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Comment by leeoniya | Hacker News Reader

> If people don't change even with the threat of human life being lost then there's no way they care if multiple species of birds goes extinct.

people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits.

as a species, humans plan and invest very little beyond our own lifetimes. but we're just animals after all. all the talk about becoming an interplanetary (mars) species for our own survival has to be the most absurd statement that can be made to dismiss the very real problems we should solve here first. but billionaires need an excuse to play Tony Stark.

it's not cool or profitable to do the boring work of unfucking ourselves.

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> people won't change. they are addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability. which is also great for corporate profits.

But we can change our behavior by showing ourselves less ads. And that would solve a lot of other problems too.

> But we can change our behavior by showing ourselves less ads.

i have uBO chrome extension installed, so i'm doing pretty good by that metric!

The reason you block ads is selfish, the environment savings (I'd like to see data on that) are incidental.

Not every change we need to make will benefit people. More often they will require more work, more resources, or less enjoyment at rhe individual level (recycling, not driving certain types of vehicle).

Bullshit. That's cultural. Look at nordic countries. Norway has a seed vault and has 80% of new cars are electric. Renewables in Europe are still moving at great speed https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/renewables/europe-renewabl...

You just won't say the real people who are to blame. You want to lay the blame on all people equally

> Look at nordic countries. Norway has a seed vault and has 80% of new cars are electric.

80% of 0.001% is a rounding error. scale matters. just because a first-world country of 5M can do something does not make this attainable for the other 99.999% of the human population.

> Renewables in Europe are still moving at great speed

imo, nuclear (not fusion, mind you) + electric, is the only realistic way out of the energy mess.

I'm referring to their achievements as a country not the impact. My point is it's cultural

> My point is it's cultural

they didnt get your message in Nigeria

What do you think Norway’s primary export is, speaking of blaming the right people?

Is it seeds?

They are at fault for being suppliers? If they don't supply oil someone else will. Like blaming prostitutes instead of johns

But not that oil.

I think we have some moral standing to blame prostitutes for STDs. Peddling oil despite its externalities because people are addicted adds to the overall world market, driving down price, in turn hampering renewables.

They are contributing to fossil fuel usage. You don’t get to “but we also drive EVs!” your way out of that.

I would also suggest it’s more akin to blaming drug users instead of drug dealers, but whatever metaphor floats your boat.

I think this:

> addicted to convenience, low prices, diversity in options, and unlimited availability

applies just as much to Norway as to other rich countries. Maybe not in exactly the same way as in the US, but in their own way.

Norway’s economy is dependent on fossil fuels which represent over 50% of their exports and 20% of their GDP.

The idea that Norway holds some sort of moral high ground with respect to fossil fuels is offensive.

>The idea that Norway holds some sort of moral high ground with respect to fossil fuels is offensive

They at the very LEAST deserve the moral high ground of largely distributing the economic benefits of those fossil fuels to their citizens rather than to a dozen billionaires while their nation's infrastructure becomes dilapidated

True, but Norway still has more billionaires per capita than the US, several of them from the oil sector.

> all the talk about becoming an interplanetary (mars) species for our own survival has to be the most absurd statement that can be made to dismiss the very real problems...but billionaires need an excuse to play Tony Stark.

This is a thinly veiled dig at Elon musk. It's so weird that you think what he's doing is the problem, with his efforts bringing about electric cars earlier than what would have happened.

He might be a loud mouth jerk, but surely he's not symbolic of the real problem here?

the guy dropped how much coin on a social media platform that could have gone to the very environmental causes that he claims to want to advance?

what do you think $44 billion in climate/epa lobbying would look like?

teslas still have to be manufactured. he probably would've had a greater climate impact if he purchased everyone on earth the same model bicycle that can be repaired/reused indefinitely.

we should be trying to remove cars, reduce production, and replace it with public transit, etc. but that's neither cool nor profitable; electric cars are both of those things.

electric energy storage, on the other hand, is useful. so making batteries cheap is a good thing, and tesla definitely helped that a lot.

My point was not that Elon is a saint, or the best thing for the planet. Instead that there are so many individuals and companies that are much more deserving of your ire. But you're distracted by Elon's antics that you're ignoring much more legitimate threats to the environment.

> He might be a loud mouth jerk, but surely he's not symbolic of the real problem here?

Elon Musk, the guy who floats insane ideas like tunneling and hyperloop to derail public transit projects?

> with his efforts bringing about electric cars earlier than what would have happened

Now if only they were affordable by the masses....

>his efforts bringing about

Government subsidies and his engineers brought that about. Not Elon freaking musk. Stop drinking his kool aid.

That's precisely why every private launch company before SpaceX succeeded! After all, they had even larger government subsidies and even more engineers! /s

It is your own biases making you misinterpret my words. I did not say Elon singly handedly achieved anything. But it's undeniable that he did put in effort with Tesla, and that helped bring electric cars to market, helping to start the transition away from ICE.

I don't think Elon is a saint, there's plenty not to like. But I think that you're so angered by him (probably drinking an alternative brand coolaid) that you're willing to discount any positive contribution, action, or utterance from Elon. Usually people aren't all good or all bad, as much as we'd like the world to be that simple.

Elon Musk proposed the hyper loop specifically to decrease investment in actual rail. He had no plans to build it. He has no interest in improving transportation or making it greener (which rail would certainly be). He only wants to enrich himself.

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