of which being true while the other is false. Of course, both could be true, or both could be false.

[classical_Liberal]

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[tonyedgecombe]

I remember a talk at LSE by Jeffrey Sachs about this, he put it at about $10K USD although that was a few years ago now.

[classical_Liberal]

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[Jean]

That number would be 27'000 per years in switzerland. That's a huge différence.

[tonyedgecombe]

Housing and land costs distort this. My house would be three times as expensive if it was shifted East by 60 miles but would still contain the same embedded energy.

[Mister Imperceptible]

My parents pay more than one JAFI in property taxes per year alone.

[Hristo Botev]

My parents pay more than one JAFI in property taxes per year alone.

So do we; someone has to pay to prop up failing businesses and schools.

[Alphaville]

i’d be interested to hear a conservative response to this, if there’s one:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- ... st-alaska/

eta: original/nonpaywalled:

https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releas ... dless-rule

[7Wannabe5]

From article linked:

(Trump) asked him “How the hell do you have an economy if you don’t have roads?

I think this is an interesting and timely question even considered from a politically neutral perspective. To paraphrase Michael Pollan from his great book “Second Nature”, once you are standing on a trail contemplating a wilderness, it is no longer a wilderness, it is a garden.”

OTOH, in Detroit and areas of rural blight, it is not uncommon to see a tree growing in the center of what once was a house or business. I even saw deer grazing on the grass of a house on 8 mile. In Japan, even with its relatively high population, rural communities are collapsing as the population approaches median age of 50.

It’s not just that the future is not yet uniformly distributed. It’s more like the futures will not be uniformly distributed. From the perspective of COVID 19, we are a vast wilderness. From the perspective of species of seagulls venturing ever further from shore, our landfills are a great wilderness.

NOTE: When calculating value of 1Jacob, if you use your own national GDP rather than planetary total, you will be ignoring boundary flows. So, for instance, citizen of China will come up with very low number around $3200, whereas citizen of Rwanda will get to multiply actual median income of around $800 by footprint factor of 7 = $5600. Obviously, this simply reflects difference in energy intensity between advanced service/financial, manufacturing, or subsistence economies. IOW, it allows wealthy nations to “cheat” on the number by outsourcing their dirty work. Like Lady Downton claiming “I filled zero trash bags.” However, it is also true that at the margin of affluence energy density towards quality of living can be reduced through increased efficiency and leisure, but you can’t puzzle this out on basis of this calculation.

[Flurry]

Most calculators to calculate "How many plants would it take if everyone lived like you" are kinda harsh. I really try my best to conserve resources and still these calculators tell me that I consume 1.8 times too many resources. If my lifestyle is wasteful than I think that humanity is doomed because I don't know any other people personally who would accept such low living standards in terms of everything (except housing, that's probably my weakness).
So I don't really want to calculate anything using these values what makes it kinda hard to evaluate my personal footprint.

Regarding the topic of the thread: I am a fan of a global CO2 equivalent tax. My trust into free markets is big enough to believe that every use of limited resources gets optimized and a tax would make climate changes gasses to limited resources. To ensure that the tax won't be the burden of the poorer people, I'd distribute all these taxes equally back to the people so the vegan living in a tent would make a nice profit of his lifestyle while the wasteful living person has to carry the financial burden.

[Hristo Botev]

i’d be interested to hear a conservative response to this, if there’s one:

To quote Russell Kirk, "There is nothing more conservative than conservation." Granted, Kirk's conservatism (and that of Roger Scruton) is very different from the more cosmopolitan types, who push for progress at all costs.

[7Wannabe5]

@Flurry:

Some of the calculators are harsher than the Jacob calculation because they automatically assign you fair pie share of government spending towards services/infrastructure in your region. So, whether or not this is more accurate than Jacob calculation would depend on whether your actual use of such services/infrastructure is proportional to your overall tax burden. For instance, your typical childless, car free, extreme early retiree might make more use of library and park services than average citizen, but less use of roads and schools.

[Alphaville]

To quote Russell Kirk, "There is nothing more conservative than conservation." Granted, Kirk's conservatism (and that of Roger Scruton) is very different from the more cosmopolitan types, who push for progress at all costs.

i agree on the conservative aspect of conservation, semantically at least, but i never see it in politics. most “conservatives” these days either deny climate change, or deny that we have anything to do with it, or deny that we can do anything about it. it’s more free market/free enterprise types, blind to externalities.

which points to something i wanted to mention earlier: the broadness of the conservative label makes it impossible really to come up with a consistent position on the matter. eg i find the amish more conservative than the koch brother still surviving, but the kochs shaped the debate for decades while the amish are traditionally silent beyond their borders (i think, having never heard from them).

from scruton i’ve only read his aesthetics of music and he comes across as nothing if not cosmopolitan—culturally at least. not really familiar with his politics, but i was not a fan of his aesthetic reasoning, ha ha.

my experience with rural folk is that being at the forefront of natural depredation they tend to be for depredation—yes, some wise souls among them do see value in conservation (e.g. some smart ranchers i know work together with environmentalists) but others can’t see past the quick payoff, and damn what comes after. short-termism is universal.

suburban and city people on the other hand as you’ve pointed elsewhere tend to virtue signal more than reduce their actual demand for resources, which they don’t actually see mined or logged or farmed—nevertheless, some do make the effort, same as it happens among the rurals. unfortunately, just as elsewhere, they’re a minority.

nevertheless, this is where consumer demand comes from, and free enterprise attempts to respond to it with supply, either real or fake (or both). this nexus might be the only relevant locus of control at a global scale—at least under capitalism.

[Jean]

Some people use labels as shield. They are the main benefitors from prejudices associated with those labels.