Hacker News Reader

Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much agree. Nature will fix the climate, after it eliminates (a large number of) the humans that are causing the problem. That's really the only way.

View on HN

The defeatist mindsets expressed in these comments seem more like a way to shed any sort of personal accountability for participating in a solution that doesn't kill billions of people than a reflection of reality.

There are many solutions.

> There are many solutions.

There are, but none that will be accepted. Will you give up your car, your air condititioning, your AI agents, your uber eats, your year-round fresh produce at the supermarket, meat as a regular part of your diet, all the imported stuff you are accustomed to having?

You're right, I won't, and I'm probably not alone. So what's the endgame? A world government that enforces all of those "give-ups" at gunpoint?

As a family: - We don’t use Uber Eats - We don’t fly - We bike in the city (long tail bikes to carry the kids) - We don’t use A/C (and resist so far installing it) and try to do some passive ventilation, shading to limit the house getting to hot in the summer (it’s gets sometimes around 42 C where we live) - We try to eat local food

…

And we are not sad!

here's a thought experiment but it's really more of a personality test of fantasy vs reality

let's say they somehow make fusion happen next decade

so with "unlimited" "free" power do you think there will be

A - more peace

B - more war

To me it's pretty obvious.

When I was a teenager I hoped for a Star Trek future

But after the past decade especially, I realize that will never happen, that people will support suppressing and murdering thousands, millions of innocent people to feel a fake sense of satisfaction

The same reason that fake religion persists is the same reason why the human made part of climate change will never be solved

We will never, ever see a reduction in the amount of energy that humanity uses. The population might dip slightly from climate change (highly unlikely actually), but that won’t be what solves climate change. Clean energy is the solution, and it’s already happening.

This is complete nonsense. The US energy use per capita is down significantly from 1975 and still actively declining.

Who said anything about per capita? Is global total energy use down? Fuck no. Nor will it ever be.

Then the misanthropes of HN will have their way. And can gloat in their graves.

This is a cold-hearted way to think about it. The countless people who will suffer are not the ones causing the problem. The problem is caused by the billionaires willing to sacrifice human life and the environment for profit. They actively sow climate skepticism and encourage defunding of climate research to protect their bottom line. When extreme weather events kill millions, those billionaires will be safe in their bunkers. We can’t just condemn millions or even billions to death without trying to do anything about it.

Kings have always sacrificed the common folk for their own benefit. This is also the way of human society. The experience of our own current lifetimes is quite the exception.

It's easier to blame climate change on a conspiracy theory around billionaires then it is to stop driving so much and reduce consumption.

> conspiracy theory

What is the name for the theory that the most fantastically wealthy do not rule society? No kind adjectives come to mind.

At the end of the day it's unsustainable consumption of resources and increasing generation of waste that's killing the planet.

Even if the 4000 billionaires are ruling society, they're destroying the planet with the help of 8 billion poors.

At the end of the day it’s bullets fired from rifles, mortars, artillery shells, cruise ship missiles, etc. that are killing people in war.

If the executive branch of the government is commanding the military, and generals are commanding the military, they’re killing people with the help of tens of thousands of soldiers.

At least in the US, many people have to drive because US metropolitan areas are car-centric and lack public transit. This, in turn, is a direct result of lobbying by powerful companies like oil producers and automobile manufacturers.

As for your point about reducing consumption, there has been a deliberate effort by billionaire-controlled corporations to increase consumption. This has been done through a variety of methods, including limiting repairability, deliberate planned obsolescence through things like fast fashion and equipment designed to break down, and psychological manipulation to encourage consumption. Small ‘d’ democratic efforts to limit these techniques have been defeated by powerful lobbies backed by these billionaires.

Billionaires aren’t just responsible for consumption-driven climate change, they’re also responsible for subverting the democratic processes that could have reversed it at large scales.

The car-centrism of the USA is IMO because people like the convenience of being able to go where they want, when they want, and not waiting for a bus that will take an indirect route and twice the time. People also like living in their own house with a fenced back yard and not having neighbors on the other side of the wall/ceiling/floor. This means we're more spread out (we have lots of land) and mass transit is less practical.

In dense urban areas we do have good mass transit and it's relatively more common for people to not own a car.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com