good morning john today i'm going to
teach you how to do one of the most
important things that you can do to help
mitigate climate change it's something
anyone can do and if you watch this
video you will be better at it than
almost everyone on earth but first
a little background every six or seven
years the un puts out a report about
climate change where we are what it
looks like how we're doing and one of
those came out this week and the result
was a whole lot of headlines that do not
look good and like yeah no things
aren't good but also i was really glad
to have come across this tweet as a
climate scientist i'd like you to know i
don't have hope i have something better
certainty we know exactly what's causing
climate change we can absolutely one
avoid the worst and two build a better
world in the process and that is
certainly nice we know what is causing
this problem we know how to solve it and
indeed in a way we are like renewable
energy is skyrocketing and yeah solar is
producing just one percent of the
world's energy right now but it's
increasing faster every year per capita
co2 emissions in the us are lower than
they were in 1918 now that was some very
cherry-picked data things are not good
we are running an experiment on our life
support system and we know that the
result is going to be bad we just don't
know how bad the ipcc report is clear we
are not headed in a good direction to
avoid the worst consequences we're going
to have to keep global increase in
temperature below 2 degrees celsius or a
little less than four degrees fahrenheit
currently we are not on target to do
that even if we keep to all of the
agreements we have we need to quickly
stop putting greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere and also quickly start taking
them back out now the two most common
questions i am asked about climate
change are one is there actually any
hope here and two what should i do now
as for the first question yes i mean it
depends on what you mean like is there
hope that we will experience no negative
impacts from climate change no no
there's not like we're already
experiencing them so climate change is
gonna make life worse but we don't know
how much worse and if you're watching
this video the chances are it's gonna be
much worse for other people than it is
for you global warming like almost every
issue is a justice issue it will have
the biggest impacts on the people who
are least responsible for it people who
are relatively affluent and live in
relatively affluent places will be
mostly though not all okay like not
great but okay but the less you have the
harder it is to deal with the
destabilizations that come from a
changing climate and as for the second
like a lot you should be doing a lot but
you also have other stuff to do like you
have to take care of your friends and
family you have to go to school you have
to pay off your loans you got to do your
work you got to goof off sometimes but
in between all of that yes climate
change is the most important and
difficult issue humanity faces and so
there are things you can do both to show
the world that this is a crisis and to
mitigate your impact eat less or no meat
especially not beef never buy a
gas-powered car ever again if you can
avoid it especially not a new one prefer
smaller homes don't buy gas stoves live
closer to where you work but also one of
the most important things that anyone
can do and anyone can actually do this
one is to be informed on the different
policies and laws that governments
create to try and solve these problems
because we can't do this without an
informed public these policies need
advocates so they need people who
understand it so we can have these
conversations in ways that make sense
and unfortunately it's pretty
complicated so it isn't immediately
obvious how any of this works but if you
just watch this video you are going to
be more informed than 99 of the people
in your country on how this stuff works
this one video now you can go deeper
than that and i encourage you to but
this is a good place to start but before
we do that a couple points of
clarification one i'm going to be saying
carbon a lot and when i say carbon i
mean carbon dioxide which is the chief
heat trapping gas that we emit into our
atmosphere but i don't just mean carbon
dioxide i also mean the equivalent
amounts of other gases that also trap
heat methane being the primary one
methane actually traps about 84 times
more heat than carbon dioxide we just
release a lot less of it thankfully so
we have equivalency measures so one ton
of methane being released would be
equivalent to 84 tons of co2 this way we
end up talking about all greenhouse
gases in the frame of carbon dioxide
which is why people often just say
carbon now second we're used to thinking
of global warming as a problem of like
our transportation maybe our homes maybe
agriculture because those are the things
that we have the most direct contact
with but this is a big mixed-up jumble
of a problem you can pause the video if
you want to get the lowdown from where
all of the carbon is coming from this is
a very useful chart from dr hannah
ritchie at our world in data all right
here we are we have actually arrived
we're going to talk about what
strategies governments do use and can
use to rapidly decrease their emissions
of greenhouse gases and there are two
big categories of these there's carbon
pricing and then there's everything else
carbon pricing looks at the problem with
a pretty clear vision if releasing
carbon dioxide is free people don't have
any reason not to do it but it's
actually not free it's going to cost a
tremendous amount of money to deal with
the consequences of the emission of that
carbon but that money isn't being paid
by the people producing the emissions or
the people consuming the energy the
gasoline the steel the concrete that
create the emissions those costs will be
borne by people in the future and they
will be wildfires and droughts and
famines and wars and refugees and sea
level rise all of those are costs that
are not being priced in so carbon
pricing just includes those costs and
there are three main ways to do that the
first is just pricing carbon and this
actually weirdly has had some pretty
