Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are You Hopeful About the Environment?

58 points_fol876 comments

I guess this is sort of an open-ended question, but I just wanted to know if people on HN were hopeful about solving environmental change/damage.

Last June is now officially the hottest June ever recorded. I guess you can add that to the laundry list of environmental issues we have. My worry is that its looking more and more like we need some sort of technological miracle (or everyone everywhere just stops buying most stuff). And tech seems to be a step function - sometimes you get big things like the Internet and the Engine which can spawn lots of smaller things. But those big things historically have seemed to come about by chance and happenstance as much as hard work. I sometimes worry that we might not solve the environmental crisis because we just won't get lucky.

Does anyone else feel this way? Or are people here mostly hopeful that this thing will all work itself out (please say how!)? Anyone here working on that next big thing?

If you don't believe in a coming environmental catastrophe, that's fine and I'd be happy to have your opinion on why you think so in this thread. But tin foil hatters and political partisans are boring and this isn't really what this thread is about - please spend your time elsewhere. Thanks!

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Unfortunately not at all.

A lot of this comes from extensive travel and spending time in the third and second world. Many of the poorest billion simply do not realize that it is against their interest not to, for example, dump chemicals and trash in water they drink from and bathe in. Or just simply that littering is a problem. To be clear I'm not faulting them, like everyone else they are mostly good people and if they had better access to information I have no doubt they'd act differently but there is a huge need to educate people that is not being met.

It's also just hard to imagine consumption of everyday objects at the global scale.

But it's really hard to feel like recycling one more bottle is going to save the world when you've seen dump trucks waiting in line to dump industrial waste in rivers. But this sort of thing is likely happening every day, repeatedly, in many places around the world.

I once drove through a section of highway in north western Peru that was just an open air landfill on both sides, maybe 5 feet tall on average, continously for an hour. It's just hard to imagine that stuff like this exists if you've never been exposed to it.

And that doesn't even match things I've seen only in documentaries like https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_ZttK3PuM

I believe that our problems are technically still fixable but that the coordination necessary is, if not totally infeasible, far beyond our current willpower to achieve.

The rich (and all but the poorest Americans are rich for this discussion) will basically be fine maybe minus inconveniences for the near future.

But I think things are going to get drastically worse for many people over the next 50 years.

> Many of the poorest billion simply do not realize that it is against their interest not to, for example, dump chemicals and trash in water they drink from and bathe in. Or just simply that littering is a problem.

To be fair to the poorest billion, the richest billion also doesn't really get this either.

Indeed, how's the water in Michigan, and even "recycling" in the US means the trash gets shipped to Asia/Africa to be burned.

It's "lack of information" or in this case being mislead by whoever promised them their recycling is contributing to being green...

I was so disappointed when I found out that this is how my recycling was being handled. I had this image in my head of my plastic waste being recirculated and reused that was so completely false.

As I understand it, recycling is just the long road to the landfill.

I am currently reading a book on recycling that disputes that narrative (Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter). The main argument is that shipping a container of "recycling material" across the oceans costs real money (much more than a local landfill), that somebody paid. That somebody surely isn't paying for the junk just to burn it.

What is true is that recycling methods can sometimes be cruel. The example is a guy recycling Christmas lights in China. At first all they did was burn the plastic away to get to the copper. Later, when demand for plastic in China was also rising, they invented methods to also recycle the plastic.

Burning the plastic away was of course very dirty. And in other places (like Africa), dirty methods might be still more common.

And on a per capita, probably pollutes a lot more (I have no data on this). We just can afford to keep it out of _our_ water.

I'm conflicted about this. As an American we are voracious consumers and highly ineffecient about it but I've been repeatedly shocked in trips to Taiwan and Vietnam about how the consumption there seemed frequently even more wasteful than what I was used to back home, especially in terms of plastic packaged in plastic packaged in plastic Russian doll scenarios that seemed totally egregious but really common.

On the other hand I think it's a little bit easier to notice when it's not your culture for some reason so maybe I'm biased.

I think Taiwan would rank closer to the top billion than the bottom, so maybe supports my thought?

This is sadly true although I think many in the rich world know but are in denial or choose to be lazy. There are really people out there though who just have never been exposed to the idea that you shouldn't do this stuff.

I doubt it's 'denial', it's more a calculation :

    if ($fakeDenial === $moreMoneyThanModifyingBehavior) { 
       $changingCourse = null; 
    }

Whatever the poorest billion are doing wrong is likely far outstripped by a few big corporations. Or the US military alone.

Well said. And here's some reference https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/1671884...

And the ones that realize it too well tend to get killed in the name of progress. The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Juan Manuel Santos even joked in one of his videos that "the difference between terrorists and environmentalists is that, with terrorists, one can negotiate." This is the former president of Colombia, a country where hundreds of activists (including environmentalists) get murdered per year before the complicit inaction of their government and the smears of their corporate media.

