Comment by alpha_squared | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alpha_squared | Hacker News Reader

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> The only reason that this is even coming up is because climate change proponents, deep inside, believe that there will be no serious adverse consequences from climate change.

That's not the case at all. The world isn't really a black/white place. In an ideal world, we'd all stop right now and focus -- concertedly -- our efforts on reverting climate change. Unfortunately, life just doesn't work like that.

You go ahead and tell two large, thriving and growing, economies that "oops, we screwed up the planet, but at least we made a ton of money and our citizens live a nice quality of life! Wait, what? You want to improve your country, too? Well, you see, we sort of screwed up the planet and now you need to bear the responsibility on our behalf. Yes, that means stifling your economy and keeping your citizens in poverty. Yes, this also means the world will continue to view you as poor, undeveloped countries. What's that? For how long? Well, we don't really know, I mean, it could be a while..."

But you're just sidestepping my point.

In the case of an actual planetary threat the argument you describe about letting poor countries catch up would be incoherent and insane. Let's change the scenario here and make it more extreme, imagine instead of CO2 our industry released lead and we knew over time the whole world would get lead poisoning and all humans would get sick from lead poisoning and die out if we continue on our path. In such a scenario, would we

1) Have rich nations stop emissions out lead but still allow developing nations to have lead emissions cause, hey we may all die, but it's only fair, I mean they should enjoy the same standard of living as us

2) Have everyone stop putting out lead emissions because, as crappy as it is, everyone attaining a western standard of living is not as important as preventing human extinction.

I think we would all agree that option 2 was the only option. Option 1 would be incoherent and insane. The only case in which we would even consider option 1 is one in which there is no real coherent planetary threat.

Now climate change proponents may not be suggesting human extinction but you are suggesting widespread, possibly civilization ending catastrophe. This leaves scenario 1 as the only real choice and scenario 2 as incoherent and stupid. Yet climate changers still advocate and openly push for scenario 2 . . . which would lead any reasonable person to question the sincerity of their belief in planetary environmental catastrophe.

> But you're just sidestepping my point.

I think I'm not making myself clear enough. Politics often requires compromise. Until we have a global hegemony, there's no way to enforce one set of rules across all others. This is also the reason you can have such wildly different political views and oppositions of governance that can both, simultaneously, work for their respective regions while not working well for the whole.

By painting the issue as black/white, you're grossly neglecting others' needs. It's easy to say that when, by no stretch of the imagination, you're likely living in a well-off and developed country with a pretty decent quality of life. Please, recognize the advantages and luxuries you've been afforded and take a moment to understand that others don't even have a fraction of that. They're just trying to reach a fraction. Can we resolve this climate problem and simultaneously keep developing countries from stagnation and regression? Sure, it just won't be easy. And that's why there are compromises made.

>Politics often requires compromise.

But potential planetary catastrophe is not a political issue and not an issue that allows for much compromise. Sure there is political hand wringing about whether it is really happening and what its consequences are . . . But once you accept that it is real and potentially destructive it becomes a question of preventing planetary catastrophe which is not political and seems very very black and white and not open to compromise.

>Can we resolve this climate problem and simultaneously keep developing countries from stagnation and regression? Sure, it just won't be easy

If climate change truly has the negative potential that you claim, how could you even risk it - if it really were as bad as you say wouldn't the consequence for both developing and developed countries be much worse by allowing for continued emissions?

> But potential planetary catastrophe is not a political issue...

Tell that to the American Republican party.

> If climate change truly has the negative potential that you claim, how could you even risk it

We've crossed the point of no return already, the question is now "how do we minimize the looming repercussions"? Part of that is to have the world transition, even if at different rates, to renewable energy. There's a lot of hang-up on this different rates part. There's no blank check for China/India on this, they just have a longer period to catch up in renewable energy.

The developed world has committed to a reasonable upcoming transitional period and the developing world will be carried along, financially, to keep up or given a larger transition window.

I'd love for the world to have just done this a decade ago, but that's not the case. I'd love for us to stop today, immediately, all over and just change to renewables, but that can't be the case. Again, the world's complicated and neither one of us armchair politicians really grasp just how complicated geopolitics are.

But it's not as if China, India, etc haven't benefited from the West's carbon-fueled economic growth. It was that economic growth that led to all the various technologies that they've imported. The West has also borne, and is bearing, the costs of R&D on green energy.

If we are talking about "inequities", I would say these countries took an "unfair" leap in technological development because of us, so it is not entirely unreasonable to say the disadvantage of less carbon use has been more than offset by tech transfer. Especially since China and India are both notorious for not respecting IP rights.

If not for the West, neither of these countries would even be in a position to want higher carbon emissions.

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