Comment by rdm_blackhole | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdm_blackhole | Hacker News Reader

Carbon pricing and carbon offsets are the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a patient dying of blood loss because its legs have been cut off.

By all accounts its already too late to stop the warming of the planet and we will have to learn to live with the consequences of our actions for the foreseeable future.

Even with wildfires raging across the northern hemisphere this year and in the southern hemisphere last year we keep on digging more coal and oil from the ground.

We keep on acting as if its business as usual. Move along, nothing to see here.

And no, renewable energy is not going to save us. We wont even reach 45% of renewable energy production worldwide for another 20 years at best.

Our global population keeps on increasing and we are depleting our natural resources at an ever faster pace than before therefore increasing deforestation and carbon emission.

All of this done in order to satisfy the need for our economies to grow no matter what the cost on our habitat is, and threatening a million species of animals/insects in the process.

There is a garbage island in the pacific and there will be soon more plastic in the ocean than fish. What a depressing thought.

If only we were the rational creatures that we think we are, maybe we would stop this madness and realize that we are driving at full speed towards a cliff.

I am afraid there is no hope for us.

What do you suggest we do?

We need to start reducing our carbon emissions aggressively within the next 5 years. We need to stop destroying forests and plant trillions of trees.

We also need to stop thinking that renewable energy will save us. It wont. Maybe in 50 years, but its already too late as of now.

We need to stop ICE cars from being sold within the next 5 years and we need to start decreasing our population to reach a natural equilibrium with our global ecosystem.

Its time for the leaders of this world to acknowledge that we are in danger as a species.

It's time to call a spade a spade and its time to stop having pointless debates about climate change. Its time to act.

This is too romantic. Politicians invest most of their time in maintaining their power. (even in democracies) Policies are just things that happen on the job.

If you can maintain power by doing the exact opposite of your position then that is exactly what is going to happen. The conservative German party CDU gets 30% in Germany because people don't want things to change. The CDU is well known for pretending to care about the environment and then not doing anything, their voters don't see a problem in that, they like it that way.

> We need to start reducing our carbon emissions aggressively within the next 5 years.

Just need to point out that a price on carbon is a mechanism for achieving exactly this. The goal is to make emitting energy sources expensive enough that people shift to carbon free alternatives wherever possible.

I don't know you of course, but I think it could be good for you to talk to a doctor about depression.

Not OP, but I don't think this is such an irrational point of view. We're already seeing the effects of climate change; it's no longer the looming danger in "the future", it's something we deal with today. It's not so much that we can't do anything to try, technically speaking, it's that we most likely won't, for two reasons in particular. Firstly, we're trading a short term loss for a long term benefit. At a societal level, organized around quarters, financial years and terms of office, this is a hard sell. It's quite literally evolution. Some people alive today will never see the benefit of combatting climate change, so why should they, in their rational self-interest, support any action against climate change? Secondly, climate change is a global problem that needs a global solution. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything unless everyone everywhere does something, but it is essentially the diplomatic equivalent to the prisoner's dilemma. No nation wants to make the hard sacrifices necessary alone, which would only put them at a severe disadvantage, possibly for no benefit at all. It's also something that can be infinitely postponed into the future until one day it's too late.

In summary, climate change is a human problem, not a technological one. Technology has changed a lot and continues to do so, but the fundamentals of human psychology haven't really changed. We know of the problem, we have the technology to solve it, to the extent that it can be solved, but not the will and coordination to do so. Yet what reason do we have to believe that this will change in the future?

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

A political will is definitely lacking. One thing we cannot say, when the last forest has been cut down or was burned down during the soon to be longer summer months, when the food chains start collapsing due to the death of trillions of insects, is that we did not know.

We knew as far back as the 80s that this was going to happen but too often the human species likes to bury its head in the sand until its too late.

There is no reason to think that this will change anytime soon.

We, in tech like to think about technological solutions to a problem. In this case the tech is here. Its affordable, but we are not embracing it as we should.

Instead of committing to net zero in 2050, we should do the transition in less than a decade and then start capturing CO2 from the atmosphere after that. Yet here we are debating if we should or not start trading carbon credits between ourselves, as if there is nothing better to do.

>We, in tech like to think about technological solutions to a problem. In this case the tech is here. Its affordable, but we are not embracing it as we should.

Even when it makes financial sense people may be attached to the old way of doing things. They may drive an ICE car because they want to complete their 500 mile trip with one tank even though charging on the way only delays the trip by 30 minutes, something which is possible today.

There are inferior ways of achieving a goal that don't harm the planet. They often require a small sacrifice but they are possible today. When someone insists on an ICE because of a difference in range, they insist that engineers solve the impossible e.g. carbon capture [0] even though a possible solution exists.

That is the real problem. We collectively decide to create a problem that is impossible to solve and then we point at the engineers. They are already solving problems, you know, the solvable ones.

[0] By that I mean enough carbon capture to undo all the pollution that we didn't even try to prevent.

It's not that it's irrational, it's that this is how depressed people think and write.

Of course, I know nothing about OP, have no professional knowledge, and could be way off. I just thought mentioning it might push someone to seek help. I won't mention it again.

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Climate change is a hard problem, but not for the reasons you give. To me, it's mainly a "Collective Action Problem". I, my city, my state, or my country may do our part of what's needed to solve the problem, but it won't be worth anything if the rest of the world doesn't join in.

Worse, our sacrifices makes the problem less urgent for other regions, who can "free ride" on our efforts.

If there was "local global warming", and changing California's emissions would fix California's weather, I think it would long since be handled, despite the long term nature of the benefits.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/collective-action-problem-1...

Thank you but I am not depressed. I am a realist. This is simply the sad state of affairs that we find ourselves in.

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