Hacker News Reader

Comment by necrotic_comp | Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand is what people who argue against climate change stand to gain.

The argument for climate change is: "humans are polluting the planet and it's causing a change in the environment and will have a disastrous effect on the climate." The arguments I hear against climate change always seem to concede that humans are polluting the planet, but argue in different ways (natural cycle/not really happening/etc.) that this pollution has no effect.

Even if this were true, why would it be a bad idea to reduce the level of pollution in the environment ? We know we're screwing up, why don't we do our best to clean it and make it usable for the next generations ?

View on HN

IMO, because admitting that climate change is reality would in consequence require massive, expensive, and hugely uncomfortable changes in one's lifestyle. Plus, not uncommonly, becoming de facto socially ostracised in at least some (though possibly all) of one's social circles. Also, there's not even some concrete "ozone layer hole" you could point your finger at, but rather some vague: "Some, though not all [FUD works, sorry to say :(], scientists say it will be warmer! Like whopping 2 degrees! No, no, you heard me right, that's a lot, and you don't want to be warmer, though it's kinda hard to explain, involves some complex theory or something..."

Exactly this. Plus some perceived unfairness because people who do not care about the environment have an advantage over you and also a better lifestyle.

People are afraid that this unfairness will leave them without money. There's a thought that if the US has laws to limit altering the climate, China (ever the bogeyman) will continue to pollute and have a crushing economic advantage because of it.

To be fair, it's not totally unfounded. It's just that going as-is will lead to a worse outcome for everyone in the long run. Perfect example of the tragedy of the commons.

>> massive, expensive, and hugely uncomfortable changes in one's lifestyle.

Why? The biggest climate change issue, carbon, doesn't require any lifestyle changes. Solar/wind/batteries + nuclear reactors can provide us with all the electricity we need. Cars/trucks can be electrified in the near term too, although there are non-electric green options too (fuel from captured carbon).

Maybe if your precious "lifestyle" involves rolling coal as you drive to you private jet to then go shoot some endangered lions. Maybe if your lifestyle involves a love of smokestacks or indulging a hypochondriac fear of that windmills will give you cancer. Those people will see an impact. But us normals can still drive cars and have air conditioning in our apartments.

> admitting that climate change is reality would in consequence require massive, expensive, and hugely uncomfortable changes in one's lifestyle.

I think you are right about people's thoughts on this.

But it's important to counter that it won't be massively expensive to switch away from fossil fuels, and will likely be cheaper. Decarbonization while maintaining lifestyles, and increasing the energy consumption of developing countries, will not require sacrifice from everyone. No, it simply means disrupting the usual energy sources with new technology, and fossil fuel companies are hugely influential, and have situated themselves deeeeeply within the power structures, especially after the energy crisis of the 1970s.

So because a very few investors have a lot of money at stake, and because they are so extremely influential, and so good at manipulating popular opinion, and even better at influencing power to act in favor of fossil fuels, we see very little action. The only tech missing from the decarbonization transition are some industrial processes like steel, ammonia, and concrete. We don't yet know if hydrogen or carbon capture will be better, or some other new chemistries. But it will be solvable and the worst case cost will not be drastic.

Renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels currently. Batteries are on their way to be cheaper than gas powered cars. Batteries are already cheaper than natural gas peakers, and will soon be cheaper than coal.

Christopher Clack's latest models, which model the electrical grid down to the distribution level along with weather patterns, show us a path to save lots of money while decarbonizing the electrical grid at the pace we need to. Yet nobody talks about this on the news, we only get paid PR to subtly tell us that we need fossil fuels. And in the Murdoch media empire, they are so far detached from scientific knowledge, and so deep in the pocket of narrow investment interests, that we have entire political tribes fighting against their own financial and survival interests, merely to help out fossil fuel investors.

