Curious: what do you think you, personally (not others!), should do about climate change? How do you feel about your own answer - does it seem satisfactory to you, or unsatisfactory?
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
I feel like “Do nothing” is a strong default for most issues and if you tell me my individual contribution has no impact at margin, my community has near total consensus, and societal attention is high, those would all counsel me to increase confidence in doing nothing.
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Replying to @patio11 @michael_nielsen
This seems like an unsatisfactory answer in terms of social desirability but a reasonably satisfactory answer in terms of confidence in reasoning.
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Replying to @patio11
Curious: do you vote? Personal question, obviously no need to answer! But a very similar argument could be made, so I'm curious if you see it similarly or differently.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
I vote, and am sympathetic to the argument it’s symbolic, but my estimate of relative likelihood of vote mattering at margin versus personal carbon emissions mattering is at least 10e6 X in favor of voting. (And the one jurisdiction I have franchise in is extremely uncompetitive)
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Replying to @patio11
Thanks! Incidentally, I'm not sure I'm understanding your comment about "no impact at the margin". CO2 offsets or reduced emissions don't really have diminishing returns. 1 tonne less is 1 tonne less. Could you unpack a little?
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
Holding all else equal, no action which I could in personal capacity take to reduce or offset emissions is distinguishable from not taking that action.
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Replying to @patio11
Well, there'd be n tonnes less CO2. I guess you value that at zero? (No criticism intended - this can be hard to convey when you're trying to dig into people's mental models! And thanks for the comments.)
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
Not obvious to me why I care about number of CO2 molecules in atmosphere more than I care about exact count of water molecules in a rabbit unless there in some impact on humanity in the delta.
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Replying to @patio11
Ah, this is very helpful! I suppose I've been convinced by an abstract argument that a reasonable price is on the order of some tens of dollars per tonne (& that price is itself a proxy for other things, which I care about more). You have not. Thank you for bearing with me!
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Am I miscalebrated radically on consensus estimate for how many tonnes would need to be removed? My mental math should have us reaching same conclusion even if I’m off on pricing by 10e5 X. Am I off by even more than that on scale of global emissions?
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Replying to @patio11
It's about 5 tonnes per person per year, globally, for net zero emissions. If you price it at $20 / tonne, it's about $100 per person.
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @patio11
But everyone knows carbon offsets today are frauds and the real cost is something much closer to like $20,000 per tonne
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