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Comment by nologic01 | Hacker News Reader

The lifecycle of (artificial) plastic stuff in the biosphere is one of these bold, impact agnostic technological adaptations whose true footprint only reveals as densities and exposures become systemic and get integrated over time.

Our mental models and economic organization are simply not geared to long term, insidius, slow cooking phenomena. If a profitable and desirable convenience is not immediately and obviously harmful it assumed to be "ok" for the long term and at scale.

At some point we might have to switch to a thinking pattern where every and any technology that is applied at planetary scale must undergo a long and exhaustive testing process before being deployed.

This will have a dampening effect on innovation in certain areas, but we must accept that moving "fast and breaking things" at planetary scale is no longer a viable strategy.

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> we must accept that moving "fast and breaking things" at planetary scale is no longer a viable strategy.

It never was, and we knew it. Whole civilization went extinct when they depleted their sources of food or energy (e.g. wood) or poisoned themselves.

It's not ignorance. People in power took deliberate decisions to prioritize their interests.

E.g. "COAL CONSUMPTION AFFECTING CLIMATE" was published on 1912 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814....

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie... )

Chief Seattle had it right all along it seems[0]. We should have been aggressive about considering the impact of technology on the next seven generations. It’s not too late to start of course, but it is too late to avoid dire planetary changes.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_generation_sustainabil...

It is a one-time cultural leap or socioeconomic transition that needs to happen, but at global scale and spanning fairly diverse cultures (some more ready than others).

In some sense the amount of damage that will cumulate till that transition process is complete is secondary to it actually happening (for which there is not guarantee)

In any case, given that such views are nowhere yet close to being common ground truth that is widely accepted the next decades will likely see enormous strife, debate and ideological movements (maybe even religious ones).

A defining moment in our social evolutiom that a lot of us that grew up in the age of carefree consumerist ignorance probably did not see coming.

You frame it like we're incapable of that kind of thinking as individuals or as a species. That's demonstrably untrue.

The problem is that the entities that are tasked with protecting us from shortsighted and other problematic paths are not doing that. Either they're incapable because they're not invested with the necessary authority to do their jobs, or they're influenced by those who would gain from harmful scenarios, or both.

A planetary scale strategy is only viable if it first outcompetes the alternatives, and then produces the “right behavior” as a side effect.

A few buy a Tesla to save the environment. The majority buy a Tesla because it has “self driving”, it appeals to their vanity, FOMO, etc.

A few buy bitcoin because it’s a necessary tool to curb fiat devaluation and other forms of corruption. Most buy bitcoin because “number go up”, appeal to greed, and even the worst intentioned actors engage simply out of self interest.

Whether Tesla and bitcoin are “the right thing” is not the point. They illustrate the right strategy, where a desired new behavior is adopted at scale even by those with no interest, or even opposing interests.

The hard part is not figuring out what new behavior is needed. It’s figuring out how to bring about wide scale adoption.

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