It's Friday, so WTFuckery is on topic, right?
My ID badge expires at the end of this month. The paperwork to get it renewed went through Tuesday. I was working from home Tuesday like usual and WFH/sick Wednesday. Yesterday I was productive enough but didn't get around to looking into the badge. This morning I went to the badge renewal office indicated in the email, about two blocks away, and was told it wasn't there yet - they were still installing stuff. So I went to the old one, about three blocks beyond that, and found it was permanently closed. They're transitioning this weekend, apparently, and not open until Tuesday. The person in charge of badge renewal paperwork sits right next to me and was very surprised when I told her all this. On Tuesday I will be flying to California for vacation. On Monday the only place I can get the badge renewed is in Virginia, and I should expect a rush, because every Monday there's new hire orientation.
When I got around to my actual job, I was surprised things seemed kind of slow. When I asked about certain reports I was expecting, I was told they had come in hours ago. In hindsight the fact that I hadn't got any emails since 4 p.m. yesterday should have been a clue. Outlook has stopped working for me. As a workaround I'm getting my emails via some Web site. The reports are Word documents attached to emails. When I try to download file attachments the usual way, it won't download the Word document itself. Instead, it downloads the GetFileAttachment.json file, the icon the Web site uses to display the attachment. With help I found a workaround but it's like a 10-step process.
Also, a subject matter expert was a no-show at a meeting this morning about 5 or so documents that I'm told basically don't currently exist, and should. Apparently his team lead had told him the meeting wasn't needed, but hadn't told me. My team lead seems convinced that those documents already exist and there's little or no problem here. I think she's wrong, but at this point, I don't care.
I'm going to start drinking as soon as I get home tonight.
My humble abode is officially zero landfill. Recycling, concrete, and pork.
Eating lasagna with your hands is a good way to avoid waste.
But the pigs would want to chew your fingers.
"So far it hasn't been an issue apart from that one time where the city was submerged."
Clearly, recycling is a small little ritual that helps us feel virtuous.
This is how I feel about the no-plastic-straw trend. I question how much of a difference it's really making, but I don't want to be the asshole who insists on a straw and looks like a turtle murderer.
I really like the curbside compost pickup. It is amazing what the remaining trash is: basically all plastic packaging and bags and tape and assorted plastic.
I don't like straws. I'd rather just drink from the glass.
I mean, I hate turtles too. But not enough to use a straw.
I actually pay a small amount of money so that I can collect my compost and then deliver it to a pick up location every other Saturday or so. I guess the sheer stupidity of this is supposed to make me feel virtuous.
I bet if I said I was composting, the neighbors would stop asking about the smell from when I poop in the yard.
Or maybe not. Some problems are intractable.
The recycling program here in on hold, for the same reasons.
I can take compost to the farmer's market. I don't, because I can't face policing other household resident's compost management, but I should start in the fall when my nest empties.
Can I count shoving old food down the garbage disposal as composting?
Same question to sitting in the sink for too long.
I find when I do that my legs go numb.
That's when you partly sit in the sink. You have to commit.
To some extent, recycling is a bullshit cover for inadequate reuse.
It makes sense to recycle aluminum cans, but everything else is a shit-show. My town dump won't even take glass any more - not even to grind up for use in cement. And plastic bottles can only be down-cycled - turned into fake-wood decking or whatever, but not into new plastic bottles.
It used to be that returnable bottles were a common thing. My Dad uses to save his empties and bring them back to the store when he had finished a case. But I haven't seen beer or soda sold like that for a very long time. Not in the United States at least - I have seen it in Costa Rica where being green is a big part of the national identity.
I suspect the economics don't make sense in the US because bottle deposits have been stuck at 5 cents for decades. If they were increased to a quarter, maybe it would make sense to re-integrate bottle reuse into the supply chain.
In Samoa in the early nineties, beer and soda bottles were reused until they had visible wear lines from rubbing against each other in crates. Deposits were significant -- I've forgotten the numbers, but a reasonable number of empties, four or five, would buy you another beer. Now, that was island economics, where shipping was expensive, and I don't know if it's still the same.
