Hacker News Reader

Comment by gyaniv | Hacker News Reader

I think the fact that it isn't cheap shouldn't be that much of an issue (although I know it currently is) because the price we (not even our children) will pay because of climate change would be much higher (in pure economic costs, before we start talking about more moral and environmental costs like animal extinction).

But I think the problem is that people care about today a lot more then they care about tomorrow, or next year (and definitely more then their potential future descendants).

View on HN

> I think the fact that it isn't cheap shouldn't be that much of an issue...

EDIT: Apologies for the combative tone below, what I'm trying to say is, it's not as simple as monetary cost.

I'm afraid that's looks like first world thinking. For countries still developing lives are literally at stake right now. Rolling back environmental impact means lower economic growth, poorer infrastructure and therefore people dying in poverty.

It's not all bad news on this front. Modi committed India to opening a swath of new coal power stations before coming into office, but has since changed tack with the collapse in the cost of solar energy[1]. Still, this will be new solar capacity and while it's better than more coal it's still environmentally worse than no new energy generation at all.

[1]https://www.ft.com/content/b8d24c94-fde7-11e8-aebf-99e208d3e...

> this will be new solar capacity and while it's better than more coal it's still environmentally worse than no new energy generation at all.

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.

Can you elaborate more on this last point?

Do you mean to imply that one approach to the problem is to build no new electricity capacity?

How will we displaced fossil fuel use for transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and mineral processing if not with new electricity generation?

Or did you mean to imply the world would be better off if India’s poorest continued to suffer in the dark and cold?

All I'm saying is that new capacity to meet an increased demand has an environmental impact even if it is solar.

More broadly my point is we cannot expect developing countries to simply stop developing. That's not an acceptable short term cost, as I pointed out when I said lives are at stake. I'm pointing out some complexities in the issue. How you can get from that to me saying poor people should suffer in the cold confuses me.

Rolling back environmental impact means lower economic growth, poorer infrastructure

This isn't true. It just requires a different development path than Europe and Asia have followed. For example, local power generation can bootstrap a small, isolated economy without requiring massive investments in a nation-wide energy grid. And renewable power (solar or wind) lends itself much better to small-scale deployments than fossil fuel generators.

Yes, this. Cell phones in Africa are a great example. They skipped right over having land lines and went straight to cell phones.

All of those increase environmental impact, they just do it less than historical approaches. Actually rolling back environmental impact is another thing altogether.

The last ten years' experience with renewables has shown that local-scale generation is underwhelming and large-scale deployments are the way to go.

With the exponential recent declines in production cost, most of the cost of solar is now in deployment, not manufacturing the cells. This has made huge desert installations much cheaper per watt than rooftop -- as a result, large-scale installations is where almost all the growth is coming from.

As for wind power, efficiency increases superlinearly with blade length. As a result of this, and improving material science and production/deployment tech, turbines have been getting enormous (Eiffel-tower-sized or more) and no longer fit outside of dedicated wind farms.

As for nation-wide grids, they're are a central part of the solution to solar/wind intermittency (because weather patterns average out over long distances).

> But I think the problem is that people care about today a lot more then they care about tomorrow

Absolutely, and to change that, you need to ask why this is the case.

There are many reasons for that. Some people are selfish, some are merely short-sighted. This needs to be fixed by changing the mindset.

But to me the (by far) biggest problem is that too many people simply cannot afford to think otherwise.

Climate change in X years means nothing to someone living in, or close to poverty today. "Green" means nothing to someone hungry today, and it would be absurd and apathetic to expect otherwise. And a very large share of the global population today are poor.

This is true, a great deal of good can be accomplished supplying electricity and light and clean water to those who don't have access now. However, the carbon footprint of poor individuals is vastly less per capita than of rich individuals. Every rich person, and you are most likely rich in a global sense, must realize their luck and their lifetime carbon footprint and do their part for decarbonizing, given we are those who emit the most.

This is called "eating your seed corn". Do you go somewhat hungry during winter, and possibly starve now? Or do you eat your seed corn now, and have nothing to harvest later, and certainly starve later?

Our ancestors figured this out. Some of them did starve during winter. But we're the descendants of the lucky and prepared.

Why should the future be any different?

Because the time scale of our situation is different. Those threatened by starvation in winter aren’t the same people who will need the seed corn in spring. That disconnect creates an immediate, imposed suffering on some for the future, anticipated benefit of others.

