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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

Especially since HNers mostly are the top top top earners in the world, having unsustainable lifestyles. No one likes to accept it can't be like this forever.

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It's really frustrating that I had to work really hard, study the right things, and get lucky to be able to afford to live somewhere my direct emissions are minimal. More people should be able to afford to live car free in well insulated homes.

This doesn't seem right. Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming from developing countries. On the other hand, the HN crowd is much more likely to live in dense cities (which are more climate friendly), have access to public transportation, drive electric cars, and can afford to pay for carbon offsets.

The only thing unsustainable about the first world lifestyle is the fact that we don't have the political will to invest in real solutions like nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, etc.

> Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming from developing countries.

Isn't this because we're paying them to make stuff for us? Or is there some accounting of this where its their own consumption that causes it?

Also why would developing countries have to limit carbon emissions more than non developing ones?

Exactly. The cumulative emissions of the United States dwarf the rest of the countries in the world[1].

The powerhouse that is the United States was built on the externality of carbon emissions. Now that the West has built their economies of this externality, they're trying to prevent developing nations from catching up by utilizing the same externality.

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-2...

It's because they're industrializing, have higher population growth, and are primarily building coal power plants to keep up with it.

Well, you're saying "new carbon emissions", of course those are coming from developing countries. It's not the same statement as I said. And of course they should be allowed to improve their quality of life.

My point is that an average HNer lives in a country where per capita co2 per person is >10x as much as the poorer countries. And since the average HNer is a well off person with a lavish lifestyle, international travels etc., it's probably closer to 100x the amount of a person in a developing country.

Either this lifestyle should only belong to us few and developing countries should remain developing. Or we need to cut back to a sustainable level everyone can share. Which is a reality people don't want to face.

> The only thing unsustainable about the first world lifestyle is the fact that we don't have the political will to invest in real solutions like nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, etc.

It's not about "political will". Would you pay more for a product if it's external effects were priced in? Probably not. Hence unsustainable. Our level of consumption is only possible because we don't pay the true price, someone else is.

Carbon emissions per capita is going down in developed countries. It's going up in developing countries. Your implication was that the current problem is the level of consumption in the richest countries. But in reality that only accounts for a small portion of the expected carbon emissions over the next century.

We don't need to "cut back" to a sustainable level. A sustainable level is whatever amount of energy we can produce without increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. If we built more nuclear, solar, and wind power, and invested more in carbon capture and storage, we could sustain a much higher level of consumption than we currently are, while emitting less carbon.

You're kinda proving my point. Instead of facing reality as that would mean changes to your lifestyle, you want to keep on going as if nothing is happening and just hope technology will save us.

My argument is that your point isn't based in reality. How is changing my lifestyle going to fix the problem when most of my power consumption is fueled by renewables, while most of the carbon emissions over the next 50 years are going to come from India and China?

I'm not saying keep going as if nothing is happening. I'm saying the climate crisis is a real emergency, and the solution is to build more renewable energy and remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Because while your "power" consumption is mostly renewables (again, you arguing against something slightly different than what I write), it's a small part of your total consumption. What about all the power China uses to build the things we in the west consume? That's on your budget.

Oh, I'm all for reducing consumption of useless crap. Personally I don't buy many things, most of my spending goes toward food and books.

I thought we were talking about energy "consumption", not consumption of material goods. However, I'm still not sure how much reducing that kind of consumption is going to help in the overall picture of the climate crisis. It's also not realistic to expect that everybody is just going to stop buying things in the next 10 years.

If you've either taken four long flights in the last year, or drive an SUV a little more than average, you're already above the average carbon footprint for the world, without any consideration of eating meat, electricity, other fuels, etc.

> Carbon emissions per capita is going down in developed countries. It's going up in developing countries.

But it's not going to go down far enough in developed countries and it is going up very rapidly in developing countries, the result of that is predictable, and in the meantime we are emitting a large multiple of the per-capita greenhouse gases compared to everybody else, who simply want to have theirs too.

We do need to 'cut back' to a sustainable level or we will be cut back. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is already too high, it won't come down unless we cut back, as a species.

> If we built more nuclear, solar, and wind power, and invested more in carbon capture and storage, we could sustain a much higher level of consumption than we currently are, while emitting less carbon.

That can not be stated with such a degree of confidence, and smacks a bit of people saying that driving electric cars is good for the environment. It isn't, it's just slightly better than driving an ICE.

CO2 emissions per capita (tons/person/year):

Canada 18.72

United States 15.32

China 7.44

Brazil 2.24

Indonesia 2.02

India 1.89

I’m sure Canada is driven by heating load.

What drives it doesn't matter. Some areas may simply not be habitable sustainably.

We do seem to be working hard on making sure Canada is nice and temperate, though.

It beats -45 I guess... (that's the lowest I ever saw on my outside thermometer on St. Josephs Island).

You make a good point though: what is and what isn't habitable will change and as a result there will be substantial movement of people, displaced either by choice or by need.

I understand I was just trying to explain to myself how they were #1 in usage. I was surprised. I was also trying to define the problem since they were outpacing the USA.

Looks like Niagara falls only produces about 16 billion BTUs or 4.9 Million kWs.

Up North there are stacks of firewood everywhere and prepping for winter is an exercise in logistics. Also still many oil furnaces in active use.

Makes me wonder if the offshoring of manufacturing from the USA ended up looking like efficiency gains. If we are indeed now anchoring manufacturing it will have a much smaller energy footprint than the manufacturing we lost. Which finally brings us back to the original topic delivery of goods.

Yes, and when you multiply per capita by population, you end up with China and India emitting over double what the United States emits.

There is also the delta to take into account. Industrialized countries are decarbonizing and switching to renewables, while industrializing countries are building new coal plants.

It's not exactly fair for industrialized nations to have taken advantage of the externality of their historic carbon emissions, but then prevent developing nations from doing the same.

The ethical solution would be for industrialized nations to subsidize the development and decarbonization of developing nations.

Too bad the atomic energy commission is so tight lipped about proliferating reactor designs. The third world could have been powered with atomic energy by the 1980s if we didnt subscribe to cold war us vs them thinking (which our top brass continues to subscribe to even if the general populace hasn’t given a shit about the cold war since before Vietnam).

Average vehicle driven average distance per year (for US - 20,000km): 4 tonnes.

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