You can by Straub in returnable bottles here.
I know this because of my deep commitment to the environment.
19: That's a state-by-state thing, isn't it? I'm pretty sure Vermont still does that. Of course, that's Vermont. I know returnable bottles have a list of states on them.
For most of the twentieth century my township had the most amazing food recycling program: You put your food waste into a covered bucket, and the local pig farmers would pick it all up and feed to the pigs. Nothing left the township, except as pork, and no money changed hands. Some of the farmers also collected from restaurants in Philadelphia.
About twenty years ago the last pig farm turned into condos, and that was the end of that. Apparently even the more rural areas don't do this any more because there are more scientific ways to raise pigs.
Nothing left the township, except as pork,
Most ominous movie tagline ever.
They make a big show of recycling where I work, side by side bins marked 'glass,' 'metal', 'plastic', 'paper,' etc. but it's all (obviously) bullshit.
It's less labor to feed pigs a meal of corn, soy, and molasses than actual food. It is just conveyed in using a tube.
I'm pretty sure Vermont still does that. Of course, that's Vermont. I know returnable bottles have a list of states on them.
Sure, deposit-return still exists as a program in many states. But if you go to a store, all the actual bottles on display for you to buy are single-use. So, even when you return bottles and collect your nickle, they get recycled (maybe), not reused.
Another problem is that, even when using glass instead of plastic, every company wants to have their logo either painted or embossed on the bottle. Branding! But the lack of generic bottles sucks for interoperability.
I also loved the OP article, although I'm not quite as adoring a fan of the author as some. Solid work. For a tragic counterpart to the comic take, I think Elizabeth Kolbert's conscious homage to John McPhee about the Louisiana coast will stay with me for a long time.
I really do get hung up on the money questions. There is economic disaster lurking in the shadows of this ecological disaster, and it's too complex to model in my head, but the coming scarcity (and inevitable violence) preoccupies me more than recycling and straws. (And recycling is sort of an economic disaster too.)
I've also basically shifted into thinking that there's a form of climate denialism that is denial of the political realities on the ground. You have to start at least imagining mitigation strategies you can do over the objections -- without the consent -- of huge numbers of obstinate, stupid people who are never going to be enlightened. That's as fucking real as sea level rise. We are not going to get consensus, not even close, on probably half of what needs to be done on a "political" level. I know this is not a super coherent statement, and at the level of rhetoric it probably splits the difference between being obvious and being alarmingly proto-fascist, so clearly I need to refine my pitch here. But it frustrates me that so much of the rhetoric around climate change is still premised on some kind of huge collective awakening, when decisive action without majority consent is a stone cold fact of life on earth. And no, I don't have any virtuous draconian, authoritarian actions in mind per se (if I did, I assure you I'd be doing them).
How did it work when bottles were reused? Could stores recap them?
California is at least thinking more about overhauling the production system - but, as an artifact of who knows what lobbying / public choice phenomenon, these efforts tend toward industry-specific or product-specific regulations, rather than, say, a generally applicable non-reuse tax. Plastic straws. E-waste recycling fees. This year there's a bill to cut down on paper receipts.
there's a form of climate denialism that is denial of the political realities on the ground. You have to start at least imagining mitigation strategies you can do over the objections -- without the consent -- of huge numbers of obstinate, stupid people who are never going to be enlightened. That's as fucking real as sea level rise. We are not going to get consensus, not even close, on probably half of what needs to be done on a "political" level.
This is smart.
29. I have always believed that the way to bring around the "obstinate, stupid people" is to create jobs for them that are part with mitigating and ultimately reversing climate change. Putting solar panels on everything has already managed to employ a lot of people, for example. Insulating homes is another. These are unfortunately really tiny steps in the grand scheme of things. There are only so many jobs in wind energy, solar energy, etc.
