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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

The thing is actually stopping the warming involves:

1. Cutting emissions to zero. Not cutting back, zero

2. Extracting a chunk of co2 from the atmosphere and sequestering it

Cutting back just means things get worse less quickly. They still get worse.

To solve the issue we should be building nuclear among other things but for whatever reason the green movement has opposed the solution for decades. Even shutting down nuclear to use more coal. Renewables are great but nothing currently is replacing baseload co2 producing fuels, which are still growing globally. And which will still grow unless we make an economically feasible baseload alternative.

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> but for whatever reason the green movement has opposed the solution for decades

Which green movement are you referring to? I understand there are some anti-nuke green parties in some European countries but as far as I can tell they don’t hold all that much political power.

> Renewables are great but nothing currently is replacing baseload co2 producing fuels, which are still growing globally.

It is not a green movement that is currently interfering with the production of renewable energy sources in the States, that much is evident.

> for whatever reason the green movement has opposed the solution for decades. Even shutting down nuclear to use more coal.

This is an amusing and antique take on things. Anti-nuclear protests were frequently in the news in the 70s and 80s. As a result, some people with views set in stone in their youth believe that environmentalists are still predominately anti-nuclear.

In a strange twist of fate, this mindset is actually helping things today. The US President, likely motivated by a desire to own the libs and punch environmentalists in the face, plans to pour $4T into nuclear, making him an unintended climate change warrior, some say the greatest ever.

If that actually happens (and isn’t a giant scam!), along with the crash in global trade cutting emissions there, it would be the most hilarious thing ever.

Nixon going to China level.

Exactly. Runaway capitalism is the fuel of our climate emergency. Boats and planes delivering container loads of plastic shit around the world. People flying to Europe for the weekend.

The best fix at this time, since we humans have shown ourselves to be collectively incapable of doing the right things, would be to push a stick into the spokes and bring the whole system crashing down.

Guess who seems to be doing just that (though for all the wrong reasons). If the rabid US leadership manages to crash the global economy, that could be the single biggest reduction in emissions in history.

> The US President, likely motivated by a desire to own the libs and punch environmentalists in the face, plans to pour $4T into nuclear, making him an unintended climate change warrior, some say the greatest ever.

All that cash and he’s only asking for 5 GW of improvements to existing reactors and ten “new large reactors.” So what, 20 GW total? By 2030.

That doesn’t come close to satisfying an AI power consumption estimate of 68 GW by 2027 and 327 GW by 2030. [1]

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3572-1.html

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