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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?

#221

Post by pauldjohnston »

Well, having done some research into this recently, the tech world has something it can do right now. Switch to sustainably powered Cloud and move to renewably powered/offset Data Centres.

e.g. Google (100% carbon neutral), Azure (100% offset), AWS (Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Frankfurt regions are 100% carbon neutral)

Cloud/Data Centres emit around 2% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (bet you didn't know that).

There is also research showing that we're going to increase our Data Centre usage by 5x in the next 7 years.

So change that 2% to something much much higher... because that much compute requires that much more energy and we don't have the worldwide renewables infrastructure at scale to cope with the extra capacity.

https://bit.ly/2024wp

https://www.change.org/p/sustainable-servers-by-2024

* Sign the pledge please * (if you agree with it of course)

It's almost the simplest thing we can easily do, and it should put pressure on tech companies to switch to renewables.

If we believe the tech industry is an innovator and a force for good, why not start with the means of production - the energy industry?

Sign up... switch... go!

PS I wrote the whitepaper with Anne Currie - we have not been paid for the work and was entirely voluntary. I used to work for AWS up until June this year.

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

#222

Post by barrkel »

It's a collective action problem and there's almost no way it can be addressed politically in today's world. There's too much win for populists to say to their population, "screw those foreigners / globalists / westerners / elites telling us what to do, we're going to look after ourselves". This is a hard message to compete with in domestic politics. And everybody ends up worse off because everybody else has the same dynamics.

So IMO we'll need to deal with mass migration and political instability in poor countries. That's the next battle; parts of the world with subsistence agriculture will become unsustainable, and there will be large migrations of population to elsewhere. That needs to be dealt with rationally, because if it becomes irrational, we'll get into the realms of fascism and genocide.

I don't think the whole planet is going to die, FWIW. Instead, I think we're going to see a shift in ecosystems, where the relative balance of flora and fauna will alter. Some may be edible, some less so. Prices will change and people will adjust, but adjustment will be much harder where there's subsistence agri. I don't think humans are seriously at risk of being wiped out - we're pretty adaptable and we have a lot of technology we could apply when prices rise enough for it to make sense. But food prices may rise generally, and some specifics may become very expensive. This too will lead to political instability and migration.

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

#223

Post by Freak_NL »

tekkk wrote: post #185
trymas wrote: post #27

EDIT: downvoters, feel free to add your opinion, what seps we can take in 12 years to prevent climate change. I will gladly hear any opinion, especially if it is not as drastic as mine. 1. Drop coal and gas as energy sources immediately. Use renewable and nuclear energy as main power sources. Phase out nuclear after couple decades, when we hopefully can get all our energy needs from renewables. EDIT: forgot to add in…

Good ideas but impossible in practise. The people and myself included have hard time imagining how global warming will affect us so drastically that such measures would be needed. Maybe they are but as of now we're just sitting happy in our slowly heating up pan like the frogs in one previously done experiment. Only when the effects are clear and causing visible suffering I believe our human civilization will try to…

Eating less meat is not only possible, it is a persistent trend in developed countries.

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

#224

Post by gardaani »

tobr wrote: post #19

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 r…

Bhutan is a great example how countries could look like. It is the only carbon-negative country in the world and they measure Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product.

https://www.ecowatch.com/this-country-isnt-just-carbon-neutr...

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

#225

Post by perfunctory »

otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #60

> We have 12 years to prevent a climate catastrophe I don't know how old you are, but those of us over 20 remember that we had '12 years' 20 years ago. Somehow the prophesied catastrophe never arrives and the date gets perpetually pushed into the future. Looks like a secular Seventh Day Adventists.

> Somehow the prophesied catastrophe never arrives and the date gets perpetually pushed into the future.

If anything, the date gets pushed back. With every subsequent IPCC report it turns out the previous as an underestimation.

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

#226

Post by fallingfrog »

Radim wrote: post #41
fallingfrog wrote: post #4

To solve this crisis in 12 years would require overthrowing the government of every country with an industrial base and replacing them with much more progressive people. You can try if you want but I don't see it happening. As far as actually convincing people of global warming, the older generation will absolutely never believe it no matter how much evidence you present. They are truly lost. Change will only be poss…

[flagged]

I was talking about waiting till they have gone from old age, to be clear. And I'm not advocating otherthrowing governments, I'm just saying, 12 years is such a short timeline, that's what it would take.

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

#227

Post by patrickg_zill »

gardaani wrote: post #224
tobr wrote: post #19

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 r…

Bhutan is a great example how countries could look like. It is the only carbon-negative country in the world and they measure Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product. https://www.ecowatch.com/this-country-isnt-just-carbon-neutr...

Are you aware of this country's recent past ethnic cleansing...?

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

#230

Post by krapp »

adrianN wrote: post #208
GrumpyNl wrote: post #206

Could we have prevented the extinction of the dinosaur with the knowledge we have now? If not, why worry?

If we had detected the asteroid sufficiently early we probably could have diverted it.

But if it weren't for the extinction of the dinosaurs, we wouldn't be here.
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