Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we as a civilization have jumped too far, too fast, we don't actually need those things to survive, and we will need to be comfortable temporarily sacrificing certain luxuries If you mean the average hacker news reader, you may be right. If you're talking about the average person on this planet, you're very far off. The type of global reform that makes a high earning tech worker's smart phone double in price will a…
> The type of global reform that makes a high earning tech worker's smart phone double in price will also have millions of people pushed back into poverty or outright starvation. I don't see any reason to believe this, nor any justification of that statement in the rest of your comment. Is it really so hard to believe that some of those at the top can lose a little bit of luxury, and the rest of the world can gain ac…
I hope you're right but am convinced you're wrong. There's no straightforward regulation that we can put into place that affects only the affluent layers. The most successful global regulation to date, that I can think of, is the elimination of CFCs, which was enabled because of readily available replacements. The replacements for fossil fuels are not even close, requires replacing the majority of existing infrastructure, and the cream on top is that climate activists are persisting in phasing OUT nuclear, when we need it the most.
> Which approach do you think will cause less suffering: preparing for a dearth of resources that we can see coming before it happens, or waiting until people are dying of starvation en masse to start thinking about it?
I think the former option does not exist in practice. Why? Because when you have a significant drop in standard-of-living over a short period of time, people turn to populism and will reject the paradigm that forces them to have worse lives than their parents, even if it's to their own or others' detriment in the medium-long term. Perhaps not the affluent classes, but certainly the working- and middle classes (that by the way have already been significantly eroded in the western world over the last decades).
The third option is technological advancements - in practice, finding non-fossil replacements at a cost that societies can bear. This is what, imo, the wealthy and climate-conscious nations should spend their time and resources on, to pave the way for others to follow when the solutions have become cheaper. The US can play a big role in this, but so can affluent, socially conscious and technologically strong smaller countries. Most of them, however, are living in complete denial and are instead intentionally crippling themselves to prove a point that developing countries don't give 2 shits about.