Bret Victor: What can a technologist do about climate change? A personal view(worrydream.com)
worrydream.com
Bret Victor: What can a technologist do about climate change? A personal view
https://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/
7 comments
I cannot speak for others, but one hacker did respond w/ ideas for a couple of things he is wondering like crazy about why are not implemented because of the massive RoI. Hackers and technologists shouuld be able to join forces.
Maybe someone brighter than I am can explain why those things are not done post-haste.I am hardly among the brightest folks here, or anywhere. I am just curious about things. Curious, or fiend for that A-ha experience!:)
Maybe someone brighter than I am can explain why those things are not done post-haste.I am hardly among the brightest folks here, or anywhere. I am just curious about things. Curious, or fiend for that A-ha experience!:)
OT: oh wow, did chindōgu really make it to English? (it's Japanese for gadget)
For me, absolutely yes! It's a really important art-form with lots to
say about technology but hides inside fun and frivolity. I'm really
into studying it. :)
Maybe you know, what's the plaural of chindogu?
Like sheep (one chindogu, many chindogu)?
Just realized this article was written in 2015. Because I feel the biggest problem to overcome now is politics.
If we could magically rid the world of the toxic and addictive qualities of social media algorithms, (something technologists could do directly), and put more focus on fact finding and disseminating, it would have an impact.
If we could magically rid the world of the toxic and addictive qualities of social media algorithms, (something technologists could do directly), and put more focus on fact finding and disseminating, it would have an impact.
> Because I feel the biggest problem to overcome now is politics
Politics is just a proxy for people’s desires and motivations and willingness to make trade offs.
Polls show that most americans agree humans are causing climate change, but most won’t spend even $10 a month to combat climate change: https://apnorc.org/projects/is-the-public-willing-to-pay-to-... (open the top line results pdf).
Forget EVs. What’s it going to cost for people to replace their gas and oil heat with heat pumps? Way more than $10/month!
Politics is just a proxy for people’s desires and motivations and willingness to make trade offs.
Polls show that most americans agree humans are causing climate change, but most won’t spend even $10 a month to combat climate change: https://apnorc.org/projects/is-the-public-willing-to-pay-to-... (open the top line results pdf).
Forget EVs. What’s it going to cost for people to replace their gas and oil heat with heat pumps? Way more than $10/month!
But the article has a few examples where government action helped start a movement (like with financing large solar projects because private banks wouldn’t)
So things like subsidies could just help nudge markets to go. So strong subsidies for heat pumps would incentivize more people to make that move.
But to use your analogy, it’s also something mentioned in the article (or maybe I wanted to interpret it how I wanted to), we also don’t do a good job of communicating the risks.
My eyes glaze over when I read 2 degrees, “metric tons of CO2” cuz I can’t imagine how to weigh a gas, and other similar figures that are simply harder to relate to.
So we need to find better ways to communicate these things than very nerdy statistical model figures and such.
So things like subsidies could just help nudge markets to go. So strong subsidies for heat pumps would incentivize more people to make that move.
But to use your analogy, it’s also something mentioned in the article (or maybe I wanted to interpret it how I wanted to), we also don’t do a good job of communicating the risks.
My eyes glaze over when I read 2 degrees, “metric tons of CO2” cuz I can’t imagine how to weigh a gas, and other similar figures that are simply harder to relate to.
So we need to find better ways to communicate these things than very nerdy statistical model figures and such.
> So things like subsidies could just help nudge markets to go. So strong subsidies for heat pumps would incentivize more people to make that move
Who is going to pay for the subsidies? In the US, we caused massive inflation because we had to print trillions of dollars just to handle Covid.
Who is going to pay for the subsidies? In the US, we caused massive inflation because we had to print trillions of dollars just to handle Covid.
What caused what most people perceive as inflation is really greedflation that, quite simply, was caused by it suddenly becoming acceptable to raise prices "because everyone else is" and corporations piling on by saying to themselves "let's see just how high we can put prices before people cut back buying". The answer is "a lot" people have shown they will still wait in line to pay a bigger chunk of their income for a burger, a coffee, an egg, and pretty much everything else. They will whine the whole time but they still buy much to the delight of the seller. Imagine if tens of millions skipped product x for a week or two or even better until the price went down.
