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498: What sets the limits on pollution? Why don't we pollute less or decrease faster?
Episode 498
My notes I read from:
Why do we still pollute, part 1: the questions
Does the following sound familiar?
- We use a lot of energy, but we’ll electrify everything and power them with wind and solar.
- Yes, we need to build a lot, but prices are cheaper than ever for renewable power and batteries. They fell faster than anyone expected and will keep falling. More solar energy hits the Earth daily than we need in a year.
- There are some problems, like that the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow, and we haven’t electrified some things, like heavy loaded trucks, airplanes, and container ships, but they’re just engineering issues that we’ll resolve.
- Nobody at the time of the Wright brothers could have predicted the 747. People a decade ago didn’t predict prices and capacity for renewables and batteries falling so fast.
- A world where we live like today just without carbon emissions is around the corner. All we have to do is wait, maybe fund some research.
Those ideas sound enticing and compelling. Why was everyone so gloomy?
What actually are the limits and why? The prices are lower but why not lower still? Is there a lower limit or do you believe it will drop to zero? Why aren’t we building more solar and wind farms? Why aren’t we damming more rivers? Why haven’t we electrified planes, boats, and for that matter more cars? If electric cars are better, why do people still buy internal combustion engine ones?
Something is setting those limits. What? Do batteries and electric vehicles only require we build more factories, in which case it’s only a matter of time, or are there limits that we can’t overcome? Maybe some we can overcome and some we can’t. If so, it matters which.
Also, I’ve written in my blog that humans have historically responded to new sources of power by using the old one and the new one. Our environmental problems aren’t too little power but too much pollution, just supplying new power doesn’t mean we stop using fossil fuels. Headlines keep touting record using of renewables, but the meaningful measure is how much we’re reducing pollution. We can easily keep building renewables and never stop burning coal and oil even if we can substitute.
Why aren’t we closing coal plants? Why do we keep using jet fuels for jets?
It’s tempting to believe that somewhere near the source of power supplies there are a few people or companies that are gearing up to supply what we need. Maybe they’re going as fast as they can. They’re just waiting for supplies or a few key technological developments.
You probably realize it’s not as simple as that. There are markets and market forces driving development and things get implemented as they can. When market forces drive some development, they do, but not all things respond to market development. For example, people knew about problems with pollution and the greenhouse effect for generations but didn’t act. Why now? Are there things that market forces can’t resolve or won’t address? You probably know about the Tragedy of the Commons, Jevons Paradoxes, and Rebound Effects, which are systems effects where markets produce the opposite goals people expect or desire. How significant are they?
Briefly, the tragedy of the commons occurs when private citizens benefit from using a resource that can be depleted but the public loses, for example overfishing the oceans, depleting aquifers, and polluting the atmosphere. Jevons Paradox is that when you make a technology more efficient, you decrease the pollution in each use, but by making it cheaper, more people use it more and for more things, so you may increase the total pollution. Rebound Effects are more broadly when our attempts to decrease pollution end up creating more, which might include replacing some business travel with video conferences, but then traveling for other reasons anyway, or travel
Published on 4 years, 4 months ago