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How We Fix the Climate

2021-08-13 · explainer · Hank · 16:19 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature (also: US politics & society) · mode: Explainer · tags: timely hook, civic or action cta, heavy topic

Prompted by the week's IPCC report, Hank argues that one of the most important things anyone can do about climate change is understand climate policy, and explains carbon pricing (carbon tax, fee and dividend, cap and trade, paying for removal) and the US 'everything else' approach of standards, investment and justice, favouring all of them.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The week's UN climate report, a climate scientist's tweet about certainty, cherry-picked good news, and the 2-degree target we are missing

  • ★★ Hank promises to teach one of the most important things anyone can do to help mitigate climate change; watching will make viewers better at it than almost everyone on Earth. — 00:00:00 · climate change
  • ★★ Every six or seven years the UN publishes a report on climate change; one came out this week (week of 9 August 2021), producing many headlines that do not look good. — 00:00:00 · climate change
  • ★★ Hank was glad to find a climate scientist's tweet saying they have not hope but certainty: we know what causes climate change, how to solve it, and in a way we are. — 00:00:29 · climate change
  • ★★ Renewable energy is skyrocketing: solar produces just 1% of the world's energy but grows faster every year. — 00:00:46
  • ★ Hank says US per capita CO2 emissions are lower than in 1918, then admits that was very cherry-picked data. — 00:00:58 · United States
  • ★★★ The IPCC report is clear we are headed the wrong way: avoiding the worst means keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and we are not on target even if all agreements are kept. — 00:00:58 · climate change

00:01:39 — The two common questions: is there hope, and what should I do? Climate as a justice issue; personal actions; be informed on policy

  • ★★★ Asked if there is hope, Hank says yes, depending on what you mean: there is no hope of escaping negative impacts, which we are already experiencing. — 00:01:39 · climate change
  • ★★★ Climate change is going to make life worse, but we do not know how much worse. — 00:01:56 · climate change
  • ★★★ Global warming, like almost every issue, is a justice issue: it will hit hardest those least responsible, while relatively affluent people in affluent places will be mostly okay. — 00:02:05 · climate change
  • ★★★ Asked what to do, Hank says viewers should do a lot, around their other duties, because climate change is the most important and difficult issue humanity faces. — 00:02:26 · climate change
  • ★★ Personal steps: eat less or no meat, especially beef; avoid ever buying a gas-powered car; prefer smaller homes; skip gas stoves; live closer to work. — 00:02:42
  • ★★★ One of the most important things anyone can do is be informed about the policies and laws governments create to solve these problems: we can't do this without an informed public, and policies need advocates. — 00:02:55
  • ★ Hank says watching this one video will make viewers more informed on how this works than 99% of people in their country. (playful) — 00:03:24

00:03:38 — Clarifications: 'carbon' means CO2 equivalents (methane); where emissions come from

  • ★★ By 'carbon' Hank means CO2 plus equivalent amounts of other heat-trapping gases, chiefly methane, which traps about 84 times more heat; one ton of methane equals 84 tons of CO2. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ Global warming is not just transport, homes or farming but a big mixed-up jumble of a problem, shown in a chart of emission sources from Dr. Hannah Ritchie at Our World in Data. — 00:04:23
  • ★★★ Governments' strategies for rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions fall into two big categories: carbon pricing and everything else. — 00:04:23

00:04:35 — Carbon pricing: carbon tax, fee and dividend, cap and trade, and paying people to keep carbon out of the air

  • ★★★ Carbon pricing starts from the fact that emitting CO2 is free but will be very costly: future people will bear wildfires, droughts, famines, wars, refugees and sea level rise, costs not priced in. — 00:04:52
  • ★★ A straightforward carbon tax has had fairly bipartisan support from the center, where market-based solutions appeal, though people further right or left dislike it. — 00:05:21
  • ★★★ A carbon tax charges fossil fuels as they enter the economy for their future cost (say $50 a ton); Hank calls it by far the simplest option: easy to regulate, flat, hard to lobby, and spurring alternatives. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ Revenue can fund decarbonization, but since nobody likes a tax raising heating and commuting costs, the more favoured plan is the carbon fee and dividend: everyone gets the same check. — 00:06:19
  • ★★ The dividend is not universal-basic-income sized but covers higher heating and driving costs for most lower-income people; it is not totally fair, since rural people use more energy yet get the same check. — 00:07:16
  • ★★ Hank thinks the lack of fairness will probably cause some tension, adding 'just guessing'. (playful, hedged) — 00:07:40
  • ★★ Since some industries are easier to decarbonize, cap and trade sets a cap on total emissions and distributes or sells tradable permits; as the cap falls, permits get scarcer and decarbonizing pays. — 00:07:47
  • ★★ Cap and trade worked extremely well at cutting sulfur dioxide from coal plants in the 1980s, which formed sulfuric acid, made rain acidic, wore away statues and killed forests. — 00:08:43
  • ★★ Cap and trade has issues (free credits, cheap unproven offsets, lobbying for carve-outs), but it works and is used worldwide; it is just more complicated than it sounds, and it also raises revenue. — 00:09:15
  • ★★ Both systems deliberately raise carbon's price to spur alternatives; people dislike rising prices that hit some harder, so it is hard though not impossible to win support. — 00:09:44

