Energy is very expensive which makes everything expensive like normal cost like groceries, heating, everyday transportation. Housing market is the worst, too little houses are being build because of all the rules. Too many people are being let in which is leading to an overheated market for buying and renting houses.
For normal people this is a bad situation. It’s only good for property owners (that sell houses) and the government because more tax income.
I’m lucky that I am a software engineer and have an above average salary. But the average person in my country (the Netherlands) is worse off. I hear many stories of people that can’t go on holiday anymore abroad while 5 years ago they could.
This all in the name of being green and being the best boy in class. Set an example. Need to start somewhere. We (our country hence the tax payers) spent billions on it. And get very very little in return.
While energy is expensive, I find it hard to blame on the "green stuff".
The majority of the energy cost increases in the last few years are because fossil fuels got more expensive for europeans, as cheap gas and oil from Russia wasn't cheap nor very available any more. Lower emissions technologies require much less energy: Heat pumps, induction stoves, electric goods and private transport. Renewables are furthermore more resilient to supply shocks, as they aren't as dependent on from despotic states such as Russia, Saudi Arabia or (seemingly) the US for much of the (fossil) energy. The correct response would be to electrify as much as possible (much less energy required) and produce electricity without the need for importing fossil fuels.
The housing situation sucks, but while many rules discourage housing production, only a smaller subset is there to reduce emissions (requirements about amenities such as outlets, room size and layout, parking and local opposition have little to do with emissions). Many countries such as the US which care much less also suffer heavily as well from being unable to build enough housing.
I have little idea about what specifically the netherlands are doing on climate, but it has at least not been my impression that they were the "best boy in class".
You might not see the benefit directly, but the idea is that we must do this for future generations. If everybody keeps looking at the others, nothing happens. The ones that can lead must lead.
I however think it should be a personal responsibility. Not something forced upon you or being pushed to the government to solve. People have more personal responsibility. Lots of them aren’t bothered anymore because they think the government will fix it.
For example, I don’t have a car and choose to live in walking distance of my work. When I go somewhere I take the bike or train.
I get frustration that people feel in some countries like Netherlands where emissions per capita is 6.56t CO2, while others that also can do something like US, do not (14.3t CO2 per capita).
> If everybody keeps looking at the others, nothing happens.
We must suffer, our kids and their kids, alive today, must suffer so unborn future generations may (possibly?) benefit from unpredictable climate benefits?
I’m not buying it, but it’s being forced down my wallet anyway.
What’s the reason we have to have expensive energy and import massive numbers of unskilled migrants?
Because we stole from the future for the gains and quality of life today, and now we must pay the debt back (global low carbon electric generation transition, EVs, heat pumps, decarbonization, and sequestration of excess CO2 emitted since industrialization began).
I can’t think of a single thing where people damaged their surroundings and following generations didn’t have to pay more for that then what earlier generations got out of the destruction.
Some will say we do nothing, some will say we do better. Imho, the latter is winning over the former at the moment. That might change, hopefully it doesn't. As you say, this is an infinite ooda loop of humanity in the aggregate.
(1GW of solar PV is deployed every 15 hours as of this comment; battery storage is ~$52/kwh, half of new vehicles sold in China and 25% of global auto sales currently are battery electric or plug in hybrid electric; manufacturing capacity and uptake trajectories continue to steepen)
Fossil fuels have a host of nasty externalities aside from climate change that are greatly lessened by cleaner sources of energy. For example, cutting down on the 10s of millions of lives that are shortened and made worse by fossil fuel pollution could be part of a better world.
In many places wind and solar are now cheaper than fossil fuels. This can particularly be seen in the past year countries like Pakistan, India, South Africa, etc greatly expanding their use of solar in particular.
Not sure what immigration has to do with energy policy.
> There’s no universe where expensive energy and unavailable housing is a better world.
But there is a world where solar power plus battery storage is so much cheaper than coal that it's going to be cleaned up AND lower price of electricity just by market forces.
All you say is true, except adopting green solutions is not a plan to be achieved in 4 or 5 years. I think modern politics has being more focused on the continuation of one or a group in power or reaching the power rather then advancing towards common goals.
In times of hardship, people want the solution for their big problems to be easy.
I can't buy something increase minimum weight (inflation)
Missing health or jobs, blame immigrants not the lack of investment over the last 20 years nor the future consequences.
It anguishes people that their problems are not truly solvable but only briefly relieved until the side effects are uncovered.
And it is the same here.
The advancements of politics in the development of sustainable and renewable energy was not enough.
There were way too many counter incentives to actually act serious on it. The lobby of oil, etc...
Many of the politicies that were adopted post COVID could have been adopted 15y or 30y before.
The lack of restructuration of the taxation over the companies exponentially increasing the usage of electricity or profit with diminishing employees is the same is another example.
For now, people are focusing on a war that will only exist because people are focusing in a war that does not exist.
A trillion dollars in war insteadof towards actually solving the causes for the potential war is a slap on the faces of poor people (aka us) who will be sent to kill other ones children.
> Housing market is the worst, too little houses are being build because of all the rules.
I find other reasons way more convincing:
Construction can’t keep up with efficiency gains of the rest of the world. This has less to do with regulation and more with failure to automate as much. Basically baumoll’s cost disease.