This is not "eating your seed corn", as that story is about a single resource, and the short-term planning of when to consume it.

> But we're the descendants of the lucky and prepared.

Some of us may be the descendants of those who enjoyed their seed corn during the winter and later reaped the cobs planted by their neighbours.

Given that the poorest are not disproportionately consuming the least-clean energy, I think the poverty issue is minimal.

My parents smoked heavily. Even after the causal connection with lung cancer was well-established. Even though both of them lost their father to lung cancer. Even though their child (me) suffered from asthma, to the extent of being hospitalised. I know addiction is a thing. But there was no sense that those choices were made because of the physical compulsion. There were no attempts to quit. The biggest addiction was mental: a lack of any interest in trying.

I don't think it is helpful to claim we are 'addicted' to high-carbon energy. But whatever the label, there is mind-boggling inertia in the human soul.

Nobody drives a shitty, old, inefficient, dirty gas guzzler because they are addicted to them. They drive them because they can't afford something better.

A solar panel is probably an unaffordable object for at least a quarter of the world's population.

No, but plenty of people drive brand-new, expensive, inefficient gas guzzlers. Poor folks are much more likely to buy a cheap small engine Honda than a 200 cu.in. un-aerodynamic brick. Guzzling gas is expensive.

And the poorest ¼ of the world contribute way way way less than ¼ of our CO₂ emissions.

I guess culture just has to change, so that a gaz guzzler isn't a status symbol. Say, a sailing yacht? Or a telescope in your front yard (for watching the stars, of course, not spying on the neighbors getting it on). Or bling-bling to hang around your neck?

I mean, plenty of ways to show your wealth without it having to be a big FU to the planet.

You can put a price on the planet when you have more than one. Until then, this thinking is absurd.

We do have other planets, relocation will cost roughly $3.75e+15 USD at SpaceX price estimates. IIRC, the global economy is about $1e14 USD/year.

I haven't read the estimates, but that would be relocation only, correct? Assuming that's true, you need to add the costs of terraforming on top of that.

Correct. I kinda assumed the people who moved would build up domed habitats while there until it counted as “done”. Multiply by ten if you want to do it directly, I think?

Why can't we just do that on Earth though? If we're going to live in underground caves , like we would have to on Mars, then why don't we just do it on Earth?

Well, yes, I agree — Antarctica in winter and the peak of Mt. Everest are both vastly more hospitable than Mars, but Mars is there if we want to try it.

We don't "have other planets" in any useful sense. We know there are other planets out there. We're a long way from knowing with even a shred of certainty whether we will ever be capable of relocating to them, let alone when it may become feasible or what it will cost.

So it will only take 37 years in impossibly perfect conditions? Unless people are willing to sacrifice themselves to let others survive this scenario is never going to happen.

That’s literally moving the entire population of the planet — you’d only do that in a very unusual circumstance when most people were going to die anyway if you didn’t leave, and building domes over your cities does nothing to help.

Most people don’t even move more than, what, a hundred miles from where they’re born? Just because I fancy giving it a go doesn’t mean I expect people to go to Mars en masse even if it was free.

But they could if they needed to.

A wealthy retiree without kids is going to naturally live for today and not care too much about tomorrow. Suspect there’s plenty of them too.

Apart from being uncharitable, that's just not a reasonable generalisation of human behaviour. Plenty of old people with no relatives have died wealthy wile living very simple lives, giving their wealth to charity. Wealthy retirees with lots of relatives have left all their money to their cat, or whatever. It's just not possible to paint big swathes of humanity with a single broad brush.

I’m not intending to be uncharitable - I agree that there are plenty of people of all sorts. My point is that there will be some people who really don’t care - these could be younger or older, childless or whatever. I am not sure if there is going to be much more than anecdotal evidence on who causes the most damage to the environment and who is likely to change their behaviour due to climate change.

I’m also not saying anybody would be wrong to not care about the future. It’s quite understandable to me someone using their freedom to say f the world, question is if everyone needs to be on board to make necessary changes then how do you achieve that.

In other words the point isn't the (admittedly unjustifiable) generalisation, it's that there are people who are not going to be on board unless they see something in it for them. Could be a wealthy childless retiree, or it could be someone in their thirties with four kids travelling round the world for work racking up air miles for their career to support their family.

A wealthy retiree without kids contributes less to climate change than basically anybody that will have kids. His climate impact stops with him, it doesn't for people with kids.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com