Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

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> Why should it be different for emissions?

Because we clearly don't know how to do it properly. And individual wishes are not important when we talk about the future of mankind. It's all fun and games when we talk about one dude, multiply that by 8b and you're doomed, there is just no way to make it work.

> you would end up in a carbon-free pre-industrial world

Cut off the worst causes of pollution, what's hard to understand ? We don't have to go back to a pre industrial world, we simply need to adjust the balance, we're clearly fucking it up right now. Just don't spend 4 weekends a year 1000km away from your home, stop shipping fruits from the other side of the world, don't drive a V8 when you can drive a small 3 cyl car, don't eat meat at every meal / every day, don't buy the next iGadget as soon as it's released. Are any of these going to seriously impact your well being ? nope.

It's not like getting shitfaced on a beach in Ibiza or taking pictures of the Eiffel tower is going to deeply change your life (because let's be honest 5 min, the majority of travel is for leisure). If you put personal needs above everything else we're toast, 8b people living like the average American would destroy the world in a few years. Travel is a luxury, not a right, people need to understand that, it might be cheap money wise but you're selling away the future of mankind.

> All human (civilizing) action is aimed at enlarging the space of possibilities.

Remember all the ancient civilisations that expanded too quickly or were not able to sustain their lifestyles ? I'm sure they were thinking just like that.

> Remember all the ancient civilisations that expanded too quickly or were not able to sustain their lifestyles ? I'm sure they were thinking just like that.

What makes you think, this civilisation is collectively going to behave more sensible? We (broadly) accept the idea of evolution in biology. I'm pretty sure this works well on sociology, too. Or, put differently: We _will_ fuck it up. If it's not the climate crisis, it will be something else. Or: In a world where one nation alone has enough weapons to literally nuke the whole world, it is a strong bet to say that we'll be doomed on pollution.

> multiply that by 8b and you're doomed, there is just no way to make it work.

I believe the the 8bn are a problem on its own.

Yes we will fuck it up no matter what, that's why we have laws, you can't run straight pipes on a car, you can't burn the furnitures you don't need anymore, you can't kill someone, you can't throw mining byproducts into rivers &c. Why couldn't we limit the amount of plane travel people are allowed for leisure ? Ban imports of unnecessary goods ? limit product cycles (Do we need 200 new models of phones per year ?) ? Prevent subsidisation schemes ?

Nobody expects the individual to care for the planet or to even to be interested in the topic, that's why we rely on higher authorities to enforce laws.

8bn isn't a problem in itself, the hard cap is at least 50% more. The problem is that we live like there is no problem and that we deify "technology" as if progress just happens by itself and will save us if we continue in that direction. It's a textbook definition of wishful thinking. Somehow anything short of the status quo became "getting back to the middle ages" ...

> Why couldn't we ...

Steps involved:

  - Convince people that it's necessary ("do we really need it?")
  - Find a commonly accepted measure ("how much can I personally still travel")
  - Prevent loop holes ("But my neighbour has been to Mallorca recently")
  - Put laws into power. Globally (And one small country won't join the stuff and you'll end up full of envy at the point before, but on a higher scale).
  - Enforce the law. Globally. Fight corruption.

Sure, we could... But try to limit gun posession in the US, or speed limits in Germany. Whatever people feel will reduce their freedom will make them oppose.

If your idea is to implement all this democratically, it's a very weak selling point for politicians. If you pitch it, you're even missing the pain point. Most people do care way more about their next weekend than about the "future of mankind".

> 8bn isn't a problem in itself, the hard cap is at least 50% more.

Also a strong claim. What is it based upon? If we cannot scale the western life style for any of the 8bn, even if we could technologically, we're already behind the hard cap. It's not just "feed" them all, it's making them all "happy", reducing "envy" etc. More people, more conflicts.

8bn is a number this planet has never seen before (like it has never seen before this amount of pollution), and yet you claim that this "experiment" can be enlarged by 50%?

> Somehow anything short of the status quo became "getting back to the middle ages"

According to climate science, ~0.6t - 1.2t is the annual budget per person, if you want to stop climate change[0]. Now, look at this map[1]:

Below 1 tonne per person is the lightest colour on this map. Compare the living standard of these countries to the middle ages and you'll come close.

[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-a-persons-average-carbo...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

> 8bn is a number this planet has never seen before (like it has never seen before this amount of pollution), and yet you claim that this "experiment" can be enlarged by 50%?

no no no, if we lived _sustainably_ Earth could handle way more people. Right now with 8bn we're already way past the equilibrium point, we both agree on that. That's what we get when some people consume their life carbon quota every single year.

