Comment by mcdramamean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcdramamean | Hacker News Reader

We need to do something; and that's heal our psychology. We can't just save the planet because all the thing that are killing it are things that we make "to feel good". Most of our economy is based on consuming things we don't need. Most of the pollutions comes for the energy sector and all the containers that get shipped across the ocean. Ocean Cruises are pretty bad also.

We need to focus on how to get the entire planet to execute on the same actions. That is our only hope. If 80% of the planet goes green, but 20% is still emitting pollutions, we are still in the same boat (just not sinking as fast). Getting individuals to do what is necessary will simply take pricing things correctly and making laws; most humans don't want any trouble and will easily be able to live a more sustainable life just through peer pressure.

FOCUS ON INTERNATIONAL CONSENSUS. This will serve us in all problems, not just global warming.

To put it another way, if you have a cold, you don't solely focus on making the cough go away. Just drinking cough syrup isn't going to fix it. Global warming is the "cough" to our "cold". If we just "fix" global warming, we still have soooooo many other psychological issues as a species that it's not going to "save the planet". We can't even agree if humans should live or die. There is so much nihilism that there are lots of people who are content on doing whatever; until they die. Lo, they prolly want death and are just to scared to do it themselves.

This is a legit problem; that many humans (either through religion or personal belief) don't WANT humans to live; or don't think we deserve to live. How are you going to solve that by solving global warming? We can't even agree that, regardless of our impact on the climate, we should be as clean to our environment as we can. Half the population only cares about GDP.

Go back to first principles and let's SOLVE THIS. We all watch the Avengers, but don't come out wanting to BE THE HERO. We can solve this. We can't save all the animals; but we can solve this.

So stop bitching, let's come up with solutions. Until the last second on the game clock ticks, you are in the game. Make a friggin' play. (YES YOU!)

> If 80% of the planet goes green, but 20% is still emitting pollutions, we are still in the same boat (just not sinking as fast).

I'm not sure this is actually representative of the facts. We don't need 100% of the planet to go green to stabilize our temperature below a threshold and there are negative feedbacks on carbon emissions.

Agreed. And you are right. I made these numbers up; and I ca n imagine a scenario that would allow MOST of the planet to go green and we can stop the damage. But in my scenario, what if that 20% are countries like China and Russia; that produce and consume alot of energy. Just a thought experiment. My point is, we have to have the whole world be on the same page to solve the real issues that would cause us to continue to ruin our environment; even when we KNOW we are doing it (aka govt, military, corps know the truth and still continue on). This is a psychological problem. Do you agree?

> China and Russia

Well, that's already over 20% of the world population!

China is trying.

Russia is in the fossil fuel export business. Without it they're dead.

Throw in India and you now have a problem. I love sports analogies, because they represent pure human emotion and psyche. I'm not a stat padder. I don't care if I average a triple-double like Westbrook if I can't get past the first round. I want a championship.

If you have lung cancer, it's great that you can quantify how much LESS you smoke. "Since I've developed lung cancer, my smoking has decreased 90%". Cool story bro... Why don't you just quit.

For sure, we need to do EVERYTHING we can to keep us in the game and our planet alive; but I'm not interested in splitting hairs about what, for instance, China is or isn't doing. Be real. They have a WHOLE middle class that is growing and wants to live like Americans. Judging them now would be very wrong; because in 20 years their population of "polluters" is going to increase. Regardless of what green technology China invests in; the have a BILLION people living in smog and VERY POLLUTED areas that have NO INFRASTRUCTURE. They haven't begun to start paying that cost (you know that thing that took the USA 50 years to build and is even starting to break in our country). I think they only guarantee we have is if we are all on the same page; even if that only nets us a 1% change toward climate change in the short-term. We need a dramatic change in our outlook toward life and how we proceed to live. This has nothing to do with climate change directly; but is prolly the biggest driver of it.

I bring it back to the Avengers. We are in tech. We all talk a good game about changing the world with tech, AI, machine learning, etc. The end result is just another dog dating app, because people "can't find problems to solve". Are you kidding me? Save the world kid! We need heroes. We need individuals to take full responsibility and come up with moonshot solutions.

If the people who visit Hacker News can't at least use their imagination to try to thing of some global moonshot; no one will. I want you to realize that. I hope that my solution will help (still working on it); but it could just be a toy and a pipe dream. But you know what... At least I fucking tried. At least I can take these Super hero myths and do something constructive with them.

That's what we used to get in tribe, you know? You would be told stories of your great, great, grandmother; who saved the whole tribe. And that DNA runs in you; so you must live up to your ancestors. But instead of us internalizing these things, I guess we just wait for the last Star Wars movie....

China consumes a lot of energy because they have a lot of people, and they produce most of the world's cheap goods.

Also, please dont make numbers up. How would you feel if a climate-change denier simply made his numbers up during a debate? We live in a time where there is fake news everywhere, even though actual facts are easier than ever to look up and verify. There's no need to make anything up.

> Also, please dont make numbers up. How would you feel if a climate-change denier simply made his numbers up during a debate? We live in a time where there is fake news everywhere, even though actual facts are easier than ever to look up and verify. There's no need to make anything up.

They were imagining a hypothetical scenario, no?

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