Hacker News Reader

Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, I believe ecological collapse and resources depletion in the next few decades will hinder technological progress.

View on HN

I think the ecological collapse will be avoided, I take as example South Africa and the water crisis [1]. They predict the day 0 (out of water). As the day get closer, everyone started to ratiocinate the water, everybody realized that the problem was just ahead of them that the entire community helped and "the day 0" was moved several times.

It seems to me, but I might be wrong that we are procrastinating with global warming till the issue is really close, then the hair of everyone will stand and the entire population will help.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/04/back-from-the-...

The trouble is if we reach a tipping point where warming causes big releases of methane then there is nothing we can do. We will be carried along for the ride at that point.

Or the massive investments which have been driving down the cost of solar, wind and battery technology will cross a threshold where it's cheaper than mining coal.

If the technology keeps getting cheaper, the markets will do the migration.

Note. The technology is getting better/cheaper because of investments, some of which is publicly funded.

I believe ecological collapse will be avoided, but we definitely need people who push forward the idea that it won't, just to keep us on our tip-toes.

E.g. a recent piece of news: https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/02/28/nasa-says...

that might turn out to be a driving force behind innovation

Immediately made me this of this. A "new" way to store green energy. https://energyvault.ch/

up to the point that we see actual infrastructural collapse. I mean, I've seen Jeri Elsworth bake her own transistors in the oven and stuff (each one being about the size of your hand) but somehow I can't picture a chip fab based upon such transistors... call me old fashioned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qph8BNrnLY

Have you heard of generation IV nuclear reactors?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

Reply on news.ycombinator.com