Hacker News Reader

Not a great analogy. It doesn't matter how big the rube goldberg machine is if there was only one input to begin with, it would still trace back to that input. The problem with climate is that there are billions of inputs spanning centuries. Trying to assign blame is a waste of time anyway, time that we don't have.

View on HN

It's a great analogy for what they were pointing out. The point is not that these issues are traceable and thus inarguably someone's fault. The point is many times people don't have to take responsibility for these issues because they are indirect. The more indirect (the larger the Rube Goldberg Machine) the higher chance of avoiding responsibility.

Then perhaps we need to reframe the issue from one of "taking responsibility" to one of "this is what we need to change in order to survive".

That's a much harder problem :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com