by spwa4 | 2025-06-11 14:46:30+00:00
Can we answer the elephant in the room instead? It's not the messaging. Nothing can be done on the user end, because of Jevon's Paradox [1]. People forget that oil is very cheap, and what we're using it for is profitable, but really quite wasteful, but we don't care, because the price is so low.

A 1 gallon bottle of the cheapest water is $1.5 at Walmart. 1 gallon of refined fuel is $2.6 to $3.6, so let's say on average double the price of the cheapest water you can buy. Unrefined petrol is $68/barrel / 42 gallons/barrel = $1.6 per gallon.

This means the only way to reduce CO2 output is to get oil producing nations to pump up less. Anything else does not make sense. Notably the one thing that appears to come close, artificially raise the price of oil in developed nations, think about it, does not work if it's not the result of supply and demand. Plenty of local interests are served by increasing taxes though, so you will find A LOT of messaging to the contrary. But taxing fuel in the west will not lower global CO2 output. In fact, by making oil exports go to less developed (non-CO2 capturing and even non-complete burning cycle power plants) it makes things worse for the same amount of oil burned.

BUT the IPCC's goal is only to change western policy ("equip western policy makers"). Read the intro to the IPCC reports and you will find this, for example here [2]. Their goal is to get western nations to change their behavior, frankly playing on personal guilt. The policies pushed are aimed at making people feel better about their contribution to climate change, NOT about arresting or even slowing down climate change. For the reasons outlined above this won't change anything. It may redivide oil use between nations, but not reduce it, and more likely it just won't do anything because most oil use is for economic activity.

And that's exactly what you see. Climate change policy has been hard at work, making decisions and interfering in people's lives (in the west), for 50 years now. There has been no useful result in CO2 release (local parties and interests may have been served, but global co2? Not at all). As the IPCC themselves argue: there has been zero effect on CO2 production. The only thing that may be making a dent is Chinese overproduction and dumping of solar panels, and only very recently.

In other words: climate policy within the nations talking about climate policy cannot achieve anything. You could get literally everyone in the US and Europe to agree on reducing climate ... and global CO2 production would not be affected. It's popular, but it cannot work.

Since oil producing nations will never accept real reduction in output where it cuts the income of the top of their societies, actual climate policy ... means forcing oil producing nations to act against their own financial interests, against the will of the top of their societies, against the will of their politicians. It means forcing extremely authoritarian and extremely unequal societies to accept a lot less economic activity (Venezuela is just about the most free large oil producing nation, outside of the US. And it gets a LOT worse than Venezuela). But instead on these forums we're discussing wind power in Southern Utah ... and that's if they're not discussing oil deals. Oil producing nations are the only ones capable of reducing CO2 emissions by themselves and they have made it clear many, many times that they have zero intention to do it, no matter the agreements they sign. They'll happily lie about it, of course [3].

So climate change policy has one option: force oil producing nations to comply. They will not respect agreements, even if you get them to sign them. They need to be forced. That means, at minimum, using the military to stop their ships at sea. To physically blockade Saudi, Venezuelan and Russian ports. Oh, and Russia has already demonstrated that that's not enough: they lit entire shipments of oil on fire, just burning them into the atmosphere for no useful purpose whatsoever, rather than stop pumping.

And since nobody is willing to discuss that there is no climate action. Or at least, there is no realistic climate policy that will limit and/or lower global CO2 emissions, people are just lying. And as the private jets argument points out, very well paid people are lying about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

[2] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmzvdn9e18o