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Comment by akuji1993 | Hacker News Reader

akuji1993

I'm absolutely certain with governments moving this slow right now, making small goals for 2050, getting courted by lobbies to not push through massive restrictions, probably most of these very dark predictions will come true. I, as a concerned citizen can do nothing against the corporations ruling our society, overruling politicians or outright controlling them directly. We are probably beyond any point of return. The people that yearn for the next payday will get their money and probably will be able to save themselves in an underground bunker or a suite in the mountains, while the rest of the poor and middle class burn in the ashes they leave behind.

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People blaming governments and corporations are merely using faceless scapegoats because the truth is too terrible to behold.

Normal every day people don't really believe in climate change, don't really want to do anything and in fact don't have the dimmest clue as to what needs to be done, nor how to do that.

I think dealing with the above fact is too much for people, so instead we simplify using familiar models and tropes.

Eh. This is a coordination problem, probably the most difficult one humanity has encountered. Governments were basically invented to help solve coordination problems. 7.5 billion people don’t just start caring about the problem by themselves.

Yup. Sadly, we have very weak world government, so it is hard to coordinate the entire planet.

> Normal every day people don't really believe in climate change

Polling data for the US shows that 64% believe that climate change is caused by humans and 60% believe we're already experiencing its effects. https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-s...

That's not the number many would like to see, but it's a clear majority, and we ought to be able to get stuff done with it.

I think the problem is the "faceless" part. Voters need to hold their specific elected officials responsible, and avoid the products of the worst offending companies. We should create trustworthy independent organisations that can name and shame, until we get a comprehensive emissions tax.

"We should create trustworthy independent organisations that can name and shame..."

I thought that is what news and reporters are suppose to do

Education would be a good start. Guess who can decide about what we are taught? Governments.

People know their personal largest impact is cars and meat. But personal convenience has always beaten doing the right thing.

This is absolutely not true. People don't know that. Ask 2000 people on the street in a southern red state what their contribution to climate change is. I bet you get 0s back. "Taht fake thing isn't real" - "My car doesn't pollute you schmuck" - "the Earth is here for us to pollute it, that's what god said", etc.

People do not know that their largest personal impact is cars and meat. They just don't know that at all because 1) they don't know that climate change is real thanks to Fox and Exxon, and 2) they don't think that their habits matter. Your assumption that they do is dangerous and wrong.

Remember that Exxon Mobil has spent 40 years knowing about the dangers of climate change, but "educating" Americans through TV that it isn't a real threat. The primary education Americans get about this topic is from the megacorporations and mega rich people who are selling us polluting products with no alternatives, and is not a real education at all.

Go to a highly educated Silicon Valley tech company. Survey around. How many of these people eat beef? How many take frequent vacations via plane?

Per capita, especially due to the plane travel, their emissions are probably as high as someone in a southern red state. Personal convenience beats doing the right ting.

Personal convenience beats doing the right ting.

Yes, I am moving more and more towards that camp too. I don't own a car, never fly, eat mainly chicken instead of beef, and consistently vote green. But I refuse to take more responsibility when the rest of the world is so obviously not picking up its share.

Like another parent said, this is a coordination problem. The collective action that people have been clamouring for for decades hasn't happened, and my personal contribution is small enough to not make a hint of a dent. Frankly, I have resigned myself to the reality that peak civilization is behind us.

The vast majority of people I know (Texas) couldn't live a productive life without a car. Some people certainly could but not most. Meat, though, they could definitely do without—and for most of them it'd be healthier.

This always sounds phoney to my ears. Move to a suburb to have a large house (3 bedrooms!), vote for parties that build roads instead of public transport, despise public transport, don't walk 100m but go by car, don't own a bicycle and then "I couldn't live without a car".

Yes they can't live without a car, agreed. But this is by their own choosing.

Strange, I'd heard it was refined carbs and sugar giving America diabetes and heart disease. Are you saying it's meat now?

