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Comment by DoingIsLearning | Hacker News Reader

It's unfortunate you are being downvoted because you have a lot valid points.

> If we are to survive climate change we would have to cull all politicians and dirty industry leaders. They have so much power over the world and don;t give a fuck about next generation.

I agree this is the inevitable end of this trajectory. Eventually there will be environmental extreme groups that will target fossil fuel leaders.

Controversially, ignoring the ethical aspects of this, it would be an incentives equalizer to precipitate real climate regulation. Currently there is no incentive to do so, this dynamics would change with a palpable fear of immediate injury/death.

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Or perhaps we could allow obtaining of some carbon credits through carbon capture / sequestration, and tighten the emissions cap. For 4% of global GDP you could stop/compensate global co2 emissions based on current carbon capture technology's prices per ton of co2 removed. [1] If there were a business case for CCS, the cost would come further down. Currently there is no profit in it.

One would need to restrict the allowed methods to safe and scalable ones (like extraction from seawater, not ocean seeding).

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GmWpFCjh0Fk for prices and methods + https://www.mcc-berlin.net/fileadmin/data/clock/carbon_clock... + simplistic back of envelope calculation (assumes cost scales up linearly)

> Or perhaps we could allow obtaining of some carbon credits through carbon capture / sequestration,

Except companies will go for the cheapest possible solution that “counts” for carbon credits, which is probably entirely fraudulent.

So don't have those fraudulent solutions?

See off-shore accounting and special tax jurisdictions, for a solid track record on Humans not having fradulent solutions (specially when profit is at stake).

Carbon credits are a joke. Its basically "so I'm clean over here which means I can be dirty over there! Profit!"

Carbon credits are like paying someone else to not commit adultery so that you can commit adultery guilt-free.

Carbon credits are a mechanism by which excessive pollution is supposedly legitimized by other actions. It's a rather nefarious scheme IMHO. We should treat the activities of governments, companies and other organizations in a disaggregated fashion: Pumping out CO_2 and other pollutants into the air should be penalized, and engaging in CO_2-and-methane-sequestering activity (e.g. forestation) should be encouraged, independently of one another.

Sorry, i dont think that is a good idea.

Its like telling me that its ok if a company shits in my garden and then donates some money to the public cleaning fund.

I dont want to have trash in my garden or deal with shit from companies.

We are actively trashing this planet for younger generations. To feel good we say, no problem to companies if they donate some money to charities or organizations which do some cleanup.

Why allow companies to pollute in first place ?

Oh wait, because of lobbies.

Never Mind.

Politicians in general are no longer accountable to the public. I've long thought that some tarring and feathering is overdue.

That's only because the public keeps re-electing them and their parties regardless of what they do. It's the voters who are not holding politicians accountable.

Current days political campaigning is pure emotional control. And its in a runaway effect state.

Politicians, backed by professional PR companies who in turn are based on sociology/psychology and years of studies, can pull on emotional strings of people who are already self identify into entrenched positions. Using emotions is clearly easier and more powerful way of getting votes. The only way to win is to play their game, and that costs a lot of money.

Its a fools game to try convince anyone with facts, it simply doesn't work. Thats why anti vaccines, flat earth etc are so rampant today. The more you reason with those type of people the more you entrench them.

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted because that’s exactly what they’re doing. I worked for a company that was being paid to work out how best to manipulate people into certain political outcomes by trying things and measuring results. Of course they didn’t market themselves as that. I quit when I worked out what they were doing.

Interested in hearing more about your story if you're willing to share.

I’d probably get fucked over if I mention names which would be required. Not very nice people.

"trying things and measuring results"

do you mean plain jane A/B testing?

Nope much more insidious. A/B testing is statistically random. This thing dangled the desirable result down a path of rewards to attempt to reprogram people into accepting version A while discarding version B, then measuring which method to do so was more effective.

And that's only because for-profit media outlets owned by the bourgeoisie control the “narrative” and have huge power to influence people's electoral decisions.

