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Comment by caesil | Hacker News Reader

It's fascinating that it's the left that has stepped into the role of standing athwart history yelling stop.

I think it's a matter of refusing to believe that the disease and the cure can be the same. The realization that the industrial revolution was the root cause of climate change creates an aversion to believing that we can solve it scientifically, and a push toward demanding we slam the brakes on industrial society and move in reverse.

It's a fundamentally conservative stance. And one that's clearly wrong. The only way out is through. We're only going to solve the problem by accelerating toward a future of clean energy.

The old adage that people become more conservative as they age, I think, has a fundamental truth to it, but every generation finds a new and unique way of expressing that conservatism. With degrowth, we're seeing a blossoming of one of these odd paths in real time.

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Decades of environmentalist opposition to nuclear power and (in the anglosphere) dense housing is still the #1 cause of carbon emissions :D

While oppposing nuclear power can certainly cause more CO2 emissions, I doubt it's #1.

I would like to see an analysis of how much CO2 emissions could be reduced if 30 years ago there were, say, 500 more nuclear power plants than now. What about cars and trucks? According to the EPA.gov website, transportation is still the #1 cause of greenhouse gases.

Rail of various sorts fixed the transit problem. If we had abandoned our suburban failed experiment the same time nuclear was built out, I fully believe cars would die a natural death as all the gasoline infrastructure would cease to be profitable.

So basically it is a combination of no nuclear power + severe restrictions on density (zoning most famously, but also two-track building codes) that prevented this "natural solution".

I put nuclear first because it is much more global, while the problems of suburbs + NIMBYism is most pronounced in American. (Still a problem elsewhere but never quite as bad.)

Instead, we abandoned many rails lines. Just ion my area of the Midwest there are two lines that were unused in the 70-80's. In the 90's they were converted to bike trails. Now the rail companies wish they had those rights-of-way's back to relieve rail congestion in the area.

It’s 25 vs. 28 for transportation, but abundant nuclear could have made commercial and residential heating all electric or through district hot water heating, which is 13%.

On transportation, I’m reminded of old popular science mags where the cars were predicted to have mini reactors in the trunk. obviously with 1970s tech that’s much too dangerous to be viable, but maybe we would have developed nuclear batteries over time to skip over our porches with EV batteries.

In the US it looks like electricity production (25%) is a little less than transportation (28%). Commercial and residential show as 13%.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

I agree with some of your points...but I do have a question for you. I believe that clean energy definitely has some advantages, of course I do.

But clean energy cannot be the whole solution. What happens in even the best-case scenario when everyone uses clean energy like solar/wind for everything? It will make humanity even more efficient and give us even more space to grow, but the biosphere will still be in trouble and all that clean energy will make people consume even more of earth's resources.

So, it's clear that while clean energy is a start, it is not even close to an end to get people to be in equilibrium with the rest of our planet.

> It will make humanity even more efficient and give us even more space to grow, but the biosphere will still be in trouble and all that clean energy will make people consume even more of earth's resources.

The global population will soon be contracting. The UN puts the bump somewhere at the end of the century but their hypothesis are completely crazy and most specialists think it will be sooner.

Yes, even if we remove carbon emissions entirely, if we continue to grow at a modest 2.8% a year energy usage or whatever, then in around 400 years we’ll boil the surface of the earth just from emissive heat without any additional greenhouse effect at all.

Eventually humanity’s energy usage is going to have to flatline. And people really really don’t like that idea, but even solar energy has this problem. That’s still energy being captured that mostly would have reflected back out into space.

This is a very interesting observation, thank you.

I find degrowth arguments that call on governmental power to limit demand worrying. Application of force there is artificial and goes against what people naturally do. It's particularly distasteful to people who value life with limited government intrusion - and this is a very large cohort, so taking this avenue is going to have a lot of friction.

A future where these problems are solved by voluntary adoption of superior technology is so much brighter!

These limp attempts to limit demand are exactly what people naturally do, and so is ignoring them.

Some environmentalists might say that our power is unchecked because we've killed our last predators and destroyed all the other checks on our resource consumption, but they just aren't looking far enough in the future or with a wide enough view at the system. The checks are there, and they will check us since we're incapable of checking ourselves. And it's gonna hurt my kids.

>and a push toward demanding we slam the brakes on industrial society and move in reverse.

Where does the article suggest this?

As a Reddit refugee my disappointment is immeasurable that people are actually worse (or less quickly buried) at reading the article here

The comment appears to be a sort of strawman intent on blaming the left without sourcing any thoughts from the article, so was just trying to make sure.

The article is entirely about reduction of consumption, and the strings like "electri" "invest" "density" do not appear anywhere within it.

It is self-flagellating for self-flagellating's sake without understand there actual material basis of modern society. This is extremely common in the environmental movement and for decades has been a massive political failure except for empowering perl-clutching NIMBYs.

I would be a lot more sympathetic if consumption reduction was the only way to go. But it is not. Abundant apartments without parking, abundant e-bikes, abundant transit are feasible, get the job done, and way more popular. (People love to romanticize low density, but rents reveal different preferences.)

>The article is entirely about reduction of consumption, and the strings like "electri" "invest" "density" do not appear anywhere within it.

I mean a writer needs to actually say something in order for you to criticize it, failing to mention something or focusing the article on a particular topic of discussion isn't a position.

Is the goal decarbonization or is the goal something else? If that is the goal and it's that important, I think errors of omission as as bad as errors of inclusion.

For decade environmentalists have asked for political martyrdom (por political petard). It's never worked, unless you count Putin pissing off his natural gas customers (lol). Acting like that is the only strategy again and again is just irresponsible.

>I think errors of omission as as bad as errors of inclusion.

A stylistic choice like scope is not an error, so neither.

>Acting like that is the only strategy again and again is just irresponsible.

The article did not, you are attacking a strawman.

You’re right, but using single use plastic and manufacturing products forever that will end up in landfills won’t work, you’ll eventually end up as the planet in Wall-E. We need to invest in renewable energy and reducing the amount of waste we generate. Making things that last a long time is also a good idea.

I think you've responded to the domain (guardian.com) more than anything in the article.

It's written by their economics guy and even in the sub-headline he's calling for government investment.

What clean energy do you have in mind ?

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