Centralization means that everyone wants to live in the same places. We hardly can create new land to build on, especially where we need it the most.
Missing or wrong regulation of cars in cities. They take up an enormous amount of space.
Financialisation of the housing market. Housing can either be affordable or a good investment asset. Not both.
Would you say that lowering the climate goals / increasing emissions could meaningfully alleviate pressure on the housing market, migration, groceries, energy, etc.?
One of the things we (the Netherlands) should do is get to a more average level on EU levels. Not trying to be the best. The costs are too high.
Also energy cost should be as low as possible. A few nuclear plants could be a good solution. (I’m not an energy expert) When you lower energy cost, the cost of all other things can also be lowered.
And that's a big big part of the issue, Germany said "fuck ghg" and closed their nuclear plants.
We also have soaring energy costs in Sweden.. but _only in the south_ close to Germany, in the north we still have plans on using relatively inefficient electrolysis to produce hydrogen to in turn reduce GHG's from steel production, because we have so much power generated from wind (uneven) and waterfalls (even).
Sweden is once again building nuclear plants after 40 years, but we could've started far earlier.
Not an expert either, but commonly nuclear energy tops the list of most expensive sources, even if we ignore cost of mining, waste storage and dismantling of old installations.
There are arguments to be made in favor of nuclear, but I don't think cost is one of them
The costs of nuclear are 80% in managing regulatory burdens, where laws require recertifying a design for every unit constructed and spurious lawsuits postpone beginning construction for a decade etc.
> A few nuclear plants could be a good solution. (I’m not an energy expert)
You should look at the track record of recent nuclear projects in Europe. Olkiluoto and Flamanville both 3x+ over budget in time and money. Sizewell C isn't doing too well either, its very far from cheap.
If you take a step back, what did the netherlands look like 100 years ago? What was the wealth inequality split? How much capital was owned by the elite vs the commoner?
You will see that the last 70 years have really been an outlier in history due to the great reset of WW2 and the elite losing their wealth. The current trends are actually the return back to historical norms.
The problem here is not green energy sandbagging the economy in NL and making life unaffordable for the commoner, the problem here is that wealth/capital accumulates faster than wages and therefore as the economy slows down an ever growing slice of GDP goes to capital owners.
I would suggest if you want to solve this problem, do not blame the green energy — it is a distraction — instead look to your elected representatives in government to form wealth tax and land tax legislation to curb the positive feedback loop of wealth accumulation, lest you become a serf to the elite again.
Take a look at Thomas Piketty if you are interested in learning more.
This situation has played out in every developed nation, do you really think NL is unique? Look at any country in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, China, … and they all have a huge issue with inflated asset prices (housing, stocks, gold) because wealth is becoming more concentrated and rich people need to park their wealth somewhere, and that somewhere is gold, stocks, real estate, bonds, and mortgages.
Also notice that asset prices started increasing across the world way before we had green energy policies. I live in a place where they canceled a bunch of green energy policies (mainly carbon taxes) and guess what happened to asset prices? Nothing.
The quoted person is from the Netherlands. Global warming and sea level increases directly pose a threat to their country, most of which is already below sea level.
Well. We have another crisis. We are not producing later generations. Part of it is that everything is too expensive. So for who would we leave this place?
Not really. We are masters of the water. We build land out of water (like the island in Dubai, some airport islands in Asia, a whole new province called Flevoland). Make dikes and dunes to withstand the worst storms in a hundred years, since 1953. So we could prepare for rising sea levels which doesn’t rise that quickly
The rate of sea level rise since the turn of the century has nearly doubled to almost half a centimeter each year. At the current rate is increase, within a human lifespan, some Dutch dikes will be underwater.
If the ice caps fully melted, that's 60-70 meters of sea level rise. Well before we reach that point, the Netherlands will be lost. There's simply no building dikes which approach that level. Even if that's not within your lifetime, it's not outside of the realm of the possibility that your grandchildren would be facing that eventuality.
> If the circulation weakens, Northwestern Europe would experience the most pronounced cooling. Under global warming of +2°C, a cold extreme that currently occurs once every ten years in the Netherlands could drop to -20°C — around fifteen degrees colder than in the pre-industrial climate, according to the same climate model. In Scotland the cold extreme could reach -30°C, a full 23 degrees colder than in the late 19th century.
That's not -20 OR +40. You're getting both. And while you're busy touting your preferences, I'm sure your farmers will be happy about their crops freezing, their land becoming unusable, your building being thoroughly unable to withstand such massive temperature swings and cracking, making it even worse to live in.
>We know for sure when we arrive at that point.
The moment you do arrive at the -20 every year point means that:
* You've spent the previous 40 years in denial that it happens more and more often
* You're on the path to -30 already, with no way to stop it.
The USA, China, and India are the leaders on Climate Change emmisions, and have to make real changes for global results. Until us three get serious, progress is nil.
India is not in even in the top 30 countries that can realistically reduce emissions. They have per capita emissions lower than any European country, except maybe Iceland. Lower than the Nordics, much, much lower than France or Germany or Spain. There's no way for them to reduce their emissions without severely impacting lifestyle even more drastically - which is not at all the case for us here in Europe.
