Where To Spend the Carbon Budget

[Skotty]

I sometimes think of carbon emissions as a business problem. Business engages in risk management. Carbon emissions are a risk. The likelihood is high, the scope is high, the risk is high. It's a high impact risk. Any business with any sense would engage in mitigating that risk. The only way to mitigate that risk is to reduce carbon emissions. But by how much? This leads us to consider that there is some amount of carbon budget that is sustainable and sufficiently low risk. How do we want to spend that budget?

Here on these forums, we mostly talk of vehicle emissions and power production. Those are sufficiently low hanging fruit. But we might want to do some analysis to look across the board at carbon emissions, and think about what carbon emitting activities do we most want to use while simultaneously not having any good substitutes for? I think it would be an interesting topic to delve more deeply into.

For example, I think some of that budget would have to go towards agriculture. I hear concrete production also contributes to carbon emissions. Are there ways to reduce carbon emissions in concrete production? If not, we need budget spent there. I'd like us to continue to be able to use natural gas for cooking if nothing else. There's an interesting array of activities to look at, in terms of how much do they emit, how attractive any alternatives are, etc.

 

[Skotty]

As a brief political side note, I think it would help if those who want to work on the carbon emissions problem would more often present it as a risk management business problem, as that is ultimately what it is, and it would be more attractive to conservatives when viewing it through that lens.

 

[David_Cary]

I think some of this is happening. The problem is that the risk is fairly long-term and businesses work in short terms.
Look at Ford making an EV. They will lose their shirts for years. The dealers will lose their shirts forever. It is a better short term play to slow roll the transition. It will destroy Ford in 10-15 years but for now the lights will stay on.
Ford was just easy to type - you can sub in whole industries.
The absolutely easiest and most productive thing to do is stop eating beef. That isn't going to happen. Mcdonald's in particular would not do very well. And the fact is that conservatives don't like losing freedom at government's hand. And Beef - it's what's for dinner.
You will not get Plutocrats to support restricting profit. You will not get most of the population to make sacrifices.
Outside of beef and perhaps easier/productive thing to do in the short term is reduce methane leaks and burns. These cost profit to the plutocrats so that is not going to happen quickly.

This is not something that capitalism/business risk management is going to work for. At least not more than just tinkering on 1% change per year when at least 5% is needed. You can't succeed without changing the system.

Lots of authors have broken down the segments. There is a whole thread here about meat. Concrete and air travel are also discussed.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I think some of this is happening. The problem is that the risk is fairly long-term and businesses work in short terms.
Look at Ford making an EV. They will lose their shirts for years. The dealers will lose their shirts forever. It is a better short term play to slow roll the transition. It will destroy Ford in 10-15 years but for now the lights will stay on.
Ford was just easy to type - you can sub in whole industries.
The absolutely easiest and most productive thing to do is stop eating beef. That isn't going to happen. Mcdonald's in particular would not do very well. And the fact is that conservatives don't like losing freedom at government's hand. And Beef - it's what's for dinner.
You will not get Plutocrats to support restricting profit. You will not get most of the population to make sacrifices.
Outside of beef and perhaps easier/productive thing to do in the short term is reduce methane leaks and burns. These cost profit to the plutocrats so that is not going to happen quickly.

This is not something that capitalism/business risk management is going to work for. At least not more than just tinkering on 1% change per year when at least 5% is needed. You can't succeed without changing the system.

Lots of authors have broken down the segments. There is a whole thread here about meat. Concrete and air travel are also discussed.

Also stop eating lamb. Which is sad because lamb is better than beef.

 

[Skotty]

I think some of this is happening. The problem is that the risk is fairly long-term and businesses work in short terms.
Look at Ford making an EV. They will lose their shirts for years. The dealers will lose their shirts forever. It is a better short term play to slow roll the transition. It will destroy Ford in 10-15 years but for now the lights will stay on.
Ford was just easy to type - you can sub in whole industries.
The absolutely easiest and most productive thing to do is stop eating beef. That isn't going to happen. Mcdonald's in particular would not do very well. And the fact is that conservatives don't like losing freedom at government's hand. And Beef - it's what's for dinner.
You will not get Plutocrats to support restricting profit. You will not get most of the population to make sacrifices.
Outside of beef and perhaps easier/productive thing to do in the short term is reduce methane leaks and burns. These cost profit to the plutocrats so that is not going to happen quickly.

This is not something that capitalism/business risk management is going to work for. At least not more than just tinkering on 1% change per year when at least 5% is needed. You can't succeed without changing the system.

Lots of authors have broken down the segments. There is a whole thread here about meat. Concrete and air travel are also discussed.

I kind of view beef as currently untouchable. Any attempts or even discussions of carbon emissions in relation to livestock usage will just result in a stalemate at best, and more likely, additional backlash against attempts to reduce carbon emissions. It shouldn't even be in the discussion, except in just to provide a statistic in the comparison of emissions contributions. It might would need to be the absolute last thing addressed, if everything else wasn't enough.

 

[Unclepaul]

Biggest issue seems that activists want to tell everyone else what they need to do to achieve their dreams. They tend to not want to do everything they should as well. Kind of like them complaining that Lithium Ion batteries are bad for the environment and should not be used in EVs, but will continue to use their smart phone, that also contains such a battery, along with many other environmentally toxic chemicals. They are great at justifying such things.

 

[David_Cary]

The fact that beef is untouchable is really a pathetic statement on the human condition. Lamb also it just doesn't have the quantity effect in the US. I say this from multiple viewpoints - including that beef is generally not very healthy also. Sure, a good steak tastes really good but the vast majority of beef is just crap - like McD's hamburger crap. It isn't xome delicacy.

When you think of budget of things - the battery in a cell phone is very very small. Yes - there are billions of them. But it is small for the value it provides. And there isn't a good alternative. It is about 3600X smaller than an EV so 3.6 billion cell phones vs 1 million EVs. I really don't think this is something that requires some strange logic to "justify". It is about budget.

We are not going to eliminate every bad thing we do. But we can do a lot better. The only way to eliminate every bad thing is to truly deindustrialize. I am not sure that is going to be good for the betterment of humankind. But not eating beef? That is a win on so many fronts. Not driving ICE cars - ditto. Getting way better at transit efficiency - small sacrifice in some ways and far better in other ways.

When you start nit picking about how someone isn't perfect, it would look like you are trying to distract and deflect. That doesn't mean some(most?) people don't use warped logic of course.

A reasonable goal perhaps would be not to be the worst large country in per capita emissions in 5 years. When you look at what would be our best examples of "peer countries" that live a luxurious western lifestyle - we need to reduce by 50% emissions to match them. Strangely, they still have things like smart phones and eat beef.