I am from a third world country and I have seen the poorest risks their lives in defense of the environment in ways the more educated do not even come close to considering. The rest are being "educated" on a day to day basis on the wonders of consumerism.

I'm terrified. For example: The ice cap melts are accelerating a lot faster than modelled. The mechanisms are not yet perfectly understood.

The major flows of sea water (e.g. Gulf Stream) are at risk of changing completely with the temperature changes, which means dramatic changes in climate for Europe (colder), USA (warmer) (for example) are possible. Who knows - and the answer is nobody really.

The acidification of the oceans as they absorb more and more CO2 is making it harder for phytoplankton to grow. Take away this basic building block of the ocean ecosystem and the ultimate outcome is dead sea, with no ability to generate oxygen, and toxic gases emitted. That will change our atmosphere to be deadly.

These and so many others are not just exponential trends, but have unknown knowns (e.g. methane released from Arctic) and unknown unknowns that will magnify the impact. As people involved in high growth companies and the internet we understand exponential growth - but the politicians and even scientists are reluctant to understand and embrace the consequences.

Meanwhile we are still increasing, not decreasing CO2e emissions. Emissions need to decrease sharply now, to zero, for us to have a chance, and even then it's hard.

There is no political will. We are too comfortable. And then it will be too late.

We should ask ourselves the question - what can we do that's more important than helping to reduce global emissions? And then do something. There are lots of ways to help, and none of us can do it all, but we all need to do something, and take leadership roles to make the changes.

Agreed.

I think one of the ways we could survive this is to radically reform our philosophies and politics. We need to make amends with and reform indigenous rights. LBGTQ+ and women's rights. Abandon capitalism. Accept immigrant and migration. Change our perception of what it means to be happy from endless consumerism to self-actualization and social acceptance. We may have to scale back our modern lives: abandon international tourism, next-day delivery, unlimited energy and clean water, built-in obsolescence, disposable culture etc. Re-design the technology too useful to abandon to be low-impact: as little energy as possible, reliable and interchangeable components, peer-to-peer networks and protocols, etc. Design our lives for near-zero emissions, near-zero waste. Re-learn lost arts like ship building, wood working, forestry, cloth making, foraging, water management, perma-culture, and what it's like to live without plastic, etc.

I believe we have as much capacity for making the environment better as we do for destroying it. It's a matter of will, perception, determination and luck.

I hope we all make it.

I can't upvote this enough. The way I see it, the Holocene is over, no more neolithic civilization, unless we keep powering the machines with lots of energy in order to cling to the past (which is a big part of the use we have been giving to machines, and the reason why Modernity is a sham) as mythified by our collective amnesia. We need to integrate our lives with the ecosystem in order to create virtuous cycles of soil restoration, reconsider ways of living that would make us more resilient in the face of modern technology being unavailable, and start questioning the institutions of civilization such as marriage and private property. When collapse arrives the latter too are just unavoidable, the Earth will ruthlessly desecrate our myths and idols, so it's better if we ourselves do it in a more orderly fashion, waking up from the dreams for which we have abused technology as a sort of hallucinogenic soporific.

You won't find much neolithic civilization outside of North Sentinel Island and the deep Amazon.

Thanks, I stand corrected. I abused the term. I meant to say civilization as a society where humans depend primarily on agriculture for their survival, as the appearance of such a society coincides with the start of the Holocene.

How can rights movements fix the environment?

The rest is indeed true, the problem being if you drop consumerism capitalism fails and at the same time people realise they are doing irrelevant things such as arguing on the internet instead of doing. Since even with currently more intelligent (though not experienced with revolts) masses the average is not great, things would turn ugly. (Including more terrible leaders.)

The primary problem is that outrage is extremely easy to divert and push. To any ends, including violent.

The other problems are that people still do not know to cooperate in general, and still prefer short term feel-good measures to long term results. (And ecology used to work on geological scales...)

Why the 'we'? https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-carbon-emissions-in-... - etc., https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-... (2017 admittedly).

Not at all.

Back when ozone depletion was being discussed, so was CO2. Thatcher was as keen on CO2 action as CFC action. Back then I was very optimistic.

James Burke, a famous old UK TV science personality known for Tomorrow's World, Connections, and The Day the Universe Changed, made a programme in 1989 called "After the Warming", a view from 2050 looking back. Find it on YT, forgive the late 80s CGI, and be surprised, and a little depressed. He gets much right, and a little of the then new science wrong, only it turns out he was pretty optimistic too.

Decades of inaction and international treaties (Rio-1992!!, Kyoto, Paris) that barely scratch the surface, or require no commitment from developing nations. Then all the disingenuous attempts at briefing against fact and science, or claiming we can't afford to, or we'll adapt, squelched all that optimism.