To quantify this, India had a per capita CO2 emission of 2.07 tonnes per year, while Sweden had 3.43 (2023). Sweden used this to achieve a 58,100 USD per capita GDP (2025) compared to India's 2,878 USD all while using a non-unsignificant part of it as heating in the winter. It would be great for all of us if India could do better on a per capita basis since the resulting effect would be huge.
You're forgetting the fact that Sweden (like other European countries) has had >100 years of much higher emissions than India, and has built this wealth through that. Wealth compounds - so if you want to make these sorts of arguments, you should look at total historical emissions per capita.
So because others made an unknown mistake, now India should be allowed to perpetrate known, deliberate, and intentional harm? It makes India that much worse, it makes India evil!
This is just unsophisticated and uncivilized excuse making and primitive rationalization.
These arguments are frustratingly stupid. It's as if 100 royals were eating a quarter of the food, 10,000 peasants were eating the other three-quarters, and the royals were telling the peasants that their greed was causing the stores to run dangerously low.
I gave you the numbers, if you want an honest argument then use the numbers. It's as if 10.5M "royals needing heat" used 3.6 MT (0.12%) while 1450M "peasants" used 3000 MT (99.88%).
The same argument can be made for us here in Europe. And it makes even more sense, since we're trying to live in this extremely northerly place, where large amounts of energy are required yearly to even make it habitable, and solar is quite inefficient.
India started around 40 new coal power plants just in 2024.
Per capita is irrelevant in this matter. The presumed impacts on the environment and the planet do not care that India has long had an unsustainable, reckless population size. Per capita use in situations like this is simply ridiculous and evasive lying.
Sounds like something a country with extremely high per capita emissions would say. Somebody else would say that the imaginary line drawn around a bunch of land and given a name matters a hell of a lot less.
I actually don't worry about emissions at all because I compare my personal emissions to the emissions of the entire continent of Asia. It's not my fault that the inhabitants decided to be more than one person.
What did you not understand about “per capita is irrelevant”. You make my very point and don’t even realize it though. It is an incomplete measure and a bell curve distribution relative to productivity, especially when talking about one civilization that produced all the advances and one that not only uses all those advances, but has not contributed any advances.
If you want to use per capita, you need to look at the qualities, make a qualitative determination; per capita net value, per capita quality score, etc.
Or maybe you would suggest that Europeans should start having 20+ children per woman and that will then magically improve things because their per capita measure by moronic means will improve immensely?
So get to it, Europe, have 20, 30, 40+ children per woman, because low intelligence people will then celebrate how wonderful you’ve improved your nonsense, meaningless pollution numbers.
I could see an argument for trying to impose a per-population cap (it’s our shared world so we should share the capacity to do damage to it equally). Or an attempt to use the market to figure out the best expenditure of emissions for economic activity; some kind of carbon tax and credit scheme.
But, by whatever metric we want to use, India is with their huge population is going to end up with a lot of it. Unless is it some sort of per-country cap, which would be totally unfair, right?
So you suggest western countries should get birthrates up and that will fix climate change by offsetting the main producers in the country? How is per capita relevant.
No, I think it would be most fair to split the remaining carbon budget (to the extent that there even is one) evenly, or maybe try and account for the fact that regions that have been industrialized for a long time have already used up a lot of the cap.
However, I think the fair plan is impractical and would meet a lot of resistance from major economies. So, out of pragmatism I prefer a carbon credit system.
Not sure if this statement is correct. One consequence of India's population growth is that millions of Indians are emigrating. So the rest of the world helps solving the population problem. If one even wants to call it a problem.
Then there's is no progress to be made. Developing using cheap energy regardless of emissions, i.e. the harm/ethics (positives) of poverty reduction > pollution any day. US/west sets the baseline for historic not just annual per capita emission - annual doesn't capture historic emissions for building infra/capita base. Many countries still have magnitude more steel to smelt and concrete to pour. If developing / low middle income countries does most of the growing/developing on clean generation, better, if west wants to subsidize that like prior climate pledges, they're welcome to. Until then, their per capita is floor of what everyone should aim for. Ultimately, global emissions isn't really worth worrying, as in even if it's existential for some tiny islands or climate death zones, there's shit all do because most of the world who desires to be rich and comfortable will just chug along.
Stuff. Indeed it's mostly about stuff we buy (which is mostly from China).
If you want to lower emissions, not flying and not eating meat is important. But stuff we buy - clothes, electronics, cars, furniture, even solar panels: consider if you really need it, for how long will it last, and why can't it wait. Don't click "buy now"
Europe makes a terrible mistake. They are obsessive to decarbonate not because of climate change (they emit a measly 8% of total, the earth will feel nothing) but because the developed north wants to continue heating its homes and moving its cars after fossil fuels. But this will come after 50 or 100 years, it's too early to take so painful measures. In software design its called YAGNI.
You do realize that the consequences of a failed reduction of carbon dioxide emissions will hit mankind in 50 to 100 years.
Our children and grandchildren pay the price for the mistakes we do now.
> they emit a measly 8% of total, the earth will feel nothing
Earth doesn’t care, it’s not about protecting Earth it’s about protecting us. Warmer climate is better for many other species besides humans.
Climate scientists keep telling us that achievable emissions reductions aren't going to be enough to prevent bad climate effects. The single-minded focus on emissions reduction is not going to save the world and it has a lot of bad effects on economies and ultimately people. We need to be investing in solutions that could actually work, like stratospheric aerosol injection.
