Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryeights | Hacker News Reader

This is drawing parallels to Futurama’s giant ice cubes in the ocean… if we don’t stop the problem of climate change at the root, i.e. mass overconsumption and waste, we’ll simply be facing the same challenge in another 50 years when greenhouse gas emissions rise to meet their new ceiling.

View on HN

The problem of climate change is not one of generic 'overconsumption and waste' but of bringing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero. Most of the electricity, transport and industry currently dependent on fossil fuels can be greened. There are important exceptions, like aviation, and in those cases reducing consumption would be helpful. But for the most part it's a question of substitution, not reduction.

We are also living through an ecological crisis whose causes are far more entwined with over-consumption. But that's because it has causes additional to climate change.

In Futurama they used Benders shiny metal ass as a jet (with other robots) to move earths orbit out a little bit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_of_the_Hot

I can imagine a Futurama episode where they put giant bubbles in space and they end up burning everything on the planet like ants under a magnifying glass.

It’s really people looking for excuses to NOT do the right thing. In order for us to consume less, we need to lower our population. Not a hard math problem. We need to cut world population by at least 1/2.

No we don’t.

Explain the math and/or give sources from experts, poindexter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com