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Comment by aequitas | Hacker News Reader

> To make up for a lack of natural snowfall, resorts switch on the cannons, although they’re energy intensive

And thus only adding to the climate change problem.

Everyone is or will suffer from climate change, but if even the ones currently suffering don't want to make the changes needed to divert the problem how do we expect people that don't feel the pain yet to change?

And no, things like driving a low milage or electric car is not a change that solves the problem, not driver, or driving less is.

That's why I'm pessimistic this problem will ever get solved in time. Since in order to really solve it (compared to avoiding it for a few generations more) we collectively need to agree that we can't keep on living this way and with so many any longer. Which is just not in our (ironically) evolutionary biological nature as a competitive species.

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"It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It" - Upton Sinclair

Why assume they're using non-renewable energy? These resorts are in mountainous regions where hydro, wind etc are all very viable options.

Renewable energy is not an infinite resource. It will take eons for us to exhaust the sun's energy with solar panels. But long before that time we will have exhausted our supply of ground minerals that make these panels. You can also only have so many hydra dam installations.

So even if they where using 100% renewable energy. They are 'stealing' that clean energy away from others. So grey energy will still be used to fulfill that demand.

Most of them dont care where the energy comes from. All they care is to keep the stream of tourists. I know, I live in a skiing country which is about to face the end of this era. Nobody from the tourism industry is willing to accept the facts, all they do is pretend it can be handled with artificial snow.

"Most of them", you've done a global survey then, have you? Ski resorts here in Colorado very much care and advertise about their renewable energy usage.

Colorado is bottom 10 when it comes to renewable energy production though.

Those in France will mostly be using electricity generated by nuclear.

The water usage alone is huge.

Nonsense, most of the tech already exists to solve this issue. This is a problem of politics and lobbying by fossil fuel industries.

Luckily tech I outpacing fossil fuels and beating them on price.

It's not though. The tech has to capture almost a century of output from the fossil fuel lobbyists damage as well as prevent any new emissions at the same time.

So much damage has already been done by fossil fuels, and unfortunately there is just so much left in the ground which hasn't been exploited yet solely due to politics. Russia wants to extract the fossil fuels in the Arctic which potentially holds vast reserves, the only thing preventing it is the idea that pissing off all the NATO allies surrounding the Arctic is not a good move. Norway is a very oil rich country and a lot of its welfare is due to the oil, if the profitability of its current reserves wasn't enough, the only thing stopping Norway from extracting its own reserves further north would be domestic, political backlash.

We need to be very vigilant politically because in a purely short term, economic point of view fossil fuels still very much makes sense.

No, the problem is a lack of public support.

Nearly 70% of Americans wouldn't pay $10/mo more to help fight climate change. [1] This is clearly at odds with what experts are claiming is necessary to meaningfully impact climate change.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/do-most-...

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