Regardless, writing X in a box every four years is hardly a “democracy”.

You can find causes for causes all the way back in the chain. But voters are human beings with independent agency to act according to their own wishes. They have the ability to break the chain of causation if they want. And they don't. So it's their fault.

It's the same way that you can't say a child abuser isn't responsible for his crimes because he was abused himself as a child. Yes, that's a factor that contributed to his actions, but he's still responsible for his own actions no matter how difficult the decision is.

Yes, voting every 4 years is a democracy. It might not be direct democracy but direct democracy has serious problems and you probably wouldn't want it.

"No longer"? When were they accountable to the public? To public opinion, sure, but we still have opinion polls and politicians in most Western countries spend a lot of money on trying to shape that. But accountability is incompatible with centralization and multiple layers of delegation.

There's also the rather obvious conflict of interest between politicians needing/wanting money and politicians being supposed to represent the will of the people (rather than the will of those who can give them a lot of money). That police officers aren't being bribed doesn't mean we don't have corruption. We just have corruption with Western characteristics.

> It's unfortunate you are being downvoted because you have a lot valid points.

that tends to happen around here. valid points don't matter, only group think get upvoted

Totally agree. Just that I probably mean another group.

Its incredible how common it is that people picture themselves as self-thinking individuals who came to their conclusions by doing their own research ... and then repeat all the standard talking points by some other group.

What valid points, mass murder or some space station from a movie?

It was the same old nonsense with no actual solutions.

- Germany closing down Nuclear meant a greater dependency on Carbon emitting energy sources with no down time (Coal and even more so Gas)

- Nord Stream 2 is a project that will further allow Germany to burn more Gas cheaper (more emissions) and become geopoliticaly more dependent on Russian infrastructure

- The EU loses geopolitical strength if it is unable to cut ties with Russia as an escalation counter-measure (Because it's biggest net contributor actually needs Russian gas to keep the lights on).

- Just like you have had extreme groups and extremist recruitment/propaganda forming around other divisive issues, it is inevitable that some form of environment related extremism will evolve in particular when populations start to become displaced. The obvious target of such groups would be fossil fuel industry leaders and lobbyists.

Controversially, ignoring ethical aspects, you could eliminate most violent crime by killing off the poorest people in each country. You could prevent child abuse by killing children. You could encourage any kind of behavior you want by randomly killing people who disobey your demands. Wouldn't life be great if you were an authoritarian dictator with no morals.

(Reductio ad ridiculum, doesn't allows to have a very meaningful discussion)

Sure. But neither does inciting murder. Some problems can't be solved just by being angry enough to kill people you hate. The oil industry will continue no matter who you kill or how dangerous it becomes because everyone and their dog will be throwing money at whoever can supply oil.

I am too old and cynical to be angry at anybody, my point was that (ignoring ethical matters) the likely spawning of environmental extreme groups would act as an incentive equalizer for the current status quo.

There is too big of an asymmetry with the current situation: profits, tax incentives, lobbying, and regulatory capture. This is not something that the average person can address from within the existing judiciary system.

At the moment you will need either something that will make carbon emissions unprofitable, or an epiphany from those abusing the status quo, that would lead to de facto climate regulation. Neither of those will happen without some incentive (positive or negative).

Apart from the fact that this is logical fallacy, all your examples are not civilisation ending scenarios.

If we both are on a cliff face and you fell off, and now you are dangling connected by rope to only me. Standard movie trope.

Now because of your weight my only options are to cut the rope - you die, or wait and we both die. This is more accurate example we are talking about here, not killing poor people because 'crime'.

Also I would like to point out that poor people are not root cause of crime. So you are not tackling actual problem, only applying band-aid solutions. But that's a tangential topic.

> all your examples are not civilisation ending scenarios.

Neither is climate change, is it? Unless there's some research I haven't heard about, I think you're doing science denial misinformation spouting.

> Unless there's some research

At this stage this is trolling.

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