Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

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Disclaimer: I believe in climate change but I honestly don't think there'll be any meaningful changes until it's economic to do so. Put another way: things like coal power will be replaced with renewables when it's cheaper. This is one reason why plummetting solar prices are so important and impactful.

But there are two things I hate:

1. Citing any kind of single events (eg Hurricane Fiona in this article) as evidence of anything. They're all anecdotes. You could just as easily point to the low activity of the Atlantic hurricane season in the southern states as a positive for climate change. The whole anecdata thing is silly. Please just stop. I realize part of this is journalists trying to make something personal by focusing on a single event but it honestly doesn't help; and

2. People hijacking climate change to push a particular preconceived agenda. Nuclear power is the obvious example. It's a fine discussion point on its own but the ability people have to ignore negatives when pushing their particular agenda never ceases to amaze and is ultimately unhelpful.

This isn't all doom and gloom either. US emissions depending on which you look at actually peaked decades ago (eg [1][2]). Is it enough? Probably not.

Pretty much all problems that exist in the world can be reduced to being energy problems. Food production now is driven by dumping petroleum products on crops (ie fertilizers). Energy costs are a direct input to food costs. Fossil fuel emissions would go away overnight if something renewable was cheaper than fossil fuels. This may seem trite but what I mean is you could sequester CO2 into hydrocarbons and make those things at worst carbon neutral without, say, having to build out a massive grid for EVs (as one example).

Climate change here isn't really a political fight. It's a fight against capitalism. Capitalism knows no political bounds. It seems unlikely capitalism is going away anytime soon so your next best option is make emissions a byproduct of a capitalist endeavour such as cheaper energy.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states

[2]: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

Replying to your first point. There is actually a new branch of science called extreme event attribution [1]. Basically all weather events are now analysed to see how much more probable they are due to climate change. You are right one event might be anecdotal and could also have happened without climate change. But looking at the frequency of these events, the probability of extrem weather events has risen. In other words what was a once in a hundred years flood is now a once in ten years flood - keep in mind this is an example and a once in a hundred years flood can of course happen more often. What I am trying to say is we can attribute the trend of extrem weather events to climate change. So the argument that Fiona is more probable in a world with climate change than in a world without climate change is legit.

[1]:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_event_attribution

I don’t understand framing the evils of the modern world as “capitalism” when every other economic system exhibits the same evils. Like what’s the proposed alternative? Communism? A fascist command economy? Every alternative is measurably worse on even this metric.

The point here is that the US government in particular works at the behest of the capital-owning class and this is not a partisan issue, meaning there is almost no difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Paying outrageous amounts for healthcare is to protect profits. The ultra-wealthy paying very little in tax is protecting the capital-owning class. We topple and isolate governments that push back against economic colonialism (eg Venezuela threatened to nationalize oil producers and oh look, a coup). We are raising interest rates supposedly to fight inflation but really to create unemployment and suppress wages. Why? Wages come at the expense of profits. The recently averted rail strike would've cost 3.5% of profits (not revenue) to provide 125,000 essential rail workers with paid sick leave.

Look at the case of Steven Donziger [1] where Chevron shopped for a sympathetic judge that allowed an oil law firm to criminally prosecute and detain someone for years over a misdemeanour to daring to organize a $9.5 billion judgement against Chevron in a completely different country (ie Ecuador). This began under the last administration and the current administration has declined to intervene (which they could) and dismiss the case. Why is it that neither party wants to stand in the way of Chevron being essentially deputized to criminally prosecute people?

Even war can be viewed through the lens of protecting profits. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost an insane amount of money but they generated a massive amount of profits for a whole host of companies. Even the very justifiable material aid we have been giving and continue to give to Ukraine is a huge gain for the military industrial complex who sells those weapons (and, as an aside, the amount of Ukraine aid is eerily similar to the spending that ended by withdrawing from Afghanistan).

Prisons? Cheap labor (eg Angola State Penintentiary in Louisiana [2]). Restrictive immigration? Also cheap labor. Chicken factories and farms rely on undocumented migrants. If they complain you call ICE on them, pay a small fine, rinse and repeat. Why? Profits.

My point is that climate change is no different. If you attempt to fight the system, you're going to lose because profits (particularly short term profits) win. The only path forward is an economic one.

[1]: https://theintercept.com/2022/04/27/deconstructed-steven-don...

[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/404305/angola-prison...

The framing of "capitalism" says more about the person framing it that way than the framing itself. You'll never get an answer to your question because there isn't one. Some people are unhappy that we live in an unjust world in a cold, uncaring universe. Since those things are immutable, they will therefore always be unhappy.

Specifically in regards to climate change, "pure" communism or fascism would probably be less bad, due to their economic failures and thus decreased energy (fossil fuel) usage.

Ah yes, pure communism...

Where you "save the planet," but starve 250,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 people to death.

Not a feature unique to "pure" communism, but sure. It reduces emissions, although I wouldn't want to live there (nor would almost anyone else). Looking at other possibilities it might not the best course of action.

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