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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?

#251

Post by alex_duf »

At a personal level, switch energy provider, change your diet, cycle / use public transport and drive electric if you must drive (it's more complex than that depending on if you have a car or not). If you have the chance to own your property and the cash to do so, ensure it's insulated.

On a financial level, divest from fossil fuel, invest in renewable energies and sustainable technologies

On a professional level, if you have the privilege do be able to choose your job, try to find one that do no evil.

Happy to hear about more suggestions

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

#252

Post by Sharlin »

doon123 wrote: post #127
raquo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on. Governments and countries are not very stable under these conditions. Probably shouldn't expect your wealth to crisis proof your life in this scenario. Won't hurt but we'll all be much better off organizing to avoid this future.

>> Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on. I think the crisis will be contained to the poorest parts of the world. Especially the tropics. This area is going to be the first to bear the brunt of climate change related problems. I dont foresee Global wars happening. The politicians are too smart for that. They will try to contain the damage to the extant…

People in regions bearing the brunt of the change aren't just going to stay there. There will be mass migrations of possibly hundreds of millions, and no wall is going to stop them.

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

#254

Post by TeMPOraL »

jjeaff wrote: post #168
buro9 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you. If we care about the…

Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space, the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands. Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long time.

Human societies can have individuals doing all that. Stable, large societies. The astronauts can survive in the vacuum of space because of technology, and they can get to space because of technology - technology that is backed by hundreds of thousands of people all across the greater economic machine that built the rocket and the space suits, and supplied and fed everyone involved.

As individuals, we're not much more interesting than any other animal. It's our technological civilization that makes us interesting in the grand scheme of things, and that civilization is both hard to bootstrap and extremely fragile.

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

#255

Post by Chris_Jay »

jsingleton wrote: post #113
vjsc wrote: post #78

In my opinion, the large corporations behind fossil fuels have too much of an economic clout. The governments around the world are dependent on them for a considerable amount of their respective national economy. So yes you are right about government not doing much about this. Ultimately, unless there is a relatively quick mass extinction event, no government is going to be bothered into action. Climate change and th…

Depressingly pragmatic. While building resilience is certainly worthwhile, we can still fix this and should try. I think individual actions can add up, particularly when we use the magnifying power of tech. I wrote a lot on this recently and I can't fit it all in a comment so I'll just link to it. https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t... It boils down to a three step process: - Understand - Org…

When you say 'fix' do you mean 'prevent a two-degree shift' or 'transition to an zero-net-emissions economy'? Or do you mean we can avoid some survivable threshold higher than two degrees?

I agree that useful action is possible and important, but I'm starting to feel that our last chance to avoid catastrophic climate change was sometime last decade or the one before.

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

#256

Post by gldalmaso »

ManlyBread wrote: post #243

The greed of the 1% most wealthy people in the world has caused this problem so they should pool their resources and fix it.

But they won't, and they will be fine even if comes to living in a bubble. As it has always been, the poor will carry the burden of humanity.

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

#257

Post by EeThahs2 »

doon123 wrote: post #127
raquo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on. Governments and countries are not very stable under these conditions. Probably shouldn't expect your wealth to crisis proof your life in this scenario. Won't hurt but we'll all be much better off organizing to avoid this future.

>> Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on. I think the crisis will be contained to the poorest parts of the world. Especially the tropics. This area is going to be the first to bear the brunt of climate change related problems. I dont foresee Global wars happening. The politicians are too smart for that. They will try to contain the damage to the extant…

[flagged]

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

#258

Post by gpm »

plopilop wrote: post #138
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…

> 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. That's an enormous "if". Fusion research has been underfunded for decades, we don't even know if we can sustain it, and for a reason I don't get, many ecologists are anti-nuclear. Plus fusion won't solve everything. You won't put a sun core into your car nor yo…

> nor your plane

Agreed with car - not sure I agree with plane.

Currently we have fission powered submarines and boats. Putting a fission reactor in a plane would be somewhat suicidal, but a fusion reactor would be mostly safe. A large plane is similar in scale to a submarine.

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

#259

Post by haihaibye »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #132

We are past the point where we we can fix this with discussions & civil discourse. Not to say that we shouldn't try. But a leaflet campaigns and discussions aren't going to reduce emissions. The best solution would be not to have kids (too late for me) and adopt instead if you must, not to own a car, try to own as little as you can (it will make you happier too). Plant stuff, pick up gardening, go offline and go outs…

>> The best solution would be not to have kids

Many countries use immigration to stop population falling. The increased co2 from 1 person moving from a developing -> developed country would pretty much cancel this out.

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

#260

Post by TeMPOraL »

domlebo70 wrote: post #102
raquo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that relevant? Areas where more than a billion people live today will become uninhabitable to humans if they warm up by 14 degrees. Actually, much sooner than that.

But why? Why can't we adapt to those environments using technology? This is what the OP comment is saying.

Because our technology doesn't magically appear out of nowhere. Even the simple DIY "lifehack" you can assemble from $5 worth of RadioShack parts has huge supply chains hidden behind it, staffed by hundreds of thousands of people. On top of that, all those supply chains are full of circular dependencies. A chip needs a fab. A fab needs computers. Computers need chips... and screws. Screws need metal and precision manufacturing machines. Precision manufacturing machines need computers and screws. Metal mining needs computer and screws. Etc.

If the climate situation gets to the point of crashing global supply chains, say goodbye to all modern technology. Whatever's left will degrade quickly, and we'll be back to preindustrial levels, but with no easily accessible dense energy sources to bootstrap another industrial revolution.

This is why I keep saying that the most important goal right now is not to protect the planet, not to protect the human species, but to protect our technological civilization. If it collapses, we'll still be there (albeit in reduced numbers). But our civilization won't recover for millennia.

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