Now I think IPCC will turn out to be at the wildly optimistic end of the scale, as their projections presume we will eventually get off our ass and try. Seems we have to hit rock bottom, and too late, but right under our noses first.

I still have a feint hope the world will prove me wrong...

It's easy to be pessimistic but do you remember CFCs[0]? I don't have time to re-read the article but my recollection of the timeline of events goes somewhat like this:

1. CFCs invented

2. CFCs are in high use

3. Thesis: It's bad for the environment; ozone layer is depleting

4. Antithesis: It's problematic for some businesses to give these up

5. Synthesis: Global effort to stop using them and find replacements

6. Ozone layer is slowly getting better

On one hand, I'm hopeful something similar could happen again.

On the other, the aforementioned events happened in a pre-post-truth world so it might not. You might argue that would be natural selection at work.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon

Phasing out CFCs was much easier to do because CFCs do not make up the backbone of the global economy the way fossil fuels do.

There were some hacks in the aerosol and chemical industries who tried to deny that it was a problem (the chairman of the board of Dupont declared that ozone depletion theory was "a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter nonsense"), but they were small fry in relative terms.

The bottom line is that too many powerful peoples' wallets are lined with money earned by burning fossil fuels. That's why there is no Montreal Protocol for carbon dioxide.

CO2 and global effort were being talked about and the IPCC was being created out of UNEP right back when we were starting to take action on CFCs.

Reagan and Thatcher together pushed for global action on CFCs, and were pretty central to the Montreal Treaty getting signed. Only Thatcher pushed for global action on CO2 in the late 80s. Her speech to the UN from 89 is surprising, if naively optimistic about business' role in things, but she seemed very well informed about a then little known or understood science, and even talked of stopping forest and species loss.

Approach the mid 90s and Thatcher was caught up in her dogmatic, failing government, while science, CO2 and plenty of other things were forgotten.

Reagan wasn't at all keen, even of the then new IPCC. Maybe had he been interested too...

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/science/the-montreal-prot...

More warming seems inevitable, oceans are going to rise, and history weather patterns are going to change. Coastal cities will be flooded, existing farm land will get harder to maintain, and previously infertile land has the chance to become fertile.

However solar, grid power storage, and wind are increasing faster than anyone seemed to be think was possible just a few years ago. Coal plants and coal mines are increasingly price prohibitive to run. New plants are being cancelled and existing plants decommissioned.

UAE (the last place I'd expect solar) just turned on the largest solar farm on the planet! I walk around my city and I see huge solar arrays on parking lots, churches, universities, and even on top of commercial buildings.

Generally it seems like instead of the slow migration that green energy is causing a major disruption. Solar is now getting to the point (in many places) where it's cheaper than many consumers current power bill. 5 year cost to own is favoring electric cars over gas cars, even compared to relatively small cheap cars like the toyota corolla or honda civic.

Tesla is of course shipping more cars than ever and fighting to get the prices lower. Even at $40k to start with (not including federal, state, and power company incentives) isn't too far off the price of the average new car.

So changes are accelerating, Tony Seba on youtube has a pretty good talk on green power, electric cars, and the speed of major disruptive changes.

So terrible things will happen, but I'm growing increasingly optimistic that the worst will be avoided.

I don't believe that the next ~200 years will be anything but catastrophic for life on this planet. I'm not hopeful that we can "solve" climate change or avert catastrophe. As I understand it we're in the early phases of a sixth mass extinction event caused by many factors. Most of them anthropocentric.

The only thing we have power over now is determining how severe the building catastrophes will be. If we can mobilize radical efforts in the next ~4 years we may avoid the worst case scenarios. But that doesn't mean we'll be hotly anticipating the next smart phone and enjoying next-day delivery in thirty years. There will still be mass extinctions, large swathes of the surface of Earth will be inhospitable to humans, we will live with constant wildfires and super storms... regardless of what we do now.

I'm not a gambling sort of person so I don't plan on getting lucky. It sure would be nice if some genius out there invents a technology that magically reverses everything. However that's not a likely outcome.

I think we need to look forward to surviving. It's not going to be pleasant but I do remain hopeful that it will be possible.

