Comment by flagrant_taco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flagrant_taco | Hacker News Reader

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What you're describing is the path to inevitable collapse. If people will never be able to give up convenience or growth then we really are doomed, tech advantages only slow down that runaway train.

I don't actually think it's a fundamental blocker though. People sacraficed quite a bit at home during WWII to support the war effort, we could make similar sacrifices now if we saw our impact on the planet as a similarly existential threat.

To me it seems like the failure is in trying to analyze the problem so specifically that we can define the "right" path then logic people onto it. That will never work, mainly because the problem is so complex that there won't be a complete understanding to share. There will always be assumptions used in modeling and holes in the data allowing for alternative explanations that are then argued over even further.

We all know that using oil at this scale isn't a great idea. And we all know that we could actually use less oil without giving up much at all. If we spent less time arguing over how we got here we could find reasonable next steps that are hard to argue with when it isn't all backed by "science" and "fact" that can be debated endlessly.

WW2 only lasted 4-7 years depending on which country you were in. There was direct, visible progress along the way. As soon as the war was over, everything could go back to "normal" (at least for the winners).

What you're asking for is a permanent reduction in standards of living. While that might be the right thing to do, it's going to be difficult to convince average people to vote for that. Many of them are barely getting by as it is and don't think they are able to sacrifice more.

I was listening to "The Regrettable Century" podcast's episode on degrowth recently, and they made a couple of good points here. The first point is that degrowth as reduction-in-consumption only is really going to affect the global rich; everyone else can afford to come up a bit to a new lower average. The second point is that there's more to quality of life than quantity of consumption. Nobody is talking about, e.g., making modern medicine go away. It means more trains and fewer cars, fewer Funko Pops and more live music. It means shorter working hours and no commutes. Fewer treats but more leisure. It's only a permanent reduction in "standards of living" if by that you mean "amount of consumption" rather than "quality of life".

Defining standards of living in this way is very short term focused. If we reduce energy demand now but avoid a power grid collapse a decade down the road, is that better or worse for standard of living? And if we really are meant to believe that climate change is irreversible if we don't change course before 2030, who gives a damn about stander of lining for the next few years?

Sure, that's the logical analysis. But many people do give a damn about their short-term standard of living and vote on that basis.

I disagree. There is more untapped energy and resources in this world than we could ever hope for, We just need to develop the tech to access it. Climate change too could be solved with tech. Theres no other choice.

How do we know these exist of we don't know how to access our use them? Without access we can only estimate the reserves, and without a way to use it we can't calculate the potential energy creation or storage.

We really are screwed off our only hope is blind faith that tech can save us. Technology can help, but we can't abandon the option of decisions that can already be made today.

>We just need to develop the tech to access it

What energy

What "tech"?

Tech isn't magic. We can't just magically stop the greenhouse effect.

Solar, wind and nuclear (theoretically) are limitless.

> We can't just magically stop the greenhouse effect.

You're absolutely right, that's why tech is the only non-magical solution.

Anyone thinking they can change the behavior of 8 billion people is engaging in magical thinking.

Solar and wind are absolutely limited, both by environmental conditions that change the energy potential and by our ability to store energy. Neither can handle surge use as well either, we can't make more wind or sunshine when everyone turns on their suit conditioner.

Nuclear is at least a viable shirt term solution. Combine that with reducing our total energy demand and we're at least buying ourselves more time to figure things out, that's a much better sort term path for sure.

You're not saying anything I disagree with. Technology will, and has been very quickly improving those limitations.

Young men have a genetic proclivity for getting their asses handed to them in war. It's surprisingly easy to order men to their deaths when they're convinced it's to protect their tribe from some other tribal threat. We've been doing it for longer than we've been human.

Nothing in our evolutionary history has prepared us for climate change. We have more trivial things to worry about.

That's the thing. No one can actually comprehend such things like geopolicits, global/national economy, climate change etc. The world is too big for our brains to understand.

Reason is slave to the passions. If it doesn't resonate at an emotional level we don't care. It doesn't matter if we understand. We also have to give a fuck, and clearly we don't.

People by and large understand and ask for and vote for solutions to this.

The various comments here blaming "people" are a mix of victim blaming and cover-up for the well organized forces that have held the democratic will back for decades and despite (or because of?) this, the agents of this tragedy are very popular around these parts.

>People by and large understand and ask for and vote for solutions to this.

They really haven't, no. Corporations don't want to take responsibility for their actions, governments don't want to, and big surprise: individuals don't want to either.

USA:

Polling shows that US voters favor climate bills – yet assume fellow Americans don’t

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/01/us-vot...

UK:

> The UK has some of the highest levels of concern regarding the climate emergency in the world with 81 per cent of people ‘believing’ in the climate emergency, with over three-quarters (77 per cent) saying we must do ‘everything necessary, urgently as a response’.

https://www.ippr.org/blog/as-some-politicians-seek-to-divide...

I've read those numbers, and my anecdotal experience more or less corresponds to them. I know plenty of people who acknowledge climate change and think it is serious.

They've all had their whole lives to make climate conscious lifestyle decisions, they could all stop eating meat tomorrow, but they ain't done squat. Not as individuals nor as a group. The few who have are weirdos who live at the margins.

Putting the burden on invididuals for averting the climate crisis is a form victim-blaming. It’s long been clear that only concerted collective action will be effective in producing real change.

This is why so many free-market, minimal-state absolutists are so prone to putting their fingers in their ears and pretending climate change is not a problem, or if it is, that individuals as free agents are responsible for creating it and therefore fixing it. They cannot accept the logical conclusion of the necessity of state action, as it contradicts their core beliefs.

Not acknowledging that the current predicament is caused by every single human being except maybe native tribes in remote islands is blindness. Saying that the vast majority (%99.9) of human beings is responsible and to be blamed for it is not victim-blaming, but not right either. The thing to blame is our beloved technology. Technology is the main force which shapes human society. We do things and don't do things because of our technology. It defines societies and the entire human civilization. The only choice there was was to oppose all technological progress, but that ship has sailed long ago, in 15th century or so. Back then, few people understood what technological progress will inevitably bring, no one had a time machine to see 21th and 22th centuries. We tout these people as religious backward luddites today, though the sentiment is changing.

The whole situation is as deterministic as two celestal bodies moving according to Newtonian physics. Technological progress was inevitable, and so was the resulting population bomb in the last century, and so is the nearing Collapse of the civilization in the coming decades, due to ecological overshoot. Read the Industrial Society and Its Future by Ted Kaczynski.

For even longer it's been clear that any collective (or state for that matter) is made up entirely of individuals. In this case millions of individuals who can't help but give tens of thousands of dollars to the fossil fuel industry each year. I'm really not apt to regard a bunch of people enjoying the fruits of their ill-gotten gains as victims.

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