> If your idea is to implement all this democratically, it's a very weak selling point for politicians. If you pitch it, you're even missing the pain point. Most people do care way more about their next weekend than about the "future of mankind".

But then again what's your alternative ? Wait until "technology" saves us ? If the human race prefers autodestruction over self restraint, let it be... You better start planning the pitch you'll give to your grandchildren now though, this one will be much more of a hard sell than mine.

> But then again what's your alternative ?

I don't wish for an alternative to "sustainable" living, just to be clear. Only I doubt people will voluntarily give up all the amenities of our unsustainable way of living.

> Wait until "technology" saves us ?

Is that really too far fetched? Like "technology" saved us from food shortage [0], bacterial infections [1], horse manure [2] and so much more.

Technology like airplanes also saved us from being unable to leave our home town in a lifetime.

Today's problems are mostly side-effects of yesterday's solutions, often accelerated by greed and selfishness.

> If the human race prefers autodestruction over self restraint, let it be.

Maybe the next iteration of intelligent life on this planet is less selfish and more sensible? Less prone to social traps [3]?

> You better start planning the pitch you'll give to your grandchildren

That's not a pitch. If that happens, it's more like "We fucked it up, we're going to die. End of the story". Nothing someone needs to buy. No one "pitched" the demise of the Ancient Rome to the people. It was just inevitable, yet painful.

> this one will be much more of a hard sell than mine

It would be a more fateful talk than yours, but your's is a big one to sell:

"We've identified a bunch of problems, like nuclear weapons and climate change. Climate change is the only thing, YOU personally can do something about. So, yes, you would be able to buy an iPhone every year, watching TV on a big plasma while bbq-ing pulled beef and fly to any beach you can dream of just to get plastered with cheap beer over there, BUT we take ALL this away from you to save the planet. You can emit only as much CO2 as the poorest people in the world do. Yes, we try to reinvent all this stuff from scratch, but in a sustainable way, but this could take ages - if it happens at all. We don't really believe in technology, which is why we need to take it away from you NOW, but we hope for the best.

The nuclear weapons and stuff, you ask? Yes, we talk to the world leaders. They are unregenerate at the moment, but YOU will join us for the good cause, won't you?"

My point here is not that we would not be better off, if we all lived sustainable. But taking a single threat to humanity out of a big list of threats and conventionalise the one with the solution imposing the biggest cuts on an individual level, to the most detrimental one, might do more harm than good.

And, according to science, every cut above these 0.6-1.2t per capita per year would just delay the catastrophe to the grand-grand-children. So, yes, this would sound a bit like "middle ages" to most people.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_productivity

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_crisis_of_1...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_trap

> Why couldn't we limit the amount of plane travel people are allowed for leisure ?

Why for leisure? If you want to get rid of 200 new smartphone models a year and other irrational consumables, you'd need to rethink the whole economy anyway, so that it is no more rewarding to rely on unsustainable consumption.

This may sound like utopia, but is not necessarily a bad idea.

So why not limit business trips instead of personal ones? The CO2 budget which is now wasted by producing planned obsolescent gadgets could partly be used by individuals to get more mindful by traveling, by getting in touch with different cultures, by having a better meaning of life than working their ass off to buy such gadgets. For a little more than four iPhones you can already have a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas and back [0][1].

If you can't think of this utopia, you're mentally stuck to the growth based capitalistic economy we already have. In this case, limiting these resource wasting consumption goods would turn us right into recession, no?

[0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-x-environmental-repor...

[1]: https://co2.myclimate.org/de/portfolios?calculation_id=23389...

> If you can't think of this utopia, you're mentally stuck to the growth based capitalistic economy we already have.

Oh believe me I can think of it. But see, as soon as you say "maybe we should be careful about what we're doing" you're met with "hold on we can't do anything because we would go back to the middle ages". If we can't get people to do the most basic things I don't see how you realistically can shift to a whole new paradigm.

> maybe we should be careful about what we're doing

> realistically can shift to a whole new paradigm.

I wish it was different, but I believe that a smooth transition (i.e. evolution) from wasting everything we have to "let's all live a little bit more sustainable" is not a choice. The price tag of such a shift in paradigms may be a revolution. For example I could think of a very very big market crash which would reveal any of these dirty bookkeeping tricks which delayed the crash so far. After such a clearing with all assets set to zero, humanity might be ready to try the next social system experiment, whatever that may be.

That would be an event with immediate consequences.

But telling John Doe that "the planet is in danger because it gets a few degrees warmer, may not buy you his support for taking away his beloved smartphone and weekends in wherever...

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