bipartisan support people further on the
right or the left don't like this but in
the center where like market-based
solutions feel really good people like
this the basic idea is that whenever a
fossil fuel or another source of
emissions enters the economy whether
it's the moment it's taken out of the
ground or at the port of entry as we
import it you tax it you say this will
soon be burned and that will produce a
ton of carbon and that ton of carbon is
going to cost the world 50 to deal with
in the future so we're gonna make this
thing cost fifty dollars extra this is
by far the simplest thing i'm going to
talk about today to actually implement
it's easy to regulate you don't have to
worry about different industries
lobbying to get better deals everyone
pays the same flat rate and this
significantly increases the cost of
fossil fuels thus encouraging investment
and innovation in other options now
there's a subcategory of this idea which
is what do you then do with all of this
money any carbon price that is anywhere
near the actual long-term cost of
releasing the carbon will at first
generate a lot of cash and there are two
basic ideas the first is to use it to do
the work of decarbonizing our economy
invest in new research and mass transit
solar power plants job training for
people who used to work in the fossil
fuel industry but the second idea
confronts the biggest problem with a
carbon tax which is that it is a tax
pricing carbon increased the costs of
heating a home of commuting to work of
flying to see your family and nobody
likes that so instead of giving the
money to governments to invest in
decarbonizing the economy the current
more favored and more palatable plan is
just to take the money that we raise
and give it to people you divide the pot
by exactly the number of people who live
in the country and then you give
everyone the exact same check this is
called the carbon fee and dividend now
the money that comes out of this isn't
enough to be like a universal basic
income kind of thing but it is enough
that it covers the increased costs of
the heating and the driving for most
people now not for the wealthiest people
but mostly for the people who are on the
lower end of the income spectrum their
extra costs will be covered but that
doesn't mean that this system is totally
fair people in rural areas use a lot
more energy than people in cities but
everybody's gonna get the same sized
check and i think that lack of fairness
probably caused some tension just
guessing now another problem with a
carbon tax is that it treats everything
the same which is what a lot of people
like about it but some industries are
way easier to decarbonize than others
and some are far more hot politically
like people care a lot more about gas
prices than they do about steel prices
so what if you could create a plan that
like found the cheapest ways to
decarbonize and prioritize them first so
you have roughly the same amount of
carbon decreasing but you give some more
time to the industries where it's more
difficult to decarbonize that sounds
like something that a market would be
good at and thus we have cap and trade
again very basically there's a cap
that's the total amount of emissions
that the government's going to allow and
then they distribute or sell permits to
different polluters and then those
polluters if they don't use up all their
permits can sell or trade on an open
market those permits for pollution as
the caps get lower with time the permits
become more scarce and thus more
expensive and thus decarbonizing becomes
more worth it this worked extremely well
at decreasing the amount of sulfur
dioxide released from coal plants in the
1980s sulfur dioxide reacts with water
in the atmosphere to create sulfuric
acid was making the rain literally
acidic the faces of statues washed away
and forests died in droves and we solved
that problem with a cap and trade system
on sulfur emissions this creates a
market that can act like a market and
the people who can most inexpensively
decrease their emissions do it first and
then over time as the cap gets lower and
lower and lower everybody has to join in
but cap and trade of course has its
issues certain polluters usually start
out with free pollution credits often
times they can offset their pollution
super inexpensively with unproven
credits and it's very vulnerable to
lobbying by big emitters they can
convince legislators that they need to
be carved out or given more permits so
the companies that can afford more
lobbyists get better deals but cap and
trade does work it's being used all over
the world it's just more complicated
than it initially sounds as all of this
is hank from the future i forgot to say
that cap and trade also generates
revenue so you have the same questions
about whether to spend it on
decarbonization or just redistribute it
as a dividend or lower taxes or some mix
of those things but both of the systems
we just talk about they intentionally
increase the price of carbon that's what
we've been talking about right it's
carbon pricing we have to increase the
price in order to incentivize
alternatives but people do not like it
when their government is like hey your
prices are gonna go up especially when
they're going to go up for everybody and
that's going to affect some people a lot
more than others it's hard though not
impossible to get people on board with
this stuff there are carbon taxes and
cap and trade schemes all over the world
right now but this does lead us to our
final and most futuristic option for
pricing carbon instead of charging
people for releasing carbon you pay them
to keep it from being released or to
capture it again kim stanley robinson
the science fiction author calls this
carbon quantitative easing quantitative
easing being the weird economics term
for just dumping lots of money into an
economy basically this just switches
carbon pricing on its head instead of
saying hey we're going to charge you for
emitting we're going to pay you for not
emitting and it makes sense because
there's two ways to think about the
costs of emitting carbon one is to say
this is going to cost us a lot of money
if we admit it the other is to say this
is going to save us a lot of money if we
