There is no ‘getting back to normal’ with climate breakdown – Mark Blyth | Hacker News Reader

There is no ‘getting back to normal’ with climate breakdown – Mark Blyth

theguardian.com

41 pointslisper12 comments

The only hope is massive political pressure on our leaders. If enough people force our leaders to force change on all of us, then we stand a half a chance. I wish this was a hopeful situation. It is not. If this were a war, we would be badly losing. We are effectively sending our children into the deadly hands of our enemies.

There is massive political pressure on our leaders. Unfortunately It's not from the electorate, its from the people who live in the lobby (of 6 star hotels).

If you're losing a war badly, one of the first things to look at is changing tactics. Climate change activists don't seem capable of this. If they want to win this war, come up with a different strategy and new tactics. This one isn't working.

This response is infuriating. Pretend it's not that bad? No one feels the need to do anything. Be realistic about how bad it is? The people who believe you get too depressed to do anything while the others call you alarmist. What "strategy" would you propose?

I kind of agree with parent poster.

Currently the message could be summarized thus: "Everything bad you see in the news is due to climate change, if you don't stop driving and using straws, we're all gonna die!!"

People don't believe that and if they do, they're like, well, were done. What can I do, I'm only one.

Instead they should be aiming at the number one culprits, industrial processes and population growth... but they don't do pop growth because it's touchy because it would affect some countries more than others, they don't touch industry because... I don't know, but we know the consumer end of this is not the low hanging fruit or the most impactful target, yet this is where they spend their time and money.

They also like attacking big oil from the 70s because they influenced bad policies (granted) but speak nothing of activists who killed Nuclear (I guess few would own up to their own mistakes) --which would have dampened fossil fuel use.

Well the solutions that are screamed at me involve me giving up my car, my gas range, most of the electronics I find enjoyable, any and all non-essential activities, traveling, etc. In addition to moving into a city with overcrowding public transit (you think it's bad now?) with rapidly increasing crime, more expensive _everything_ is just not something that really gets me in the mood to just say "YEAH, LET'S DO IT! Wait, why am I the only one doing it and suffering?"

I don't think forcing people into suffering (because it is) is a very appealing argument.

What do you suggest? Bombing the lobby of Exxon Mobil HQ?

In Alberta we had this guy named Weibo Ludwig. He was a pastor who, with his congregation went to homestead in northern Alberta, on a property near some natural gas wellheads.

His sheep started having miscarriages, and then later members of his congregation started having them as well. Efforts to address the matter through legal channels went nowhere so they blew up some wellheads.

As hated as he is in Alberta, he did more to prompt real environmental reform than, well, anybody.

We need more valve turners and action along those lines. Fortunately or unfortunately too many of us have too much to lose.

Well, I often post about the macroeconomic benefits of fiscal stimulus and CO2 taxes.

The idea that fighting climate change is bad for the economy must die.

Overly simplified: The working economy runs out of money as money concentrates in corporations and the wealthy. Salaries can't be paid at the small business end. Unemployment is pretty much guaranteed. The government pours more money into the economy to alleviate the shortage of money.

What should you pour it on? Schools? Roads? Bridges? Research? Out of ideas? Put the rest into fighting climate change.

The funny part is that it doesn't even require you to believe in climate change. Renewables are cheaper. Electric cars will last longer. Although grid storage is not essential, it would be amazing to have energy storage in the electric grid to prevent blackouts. It would also encourage goal directed research which is much easier than blindly guessing the next big thing.

Now, if it turns out all that climate change noise is true and you end up saving the planet, then think about the profits you would make compared to the business as usual scenario which would obviously have the risk of massive loss of GDP.

In the past three weeks, US citizens sent over 40,000 messages to their senators to ask them to support a carbon price. Citizens Climate Lobby is now doing the same thing with the House of Representatives: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/house/

This is one of the best chances we've had in a long time to pass some serious climate legislation. A majority of Americans of both major parties are in favor.

It's too late tonight, but I'm personally setting an alarm to call and email tomorrow!

Sweet. So I’ll move to New Zealand. All the strategies everyone has come up with so far are all in the “If we could all get together and agree to do” class, which I don’t have much hope for.

Thanks for the fish.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com