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Comment by meristohm | Hacker News Reader

Responding to just the headline, as I don't have a NYT account and chose not to bother with paywall workarounds (and I'm not on wifi and chose to pay about $17/mo for mobile service, including taxes and $5 for a gigabyte of data, which I'm both happy and careful with):

No.

No, not unless you include social and cultural engineering, towards a way of life that has worked for us for tens of thousands of years, a way of life with minimal to zero automation, with much of our time spent ensuring shelter, food, and companionship. This is not a bleak proposition to me, nor do I feel blinded by romanticism; such a life closer to the land and water is that much closer to death, but also, in the company of mutually-supportive family (to use the term broadly), entirely meaningful.

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This kind of extreme "we may as well tear down civilisation" is an unhelpful and paralysing response to climate change. Even if we did NOTHING until 2050 (which is itself an absurd extreme, given that solar+wind+storage now achieves a lower levelized cost of electricity than any other source) then the whole world could afford to live with the CO2 emissions per capita of Brazil or Indonesia, or in other words a 48% reduction from what France emits per capita, without exceeding 1.5 C of warming.

What we can't afford is the absurdly inflated per capita emissions of Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The UK is now emitting less per capita than they did in 1879 and emissions have fallen 60% since 1970. If they were to fall another 47% then they'd be compatible with 15 C.

Climate change is essentially a problem resulting from overconsumption by the rich. The bottom 50% of the world aren't actually causing any particular climate change problem.

Yes, but the bottom 50% of the world want to live like the top 50% no matter what will it do to the climate.

Not all of them by any means - many in the global south are all too aware of the external costs of first world consumption in a very direct in their face way that eludes the privileged few.

You put forward a poor argument against positive change, it smacks of "if we don't burn through fossil fuels first they will".

It's a lazy defeatist justification for not making any effort to change.

> The UK is now emitting less per capita than they did in 1879 and emissions have fallen 60% since 1970.

This is largely because industry has been gutted in the UK, the emissions for the UK population is simply occurring in other countries. Our green efforts have been better than many countries, but that’s not what has driven this large decline in emissions.

> but that’s not what has driven this large decline in emissions

Perhaps since 1879, but for the past 30-40 years the largest driver in co2 reduction has been due to actual reduction in (trade adjusted) consumption (40%)

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

this tired trope won't die in the face of facts. https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 34% of the emissions due to UK economic activity are occurring in other countries - it's not what has driven this large decline in emissions.

Fair enough. My apologies for being a parrot.

If I were king of the world, I could've fixed global warming in the 70s. It would cost a lot, there might've been a few more nuclear accidents, but it would be done by now - we'd be talking about how great our electric cars are going to be.

Which is to say: we have the technology, if we're willing to pay for it, to fix this problem entirely by multiple means today (solar, wind, batteries, nuclear etc.). It'll cost a lot less then "we must fundamentally reshape humanity".

But that's the problem with big problems: everyone uses them as a bandwagon for whatever unrelated issue they want to dump on it. So many people who practically want an apocalypse so they can "tut-tut" their neighbor who doesn't quite do recycling they way they think they should or whatever.

Human societies driving themselves into death and oblivion predates modern technology. Boom/bust farming/famine cycles, for instance. The collapses weren't "huge swaths of the planet"-wide but that didn't make them any less devastating. Yes, you could have a meaningful life anyway - you could also have a meaningful life today. Don't blame climate stuff for that if you aren't happy!

(Hell, even non-technological animals have gone extinct countless times over the ages.)

The only constant through the ages has been trying to stemp the tide of the larger forces that would destroy your society.

I can point you to a sustainability internship in Kenya if you're interested.

Unironically interested in that. Can you send it?

You can go ahead an join a tribe somewhere in the Amazon. Whatever, hopefully you don't need modern medicine.

Yes!

More and more, I'm coming to believe that humanity ended up on the wrong path with the industrial revolution.

The benefits are obvious (technology, medicine, etc.). But the downsides are also gathering momentum... Two centuries of industrialization have wrecked our climate, and machines have enabled the destruction of vast ecosystems.

There are no glib solutions for soil degradation, desertification, water table depletion, or pollution.

Billions of humans would not exist without the Haber–Bosch process (https://www.nature.com/articles/22672).

The path of industrialization might very well have a dead end, literally and figuratively.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Climate change is the ultimate version of this. Almost no one wants to believe that our civilization is heading for total collapse caused by it's own waste. No one wants to revert to an agrarian society, they want to eat out and be entertained. Hence the angry replies and downvotes.

> Hence the angry replies and downvotes.

Nah, I downvoted because "I didn't read the article, I just want to say the little rant I always say about this broad topic" is a comment genre I want to see less of.

If the so-called "total collapse" threat was real, then Obama, Gore, DiCaprio and all the other ocean-front mansion owners wouldn't have 1) bought the home or 2) been able to insure it.

So why cripple our economies, ruin our lives, increase our food, transportation, and energy costs? Because of faith? Dire climate-related predictions from the church of climatology date back to the 1960s. Hundreds of them. Not a single one has ever come true. Not one. But we should believe it now?

Catastrophic changes happen over geologic time. There isn't a tax which can stop a natural process, so why bother?

Even if the stated sea level rise is accurate (0.12 inch per year), that isn't exactly a flash flood. Places like New Orleans demonstrate that you can live at or below sea level and manage it with engineering.

If it came down to it, we'd build or we'd move 1000 feet inland and be good for another 5,000 years.

The calamity and chicken little shit is overstated because it is about the money; always is.

Catastrophes happen to many species and civilizations. Many have gone extinct. For example we kill many species. They never expect it. Smart or rich people, including insurance companies aren't special enough to be an exception.

Many predictions about industrialization have come true. Our cities are dirty from smog, and dumping. It is simple to see that we are damaging nature on a big scale, and we need the natural balance to survive.

Might as well try and stop our self-destruction. Unless you want to just give up now. In the end the world keeps on turning.

The argument in your first para doesn't hold together. If we're heading for total collapse, what else are you going to exchange the bits of paper for?

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