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Comment by _hypx | Hacker News Reader

Doomerism is catching on because nearly none of those ideas are worth a damn. It's something of an subconscious realization that most environmentalists are not serious people, and most policies are intended to placate the electorate rather than solve anything.

When we see a large scale push for more nuclear power, mass transit, opposition to car-centric neighborhoods, shifting of focus to stopping industrial emissions, acceptance of ideas like geoengineering, as well as various other "unacceptable" ideas, then we will have become serious about climate change. If we want to stop doomerism, we'll have to make a massive shift on how we view the problem. Until then, doomerism is a logical conclusion of how we're actually attempting to solve the problem.

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Most of the environmentalists I hang out with are on board with most of those ideas, myself included. (And also carbon taxation, which incentivizes a bunch of them) Geo-engineering is a tough one, and I think should be viewed as a last resort, once we're already well on our way to decarbonizing, because otherwise it's the equivalent of trying to stop a speeding car by pressing the brakes without taking your foot off the gas. Something like releasing particulates may cool the earth, but is really hard to do reliably and accurately, and if you ever stop, you're in for a large amount of very sudden warming. There's also a moral hazard effect. It's not fixing the problems, it's trying to treat the symptoms.

That said, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it, I just want to make sure we're at least also attacking the root causes as hard as we can as well.

If you're referring to nuclear, that only happened recently. Before, environmentalists had done more to stop zero emissions energy than to promote it.

Geoengineering is likely to be the same type of fight. We pretty much have to do it. There's no way around it at this point. It's biggest enemy are environmentalists who demand ideological purity. It's heading towards the same story as anti-nuclearism.

It should also be noted that people who are pro-nuclear or pro-geoengineering are not fanatics and are not obsessed with their ideas in the way radical environmentalists are. No one is suggesting that they replace all other ideas. Radical environmentalists who suggest that is the case are basically projecting. As if their opponents are as crazy as they are with their ideas.

That's just a slightly different (though overlapping) list of things you think we should do. Things that apparently you think could a) save us from doom, and b) be good ideas anyway, so my basic point stands: doomerism doesn't change our options.

You're right that it's a logical conclusion given what's actually happening, but your examples aren't the reasons why people are starting to realize this.

Eg, a mystery entity blew up the nord stream 2 pipeline and caused so much methane to be released, that years worth of past and future carbon progress have been erased.

When people see that no one important cares about that because Russia is naughty, and people are still going on about your neighborhood design, what else is there to conclude?

Why do you think Europe is importing so much natural gas in the first place? What Russia is doing is a symptom of the problem. It is not the problem.

What is the root problem that you think motivates Russia?

Europe is buying Russia's natural gas. That is the root problem. In fact, with the shut downs of nuclear power, Europe is more dependent on natural gas and coal than it had been for decades.

I think it's catching on because it's easier than feeling like you're complicit in not doing anything (providing you an out) and it's something for people to project their other ennui onto.

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