Isn't the consensus from climate scientists that emission reductions are totally necessary, and there is no solution which is solely based on capture of greenhouse gases or cooling technologies? Even if reducing emissions is not enough, I thought it was clear that it needs to be done - and the economic impact is a necessary evil, since in reality we are just seeing the reversal of economic benefits obtained at the cost of planetary temperatures.
I haven't seen an analysis of stratospheric aerosol injection that suggested it couldn't solve the problem. We know it works because it happens naturally via volcanoes, and if we do it ourselves we can do it almost entirely without the other bad effects volcanoes cause. The opposition I've seen to it has been on moral or ethical grounds, or misunderstandings.
> We need to be investing in solutions that could actually work, like stratospheric aerosol injection
The problem with aerosol injection is that it doesn't actually lower CO2 levels. It just adds a cooling effect that can counter the CO2 warming effect. The aerosols don't stay in the stratosphere long so you need to be regularly injecting more.
If you stop those regular injections the warming quickly comes back.
If we have a strong plan to reach near net zero CO2 emissions in some given timeframe and we really can stick to it then adding aerosol injections so that we can stop the warming sooner might be OK.
If we don't have that there is a good chance that some large emitters will decide that since the aerosol injections are holding warming at bay there is no reason to not increase emissions as much as they want. Most will acknowledge that we should reduce emissions, but with no immediate consequences they will put it off.
Then in a few decades if something disrupts the regular aerosol injects we could get decades worth of warming over a few months.
Emitting CO2 is not morally wrong in an abstract sense. It is only bad to the extent that it has bad effects. The major bad effect is warming. If that is mitigated, then the need to reduce CO2 emissions is legitimately lower and that's OK! The other bad effects of CO2 emissions are less bad than warming. The only really concerning one at realistic CO2 concentrations is ocean acidification, and there may be other ways to address that too.
Human CO2 emissions will eventually decline naturally due to the meteoric rise of solar and the eventual exhaustion of economical sources of fossil fuels. We can't increase fossil fuel consumption forever, and CO2 will not continue to rise forever. But it will rise to a point where we will need to implement a proactive solution for warming, regardless of what the EU does or doesn't do. Pretending that emissions reductions alone are going to save the world is doing everyone a disservice.
CO2 emission reduction is the hardest way. It requires coordinating most of the world to act in a way that disadvantages them, while anyone who defects gets an advantage.
A solution that can be unilaterally implemented by a small minority is much, much easier. Solving technical problems is much easier than changing human nature, which is in fact impossible.
If the freedom country were going to bomb the country with by far the world's highest per capita emissions, there wouldn't be a freedom country anymore.
But at what cost?
Energy is very expensive which makes everything expensive like normal cost like groceries, heating, everyday transportation. Housing market is the worst, too little houses are being build because of all the rules. Too many people are being let in which is leading to an overheated market for buying and renting houses.
For normal people this is a bad situation. It’s only good for property owners (that sell houses) and the government because more tax income.
I’m lucky that I am a software engineer and have an above average salary. But the average person in my country (the Netherlands) is worse off. I hear many stories of people that can’t go on holiday anymore abroad while 5 years ago they could.
This all in the name of being green and being the best boy in class. Set an example. Need to start somewhere. We (our country hence the tax payers) spent billions on it. And get very very little in return.
While energy is expensive, I find it hard to blame on the "green stuff".
The majority of the energy cost increases in the last few years are because fossil fuels got more expensive for europeans, as cheap gas and oil from Russia wasn't cheap nor very available any more. Lower emissions technologies require much less energy: Heat pumps, induction stoves, electric goods and private transport. Renewables are furthermore more resilient to supply shocks, as they aren't as dependent on from despotic states such as Russia, Saudi Arabia or (seemingly) the US for much of the (fossil) energy. The correct response would be to electrify as much as possible (much less energy required) and produce electricity without the need for importing fossil fuels.
The housing situation sucks, but while many rules discourage housing production, only a smaller subset is there to reduce emissions (requirements about amenities such as outlets, room size and layout, parking and local opposition have little to do with emissions). Many countries such as the US which care much less also suffer heavily as well from being unable to build enough housing.
I have little idea about what specifically the netherlands are doing on climate, but it has at least not been my impression that they were the "best boy in class".
You might not see the benefit directly, but the idea is that we must do this for future generations. If everybody keeps looking at the others, nothing happens. The ones that can lead must lead.
There are generations alive today who will live to see the end of this century, and the consequences of our emissions:
https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/amoc-atlantic-tipping...
What if we leave our children an impoverished Europe and a world dominated by authocraties?
Then they'll be in a better position than if we leave them a Europe that can't support life.
Will we?
Well, unless we manage to reverse the trend I guess.
I kinda agree.
I however think it should be a personal responsibility. Not something forced upon you or being pushed to the government to solve. People have more personal responsibility. Lots of them aren’t bothered anymore because they think the government will fix it.
For example, I don’t have a car and choose to live in walking distance of my work. When I go somewhere I take the bike or train.
If there was any sign of that working that'd be fine.
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I’m not.
What’s stupid about it?
I’m willing to change my mind.
What's stupid about it is that there is zero evidence to suggest it has any chance at achieving a sufficient effect soon enough.
> The ones that can lead must lead.
