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Comment by glogla | Hacker News Reader

Of course! But why would you think that this is achievable?

Look at the enormous amount of hatred even a small change like "your car, your house heating and your stove will use electricity instead of compressed refined dead dinosaurs" got. Look at how many people when told "we need to change things or this planet is going to be uninhabitable in a few decades" stick fingers in their ears and say "nu uh" or actively start claiming this is all made up.

I'd love to have more sustainable vision of the future, but since most people would rather see humanity end than give up tiniest comfort or accept any change (even a good one, like people in walkable cities are actually happier than people in suburbs). So we don't exactly have a lot of manoeuvring space.

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Well the reason I wrote to post was to inject the point into the conversation as it’s sorely lacking usually.

Also, it’s been my experience that people only change when they are in incredible amounts of pain, and I think that that’s true of this debate with climate change, and it’s impacts on earth.

As soon as food and water supplies are threatened, and people are having to retreat from coastal areas in the next few decades, the conversation may finally shift to meaningful action. And that’s the reason for my “optimism.”

Obviously, for those of us who actually study the issue like yourself know it may be far too late to do anything about it, because by the time these impacts hit, there will be a great deal of downstream consequences, but I do think people will change eventually. If for no other reasons than because they have to, or at least they will then.

Just a little sad you can’t avert the inevitable consequences that are so clearly laid out because people hold onto iterating on simple extensions of the existing failed ethos and paradigm, which is why I generally try to inject a transformation instead of iteration comment into these types of posts on online platforms. They are polarizing ideas, but if more of us injected this bias at scale and with great frequency I believe it could gradually change public opinion.

And that is how you bring about change — the environmental consciousness is profoundly different than it was in the 50s and 60s, when a visit to the forest camping with the kids or even backpacking often included USFS run burn pit and people scoffed at the clean water and air acts, and it was done with similar educational and outreach so it really can change things — we do have impact as collective individuals in sharing our perspectives and alternative belief systems. So I don’t generally feel the need to provide the answers to how because the purpose of this comment and my many others like it is to anchor an alternative opinion to allow for alternatives to the dominant paradigm not solve the execution issues in providing a visionary societal transformation as that far exceeds what one person can do.

But I do believe we should be actively talking about transformation and not iteration of the existing system much more actively.

That is a better response than my sad little post deserved. Thank you.

That’s just the kindest response ever. Thank you for being you!

Well, the simple (not to be confused with easy, or pleasant) solution is to stop listening to those people. Sometimes people need to be dragged into the current century kicking and screaming.

Wise words those.

I think this is inline with much of the thinking I’ve seen from policymakers I’ve read and talked with.

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