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Comment by ciconia | Hacker News Reader

There's no two ways about it: economic growth means more ecological damage. Technology will not save us. IMO the only way to mitigate the onslaught of climate change is to do a controlled contraction of the world economy. If we do not do this willingly, nature will force it upon us.

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Sorry to see people downvote your statement, which is clear and obvious to those who can step outside the mainstream system and its values of material growth, externalizing costs, extraction, comfort, convenience, and efficiency.

Many cultures have thrived with complementary values of personal growth, responsibility, sustainability, meaning. purpose, and resilience. Those values reinforce each other just as much and lead to health and happiness just as much, with the added benefit of not destroying Earth's ability to sustain life and society.

Many people defend the former way for creating more material wealth, which they erroneously believe necessary for health and longevity. It also creates craving and addiction, not such great happiness.

The HN community is like Robert Moses and his engineers before Jane Jacobs, thinking building just one more highway will relieve all this traffic, not realizing their would-be solutions are creating bigger problems. I'll suffer the downvotes too, hoping at least a few will reconsider their devotion to a destructive culture anyone can see is making Earth unlivable, even if we happen to be living at peak extraction, enjoying the last of the abundance. We can switch cultures. Humans have done it before.

Well said.

> IMO the only way to mitigate the onslaught of climate change is to do a controlled contraction of the world economy

This straight up does not work, it's too late for that. It might be tempting as a philosophical thought but contraction just cannot work. It might have been a viable option in the 70s or 80s but we're past that point and it's too late to change the past emissions.

Even the Paris agreements are referencing carbon removal technologies because everybody realized that's the only viable solution at that point.

Why do you think contraction "just cannot work"? I think nobody really believes technology will not be part of the solution. Rather the question is if just technology will be able to solve the problem.

edit: added question mark

Because we still would be in trouble right now even if the emissions would reach an absolute zero. Additionally, contraction can make it worse because it destroys the budget needed for carbon removal.

I do agree that we've got some reduction of emissions during covid but the amount of public money spent to try to prop up the economy is massive across the world, I'm afraid that this will severely affect public spending for carbon removal technologies & public support for carbon taxes.

You are wrong. The earth is getting bombarded with free (as in money) energy from the sun at all times. It is a matter of logistics and political will to use that energy to its fullest extend. There can be prosperity and nature preservation at the same time thanks to technology.

My sister is building an off grid house right now with a huge solar array and a tesla power wall. If all goes well she won't have to pay for electricity, heating or gas for the car ever again.

If only this were that simple. To make electricity out of the sun's energy and in addition to store it, you need some materials coming from the depth of the earth: lithium, silicate, copper, iron, and I guess dozens of metals and rare earth metals. Have a look at how those are extracted, and the (fossil) energy used in extracting, refining, transporting and fabricating all those solar panels and batteries.

Clean power is often more expensive at least initially, contraction would not only kill people through poverty but also make the environment worse as jobs transition to agriculture and power is generated through things like Coal and Oil

Clean power is an easy jobs program. You can easily reduce income inequality by reducing unemployment and reap environmental benefits all at the same time.

I disagree. Framing the problem this way has denied us the low hanging fruit that technology has given us and we collectively refuse to pick them. The idea that we have to choose between one thing and the other when in reality we can easily have both. That's what's truly holding us back.

Okay, you first.

Being less facetious, we can grow the economy while reducing the resources we require with the right incentives in place.

I have already started doing it: less travel, less dining out (or take out), and generally spending less money. More work is to be done on household energy consumption and water consumption, but that's coming.

The most impactful thing you could do is refrain from reproducing, but that's generally not a popular suggestion.

Suicide is even more impactful. He should try it!

Isn't this something that is happening without people even caring about the environmental benefits?

This is factually untrue.

We need to stop pretending that nature will survive. Once you start treating the natural world as just another finite resource all sorts of policies become common sense.

For example an oxygen tax to keep enough land set aside for plants of some description. Or better yet, fusion based co2 scrubbers.

How do you imagine killing nature? We could not do that even if we declared is a as sole goal of the humanity.

Nature will survive. Plants might not, humans definitely won't, but given the extremes at which we've found life on Earth it's obvious something will, even if it's just bacterial colonies in hydrothermal vents deep under the ocean.

Life... uh.. finds a way.

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