Antarctica is screwed and so are we | Hacker News Reader

Antarctica is screwed and so are we

theoutline.com

15 pointsnwrk11 comments

I read a very detailed book around 2001 on climate change. The title escapes me now. The book laid out just how badly in the crap we are, and the main takeaway was that drastic changes to our lifestyles are the only hope for preventing climate change with disastrous consequences. No such change is evident yet. Even efforts like the Paris accord etc are like sticking our heads in the sand compared to the level of change that's required. Personally I'd advocate for population control, but it's deeply unfashionable politically to have something like a one child policy. So instead we give people the freedom to breed at will, and our ever growing population guarantees problems ahead. Still if humanity does disappear life will no doubt continue.

we should be discussing ending meat subsidies. I think people would not consume so much of it if steak was $30/lb. There are cheaper, healthier ways to get protein and b12.

It looks like somebody figured out that skyrocketing income inequality is like free birth control for millennials, so I'm sure we're all going to be ok.

> what happened 10,000 years ago was natural. What’s happening today is human-caused

So it's also natural. It's like calling the man made elements unnatural. Just because you ascribe constraints to condition, doesn't make it any less natural.

That's just semantics. The point of that sentence is that humans are the cause. How you distinguish us from the rest of nature isn't really important here.

If we're the cause, we can also be the solution.

Do you also ascribe to “the climate is always changing?”

The rate of change, the billions of people who will be affected, and the incredible expense will make our impact a bit more painful.

At this point, I think the best solution is to get the federal government out of flood insurance, etc and let private citizens, and state governments deal with disaster relief.

Everyone can argue with their insurance companies about climate change, as their premiums increase every few years.

I agree. Is there language that differentiates between human processes that are in equilibrium/harmony with the rest of the non-human world, and those that are not? Artificial vs. natural is the first pair that comes to mind, but I don’t think it truly captures the idea.

My opinion is that as time moves on, we’re going to develop that language to describe the human effect on the rest of the world that doesn’t necessarily separate humans from the rest of the world.

That's literally the definitions of natural and artificial.

If you prefer your text as, you know, text, put TheOutline through Outline:

https://outline.com/5wP4eL

My favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"

This is a really good article but yikes, yikes, yikes. Not good news.

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