I am now remembering that book by W. Heisenberg "Das Naturbild der heutigen Physik," which talks about how Physics and Mathematics overcame the Cartesian mindset. I think that Cartesian mindset needs to be questioned more than ever now that we need to come up with unprecedented measures against all odds. For example, I see modernity as being predicated on this platonic notion that we humans have our minds separate from the material world, and from these minds ideas emerge, including the ideas about what we should aspire to. There is little regard for the way in which technology tends to be a tool for us to indulge in our more basic impulses (unless, I think, one works in PR). I refuse to say primitive because the impulses I am thinking of are more of the nature mentioned by Veblen when he talks about conspicuous waste. So as a result of this tendency, we are in this paradox, in which technology actually seems to be shrinking our possibilities (I think David Graeber mentions this in another context), and the world is turning into a monoculture both literally and metaphorically. The result is less resilience in the face catastrophe and less capacity to adapt in the face of energy shortages, because the complexities that allowed for adaptation (different ways of living, biodiversity, crop diversity) have been steadily eliminated. There are also economic impulses behind this, related to the process of commoditization, and the reliance on debt. The first is seen as good because allows creating economies of scale. The latter makes scarcity be a good thing, because if things are not scarce enough then they cannot be converted into enough money to pay debts. Hence, people worry about employment and growth. Environmental degradation never subtracts from growth, and neither do chronic diseases.

I believe we'll eventually get our act together and survive with some pretty serious damage to the environment. When people are sufficiently desperate, you'll see more change.

You can get ahead of the eventualities and help by learning how to survive without the use of fossil fuels which is difficult but more or less achievable today. Use electric bikes, cars and motorcycles. Work remotely. Try to find an efficient home. Live in a climate that doesn't require too much heating or cooling. Eat vegetables more and so on.

I know you didn't ask for it, but there is a political factor too. Vote for politicians who take the environment seriously. There are industries that need regulation. No matter how much you're trying, if they aren't, progress on the solution will be slowed or stopped.

> I believe we'll eventually get our act together and survive with some pretty serious damage to the environment.

I agree that it will take some pain before we get behind fixing the problem. My concern is that once it is painful, we won't be technologically capable of saving the planet.

I think that there needs to be an equivalent of a climate 9/11 event. Maybe Miami getting wiped off the map by a category 9 hurricane (and call me a pessimist but the loss of a city in a developing country to climate change just won't register in the minds of the developed world).

We as a species are very emotionally driven and slow trends and statistics just aren't as compelling as a big event. I don't know how bad the environment will have to get for that to happen though.

Otherwise, the people creating the most carbon emissions will just view this as an inconvenience and crank their AC higher. The numbers involved in the reporting (2C, 3C etc) just sound small and insignificant when in reality of course that's just an average.

I'm thinking we need NYC and Miami to be completely wiped off the map by rising waters before anyone takes action, when D.C. is the new coastline they might wake up and start to change things, I hope it's not too late by then.

Edit: Or they might bask that they (congress) now own beach-front property.

It is worth remembering that less than 2 years ago thousands of Americans were killed and 3 million plus Americans spent months without electricity due to a hurricane. It is impossible to link that single event to climate change since climate is about trends and not single events, but that event came and went and generally speaking the country barely seemed to care.

Are you referring to the one that hit Puerto Rico? Cynically I think that's because many people don't consider that truly part of America. (Note that's not my personal views, but just trying to make sense of why there was such a lackluster response).

My original comment was really trying to get at the human factors involved as to why we don't care. We just seem to be bad at responding to trends but better at responding to single events. Just like how the US generally don't care about the 40k+ USians killed every year in traffic accidents, but the US responded strongly to the singular event that was 9/11.

Edit: care about on an emotional, popular media level. Deaths per vehicle mile traveled have been going down over time in the US, due to increased safety regulations imposed on the manufacturers.

Yes, I was referring to hurricane Maria that impacted Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

>We just seem to be bad at responding to trends but better at responding to single events.

That is the problem since climate change is only visible when looking at trends. 100 year floods were very much a thing before climate change so you can't point to a single 100 year flood as a sign of a problem. You instead have to point to X number of 100 year floods in Y number of years.

As far as human factor go, do you think political groups would do well to take more 'extremist' positions like outlawing gas burning cars and outlaw kerosene-based air travel, etc? It seems extreme, but isn't that what we are going to need to do anyway?

The environmental political base would stomach it, the opposition would think you're crazy, but they weren't going to help anyway. The tuned-out folks might take notice, "You want to do what?"

Talking about an abstract fossil fuel tax is not visceral enough. Threaten to take away something tangible and you might have their attention. Once you have their attention, explain why you're (we're) in this bind, then ask them to help. Ask them what they want to do if not your plan? Don't settle for anything less than serious fossil fuel withdrawal.

It feels heavy handed, but not too far off the mark from what's needed.

Even then... I saw 9/11 an incredible opportunity to start a nation-wide movement to drop off oil. Because look what they did! Let's stop pouring money in the industry that supports them! Let's change our ways from driving SUVs just to eat out and buy groceries.

