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Comment by drallison | Hacker News Reader

Everyone seems to ignore the only critically significant hard problem: how do we mitigate the negative impacts that humans have had on the planet? Right now it looks like we are careening towards a quick extinction of the human race and most other species and we are not doing anything about it. True, the magnitude of the problem is daunting. True, it may be too late as we are past the tipping point. True, it is easier to ignore the risks that it is to confront them.

Maybe the real hard problem is getting people to pay attention to what is happening in their world and to forecast what the impact of their actions will be in the next few decades.

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Solutions to the stated problems are, from a technical and policy stand point very simple. Yes, we know how to solve all of this - it's called market regulation and we know it works reeeely well.

But it's politically hard.

What we need is an economically pragmatic green political movement, who will not keep shooting itself in the foot with left-wing ideological purity competitions.

Profit seeking motive is only a problem when you let it of it leesh (because you somehow convinced yourself that the state of perfect market competition is the stable state of a market, when in fact all natural forces point toward domination - monopolies).

So, green parties... Drop the bullshit feel good stories and let's just make saving the earth profitable.

I think you are begging the question. Market regulation and a more economically pragmatic green political movement, and a fettered profit-seeking motive won't respond quickly enough to save the day. We have a crisis here and have not much of anything which makes a difference. For example, when huge fires burn, dumping significant CO2 into the atmosphere, it would be to everyone's best interest to put them out. But we (the world collectively) has not done that. Likewise, despite regular warnings about the dangers of pandemics, the global medical system was designed under the assumption that "pandemics" would be small and could be localized. Turns out to have been the wrong choice. And in this case, every serious Global Trends study points out that the risk of a pandemic was significant and that a pandemic could be costly.

Why do you presume it won't respond quickly enough? I think that if the EU made any carbon fuel that was created from the atmospheric CO2 free of any and all tax ... we would see it on the market in a few years at max with plants cropping up very quickly. When that industry matures in a few years just force anyone polluting with CO2 to buy and sequester this carbon fuel.

Besides that's only half of the solution. The other is pragmatic policy. If the green movement was pragmatic they would have championed "EU builds 200 nuclear plants in <10 years". All the problems with nuclear right now (who will build it? it's expansive, takes too long etc.) go out the window when someone like the EU decides to build 200 of them. Wind and solar are nice and all, but they can't do in 10 years what a few dozen, let alone a few hundred, nuclear plants can. Solutions are there. But solutions are not the point. Getting elected is the point. And that's where ideology and election-efficiency (it's much easier and cheaper to campaign on emotional social issues and virtue signaling that it's on suboptimal, ideologically-unpure, hard, painfull, expansive solutions) reign supreme.

And regarding the pandemic thing - the question you should ask: "wrong choice for whom?". The general population? Or the people in power? The biggest problem in our society is that we've fallen for the lie "in a democracy the general population rule and the system inherently works in their best interests". Democracy has nothing to do with taking care of the people. It can be used for that ... WHEN the general population realizes that it first has to BECOME a power player in the game of politics.

Simple enough--there is not enough time. Even if we were to stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere today, the global temperature change will exceed acceptable limits. If we continue with business as usual, substantial parts of the earth will become uninhabitable. Nothing on a global scale can be done in the twenty or thirty years. Collaborative global problem solving does not seem to work.

I agree, In fact you'd think conservatives forces would recognize that the greatest threat to the status quo is CC, and that they'd act in favor of saving the world if only because it will ensure their dominance.

Let nature do its thing.The fittest will survive.

Looking at the current state of things, I think you are guilty of wishful thinking. Survival of the fittest depends upon reproductive success over multiple generations. The time change need to adapt is not commensurate with the time scale leading to extinction.

Its only wishful thinking if you assume that humans are expected to survive. Will that happen? No idea? But even if humans survive then evolutionary pressure will eventually push them towards being a different species.

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