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Comment by wastedhours | Hacker News Reader

> People will need to change their habits to help out

> or they'll eventually be forced to

I think we overestimate most people's desire to do anything for the benefit of others. My fear is that a lot of the worst offenders of that are people who are quite likely operating on the basis they'll be dead before we feel the absolute effects.

As much as it's the only real solution, I don't think we can rely on regression to drive action. That's why the sugar for the pill of renewables will be eventual cheaper prices. We need to make the alternatives more appealing (or, at least some decent narrative to make them seem more appealing).

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What if we _can't_ make the alternatives more appealing?

What if, for example, infinite disposable plastic bottles are actually the easiest solution, and the sustainable solutions are actually a bit more work (e.g. water fountains and bottles you carry around).

Yes, sure, perhaps we can fix landfill. Devil's advocate though - it is definitely not the case that every aspect of our current ecological nightmare has a win-win solution.

We _need_ to start pricing in externalities, whether people moan about it or not. Seriously - this is putting the seat belt on in a car level stuff. Deal with it.

Is the morning after a night out a regression? Not the hangover; the every-day life. No - it's absurd to paint it that way - the high life was the abnormality.

> What if we _can't_ make the alternatives more appealing?

> We _need_ to start pricing in externalities

I might've been arguing the OP at crossed purposes, as my point seems compatible with yours, just framed differently at the point of delivery. We can't rely on the population to just decide "I'm going to do the right thing today". We make it a non-choice as you say. That can either be "it's cheaper/easier/better" or "you'll be locked up if not". It's quite a compelling narrative either way.

Just expecting large swathes of quite evidently moronic people (without delving too far into politics, if you agree the current political climate is as the result of ignorance, that's a sh*t-tonne of ignorant people out there - on the order of billions of people worldwide) to decide to look out for the interests of us as a collective is frankly wrong.

I agree with you - but I think we need to move past the "do it for the planet/species" argument as there's a lot of people who don't care and will be ridiculous in their stubbornness. The scale of it just doesn't work when trying to convince people. But show them how their heating bills will be cheaper and that they'll get a 6-month suspended if they throw a bottle in the sea, and things might change sooner.

Sure. I mean, it's not "them". It's us. Everyone.

I do bad things all the time because I have little agency.

I'm planning to make some major changes to move towards that, but still, if every store around me uses plastic in food etc I can't skip it.

We need to price in externalities. It's that simple. We need to cut this bullshit about the 'short-term economy' or phasing things out over 40 years or whatever; this isn't an emotional argument.

If we don't account for the cost of pollution we are going to kill ourselves.

> We _need_ to start pricing in externalities, whether people moan about it or not. Seriously - this is putting the seat belt on in a car level stuff. Deal with it.

Hmm, no it's not on the same level. Perhaps you can deal with it because you can afford to spend more on goods, but people in poverty will rightly moan.

Do you not understand the meaning of "need"?

Moaning does not change the outcome.

Again, we either reduce consumption, stop emitting (and likely have to capture) CO2, etc, or we kill ourselves.

It does not matter how much the child wails, if it is time to leave the arcade, one must go.

> can afford to spend more on goods

We must all use less. This is not a matter of bits of coloured paper; externalities must be priced in to force the market in the correct direction.

To take an example: if plastic bottles were banned worldwide tomorrow, or suddenly cost 10 USD per, this would have approximately zero effect on those in poverty other than shuffling some jobs around a bit.

I'm with you on pricing in externalities. However that's a tricky business and is not anywhere on the level of mandating that people wear seatbelts.

> If plastic bottles were banned worldwide tomorrow

What happened to pricing in externalities?

You made a silly ad hominem about me potentially being able to afford to ignore increased prices. So let's go ahead and assume the externalities are priced so high that it's an effective ban for all but 0.1% or whatever.

It doesn't make a difference. We are not playing some identity politics game about who gets more or less.

I'm tired, sorry. But really. Just do it.

They will be poorer if you don't.

> You made a silly ad hominem about me potentially being able to afford to ignore increased prices. So let's go ahead and assume the externalities are priced so high that it's an effective ban for all but 0.1% or whatever.

Pricing in the externalities doesn't mean we selectively jack the prices up on the "bad stuff" like plastic bottles (where you get to define what's bad). It means that the price of nearly everything goes up because the cost of raw materials, shipping, etc goes up since everyone on the supply chain has to pay for the pollution they're generating now.

It's straightforward to avoid making a carbon tax progressive rather than regressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend

> lot of the worst offenders of that are people who are quite likely operating on the basis they'll be dead before we feel the absolute effects

These people often have kids, and they do a lot for them. They need to understand that it is all in vain if they don't do anything.

> These people often have kids, and they do a lot for them. They need to understand that it is all in vain if they don't do anything.

And yet, lots of those same people with kids are the reason we're in the current political climate. Deliberate choices designed to cause outweighted impact on the younger generations.

I don't want to veer too much off course here, but look at the demographics around the Brexit vote. Those are large swathes of parents across the country who've made a decision that they wont live to see the ramifications of, with those younger generations almost entirely voting in the opposite direction.

Personally, I believe it's because the issues at play are far too large to comprehend. We need to change the message, and it needs to be localised and individualised as much as possible. However, that's expensive, and the people with the money are the ones less likely to want to help get that message out there...

> Those are large swathes of parents across the country who've made a decision that they wont live to see the ramifications of, with those younger generations almost entirely voting in the opposite direction.

Disagree. Leave/remain is just as 50/50 among my generation (young people) in my area. Anecdotal to be sure.

Whilst it's non ideal, various polls peg the youth vote at being around 70-75% remain [0]

[0] https://fullfact.org/europe/how-did-young-people-vote-brexit...

> I think we overestimate most people's desire to do anything for the benefit of others.

True, which is why we need a legislation framework to combat this problem. We need to do this together, as one human race (also helping certain other races who have it tough such as other mammals). Which won't happen when a country as important as the USA elects someone who "does not believe in climate change".

> We need to do this together, as one human race

As per my other comments here - we need to do that 100%, but I don't believe that's a compelling way to get individuals to change their own behaviour.

"I don't have to do my bit as other people are much worse than me. Why aren't the other 6,999,999,999 other people doing their bit too?"

> We need to make the alternatives more appealing (or, at least some decent narrative to make them seem more appealing).

so you want to deceive people at scale to get them to do what you want? not sure I can get behind that.

> deceive people at scale

Without want to slander my own profession, but: "marketing".

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