But... money come first. Always. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Fight_(2005_film)

Recently I heard someone talk about MPA, Marine Permaculture Arrays, that gave me a bit of optimism. There's plenty of pessimism, but we can choose where to focus. Imagine regenerating vast rivers of the fastest growing plant, kelp, not just along the coasts where warm water has been causing die-offs, but in the open ocean too.

MPA are floating kelp farms. Floating, but submerged, using wave action to power pumps that provide nutrient laden cold water to help the kelp grow. These pumps are like the flaps valves in your toilet tank. Kelp could provide biostock for fuel among other economically valuable commodities. There has been prototype work done in Indonesia and the Philippines. The next implementation looks like it will be in Tasmania. There are a couple of challenging technical obstacles - the cost of current (ocean current) sensors, and nutrient sensors is too high now to make this scale. Some innovation is needed to bring the cost of those sensors down. From some notes: The long range vision is to create an industry that will provide a range of ecosystem services that would supply food, fuel, fertilizer, fiber, farmaceuticals (nutraceuticals). Not just along the coasts, but in the open ocean. Think of it as biorefinery management. An MPA would likely have a 3 month service interval, and 3 year overhaul schedule to deal with things like biofouling that are part of maritime activities.

A one sq kilometer MPA might generate $1 million a year in value from kelp, maybe another $1 million a year from fish. The fish part is an unknown.

The best way to ride out an ocean storm is to submerge, like whales do. They could adjust bouyancy of an MPA if satellites tell them a storm is coming.

They intend to use mesoscale ocean current eddy shear levels to move MPA's to different locations in a region (imagine using foils to tack across the difference in current layers speeds, or to keep them circling in a small area, and want to develop cheaper marine vessel navigation automation [This means they won't need to anchor or tether the arrays to the bottom of the ocean]

I am hopeful. We're in for a rough ride, but we will survive.

1. Rate of progress and market adoption of key technologies (ICE alternatives and renewables) is much higher than I would have anticipated even 10 years ago, let alone 15 years. I am hopeful that, even with only market forces, by the end of my lifetime developed economies will have more-or-less righted the ship on GHG production with a corresponding blueprint for the rest of the world.

2. I think we still have a long time before some of the worst-case feedback loops are triggered.

3. The realities of climate change are becoming difficult to ignore. This is, paradoxically, good news because it makes denial a less tenable barrier to action in the mid-term future.

All that said, I'm hedging my bets with real estate investments in regions that are most likely to benefit from mid-term impacts of warming.

Absolutely not.

Even as we start to see major changes to weather patterns globally, most people put up little more than nominal effort to avoid CO2 emissions and other damaging activities - for example, air traffic continues to grow [1].

We're likely to hit the point of no return on CO2 emissions within two decades [2]. Those with the resources to work towards reversing the damage at that point will also be the ones who can afford to comfortably adjust to changes in climate - which do you think will take priority? Meanwhile, those who are going to be hit hardest overwhelmingly cannot afford to avoid contributing to global warming, let alone actively combat it.

I'm sure civilization will survive - it's more a question of whether we'll ever do anything significant to stop climate change, or if we'll have to adjust to whatever new equilibrium the environment enters - and how much biodiversity and population loss will we sustain on the way there?

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/564769/airline-industry-...

[2] https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/9/1085/2018/

I found it ironic how 4 photos of the Europe heat wave had asian people who traveled half the globe: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48766481

In no way I'm blaming Asians. Photos in Asia would show lots of non-Asians. It's just an example of how we as humans always put our experiences first.

No, not at all. Incentives aren't alligned in politics, industry, or in the home for real change to happen. It's a tradgedy of the commons.

Records are set every year. A record just means no observation was previously recorded.

There's a catastrophe every generation that turns out to have been a false alarm by the time the next generation's catastrophe is fabricated.

For instance, my wife was told "no homework tonight since we'll all be dead tomorrow anyway." (Cuban Missile Crisis)

Around the time of the first Earth Day, the predictions of environmental apocalypse were legion, yet societies somehow seem to find ways to fix things that societies broke. They also seem to find ways to fix things that tyrants broke.

When you see dozens of such dire predictions over a lifetime, you start to get skeptical. Skepticism is a good thing, btw. Without it, there wouldn't be any science.

Lots of catastrophes came true. Your example of the Cuban Missile Crisis is particularly odd: there was nothing at all overblown about the worry, and there’s a pretty good case to be made that the fate of the world came down to a single tired, sweaty guy in a submarine making the right decision.

For a couple weeks, there was almost nothing else in the news. JFK was a single tired guy in a submarine? We might be thinking of different Cuban Missile Crises.

https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis

Vasily Arkhipov was a single tired guy in a submarine. The Soviet submarine B-59 was being depth charged and its captain wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo at the US Navy fleet that was pursuing it. Two other officers had to agree to launch the torpedo. One agreed, and Arkhipov was the other. They argued but he refused and convinced the captain to surface.

