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

I like polar bears so it's sad to see those go. It will be disturbing to see coastal cities founded next to sunken cities. Storms are fun but only when they're occasional. I already miss the insects.

We worry about losing languages, cultures, artwork to the unyielding entropic horror named time. Not because we have a pragmatic need for them. But the future is scary when you can't bring the past with you. My culture is my security blanket.

Maybe my kids are going to grow up in a world not defined by technology but by the change in daily regimen of existence. Humans adapt really well to just about anything, so I bet my kids will feel right at home. They'll roll their eyes on cue when I insist that the future wasn't supposed to be like this.

I've always kind of wondered how someone as liberal as me can possibly turn into an old curmudgeon. Maybe this is how. Maybe I'll be disquieted not by being overrun by the creep of new gadgets, but by looking around and seeing a completely foreign anthroposphere.

I think western countries are not representative of the world as they represent a small minority of world's population (10% or so).

I have read some predictions about world population continuing to increase to around 12 billion and stabilising at that number.

Let's say that happens. Then you run into the problem of people in western countries consuming many times more resources and energy per capital as developing world.

Then in order to avoid climate catastrophe it would mean you have to reduce standard of living for the minority that consumes the most fuel and energy, also standard of living of those in developing world could not catch up.

Basically the argument I'm trying to make it that it won't be sustainable to have 1 or 2 cars per family like it is normal in the West, and other similar luxuries.

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

Y2K was supposed to be a global catastrophe. It got quietly fixed. No one (but me) wakes up today and goes "Oh. Thank. God. We aren't living in the Y2K post apocalypse!"

In fact, I have been told that most people laugh at the idea that we ever worried about it because it turned out fine, so we must not have been in real danger.

The Kuwait oil wells were supposed to burn for years and be a global catastrophe. Crack teams converged on the country and put them out in a mere 6 months. No one is saying "Hallelujah!" about that either. It is also forgotten while we are on to bellyaching about our next catastrophe.

Don't get me wrong. I'm an environmental studies major and I have lived without a car for more than a decade and I would like to do more to mitigate this problem. But I'm pretty damn sure that if I actually fixed it, A. I would likely get zero credit and B. The very next morning the entire world would be focused on some new problem rather than dancing in the streets to celebrate this triumph.

In the mean time,let me recommend that you pee on a tree. (Website possibly coming soon.)

Does anyone have any views on buying carbon offsets through services like TerraPass and Carbonfund? I drive a pickup truck so I'd like to reduce my impact, but don't know if the efficacy of carbon offsets have really been evaluated.

I don’t think the result would be good. All that would do is destabilise the world crash our economies and set back our green tech.