Unfortunately making real headway against the trend requires one or more of "... and then a miracle occurs" technological breakthroughs (maybe cheap carbon capture and/or working fusion power); convincing everyone to return to a lifestyle with a much, much lower carbon footprint (which includes convincing people in SE Asia whose lives depend on burning their forests every few years -- it's not just "the rich"); doing really, really unpopular or dangerous (but not as dangerous as ever increasing CO2 levels) things that might help (lots more nuclear power, for example, or massive geoengineering); imposing totalitarian control over the entire world; telling developing countries "Sorry, you can't do what we did to get rich"; or maybe successfully spreading a new religion that everyone will join (hasn't worked so far). Not to mention the "minor" detail of suppressing the fossil fuel industry.
Still, as the meme says, "This is fine."
There's a local kombucha company that has convinced several local stores to install kombucha taps, where customers can fill their own containers. And this system's been around for a while, so I assume the stores are making enough money for the tap to be worth the bother and space. But I imagine the overlap between people who are into re-usable bottles and people who drink kombucha is basically 100%.
How did it work when bottles were reused? Could stores recap them?
Not stores - although that would be an interesting model - but the local/regional bottler. I assume they washed out the bottles first.
You have trucks going back between bottlers, distributors, and stores away.... its a matter of making sure they take the empties on the return trip.
Pretty sure my Trump-supporting Fox News-watching brother is still considering buying waterfront property on Florida's Merritt Island.
"Global warming is a religion" is a line I've often heard my father repeat. One of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
massive geoengineering
This is one of my worst fears. The catastrophic failure scenarios kind of overwhelm the qualified success scenarios. If you know any happy geoengineering stories, people, please don't be shy...
We're not shy, just very busy because our fingers are currently stuck in a dike.
I admit that, in my head, the "obstinate, stupid people" were largely right-wing politicians and businesspeople in this country and others. And their devout followers and supporters, yes, but I have less data about how obstinate and stupid less visible people are, and would prefer not to assume the worst except as a matter of cold statistics.
I saw a proposal to do something to protect Belize City that is similar to what the Dutch have done to the North Sea. But it was seen to be unfeasible because, for such a thing to be sustainable, you need a strength of social and political institutions far beyond what is currently practical in an impoverished, post-colonial econonomy.
37: It's always striking to hear that line from religious folks, who invariably are using it to denigrate some belief. "Atheism is a religion."
41. The whole Belize coast is pretty low-lying, not to mention there are hundreds of "cayes" (keys, if you are from Florida). Caye Caulker is barely above water even now, for example. To see anything even remotely mountainous, you have to go almost to Guatemala.
42. "Climate Change is a religion" is pretty popular in those circles, too.
You know what's a religion? Christianity is a religion.
They should probably just colonize Guatemala before Guatemala gets itself organized.
I have two degrees in Religious Studies and I still don't know what that means.
You did well on standardized testing?
I recall in a thread some time ago I linked to a Japanese company that sells and installs retractable sea walls. I wonder if they're publicly traded; if they are maybe I should buy some shares.
||
Remember a few years ago I posted about our tax guy who hasn't sent us an invoice in years? He still never does. After I pay my taxes each year, I send him an email thanking him, and asking what I owe, and he never responds.
This year, his email footer has a new link, "pay your invoice here!" So I click on it. But I have no invoice number, and no amount, and so I can't fill in the necessary fields, and so I am still not paying him anything. We might be close to 10 years since we've paid him.
IT'S SO WEIRD that I feel slightly embarrassed, like I must be doing something wrong.
|>
If it makes you feel better, my mom's accountant was charging us too much before we stopped using her.
The whole Belize coast is pretty low-lying, not to mention there are hundreds of "cayes" (keys, if you are from Florida).
Yup, and parts of the city are already below sea level. Particularly the poorest parts... people are living in shacks on stilts.
I got into a wormhole on Deep Adaptation, and all my thoughts on climate change for the last month have been nearly overwhelmingly sad and horrible and intense. I've been pessimistic and cynical and glib about it online for what, fifteen years, but now I'm thinking I wasn't pessimistic enough.
At this point, I've got the cowardice she mentions in the article. I think my emerging preference is for a 99.999% fatal plague, to take away agency and decisions and to hopefully kill us all before we do more damage.
Should you like to become as fearful and pessimistic as I've become, I can provide links.
