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Comment by 3princip | Hacker News Reader

Unless this world government is going to organize the biggest genocide in history (as the conspiracy goes), or implement (energy) austerity on a massive scale, I don't see what such an institution will do for climate change.

All it will achieve is the greater concentration of power in the hands of even fewer people.

The potential solutions that come to mind range from, on the pessimistic end, apocalyptic, to technological if we are to be optimistic. We'll either think our way out of the crisis with cleaner sources of energy, or nature will have it's way and our population will dwindle.

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An effective carbon tax that goes to finance alternative energy tech seems like a pretty good start that can only be implemented with global consensus.

A tax that will be passed on to the consumer which will disproportionately affect the poor? It won't be people in Switzerland or Silicon Valley that will be materially affected by such a scheme.

Taxes are not the solution to every problem.

Taxes can be structured to not impact the poor and/or additional aid can be structured to offset the impact - much like income tax, or luxury tax, or inheritance tax.

>A tax that will be passed on to the consumer which will disproportionately affect the poor?

A tax on BS consumption won't "disproportionately affect the poor". The poor have vastly more basic needs to be concerned with a tax on all kinds of consumerist crap.

You know what else will disproportionally affect the poor? Global warming.

Or rich nations subsidizing nuclear power in the poor nations who are manufacturing stuff for them. We've effectively off-shored our manufacturing pollution.

The atmosphere and oceans are a common good, and it's hard to see how we'll stop polluting without enforceable agreements. And that means some entity has to do the enforcing.

Global warming denial seems to be an ideological necessity to the right-wing because they can't accept a problem exists that can only be solved by global governance. Witness the poster you're replying to, suggesting we accept human extinction rather than taxes and regulation.

>Witness the poster you're replying to, suggesting we accept human extinction rather than taxes and regulation.

Straw man or False dilemma?

Neither, unless you can propose a third option.

>The potential solutions that come to mind range from, on the pessimistic end, apocalyptic, to technological if we are to be optimistic. We'll either think our way out of the crisis with cleaner sources of energy, or nature will have it's way and our population will dwindle.

That was the original statement. To me, the fact that 'range' is included, means there's more than just two choices implied. I do believe it misrepresents the argument to suggest that there's only two 'extremes' of "taxes and regulation" or else "we go extinct."

So taxes and regulation are an "extreme". I call that extremist thinking.

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