Silicon Valley Couldn't Care Less About Earth’s Imminent Demise | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley Couldn't Care Less About Earth’s Imminent Demise

truthdig.com

33 pointsJerry210 comments

Maybe it would be more accurate to say most people couldn't care less about the Earth's "imminent demise" (whatever that means). I mean sure, there are lots of people who say they care, but how many have stopped driving cars, or flying planes, or eating food shipped from the other side of the planet, or living in giant single-family homes with huge lawns, or any of the countless wasteful convenient things that our society runs on? If anything I think big tech companies have been more environmentally conscious than most, so I don't think you can just use them as a scapegoat for why the world is the way it is. Individual people are causing the problems, it's not just big evil corporations.

An individual giving up their car and living in a yurt has literally zero impact on the global problem. It’s like being in a burning stadium and saying “well that person won’t toss their 4 oz drink on the fire, so why should we bother calling the fire department?” Strong concerted effort from people with social/economic/political power is pretty much the only thing that can actually move the needle in terms of biodiversity loss, global warming and all its consequences, etc. just imagine if Silicon Valley companies exerted effort similar to what they’re willing to do to subvert labor protections to change our energy infrastructure!

when you concentrate that much power, the effects may be worse than the original problem. Indeed it may not even address or care about the original problem once it reaches critical mass. The type of people who are interested in social/economic/political power, seem mostly interested in social/economic/political power, and the moral crisis de-jour is just a tool.

Silicon Valley companies and residents care about it a lot more than the rest of the country.

A thought I had just today is that I wonder if people who live in temperate climates are more bothered by the idea of climate change since they live in basically a continually ideal climate.

Here in the Midwest, it will get down to -20F in the winter, and break 100F in the summer, so dealing with extreme weather is just sort of a fact of life. Also ~1000 feet above sea level, so sea level rise is sort of a non-issue.

So maybe part of the trouble with getting people in the inland US to care about climate change is convincing them that other people's problems are going to become their problem.

I've never seen as many solar structures or electric cars as in Silicon Valley.

As a matter of fact, I've never seen so many solar companies and electric car companies either.

So basically at every level.

(imho this is a purposefully inflammatory headline)

"electric" cars are just coal powered cars. 40% of our grid is coal. Then you add a 50% efficient battery on top of that...

We need nuclear and we need it now

Unless you have solar panels on the roof like parent is talking about, which I see everywhere in Silicon Valley.

> We need nuclear and we need it now

Time to grab a time machine since those take 50 years to build.

This article focuses on tech barons but the vast majority of people in the valley, even those in tech, are not tech barons. Tech barons do what they can but business in the valley is anything but top down waterfall in nature.

I can't tell if the author is a moron or if he's just pandering to the morons that are predisposed to credulously digest this kind of low effort bullshit.

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