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Comment by qart | Hacker News Reader

Which country do you live in? What is your average yearly per-capita CO₂ and CH₄?

Anyway, I welcome you to India. Stay here for a few years. Live through peak summers with power-cuts due to load shedding. And then repeat your message.

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I live off grid in Portugal. My power comes from solar, wind and hydro, and I retrofitted our ancient hilux to be fully electric, charged here off our renewables. We grow 95% of our own food, the rest comes from less than 10km away, heat in the winter from the hydro, and make do and mend whenever possible, while reforesting degraded agricultural land with mixed native species. I haven’t been more than 20km from here in nearly two years. None of this is a sacrifice - it’s a pleasure beyond measure to be here doing this.

I recognise that this is currently a privileged position - the upfront costs aren’t insignificant - it has cost us about €100k to achieve this degree of low-impact living - but it doesn’t have to be that way.

It’s perfectly possible to direct investment in a direction other than massive centralised and industrialised growth, which incurs the problems you describe, and simultaneously provide a better quality of life for the majority. You could subsidise rooftop solar, or local hydroelectric projects, or passive cooling systems, or subsidise people to nurture nature, and both provide energy and cut energy consumption in one fell swoop. India has the opportunity to make good decisions, rather than becoming burdened by what seem like good decisions now, but are bad decisions in the long term. It’s a shame to see that opportunity squandered.

I always thought we just had shitty transformers that would constantly blow up.

Nope. Those are local problems, like when your road doesn't have power, but the next road does. Load shedding is announced days in advance and publicized in newspapers.

You're saying that as if there are no alternatives to coal. India could build solar panels or nuclear power instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta...

India is already building plenty of solar parks. We still need a lot more power.

Then build even more?

> "While India is committed to add more capacity through non-fossil sources of generation, coal-based generation capacity may still be required to be added in the country as it continues to be the cheapest source of generation," the NEP draft read.

I don't want to wear a hair shirt while people in other countries wear the finest silks.

India is going to be hit really hard by climate change too. Coal is only the cheapest option if you don't count the costs of climate change.

Yes, India is going to be hit really hard by climate change too. So please reduce your own CO₂ and CH₄ contributions. Indians are not the problem here. You are welcome to talk about India as a problem once your own per capita contributions are in the same ballpark as that of Indians.

Every ton of carbon is part of the problem. The climate doesn't care where it's emitted.

Good, so I invite you and your countrymen to spend a few years in India, and live like the average Indian. Take back the lessons to your own country. Hopefully, we can conquer this climate change problem together. If you don't like India, that's fine too. There are many other countries with low greenhouse gas lifestyles.

We will, and we will leave you in the dust with our superior energy infrastructure.

These kind of comments just make me laugh. I hope someday you'll get off of your high-horse and would see the world as it is and not from your already privileged position. It's for your own good at the end. Till then good luck decreasing your per capita emissions.

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