Comment by asaegyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asaegyn | Hacker News Reader

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Hey,

Not sure what you mean by "no impact on ordinary people's lives." The evidence we see seems to suggest the exact opposite.

We're seeing a massive uptick in the amount and intensity of "once in a century natural disasters." These disasters destory homes, destroy crops and cause serious life loss and economic damage to everyone directly affected.

But these disasters also lead to the downstream effects: We're seeing significant inflation in food prices and insurance prices. In Canada last year, vegetable prices increased by ~16%. In comparison, inflation was ~2.5%. Throughout the world we see higher prices in food - this makes everyone poorer. Especially "normal" people.

Similarly, we're seeing insurance rates go up. This is for insuring farms, for insuring houses and anything else that is affected by climate. This is a real economic cost. Moreover, if your home is no longer insured from flooding - when that more frequent and devastating natural disaster happens, you're not covered!

We have all these hidden "taxes" from climate change that affect us all.

Sorry, obviously I wasn’t clear, I’m saying the changes necessary to avoid climate change will often not affect people, not the outcomes of climate change.

Thanks for clarifying.

On that point of what we need to do not affecting normal people - I don't think that's accurate either.

We WILL need to live different lives in the developed countries. Our lifestyles (beyond carbon emissions) are not sustainable.

If everyone on earth lived as those in the US did, we'd need 4-9 earths. So long as higher quality of life looks like how we live, people around will strive to adopt that. China is by volume, now the largest emitter, but it's only 1/6 of the US in per capita emissions!

I find it hard to see a scenario where we've addressed climate change and ecological collapse, while we live the way we live today.

But your "we" and "our" should be split up more.

Many people in the US live close to sustainable lives. they live without air conditioning, take transit everywhere, they eat chicken and not beef, they've never flown in an airplane. They're poor.

And then a small percentage of the US population lives insane lives. Gigantic houses with the windows open and the air conditioning on max for the garden party. Fly to Paris 14 times a year. Yacht idling in the harbor.

The carbon-production standards of most people, even in the US, don't need to change much.

How so? When you tax energy consumption more, poor people won't be able to afford driving a car. It doesn't affect the upper and upper middle classes, that's very true, but if i.e. transport of goods is taxed by travel distance, or flying is taxed more heavily, that will just mean that the lower classes can't fly and can't afford tropical fruits.

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