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Comment by bognition | Hacker News Reader

Until the pain hits the wallet and stomach of the American middle class nothing is going to change. The ruling class and their media machine have people whipped into line and parroting back the talking points of the ultra wealthy.

It’s going to take pain of a seismic level to break the hold on the minds that of the people.

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I dont think India or China will close brand new coal power plants because US middle class has a wallet ache. We are fucked no matter what

China's exports (and by extension, carbon emissions) are driven by American and European demands for cheap products. Drastically decreasing industrial demand would lead to Asian carbon emissions shrinking by a large margin.

There is a huge push for rooftop solar in India.

At least China is also doing some good things, like building massive amounts of solar energy, and exporting cheap electric vehicles all around the world. Meanwhile the regime in America is actively attacking climate science and denying the whole issue.

Compared to Trump's administration the Chinese Communist party is quite okay from environmental perspective.

> Compared to Trump's administration the Chinese Communist party is quite okay from environmental perspective.

Yet the Chinese government is blocking the export of inputs for Battery and Solar technology to India [0], which incentivizes India to remain using coal and natural gas as a stopgap, as those are sourced from domestic and close allies (Saudi Arabia and now the US) respectively.

And China itself has begun expanding coal power capacity at the highest rate in almost 10 years due to energy security concerns [1]

Ironically, the Trump admin just gave a massive cash and tech injection into India's civilian nuclear and battery tech industries by starting to ToT American nuclear power plant designs, as well as subsidizing India's critical minerals industry (materials that are used to manufacture batteries and intermediate parts for PEVs) [2]

Reality is, no state or leader of a large country actually cares about environmental factors because they can afford to paper the effects, and the brunt of the suffering will affect poorest countries/LDCs that lack that capacity [3]

[0] - https://www.straitstimes.com/world/china-export-ban-on-engin...

[1] - https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-power-plant-carbon-cli...

[2] - https://in.usembassy.gov/united-states-india-joint-leaders-s...

[3] - https://www.economist.com/special-report/2022/11/01/the-rich...

China China China

https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-renewable-energy

The pain is already happening. Food scarcity - and inflation - will happen before financial collapse and government collapse.

It's already localised - currently coffee and cocoa - but at some point staples will affected. Which is when it gets interesting.

This is the most incredible time in recorded history. There's never been a civilisation facing so many extreme existential threats at the same time.

And all of them are self-inflicted, and would have been sidestepped or mitigated by a rational planetary culture - climate change, war (possibly nuclear), pandemics, catastrophic economic destruction, and AI.

Unfortunately, the average consumer has no idea that high coffee or chocolate prices have anything to do with the climate change. Apparently the average economical understanding is at the level of believing a president can magically make grocery prices come down.

It’s amusing to read that in your head the American middle class will cause a change in global warming, I’ll give you that.

It’s not in my head. Going back as far as 1992 George Bush was saying “The American lifestyle is non-negotiable” at an international gathering focused on climate change.

This has proven true. It’s also spread across the globe and is a major contributor to green house gas emissions.

I wasn’t clear, even if American middle class would make a change, by that time, developing countries would be at the stage where they could and would have our luxury lifestyle. And that population outside US/EU is much much larger.

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