I get frustration that people feel in some countries like Netherlands where emissions per capita is 6.56t CO2, while others that also can do something like US, do not (14.3t CO2 per capita).
> If everybody keeps looking at the others, nothing happens.
On the other hand, this is true.
We must suffer, our kids and their kids, alive today, must suffer so unborn future generations may (possibly?) benefit from unpredictable climate benefits?
I’m not buying it, but it’s being forced down my wallet anyway.
What’s the reason we have to have expensive energy and import massive numbers of unskilled migrants?
What does immigration policy have to do with climate and energy?
The grand parent comment brought it up.
Anyway, immigration drives up energy demand, and according to at least some theories of economics, that has a tendency to drive up price.
Because we stole from the future for the gains and quality of life today, and now we must pay the debt back (global low carbon electric generation transition, EVs, heat pumps, decarbonization, and sequestration of excess CO2 emitted since industrialization began).
That’s what always is happening. We learn. The next generation will have something different they will steal from the future.
It’s an infinite thing.
I can’t think of a single thing where people damaged their surroundings and following generations didn’t have to pay more for that then what earlier generations got out of the destruction.
Some will say we do nothing, some will say we do better. Imho, the latter is winning over the former at the moment. That might change, hopefully it doesn't. As you say, this is an infinite ooda loop of humanity in the aggregate.
(1GW of solar PV is deployed every 15 hours as of this comment; battery storage is ~$52/kwh, half of new vehicles sold in China and 25% of global auto sales currently are battery electric or plug in hybrid electric; manufacturing capacity and uptake trajectories continue to steepen)
Solar:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-...
Batteries: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
Heat pumps: https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-heat-pumps/executi...
EVs:
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025
https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/global-elect...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250904191345/https://www.ftpor... [pdf]
Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy+ (LCOE+) : https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e...
You provided good links. I will read them. Saved in my reading list. I agree with you that we should leave this place better than we found it.
I appreciate the open mind. The data is very favorable, innovation may have saved us from ourselves.
> But at what cost?
I can’t help thinking of the satirical cartoon “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing” ;)
There’s no universe where expensive energy and unavailable housing is a better world.
There’s no universe where importing huge numbers of unskilled migrants depended on the state is a better world.
Fossil fuels have a host of nasty externalities aside from climate change that are greatly lessened by cleaner sources of energy. For example, cutting down on the 10s of millions of lives that are shortened and made worse by fossil fuel pollution could be part of a better world.
In many places wind and solar are now cheaper than fossil fuels. This can particularly be seen in the past year countries like Pakistan, India, South Africa, etc greatly expanding their use of solar in particular.
Not sure what immigration has to do with energy policy.
> There’s no universe where expensive energy and unavailable housing is a better world.
But there is a world where solar power plus battery storage is so much cheaper than coal that it's going to be cleaned up AND lower price of electricity just by market forces.
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All you say is true, except adopting green solutions is not a plan to be achieved in 4 or 5 years. I think modern politics has being more focused on the continuation of one or a group in power or reaching the power rather then advancing towards common goals. In times of hardship, people want the solution for their big problems to be easy. I can't buy something increase minimum weight (inflation) Missing health or jobs, blame immigrants not the lack of investment over the last 20 years nor the future consequences.
It anguishes people that their problems are not truly solvable but only briefly relieved until the side effects are uncovered.
And it is the same here. The advancements of politics in the development of sustainable and renewable energy was not enough. There were way too many counter incentives to actually act serious on it. The lobby of oil, etc...
Many of the politicies that were adopted post COVID could have been adopted 15y or 30y before. The lack of restructuration of the taxation over the companies exponentially increasing the usage of electricity or profit with diminishing employees is the same is another example.
For now, people are focusing on a war that will only exist because people are focusing in a war that does not exist. A trillion dollars in war insteadof towards actually solving the causes for the potential war is a slap on the faces of poor people (aka us) who will be sent to kill other ones children.
I digress
> Housing market is the worst, too little houses are being build because of all the rules.
I find other reasons way more convincing:
Construction can’t keep up with efficiency gains of the rest of the world. This has less to do with regulation and more with failure to automate as much. Basically baumoll’s cost disease.
Centralization means that everyone wants to live in the same places. We hardly can create new land to build on, especially where we need it the most.
Missing or wrong regulation of cars in cities. They take up an enormous amount of space.
Financialisation of the housing market. Housing can either be affordable or a good investment asset. Not both.
Would you say that lowering the climate goals / increasing emissions could meaningfully alleviate pressure on the housing market, migration, groceries, energy, etc.?
One of the things we (the Netherlands) should do is get to a more average level on EU levels. Not trying to be the best. The costs are too high.
Also energy cost should be as low as possible. A few nuclear plants could be a good solution. (I’m not an energy expert) When you lower energy cost, the cost of all other things can also be lowered.
And that's a big big part of the issue, Germany said "fuck ghg" and closed their nuclear plants.
We also have soaring energy costs in Sweden.. but _only in the south_ close to Germany, in the north we still have plans on using relatively inefficient electrolysis to produce hydrogen to in turn reduce GHG's from steel production, because we have so much power generated from wind (uneven) and waterfalls (even).
Sweden is once again building nuclear plants after 40 years, but we could've started far earlier.
