Comment by ttiurani | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ttiurani | Hacker News Reader

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None of them are system changes.

Yes, 1 and 3 would be fantastic – although switching to electric without at the same time reducing SOVs is IMO very inadequate if you take int account all of the planetary boundaries, not just climate change. 2 is a policy that might stem from the system change, not the actual change. 4 is not based on facts: there are billions of people in the world who are living within planetary boundaries. Can't stress this enough: it's not "humans" that are the problem but the wealthy people that are taking more from nature than nature can regenerate.

A meaningful system change to me is where there is a deliberate and continued reduction in material flows and energy use in the rich countries until they are below planetary boundaries. That can be done if they deliberately start reducing overproduction. That in turn would happen if governments would abandon the goal of aggregate economic growth across all sectors, but instead increase the parts of the economy that produce well-being and scale down the parts that don't. Another system change would be if the rich countries would pay for the catastrophic damage they have inflicted on the countries worst affected by climate change, and then stop taking advantage of poor countries by ending unequal exchange.

Those would be system changes.

I'm not saying nothing except politics is needed – everything would be doubly hard if e.g. solar wouldn't have become so cheap.

But given what is easy in the current world (producing and selling stuff) and what is hard (creating political change), I wish that the most capable and smartest people in the world would work mostly on the hard parts.

"...if governments would abandon the goal of aggregate economic growth across all sectors..."

You've obviously thought about this topic quite deeply - have you heard any realistic proposals on how to achieven this? I have yet to hear any, and until I do I'll be devoting my energy to changes that have at least some chance of being enacted, like a carbon tax.

There is no easy answer, and making a change this big is a monumental task. Personally I've still come to think that just because making this change is very hard, that's not an excuse for me to not try, because the alternative is so much worse.

What I'm talking about is what the academic degrowth research has been working on for the past 20 years. (What's under the degrowth umbrella is the current wave of discussions started by the 50 year old "The Limits to Growth" report.) Doughnut economics is also intimately related.

If you want to learn more, as it happens, there is a brand new book "Degrowth & Strategy" with a free PDF here:

http://mayflybooks.org/degrowth-strategy

Note: I haven't yet read it, but it has got a lot of endorsements and great reviews from the top researches on the field, so it should be good.

Andrew Yang's proposal in the last Democratinc party primary of replacing GDP with a 'national report card' seems like a realistic-enough approach. In fact, I'd say if one views Andrew Yang's platform as a whole (particularly the heavy value-added tax) through an environmental perspective, I'd say he had the best environmental proposals I've seen for any politician in my lifetime.

The problem with political change is that then it becomes highly polarised political topic. With some people pushing rebranded communist ideas. Then suddenly it becomes political spectrum issue and not climate issue.

Let alone that historically non-capitalist countries had terrible ecological track record. For example here in ex-USSR. In USSR era ecological situation was pure catastrophe. But we're making massive improvements for the last few decades. And capitalist market economy works damn great to support ecological efforts.

> Another system change would be if the rich countries would pay for the catastrophic damage they have inflicted on the countries worst affected by climate change, and then stop taking advantage of poor countries by ending unequal exchange.

So, let already rich elite in poor country syphon even more money off rich countries? While making rich countries poor, so there's a big chance for elite in rich countries become even more detached, similar to poor countries. Global elite unite & fuck over the rest...

Also, „reducing overproduction“ will fuck over poor countries much more. Make stuff expensive to produce and suddenly bringing back manufacturing is much more viable.

The problem with political change is that then it becomes highly polarised political topic

Indeed, and the best way to avoid that is to ignore the people using pushing their polarising simplistic us-vs-them rhetoric into the discussion.

ahm, so, how exactly was ex-USSR ecologically worse than western countries, that were already producing en masse all sorts of single time use plastic unnecessary products, solely for the purpose of economic growth? Single time coca-cola bottles, plastic wrapping etc were not found in USSR. Yes, certain energy sectors were inefficient, and burning a lot of energy in vain, but still it seems to me that it was way less environmentally impactful than consumer society in the west. But that's just my personal armature opinion.

It was not „inefficiency“. It was environmental disasters left & right without nobody responsible. Single-use plastics is peanuts compared to just dumping chemicals and bio waste left and right.

For example, there is a lake in my hometown. Next to it, there was a carpets factory. Do you know how you could know what color they'd use that day? Just go swim in the lake in the evening :) The factory didn't care. Upper tier of the party doesn't care if some workers' town lake is messed up. There's neither resources nor incentive to take care of it.

If you'd go to local party office or KGB, they'd laugh you off and go party with the factory management :) Oh, and you probably work in the same factory. Or local school/shop/water, which is run by the same single party as the factory.

As a citizen, do you want to vote with your wallet and not buy carpet made in such way? Tough luck, that's the only carpet factory you get it from :)

State farm in the outskirts of town was run in same way. Just drop fertilizer in a water ditch and call it a day. Who cares how much you produce and that local ecological system is messed up? Meanwhile tractor driver can steal diesel planned for fertilising the fields and sell it in black market :)

It's not a random town with tough luck. This was modus operandi throughout USSR. If you want bigger scale stories, look up lake Karachay and Majak nuclear accident(s) :) Same line if thinking, just worse consequences.

Fertilizer in water is a problem to this day in capitalist USA. And every attempt to limit it is attacked, ironically, as communism.

https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/sources-and-solutions-...

The EPA itself was started by a right-wing president because rivers were catching fire due to pollutants.

In China, a nominally communist party is working to shift from coal because air pollution was a threat to their continued rule.

Politics is definately important to climate change, but not the team sports level politics that many indulge in.

Not fertilizer in water. But literalyl piles of fertilizer in water ditches. No farmer in market economy would do that, because fertilizer is damn expensive.

China is turning away from coal mostly because they don't want to be dependent on Australia and other sources of coal.

> No farmer in market economy would do that, because fertilizer is damn expensive.

Farmers in market economies literally do this, when the costs are externalities to them, it's the same thing being done for the same reason.

With the right incentives, they'll do something else.

How would you structure incentives in market economy to incentivise discarding fertiliser in ditches? In worst case, you'd be better off selling it in black market.

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