42, 44, 45: I don't have cites for this, but I think the original form of that argument is that environmentalism, atheism, what have you, is an idolatrous religion because it involves setting up something that isn't divine (the Earth, humanity) as a "god" to be worshipped. It worked better against a background where everyone was presumptively Christian so equating the target of the attack with idolatry had some bite to it.
These days you also see a degenerate form where the person making the argument isn't necessarily religious and is just trying to imply that the target belief system isn't evidence-based. The degenerate form, as 45 notes, is silly from anyone who holds themselves out as having religious beliefs (except maybe in an "at least I admit I'm relying on faith" sense).
The FT has a very sympathetic piece on Extinction Rebellion this week, which makes me want to sign up.
Woman at War is an interesting Icelandic movie about a person trying do something about climate change -- quirky and quasi-apocalyptic.
There's a concern among some that even left-of-center Ambitious Climate Action proposals boil down to "my life, but green". E.g., the vision that with certain investments everyone can switch to electric cars powered by wind/solar and suburbia can persist on present terms. (This includes a more detailed Green New Deal whitepaper in which public transit is almost an afterthought behind charging stations.)
Iceland being one of the few countries standing potentially not just to survive but to prosper from climate change.
Taber did a fascinating podcast on biocharring sewage, which according to her is great for carbon sequestration and even better (and in my view more important) for soil fertility. That's a doable significant thing (which can also consume huge amounts of random garbage). I'm even more worried about agriculture than everything else because breeding heat resistant crops could take decades and might not work, and I don't know how much work has started.
56.1: When I see that argument phrased that way, I don't think it is usually an effort to suggest that something is incompatible with the True Religion, but rather that it is false.
The distinction may be subtle, but I think it's pretty straightforward. When people want to emphasize idolatry, they say something like "Money is your god." But they talk about "the religion of Darwinism" because they are talking about a belief system that isn't evidence-based and that therefore is bullshit.
I think I've seen 56.2, with the Sam Harris types who express contempt for religion putting other things in that category in order to belittle them.
60.last: that makes me so stupidly angry. Stupidly, obstinately angry, diffusing across the local area like the Camp Fire smoke.
I have a religion, which is why I'm in an airport bar eating meatlessly.
I certainly agree that using "religious" or "religion" as a pejorative (without adding "false") doesn't make any sense for someone who actually holds religious beliefs. I suppose I'm speculating that the reason you hear some self-identified religious people doing so (which, I agree, you sometimes do) is that it's sort of a vestigial survival of the version that did have the "false" included.
Non-biological problems I actually feel broadly (probably irrationally) optimistic about, because they're engineering problems with physically possible solutions. Like, American-style suburbia may have to die, but suburbia was born of a rare combination of cheap land and cheap oil. Most cities, and the cities that where virtually all future growth will happen, don't look like America at all, they look more like Chinese cities, high rise and dense and built around electrified infrastructure. And there are and will continue to be incomprehensible sums of money to made in building out all those cities.
65: They feel persecuted because Teh Gay and think that if you accept one belief without scientific grounding, you have to accept them all.
It's not the kind of argument the ones who did well on their standardized testing make.
There's a concern among some that even left-of-center Ambitious Climate Action proposals boil down to "my life, but green". E.g., the vision that with certain investments everyone can switch to electric cars powered by wind/solar and suburbia can persist on present terms. (This includes a more detailed Green New Deal whitepaper in which public transit is almost an afterthought behind charging stations.)
I want to defend this perspective somewhat (I say as somebody who rarely drives and bikes or buses to work).
Any element which is common is most people's lives (like cars or restaurants, or what have you) is providing a lot of value to people. I think it would be idea if any green transformation would include a discussion about how to replace those with better alternatives, but I think it makes a lot of sense to say that the transformation should be able to deliver the same things that people value today.
I'm sure there are ways in which it will not be possible to find easy replacements (or improvements) on current behaviors, and that should be seen as a loss (even if it's better in the long-run).
Also, as lurid points out, building it out will involve massive state-building projects. Like total war! But with less blowing stuff up.
