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Comment by dragthor | Hacker News Reader

Watch out for the ozone hole!

Do you realize the scale of the work, negotiation and monitoring that went into making the ozone hole not be a problem? It took decades and we still have people trying to cheat the agreement and produce CFCs. CO2 and greenhouse gases in general is a problem several orders of magnitude greater and we're already decades behind where we should be on slowing it down much less undoing it.

The ozone hole is actually a huge success story, thanks to the collective effort of mankind we've undone the collective harm of mankind: it has started recovering.

Indeed it is, but we were lucky in that it turned out to be possible to switch to non-CFC refrigerants at a, in the end, very low cost. And then we could continue with BAU.

Climate change, otoh, demands massive changes in our energy systems, in what we eat, how (if?) we travel, etc. Technically, all doable, but politically, I'm very sceptical.

I doubt the "what we eat" part but not the energy and transportation aspects of it.

We could, in 20 years from the time the efforts were legislated in, phase out most petrol vehicles in exchange for electric and go to nuclear, solar, and hydroelectric for our power needs.

It would work, too.

The "what we eat" is tied into the energy and transportation aspects of it. Even ignoring the methane issues of industrially raised (beef) cattle, American agriculture / supermarket culture is hugely (over?) dependent on a world with dirt cheap energy and transportation. That isn't likely to change in the transition to electric vehicles and greener energy sources to the electric grid, but there is still a risk to existing grocery supply chains if the margins shift due to industrial transportation and energy costs.

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