> What caused what most people perceive as inflation is really greedflation that, quite simply, was caused by it suddenly becoming acceptable to raise prices "because everyone else is" and corporations piling on by saying to themselves "let's see just how high we can put prices before people cut back buying
How can you believe that when the graph of M1 money supply looks like this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
How can you believe that when the graph of M1 money supply looks like this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
Casting this as a cost problem is part of the political problem. There is little discussion of sticking to narrow market solutions when it comes to war, yet we blithely put out billions dollars for various form of defense and really don’t ask how are we going to pay
The cost of not fixing climate change is going to be a much higher financial impact than the cost of governments programs to shift our energy. It’s already fiscally prudent for our economy to take care of late change even if every dollar of that is deficit funded (which there is actually not a need to structure the fix that extremely).
It’s only political lobbying of extremely wealthy fossil fuel corporations and billionaires that stands in the way.
The cost of not fixing climate change is going to be a much higher financial impact than the cost of governments programs to shift our energy. It’s already fiscally prudent for our economy to take care of late change even if every dollar of that is deficit funded (which there is actually not a need to structure the fix that extremely).
It’s only political lobbying of extremely wealthy fossil fuel corporations and billionaires that stands in the way.
> Casting this as a cost problem is part of the political problem.
It's inherently a cost problem. We have to replace a bunch of capital infrastructure with different capital infrastructure. That costs money. If you fund that with deficit spending, you will increase inflation, which is politically unpopular.
In aggregate polling, Donald Trump is now tied with Biden among people 18-34: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16D9GSxqF5LFIRTcoVJlv.... That is completely nuts, and it's because eggs are somewhat more expensive than they were a few years ago. What do you think is the political feasibility of financing climate change mitigation efforts through deficit spending?
> There is little discussion of sticking to narrow market solutions when it comes to war, yet we blithely put out billions dollars for various form of defense and really don’t ask how are we going to pay
Defense spending as a share of the economy has been shrinking for decades as the Cold War threat recedes into memory: https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/non-defense-consumin.... If you can persuade Americans to open their pocket books for climate change the way they did for defense during the cold war, then that's great. But that's what it will take.
> It’s only political lobbying of extremely wealthy fossil fuel corporations and billionaires that stands in the way.
This sort of magical, ignorant thinking on the left is why we have no hope of doing anything to mitigate climate change.
It's inherently a cost problem. We have to replace a bunch of capital infrastructure with different capital infrastructure. That costs money. If you fund that with deficit spending, you will increase inflation, which is politically unpopular.
In aggregate polling, Donald Trump is now tied with Biden among people 18-34: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16D9GSxqF5LFIRTcoVJlv.... That is completely nuts, and it's because eggs are somewhat more expensive than they were a few years ago. What do you think is the political feasibility of financing climate change mitigation efforts through deficit spending?
> There is little discussion of sticking to narrow market solutions when it comes to war, yet we blithely put out billions dollars for various form of defense and really don’t ask how are we going to pay
Defense spending as a share of the economy has been shrinking for decades as the Cold War threat recedes into memory: https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/non-defense-consumin.... If you can persuade Americans to open their pocket books for climate change the way they did for defense during the cold war, then that's great. But that's what it will take.
> It’s only political lobbying of extremely wealthy fossil fuel corporations and billionaires that stands in the way.
This sort of magical, ignorant thinking on the left is why we have no hope of doing anything to mitigate climate change.
While the majority of inflation today seems to be driven by companies increasing the profit margin, Climate change is a strong contributor to inflation of fundamental economic costs.
Food price inflation is increased by increased heat waves, droughts, and shifting northward of pests that used to be controlled by colder winters.
Property insurance inflation drives up the cost of insuring against the effects of the same disasters - directly driving home ownership costs up, as well as rentals up.
Supply disruption as inflation driver increases from events like drought and heatwaves disrupting Panama canal operations.
Building supply inflation is increased as increased hurricane and tornado intensity causes more resources to be diverted to rebuilding instead of being able to do things like build new housing stock.
