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Comment by RoutinePlayer | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I fully know your stances on all of this, but Religion is not really a prerequisite for fully appreciating how beautiful yet precarious our biosphere truly is.

Engineering solutions to combat or circumvent Climate Change is our ONLY way forward. But first we need to get a critical mass of our American citizenry to be convinced we have an actual problem. Especially, in fact, a large segment of the electorate that's VERY religious and continually refuses to accept the facts about AGW.

I say Americans here because a disproportionate percentage was/is being caused by us, and because we also play a unique place in world affairs.

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Carl Sagan wrote about the numinous, a feeling of awe from looking at the night sky. Can't remember if it was Cosmos, or Contact, or one of his other books.

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

The Sublime is a similar concept from the Romantic era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy)

I agree that religion (especially as it is conceived today) is not the answer.

I also agree that engineering will be required. When I said "merely engineer," I meant that engineering cannot be a replacement for our awakening to the "miracle," but must be used in service of it.

> Engineering solutions to combat or circumvent Climate Change is our ONLY way forward.

I think that this perspective ignores the environmental problems inherent in a capitalist mode of production, and in fact plays into them.

I think that a political revolution could be imminent, and I would urge those concerned about the future of life on this planet to consider alternative modes of economics.

Capitalism is based on infinite growth (economists even laugh at people like Malthus who proposed otherwise) and on fungibility of values (money is green no matter where from). This basically leads to a necessity of destroying nature for the sake of realizing economic growth. We need at least start to take seriously the fact that, the way capitalist economy is conducted, there is no way forward to save the environment.

By that logic, capitalism leads to a necessity of murdering your business rivals for the sake of realizing growth.

Capitalism happens inside a framework of laws. There are strong laws against murdering your competitors, that's why this doesn't happen (nowadays). There is a whole set of unethical behaviors, however, that are commonly used for the goal of producing a profit.

The laws are not generally part of capitalism, but imposed upon it to prevent various harmful activities. Pollution is an example: capitalism itself (the private ownership of the means of production) has no mechanism that could deal with it.

It absolutely has a mechanism - property damage

the private ownership of the means of production

Is there any reason you're using marxist terminology?

Property damage is a consequence, not a method of prevention? The damage won't necessarily happen at the place of origination.

I'm not sure why you say it's Marxist terminology. It's more or less what Wikipedia uses. Is there another definition that you'd prefer?

Pollution is nothing more than a negative externality.

People have measurably shorter lifespans due to coal emissions. We aren’t doing anything about that, so why do you think property will be treated any differently?

What's your argument? You've so far told mecapitalism leads to terrible things happening in the name of growth unless there are laws against it, which there are, as 'capitalism exists inside a framework of laws'. Your own argument informs us that capitalism does not automatically mean environmental damage will occur.

What form of "Capitalism"? The unfettered type that sits all the way to the right of the spectrum (that does't exist, because it would only last a few hours), or the overly regulated one all the way on the left of the spectrum?

I disagree. One could change the capitalist model to account and be liable for all externalities and to tax/penalize those firms/countries who refuse to.

Right. Something along those lines is what we should be striving for.

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