Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

> In order to hit the 2050 target, we therefore need to be using about 1500 TWh per year — 1% of current global energy consumption.

It's infuriating that rather than increasing the cost of energy by 1%, we decided to destroy the entire planet.

It's even more infuriating now that I've read H.G. Well's "The World Set Free.", which was written in 1913, and covers the same topics as this article, but with a more savvy take on current day energy politics.

The problems it focuses on haven't been addressed, and we're living the worst case scenario the book posits. (The better case scenario the book focuses on is a global collapse of government due to full scale nuclear war in the early days of atomic weaponry.)

Not that story telling is the ultimate solution, but I share the frustration. So many of these old stories are essentially coming true, and there's not much discussion on it by most people.

That said, we have some very good cautionary tales like black mirror that make people think, but those are very few. In fact, most stories in this genre start with "in an apocalyptic world where people X, Y happens".

It would be nice to see some modern black-mirror quality adaptations of ideas by H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and even authors like Mark Twain would be great.

It’s a failure of education, and in many ways a deliberate one because of the primacy of industry over the past century.

It's a systematic failure of government going back at least two centuries. In 1913, people were making identical complaints about the government and courts (especially regarding IP) as they do today.

I agree — I think often where there is a prolonged failure of democratic government it is a result of insufficient attention to updating the education of the voting population.

well if you want to see how “let’s use less power” can look like, look at Europe this winter. Will be fun to watch.

Nuclear Winter can stop Global Warming with room to spare, so, maybe, Russians do the right thing when they are shelling Ukrainian nuclear power plant. Maybe, Ukrainian just need to return the fire.

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