I believe the topic is "Climate Change" so I don't know why you're talking about diabetes and heart disease.

The argument is probably that meat production emits higher levels of carbon than other types of food production.

Unrelated, meat does have an impact on diabetes and heart disease, so if you're concerned about those things, then you should definitely learn more about it.

Red meat is known to increase risk of heart diseases.

The anti-meat crusade is really strong these days on here, but that is not a concern that even registers in most peoples' heads.

Very few people have the luxury of considering anything outside their immediate circle of concern.

It's also exaggerated from a climate issue.

The vast majority of the benefit comes from cutting beef (and lamb), which I don't think is that hard of an ask. Other meat reduction has much less benefit.. and it is harder for most people to do.

Source: https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to...

[edit] I've meant beef when I've said meat. I very rarely eat any meat and if then only beef, so sorry for the confusion.

That is probably not even true for the crowd here. Flying and cars likely dominate.

(Where) do smartphones fit in the impact spectrum?

The most educated people I know take regular intercontinental flights and have huge carbon footprints. They also "hate" global warming but seem totally ignorant of their out sized role in producing it.

It's about economics. Climate change keeps being presented as something we need to make huge sacrifices to do something about, and this does not work. The unwillingness to make such sacrifices, we may find reprehensible when it comes from the rich who could easily afford it, and more sympathetic when it comes from people who are barely keeping their heads above water as it stands, and reasonably suspect they would end up in a pauper's grave and never see the future they were supposed to be defending, but whether we agree with it or not, that is people's revealed preference.

So the narrative needs to stop being about sacrifice, and start being about jobs. The immense task of converting the world to renewable energy, has the potential to create millions upon millions of badly-needed jobs. It needs to start being sold that way.

You as a concerned citizen can do plenty on your own. Most people could cut down their emissions and other environmental impacts by 50% easily if they really cared.

The problem is that most people don't really care that much when push comes to shove, and in aggregate this is the reason for why we're moving so slowly on climate change.

It's the tragedy of the commons though. If I stop driving my car and go vegan, we won't see any measurable difference in climate change. The only measurable thing that happens is my quality of life going down. If enough people do it and we actually get a benefit I could even see Republicans arguing for more deregulation and balancing out all the sacrifice we made. The only practical solution is collective action. In fact I'd argue that non action of countries should be the number one reason for sanctions and if necessary military force. Our entire future is at risk here.

There are limits to what individuals can do. Take automobile fuel efficiency. Cars these days are way more efficient and cleaner than they were fifty years ago, and they perform far better. Consumer choice would never have made this happen in response to market forces. You couldn't buy an efficient, high-performance car in the late 60s even if you wanted to. Companies needed an incentive to invest for the long-long term in technologies to improve the efficiency of their products. Short term price shocks weren't going to make that happen. Only multi-decade, ratcheting fuel-efficiency regulations that applied across the board and eliminated the risk to automakers for pursuing efficiency achieved our current state where we even _have_ the choice of buying cars that can achieve 50mpg or more with adequate performance.

Yeah let's take fuel efficiency. If Americans all still drove cars with 60s fuel economy, but only drove as much per year as Germans do, they'd still (give or take) be emitting the same amount as they are now[2][3].

Now, why do they drive so much and drive such inefficient cars? It's largely because fuel is so much cheaper in the US than in the EU.

What I was trying to get at in my original comment is not that we should all solve climate change by personal action, and that public policy shouldn't be involved. I wish I could pay more taxes so the country I'm living in would migrate to renewables faster.

Rather, it's that if you look at how concerned people are politically about climate change, and then look at their revealed preferences, both when it comes to what they do personally and what they'd really stand for politically, it turns out that in the aggregate they don't take the problem seriously.

How many people who say "we must do something" in the US would say put up with a 100% increase in fuel taxes (bringing it in more in line with the EU)? I bet you'd go from 50% approval to 5% approval pretty fast.

1. http://internationalcomparisons.org/environment/transportati...

2. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheet...