Not an expert either, but commonly nuclear energy tops the list of most expensive sources, even if we ignore cost of mining, waste storage and dismantling of old installations.
There are arguments to be made in favor of nuclear, but I don't think cost is one of them
The costs of nuclear are 80% in managing regulatory burdens, where laws require recertifying a design for every unit constructed and spurious lawsuits postpone beginning construction for a decade etc.
> A few nuclear plants could be a good solution. (I’m not an energy expert)
You should look at the track record of recent nuclear projects in Europe. Olkiluoto and Flamanville both 3x+ over budget in time and money. Sizewell C isn't doing too well either, its very far from cheap.
Nuclear is never a good solution if you are looking for cheap energy.
What are you talking about? We’re below average already[1].
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
It’s not just about green energy, also everything else that relates to being green and good for the environment, like CO2 and nitrogen emissions.
One of the pressures causing migration is global warming screwing up agriculture, particularly in poorer regions.
Any source for this?
What about the costs not doing nothing.
The consequences of climate change will also affect normal people more than the top.
If you take a step back, what did the netherlands look like 100 years ago? What was the wealth inequality split? How much capital was owned by the elite vs the commoner?
You will see that the last 70 years have really been an outlier in history due to the great reset of WW2 and the elite losing their wealth. The current trends are actually the return back to historical norms.
The problem here is not green energy sandbagging the economy in NL and making life unaffordable for the commoner, the problem here is that wealth/capital accumulates faster than wages and therefore as the economy slows down an ever growing slice of GDP goes to capital owners.
I would suggest if you want to solve this problem, do not blame the green energy — it is a distraction — instead look to your elected representatives in government to form wealth tax and land tax legislation to curb the positive feedback loop of wealth accumulation, lest you become a serf to the elite again.
Take a look at Thomas Piketty if you are interested in learning more.
The rich pay enough in this country. The middle class is enslaved for the bottom 10%, not the top 1%.
This situation has played out in every developed nation, do you really think NL is unique? Look at any country in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, China, … and they all have a huge issue with inflated asset prices (housing, stocks, gold) because wealth is becoming more concentrated and rich people need to park their wealth somewhere, and that somewhere is gold, stocks, real estate, bonds, and mortgages.
Also notice that asset prices started increasing across the world way before we had green energy policies. I live in a place where they canceled a bunch of green energy policies (mainly carbon taxes) and guess what happened to asset prices? Nothing.
Also note that the top 10% of wealthy people own over 50% of the wealth in NL https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2025/03/56-percent-of-wealth-i...
If you don’t feel like reading Piketty I would recommend watching this short video which shares a bunch of views with Piketty: https://youtu.be/BTlUyS-T-_4?si=6Lms-8pJTcJm7k7e
And same time here Finland we have super cheap electricity. It is just that you don’t build enough new capacity and nuclear power is no go.
You don’t think a livable planet is a good benefit for your money? Especially for later generations?
How does global warming make planet not livable? Some places - maybe, but not a planet.
Also global warming makes some places livable as well.
New slogan for pro-global warming folks: Make Greenland green again!
The quoted person is from the Netherlands. Global warming and sea level increases directly pose a threat to their country, most of which is already below sea level.
Well. We have another crisis. We are not producing later generations. Part of it is that everything is too expensive. So for who would we leave this place?
The marginally higher cost of energy is not the main contributing factor to lower birth rates
> But at what cost?
Most of this improvement is driven exactly by cost reductions. In other words: the CO2 emissions are falling BECAUSE solar is cheap.
Lowering CO2 is the thing that SAVES money.
You’re from the Netherlands, and can’t see the negatives of sea level rise?
You live in netherlands
less emission = less artic ice melt = less sea water rising
how can you say this??? while netherlands is probably need one the most???
Not really. We are masters of the water. We build land out of water (like the island in Dubai, some airport islands in Asia, a whole new province called Flevoland). Make dikes and dunes to withstand the worst storms in a hundred years, since 1953. So we could prepare for rising sea levels which doesn’t rise that quickly
The rate of sea level rise since the turn of the century has nearly doubled to almost half a centimeter each year. At the current rate is increase, within a human lifespan, some Dutch dikes will be underwater.
If the ice caps fully melted, that's 60-70 meters of sea level rise. Well before we reach that point, the Netherlands will be lost. There's simply no building dikes which approach that level. Even if that's not within your lifetime, it's not outside of the realm of the possibility that your grandchildren would be facing that eventuality.
Does it matter how quickly it rise? Eventually sea will go 1m up, how dikes will help? Are you going to build a seawall for entire country?
Well, good luck with that.
> If the circulation weakens, Northwestern Europe would experience the most pronounced cooling. Under global warming of +2°C, a cold extreme that currently occurs once every ten years in the Netherlands could drop to -20°C — around fifteen degrees colder than in the pre-industrial climate, according to the same climate model. In Scotland the cold extreme could reach -30°C, a full 23 degrees colder than in the late 19th century.
https://www.uu.nl/en/publication/what-will-happen-to-europe-...
I haven’t read into the details yet. But scientist discover something new every year. We know for sure when we arrive at that point.
