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Comment by oytis | Hacker News Reader

Any solution relying on collective sacrifice is unrealistic IMO. I believe in geoingineering because it's better compatible with how economy works. Either that or we discover a magic abundant non-polluting energy source, but I woldn't rely on that

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Oh, yes, geoengineering, because nothing can go wrong …

Please read the classic book by Edward Tenner: Why Things Bite Back. Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, 1996 (oldie but goldie and must read for people who think technical solutions have no unintended (and irrevocable) consequences Mike eucalyptus trees in California, or the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toad in Australia, among others.

A lot can go wrong, but a long is going wrong already. I think putting effort in trying to do it as safely as possible is more productive than trying to convince nations to become poorer voluntary. Alternative energy is important too, but so far it rather complements than replaces fossil fuel.

But this is one of the classic blunders! "Things are going wrong, so we have to do something! This is something, so we have to do it!"

Well, no, we have to do something that will help. Doing something that makes things worse isn't the answer, and the worse things are, the less we can afford to do so.

"This might help, but also might really mess things up" is not the answer - not in politics, not in economics, and not in climate change.

But I agree with one part of your post. Persuading nations to become poorer voluntarily is not a viable strategy.

We're already doing it and making progress. It's not instant and we still have delayed consequences to deal with, so short-term fixes also make sense.

You can use different metrics for progress, but it looks like world oil consumption has nearly doubled since 2000

It is not collective sacrifice. The war on drugs was imposed worldwide by the American élites and it consisted on banning the production, trade and use of many drugs.

Oil is a drug for the world’s economies. If you remove it, the economy plummets with billions of starving people because everything is grown, produced or transported using fossil fuels

> It is not collective sacrifice.

> If you remove it, the economy plummets with billions of starving people

Sounds like quite a sacrifice to me.

Don't we already have that source in the form or modern solar panels backed by battery storage ?

Nobody is sacrificing anything.

Framing it as such is doing propaganda's work.

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