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Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

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Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#11

Post by cletus »

So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was.

Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity.

One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of this.

Think there's too many people? You can easily show that the world could easily produce enough to feed a population 10 times what we have now in the very near future, thanks largely to automation.

Think we're dumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere? We no doubt are but that problem basically goes away immediately if we ever get economic fusion power. Even if we don't, the plummetting cost of wind and solar may solve that anyway (by "solve" I mean that as soon as non-fossil fuel power production is cheaper than fossil fuels it becomes economic to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn into hydrocarbons).

Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to dollars per kilogram.

Worried about how we'll produce all that power? When getting stuff into orbit is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit and beam energy back to Earth.

And all you need for this kind of optimism is the kind of technology we're widely expected to have this century.

So it's kind of sad that a lot of the larger fauna is doomed but you're not going to change people's appetites for rhino horns, fish bladders, tiger oil or pangolin dishes. Then again, maybe future genetics can restore some or all of those species.

The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now so I have trouble believing the doomsday scenarios of runaway climate change that'll turn the Earth into Venus just because the Earth has been here for 4-5 billion years, has been hotter than now and hasn't become Venus yet. We also seem to have a pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too.

Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right but who cares? We're still screwed. You're probably better off just hoping things will work out because, honestly, I think there's a pretty decent chance they will.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#12

Post by jlj »

josho wrote: post #3

> Maybe corporations are the ones who can be pressured to take the lead. Yes. They absolutely will. But only after they have the right incentives. Those incentives can be created over night by having governments put in place a carbon tax. It gets even worse. If a large group of people reduced their energy consumption to help climate change it has the consequence of reducing demand and therefore energy costs will come…

> If a large group of people reduced their energy consumption to help climate change it has the consequence of reducing demand and therefore energy costs will come down. That will make green energy cost uncompetitive and slow down the transition to green fuels.

Another way to look at it is, as more people demand green energy, the supply will increase faster to meet demand. As the supply increases, economies of scale reduce the cost, making it more competitive with fossil fuels while at the same time wind and solar efficiency will increase further reducing the cost per unit.

Eventually the supply with the lowest cost will win and the others may become obsolete.

Whether or not that can happen fast enough is another question. Taxation of fossil and subsidizing of renewables seems like a logical conclusion. The likelyhood of a massive win-win solution of that nature with no game theory cheats on a global scale seems much less probable than innovating our way out of it.

I don't think government on a coordinated global level can do it. It would be like diverting the same level of national resources as a war into a peacetime effort. Would need a way to demonize climate change so it becomes a common global enemy. But on the other side of demonizing is half or more of humanity, so it is really a new level of war over new types of resources being shoreline, water supply, and probablilty of destruction or famine by natural disasters.

I hope for no war and don't believe all that will happen. But it could. And I think investing in time, money, and peace seems like a valid approach to get behind vs trying to get government to do it.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#13

Post by emilsedgh »

shard972 wrote: post #10
verroq wrote: post #5

Can’t see it happening when a large portion of the population insists that climate change isn’t real.

Maybe if the media managed to actually present the issue in a balanced way we wouldn't be here. Maybe if every dire prediction wasn't presented as fact and every criticism labeled as conspiracy theory and vica versa for a-lot of other outlets. Maybe if solutions like geo-engineering were at least discussed instead of the chorus of the media/politicians telling people that taxes and fees are THE ONLY SOLUTION to the c…

It seems that people really prefer to vote extreme people who take hard instance against situations instead of level-headed ones.

We now have hundreds of years of experience regarding politicians. Maybe we have to teach politics in schools:

On the methods the politicians have used to manipulate people and how to call them out.

On the way we should measure politicians and what makes a good decision makes vs. a poor one.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#16

Post by jonstewart »

Give money to Democratic candidates challenging Republican incumbents, right now.

If we believe in evidence-based science, then all evidence points to Republicans being anti-science. You don't have to be a committed lifelong Democrat to see that the current Republican party is fighting climate change efforts at every turn and needs to be displaced in order for political progress on the issue to happen.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#17

Post by annadane »

cletus wrote: post #11

So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…

And before someone replies with "How can you possibly say that", you can do both - be optimistic about the future and also change your own personal habits and become educated on the topic in general anyway.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#18

Post by quickthrower2 »

cletus wrote: post #11

So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…

> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now so I have trouble believing the doomsday scenarios of runaway climate change that'll turn the Earth into Venus just because the Earth has been here for 4-5 billion years, has been hotter than now and hasn't become Venus yet. We also seem to have a pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too.

This is disingenuous because humans have been around say 2M years, and those hot climate years were >5M years ago. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record).

We don't need Earth to have Venus conditions for it to be a big problem for us.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#19

Post by tobr »

Fundamentally it is a political problem, not a technological problem. We need high carbon taxes, we need to end fossil fuel subsidies, and we probably need to change our economic system to something that addresses the tragedy of the commons.

But we’ve seen in recent years how technology can influence politics. I’d quote a tweet from Tristan Harris from the other day [1]:

> In an hypothetical world, if Facebook were re-designed entirely into a global coordination tool for billions of people to take the most meaningful and significant steps to fight climate change -- what would it look like?

1: https://twitter.com/tristanharris/status/1049177712227573760

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#20

Post by cstejerean »

Absolutely nothing. As long as solutions require major changes in lifestyle for most people absolutely nothing will happen. Our only hope is to invent technology to mitigate the problem (sequester carbon from the atmosphere, get cheaper alternative fuels, protect cities from rising ocean levels and reinforce infrastructure to better tolerate extreme weather).

Anything else is just wishful thinking that places much more faith in the ability of people to value their long term interests over their short term comfort than evidence suggests is warranted.

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