Also -20 sounds better than +40. But that’s a preference lol
I'd rather not bet the survival of the human race on "scientists discover something new every year"
That's not -20 OR +40. You're getting both. And while you're busy touting your preferences, I'm sure your farmers will be happy about their crops freezing, their land becoming unusable, your building being thoroughly unable to withstand such massive temperature swings and cracking, making it even worse to live in.
>We know for sure when we arrive at that point.
The moment you do arrive at the -20 every year point means that:
* You've spent the previous 40 years in denial that it happens more and more often
* You're on the path to -30 already, with no way to stop it.
So, no, we won't "wait and see", no.
The USA, China, and India are the leaders on Climate Change emmisions, and have to make real changes for global results. Until us three get serious, progress is nil.
India is not in even in the top 30 countries that can realistically reduce emissions. They have per capita emissions lower than any European country, except maybe Iceland. Lower than the Nordics, much, much lower than France or Germany or Spain. There's no way for them to reduce their emissions without severely impacting lifestyle even more drastically - which is not at all the case for us here in Europe.
To quantify this, India had a per capita CO2 emission of 2.07 tonnes per year, while Sweden had 3.43 (2023). Sweden used this to achieve a 58,100 USD per capita GDP (2025) compared to India's 2,878 USD all while using a non-unsignificant part of it as heating in the winter. It would be great for all of us if India could do better on a per capita basis since the resulting effect would be huge.
You're forgetting the fact that Sweden (like other European countries) has had >100 years of much higher emissions than India, and has built this wealth through that. Wealth compounds - so if you want to make these sorts of arguments, you should look at total historical emissions per capita.
You are conflating energy vs emissions. Cheap clean energy is propelling India and China to the moon.
So because others made an unknown mistake, now India should be allowed to perpetrate known, deliberate, and intentional harm? It makes India that much worse, it makes India evil!
This is just unsophisticated and uncivilized excuse making and primitive rationalization.
These arguments are frustratingly stupid. It's as if 100 royals were eating a quarter of the food, 10,000 peasants were eating the other three-quarters, and the royals were telling the peasants that their greed was causing the stores to run dangerously low.
I gave you the numbers, if you want an honest argument then use the numbers. It's as if 10.5M "royals needing heat" used 3.6 MT (0.12%) while 1450M "peasants" used 3000 MT (99.88%).
Why not? India could easily leapfrog fossil fuels, and replacing coal with renewables would even have a positive impact.
If they can’t reduce per capita, they could reduce population: free birth control, etc etc.
The same argument can be made for us here in Europe. And it makes even more sense, since we're trying to live in this extremely northerly place, where large amounts of energy are required yearly to even make it habitable, and solar is quite inefficient.
India started around 40 new coal power plants just in 2024.
Per capita is irrelevant in this matter. The presumed impacts on the environment and the planet do not care that India has long had an unsustainable, reckless population size. Per capita use in situations like this is simply ridiculous and evasive lying.
> Per capita is irrelevant in this matter.
Sounds like something a country with extremely high per capita emissions would say. Somebody else would say that the imaginary line drawn around a bunch of land and given a name matters a hell of a lot less.
I actually don't worry about emissions at all because I compare my personal emissions to the emissions of the entire continent of Asia. It's not my fault that the inhabitants decided to be more than one person.
What did you not understand about “per capita is irrelevant”. You make my very point and don’t even realize it though. It is an incomplete measure and a bell curve distribution relative to productivity, especially when talking about one civilization that produced all the advances and one that not only uses all those advances, but has not contributed any advances.
If you want to use per capita, you need to look at the qualities, make a qualitative determination; per capita net value, per capita quality score, etc.
Or maybe you would suggest that Europeans should start having 20+ children per woman and that will then magically improve things because their per capita measure by moronic means will improve immensely?
So get to it, Europe, have 20, 30, 40+ children per woman, because low intelligence people will then celebrate how wonderful you’ve improved your nonsense, meaningless pollution numbers.
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I could see an argument for trying to impose a per-population cap (it’s our shared world so we should share the capacity to do damage to it equally). Or an attempt to use the market to figure out the best expenditure of emissions for economic activity; some kind of carbon tax and credit scheme.
But, by whatever metric we want to use, India is with their huge population is going to end up with a lot of it. Unless is it some sort of per-country cap, which would be totally unfair, right?
So you suggest western countries should get birthrates up and that will fix climate change by offsetting the main producers in the country? How is per capita relevant.
No, I think it would be most fair to split the remaining carbon budget (to the extent that there even is one) evenly, or maybe try and account for the fact that regions that have been industrialized for a long time have already used up a lot of the cap.
However, I think the fair plan is impractical and would meet a lot of resistance from major economies. So, out of pragmatism I prefer a carbon credit system.
Per capita is relevant because the atmosphere doesn't care about arbitrary political boundaries that humans draw on the map.
A ton of emitted CO2 does the same amount of harm no matter what person's activities cause it (directly or indirectly).
Not sure if this statement is correct. One consequence of India's population growth is that millions of Indians are emigrating. So the rest of the world helps solving the population problem. If one even wants to call it a problem.
