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Comment by hnarn | Hacker News Reader

The era of fossil fuels will go down in history, if any history is preserved, as the point where human ignorance was no longer held back by lack of capacity. We are so doped up on carbon-based fuel that we are completely oblivious to the total dependency our way of life has on it. A simple thought experiment by the way of "what does it take to produce a pencil"[1] will give anyone insight in this. Sometimes I feel like we just don't have the collective mental capacity to handle mega-issues like these. And in the end, just like an addict, unless we kick the habit we are collectively, as a species, going to walk hand in hand into oblivion.

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2153998.I_Pencil

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I would be careful about blaming "human ignorance" because, case in point, a great many of us are aware of the climate crisis and feel the need to do something about it. In the US, for example, most of the component policies of the Green New Deal poll quite well across party lines.

The problem is that the climate crisis demands large-scale collective planning and decision making, and our systems for doing so have been completely co-opted by powerful economic entities. The actions available to the average citizen amount to putting aside everything in one's life to become an activist (which most people don't have the luxury to do), occasionally voting from a menu of pre-selected corporate-backed candidates, or making ultimately insignificant lifestyle changes (and even that has been subverted by economic powers through "eco-friendly" consumer products).

It's always helpful to look at a problem through the lens of power relationships before blaming "people" for being stupid or ignorant. Certainly some people are, but that doesn't mean it would solve the problem if they weren't.

It is ignorance though, both willing and unwilling. It's ignorance at the bottom, ignorance at the top, and ignorance at every level in between. Even our "solutions" are ignorant.

Every improvement in energy efficiency we have ever made has resulted in more energy use, but we still cling to the idea that if we can make everything just a bit more efficient then that will do it and our problem will be solved. It's a lie and it's a scam.

A green new deal isn't the solution and it's our ignorance that makes us believe that it is. All it does is greenwash all of the toxic things we are already doing. We can't solve industrialisation with more industrialisation.

We can look outside of our windows now and see the solution. It's doing less, it's working less, it's not polluting the world, it's consuming less and producing less. Radically so.

> We can look outside of our windows now and see the solution. It's doing less, it's working less, it's not polluting the world, it's consuming less and producing less. Radically so.

And this requires revolution because our whole economy is built around constantly working (and thus producing and consuming, if not rent-seeking, but we can't all be rent-seekers), even if all our basic needs were already met.

I don't disagree with you at all in terms of the solution. I didn't mean to imply that all conceptions of the term "Green New Deal" represent a solution, but simply that there is broad support for doing something. The policy advocates I take seriously absolutely recognize that a solution cannot constitute more industrialization and emissions, but they also recognize that if we radically do less under our current paradigm, the people who are barely scraping by now will be crushed.

In terms of energy efficiency, it is obviously crucial, but under our current system every improvement simply represents surplus capital which then goes towards growth and expansion. Changing that, again, requires collective long-term planning and decision making which is being subverted.

I think it is giving far too much (or too little?) credit to the powerful to say there is "ignorance at the top". There is not ignorance at the top. They have demonstrably understood this looming crisis for a very long time, and what we are seeing is the expansion and fortification of existing power relationships in the face of it.

If ignorance and lies are being spread at other levels of power, again, I think it's worth asking "by what means?" and "for whose benefit?"

I agree with basically everything you've said but I'd caution that "broad support for doing something" without much care as to what is a recipe for a lot of bad things to come to pass under the guise of fighting climate change.

Of course, I'm only challenging the notion that there is complete ignorance about the need for action. What that action looks like is up to us. I would say we are actually already on the path for "a lot of bad things to come to pass under the guise of fighting climate change." It is the explanation for a lot of the trends we are seeing like nationalism, the strengthening of borders, and the weakening of labor representation.

If that's truly your fear, you should support real (and acceptable) moves for fighting climate change as a way to head that off at the pass before it comes to be.

Today, if you make a list of all the fascistic bad things that governments have done "under the guise of fighting climate change" I'm pretty sure the set is empty, it's a zero item list. No government anywhere is a green fascist dictatorship, and it seems far-fetched to imagine one. But again, if you think that's a real risk, I urge you to support climate action now so that public support for drastic action doesn't build up.

You appear to be reading a ton of sentiment that isn't there into my comment. All I'm saying is that opportunities for big action give cover to those looking to do bad things that would not otherwise be acceptable and give cover for people who would not otherwise condone those bad things to ignore it. We need to be vigilant so that we don't say we're fighting climate change but instead wind up off in the weeds screwing over people.

And for the record, I am strongly in support of any progressive (as opposed to regressive) measure that has a net positive impact on climate change.

> but they also recognize that if we radically do less under our current paradigm, the people who are barely scraping by now will be crushed.