Defense spending is accepted deficit spending for the public good to avoid the disruption of military actions. It's a lot like other insurance spending.
Climate change is a form of insurance spending. If we don't fix Climate change, the inflation will come one way or another, and we should decide if we want to address it in a relatively controlled way of building up our economy with common deficit spending, or if we want uncontrolled events to land and generally inflate our economic costs in poorly controllable ways.
Magical thinking is somehow believing we avoid costs by sticking our head in the sand and wishing for conditions long past.
Food price inflation is increased by increased heat waves, droughts, and shifting northward of pests that used to be controlled by colder winters.
Property insurance inflation drives up the cost of insuring against the effects of the same disasters - directly driving home ownership costs up, as well as rentals up.
Supply disruption as inflation driver increases from events like drought and heatwaves disrupting Panama canal operations.
Building supply inflation is increased as increased hurricane and tornado intensity causes more resources to be diverted to rebuilding instead of being able to do things like build new housing stock.
Defense spending is accepted deficit spending for the public good to avoid the disruption of military actions. It's a lot like other insurance spending.
Climate change is a form of insurance spending. If we don't fix Climate change, the inflation will come one way or another, and we should decide if we want to address it in a relatively controlled way of building up our economy with common deficit spending, or if we want uncontrolled events to land and generally inflate our economic costs in poorly controllable ways.
Magical thinking is somehow believing we avoid costs by sticking our head in the sand and wishing for conditions long past.
More magical thinking! Yes, companies just randomly decided they could increase profit margins in 2021, and it’s totally not caused by the trillions of dollars of money we just printed: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
You’re literally doing the same thing as climate change denying conservatives. It’s inconvenient for their political ideology so they won’t believe the data that’s right in front of their face.
You’re doing the same thing. The data says that regular voters won’t spend even $10 per month to mitigate climate change, but you want to blame “corporations and billionaires.” Inflation just happened to occur right after we printed $6 trillion in response to COVID, but that must have been billionaires and corporations too!
You’re literally doing the same thing as climate change denying conservatives. It’s inconvenient for their political ideology so they won’t believe the data that’s right in front of their face.
You’re doing the same thing. The data says that regular voters won’t spend even $10 per month to mitigate climate change, but you want to blame “corporations and billionaires.” Inflation just happened to occur right after we printed $6 trillion in response to COVID, but that must have been billionaires and corporations too!
> Forget EVs. What’s it going to cost for people to replace their gas and oil heat with heat pumps? Way more than $10/month!
People will save money by transitioning to EVs and heat pumps.
Often the big barrier is an upfront cost that makes them just continually pay a higher monthly cost, or a long payoff time.
There's various ways to financially engineer that and unlock the savings and government often plays a vital role in that since the switch has various other benefits, like less death and disease.
People will save money by transitioning to EVs and heat pumps.
Often the big barrier is an upfront cost that makes them just continually pay a higher monthly cost, or a long payoff time.
There's various ways to financially engineer that and unlock the savings and government often plays a vital role in that since the switch has various other benefits, like less death and disease.
They probably will, but do we have an effective way of subsidizing the up-front cost? In Maryland it cost me $16,000 to install heat pumps in our 2 story home a few years ago. Since then, the infrastructure act’s 30% subsidy has come into effect, but that has been more than eaten up by increasing costs. Contractors can just jack up the price to capture the full value of the subsidy because of the lack of licensed hvac installers. A few thousand dollars worth of made-in-China equipment turns into a $10,000 install. Do we have a way of dealing with that?
People is such a vague term.
You and I largely have nearly zero influence on these decisions because a handful of extremely large (aka too large to fail) corporations, billionaires and their lobbyists yield sufficient influence over most governments to almost always get their way. We've legalized bribery and then are surprised at the consequences.
You and I largely have nearly zero influence on these decisions because a handful of extremely large (aka too large to fail) corporations, billionaires and their lobbyists yield sufficient influence over most governments to almost always get their way. We've legalized bribery and then are surprised at the consequences.