Thanks for the great reply, with some new thoughts, but also reminding me of some thoughts I kept before but apparently forgot recently, argh. In particular, that individual people are just a tiny percentage polluter, and the main offenders are various industries (where the oil ones in particular purposefully shifted the blame in people's minds to individuals via strong PR). In fact, I long didn't see point in changing my lifestyle, as my "carbon footprint" (with even this being creative PR to shift blame to individuals) and other individual pollution is not really relevant quantitively speaking. Only recently I switched my thinking, in that although individuals' waste is technically irrelevant, displaying caring-about-nature actions and attitude can hopefully influence other people and thus create a "political climate" where politicians, to try and please people, start caring more about nature and as a result hopefully start pushing industries to switch away from polluting energy sources etc. Argh, I wish it was all simpler to explain and rally people behind.

Yeah, the economy is a hugely complex interplay of forces. Nobody is completely guilty, nobody is completely innocent. (I make an exception for agents that participate in intentional deception like fossil fuel companies. If the economy and democracy are information processing systems, employing deceptive PR to lie to the system is 100% bad).

I've come to view my own personal choices exactly as you. It's not as much about changing my personal footprint, as it is using my dollars towards investment in changing infrastructure.

I had to replace my 50 year old gas furnace last year, and it was suuuuper hard to get anybody to even propose a heat pump rather than natural gas. So I made sure to call tons of local HVAC places, and make sure that everyone that wouldn't bid on a heat pump knew that the reason I wasn't going with them was because of that. For deeply conservative, low-information and low-innovation parts of the economy like residential HVAC, it will probably take regulation for them to offer the better choices. But I can at least try to let them know that they would have a customer base if they ever decide to try something new.

> What I don't understand is why people who argue against climate change stand to gain.

I suspect it is something like psychological security (“I’ve only known a history of rapid progress and I’m not emotionally prepared to confront the possibility that life will be worse for my children and grandchildren, nor that I was complicit”).

At least that’s the average joe climate denier. For the very wealthy it’s simple greed. They’d rather ruin the world irreparably than pay taxes (this characterization doesn’t seem to do justice to the fact that their wealth is derived from cheating society by externalizing costs by way of pollution).

> For the very wealthy it’s simple greed.

It's greed for basically anyone above the poverty line. There's functionally no difference for wanting a better life for you and your children and to increase your wealth for what is, in the end, the same goal.

Unnecessarily driving an SUV, eating far too much meat and running the lines supplying peoples with those meat is morally not that different.

> Unnecessarily driving an SUV, eating far too much meat and running the lines supplying peoples with those meat is morally not that different.

At the very least it's a difference in degree. If we use wealth as a proxy for power then a given billionaire has at least the same political power as 10K median Americans. And of course the median American has expenses which constitute a much larger share of his income than that of our hypothetical billionaire, and they need to work such that they can't devote their full time and energy to climate problems while our billionaire can live a lavish lifestyle on capital alone.

Beyond that, I find it particularly ludicrous that there's no difference between being an end consumer and literally being at the helm of the supply chain. A consumer has virtually no ability to control the emissions involved in the supply chain while obviously the supply chain helmsmen very much do have that ability, and the creation, refinement, and transport of those goods is overwhelmingly the cause of those emissions in the first place. You might argue that consumers can choose low emissions products but we don't even have the ability to assess which products are "low emissions". And this isn't even touching the "advertising/promoting a carbon-intensive lifestyle" or lobbying to maintain a system that incentivizes pollution.

So while "not that different" is relative, I can't imagine anything more different than our hypothetical billionaire and median American. The idea that eating a cheese burger is morally equivalent to investing in and lobbying for the fossil fuel industry is nothing but repugnant ideology.

The supply chain is a symptom, not the disease. Our hypothetical billionaire could close down (or increase prices, for the same effect), but his piece would either be grabbed by another ruthless business man wanting to be a billionaire or simply merged with the existing competitors. Unless you make people change their lifestyle, closing carbon-intensive production lines is just playing whack-a-mole. So, in reality, he really has not that much more power than you.