It sounds like we should change that current paradigm too then.

We're on the conveyor belt to planetary destruction asking how do we slow it down instead of how do we get off. It won't be easy to get off, but it would be much better if we managed it ourselves rather than waiting to be flung off.

> I think it is giving far too much (or too little?) credit to the powerful to say there is "ignorance at the top". There is not ignorance at the top. They have demonstrably understood this looming crisis for a very long time, and what we are seeing is the expansion and fortification of existing power relationships in the face of it. > If ignorance and lies are being spread at other levels of power, again, I think it's worth asking "by what means?" and "for whose benefit?"

I do agree with you on all of this.

> It sounds like we should change that current paradigm too then.

That is what the most honest incarnations of the Green New Deal represent.

Every improvement in energy efficiency we have ever made has resulted in more energy use

Actually, quite a few countries never went back to their pre-2008 total energy usage, the primary example being the UK which invested heavily in efficiency.

Just for a second, try and imagine what world you would be living in without fossil fuels in the last 200 years. Would you have the computer or phone to write on? Would you have the internet to connect? Your house? Your food?

That's not to say it's not a good idea to change this, and to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. But to say this period was a period of human ignorance and "doped up"-ness is an extremely naive reading of human history.

Describing the era of fossil fuels as "doped up" is not a way of saying that the progress that was made was not good: it's a way of pointing out that it was unsustainable, and irresponsible. There's no reason to believe that computers or phones could not have existed in a different reality where fossil fuels were used in a more restricted manner, owing to their inherent dangers when over-used. Not only could the use have been restricted, we could also have compensated for the usage earlier, and made less irresponsible choices in how we perform our agriculture and industrial endeavors. The insight into climate change is not new, it's not something we're understanding just now. We just didn't care until now.

There's a reason people get hooked on drugs, it's a very pleasurable experience, while you're still using it.

When the enemy is invisible, nobody cares until the cat's out of the bag. With climate change, the enemy is here already.

I understand your sense of grievance, and often share it at an emotional level.

But what makes you think it would ever have been different? Any creature which evolved the behavioural flexibility to outrun curbs on its pullulation would eventually overtax its environment. It just so happens that human spread has been so extensive that our environment is the whole globe. It is only natural, in the strictest sense, that we will damage it, probably to the point of making it inhospitable to us (at least in current numbers & consumption levels). To think that we (merely a bright hominid, evolved for small-group social interactions) might transcend our biology to manage an entire planet is, well, wishful thinking at best.

It was a pleasant fantasy, with religious origins. That's all.

I don't think it's that special. When there are large benefits to humans and no apparent downsides, humans will pollute as much as Earth capacity allows. Just like any other organism before.

Humans aren't single cell organisms. We are self-aware organisms, arguably more intelligent than any other organism we ourselves have ever encountered. There are very apparent downsides to the benefits we are reaping, but for some reason we are incapable of acting as one in the interest of all, and instead seem to prioritize acting for ourselves, seemingly incapable of making the connection that the detriment of all will, in the end, also be the detriment of ourselves.

The economy functions in order to provide services to as many people as possible. In fact, with the marriage of state and business of today, the output is optimized to extract as much as possible and distribute to people beyond what can be realistically consumed. Our metric is growth of economic activity alone, and thus to detriment to long-term sustainability, prudent management of resources and effective outcomes of economic output.

There's a take on I, Pencil but with a computer. I'm not sufficiently motivated to look for it, but it's out there somewhere, and was enjoyable.

How can we assume that the proposed solutions or diagnosis of the problem can escape the trap of 'human ignorance'?

Human nature is largely static. The fallibility of man is a constant.

I'm a small c conservative, and as part of this I care about the environment, and from my perspective there are a number of ways that the environmental movement don't do themselves any favours. Firstly there are those amongst them that come across far too preachy, in a way that can be a turn-off. Nobody constantly wants to hear bad news and moralising and be told they are personally responsible for all these problems, when most are just trying to get by in a system they didn't create, and have little real influence over. Secondly some of them oppose even the suggestion of technical solutions, preferring instead to emphasise that a kind of hair-shirt existence of drastically poorer lifestyles is all we have the right to expect, as if we've committed some kind of moral crime and only penance will suffice. Thirdly and related to both of the first two points, some (most?) of them are tightly bound to leftist political movements - sometimes tending to the extreme - which both immediately alienates people like me, and makes me suspicious that they are merely using the green movement as a vehicle for ulterior concerns, and indeed some of them are actually completely open about this:

'I’m here to say that XR isn’t about the climate. You see, the climate’s breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system of that has infected the ways we relate to each other as humans and to all life. This was exacerbated when European ‘civilisation’ was spread around the globe through cruelty and violence (especially) over the last 600 years of colonialism, although the roots of the infections go much further back.'

https://medium.com/extinction-rebellion/extinction-rebellion...