JFK's role was pretty important too. The military tried quite hard to convince him to go to war. Good thing he wasn't stuck in a broken-down, overheating submarine with explosions going off all around it, or he might not have been so steadfast.

The world was on the brink of a war that would make WWII look like a fun walk in the woods. Am I supposed to think that a couple of weeks of non-stop news coverage was excessive?

I am a bit fascinated by the "Fin de Siècle" epoch. Those people were CORRECT in their pessimistic expectations. WWI and WWII happened soon after and killed many millions of people.

Then again, without history books and museums, you'd barely notice today that those ever took place. So maybe even that was not as much of a doomsday event as feared.

Yes, absolutely. Put enough money into it and scientists/startups will figure it out. I'd like to see someone prove that we can't reverse most of what we've done (besides extinction of different species which is obviously bad).

The scary thing isn't the current state of the climate. The scary thing is passing a point of no return where climate change becomes non-linear and self-feeding. According to many reports, we are not far off from that point. Still, we are in a world where a non-negligible portion of the population believes that climate change is fabricated, or at least overstated. Scientists won't be able to really do anything other than measure the problem until public sentiment gets behind them. Startups won't do anything until VCs see an opportunity to make exponential returns on their investments. The best case is the linear portion of climate change hits us hard, corrects public sentiment, and we have enough time to fix the planet before true catastrophe.

Public opinion is not that important. All you need is government money given to research new technology that will make for viable competition. The economics will take care of the rest.

And regarding the public, the public has plenty of reasons to be skeptical. We've been given Iraq WMDs, Obama birth certificate hysteria (more people believed this than you think), now Russia/Trump hysteria. All of this ends up being hot air. So when you tell people they have 10 years to live if we don't do a 180 on our economy, what do you expect them to say?

I wonder even at that point, could we refreeze the earth via megastructure in space, make it miserable for most of us during winters and even summer for a time to 'reboot' the polar caps/antarctica? Or maybe we could make the mega structure only affect specific locales so the rest of the world doesn't suffer as much from extremely cold spells.

I don't think that's the only fix we need though, we'd also need a way to clone and rebuild lost species like penguins and polar bears, and micro organisms, fauna, ocean creatures, etc...

Reforestation on a grand scale and global outlawing of Amazon Forest depletion would be a wise thing as well... I think there are science-based solutions but I'm at a loss of how we begin researching and implementing anything esp. w/ our polarized politics of late that could give a shit.

I guess when it hurts bad enough we'll stop putting bandaids on things and really try to fix stuff, especially when the entire fate of mankind lies in the balance, until we get to that point sadly it'll probably keep going the way it has been.

It's too late man.

No, not really. I think the unfortunate dystopian cyberpunk future we're going to see is that wealthy developed nations will be able to afford technological Band-aids, like increasing use of air conditioners everywhere fed from big grid connected photovoltaic plants. People with much less economic means will suffer and be displaced.

I predict massive refugee crises with mass-migration caused by climate change within my own lifetime.

It recently hit 54C in Rajasthan.

Do I think the environment and humans will survive? Yes.

Do I think that we’ll enjoy living in whatever this new environment ends up being? No, not at all.

Yes and no...on the current course of denying global warming -- we're screwed. If we could somehow end poverty, and move a large swath of unemployed/undereducated people into science industry so they can focus on solving problems, maybe we can build a mega structure to block out sunlight, capture existing carbon in the atmosphere and figure ways to bring back arctic ice, --then maybe we can reverse things...we also need to backup species of plants, animals, etc via dna harvesting so things that are destroyed by global warming can come back if we do fix it. A lot of my hope lies in science fictiony future tech that is yet to be created, but I hope for my kid's sake we figure it out.

I think it'd be funny if we figure out immortality tech first and live long enough to see the world end in 150 years because of our own mistakes and lack of foresight... The rich want to live forever, but then they'll regret it when they destroyed everything.

We have the ability to solve the problem now.

We just don't have the business incentive to do so. It's not about adding people, It's about adding incentive.

So long as economic growth remains the primary goal of most societies, and so long as that economic growth is tied to the use of fossil fuels, then climate change will not be stopped.

(Copying a comment I just made on a related discussion).

I am in that I try to (within reason) minimize waste, pollution, energy consumption, meat use, etc: all for the Golden Rule and a clear conscience. And I am all for reducing pollution via laws as it makes the best sense using an open process and honesty. And I am active in an organization that goes to great lengths to try to help people in need, whether due to climate change or otherwise.

But having said that, I don't think climate change is a problem humanity is currently competent to solve, nor our biggest problem. I wrote more, here (a lightweight, hopefully skimmable, no-JS/no-ads site):

http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html

I believe in cycles. Things get worse, things get better. You never hear about when things get better.

