Hacker News Reader

Comment by junofan | Hacker News Reader

Climate activists would be better off developing a compelling vision. Look at how much progress Tesla has made by offering cars that people actually want.

Nobody wants to live in the world envisioned by climate activists. That is why activists have made no progress in the last 50 years.

View on HN

Your comment ignores that these industries, corporations and governments driving climate change for profit have gone to extreme lengths to make sure activists make no progress that would affect earnings.

It’s also a strange argument to make that activists need to convince you that drinking contaminated water, breathing polluted air and ruining the natural world for profit isn’t a sustainable vision for the future.

Activists aren’t trying to sell you a product they are trying to warn you. Holding them to the showmanship antics of any given CEO seems misguided.

- Hello I am a firefighter, did you know your house is on fire

- OK but what's your vision for this issue

- I'm going to spray water on it, also you should stand farther away

- Aren't you just being reflexively contrarian?

Tesla's cars (and private automobiles in general) are not a compelling vision, they're toys for rich people. I looked it up. About a million Teslas have ever been manufactured. Round the population to a power of 10... 10 billion people. So one human in 10k gets a Tesla. The main thing most climate activists that I talk to want is for billions of people to not have to die off due to resource mismanagement. People don't believe that it's even possible for our civilization to collapse, even though entire civilizations have collapsed numerous times over the course of history. This is not a world we're envisioning, is a world we're ~visioning. With our eyeballs.

Tesla produced about 1.3 million cars just last year (2022)[1]. It has been successfully meeting its goal of an annual production rate increase of 50% per year for around a decade and is on track to continue this until they reach their goal of producing 20 million cars annually in 2030. The outcome is uncertain but the track record is there. This plus fusion power gives a much different vision of the future. The world you envision depends where you are looking.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/02/tesla-tsla-q4-2022-vehicle-d...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com