Hacker News Reader

Comment by craftyguy | Hacker News Reader

Yea there's just no way. Any response at a global (and, in the US, national and state) level will be 100% reactive, and 0% proactive. Since there are still people arguing over the cause, I'm starting to think it might be more productive to move the conversation from trying to be proactive (which requires everyone to agree on the cause) to reactive (which does not).

In other words, start preparing for the outcome of this. We, as a species, cannot seem to be able to stop what we are doing.

View on HN

Waiting to be reactive seems a particularly flawed "plan" if we want to try to survive as a species. That seems as likely an outcome of this to prepare for if we just give up on proactive attempts.

People make localized decisions which in aggregate have globalized impact. Buying and burning $3 of gasoline is a very affordable decision for a person but it causes problems when everyone does it. We need to make everything that can lead to global warming super expensive, even at the cost of comforts of life. Gasoline, meat, air conditioning, refrigeration all need to be dialed down. Do we have the will power and self control to make these sacrifices? Your first sentence is the answer.

With all the world's resources there is no reason to choose between proactive and reactive, we have to do both.

There has already been some response.

The largest global action has been the Paris thing, which is trying to be proactive, i.e. "we can still win this, and here's how".

But the largest (or 2nd largest[?], but it doens't matter) offender has removed themselves from the agreement. I'm only aware of small municipalities taking action to handle the inevitable (e.g. on the east coast of the US), but it's not going to help at a national or global level.

You kind of have to force compliance. With proactive action, it always seems overly aggressive to force compliance. With reactive action, it feels okay as you can honestly point at things that improved due to your force.

I have a feeling a war would do more damage to the climate than someone pulling out of the paris agreement would ever do, if that's how you're suggesting how to enforce compliance

Global CO2 emissions are still growing, so the response so far has been negligible.

Unfortunately a lot of people (including the US president) are still on the fence about the existence of climate change, so to them there is nothing to react too. Also their denialism is more of a mouse wheel than a ladder they climb, the ones that say "of course climate change exists but it's natural" tend to end up back in the non-existence camp.

Aside from that, if it was a natural thing then should we interfere with it? If it was natural I'd be much less inclined to act.

Even if it was 100% natural we should probably interfere and try to stop it. Similarly, if an asteroid were on course to meet the Earth we should try to deflect it.

Why would you be less inclined to act? A lion trying to eat you is natural. It's still in your best interest to run.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com