And yes, you as a consumer can make a large difference. You can choose to not eat meat, not drive a car, buy your clothes from eco-friendly shops and dedicate your life to make a change. It's just not as convenient as saying 'rich man bad'. People who try can change the world - see beyond meat and Tesla for success stories. Not doing so, but instead chasing a life of personal wealth and well-being is, simply stated, greed. With different amounts of money involved, sure, but the exact same greed. People starving in Africa do not have a choice, yes - but we do. We just choose to blame 'better connected' people because it's easy.

I fully agree with you, however, that lobbying for the wrong thing is definitely bad and something that can be done far more effectively by billionaires. Still, it does not absolve you from your own failures.

> The supply chain is a symptom, not the disease. Our hypothetical billionaire could close down (or increase prices, for the same effect), but his piece would either be grabbed by another ruthless business man wanting to be a billionaire or simply merged with the existing competitors. Unless you make people change their lifestyle, closing carbon-intensive production lines is just playing whack-a-mole. So, in reality, he really has not that much more power than you.

That might be true if votes weren't for sale (lobbying, campaign contributions, etc), but they are and thus political power is proportional to wealth. Our hypothetical billionaire can advocate to preserve policies that allow him to profit by polluting the environment, which is to say plundering society (in that the environment is a shared resource--it belongs to all of society).

To use your metaphor, the disease is that there isn't a mechanism to decouple political power from wealth.

That's a failing on the side of our political system, but yes. We can definitely agree that using you power to lobby for the greater disadvantage is morally far worse than falling in line.

Yes, it is a failing on the side of our political system, but the political system sets the rules that constrain the market including whether or not corporations can pollute for free or rely on foreign pseudo-slave labor. And this means they have lobbied to maintain a market that penalizes companies who don’t exploit the environment and/or slave labor and due to a lack of transparency (i.e., there are virtually no reliable indicators to inform consumers how environmentally friendly or humaine a given product is—indeed many alleged certification programs are shams set up by industry groups to mislead customers into believing they are buying ethical products) make virtually everyone complicit. That’s a heck of a big difference between the hypothetical billionaire and the middleclass family struggling to keep a bit of buffer between themselves and poverty.

The wealthy will likely gain by climate change, already there is a wall of money looking to benefit from sustainable and transition finance.

Not so well off people might - correctly - see that they will be disproportionately hit. So for them to push against policies (perceived or in reality) making them poorer is not totally insane.

Tax carbon, then pay out what is collected evenly among all tax payers. The poor would stand to gain financially in that arrangement.

> The wealthy will likely gain by climate change, already there is a wall of money looking to benefit from sustainable and transition finance.

I can't tell what point you're making. Do you mean "the wealthy will likely gain by combatting climate change"? If so, no doubt some will benefit from it, but they won't benefit as much (in the short term) as they would if they continued to externalize costs into the environment.

> Not so well off people might - correctly - see that they will be disproportionately hit.

I don't buy this at all. There's no fundamental reason that carbon policies would disproportionately impact the lower and middle classes and indeed many of the policy proposals are expressly designed to minimize or negate the burden imposed on those classes. The only reason policies tend to increase the burden on those classes is because the upper classes lobby accordingly.

> What I don't understand is why people who argue against climate change stand to gain.

One of the larger problems is that to many people climate change has become a political issue instead of a physical phenomenon. Climate change is used as a lever to achieve political goals just like racial relations, gender confusion, migration questions and many other unrelated things. This has made it a political act to either affirm and reinforce anthropogenic climate change or relativise or deny it. Just like with the other mentioned issues this politicisation makes it much harder to come to rational conclusions and act upon them. The tactic of using one thing to try to force through other things - "climate refugees" (migration), "green new deal" (welfare state), "the great reset" (globalism) - only adds fuel to the metaphorical fire, making it even harder to act rationally.

Another big problem is that climate-related eschatology has a rich history of failed predictions which makes it rather easy to claim that the currently fashionable scenario will probably end up by the wayside just like all the previous failed predictions did. Add to that the exaggerated emotionally laden calls for action because "the world will go under/be uninhabitable in X years" (where X tends to be in the near, not far future) and the stage is set for the defence of any stance on the issue, from "everyone is going to die from climate change" to "the world will thrive like never before".

