Hacker News Reader

Comment by sonaltr | Hacker News Reader

Oh man! I love how climate change pushers (not saying I don't believe in Climate Change - I do) love to point at something we can do to matter about CC. I feel even if every. single. person. on the planet works towards CC improvement, it'd not matter as much as improvements in commercial transportation - trucks, ships and airplanes - all of which if we seriously tackle, will raise price of our current QoL by such a massive amount that no one wants to deal with so it's easier to just point at consumer habits.

Drive a truck. Enjoy your life. It's too short to matter in the long run. But do be contentious about your consumption when doing so. Think about others (if not your kids' future, other people's future).

Disclaimer: I love cars and driving (going on a 7 day driving road trip in a few weeks) but I'm a bit tired of CC pushing me to change my lifestyle for changes that have minimal impact from the looks of it but my QoL keeps getting worse.

View on HN

The scenarios for humanity are quite grim if climate change isn't addressed in a major coordinated effort in the next few years.

Water scarcity, the death of _all_ coral reefs, sea-level cities everywhere being flooded, massive species die-offs (including ones crucial to human survival, like pollinating insects), oceanic fisheries collapse. . . with more severe scenarios seeing the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of South Asia becoming uninhabitable.

Avoiding this scenario is going require every intervention, large and small, that humanity can muster. This is serious stuff. There's a reason that climatologists sound like doomsday prophets these days.

And part of any successful effort is combating the selfishness and denial of the average person. So pardon me if I'm somewhat unsympathetic to your attitude of self-interested helplessness - "Drive a truck. Enjoy your life. It's too short to matter in the long run." We're literally concerned with the fates of hundreds of millions of human beings here.

> And part of any successful effort is combating the selfishness and denial of the average person

Does that include people in the developing world having far too many children? Anything we do in the developed world will be utterly swamped by global population growth.

They were just as doomsday as they were 10 years ago. Except Florida still has a coastline between the gulf and Atlantic

They're pessimistic because the problem hasn't changed - either the rising temps or the lack of political/popular will to take action.

The UN said the same in 1990s. So forgive me if I'm unsympathetic when everyone screams doomsday. There is absolutely nothing you can do today in your personal life that'll matter at a scale to impact the global issue of climate change.

You want real change? Fine, let's work together to ensure that companies and corporations are held accountable for their emissions, reduce population in areas most impacted and stop the hyperbole. Climate change is real. It's here. and hyperbole is not going to save us. It didn't in the 90s and it's not now.

The sad bit is, those 100s of millions will die none the less so you can have your grande caramel macchiato in a non-recyclable cup instead of making coffee at home and using a mug. Excessive consumerism had a massive hand in leading us to this point, and now consumerism is trying to sell us the cure in the name of zero emission cars and expensive recyclable crap? Spare me the hypocrisy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com