For the last several years, people were saying that CA was in drought and that this was the "new normal". I didn't believe it, and I was right. This year is particularly colder than last year, even though we had 2 extremely hot days. This is how weather works, it's always changing. I think the next few years will continue to be wet in CA and then we'll hit another cycle of droughts and back and forth. It's also safe to note that the drought we experienced wasn't worse than the 1930s due to weather, it was worse because more water was being consumed by humans, which is a different sort of environmental disaster.

I do believe that the Earth is getting hotter, but I also believe we will get cooler over the next several years. But no one will talk about that because it doesn't get clicks.

We need to plant new trees and we need to incentivize countries to not cut down their forests. Places like Indonesia and Brazil, etc, need to be incentivized to keep their forests instead of cutting it down for cash crops.

I think the bigger crisis is plastic, pollution and chemicals in our water. We need to stop creating so much plastic and make extremely draconian laws controlling this. We need to stamp down on pollution from factories. Companies that spill into our lakes and rivers and oceans need to be fined with extreme prejudice. If they go out of business I simply don't care, I would rather see them out of business than have our water and environment polluted.

I think a new normal, in the sense of a new steady (less favorable) state of the climate, is not something that is being suggested by the science. Just to point out one relevant fact, consider that the current CO2 levels were present at least going as far back to Pliocene geological epoch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate. I think it is reasonable to expect at least plenty of instability as the Earth gets closer to the temperature and sea level of that time.

"Companies" are run by people and they employ people. You don't care because you don't work there. When one has that job and doesn't know how to do anything else (no, they can't learn programming), "the company" must go on. Human nature.

This Wordsworth poem has stuck with me for years. It's from ~1807 and still rings true about humanity and nature:

The World Is Too Much with Us

  The world is too much with us; late and soon,
  Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
  Little we see in Nature that is ours;
  We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
  This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
  The winds that will be howling at all hours,
  And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
  For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
  It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
  A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
  So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
  Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Too_Much_with_Us

To anyone reading this and thinking - well what can I do? Become vegetarian. TODAY. I eat 95% vegetarian now and I don't notice the difference whatsoever, if anything, I don't crave meaty foods anymore. The 5% is once a month kind of things such as pizza that have some ham on them. Changing to vegetarian is one of the best things you can do to help.

How about telling people to stop having kids? That's going to have a greater impact[1] in the long run than not eating meat.

Well, if you can't bring yourself to tell people that, what makes it all right to tell them to go vegetarian (TODAY)?

Prozelytizing your style of life is not how you get others to be more friendly to the environment.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-...

I personally don't want to have kids and don't see that changing. Although I don't see how your suggestion isn't 'prozelytizing' as well, it is much easier to change your diet (even partially) than to possibly de-rail massive life plans which may already be in motion. There are tonnes of great foods you can eat which are just vegetables and as a previously MASSIVE meat eater, I no longer miss it. Just to be clear I don't disagree with you, but one choice is not interchangeable with the other.

I like the Adams Rule of Slow Moving Disasters: whenever humanity can see a slow-moving disaster coming, we find a way to avoid it. I don't doubt that we will continue to emit CO2 for a while, and the temperature will keep climbing, but when things get unbearable, people will act swiftly.

I expect that the hotter earth becomes, and the more we try to replace fossil fuels, the more electricity is needed. A hotter earth means air conditioning almost everywhere, huge desalination plants to provide water and so on. So the most important thing in the world is to create energy cheaply without emissions. I guess that there will be a much higher focus on nuclear fusion research to have a clean source for those energy needs, and in the meantime conventional nuclear plants will be used.

If we reach a point where temperatures become too bad, geo-engineering will also be a huge topic.

I wonder how much we've improved trends already. I mean, I realize that we are in a worse situation now than has been previously projected, but with hindsight knowledge, I wonder how much worse off (in tenths or hundredths of degrees or whatever) we'd be if we hadn't globally taken the environment actions we've already taken. The amount of solar we have now has made a dent, hasn't it?

This[1] Wikipedia entry claims global solar electricity production is 12.9TWh per year.

Compared to 13,675TWh total annual electricity production from coal, oil, and gas combined.

So we're talking about a 0.09% dent.

Lost hope.

The 3 big issues that I think prevents us solving it are

1. Tragedy of the commons

When a country/company wants to make money by damaging the environment in the process, the money come to the country/company now, but the damage is spread world-wide. If the pollution would stay only in that country/city, it would be different. So, the choice is natural, especially thinking about government 4-year terms.

2. We always put ourselves first, rest of the city/country much further, and rest of the world... doesn't matter. What people want, by human nature, is to satisfy their own needs & comfort.

Examples:

* Why wait for a bus or use an electric bike when one can just drive a 2 tonnes car to move oneself? It's comfortable and cheap.

