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Comment by janj | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking about how relief from the impacts of climate change will not be available for all. I was wondering if access to climate relief should be limited for people who denied climate change or supported climate change deniers. With past voting records, social media posts, etc, we should be able to figure that out for a large number of people. I think this would be very unpopular but if relief is limited how else do you decide? The only reason I became politically active 20 years ago was because of my concern about climate change and recognizing we needed leaders in place that would take appropriate action. That didn't happen in large part because of the types of people I debated against. Maybe those people shouldn't have the same access to relief as things get worse.

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No one person will decide. The “market” will decide. The strong will be relieved and the weak will suffer. To get relief the weak should become strong. Unfortunately, suffering will make them weaker.

Are the currently strong going to keep the weak down, will the weak destroy the strong, will power be distributed to minimize the number of weak at the expense of the strong, or will something else entirely happen? My bet is that the strong have quite a lot longer to go getting stronger before the weak can enact meaningful change.

Also worth noting are that there is a large gap between, for example, the American weak and the global weak. The global weak will suffer more and have less avenues to enact change. Americans have the luxury of climate “debate” while Indonesia (not even a super poor country) moves its capital and while others suffer.

EDIT: To be clear, I think this situation is absolutely horrible. Based on how countries have been acting for the last couple decades though, I'm not expecting things to get better before they get much worse.

I've been thinking the same. The fact that this issue is still not overwhelmingly recognized as legitimate seems to imply that a lot more suffering might be required before anything meaningful happens. Problem is the longer we wait the more pointless any action becomes.

You have a somewhat justifiable position, but you lost me when you started talking about social media posts. In your proposed rationing of "climate relief" it shouldn't be focused on people's thoughts. It should, instead, focus on specific actions people have taken or not taken that directly impact the client.

I could see something like a carbon credit for individuals based on their actions that impact the climate such as limiting their power use, not driving their car frequently, or not having pets. This type of rationing also has problems, though, as it starts to become effectively limiting things to wealthy people who can afford a lifestyle in which they can use a car less frequently or own an energy-efficient home for example.

I don't think there is a reasonable way of rationing climate relief in a morally justifiable way.

Aren't social media posts a large driver of actions? Weren't they used very intentionally to misinform people on this issue? I believe social media (along with traditional media) is a large part of why we ended up where we did, with a large number of people still claiming this issue is a hoax when it very clearly is not.

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