American-style suburbia may have to die
We could at least use some of the breadsticks from Olive Garden to feed the newly famished.
All that drywall and shingles will biochar nicely.
66,69: Alex Steffen used to pejoratively call this "The Swap" ... the idea that we just trade in our current gizmos for green versions and then everything will be fine.
He's right, in that the whole structure will change ... the thing is, swapping one component for a greener one is a much easier individual action that does actually move things in a better direction. And that conditions the system for larger scale change.
Like I have an electric lawnmower now charged from solar cells on the roof of my house. My ungreen parents bought a hybrid car after we'd had one for a while because running costs are cheaper. This creates a demand for an electrical supply chain and infrastructure that has brought costs down, etc.
Not meaning this to be a just-so story (there is a lawn involved ffs) so much as saying you have to swap all those little gizmos that work with existing interfaces anyway a lot of the time. That seems to have progressed ok over the last 20 years. There's very little "let me just take the new green maglev train instead" big infra to join up to though. And Miami will probably still be a wasteland.
74: I'm not sure 66 and 69 describe the same thing. Most cities won't be swapping out gizmos, they'll be leveling shanties and building high-rises and big infra in their place. While individuals buy new gizmos for the first time.
Gizmos are great. I can sit on a plane in Chicago and talk to people around the world.
I can't expense the wifi because there's no business need and because there's no wifi in this plane.
I'm learning about the Spanish Civil War. I just finished my book about Weimar.
I got the exit row seat with the other fat guys. But they had to pay extra.
Tell me about the Spanish Civil War Mobes. Just start at the beginning and go on to the end.
on college campuses, throwing your bottles and cans on the lawn was considered something between tipping and charity since the homeless (? or at least poor) would come and pick them up for the return value. Is this going to cut into that?
Anything that eats food that comes from an urban environment has to be a pretty concentrated sources of heavy metal, persistant organic polutants, etc.
"which includes convincing people in SE Asia whose lives depend on burning their forests every few years -- it's not just "the rich"
so, ecotourism? The camp guide/lead person i met on an elephant park trip was super passionate about pretty much everything environmental, except harshing on the fact we took a plane to get there, which is terrible on co2 emissions.
37: It's always striking to hear that line from religious folks, who invariably are using it to denigrate some belief. "Atheism is a religion."
Evangelicals are big on differentiating between 'religion', which is the bad/pointless thing people do, as opposed to being born again, which is all God's work.
Ecotourism won't come close to replacing employment in palm oil. (Which we use in basically everything anyway.) Thing is, the burning isn't actually necessary for the palm oil, it's just the cheapest way to clear fallow period scrub or something. So we just need to pay enough for our crap that the plantations can afford not to burn (maybe employing lots more people with chainsaws) and the Indonesians can/want to enforce the law.
Great. People will think I'm an asshole because my rental has Illinois plates.
Yes. Your keying their cars will have nothing to do with it.
I have a newfound fear of bottles, which may be on topic. I opened a beer using the latch from the door lock. The cap came off with the glass that was under it. Took a chunk of my finger with it.
On topic for denial and delusion: it's the Intercept, so grain of salt, but of course "recent financial and lobbyist filings suggest that the gig economy giants are hoping to get ahead of a wave of enforcement actions, new legislation, regulatory requirements, and lawsuits that could force these companies to finally and formally classify full-time workers as employees."
I feel painfully déclassé when I buy screwtop wine but it's just absurdly more convenient.
Huh -- in CA IME it's barely a thing anymore. Some wineries use screwtop caps, more don't, very little correlation with quality.
I spilled a glass of red wine all over myself tonight, so hooray for wearing black so often... far more often than I drink wine, actually.
Hey Mossy you ever get waiters ask you to open bottles of wine in restaurants over there? That happened to me multiple times and I almost never went to places that served wine.
89: I didn't say it was déclassé, just that I felt that way. I blame the bourgeoisie.
90: No. But I seldom go to restaurants.
On reflection in fact it's often worse wines trying to brand themselves up with corks.
