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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

That's because the solution is radical degrowth. There's no way out of this that doesn't involve massive energy consumption reduction and abandonment of not just fossil fuels, but fossil fuel byproducts. Since the global food supply is both energy-intensive and reliant on petroleum-derived fertilizers (thank you, Green Revolution), that means the earth will support far fewer humans than it does today.

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Developed countries have grown their GDP while reducing their CO2 emissions. Degrowth is a dangerous distraction

They have grown their GDP how, exactly? Those emissions haven't been reduced; they've been outsourced to China and India, for the most part.

The emissions per killowatt-hour of consumption has gone down, even as energy use has gone up. It has gone down so much that absolute emissions are down, even as absolute energy use is up.

It's not clear to me how this would change if we got more manufacturing here. Energy use would go up, but emissions may not given the continuing decrease per unit energy.

Half of the net CO2 added to the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution has been in the past thirty years. I'm not saying we need more domestic manufacturing, I'm saying we need less petroleum production, worldwide. That will mean less manufacturing in general, all over the world. Perpetual economic growth is a physical and logical impossibility, and pursuing it is a danger to the individual livelihood of every human being on Earth.

I understand. The argument here is not that we don't need less petroleum use. The argument is that we are accelerating a reduction in petroleum use while still growing the economy, which implies that it's perhaps not true that we need less manufacturing all over the world.

And their point is that petroleum use is still increasing during this time, so that supposition is not likely well supported.

I’d also argue that inflation may be showing that much of that economic increase is ‘fake’ - aka based off money printing more than actual productivity improvements.

This is kind of like saying "I've solved the problem, I'm no longer going 100 miles per hour towards the edge of the cliff, I'm only going 70 miles per hour"

One is making a second order statement and another is making a first order statement. Yes we are merely slowing emissions, but yes a decelerating car is much safer when heading towards cliffs.

An argument can be made that we don't expect the car to speed up significantly anymore. But the steering is haphazard. And the terrain is getting steeper. Some people say they're working on brakes.

What are you suggesting we optimize for? Is it maintaining CO2 levels at all costs? Highest quality of life for the largest number? something else?

If that's the only solution, then get ready for 800ppm CO2 because there is precisely zero chance you're going to sell the whole world on that.

Even if you did that to the developed world, you're not going to get the developing world to follow. "Hey yall, we know we colonized you for a long time and stuff but could you please stay poor so we can fix a problem that we mostly created? You cool with that? Thanks!" Yeah, that's going to work.

The laws of physics don't care who emits CO2 or where it's emitted.

Fantasies just distract and make people feel like they're doing something by engaging in performative ideological posturing and theatrics.

Not only is it not a viable solution (we as mankind just ain’t gunna voluntarily degrow ever, sorry), but it’s not even necessary.

We have the technology to decarbonize the majority of the economy already. We already put 1% of the worlds gdp into solar and it’s taking over at an incredible rate. Up that to say 5% and we’d make huge innovations on battery scale, storage , synthetic fuels, etc within short years. I believe we could be 70% transitioned in 10 years if we wanted to, and we would have MORE abundant energy than today. No degrowth nessecary. We won’t do that either of course.

I'm with you on the first part ("degrowth", at least in terms of energy consumption), but not on the second part. Since most CO2 is consumed by the relatively rich, just going Thanos and killing half of the earth wouldn't help if it was the poor half. Thus, we have to start consuming less. I feel like all the solutions right now are only band-aid and no one is honest enough to talk about the elefant in the room. The elefant is clearly saying we could consume less but we don't wanna. So we are still prioritising the present at the cost of the future. We try to have a little more luxury today but by doing this bring misery down the road. The narrative (and politics) has to change dramatically for us as citizens to change. Less consumption means a livable future.

Moreover, a lot of the solutions seem to entail increased consumption.

You are welcome to radically degrow yourself, but as soon as you start talking about degrowing other people you are not going to end up in a good place.

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