Christopher Hitchens mused about "how religion poisons everything" in his book "God is not great: how religion poisons everything" [1]. Were he still alive he could write a similar book on politics: "How Politics Poisons Everything". It would be a good read and it would not change the situation one whit, alas.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43369.God_Is_Not_Great

Having talked to climate change skeptics myself numerous times, you've hit the nail on the head. Wish I could upvote this more!

> why would it be a bad idea to reduce the level of pollution in the environment

For the record I do believe in climate change, and think we need to deal with it. But to answer your question, if climate change indeed _weren’t_ caused by human CO2 emissions, then why would atmospheric CO2 even count as pollution?

Combating climate change isn’t some simple and easy change. It would require people to dramatically change their way of life, usually for the worse (smaller dwellings, less AC, fewer children, less meat consumption, no non-essential international travel, etc.)

It wouldn’t be worth doing if atmospheric CO2 were benign.

Denial is strong in humans. You'd have to actually change your behaviour if you didn't deny it. You'd have to become responsible.

Because it would lead to hindering economic growth, especially in developing nations, more poverty, and more tyrannical governments.

And if your nation adopts those policies, and another one doesn't and increases, you're much worse off. It's basically a prisoner's dilemma on a geopolitical scale, and there's no single guaranteed strategy to win it.

Well said. There is a lot of surface level Greta Thunberg type activism but it is a bigger and trickier problem especially for those not in 1st tier countries

Because it means massive changes to everybody's lifestyle, and people will become poorer. It's not surprising that there is resistance to that.

We will become poorer one way or the other. One of them is definetly still the worst outcome, poor and boiled to death.

What if our best method of dealing with the consequences of climate change is further development? What if a clean environment is the product of industrialization?

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels shows how to think about energy and how to choose the best energy source: https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443

An interview with the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip3XoAKRKHs

The solution always eventually boils down to paying more in taxes. That's why it gets opposed.

What I don't understand is people who deny climate history. Facts are facts.

What I don't understand is HN readers who downvote statements like yours which should be common sense to intellects. Or maybe I do understand and am saddened by the way everything has been politicized here.

Agree here, if someone wants to offer points against majority climate change opinions, I say let them offer the points, and we can take those points and see what others think of them.

Not making a sacrifice viewed as unnecessary, presumably? No mitigating action is free.

Even on the opposite side you have to decide where to draw your line, how much to spend on tackling it; how much is enough, how much is a waste that could be spent on something else.

Pointing out inaccuracies isn't "arguing against climate change" or at least it doesn't have to be.

I don't see his post as a climate change denial. When you lie to make your argument you create deniers, because you have shown yourself to be untrustworthy.

The truth should be good enough, something that used to happen once a century is about to happen once a decade, then every few years...

Because it may cost a little money in the short term.

Or it may mean admitting politicians from a different viewpoint might be right.

"Costs money" is not an argument that is of much use - for an economy. Cost is income. It's a circle. Only when you apply the mindset of an individual does that cost avoidance mindset make sense. Then "costs" represent something really gone and lost. On a bigger scale though, if you want more income for more people you don't want to reduce "costs", quite the opposite.

The question for an economy is, does the flow of money lead to outcomes we want? I'd say if it flows through paths that lead to the growth of businesses that are good to reduce climate change impact that is something we want. On the other hand, if it flows through paths that lead to growth of purely financial constructs, wealth concentration (which also concentrates control, quite the opposite of the mantra of capitalism which is supposed to be freedom to do your own thing), or more unwanted telephone calls, or overpriced medicine, that's something where we would want to redirect some of the flow. For an economy, money is more about the flow, like blood. Where it passes things grow. So we want to look at the paths of the flows. "Cost" is of little use here. Of course, if you have a concrete thing you are looking at and want it to be more efficient cost again makes sense, but in this discussion here we are trying to make different kinds of decisions, where "cost" is less helpful, since we don't even have anything concrete that we want to make more efficient.

