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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

Technology is more feasible than politically driven "degrowth" or any of the other proposals.

Would it work as well, though? The basic idea of "degrowth", to me, is to slow down the car until the braking distance is smaller than the viewing distance, so we're safe no matter what. Whereas technology is more like swerving constantly to avoid obstacles. The latter is just intrinsically more likely to get us into a crash.

I'm not saying degrowth is feasible, mind you. I agree that it probably isn't. But the fact we can't do something doesn't mean the alternatives must be good. It might just mean we're cooked.

No country will ever vote for degrowth so it either has to be done secretively which will cause a populist backlash like in the UK or at gun point. Degrowthers are IMO all basically eco fascists.

The reality of the situation is if you don’t embrace degrowth principles, the planet will probably do it for you. Think mega-wildfores that cause so much devastation that hundreds of thousands of people die from air pollution, or collapse of entire crops and food supply chains due to drought, or mega-heatwaves that wipe out millions.

Degrowth is coming. And you don’t have a say in the matter.

Most of these large wildfires are started by people and a result of bad land management in the form of stopping small fires in fire adapted landscapes. Moreover meddling in insurance markets and NIMBYism causes people to build in burn zones.

There just aren’t mega heatwaves causing famines and there won’t be at 1.5c of warming either.

None of that changes that we now have substantially larger and less controllable fires than we used to. Are you really denying that extreme weather and droughts don’t play a part in dramatically increasing combustibility?

> There just aren’t mega heatwaves causing famines and there won’t be at 1.5c of warming either.

Oh we’re going way past 1.5C.

Clearly heat and droughts are an issue and contributing factor, but land use is easily controllable relative to atmospheric CO2.

> Oh we’re going way past 1.5C.

Are we? The IPCC projects that no change in public policy or tecchnological advancement globally has us on track fro 2.6C rise by 2100, but there's a straightforward path to 1.8C. Experts no longer think the old worst case scenarios are plausible. Yes, 2.6C is nothing to scoff at, but it's in the realm of adaptable.

2.6°C is indeed way past 1.5°C, yeah.

It won't stop there either.

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