The building I work in was built about 7 years ago and is five feet above sea level, and it's in an area still in the middle of a huge building boom which just seems totally illogical to me. A block down the street the sidewalk regularly floods even during moderate storms- there are these little ~3 foot plastic barriers they put up to make it not completely wash away, but I can't imagine going another 10-20 years without serious damage to the area. There have been ideas tossed around about isolating the harbor with some kind of retractable dam but I can't imagine them getting together the ~20B projected cost. Maybe the strategy is to build lots of fancy condos, sell them to rich people, then the rich people will front the money to save their buildings.
One day I drove to work and got in late and had to park on the bottom level of the garage, it's a bit unnerving to realize you're parked about 30 feet below sea level.
Ah. Mostly built on reclaimed swamps? Which were open water pre-contact?
That describes several parts of the city- the more famously formerly swamp area is not the area I'm in.
I rarely see a screw top wine cap. Plenty of wine in bags, boxes, cartons, or cans, but not bottles with a screw top.
One day I drove to work and got in late and had to park on the bottom level of the garage, it's a bit unnerving to realize you're parked about 30 feet below sea level.
When Hurricane Sandy came to the neighborhood where I lived at the time, the below-grade parking garages filled up with water and a whole lot of Range Rovers got drowned.
I NEVER saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And where to park the SUV.
I always chuckle at the Range Rovers with the raised air intake (because I'm sure you're fording a lot of streams in Fairfax County, you wanker). But maybe they make sense after all.
96. They were mostly tidal mudflats before the first Europeans arrived. There were straight-up swamps, too, of course.
98. I see them all the time. Your taste in wine must be more rarefied than mine. I don't think I've seen wine in cans more than once or twice. Truly, you live in a different world.
I drink a lot of cheap wine. I think they just market different things to different states.
75: Yeah, I guess I am just struck how most things are embedded in existing infrastructure and supply chains, making them more gizmo-like and vulnerable to swap / needing swap. Like, even buildings, to a large extent.
One consequence of a warming planet is more rainfall in the Arabian peninsula and today saw some of the heaviest since that day in October when I lost my Mini. I drove my second Mini through this one at speeds of up to 75 mph going north to visit an island off the coast and it was crazy (we were in a convoy and the lead who was an a 4x4 did not slow down.).
I thought this was a good article about the current state of recycling.
I think all wines from NZ are with screw top. A lot of wines from Europe also use a screw top. It might be cheaper.
100 is charming.
Megan, as someone who endorses 54 in all its gloom, I kind of enjoyed _Bannerless_ -- first of at least two detective novels set in a tailing-off-crash California. Locals during the crash decided the best shot at a non-coercive postcrash society was reversible reliable birth control and solar power, so they concentrated on keeping those possible, and as the novels open there's a string of towns in voluntary association around managing resource use and population growth. I thought it was reasonably optimistic and realistic (for the lucky parts of California). The novels' own blurb seems to describe it as dystopian.
88: I'm pretty sure that older distinction between cork (tasteful, and classy, and the sign of a fine wine) and screw top (cheap vino, or plonk, and decidedly déclassé) no longer obtains. I credit the wineries of the PNW, with their pinot noirs from the Willamette Valley, and such (charming, whimsical, and artsy labels ... and with screw tops!).
106 / 110 seconded: thanks for the link.
107: this has been my experience as well, including a top-of-the-line domestic-only bottle we got on our NZ honeymoon.
To make this explicit, Mossy, feeling painfully déclassé about screw tops is itself painfully déclassé.
And yet less painfully déclassé than cutting off one's thumb while trying open a beer bottle with a door latch.
Kick down, is what I always say.
|| Headline film at the festival tonight was Falls Around Her. Liked the film, but the definite highlight was lead actor Tantoo Cardinal answering questions about the film, her career, life, and the universe. |>
My own view is that greenery needs to be a religion, complete with all the moral and political reinforcement of norms, if it is to work. People need to believe on faith in the things they must do, because they will otherwise rationalise them away. People need to perform small, objectively meaningless rituals like turning the lights off when they leave the room in order to connect with the much larger, impersonal, and more painful changes in lifestyle that are coming, and to try to ensure that they are beneficial.