That attitude is just as bad as climate change denialism. The AP-NORC poll I cited didn't survey "corporations, billionaires, and their lobbyists," it surveyed regular people. The same people who throw out the party in power when gas goes above $4/gallon. People like my immigrant family members, who all bought a McMansion in the suburbs and an SUV soon as they achieved economic success. If folks on the left can't confront the reality that they need to persuade my mom to care about climate change before they even get to "billionaires," then they deserve the 4C temperature rise that's coming.
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> Politics is just a proxy for people’s desires and motivations and willingness to make trade offs.
It is not people as in "a democratic majority" which want to destroy the habitable state of the Earths atmosphere, ecosystems and our own food chain for very little short-term gain. People have children and younger relatives, and we do care about them.
It is a very small minority of very greedy individuals, and there are also massive amounts of disinformation going on so that the democratic majority confounds the interests of these with their own.
It is not people as in "a democratic majority" which want to destroy the habitable state of the Earths atmosphere, ecosystems and our own food chain for very little short-term gain. People have children and younger relatives, and we do care about them.
It is a very small minority of very greedy individuals, and there are also massive amounts of disinformation going on so that the democratic majority confounds the interests of these with their own.
> It is a very small minority of very greedy individuals, and there are also massive amounts of disinformation going on so that the democratic majority confounds the interests of these with their own.
No, it’s my mom, my siblings, probably your mom, the guy who does my tile work, etc. You’re framing this in your head as a “good versus evil” problem, which forces you to then assign blame to a “small minority of very greedy individuals.” But instead it’s a problem of humans putting short term individual comfort ahead of long term collective interests.
My brother and my sister in law have STEM degrees from Yale and MIT. They’re well-meaning democrats. But they take several international trips every year, each of which emits about as much CO2 as driving an SUV around all year. Most people I know don’t do that—but only because they don’t have the money.
Heck, I have progressive activists friends who don’t really care about climate change because their particular focus is racial issues or abortion. They obviously don’t want to affirmatively destroy anything, they’re just the same people who wouldn’t pay more than $10/month to address it. They assume there will be some deus ex machina that resolves the problem. (Get to work CO2 capture nerds!)
Look—people eat like crap and don’t exercise, taking years off their own lives. They take drugs that could kill them. People still smoke. They know better but they do it anyway. You think those same people are going to make non-trivial sacrifices for environmental problems that might affect their kids or grandkids?
No, it’s my mom, my siblings, probably your mom, the guy who does my tile work, etc. You’re framing this in your head as a “good versus evil” problem, which forces you to then assign blame to a “small minority of very greedy individuals.” But instead it’s a problem of humans putting short term individual comfort ahead of long term collective interests.
My brother and my sister in law have STEM degrees from Yale and MIT. They’re well-meaning democrats. But they take several international trips every year, each of which emits about as much CO2 as driving an SUV around all year. Most people I know don’t do that—but only because they don’t have the money.
Heck, I have progressive activists friends who don’t really care about climate change because their particular focus is racial issues or abortion. They obviously don’t want to affirmatively destroy anything, they’re just the same people who wouldn’t pay more than $10/month to address it. They assume there will be some deus ex machina that resolves the problem. (Get to work CO2 capture nerds!)
Look—people eat like crap and don’t exercise, taking years off their own lives. They take drugs that could kill them. People still smoke. They know better but they do it anyway. You think those same people are going to make non-trivial sacrifices for environmental problems that might affect their kids or grandkids?
THIS. Politics,
The big money drowns out even an enormous amount of citizens, hackers or not. 8 container ships cannot be a very massive income for the industries throwing money at politicians and would go a long way. Thorium reactors would create new jobs, deal with the problem om storing radioactive fuel rods for millions of years by making them a commodity for a new industry that makes use of them and reduces the millions of years needed to store those down to thousands of years and when we run out of nuclear waste we can continue fueling them with thorium, which is _everywhere_. The air would get cleaner & ther is money to be made.
You would think not that much political will was needed for small, big impact things like that.
Of course, ther eis always the chance I am insane and will wake up from this nightmare in a haze from forcefully administered anti-psychotics via injection
The big money drowns out even an enormous amount of citizens, hackers or not. 8 container ships cannot be a very massive income for the industries throwing money at politicians and would go a long way. Thorium reactors would create new jobs, deal with the problem om storing radioactive fuel rods for millions of years by making them a commodity for a new industry that makes use of them and reduces the millions of years needed to store those down to thousands of years and when we run out of nuclear waste we can continue fueling them with thorium, which is _everywhere_. The air would get cleaner & ther is money to be made.
