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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

Unflinching confidence in the smashing success of an unproven speculative technology to be a silver bullet savior in some currently unspecified Hail Mary pass at the global scale is equally problematic.

For instance, this pathogen is currently whipping us pretty good for such a master of the universe civilization. It would have been far worse before modern science but we aren't exactly living in a Gene Roddenberry fever dream.

Our grasp and control of things is tenuous, fragile, narrow, and sometimes, completely imagined. These times, like all others, call for both a pessimism of the intellect And an optimism of the will.

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Not to mention, carbon capture these days is mostly about capturing emissions at source, not about distilling CO2 out of the atmosphere at large. It doesn't work very well, either.

Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere will be energy-intensive and inefficient. Where are we going to get all this spare energy to scrape back the disastrous consequences of releasing a well-mixing destructive greenhouse gas? Uh, solar panels? Nuclear? A trillion trees? Spending energy on such CO2 extraction will literally have no economic value. And we're going to fund that how?

We don't do anything now because it is easier to put it off till later. In the future, the humans should be wealthier on average, and have access to better technology.

But even then, it will always be easier to put it off till later. What generation is going to take a significant, and eventually massive, charge in order to help their grandchildren? It seems not unlikely that no generation does, the problem gets worse and worse, wealth stagnates and then starts to decline, and eventually the problem is unsolvable. This could happen even without any climate tipping points.

The Moderna vaccine was designed on January ~12 2020. All problems since have been social rather than technical. And if Balaji Srinivasan was head of the FDA we'd all have been vaccinated by December last year.

That was a rhetorical device to emphasize our buildings still crumble from earthquakes, our villages still get consumed by fire and our cities are still evacuated by flood.

The damoclean sword of nuclear apocalypse still hangs by a thread despite our best efforts and 25 years of international meetings on climate has produced only platitudes and promises.

Coal plants are still being constructed and oil pipelines are still being built, intended to last decades past the dates we promise to dismantle them all, and the world goes on.

Now is not the time to be lulled into confidence by a perceived competence and strength lest we cheerlead ourselves into an abyss. Civilization persistence and failure are both fair bets to make.

We can not rely on the greatness of people yet born to save humanity from the burdens caused by our current lack of will. There will be no future of superheros. We must address the problem at a scale that matches the insanity of the circumstances because they will only become increasingly insane without our immediate and swift remediations. Intentions are fatal where actions are required.

> That was intended as a rhetorical device to emphasize our buildings still crumble from earthquakes

When did a building in Tokio crumble from an earthquake last time? Long-long-long time ago for a place where earthquakes are almost daily experience.

The fact that US infrastracture is poorly designed and mantained does not say anything about our technology and capabilities, it only tells us that our social and political systems suck. In some places of that planet.

Technology isn't gifted to us by the God Prometheus descending from Mount Olympus. It is always a product of social and political systems; long chains of teams trying to dance together. Every shiny marvel you interact with has countless human institutions, passions and pains hidden behind it. Ultimately it's people all the way down.

Fetishizing an imagined perfection is ultimately of benefit to no one.

And to answer your question, Fukushima Daiichi did not respond with perfect grace and aplomb as an uninterrupted unflappable marvel of technological perfection effortlessly absorbing the tectonic sways

Can I move the goal post to that other place in Japan, the one with a nuclear plant, or are we cherry picking facts to ignore reality and the larger picture, pretending everything's okay ?

> When did a building in Tokio crumble from an earthquake last time?

Not exactly Tokyo, but nearby Touhoku region suffered devastatingly with entire cities being levelled a mere ten years or so ago.

The technology that enabled mRNA vaccines took more than a few decades to get to this point.

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