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Comment by JoshGG | Hacker News Reader

Just watch how expensive not fixing it will be.

I feel like this take is dismissive and unhelpful. Expecting people to sacrifice their current wellbeing for the sake of a nebulous, far off reckoning is simply unrealistic and a bit of a dead end in terms of climate progress. We would be better served finding lower impact solutions that are more easily adopted than high impact ones that are never going to be accepted.

We aren't exactly asking people to sacrifice their wellbeing and convenience completely. That's why for example we aren't asking the population to ditch their cars and switch to trains and bikes, but we are offering them electric cars, which are exactly the kind of lower impact solutions you are speaking of.

An electric car isn't really a lower impact solution for a large amount of the US population. From what I'm able to find, the lowest priced EV (Chevy Bolt) starts around $27k currently[0], whereas the cheapest gas car (Nissan Versa) starts at $17k[1]. This is without even accounting for the larger difference in the used car market, cost of installing a level 2 EV charger (which is another $1k-$2.5k[2], which is necessary for anybody who does any significant amount of traveling in a single day), or the 25% higher insurance premiums for EVs[3]. All said the difference between the two options is a pretty significant difference for most of the population who are already struggling because of the significant inflation rates experienced in recent years[4].

[0] https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/bolt-ev

[1] https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html

[2] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-much-does-i...

[3] https://www.valuepenguin.com/how-having-electric-car-affects...

[4] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...

Electric cars help, but are not the solution. If everyone in Asia and Africa bought electric cars, it would be a disaster.

That's my point. We aren't looking for "the solution" we are looking for something that helps.

We’ve been talking about this problem since the 90’s. If there were lower impact solutions they are either long past the moment they needed to be implemented (back when denial was still the norm) or they just don’t exist and aren’t coming soon. Magical thinking isn’t helpful, we have to fix this problem with the solutions that exist, not the solutions we wish existed.

Go to war with the army you have, no?

Or not, and just decide that future generations are going to have to suck it up, which is the default choice anyway.

Australia is already having a bit of reckoning due to climate change in the way of mega fires and multiple "hundred year" floods per year in populated areas. At the last federal election, a newish political movement of independents took a large number of seats in parliament. This was possible due to preferential voting (like stacked voting in USA). The left party won power and has done very little on addressing climate change.

I'm now convinced that political will just isn't there even if the people are there (Large emitters donate to politicians). So I see an inevitable path where geoengineering will be seriously on the agenda inside 15 years.

> We would be better served finding lower impact solutions

There aren’t any lower impact solutions that will cut carbon emissions by 40% in the next 5 years.

We know that, but it doesn't change a thing. Your or my opinion has little influence. Therefore baby steps should be taken which will reduce that cost.

Why baby steps vs radical technological innovation?

We waste our time with virtual signalling nonsense, that hurt the least affluent here, whilst China/India/Africa are going to be outputting vastly more CO2 to make any of our efforts net-irrelevant to climate change.

We need to fix it for the world. That'll require big-impact innovation.

As expensive as “not staying in our homes for two weeks turned out to be”. Mind you, I was in the camp demanding just that at the beginning of the pandemic.

Which is to say that the technocratic powers that be should tone it down a little when it comes to imposing their top-down decisions, after all they’re just a minority compared to us, the common people, we (the common people) can always bring to power some of our leaders in order to fight (ideologically and not only) said technocrats.

How is that relevant? The voting public will typically delay expensive cost-saving measures. Because the majority of individuals will do the same.

Also forced public expenditures are a huge money making opportunity for the capital class, so they will tend to encourage delay as well.

If you tell people they have to stop all travel and electricity use and plastics purchases, they won't do a thing.

There are no levers to pull besides technological ones.

The plastics one needs to be done through legislation and collaboration with industry… there are so many products where consumers don’t have a choice - the manufacturers need to take the responsibility for eliminating single-use packaging that doesn’t biodegrade or recycle. Yes it may be painful, but there’s no other way to do it

Prove that it actually a problem. In the 70's it was global cooling and a new ice age that we were to live on fear of. Do we really expect the climate to remain stable? Something that has never actually happened?

That was all your fault as well. "The Climate Change Saga unfolds as we visit 1978 and Leonard Nimoy explains how the human population is causing The Earth to Freeze".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-ZDnSbNIYs

What's your plan for when the boy cries "Wolf!" and he's actually there?

Check that it is actually there. I have heard doom monger predictions for over 3 decades and none of them have come true to date. I live by the sea and the level hasn't risen by any perceivable amount. 30 years ago I was told that major cities would be underwater by now.

Sure, but isn't the argument that the current situation is akin to a frog in a pot?

There's no hard threshold under this line of thinking and, I imagine, if something terrible were to happen to a vulnerable population abroad, then the west would react in a way which would enable its population to treat the issue as if it were "far away".

Rising authoritarianism would just seem like something related to politics in this hypothetical future. From there, any attempts at top-down mitigation would just seem like "bad guys with power doing things bad guys do".

Expensive for folks in the future*

That is what is running through people's heads. And apparently they are not a part of this future either.

the reality is that the costs will mostly be borne by future generations.

the cost we need to confront climate change is likely larger than the cost in this generation if we let it rip.

How do you define "future generations" anyways? People that aren't born yet? Because that sounds way more optimistic than I am.

If the notion of future generations sounds way too optimistic, you are likely far too pessimistic (if this is about climate change).

There is no realistic scenario for lack of future gens due to climate change in the next 100 years even with absolutely terrible undiscovered positive feedbacks.

I'm not saying there won't be future generations. This is what I was replying to:

> the cost we need to confront climate change is likely larger than the cost in this generation if we let it rip.

I'm saying the cost to confront it will be less than the cost to "let it rip" before some current generations die off from old age.

I think that you are wrong, I am well versed in climate science. The costs to avert now are significant, even more significant than the changes needed for sea level adaptation in our lifetime.

Most of the costs will be borne out by subsequent generations.

Those in power are counting on the cost having to be paid by future generations. I assume they either don't have children/grand-children, don't like their children/grand-children, or are so narcissistic that it never occurs to them to think about their children/grand-children.

Their children will have enough money to carve out their own missile silo. The poors need not apply.

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