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Comment by luxuryballs | Hacker News Reader

“we have to accept immense hits to the global economy and the resulting poverty, suffering and impact. The scope of the change required is staggering. We've never done something like this”

This is an insanely extreme claim with very little evidence to back it up, if we watch this unfold at the hands of global leadership please know that it didn’t have to be this way and somebody is taking advantage of all of us for power and control.

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Yeah this narrative is troubling. I’ve read stuff from IPCC contributors who compare climate change to Covid, especially in the case of people living in the first world. Things will get harder and the shape of our lives will change, but “civilizational collapse” is a term from people gleefully imagining the end of the world like they would a zombie apocalypse.

this article has bought into a lot of narratives of doomsaying and the "real" causes of it. It complains about coal consumption in India and China, conveniently linked to a reuters article.

> With China and India not even starting the process of coal draw-down yet...

It is fine to assume the Global South is trending towards further coal usage. Maybe the developed world can help them transition to something sustainable like nuclear power.

There has to be an element of truth in Michael Moore's extreme Planet of the Humans.

At least Amazon's Eating our way to Extinction [1] makes a convincing argument against deforestation and meat consumption trends. But the West is continuing to sell the global south a lifestyle (foreign to them) of extreme meat eating, among other unsustainable consumption lifestyle.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Our-Extinction-Kate-Winslet/dp...

I don't think they're gleeful, they just deeply believe that we need to reject capitalism and/or embrace some sort of global technocratic governance, and see the threat of climate catastrophe as the most-plausible mechanism that such a change would come about.

That's an interesting take I hadn't thought of. At first I read it dismissively, but it's surprisingly plausible given the role software engineers have taken over the last 15 years.

I'm deeply suspicious of any environmental cause that starts with having to reject capitalism. Particularly when it advocates for totalitarian government as a solution. I tend to think the environmental cause is being used to justify belief in some other system.

How is it insanely extreme ? Except if we are lucky and there is a Deus ex machina that saves us (which by definition is unpredictable), this is the current trajectory

Can you provide something to back up your apocalyptic claim?

The newest IPCC report (Aug 2021) is rather apocalyptic even in the best-case scenarios that are not happening currently. And their worst-case scenarios do not include possible feedback loops.

Slowing down the global economy wouldn’t benefit the elites. Still though they might have their liferafts planned that none of us are going to be welcome onto.

You will own nothing and be happy.

Bill Gates tells us to not eat meat and owns a gigaton of farmland.

He rells us to ride bikes and has the largest fleet of private jets in the world.

Yeah, I'm not accepting any such thing. Cure is worse than the disease, and the implication is the developing world will have to stop developing, while the developed world lives with economic depression. I'm sure that will be politically viable /s.

Notice those who have the most information, policy makers and the rich in control have not changed their jet set lifestyle by one iota.

Still polluting the skies on their way to Davos

Because they don't need to care about consequences. No matter how high the sea level rises, enough money gets you a higher place to stay.

No, it shows they don’t believe it.

Obama’s recently purchased beachfront property is a testament to this.

Massive sea level rise is a meme, no way it's going over a few feet until Obama is long dead.

A few feet meme rise is gonna drown a lot of things, many Pacific island states, New Orleans or half the Netherlands, to name a few.

Not happening

If I had half the money I think Obama has, buying a vacation home somewhere that might disappear into a hurricane randomly in the next 10 years would not be a problem.

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