And then there is Jevons' Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

As positive as we should paint this, when somebody does this, it doesn't at all solve the problem. Corporations and Governments need to be kept at a level that stops climate change, to make a difference.

Citizens need a reeducation regarding meat, regarding travel, regarding transportation of goods and what the globalization does to the environment. The biggest change can only be triggered by either overthrowing the government or forcing them in some other way to start worrying about this.

We need artificial meat. Research and production should be funded by meat taxation.

We need environmentally friendly travel. Research and manufacturing should be funded by fossil fuel taxation.

These tasks should be implemented using the boiling frog principle. Increase taxes and funding by ~1.5% per year until we have met a goal of 50/50% meat/artificial meat consumption and 50/50% fossil fuel/renewable fuel. At which point the taxes and funding could be freezed until a 90/10 ratio is reached and then phased out by 1.5% each year.

It wouldn't shock anyone. You'd be "boiled" into a functioning world.

This should be sanctioned by UN.

There shouldn't be any specific meat taxation, there should be a generic tax on carbon emissions, which would both the externalities of meat production, as well as other products.

If you just say tax meat by the kg you end up with stupid policies like discouraging UK customers from eating beef from New Zealand over domestic produce, even though importing it from abroad is more environmentally efficient (also counting for transport)[1].

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15506220

> I, as a concerned citizen can do nothing against the corporations ruling our society

Defenestrations, torches and pitchforks have been traditional solutions to rulers not acting in the interest of the populace.

Of course more peaceful means are preferable but the option needs to be kept on the table to remember why we have and want democratic solutions in the first place.

It seems unlikely that the proletariat will overthrow the government because that government has not curtailed their own ability to buy plastic goods, drive a car, or set the air conditioning at 65F.

At least for my country, you can scream as loud as you want, people just complain about you being louder than the Television. Nothing will happen, because governments have kept the majority of the people at a low enough education that they either don't understand or don't care about these things at all. I can always see people zoning out when I talk to them about this topic. Nobody cares, because they know they won't make a difference if they do anyway.

>Defenestrations, torches and pitchforks have been traditional solutions to rulers not acting in the interest of the populace.

I'd guess the people involved in those rebellions felt the effects of bad governance much more acutely and directly than people do (currently ...) vis-à-vis climate change.

Current leading governments are too corrupt to be able to change anything by peaceful talks

Even the chinese government recognized that at least doing something about the coal smog is something in their own interest. My understanding is that the risk of civil unrest is what drives them.

The driver seems to be the economic incentive of becoming the world leader in renewables by getting a head start while the rest of the world drags its feet. Say what you will about authoritarian governments but they can certainly get shit done.

This will happen. It's actually already happening in developing countries.

The disruption of food supplies has been causing annual riots all over the world. The US has remained insulated from these effects by virtue of being relatively rich and relying on over-priced, highly processed foods that have enough margin to buffer against price shocks. But this is clearly an untenable situation.

Shit goes south really fast when people can't afford to eat. And the difference between Mexican or Middle Eastern food riots and American ones is that Americans will come with lots of guns.

Trouble is the government will make sure that the police and military remain well fed, and they have even bigger guns.

I actually think this huge block of gun owners in America share a particular mindset with each other that means they'll become the local arm of the government in the hinterland.

Just as you always see affinity between police forces and right-wing activists, you'll see the government put on a face friendly to rural gun culture, and that group will be installed as enforcers.

So I don't buy this argument that the wide availability of guns in America in any way ensures a "Freedman's Paradise." It ensures more oppression, as the (expensive) arm of Federal power recedes.

I'm hardly an advocate of the typical right-wing position that guns keep the government in check.

But I do foresee a situation where there's a clash between the well-fed police (who want to keep it that way) and the starving poor in the US. The inner city riots will not be an issue, most metro PDs have experienced and well equipped riot control departments.

It's the armed, rural uprisings that pose a threat. Think Cliven Bundy-types leading a group of protestors in sieges of government or office buildings.

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