zlacker

>>LinuxB+(OP)
The biggest takeaway here for me is that we collectively achieved something previously considered impossible: by making different behavioral choices, as a species, we achieved the largest cut in CO2 emissions in 75 years.

It's tragic that only the threat of a deadly disease could compel such a change, but perhaps we may find other levers to help us achieve such widespread beneficial changes in the future?

>>just_s+nm
We did not simply make "behavioral choices". Whole swathes of humanity were ordered indoors! It was achieved at untold cost (actually, much greater than the trillions of dollars that have been given away already by governments) that will be paid by generations to come. Only people who were lucky to hold a job that wasn't affected made a conscious decision to cut down.

I am willing to bet that come 2022 or so, emissions will rebound and exceed peaks as people 'catch up' on travel, including simply visiting near and dear ones, that they have missed out on.

>>rmk+AD
> Whole swathes of humanity were ordered indoors! It was achieved at untold cost

Climate change has untold cost too, so what you’re saying doesn’t have much weight.

>>bamboo+8E
No, climate change has costs that we can estimate and base our decisions on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch...

The foregone economic activity in just one year of lockdowns in the US is a significant fraction of cumulative worldwide damages anticipated from climate change through 2050.

>>rayine+WT
So loosing a large part of Bangladesh to the sea by 2050 and then loosing more to the sea by 2051, and even more by 2052, etc. with no hope of recovering... displacing therein tens to hundreds of millions of people that will need new homes, and new infrastructure that is requiring housing, feeding and transporting those people is going to cost less then then a year and a half of pandemic?

I would love to see your calculations for this.

>>runarb+ea1
See: https://phys.org/news/2019-11-climate-impacts-world-trillion...

>>rayine+se1
I mean, sure... if we count to 2050 and then stop counting... maybe. But that is not how the world works. We need to count beyond 2050 to get a good estimate. If (and that is a big if; ’cause I don’t really trust this number) the climate impact is gonna cost 7.9 trillion dollars by 2050, I’m sure it will cost $8.4tr by 2051, and $12.5tr by 2055, $22tr by 2060 and then $120tr by 2070. And then maybe by 2100 the economy as we know it will have collapsed and any cost estimate is void.

The climate impact is getting more severe at an exponential rate, and—unlike the pandemic—it is not gonna get better in the foreseeable future.

>>runarb+Df1
Yes, but the cost of ratcheting down the economy through lockdowns to reduce emissions also has a continuing cost.

And no, climate change, even if we do nothing, won’t cause the economy to collapse by 2100: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/how-much-will-the-green-ne...

> “While it is true that we estimated damages as high as 10% of GDP annually at the end of the century for warming of 15°F above pre-industrial levels, the odds of a temperature change that would drive damages of this magnitude are slim,” he wrote. “In fact, they are less than 1-in-100 by our original calculation.”

It’s worth spending a lot of money to avoid a 10% GDP loss. But it’s not worth spending the kind of money you’d be willing to spend if you thought the economy was going to collapse completely otherwise.