prevent it from being emitted so the
idea is as long as the u.s federal
reserve is printing money hand over fist
might as well tie some positive result
to that whoever can prove that they
prevented co2 from entering the
atmosphere or permanently stored it from
the atmosphere just gets paid they could
potentially even get paid with like a
global carbon coin a currency that every
country uses that's tied to the value of
removal of co2 from the air there are
problems with this of course as well
there's a large bureaucracy necessary
for counting these things and preventing
fraud the fossil fuel companies and
petrostates would have to be paid just
given lots of money to keep their carbon
locked up and that feels a little unfair
and then of course there's the
tremendous cost these taxes generate
revenue this is the opposite of that now
frustratingly all carbon pricing
strategies are looking less and less
likely in my country the u.s right now
in part because of the reason many
people like them they're simple economic
strategies that just price the carbon
and let the market figure out everything
else but that also means that there's a
tremendous lack of control over what's
actually happening and that means that
maybe the costs get pushed off onto
marginalized communities and that the
benefits of these new economic systems
well they're going to go to the people
who have the access and the money and
the connections to build the companies
that do all the work now does it matter
who gets rich if we get the carbon out
of the atmosphere well this is a thing
that people disagree about especially
people on the left and at the moment in
my country it doesn't matter what people
on the right think because they're not
going to vote for any of this stuff so
if you can't get all the democrats to
vote for a carbon tax you're not going
to get a carbon tax which is why in the
u.s we are currently planning to do the
other thing not carbon pricing but just
everything else passing tons of
different laws and policies and
regulations that do tons of different
things this is honestly sort of the more
progressive way to do things to pay more
attention and to control things more
tightly whereas the more conservative
thing to do would be let's create a
market let everything handle itself get
the big government out of it and this
hodgepodge of tons of new ideas they
fall largely into three different groups
first we have standards standards are
rules that affect what industries can do
so cars have to be more efficient or
they have to be electric power companies
have to decommission coal plants and
build wind and solar instead of saying
hey it's going to be a lot more
expensive to burn fossil fuels in the
future they just say hey by the year
2050 you cannot be burning fossil fuels
anymore the second is investment the
government looks for early mid and late
stage opportunities to help new
technologies come to market they spend
capital on mass transit and rail they
buy electric cars and buses and build
charging infrastructure they help people
make their homes more energy efficient
and the third and final leg of this
stool is justice help people who are
most affected by decarbonization find
fulfilling work spend money on the
communities that have been most
negatively impacted by existing
polluting infrastructure we're going to
be spending a ton of money to solve this
problem the people who benefit shouldn't
just be the ones who created the problem
you'll sometimes see this slate of the
climate agenda referred to as sij
standards investment and justice now
this falls short of a full green new
deal type framework which would add even
more on the justice and with policies
like medicare for all and a job
guarantee but it is a very very big plan
that has not been finalized much less
past president biden has said though
that he will not sign his 1.2 billion
dollar infrastructure package unless
there is also a climate plan on his desk
so like here's hoping now an important
thing here you do not have to do just
one of these things you could have a
carbon tax and a cap and trade system
and pay people to remove carbon from the
atmosphere and have standards investment
in justice regulations and these plans
exist all over the place china canada
and the whole european union have a cap
and trade system japan turkey thailand
indonesia much of europe and a bunch of
other places have carbon taxes and
pretty much everywhere has some amount
of like broad climate regulation and
which of these things am i most in favor
of
all of them i want to do anything we can
get done but it is super helpful to
understand the basics of how all these
things work especially because in this
whole video which has not been short or
simple i have only talked about what
individual countries do but of course
this cannot be done by one country the
conversation around how to create a
multinational set of enforceable
standards on carbon pricing or just
targets to achieve generally is an order
of magnitude more complicated even than
any of this but if you watch this video
and you understood it you now have
joined a pretty exclusive club you are
one of the people who understands the
basics of how governments try and
decrease their greenhouse gas emissions
through laws and regulation and that is
amazing but you can go further and i
encourage you to go further i'd suggest
a podcast called pricing nature to
understand the complexities of carbon
pricing and international agreements you
should also check out david roberts
newsletter at volts.wtf and if you want
to get very wonky inside a science
fiction framework check out the ministry
of the future by kim stanley robinson
also i have to say thank you so much to
the people at our world in data who
provide a tremendous service to the
entire world with a pretty tiny team
their site and all of their information
on climate change is extremely
illuminating to peruse and i encourage
you just to go spend time there i've
given them a 1 000 donation as a thank
you because of how much it helped me
make this video and also because you
cannot solve a problem if you don't
understand it a reminder here at the end
educational videos are allowed to be
over four minutes john i will see you on
tuesday