End exclusionary zoning in the US, so that people can live closer to the things they need, and denser, if they so choose
Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
281–290 of 523 posts
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#282Urbanization is a big thing too, it makes far more climate sense. Instead of driving to ten places to serve a hundred people on each stop a truck can drive to one and serve a thousand people. Also, heat in high rises is used more efficiently than in single family homes because all that excess heat from bottom homes rise to the ones on the upper floors.
This is thankfully a trend right now, with people moving to bigger cities to find better jobs, but in some Western countries we have a lot of hurdles to make new houses and an overconsumption of existing housing. If you own a home already, that might mean you have to sacrifice something (higher property taxes to incentivize people to choose smaller properties, for example). Also, making the cities more accessible without a car does wonders for this too.
I'm convinced there's some way tech can help with this too. Airbnb makes sure excess or unused living area can be allocated more efficiently, for example.
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a common trope in Science Fiction. But modern technology is different from the Iron Age. It uses vastly less energy for the same result; its honestly simpler in many regards than what came before. Sure there are dependencies, and some technologies will collapse and become unachievable for generations. But others are essentially free of dependencies - the germ theory of disease, the staff system, democracy, air…
That's a fair observation. In fact, applying modern scientific and engineering knowledge to tech built from ground-up is something I'm interested in[0]. The post-collapse life would be better thanks to all this knowledge (as long as people keep copying books instead of burning them), but I still maintain we'd end up in a pretty dire situation. Consider that food production is very much dependent and looped with all t…
I'm on the same page. The easiest thing to do once the collapse comes will be to give up and die instead of change - and maybe 80% is too conservative an estimate of the number of folks that will take this route.
Farming is more of a 'trickle petroleum into the ground and harvest crops'. Its one of the most efficient of technologies now. With good timing and no-till and ammonia fertilizer, even eroded clay hillsides produce bumper crops. It is a fragile technology tree but much simpler trees could be forged, having a good whack of the same benefits.
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#284There's no climate catastrophe. Nothing have to be done about preventing imaginable things.
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#285Fundamentally 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…
"Fundamentally it is a political problem" -- Agreed.
What if the whole problem is that of "growth"?
Here's one possible chain of thought. I don't fully subscribe to this, so please feel free to poke holes in it:
1. The biggest polluters tend to be commercial enterprises
2. They are aware of the environmental impact of their actions, but are reluctant to stop
3. They are staffed by (mostly) normal human beings, but they continue because they are heavily incentivized to show continued growth
4. Businesses can no longer reach a "steady state" -- they must continue growth or be considered failures
5. Growth appears to be demanded by stockholders
6. Stockholders need growth for return on their investments
7. Investments are necessary because of... inflation ?
Ergo, stop inflation, slow down growth?
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#286On a personal note, don't have children. I'm not being facetious. It seems like we've had opportunities to do the right thing and consistently haven't so until the outlook looks better and we start taking action it's not a great idea to create offspring that will have to deal with the consequences.
But people without children have even less motivation to care about the future.
Even moreso for people who aren't married....why shouldn't they let their SUV idle in the driveway?
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a fair observation. In fact, applying modern scientific and engineering knowledge to tech built from ground-up is something I'm interested in[0]. The post-collapse life would be better thanks to all this knowledge (as long as people keep copying books instead of burning them), but I still maintain we'd end up in a pretty dire situation. Consider that food production is very much dependent and looped with all t…
I'm on the same page. The easiest thing to do once the collapse comes will be to give up and die instead of change - and maybe 80% is too conservative an estimate of the number of folks that will take this route. Farming is more of a 'trickle petroleum into the ground and harvest crops'. Its one of the most efficient of technologies now. With good timing and no-till and ammonia fertilizer, even eroded clay hillsides…
RE the 80%, I expect the food shortage pressures to cause immediate wars that would quickly help shed the excess population. I fully expect to die in such a conflict (or be forced to eat a bullet to avoid the pain of starvation).
RE farming and other technology trees, it might be worth it to hedge our bets by trying to develop such simpler tech trees right now. In the worst case, we'd be making life much easier for the survivors. In the best case, maybe we could reapply some of those ideas to further reduce energy waste.
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#288vote against ethanol biofuels. From a thermodynamic perspective they will never be sustainable. We're literally dumping energy into growing extra corn that we burn.
It's a farmer subsidy and nothing more.
Just pay the farmers the money. Stop wasting the land, nitrogen, greenhouse emissions and retooling cars for this nonsense.
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#289As a political solution, I doubt there is much we can do. The young people are not that politicaly active (as in actualy casting votes). I'm very happy that Tesla has made automakers take electric cars seriously, and renewable electricity is doing well. Unfortunately, that's not going to be enough.
Geoengineering research is currently fairly taboo and hard to get money for. It involves developing methods to alter the environment to compensate for what we have done. Many say we should just reduce greenhouse gasses, since if we mess up geoengineering we could really mess up the planet, but I think it should at least be very well funded and studied.
Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
#290Well, 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 a…
Agreed, this is one for commercial votes ($). We're a rich industry that uses loads of electricity, most of which is fossil-fueled. We need to choose to run our servers 100% carbon neutral and that would make way more difference than individual action. That will get more spending on renewable generation. Our industry has the money and we can personally just choose to host somewhere carbon neutral (as mentioned, Google, Azure or the 4 sustainable AWS regions: Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Frankfurt right now)