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Comment by sharikous | Hacker News Reader

Considering the utter shitshow that is any kind of political system, modern democracies included, I am frankly surprised that we are tackling this at all, even if it 99% appearance and 1% substance.

Anyway politicians to "lead" need a mandate from voters and to lead in a direction good for the climate they need to be able to take the heat for extremely unpopular policies. Unfortunately in the systems where unpopular policies can get through the leaders have the tendency to exploit that for their own gain rather than for sustainability sake.

I believe it won't change until the situation will become so obvious and tangible that something will be done to mitigate it.

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Nothing will be done about it until it the highest wealth classes have more to lose by continuing to ignore it than they do to gain.

The problem is that currently, the people in power to change things won’t really be affected by global warming - they have enough money to buy their way out of it.

In a couple generations the problem will be critical enough that buying your way out of it will no longer be possible, and then we’ll see change.

“ In a couple generations the problem will be critical enough that buying your way out of it will no longer be possible, and then we’ll see change”

So what is that line? The inability to maintain high quality food production? Modern manufacturing? Mass migration?

Right, and the mechanism that will bring that about will be enough of the poorer classes being affected that they start to make the status quo less profitable. Inconvenient resource wars, rioting in the streets, maybe even some old fashioned eco terrorism. All of that could be accelerated if people felt strongly enough to demand change sooner and were willing to make sacrifices in order to force the issue, but they generally aren't and those at the top put effort into keeping it that way.

I think that rioting and eco-terrorism can be kept at bay with increased surveillance. My bet is that the protests can be quashed long enough until the situation becomes so bad that actual life-threatening consequences arise even for those in power (extreme food scarcity and the breakdown of every supply chain out there).

People have to live in that environment. They are busy raising children, getting an education, living life. Most people don't live life sacrificing themselves to someone else's cause. Be very careful of falling into someone else's narrative.

> The problem is that currently, the people in power to change things won’t really be affected by global warming - they have enough money to buy their way out of it.

No, this assumes that civilization won't collapse. Their money means nothing if industrial society breaks down due to the catastrophic consequences of climate change. States are what enforce property rights and states fall apart as soon as the food runs out.

I don't believe it'll collapse in these people's lifetimes though. It'll take another couple generations for that to become an existential threat.

Are the Heat Dome, massive floods in Germany and 50C in May in India not enough to make an induction that things have a pretty reasonable chance of getting a lot worse a lot faster than that?

Anybody with a good credit rating can increase their standard of living by buying an EV, putting solar panels on their roof and switching to using a heat pump for heating. All three of these pay off their premium in under a decade in most jurisdictions.

Probably not a great time for most people to take out huge loans ($80-100k?) for nonessential purchases right as we're entering a recession. Also, the things you listed are "green" but they're substitutions and not significantly increasing standard of living above their alternatives. So to the average person this is a big ask.

Of course, any action taken by the government would have much more impact and would be way more effective than individuals trying to tackle this problem.

This is only true in your country. Most people in the world do not have the luxury of affording this, and for many that do it's not worthwhile.

I live in Ontario, Canada. Almost all of my electricity comes from nuclear, hydroelectric and wind. Solar panels are not particularly efficient so far up north and they are covered in snow five months of the year anyway. Solar is mostly a waste of money here. (I still see the occasional house with solar panels but I mostly interpret it as a protest against nuclear power.)

Electric cars also don't fare particularly well in our winters. It's pretty hard to go visit family out of town when your car has half its stated range. I'm of the opinion that pervasive plug-in hybrid vehicles would do far more to reduce our collective carbon emissions and buy us time to get plug-in hybrids with renewable fuel (biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, etc.)

Heat pumps I agree would help. Unfortunately my country has huge amounts of cheap natural gas. Until carbon taxes start ramping up and heat pumps are subsidized I don't think most people will willingly increase their heating costs.

I live in Ontario. I drive an EV, which works fabulously in the winter. Solar panels are viable, with 10 year payback periods since we still have full net metering.

You've already excluded a huge segment of the population with your very first line. Regardless, all that does very little to stop the worst sources of the problem: industry. In fact, this obsession with mainting a lifestyle that only exists because of fossil fuels and environmentally damaging industry is part of the problem in my opinion.

I'm responding to a comment about rich people. Also, anything that reduces TCO benefits poor people more than rich people, so if they don't have the capital for an up-front investment governments should be providing cheap loans or grants.

IMO the obsession with requiring sacrifice is alienating, counter-productive and unnecessary.

Why? Because people don't want to live life as if they were back in the 19th century? You go first.

Yeah, exactly my point. World going to shit around us as a direct consequence of our lifestyles and nobody is going to do anything about it because they feel entitled to said lifestyle. We could do something, we choose not to.

Future generations will revile us, as we deserve that.

"the world going to shit" carries a lot of assumptions. It's not just about amassing money. It's a bout survival for many people. Getting enough food to eat. Up to 100 million people (mostly Africans) could be facing starvation from not being able to import grain from the Ukraine. A crisis which is about the availability of energy. A little humility in realizing we don't know what's going to happen. There are consequences to any choice we make here.

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