* Norway refuses to drill for billions of barrels of oil in Arctic, leaving ‘whole industry surprised and disappointed’. Government made the right choice, but a few (prosperous already) affected by making less money complain: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/norway-oil-drillin...

* France introduces a diesel tax, to reduce pollution, which affects everybody's health. But, wait, some need to pay a little more? Let's protest! Tax was cancelled: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/11/french-protes...

* The Bełchatów Coal mine & Power station in Poland. Hundreds of people employed there, they are happy with it. Should the plant be closed to stop pollution? What about our jobs? No way! And no, getting only 20% of salary for free (basic income) and having to learn stuff to maybe find a new job in renewables is not acceptable.

3. The environment effects of what a one person/community/country does, bad or good, are hard to see in the short term. Only the downsides are clearly visible in the present. So, taking the correct action is quite hard.

Unfortunately, I don't see how to overcome these. Would be glad to be proved wrong!

I am pessimistic about the future. I guess I will not raise any child, given I don’t think humanity will last long.

I’ve got two young kids, sometimes I think they might be okay. I don’t have any hope for my unborn grandchildren. At my most pessimistic, I wonder if I should investigate some sort redoubt to help them prepare. But who know what you really need to prepare for. It just feels so hopeless sometimes.

I think we're already past the point of no return and the collapse of human civilisation as we know it is inevitable.

Between resource shortages and famine, and the inevitable resource wars associated with that, I doubt there will be more than ~500m humans alive globally by 2100.

I am optimistic about the future because the costs of renewable energy (wind and solar) and energy storage (batteries) are plummeting. These trends are likely to continue.

Yes, I am hopeful.

I don't deny the climate is changing. I just think the earth (and it's inhabitants) are tremendously resilient. Life will go on.

I come back a lot to the parable of "who's to say what's good or bad?" (one telling of which can be found here: https://thepowerofthrift.com/whos-to-say-whats-good-or-bad/ )

My more specific take: As a human of generally European-ish descent born in the United States, the wave of extinctions that gave land-dominance to mammals, the likely genocide of closely related hominids by the homo-sapiens, the ecological changes putatively caused by the first wave of human occupants including all the extinctions of large land animals on this continent, the subsequent genocide of the first human occupants, the conflicts and wars that caused my ancestors to emigrate, ... those were all necessary conditions for the exact experiences I've had in my life.

I'm not saying I support genocide! (my ancestors are mostly all Jewish.) I'm just saying that the farther something is in the past, the more it just seems like a fact of history, no matter how miserable and wrenching it was for all the organisms that lived through it.

We have no way of knowing what we're really creating, and it may well be that we're creating a hundred thousand years of extinctions and inhospitable weather which will be more difficult to live through for our descendants than the conditions we were born into. We may be radically shrinking our own natural habitat. We may be paving the way for a different dominant organism. We may be living in an era that future humans will give as much thought to as we give to the years 1000-1100 C.E. Who knows! and in the long game, the thousands and millions of years perspective, who's to say what's good or bad?

I'm optimistic that Earth (our environment) will survive, but I'm also sure that it will be less hospitable for human life. If catastrophe is going to happen it is more likely that it will be human-induced catastrophe (wars, genocide, famine) rather than environmental one.

When I was a teenager, I thought I would never see my 30ieth birthday because of the hole in the ozone layer, or nuclear war, or something like it.

It was not a nice feeling.

Now I am a bit wary of doomsday scenarios. I am not convinced we have seen any real impact of global warming yet (higher temperatures perhaps, but no land has been flooded, for example. Nothing catastrophic has occurred).

I am pessimistic about human expansion, though. I think we are in the middle of a population explosion that started with the invention of agriculture and has not ended yet. Humans will consume everything that get's in their way.

That is the same as with all other species, though (like the classical fox and rabbits scenario - fox population growing until there are only few rabbits left, foxes starving, and so on). Once we hit a natural limit, things will balance out somehow. That doesn't imply that it will be pleasant.

I'm less worried about global warming. There are too many doomsday scenarios. I think if it was that easy to break the balance, it would have happened before. So I think there may be regulating mechanisms that we haven't really taken into account. "Hottest June ever recorded" may not mean that much. There can be smaller cycles (like some news now predict a coming mini ice age because of sun activity), measuring stations can have changed (cities are warmer), all sorts of things.

I think classical damage will probably be worse - agriculture, depleting water reservoirs, destroying top soil, depleting fish populations, deforestation, destruction of animals natural habitats... That's depressing for sure. Maybe the only hope is for capitalism to come up with better means of production. After all, the environment is actually doing better in some places than a couple of decades ago.

Ultimately I think it may also be an illusion that it would be normal for things to remain the same.

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