You would think not that much political will was needed for small, big impact things like that.
Of course, ther eis always the chance I am insane and will wake up from this nightmare in a haze from forcefully administered anti-psychotics via injection
“The primary cause of that is the burning of coal, natural gas, and petroleum in order to generate electricity and move vehicles around”
It was written almost 9 years ago and we’re almost in the same place.
Peak fossil fuels are expected in the next few years.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/24/1207976763/global-shift-to-cl...
It was written almost 9 years ago and we’re almost in the same place.
Peak fossil fuels are expected in the next few years.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/24/1207976763/global-shift-to-cl...
In the realm of electricity production, things are now changing very quickly, though not yet as fast as needed.
Where a huge amount of works needs to be done is carbon-economic transport, housing and construction, and agriculture. And, yes, we will need to say farewell to a few things. That's OK, we are also not using steam engines any more.
Where a huge amount of works needs to be done is carbon-economic transport, housing and construction, and agriculture. And, yes, we will need to say farewell to a few things. That's OK, we are also not using steam engines any more.
Its a political problem much more than a technical problem cuz all people wont accept the purely tech solution.
And technologists are still learning how to incorporate the political dimensions into their solutions. Its non-optional to ignore them - https://jacobin.com/2023/12/evgeny-morozov-interview-technol...
And technologists are still learning how to incorporate the political dimensions into their solutions. Its non-optional to ignore them - https://jacobin.com/2023/12/evgeny-morozov-interview-technol...
Hey, I have an idea: How about we retro-fit the 8 biggest container freight ships on earth with nuclear engines like submarines, air carriers etc. have, or even electric ones.
That would cut the air pollution by something akin to the pollution by most of the cars on the planet, combined. Those things run on the worst sludge fossil fuel in existance.
So why are we not doing that?
I wonder because cows do not fart, they burp. And methane breaks down into water within 14 days of UV exposure in the atmosphere, and I like cows.
Another idea is Thorium reactors, they can run on spent fuel from traditional nuclear plants which is mostly _not used up_ and therefor must be stored millions of years. This would reduce storage time to thousands of years, make the spent rods a commodity and the physics preclude catastrophic meltdowns, make it really hard to enrich whatever those thingies they make thermonuclear atomic weapons with.
.. why are we not doing that either?
$0.02
That would cut the air pollution by something akin to the pollution by most of the cars on the planet, combined. Those things run on the worst sludge fossil fuel in existance.
So why are we not doing that?
I wonder because cows do not fart, they burp. And methane breaks down into water within 14 days of UV exposure in the atmosphere, and I like cows.
Another idea is Thorium reactors, they can run on spent fuel from traditional nuclear plants which is mostly _not used up_ and therefor must be stored millions of years. This would reduce storage time to thousands of years, make the spent rods a commodity and the physics preclude catastrophic meltdowns, make it really hard to enrich whatever those thingies they make thermonuclear atomic weapons with.
.. why are we not doing that either?
$0.02
this is one of the pieces of writing that encouraged me to get into tech.
(2015)
Uhg, yes thank you. I was reading through and I got to the section on battery storage. Anyone following CAISO lately knows that batteries are already doing some heavy lifting each single day, and the article seemed years out of date. Had to scroll back up to the top to see that yes, indeed it’s old.
18 Terawatts of demand, and rising, with just a few hours of stored capacity. It's like reaching an energy escape velocity. We're basically betting entirely on fusion and probably are not going to "make it".
So personally, I think about transitioning society to resilient non-dependence, and about designing for intermittent and highly variable energy and connectivity as vital goals.
A lot of what we do with computers - is really about what we don't do. Stop helping create obsolescence and waste. Curb the pointless chindogu, costly aesthetics above function, feeding vanity and insecurity to stoke demand etc. Tech seems to have a culture of gratuitous indulgence and luxury against a global backdrop of austere caution.