Hacker News Reader

Comment by sumedh | Hacker News Reader

If I am not mistaken container ships are the biggest polluters. Why not focus on the main issue?

No. They do emit a lot of sulfur oxides. Not as much as power generation but still a lot. Sometimes this gets simplified to container ships are 'one of the' biggest polluters. Which is pretty misleading since 'one of the' is such a weak phrase, doubly so when simplifying it down to a specific type of pollution.

Why only focus on the main polluter and not... all of the sources? They all have to be cut back to zero asap.

Yes that sounds good on paper but unfortunately real life does not work that way.

I am talking about a practical solution instead of focussing on 100 different things how about we focus on the main thing because right now the status quo isnt helping.

There is no "main issue". Carbon emissions are everywhere and they all have to be tackled simultaneously.

So are they being tackled simultaneously right now?

Yes. More than 5 people work on climate change projects. They can definitely handle 2 projects at a time.

So has there been any progress made so far which can reverse the warming?

They may be able handle 2 projects at a time but its of no use if its too late.

> Why not focus on the main issue?

This is a very common answer and attitude in general, that I find terrible. Even if something represents 5% of the pollution compared to another 60% source, it's worth focusing on those 5% (just random numbers for the example)

Its a common answer because its practical. Saying we should work on the 5% sounds good on paper but it does not work in real life. So instead be practical and focus on the main thing (whatever that is) and go from there.

It's easier for a bunch of different teams to individually to tackle 5% problems. Even if some of them fail it's fine. And if you add up all of their improvements it's quite a lot. Whereas if you decide that one thing is the "main issue" and that turns out to be wrong later, you've wasted a lot of time and resources.

"it does not work in real life" What makes you assert so? Our experiences and the acceleration of climate changes shouldn't make us too assertive or negative, but rather humble and devoted to help the environment. It's a huge optimization problem, small gains are big gains. The average person lifestyle is quite a nonsense: an electric toothbrush+razor+vacuum cleaner and many other unnecessary devices, cosmetic products/makeup wrapped in plastics, a car and house with air conditioning, pets(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#cite_note-8), plane travels for holidays, 500kg of trash per year. All this should be optimized, from the smallest to the largest sources of pollution. I started with myself: I don't do any of the things listed above, my yearly garbage is 10 empty plastics bags of rice, and a few soap bars, toothpaste, bike tubes wrappings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com