  • ★★ The most futuristic option pays people to prevent or capture emissions, which Kim Stanley Robinson calls carbon quantitative easing; with the Federal Reserve printing money, payment could even be a global carbon coin. — 00:10:13

    “carbon quantitative easing”

  • ★★ Paying for removal needs a large anti-fraud bureaucracy, would pay fossil fuel companies and petro-states to keep carbon locked up, which feels unfair, and costs a tremendous amount. — 00:11:12

  • ★★★ Frustratingly, all carbon pricing looks less and less likely in the US, partly because leaving it to the market gives little control: costs may fall on marginalized communities and benefits go to the well connected. — 00:11:12 · United States

00:11:34 — Why US carbon pricing looks unlikely, and the US plan of standards, investment and justice

  • ★★★ In the US the right will not vote for any of this, so without every Democrat's vote there will be no carbon tax. — 00:12:10 · United States
  • ★★ So the US plans 'everything else': many laws, policies and regulations, the more progressive, controlling approach, versus the conservative market approach. — 00:12:10 · United States
  • ★★★ The US approach has three legs, 'SIJ': standards (efficient or electric cars, coal plants replaced, no fossil fuels by 2050), investment (new technology, transit, charging, home efficiency) and justice. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ On justice, Hank says that with a ton of money to be spent, those who benefit shouldn't just be the ones who created the problem. — 00:13:38
  • ★★ The plan falls short of a full Green New Deal, which would add Medicare for All and a job guarantee, and is a very big plan not yet finalized, let alone passed. — 00:13:38
  • ★★ President Biden has said he will not sign his $1.2 billion infrastructure package unless there is also a climate plan on his desk; 'here's hoping'. — 00:14:07

00:14:19 — All approaches can be combined; where they are used; international agreements are harder still

  • ★★ The approaches can be combined, and exist widely: China, Canada and the EU have cap and trade; Japan, Turkey, Thailand, Indonesia and much of Europe have carbon taxes; nearly everywhere has some regulation. — 00:14:19 · China, Canada, Europe
  • ★★ The video covers only what single countries do, but this cannot be done by one country; multinational enforceable standards are an order of magnitude more complicated. — 00:14:36
  • ★★★ Asked which approach he favours most, Hank says all of them: he wants anything that can get done. — 00:14:43

00:15:16 — Recommended podcast, newsletter and novel; thanks and a donation to Our World in Data; sign-off

  • ★★ To go further Hank suggests the podcast Pricing Nature, David Roberts' newsletter Volts, and, for wonky science fiction, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. — 00:15:16
  • ★★ Hank thanks Our World in Data's tiny team for a tremendous service and has given them a $1,000 donation, because it helped him make this video and you cannot solve a problem you don't understand. — 00:15:45
  • ★ Hank closes with a reminder that education videos are allowed to be over four minutes. (playful) — 00:16:14 · Four-minute rule

In the description and comments

  • ★★ In the description Hank says we should act as if this is an emergency, and that economic growth has already been decoupled from greenhouse gas emissions, unthinkable a couple of decades ago. — video description
  • ★ The description points viewers, especially US citizens, to a related video Hank made on hankschannel. — video description · hankschannel

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: carbon price · carbon tax · climate change · emissions trading

Also: People: David Roberts · Joe Biden

Works: IPCC Sixth Assessment Report · Pricing Nature · The Ministry for the Future · Volts

Organizations: Democratic Party · European Union · Federal Reserve · Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change · Our World in Data · United Nations

Concepts: acid rain · carbon dioxide · carbon fee and dividend · carbon offset · cherry picking · climate justice · coal · drought · Electric car · energy transition · Environmental impact of meat production · externality · Famine · fossil fuel · global warming potential · greenhouse gas · Lobbying · methane · quantitative easing · refugee · regulation · Sea level rise · solar power · Sulfur dioxide · sulfuric acid · wildfire

Places: Canada · China · Europe · Indonesia · Japan · Thailand · Turkey · United States

Policies: Green New Deal · Medicare for All

Only in the description or credits: economic growth · hankschannel · Hannah Ritchie · Kim Stanley Robinson

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