Hacker News Reader

Comment by bookofsand | Hacker News Reader

To a first, second and third approximation:

poor = small energy footprint

rich = large energy footprint

Assuming the problem is that the global energy consumption is too large, the last thing we want is to increase the energy footprint of the people we already have. Moving people from poor countries to rich countries means greatly increasing those people energy footprint. It is in direct contradiction to the stated goal of reducing the energy footprint of humanity, and serves as a strongly visible signal that the ruling class is not serious about reducing global emissions.

View on HN

If the solution to climate change must involve keeping large numbers of people poor or making existing people poorer, it will fail due to populist backlash and nothing will be done.

There is only one possible solution: replace CO2-intensive power sources like fossil fuels with low or zero CO2 power sources like nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and solar energy. If that can't be done fast enough, well enough, or affordably, then we should plan and prepare for climate change as a certainty.

We have the technology (solar, wind, nuclear, grid scale batteries, HVDC long range transmission lines, EVs), but do not have the political will. This is largely because the fossil fuel industry is powerful enough to block serious efforts, and because national economic and military competition incentivizes nations to defect from any CO2-reducing strategy and exploit cheap fossil fuels to get ahead quickly.

The solution to climate change requires indeed keeping large numbers of people poor and making existing people poorer. And it will fail indeed because of populist backlash. We should plan indeed for climate change, though not sure what to personally do beyond buying a praying book (100% dead serious).

Sobering: As of 2021, there is no 'western lifestyle' country on the face of the Earth that has emissions in line with the requirements of the Paris accord emissions, which is about 2.5 CO2 t/year/capita for a global population of 10 billion (2050 estimate). Even countries like Sweden, Switzerland of France, which are >90% nuclear & renewable in their electricity production, still have 4.5, 4.7 and 5.1 t CO2 t/year/capita. I have yet to hear concrete proposals of where the 50% cuts should come from, other than large scale technologies that have not been developed yet.

That doesn’t work. Poor people have more children, negating any savings, and as we agree it’s politically a non-starter.

It’s also hypocritical. “Could you do us a favor and stay poor to help solve this problem we mostly created?” That will get a big “fuck you.”

I am curious about the statistics you’re quoting. If 90% of power is electricity they are probably counting petrol cars and possibly the embodied energy in products manufactured abroad. It shows why the entire energy system must be converted and it must be global. If it’s not global rich countries will just outsource polluting industry and poorer countries will be happy to burn cheap fossil fuels to make money selling products back.

… but I am also pessimistic. We may eventually get there but not before serious weather changes that cause a lot of disruption.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com