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Comment by marapuru | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much longer it will take before humanity will make a stand and change habits.

It is already too late. The extinction already started. Right now it is insects, frogs and fishes that has got to go. Our time , together with the rest of vertebrates, will come in 60-70 years.

This is my feeling too. I feel that even the scientists doing these studies are not considering all of the positive feedback loops. If we could somehow account for everything we’d see that we are already past the point of no return and things are going to change for the worse much faster than anticipated.

Only if forced to do so.

So then, tyranny.

Not forced by government but by force of nature. There will be disruptions and people will have to to adapt in some way if they like it or not.

Reminds me of the quote: "Procrastination only ensures that circumstance makes your decisions for you."

The constitution is not a suicide pact.

If history is any indicator, forcing people to live according to the whims of Others results in death and destruction. The coercive power required to get people to behave and the inevitable blowback that occurs when people are unable to govern themselves will result in a lot of both.

Not everyone is going to like the environmental jihad that is being suggested, and that’s a big problem.

> Not everyone is going to like the environmental jihad that is being suggested, and that’s a big problem.

The thing about democracy is that not everyone has to like everything - just the majority.

I don't like that I'm going to have to change my lifestyle, in order to prevent appalling environmental damage, but I understand that I will have to.

The "big problem" is the kind of people who describe pragmatic evidence-based policies designed to avoid collapse of civilisation as "an environmental jihad"

The alternative is to do nothing and that will result in death and destruction. If the ability to harm the environment and other people is a freedom people are up in arms about losing, it's a shitty freedom to have in the first place. One person's freedom should not impinge on others'.

Given the choice between the state taking away coal or mass extinction, I'm choosing the former.

It surely wasn't intended as a suicide pact, but an interpretation that puts personal liberties on a higher pedestal than survival-grade commons could easily make it one.

I share your position, but it is unfortunate that the word personal is prompt to such semantic abuse nowadays. It is not personal liberty that is being preached, it is property liberty. Liberty bestowed not based on the unchanging measure of human personhood, but upon the measure of property ownership. The richer, the "liberior." A cult of the status quo in traditional service of the powerful, hiding its old age by dispensing the righteous aspiration among underdogs of becoming a great owner. And great property depends on a greatly powerful government (as Adam Smith claims when talking about the tasks of government in Wealth of Nations). Hence it is ultimately tyranny what they preach.

You've seen socialist tyranny, you've seen fascist tyranny, but are you ready for environmentalist tyranny? A coalition of hippies, vegans, and environmental engineers will rise up and take control of the state in order to move society forward on its inevitable march towards an environmentalist future!

In all cases, these tyrants were utterly convinced of their righteousness and expertise.

You do understand that a key point in tyranny is forcibly imprisoning and/or murdering people who disagree with you, right? If you can justify that, then you're in a dangerous place, friend.

Why is it not tyranny if I go dump a load of toxic waste in your backyard, just because I can because I'm more powerful.

That is a particularly apt analogy for climate change, because as richer countries belch CO2 into a shared resource (the atmosphere), smaller, poorer countries pay the price with the literal destruction of their entire country (see Kiribati).

while rich countries adopt expensive greener tech and blame the poor countries again

seems about right

The tyranny of the ecosystem we live in. Nature doesn't care about us and we'll either adapt to live within the confines of sustainability or we'll pay dearly for our excesses.

My prediction is that we will do the latter first and then maybe do the former.

Tyranny might happen, but I'm more unnerved by the realization that it's probably easier (and more effective) to shift emissions by killing people than it is to change minds/politics/behavior.

Yes, I can’t help but feel we’ll get the tyranny because countries will just want to start machine gunning people trying to migrate somewhere safe, and not because of any extreme environmental controls.

Governments punishing people, who try to save the lives of those fleeing from climate meltdown, is the current state of things (in Italy and the US at least).

Where murder (on any scale) is an option, it's almost always the mechanically easiest option. The reason we don't do it (collectively) as often as might be practical is because we have collectively agreed that it's not a nice idea to do so. Given those things, I don't see what exactly unnerves you. Is it the realisation that it is indeed easier because you suspected it would be difficult? Is it unnerving because you are not used to thinking of it as a solution?

> because we have collectively agreed that it's not a nice idea to do so

How many war crimes and genocides have been perpetrated in the shadow of these polite collective agreements? In times of relative plenty and peace? How many governments are currently defying this norm? Over the last 100 years, did more humans personally intervene to stop genocide, say "someone should do something", or look the other way?

> I don't see what exactly unnerves you. Is it the realisation that it is indeed easier because you suspected it would be difficult? Is it unnerving because you are not used to thinking of it as a solution?

I'll admit, I'm a little flabbergasted at this. The context of the sub-thread is the concern that it'll take the force of tyranny to move humanity to "make a stand and change habits." I find it more unnerving (than tyranny) that the kinds of organizational units sufficiently motivated by climate-threats to become emissions-tyrants will find it much easier to kill other people than repress their own.

Yes, sadly. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/31/european...

Let alone the fact that around 40% of the current population is sustained by synthetic fertilizers. The Haber-Bosch process represents 1% of the world's energy consumption.

How about not oligarchs putting their fingers on the scales... Russian, European. American, Chinese? Isn't that considered more democratic, bit less?

tyranny is other people

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