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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

So, there are two problems?

First, even though we’ve known we have to transition off fossil fuels since the 1980’s, governments and individual investors bet we’d keep using them through the 2030’s.

Second, solar panels are now so cheap, they’re fueling economic growth and quality of life improvements in places that developed regions think shouldn’t have those things.

I’m having a really hard time seeing the downside here.

For what it’s worth, these problems aren’t limited to developing regions: In California, we’re seeing exactly the same effects: PG&E’s cost structure is insane, and they thought they could just pass the burden to consumers indefinitely.

I guess I should feel guilty that my solar panels cover the electricity demand of our vehicles, so now we’ll have fewer oil / natural gas wars and that’ll put a bunch of human rights violators out of a job?

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The issue is made clear here:

> When oil got cheap and plentiful after World War II, humans didn’t enjoy the savings. They built more cars.

In the same way cheap solar will induce massive demand for all kinds of stuff, which is still made by emitting CO2. Like, yes, your car has lower carbon footprint than ICE car. But it has some, and far from negligible. And when billions of newly minted middle class buy their own first car, it will add up, even if these are all solar powered BEVs.

Maybe it will turn into a nonproblem, idk(that happens rarely)...but our predictions and projections ough to be fixed in any case.

> And when billions of newly minted middle class buy their own first car

Where are these supposed billions?

Because populations are either already contracting or on the verge of contracting nearly everywhere: China, India, Nigeria, even Pakistan, etc.

The first things people do when they get richer is that they stop having so many kids.

In Africa and Asia. Or they will all die off in just few decades?

it's so boring.

it's a lame balancing act by the elites who based all their livelihood off masses of people to explore, and the need to be sensible with resources to keep the status quo a little longer.

china, when they were briefly communists, put a population limit as it was sensible when the plan was to make everyone enjoy the benefits of society. ...then they jumped to capitalism as usual and changed gears.

We all die in just a few decades.

Anyway, there are no billions of new middle class people ready to buy a car there. You are far, far overestimating the growth potential and at the same time underestimating the current rate of vehicles ownership (mostly two wheeled).

Electrification, certainly, more A/C definitely, more cars, sure a bit but infrastructures are already under heavy load which limits the interest. Billions of cars, never.

I think the greatest chance of this turning into a "nonproblem" is for these developing countries to skip ahead of the developed countries (particularly the US). Most countries are a lot smaller than the US and can do even better than cars with E-bikes and good public transportation infrastructure in the cities. In the country I would think cars are less needed given the percent of the population who are farmers or the like. I would think a community owned or rental car kind of situation would be a lot more efficient and cost effective than private ownership.

For right now housing improvements and household appliances deliver a lot more value. They, too, will use power, but they can also save power through efficiency advances.

You're forgetting car is a symbol of freedom and wealth and these always trump efficiency.

If the city isn't built up around the existence of cars it's a lot more difficult to shoehorn them in.

This is really only true in the US, and only in the last 70 years. I can think of more than a few symbols that would be more fitting for those values than a car.

The car is a symbol of freedom and wealth in the US. The fun part about rising nations speed running US industrialization/wealth is that they can also skip the marketing-influenced/embellished parts. Just because US marketers were too great at selling the ideas of the "nuclear family" and suburbs designed only for lots of cars (subsequently accidentally destroying much of the urban environment), doesn't mean that's the best way to sell cars in a rising nation. Different nations, different national ideals, different ways to view wealth (and freedom). US marketing still isn't "manifest destiny" for the world's views, even though it likes to think it is (even with the US military backing it).

Basically everywhere in the world everyone who can afford it gets a car as soon as they can. The only exceptions are some of the megacities like London in which it's impractical due to congestion / on street parking being scarce.

You would know this of course if you had travelled so I can only really assume that you haven't. Drop a pin randomly on a point in Europe and it's overwhelmingly likely that you can't even get to that spot without a car.

> Drop a pin randomly on a point in Europe and it's overwhelmingly likely that you can't even get to that spot without a car.

Really makes you wonder how the Europeans coped for several millennia prior to the car.

Cutting to the chase; train, bus, bicycle, walking can get people pretty much every where in modern Europe, save those few places that require serious climbing skills.

By "can't" I obviously mean that it's impractical not literally impossible. Of course you can technically walk to anywhere that a car can go and more places besides.

The point remains. People buy cars as soon as they can unless the built environment forces most of them not to (e.g. London, NYC, Tokyo).

Even in London most people buy cars as soon as they have a family unless they're skint.

