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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

That's a failure of the political class who are using it to score points at the expense of a lot of people's lives.

It's really quite gross.

Climate change is due to, and a threat to, the status quo, and those who have gained their societal positions on the back of this status quo will defend the righteousness of their status literally to the death.

And these folks typically have communication platforms that reach a long way and therefore muddy the waters, often with the sideline cheering of said politicians.

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The "never let a crisis go to waste" crowd seem more concerning. It isn't the status quo political class who want us to live in pods and eat bugs (metaphorically speaking). A lot of the rhetoric and policy proposals related to climate change seem designed to foist a reduced standard of living on the middle and lower classes in Western countries.

This feels like a microcosm for politics in general.

You have a real problem (climate change) and you have an effective solution (carbon tax refunded as a dividend), but that doesn't really serve anybody's political goals.

Doing that would destroy the fossil fuel industry as people switch to electric cars and generate power with renewables or nuclear to avoid the carbon tax. Fossil fuel industry is a Republican constituency, so they fight it.

Doing that wouldn't serve any partisan political agenda. Given the choice most people would just buy an electric car, not ride the bus. It would likely require a significant number of new nuclear power plants. All of the money is being refunded to the population, not diverted to cronies and political donors. The most cost effective source of solar panels is currently China, not domestic union jobs. But Democrats keep asking for those things instead, which is dumb and most importantly less effective, so instead we get nothing.

Not much from what I’ve seen. Even the Green party in the UK is reluctant to admit that we can’t solve this without behaviour change.

> The "never let a crisis go to waste" crowd

In my experience there's no group better at that, and with the best platform, than politicians.

However, you're not wrong in your statement that there are other groups trying to push their own fringe agendas that just end up scaring the normal/middle majority. But, politics also has the power to guide the narrative incredibly better than it has been, and to properly address said fringe agendas.

> A lot of the rhetoric and policy proposals related to climate change seem designed to foist a reduced standard of living on the middle and lower classes in Western countries.

The problem is that's the reality, so the hard work that politicians just don't want to do because it requires collaboration with "the dreaded other side" is determining the framing and choice of what standards of living can be maintained and what needs to change and by how much.

However, if the worlds politicans are actually good judges of the tolerances of society and they've correctly decided that society can't tolerate any decline in lifestyle, then there was no way to win anyway so might as well "get what I can when I can before the music stops".

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