Then there's is no progress to be made. Developing using cheap energy regardless of emissions, i.e. the harm/ethics (positives) of poverty reduction > pollution any day. US/west sets the baseline for historic not just annual per capita emission - annual doesn't capture historic emissions for building infra/capita base. Many countries still have magnitude more steel to smelt and concrete to pour. If developing / low middle income countries does most of the growing/developing on clean generation, better, if west wants to subsidize that like prior climate pledges, they're welcome to. Until then, their per capita is floor of what everyone should aim for. Ultimately, global emissions isn't really worth worrying, as in even if it's existential for some tiny islands or climate death zones, there's shit all do because most of the world who desires to be rich and comfortable will just chug along.
china is world factory
stop buying cheap things from china then
Stuff. Indeed it's mostly about stuff we buy (which is mostly from China).
If you want to lower emissions, not flying and not eating meat is important. But stuff we buy - clothes, electronics, cars, furniture, even solar panels: consider if you really need it, for how long will it last, and why can't it wait. Don't click "buy now"
Most people’s emissions come from housing, transport and food. Cheap tat from China barely registers.
Tariffs can do that
Coincidentally EU's industrial production volume is also falling
The carbon border tax (CBAM) that is coming into effect is a good policy to help with that. Should have been done much earlier.
It is not a coincidence.
Which is what everyone should be doing if we are to survive as a species
Everyone will see how well Europe is doing as a result and follow our lead for sure
If they don't, they'll die out, too.
Maybe they will. Or maybe they will use the power of their economies to figure out a solution while Europe downshifts into complete irrelevance
No. It's way too late to just go back to being cavemen. We have to take much more drastic measures.
-Per unit of GDP-, lol. Your children will cook, but at least their bosses will make more money.
Is it useful to list eight largest economic areas without accounting for the difference in population size and surface area?
Europe makes a terrible mistake. They are obsessive to decarbonate not because of climate change (they emit a measly 8% of total, the earth will feel nothing) but because the developed north wants to continue heating its homes and moving its cars after fossil fuels. But this will come after 50 or 100 years, it's too early to take so painful measures. In software design its called YAGNI.
You do realize that the consequences of a failed reduction of carbon dioxide emissions will hit mankind in 50 to 100 years. Our children and grandchildren pay the price for the mistakes we do now.
> they emit a measly 8% of total, the earth will feel nothing
Earth doesn’t care, it’s not about protecting Earth it’s about protecting us. Warmer climate is better for many other species besides humans.
Climate scientists keep telling us that achievable emissions reductions aren't going to be enough to prevent bad climate effects. The single-minded focus on emissions reduction is not going to save the world and it has a lot of bad effects on economies and ultimately people. We need to be investing in solutions that could actually work, like stratospheric aerosol injection.
Isn't the consensus from climate scientists that emission reductions are totally necessary, and there is no solution which is solely based on capture of greenhouse gases or cooling technologies? Even if reducing emissions is not enough, I thought it was clear that it needs to be done - and the economic impact is a necessary evil, since in reality we are just seeing the reversal of economic benefits obtained at the cost of planetary temperatures.
I haven't seen an analysis of stratospheric aerosol injection that suggested it couldn't solve the problem. We know it works because it happens naturally via volcanoes, and if we do it ourselves we can do it almost entirely without the other bad effects volcanoes cause. The opposition I've seen to it has been on moral or ethical grounds, or misunderstandings.
> We need to be investing in solutions that could actually work, like stratospheric aerosol injection
The problem with aerosol injection is that it doesn't actually lower CO2 levels. It just adds a cooling effect that can counter the CO2 warming effect. The aerosols don't stay in the stratosphere long so you need to be regularly injecting more.
If you stop those regular injections the warming quickly comes back.
If we have a strong plan to reach near net zero CO2 emissions in some given timeframe and we really can stick to it then adding aerosol injections so that we can stop the warming sooner might be OK.
If we don't have that there is a good chance that some large emitters will decide that since the aerosol injections are holding warming at bay there is no reason to not increase emissions as much as they want. Most will acknowledge that we should reduce emissions, but with no immediate consequences they will put it off.
Then in a few decades if something disrupts the regular aerosol injects we could get decades worth of warming over a few months.
That would not be good.
Emitting CO2 is not morally wrong in an abstract sense. It is only bad to the extent that it has bad effects. The major bad effect is warming. If that is mitigated, then the need to reduce CO2 emissions is legitimately lower and that's OK! The other bad effects of CO2 emissions are less bad than warming. The only really concerning one at realistic CO2 concentrations is ocean acidification, and there may be other ways to address that too.
Human CO2 emissions will eventually decline naturally due to the meteoric rise of solar and the eventual exhaustion of economical sources of fossil fuels. We can't increase fossil fuel consumption forever, and CO2 will not continue to rise forever. But it will rise to a point where we will need to implement a proactive solution for warming, regardless of what the EU does or doesn't do. Pretending that emissions reductions alone are going to save the world is doing everyone a disservice.
CO2 emission reduction is the easiest way and we already fail at that.
What makes you think we‘ll do better at more complex solutions?
CO2 emission reduction is the hardest way. It requires coordinating most of the world to act in a way that disadvantages them, while anyone who defects gets an advantage.
A solution that can be unilaterally implemented by a small minority is much, much easier. Solving technical problems is much easier than changing human nature, which is in fact impossible.
And not taking care of the source of the problem? It’s like only pumping the water out of your flooded basement but not willing to fix the leak.
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sounds like an true freedom country answer
If the freedom country were going to bomb the country with by far the world's highest per capita emissions, there wouldn't be a freedom country anymore.