'Greta Thunberg: Climate crisis "not just about environment," but also "colonial, racist, patriarchal systems of oppression"'

https://disrn.com/news/greta-thunberg-climate-crisis-not-jus...

I could go on to point out the myriad inconsistencies in the positions of these groups e.g. pro-environment/pro-migration, pro-environment/anti population control, but I'll leave it there. If I think about it for too long it makes me angry because I think these groups are doing more harm than good, and I question whether they really care about the environment at all.

Not sure how you can care about protecting the environment while explicitly ignoring investigation into what’s harming the environment? Unless you believe human activity is not driving climate change, then of course environmentalism is linked to anti-globalization sentiment.

> Not sure how you can care about protecting the environment while explicitly ignoring investigation into what’s harming the environment?

Can you point to where I advocated for this? I was just pointing out that the groups that have chosen to attempt to monopolise environmental issues for themselves might deserve scrutiny. Remove these groups with ulterior motives - who in any case have proven themselves not particularly effective - and we might get closer to a more grown up debate. Isn't it funny how they choose to hammer rich, liberal democracies that are doing the most for climate change, whilst conveniently avoiding protest in countries where they might get beaten up/thrown in jail?

> Unless you believe human activity is not driving climate change, then of course environmentalism is linked to anti-globalization sentiment.

Well there's another contradiction for you then: anti-globalization/pro migration.

There are no points to be scored here. I'm just explaining, since you asked, that what you call "ulterior motives" are what environmentalists believe to be root problems.

Unfortunately, once you identify that human activity is harming the environmental, everything thereafter becomes politicized. Even science becomes subservient to the negotiation. We humans will continue to squabble whilst the world burns.

> Isn't it funny how they choose to hammer rich, liberal democracies that are doing the most for climate change, whilst conveniently avoiding protest in countries where they might get beaten up/thrown in jail?

Rich countries emit the most carbon per capita and are responsible for the lion's share of past emissions. So the first part of that sentence is rank BS.

Activists are obviously gonna activize in their own countries, most of which happen to be rich, liberal democracies. In case you care, even poor democracies have their domestic climate and environmental movements. Non-democracies usually don't have open political movements of any sort.

It wasn't those people that pulled the US out of the Paris agreement. All they have done is complain whilst it's been the conservatives that have their hand on the tiller.

I would argue that at least in terms of the environment that wasn't a particulary 'conservative' act, wouldn't you?

It's possible for both sides to be wrong. But when people like John McDonnell - ex-Labour Shadow Chancellor in case you are not familiar with British politics, and the flavour of politician that's prone to quoting Mao in parliament - start talking about the climate emergency you know it's been hijacked.

Oh no, the conservative thing to do would be to conserve your environment and resources. That thinking isn't very Conservative though.

As an aside I never believed Labour would really tackle climate change, they are too in-hoc to the unions whose members often work in industries with high emissions.

Even their proposed green new deal is dubious:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2019.15...

> If I think about it for too long it makes me angry because I think these groups are doing more harm than good

I'm don't think you're being fair here since both movements you mention achieved some measurable success last year and caused a surge in local and political conversation with the UK Government ultimately declaring climate emergency and setting a net zero emissions goal. I think the rest of your comment is more or less attempting to paint anyone involved with environmental activism as a preachy, contradictory hippy trope which isn't very realistic nowdays given how mainstream these issues are becoming.

If the cure is worse than the illness, why take the cure? Who are you going to save the planet for? I don't particularly mind humanity ending a few years after I've died of old age.

This strikes me as Luddite thinking, at best; 'I like things the way they are, so why change' type of thing. At worst, this comes across as short-sighted, selfish, and hateful.

Please explain yourself, so I can understand what you're saying.

Luddites were people that went out destroying the machines that replaced them in the workforce. Obviously their efforts were futile. Please explain how this applies to my thinking.

I'm not opposed to technology, I welcome technology. Isn't it very much like the Luddites to advocate for "scaling back" with our "pollution"? The motives are different, but the objective seems identical.

You can call me all the adjectives you want, but I do not care if earth explodes after I die. I just don't. I care for my benefits during my own life. I've said this before and I say it again, I do not have any moral problems with sacrificing other peoples benefits for my own benefits and neither should you. Doing this is insanity. Would you starve yourself to death so you can feed other people? Why should I care for other people? It's a silly notion. Maybe I'd care a little bit if I had children, but I don't.

The cure could easily be better than what we have right now. We don't have to throw away civilisation or the good life to solve this.

What do we have to do, then?

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