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Comment by Gatsky | Hacker News Reader

You have totally misconstrued what I am saying. I am NOT blaming anyone. My point is that it is a fantasy to think that wealthy westerners can significantly reduce global consumption by choosing to live a certain way.

As a thought experiment, how much of a difference would it have made to the world today if the British empire decreed in 1700 that all its subjects adopt more eco friendly lifestyles?

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No, you have indeed constructed a strawman argument based on prejudiced fears of third world 'population explosion' and poor data. Let me put aside the fact that third world peoples are not sitting around waiting for such explosions to occur and are proactive about and invested in our own resources and prospects. Let me put aside the comparison of the poorest, say, Indians (the strata where such an 'explosion' is likeliest to occur due to a host of social reasons) vs the richest, say, Americans. Even putting all that aside: the per capita consumption of an American is 10 times that of an Indian based on latest data [1].

[1]: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

And this does not at all take into account that so, so much of American consumer goods are manufactured abroad and does not factor into this calculation.

Really, please interrogate the kind of prejudice that leads to projections of the kind you have accepted, and the kind of prejudice that then uses it as a rationalization for not course-correcting own behavior.

What you propose is in fact prejudicial by ascribing primary importance to American agency, and then furthermore by assuming other cultures have the same priorities. This is the same mistake as hoping China would turn into 1 billion big mac eating coke drinking bona fide neoliberals.

Also a demographic trend is not political statement or a value judgement, it is a curve fitting exercise. I never used the word explosion, that’s your word. I am not being alarmist. The long term trend is for population growth to slow if you look at the data.

You completely missed the parent point. American consumption might be 10 times the Indian per capita, but there are way more Indians than Americans, and soon there will be more Congolese and Nigerians and other Africans, and while American consumption is going down, African and Asian consumption is going up. If both USA and EU disappeared today, it would only reduce global emissions by 25%, and that fraction will go down as African and Asian emissions grow. If USA cut its emissions in half, it would reduce global emissions by something like 7%. So yes, we can try to reduce our consumption, but it won't really change a thing in grand scheme of things.

"I'm not going to fix this crash, because next year, there might be a similar bug, and I'm not sure how to fix that yet." I hope you don't code that way.

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