Habits can change and transport habits will very likely change in near future (course of a human lifetime).

Already, for a few decades now, more humans live in urban settings rather those that live outside city bounds - the rising trend is for more energy efficient urban transport, in non US setiings that leads to improved mass transit and cheaper rates for lighter vehicles.

> Of course you can technically walk to anywhere that a car can go and more places besides.

Some of us actually do, no technicality required.

May I ask where you are from and where you live now? I come from one of those "rising nations" you allude to and every single friend and family I have there now own at least one car. FWIW, they all live in cities which were there even before the cars were invented.

If you think rising nations can skip cars, then I am afraid that you don't really know such societies.

To me, a car symbolizes willful ignorance, ugly selfishness, jealousy, and insecurity. It's also a tragic reminder of our inability to organize and collaborate. It's really a disgusting thing that we're trapped in. To me, freedom is riding the train.

I recognize my heterodox perspective is uncommon, but I exhibit it here only to demonstrate that the counter-meme exists already in the wild.

The three P's: powerdown, permaculture, population control. Industrial civilization and reproducing too quickly must be made taboo. The only way humanity survives is as small pockets of preindustrial, agrarian societies, and in far fewer numbers than exist today. We can -- and humans have -- endured for millennia this way. Industrial civilization has less than a century on its rapidly ticking clock.

" If you believe the myths of science, the Tolowa lived in this region for at least 12,500 years. If you believe the myths of the Tolowa, they lived here since the beginning of time." --Derrick Jensen

Oh, and uh, forget about going to space.

Or, we could invest in environmental remediation, which drives economic growth, and doesn’t make literally everything worse for everyone.

This worked great in the past, and we already have proven out the technology that we need for the next 50-100 years.

The main problem I see is political corruption, and greed / laziness from vested interests.

Edit: Concretely, we know how to make gasoline carbon negative for $1/gallon. Permaculture sounds good, but the yield per acre (and man hour) is way worse than comparably good conventional techniques like no-till, which we should have moved to 30 years ago.

Alright, let‘s make a deal then. We will do some horse trading in the UN and purchase one or more islands for all you degrowth enthusiasts. We will even give you all the support we can in returning the soil and ocean to a healthier state.

In return anyone leaving the island stays gone and can never publicly talk about degrowth and their dreams of ending civilization. Also, you must tell your children the truth about all the accomplishments of industrial society.

I agree that our prehistoric ancestors were the most stable populations when looking at them from very far away. You seem to actually want to return to their brutal and ignorant lives. Well go ahead, put some skin in the game before publicly advocating for the death of billions.

>The only way humanity survives is as small pockets of preindustrial, agrarian societies, and in far fewer numbers than exist today.

Aside from the complete practical and moral wrongness of all the nonsense you just said, there's the hypocrisy.

You state the above while using either a desktop device or phone to comment on a site like HN (and presumably interact with many other sites on the web), with all of these and your device being pinnacle product results of a mass industrial modern society. Not to mention your lament that billions don't die to have "far fewer numbers", while obviously keeping yourself alive despite this regret about all those others.

> they’re fueling economic growth and quality of life improvements in places that developed regions think shouldn’t have those things

This strikes me as both extremely cynical and missing the point

Even if you celebrate the rising quality of life across the world, you have to acknowledge that a knock-on effect of rising quality of life is going to be that those regions that are catching up to the first world are going to be polluting more, just like the first world currently does

If climate models were not including this source of increased pollution from rising living standards then the models are probably wrong and increased cheap solar may inadvertently be resulting in a net increase in overall pollution and worsening climate change. It is worth analyzing if this is the case or not, and if it is the case then we probably need to adjust climate plans somehow

It seems like a similar situation to how introducing western medical care and pharmaceuticals led to population explosions in many countries as they started to live longer and more children survived to adulthood, without adjusting the number of children families were having

Similarly it is not surprising that increasing the available power in a country could similarly create a consumption explosion as their standard of living suddenly skyrockets

Climate change is going to have more of an impact on people who have little resources and are already suffering from a lack of infrastructure, healthcare and stability. If these populations get more resources and can afford more services, they can be better prepared. Should they continue to suffer today‘s very real problems only to prevent the predicted but not certain worse suffering later?

> Should they continue to suffer today‘s very real problems only to prevent the predicted but not certain worse suffering later?

No probably not, but it's reasonable to look a bit sideways at actions that are causing growth in some places, while other places are being told that we desperately need to embrace degrowth

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