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Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

No civilization has ever voluntarily reduced resource consumption. The incentives and coordination issues make it impossible.

There is only one way to get what you want: build what is effectively a world government and coerce everyone to reduce their consumption. That includes people in countries such as India, China, and Indonesia. They'll need to be told by rich westerners that they can't do the things that we did to get rich. Good luck with that.

A far more practical solution is to innovate our way out of the problem. That means more cost-effective green technologies, geoengineering, and adaptive technologies (such as air conditioning, building underground, heat sinks, etc). Those would allow us to keep growing economically, maintain people's quality of life, and it doesn't fail if China or India continue on their current path.

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> No civilization has ever voluntarily reduced resource consumption. The incentives and coordination issues make it impossible.

Just to take one counter-example, the UK has reduced CO2 consumption by 38% since 1990.

> A far more practical solution is to innovate our way out of the problem

Technological approaches are part of the solution, but it's far too risky to gamble the future of our civilisation on technical breakthroughs that may or may not occur. We're up against some tough physical limits and we certainly have no guarantee that we'll get any miracle breakthroughs in the next few decades.

Besides, with our current technology level we almost certainly have the ability to solve the problem now; we just lack the political will. How would a slight improvement in technology change that?

> …the UK has reduced CO2 consumption by 38% since 1990.

The UK is a country, not a civilization. They don’t have to solve the same coordination problem that the entire world has.

I must be missing something in your argument, because if countries can spontaneously reduce consumption without coordination, doesn't that solve the problem?

You say "No civilization has ever voluntarily reduced resource consumption", but civilisation as a whole has not needed to before. This is the first time I can think of that we have faced a global existential threat - or at least one we can do something about.

"the UK has reduced CO2 consumption"

consumption or production? also, isn't CO2 increase offset by increase in forests (that consume CO2)? so reducing CO2 should lead to reduction in forests, right?

"Maintaining people's quality of life" is already a denial of reality. And "China or India will continue on their current path" as long as our air conditioning, computers, and other objects will be built over there.

"No civilization has ever voluntarily reduced resource consumption."

Energy efficiency improvements and water conservation efforts have been spectacularly effective in many first world areas.

World government is not necessary: https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/

I said, "…build what is effectively a world government and coerce everyone to reduce their consumption."

That article says we need to build a global organization that can coerce everyone reduce their carbon emissions. I don't see how my statement was incorrect.

I guess you can see "join the club or pay massive import tariffs" as coercion, but it's less of a world government than existing free trade agreements with their dispute handling mechanisms are.

I think for the foreseeable future, it will come down to proven adaptive technology to avert disaster. We should be preparing to source a lot more electricity, in a way which doesn't dig the hole deeper.

"Cost effective" is relative to peoples value set, green tech is kind of a hand wavy solution with out a comprehensive plan to deploy it as an integrated system.

Handwavy? Nuclear is real, EV automobiles are real, heat pumps for heating and AC are real, insulation for buildings, planting more trees in urban areas helps with the heat island, and creating more green is trivial and helps with storm water management.

Electrified rail.

Low CO2 concrete. Real, already used.

The list is almost literally endless.

But anyway, all of these are simply cost based choices. A carbon tax would literally overnight shift the consumer choices. And the cost effectiveness depends on the market, and that is usually the best we can get.

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