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Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

Option d) technology and good government policies enables a low/no carbon future.

It'd be nice if a no carbon future would be within reach but as far as I know, we do not have the technology to make this happen. Acting as if it's just a matter of time until we do... well, that is nothing short of a high-stakes gamble. Furthermore, we already have too much CO2 in the atmosphere -- even if we'd go no carbon _today_. We will need to actively remove it before we have passed too many ecological tipping points from which there may not be a return to the status quo.

We do have the technology. It's called nuclear energy.

That's only part of the solution. Energy generation makes up ~25% of emissions, agriculture, manufacturing, transport, etc. make up the other 75%. All of these will increase as the 3rd world industrialises.

> We do have the technology. It's called nuclear energy.

No, we do not. Nuclear energy is by no means emission-free.

> There is no such thing as a zero- or close-to-zero emission nuclear power plant. Even existing plants emit due to the continuous mining and refining of uranium needed for the plant. Emissions from new nuclear are 78 to 178 g-CO2/kWh, not close to 0.

-- Mark Z. Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University

https://www.leonardodicaprio.org/the-7-reasons-why-nuclear-e...

Certainty e) incarnate as somebody else for many lifetimes to come

Rationale: If you acknowledge you are alive and conscious reading this, why would this experience be something unique. Especially if everybody else reports the same? If not, why keep you alive?

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