Comment by piloto_ciego | Hacker News Reader

Comment by piloto_ciego | Hacker News Reader

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I hate to be a "debbie downer" with regard to the politics of this, but... the mid terms aren't going to change what happens with the environment, even if the Dems got a super majority.

There's a global war on, we're not going to be burning less Jet A or Diesel any time soon... The left will not be able to disengage from Iran no matter how much they want to now because of the ramifications of the IRGC controlling the global oil supply. Along with that, because prices are high companies and nation states are hyper incentivized to drill more to try to get as much oil as they can since it is scarce, so it's not like we're going to stop exploration now.

The high prices might deter some use, but probably not as much as we'd need. But yeah, the day Russia invaded Ukraine most of my dreams of decarbonization evaporated. You can't fight a war with one hand tied behind your back - and it's only gotten worse since then.

Now, electing the Dems might staunch the bleeding some, but this is going to get much much worse before it gets better. Bear in mind that a ton of people are likely going to starve as a result of the increased gas prices? So there's that too... The whole thing is a mess.

Now, what to do about it? I don't know, I live in Alaska, my state will probably come out better from this whole mess on a 30 year time horizon? But I expect the salmon runs to be much smaller and the forest fire season to be much worse year after year. On the bright side, we might end up solving a lot of chemistry and health issues with the open fold stuff, and we might get cheap access to space, which could change things a lot? But things are going to be quite weird.

I didn't say anything about the Dems, and a huge number of them suck on environment. I said you should vote for nuclear, geothermal, wind, and solar.

People in America aren't nearly as likely to starve because of gas prices. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you've got land for growing and/or hunting if legal. If you live in a city, there's food everywhere (even if much of it is unhealthy).

We're going through a rough period whether we like it or not. The milk is on the floor. What we can do is work to limit how bad it will get. There's nothing you personally can do beyond getting the right people in the right seats. We need regulations and investments.

Edit: It's also super weird how many people are like, actively downplaying the most powerful right almost any standard citizen anywhere holds. Is this what the kids are thinking these days? I certainly hope not.

> I didn't say anything about the Dems, and a huge number of them suck on environment. I said you should vote for nuclear, geothermal, wind, and solar.

Oh I agree with that, but the NIMBYs aren't going to get out of the way of any of those technologies likely in the next decade or 2... while I'm genuinely optimistic for the world, I expect things to get a lot worse before they get better at least environmentally.

> People in America aren't nearly as likely to starve because of gas prices. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you've got land for growing and/or hunting if legal. If you live in a city, there's food everywhere (even if much of it is unhealthy).

America will be fine, but there's going to be people in the global south die from this war that couldn't find Hormuz on a map if their life depended on it. It's an unmitigated tragedy, but I suppose war always is.

> We're going through a rough period whether we like it or not. The milk is on the floor. What we can do is work to limit how bad it will get. There's nothing you personally can do beyond getting the right people in the right seats. We need regulations and investments.

And I'm saying, "sure" you can vote blue or whatever, and I plan on it. The both sides thing is a farce, clearly one side is objectively worse... however I think nothing will likely change materially regardless of who wins this fall.

> Edit: It's also super weird how many people are like, actively downplaying the most powerful right almost any standard citizen anywhere holds. Is this what the kids are thinking these days? I certainly hope not.

This certainly isn't your most powerful "right" (if there are such things). But I probably can't really delineate what the "most powerful rights" are without getting into trouble on this forum.

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