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Comment by dogman144 | Hacker News Reader

I read Ministry for the Future lately, and minor faults aside, the book made me take climate change seriously-seriously. I’m not sure what I’d do about engaging with that yet though with my current career path*.

B/t reading that book and it reflected in news like this and related events at the COP, seems like we’re in for a rough go.

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Sounds like you are in a similar place to me. I recently became a father and I feel that I need to work on this problem the best way I can. I have my little startup and I expect to keep running that for another few years but I have started a background thread in my head looking into how I can best apply my particular skillset to helping tackle climate change.

I had a chat with a woman named Laurie McGinley who coaches people in that situation and she gave me a bunch of resources that I am slowly consuming. I can highly recommend talking to her if you are considering it as well. https://vialucent.com/

thanks for the rec!

take care not to get sucked into a cult!

Kurzgesagt made a video about it, and they say, and I agree with them, the answer can only be political pressure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

They also mentioned the stat that if 1 person lived totally carbon neutral for 70 years, that would offset only 1 second of current global CO2 emissions, which I'm going to presume is sourced properly.

I'm not very optimistic. Politicians follow the polls and go with what's popular, and if the people living in the rich nations have to pay more to fly to Asia for cheap holidays, and iPhones, etc, get more expensive because of carbon tax, the majority probably won't support the governments and will instead vote in populist idiots that will make things "great again". In the poorer countries, being told that the decades-old luxuries they've envied from richer nations will cost more because of government policies will also not be popular, never mind that the policies are meant to save the future.

> They also mentioned the stat that if 1 person lived totally carbon neutral for 70 years, that would offset only 1 second of current global CO2 emissions, which I'm going to presume is sourced properly.

That's a strawman's argument and in theory would apply to anything in the context of overall society if it was true which is clearly not the case. Because if you really lived completely carbon neutral for decades, you'd probably appear in dozens of TV shows and magazines will have exclusive interviews for you. (Not sure if it's exactly NYT, but you'll sure attract interest) So other people see that and realize: wow, it's actually possible to survive for decades in a carbon neutral way.

In reality it wouldn't be that extreme but it's always a domino effect: your colleagues, friends and family see what you do and be at least lightly influenced by it. Be it just the fact that you do something that people thought would be not possible.

After all, that's how democracy works and how movements grow. It's not that your vote only depends on the campaigns but also on your peers' opinion. It's not that movements in the past haven't been succeeding.

I'd argue this is demonstrably false if you include modern societies and even individuals that already greatly inconvenience themselves (or deny themselves in the first place) the ability to have large carbon footprints. The Amish come to mind but otherwise very orthodox religious societies and even some organic farmers you could argue are pretty carbon neutral. If anything they are the opposite of looked up to in pop culture.

> If anything they are the opposite of looked up to in pop culture.

Maybe not by their own initiative but I mean there are countless YouTube videos among them and Amish versions of popular songs as well as Southpark and Family guy episodes depicting Amish life style. Our media has quite a bias towards extreme life styles...

I don't get how it's a strawman? I'll vote for the toughest pro-environmental policies and parties (but give us nuclear power as well!), but without economic pressures (so higher carbon/consumption tax) I won't change my behavior, because I think my effect will be negligible and I'd just be like the Amish, being pious while others enjoy. (Basically tragedy of the commons).

I mean in the US there are only 2 political parties over 1% anyway, so these policies cannot be very tough especially if these are without any pressure. It's quite an irony actually since the idea of a small state is so popular yet it's not being driven forward. On-and-off I'm since 15 years using private energy providers using exclusively solar, water and wind. It's a bit more expensive but negligible compared to other expenses.

> I won't change my behavior, because I think my effect will be negligible and I'd just be like the Amish, being pious while others enjoy.

Well yes, but this is what I mean, the Amish have an effect. Yet I don't think it's not necessary to live like an Amish. Probably it's fine to just pick the next pricier product. A few percent extra paid don't hurt, have a good effect and will promote these products both towards sellers and other buyers.

From Wikipedia: "the novel follows a subsidiary body, established under the Paris Agreement, whose mission is to advocate for the world's future generations of citizens as if their rights are as valid as the present generation's."

Is Climate Change the only threat that the body looks at, or do they look at other threats such as corporate power structures, abortion etc?

Just wondering what's the abortion risk to?

"whose mission is to advocate for the world's future generations of citizens as if their rights are as valid as the present generation's."

pretty clear that the implication is right to life of a human being > right to privacy of mother

edit: fetus -> being

i don’t think protecting the rights of people who won’t exist until later has anything to do with the rights of a fetus/person who will cease to exist.

I don't see how "bad" moral decisions about abortion would affect future generations: people may have better judgement in the future, nothing prevents them from effectively eliminating abortion.

The thing with climate change, as it is postulated, is that there might be no next generations, or that they will be severely limited in their moral choices by civilization collapse.

So putting both on the same desk is really misleading.

I agree with your general point, but I think you're overstating it a bit.

Global warming doesn't pose a human extinction or civilizational collapse level threat in the next century. Tens or hundreds of millions of deaths, untold quantities of suffering, habitat destruction, and huge economic losses are within reason, but humanity would take that on the chin and carry on. 80 million young men, many from wealthy countries, died fighting in WW2, and European infrastructure took a huge hit. You can barely notice the impact on a global gdp chart, and it's invisible on population.

Abortion may also have long term consequences, though they would almost certainly be less severe. Genetics that are beneficial to humanity may also increase abortion likelihood- eg. educated women are more likely to be intelligent and to abort compared to the general population. Or the inverse, genes that act against abortion may be bad for humans at large- eg. whatever makes people fundamentalist. But these are just speculations, and it may even wind up being beneficial.

I agree that the two are not on the same order of magnitude, but it's less cut and dry than comparing zero and infinity.

I doubt that intelligent women do abortions in any large quantities in developed countries - they should be smart enough to use contracepcion. So if you are into eugenics, abortion may be the way to go.

I get what you're asking about, but this question misses the forest for the trees of what this book is about and its impact as a read.

I'm reading this book right now, and it doesn't make me enthused for the future. But I'm all over the place, I never know what level of doom-thinking to accept for climate change.

Maybe this will help the calibration: the problem is a political one. We have the needed technology, and we know how and how much to apply it.

To balance that out with some constructive environmentalism, try this book next;

https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmi...

Not trying to start anything, but does this review have any merit?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R36RD4QCZ047P9?AS...

Based on this review

> ...But in this engaging and well-researched treatise, Michael Shellenberger exposes the environmental movement’s hypocrisy in painting climate change in apocalyptic terms while steadfastly working against nuclear power....

the two books are fairly similar actually. MffF doesn't have much dogmatic environmentalist alarm. It discusses how humanity and its systems could react once the point of no climate return is reached/if it's reached, which is a different focus than this book you've linked. Whitewashing MffF as environmental alarmism really misses the point.

For example, assuming this is covered Shellenberger's book

> He also cites that the Dutch have adapted quite well to subsidence putting much of their nation under sea level, and they have been able to survive and thrive

MffF "wouldn't" disagree with that. But, it would highlight some instances where CC adaption mindsets (like your linked book) don't cover the whole picture. Some climates humans just can't adapt to. What then? MffF goes through that.

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