Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Consider the massive amount of effort, comparatively, between the effort going on and the conversation around mitigating the risk of climate change, and the risk of the flamzboo event, which is destined to quickly destroy humanity in the next decade.

I can't call it something other than the flamzboo event, since we don't know what it is. The clearest picture one can have of what this event potentially is is by considering events which would have similar impact but are currently fringe in terms of public consciousness such as:

- Supervolcano eruptions

- Asteroid impacts

- AI takeoff

- Engineered bio weapons

- Autonomous lethal weapons

- Commoditized, small nuclear weapons

These are not the things I'm talking about, since they have some level of consciousness, but are the closest examples since they are not top of mind in the public consciousness but are confer high x-risk. The ones I worry about are the ones that we can't know currently, that may be lurking on the horizon. One doesn't have to look far back in history to recognize these problems are typically the ones we get hurt by: surprises.

I don't think I can agree. Sure, something like the plague or an asteroid impact has considerable unknowns and thus considered unfixable/dangerous/worrisome. My scepticism is from observing society, seeing tremendous problems never fixed and when people with authority are aware of it.

I think greed, selfishness and people truly inconsiderate happens on a greater scale than what we imagine with factoring into as an issue with the problem of global warming. I guess my scepticism is from considering the forgoing, before thinking of global warming and then thinking of other problems humanity faced (where people are concerned with their daily lifestyle continuing or improving).

Global warming is somewhat unique in the list of known problems when I think about it. I assume it will be too late, before people start being truly effected and to the point they act on something other than promoting public awareness. I've been living a lifestyle where I always walk to work & back. I don't own a car and I somewhat imagine similar steps need to be taken on a larger scale. I'm doubtful people will go from being knowledgable to acting. I have less faith on corporations and laws changing so they must act if they even care about being fined.

> I assume it will be too late, before people start being truly effected and to the point they act on something other than promoting public awareness.

That's all too likely. I've been following this for decades. Back in the 80s, what we're seeing now -- disappearing glaciers, far less ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, thawing permafrost, tropical diseases moving poleward, etc -- would have been perceived as catastrophic. But now it's largely ignored by the majority.

> I've been living a lifestyle where I always walk to work & back. I don't own a car ...

I was like that for decades. Now I don't care so much. Because it has basically accomplished nothing.

> ... and I somewhat imagine similar steps need to be taken on a larger scale.

For sure. And far more. But the US is screwed, after decades of suburbanization.

> I'm doubtful people will go from being knowledgable to acting.

Enough people will act enough only when it's truly too late. It's just human nature. We deal with emergencies well. But for slowly moving threats, not so much.

> I have less faith on corporations and laws changing so they must act if they even care about being fined.

Corporations exist to make money. If the climate goes to hell, they'll just make money dealing with that.

Global warming will be fixed easily if/when people stop thinking the solution is to drag humanity backwards, instead of pushing humanity forwards.

To think that we've somehow reached the peak of our ability to safely consume energy and resources when we haven't even left our home planet is an extremely short sighted perspective. In 1000 years our ancestors will laugh at those who thought that somehow, after thousands of years of advancement, humanity had found its insurmountable wall to more growth and consumption of the universes' infinite resources in the humble year of 2019 due to a mis-calculation regarding the carbon emissions due to the parochial method used at the time for generating power. It's patently absurd if you take a longer perspective. If we don't survive 1000 years, it surely will not be due to our collective failure to solve this problem.

The more people continue to think that if we just convince people to give up their modern lifestyle we'll solve the problem, the longer the problem will persist.

Instead, we should be striving not to solve global warming as a first order concern, but develop technologies that will radically improve the lives of all people, and solve global warming as one of their side effects.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com