DISCLAIMER - These are the thoughts of someone not trained in (apart from a few semesters on the side while studying something technical) or working anything related to economics.

People don't want the new normal to be like in California and New York where rolling blackouts are the new normal due to unreliable green energy

>People don't want the new normal to be like in California and New York where rolling blackouts are the norm due to unreliable green energy

Huh? I live in New York and we've never had "rolling blackouts."

I can't speak to California, but in New York, no power failures due to "green energy" have ever happened here.

The few (half a dozen in the past 55 years or so) significant power outages here in New York have been due to regional grid failures and local failures due to severe weather events and/or equipment failure[0][1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_in_New_York

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy#United_States

Where, exactly, in New York are "rolling blackouts are the norm due to unreliable green energy"?

Somehow, while living in New York for the last 50+ years, I missed that.

https://pix11.com/news/local-news/power-outages-new-york-new... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/nyregion/nyc-energy-alert...

I don't mean to blame green energy for the grid not being able to handle the recent heat wave. But I do blame the closing of the Indian Point Nuclear power plant. Nuclear is a fantastic source of carbon neutral energy but plants are being shut down in both New York and California, without alternative energy sources in place to pick up the slack

From your first link:

>Con Edison urged customers across New York City and Westchester to conserve energy as much as possible, in an effort to avoid further outages due to equipment failure.

I can't speak to California as I don't live there, but your original statement about rolling blackouts in New York was flat wrong.

The recent issue in New York during the heat wave was about aging infrastructure and equipment failures, not "green energy" or the closure of Indian Point.

That might change in the future, but your statement that New York experiences "rolling blackouts" is just false.

In fact, there have never been rolling blackouts in New York. Ever.

I wholeheartedly agree that nuclear should be part of the mix and that in the absence of viable grid energy storage, solar and wind energy can't provide base load[0] power generation.

The strongest argument IMO is that the largest polluters are countries like China who will simply do nothing making our economic sacrifices nearly meaningless.

Then the relative economic benefit of ignoring climate change will further pump up the economies of countries like China who will then pollute more and gain more power, etc.

I don’t know what the solution is, if humans are even socially/politically capable of a solution, but make no mistake this is how it would play out if the western nations were all to take drastic measures against climate change.

Ultimately, the issue is that it is a competitive advantage to ignore climate change (right up until it’s too late), and global competition dictates our social evolution.

We may need green tech that is so overwhelmingly cost efficient that nobody will ever want to pollute again.

Didn't China pledge to go fully carbon-neutral by 2050 or something?

Per capita, China does way better than many other countries when it comes to carbon emissions. Yes, as a country, they're the largest contributor to global warming, but they also have the highest population in the world. Some countries like the United States release over twice as much CO2 per capita. As India gains a higher standard for its citizens, their emissions will quickly multiply the coming years from what is already a significant factor in worldwide emissions.

And to be fair, why would China or India care about becoming greener when the United States, with all of their wealth and power, can expel 16.1 tons per capita per year without repercussions while China gets told of for their 8.0 tons? Let alone India, with their meager 1.9 tons per capita; why people from these countries be expected to give up on the quality of life and luxuries when the Americans get off scot free?

The oil kingdoms won't be giving up their emissions any time soon, tiny, overpopulated islands won't either, but even large countries such as Australia, Canada and Estonia pump CO2 in the air at twice the rate of China.

Saying "China won't do it so what's the point" is just pandering to the polluting masses to pretend they can't do a thing to change the world. Telling people that it's okay to let the tyre fire burn itself out because there's a much bigger tyre fire four streets down is still a terrible idea.

People won't give up driving cars every day, they won't give up AC and they won't give up cheap plastic. The best we can do is probably what we're doing now, using "green" technologies to delay our inevitable demise by reducing the footprint.

Green alternatives that are cheaper or as cheap as traditional items won't be available because oil is dirt cheap and easy to produce, the infrastructure is already there and everything from gas to processed food depends on oil products.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com