Enough of moralising Gods -- we need a moralising nature goddess.
[Suggestions for an eco-friendly mode of public execution welcome: those disgusting heretics down the road used to burn alive people who were caught with air conditioners. Goddess! Think of the carbon released. We did well to extirpate them and leave their land fallow.]
Tattoo Cardinal said much the same thing tonight.
I expect corpses would biochar nicely, actually. Good calcium for fertility. One could drown the offender in the pre-charring sewage for aggravated offenses.
114: While succeeding in opening a beer bottle.
Sorry Moby. Coastal liberals were mean to me, I had no choice.
Also I hope you didn't drink the beer. Or at least poured it through a coffee filter.
Oh well. You had a good run.
But I still haven't returned my rental car.
They probably have another one.
29: You have to start at least imagining mitigation strategies you can do over the objections -- without the consent -- of huge numbers of obstinate, stupid people who are never going to be enlightened
This is literally true of all political action, and especially anything to do with urban planning or infrastructure. In a really important way, the purpose of democracy is to get the minority to shut up once a decision has been taken. There is a huge radical literature about how this is why Procedural Liberalism is just a more subtle form of fascism (hi, Bob!) but it's also actually really useful.
Pretty much the only institution I can think of where it wasn't true would be the old Polish noble parliament where literally everyone had an individual veto on everything - and that's remembered precisely because it was completely incapable of taking decisions and failed to the extent that Poland got carved up between its neighbours.
Meanwhile, here on Knifecrime Island Of Brexit, we're back to CO2 emissions levels last seen in the 19th century and this vast national achievement has happened without any particular drama and as far as I can tell without anyone noticing:
In per capita terms we're back to 1860 (in 2017, there's been another 3% of progress since):
https://voxeu.org/article/driving-uks-capita-carbon-dioxide-emissions-below-1860-levels
I am just amazed by the fact no-one is rejoicing, or alternatively cursing this monstrous imposition.
We just narrowly prevented additional subsidies for burning coal.
129 is fantastic - thanks for highlighting. This kind of technological change can happen really fast once it gets going. And it'll be faster for the late-adopters.
Oh, hey. I knew levels were way down per capita, but I hadn't realized they'd gotten so low absolutely. That is terrific.
It's good news regardless, but do those numbers account for the carbon emitted in the production of imported goods?
Netted out with a deduction for carbon emitted in producing exports? Which is to say that I'm sure those numbers don't account for that, and I think it'd be a really hard calculation to do.
do those numbers account for the carbon emitted in the production of imported goods?
No.
The answer is "if you count in imported goods, it's less good but still impressive", but I personally don't believe in this, for the reason LB has set out in 134. If you take it seriously it has really perverse consequences.
China - China! - would get a huge credit for its exports, and so would Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia! - while a large economy with balanced imports and exports would net out to zero however much fuel they were burning to do it. Also, if you really meant it, what about services? Dsquared flies to wherever in aid of selling financial services and buys a big car with the money, but for some reason he gets to net off all the kerosene in his trip (because it's charged to the client) against his CO2 belching bourgeowagen. This is evidently all kinds of cray-cray.
If you decide not to care about the double counting, I think you get the same results as you do counting at the point of emission, just with a bigger absolute number because everything internationally traded would be counted twice, in the country of production and in the country of use.
If you still want to put a number on it, Carbon Brief can give you one:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-38-since-1990
(Note that the figures I quoted earlier are in tonnes of CO2-equivalent, ie counting other greenhouse gases, but this is specifically CO2, so the drop is a bit smaller.)
Agreed, esp. the point on services; I would be fascinated to see figures of the carbon intensity per £VA for service-sector industries and how they compare to manufacturing-sector industries. Yes, banks don't have big sheds full of lathes and drills, but they do have big buildings full of computers, and lots of business-class overseas trips.
And the biggest single factor in this is, of course, that, over the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, we killed coal. This was a good thing.
Right, I was thinking about services when I brought up exports, but I should have said it explicitly.