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Comment by pmpmpmpm | Hacker News Reader

Who is liable for the deaths caused by extreme weather patterns? Is anyone?

Liability for things like this was traditionally resolved by warfare.

All of us, to the degree that our carbon footprint is above 2 tons a year?

Legally? Almost certainly no one. Ethically? The corporate executives who deliberately covered up evidence of global warming, starting back in the 70s.[1]

1. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...

And since we've all known about this for 30+ years, is it still their fault, or is it ours?

What should I have done about it for the past 30 years?

Live a life of voluntary poverty?

And if I had done that, how would the climate be today?

Voted for the environmental candidate every time.

Already did, we still ended up here, clearly that solution didn't work

Persuade others to vote for them?

Already did, we still ended up here, clearly that solution didn't work

How many did you convince? Did you convince 2s, 10s, 100s or 1000s?

Nothing. My point was simply that blaming people who did something 40-50 years ago is pretty silly.

It's "their" fault, at least according to Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest, who is one of "them". His view is that if a specific group, of about 1000 powerful people, chose to address climate change, it would be fixed.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/inside-and...

That’s laughable. The number 1 cause of climate change is spread out living. The 0.1+ acre lot with a detached single family home that results in enormous distances required for all the mass to travel.

There is no way people would have or will accept living in Honk Kong style dense living to save the future planet. Hell, they don’t even accept driving smaller vehicles much less changing their whole lifestyle.

Including executives that still refuse to price in the environmental externalities of their business practices.

Why would they do that? That would make their shareholders angry and give their competitors an edge. (No /s)

And don't forget the politicians and media personalities who knowingly or negligently denied that there was even a problem.

They're winning. They have billions of dollars and very cushy lives.

Nobody is liable.

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