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Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

Climate is a global issue requiring global solutions. So we won't solve it because we're just not capable of globalism as a species. So all anyone can do is protect their investments.

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Unfortunately you may be right. I could forgo flight, eke out a sustainable but subsistence living and do the right thing for the planet, while others are flying their asses off and stock piling their treasure.

But then when the shit hits the fan, they will be the ones with the money to protect their families, not me.

A sad indictment of us as a species.

It's partly human nature, it's partly game theory. In this case, it pays to defect if you can't be caught.

Do it anyway.

- treasure stockpiling guy

People don't realise that the moral high ground will flood at the same rate as everyone elses property when the sea rises.

flying their asses off and stock piling their treasure.

Don’t forget data centres https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/10/asia/china-data-center-ca... and that doesn’t even include the end user devices

Every dev who uses some crappy framework instead of writing efficient compiled bare metal code is complicit

> So we won't solve it because we're just not capable of globalism as a species.

Not with that attitude.

By what means have you charted the boundaries of our species' capabilities?

It could be solved (or helped at least) by a number of capitalism-compatible solutions, such as disrupting fossil fuels with technologies that can produce energy much more cheaply. Once it becomes a no brainer to use solar/wind instead of coal, to the point where you might as well shut the coal plant down (much like you'd shut the CRT TV factory down, or valve radio) then no amount of lobbying will make a difference. Coal usage will drop.

A carbon price would be great though, but doesn't sound like we'd work that out. With a carbon price, a lot more investment could go in to sequestration tech looking for the payout of being the people that remove the most carbon.

What kind of investments should you make in a declining world?

I would rather invest in something that tries to prevent the decline. Renewable energy for example.

To be clear, an investment is something that produces a return. Doing green tech at a lose isn't investing, it's just spending.

A return doesn't have to be economic. I'd rather lose money and not die than make trillions and drown. (Obviously hyperbolic example, but my point is that the number in my bank account isn't the only thing to invest in)

I think a well-designed carbon tax would be useful for converting environmental returns into economic returns.

But you can't actually get that outcome. You'll lose money AND people will drown. That's the point here. You can decide to lose money or not, but you can't dictate the climate. Sorry to be the arsehole here, but everyone seems to be fooling themselves and we need to stop in order to make a real plan.

I think GP meant they'd accept a lower return if it has other beneficial outcomes, as green energy does.

Its an investment in the planet. One day people will learn that you can't eat money.

Water filters and ammunition? Recreational substances will always sell too I imagine.

One ideally longs things where demand will likely increase and short things where it will decrease.

Long Wind/Solar and everything around it for instance, short petrochemical companies

Obviously that’s public so it’s priced in so I wouldn’t expect major YoY returns. But You know, slightly beat the market returns probably.

> short petrochemical companies

Is it that obvious? The harsher the world gets, the more oil we'll need to survive. I'm not sure we'll refrain from using this energy if it can provide short term relief.

Collectively we'll likely extract all that's available, but profit margins would naturally decrease as the more available deposits are used up. A lot of O&G companies will have existing infrastructure that will be depreciating over time, so they'll likely get very competitive over the dwindling supply of deposits. The industry will likely look quite active even after individual players are no longer particularly profitable.

How do you long rewnewables in a post fossil fuel world? Are there computers with records of ownership? If there are, do people care?

There are always opportunities. Right now flood defense construction companies look like a good 30 year bet don't they? The world may be declining but you will be rewarded or punished based on how your portfolio does, not the global average.

Arable land at high latitudes, perhaps bullets and bullion?

Nice cop out.

Humanity as a whole is copping out, that includes me and you too bro! I'm just honest about it

Nah bro. I did my graduate studies and work in the field of environmental policy. You are speaking for yourself when you say humanity is incapable because that requires individual change. Oddly, that’s exactly what climate deniers sound like when they argue against action: collective change always includes individuals to go along for the ride. So what are you scared of?

Im scared that despite 50 years of individual action failing to make any difference, people still think the answer is individual action. I'm scared that the environmental movement is still wasting time persuing a strategy that has not worked and won't work instead of one that might. I'm scared you have a degree in this a d don't see the cold hard facts.

> So we won't solve it because we're just not capable of globalism as a species

We already have globalism and globalism is what cause climate change. Economic globalism is why we are where we are. How do you think oil, coal, natural gas, etc from one side of the world gets to the other side of the world? How do you think saudi oil gets to the US or australian coal gets to china or russian gas gets to germany? How do you think mexican avovados gets to france and norwegian salmon gets to japan or argentinian beef gets to canada all the while spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere? Globalism. How can globalism be the solution when globalism is the cause of the problem.

It's like fuel causing your house fire, so you want to throw more fuel on the fire.

This is why a serious step of fighting climate crisis is the creation of monetary finance framework that can shift existing capital as well as allocate new capital in a distributed and scalable way. A National and International Central Climate Bank that is a mix of existing finance, with new climate constraints and community management organization.

This kind of framework definition has happened multiple times in our economic history.

Edit: some private capital is starting to move to address climate crisis too. e.g. Blackrock. We'll see if this is just greenwashing or not. I don't think Blackrock really needs the publicity of it one way or other.

https://www.marketplace.org/2020/01/14/blackrocks-new-invest...

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/corner-office-from-marketp...

https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/investment-ideas/sus...

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