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Comment by drexlspivey | Hacker News Reader

You can’t just shut down the fossil fuel industry before you have alternative green energy infrastructure in place, this is a multi decade project. Otherwise the price of oil shoots up and you get inflation which affects most people’s ability to get by. “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills.

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> “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills.

If the costs of current living standard wasn't externalized to future generations (to the detriment of the environment), they couldn't afford those bills to begin with.

Unfortunately, it's very hard to reduce people's living standards once they got used to it. So yes, the end result is what you're saying - however, I think it's a very important nuance. It was always a card house; we just chose to ignore the issue and continued to build on top of it.

"externalized to future generations"

Exactly. Too few people understand economics, that current costs are being brought down by offsetting future costs.

The same with any pollution in any industry. If the industry is allowed to follow bad practices, and cause pollution but not deal with it, then they are not bearing the brunt of the full costs of generating that pollution. Someone has to clean it all up eventually, typically the government, then people complain about taxes.

You can complain about taxes, but you just voted for someone to cut regulations on industry which then causes the pollution which needs tax dollars to clean it up.

(I know CO2 is not a 'pollutant' technically, it is just another example of the 'cost' to the environment is not being allocated correctly to the producer. I feel need to be correct since even using the word 'pollutant' is a right wing argument point on why climate change advocates don't know what they are talking about.).

I guess the great thing about putting the problems off into the future is that I/we'll be dead by then (though I suppose it depends on how fast moving the whole thing is). What confuses me about that whole thing is that most people seem to want to have children and want a better future for them.

It's not even externalized to future generations, just to other continents whose inhabitants produce crap for the West

> this is a multi decade project

Yes as Exxon report suggested:

"Thus, even if solar or nuclear technologies were to be considered viable alternatives, they would not really displace fossil fuel energy for next 40 to 50 years, and CO2 growth would have to be estimated based on realistic market displacement of the fossil fuel technologies."

This was 42 years ago. Maybe it is time for “Non-Populist anger” now.

Solar panels didn’t really take off until 10-15 years ago because their efficiency was very low and didn’t make much economic sense. Battery technology is still a big hurdle.

> “Populist anger” might be justified if people have a hard time paying their bills

I do agree that finding alternatives quickly is crucial. However, when all is said and done, our financial concerns and even our personal well-being don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things.

>However, when all is said and done, our financial concerns and even our personal well-being don't matter as much in the grand scheme of things.

That might be true, but most people care very much about their own "financial concerns" and "well-being".

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