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Comment by wewewedxfgdf | Hacker News Reader

Nothing can be done, so learn to live with it.

That's the new political position all around the world.

It does seem like that’s our new political reality for now. I think that COVID showed world governments just how little control they have over their populations. You get folks to bend a little, but they quickly break and call for you to be thrown out of power. Getting to carbon zero or negative would be asking for an enormous sacrifice of the global population in the form of lower living standards and slower growth. After how people fought against masks, a shot and social distancing, it’s obvious to those in power that there will be no solution to this problem aside from geo-engineering or cost competitive green energy. Might as well stop talking about it.

in my opinion, the solution needs to be technological, not austerity. In a democracy, any party that introduces quality of life reductions in favor of the global climate will always get voted out

The US voted against clean energy and EVs. Can’t win when you directly vote against the technological solutions you mention. “Stop hitting yourself.”

The US voted against the subsidies, not against the technology itself.

Subsidies are kind of the opposite of austerity.

The US voted for the wealthy to not pay for the subsidies via federal income tax (bottom 60% of Americans have no federal tax liability) and to expose US energy consumers to higher prices through continued fossil fuel use. The technology is proven, is cost competitive, and could be advantaged (through subsides that were removed). It isn’t, because of entrenched interests and corruption. It’s for profits and tax cuts for the wealthy, plain and simple, at the expense of everyone who needs energy.

If the public has a problem with this, they know where to find the folks making their lives more expensive for fossil fuel industry profits to share their concerns (even if climate change is not their priority).

I agree with most of this analysis - but a problem with your last paragraph is that many of the public are not/do not care to be sufficiently informed and therefore do not believe it. They think net zero/solar/anti-fracking is some sort of leftist plot.

I think the idea that it would lower living standards is something the fossil fuel companies would have you believe.

Oh but the population will have to sacrifice - there is no way food supply will not be affected. Florida’s orange production in 1996 was 174 million boxes[0] since 2020 it is around 52 million boxes[1]. Beef production is lower because of drought [3].

There are parts of the country which are not insurable because of hurricanes, fires, floods and tornadoes [4]. This is an indicator that anything built will not be around for a long time.

So they will sacrifice-they just know it yet.

[0] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Florida/Public...

[1] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Florida/Public...

[3] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...

[4] https://bankingjournal.aba.com/2025/02/feds-powell-says-some...

You can’t vote the climate out of office. Sure our food supplies may crash, but no one person decided they should crash. No one to blame. No one to punish. This is the political reality. This man made catastrophe will feel sufficiently like an act of god for most people and they will just deal with the reduced carrying capacity of the planet as if it were some divine judgment instead of the tragedy of the commons.

> Florida’s orange production in 1996 was 174 million boxes since 2020 it is around 52 million boxes

To be fair, the largest factor in that is citrus greening. The industry sort of threw its hands up and gave up on trying to fight it as far as I can tell.

A lot of orange groves were cut down for construction, 1990-2010.

I drove to Jax last week and saw some of the (long shuttered) orange-themed tourist shops off of 301/21/100. I had nearly forgotten they existed.

Right, I think its cause and effect though. Once greening took hold a lot of groves saw the writing on the wall and shuttered/sold. Thats partially what happened to an iconic grove by me which operated for decades. Now their highway stand is being paved over to put in another storage facility.

All I can say to that is: Thank God! Governments are increasingly authoritarian and not having control is a good thing.

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