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Comment by Kon5ole | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if it's too late to stop the worst case scenarios of global warming yet or if there's still time, but it doesn't seem to be happening anyway. The world can't deal with something that requires global concentrated efforts.

However, I do think we have time to prepare for the worst case scenarios, and individual countries and states can do that efficiently on their own.

Improve evacuation routines in floodable areas, build greenhouses to deal with cold snaps, ensure there are air conditioned buildings to deal with heatwaves, have distributed local production of electricity, keep strategic food reserves stocked, and so on.

Edit: Not saying that such efforts are the solution by any means, but they will help.

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> The world can't deal with something that requires global concentrated efforts

Historically, that's not correct. The Montreal Protocol to reduce CFCs in response to the hole in the ozone layer is a perfect example of us doing this.

I realize the world has changed and maybe it's not possible in our current political climate, but we have worked together as a planet to solve these type of global problems before.

>The Montreal Protocol to reduce CFCs in response to the hole in the ozone layer is a perfect example of us doing this.

I can't agree with this, the efforts are several orders of magnitude different. Sure humans worldwide can cooperate on small things and do so regularly. The olympic games spring to mind. Or the ISS.

The Montreal protocol was great, don't get me wrong, but it basically boils down to "Hey you couple of hundred thousand people in a small part of industry, please use chemical Y instead of chemical X. Otherwise carry on."

The effort required to stop global warming is entirely different. It will affect billions of people, entire industries will be terminated permanently, millions will be unemployed, rich countries will suddenly be poor, global trade will grind to a halt.

And we can't even be sure that effort will actually work.

We've already stopped the "Worst case scenarios" by rapidly replacing Carbon-intensive energy with other sources over the past decade:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/climate/emissions-worst-c...

Still work to be done, and also plenty of reasons for optimism. Batteries, motors, and carbon free generation only get better.

Fossil fuels use continues to increase and shows no signs of slowing down: https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels

Instead of trying to push with a string (coming up with new non fossil energy sources) we need to ramp down fossils production using regulation, international agreements, emissions trading etc. Otherwise we'll just keep using both fossil and new energy sources.

That's a negative framing and while I'm not going to call it /wrong/, but world population is increasing so of course our energy usage is going to increase too.

If you scroll a little further down on your linked page, you will encounter another[1] graph, with renewable fraction of primary energy production and its steadily falling everywhere but the gulf states.

We're probably doing too little, too late, but my read is actually that we're moving in the right direction even if there is significant inertia to overcome before emissions actually start decreasing.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy

The US reversed course with the current administration and until things change with regards to that, there will be active resistance to renewable power projects. Because we need all the energy we can get and there's money to be made building out those projects there will still be progress, but it will be done in opposition to federal goals.

> we're moving in the right direction

many countries are, but the US is now moving in the opposite direction and because of its size it has a very large global impact

That "worst case scenario" (RCP85) was projecting a 5°C increase by 2100; the current trajectory still puts us at a 3.5°C increase by 2100, whoop-dee-doo. The "avoid climate change scenario" (< 1.5°C by 2100) is also rapidly becoming unattainable.

> We've already stopped the "Worst case scenarios"

maybe the _very worst_ ones, but there are still plenty of devastating worst case scenarios that are highly plausible and even more so now that Trumpistan dgaf about global warming or reducing fossil fuel emissions

Since covid I’ve actually become less convinced of this. Yes there were national interests at play and there was a lot of general chaos.

But. The level of international coordination with vaccine rollouts and agreements between countries was way more than I had initially expected. Of course this feeling depends on what your own baseline expectations are.

My takeaway was that if the conditions arise that we all decide to do something about climate change (because of political conditions or because of actual effects) we (humanity) are willing to make big sudden changes

I agree, the world is able to deal with some things. Another good example is perhaps the ozone layer.

Global warming is much trickier though. Covid had hundreds dying daily, it was very direct and undeniable, and the cure was cheap and efficient once it was developed.

Global warming has no clear signal (oh look, another heatwave) and no clear cure at all, let alone a cheap and efficient one.

Millions of people died when a possible solution of "hey, everyone, let's stay inside for a couple weeks" could've possibly effectively eradicated the virus does not seem like a great example of humanity's ability to cope with imminent global existential threats. The potential solution(s) to the massive brick wall we're speeding towards are far more inconvenient than "everyone just hang out for a minute." It's radical change to everything in society.

The comparison with Covid is also striking because the only reason a global "don't travel too much" solution couldn't work is due to the nature of capitalism. It's not like we couldn't feed everyone. It's just that some people with too much wouldn't gain as much for a little bit. Which is the same root cause of why solving climate change is impossible without radical change.

Unfortunately, I don't know the answer. I'm quite certain it's not to maintain the status quo, though.

> The level of international coordination with vaccine rollouts and agreements between countries was way more than I had initially expected

Did we forget the DoD running anti-vax propaganda campaigns because the USA's vaccines weren't ready as quickly as Sinovac's: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...

Both things can be true. If you're truly pessimistic this is the only thing you would expect, and not the other stuff that happened- a globally coordinated vaccine rollout to every country on earth.

> world can't deal with something that requires global concentrated efforts

Saddest part is that it used to

The Ozone layer problem was exactly this: coordinated global concentrated effort.

I doubt we can do that again though.

>The Ozone layer problem was exactly this: coordinated global concentrated effort.

It was so much smaller though, and nobody really had to pay for it - not with money, not with suffering. The kind of sacrifices made for the Montreal protocol can be done a thousand times without moving the needle on global warming.

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