Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

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I call these kinds of suggestions abstinence based environmental policy and it will work about as well as shaming teens into not having sex. Abstinence based sex ed results in more STDs, teen pregnancy, and abortion. We've been preaching abstinence based environmentalism since the 70s. Load up the atmospheric CO2 graph and look at the plastic in the ocean and see that the result is basically the same. People pretend to go along, do showy things like wear promise rings or ban plastic straws, and keep fucking and driving and running their air conditioners.

People won't go for being shamed into reduced wealth, especially when the shaming is coming from comparatively rich people. Try to force it on them and you will get a populist revolt.

So by all means keep preaching 70s style lifestyle shaming environmentalism if you want another 50 years that looks identical to the last 50 years. People will listen, nod, and ignore, just like they do with sexual moralism.

The answer is to replace fossil fuels with solar, wind, nuclear, etc. and to electrify transport and industry. Replace as in generate the same or even more energy. As I say this I live in a place where as much as 50% of my power is solar on some days and I drive an EV. We are close to cracking the storage problem with better batteries and scaling production of them. This is very possible.

Sort of like how you cut STDs and unwanted pregnancies by making contraception available and guys putting rubber things on their willies. It's what works. Only ideologues oppose it.

The replacement is well on its way. EVs in particular will usher in more renewables because the next generation of EV batteries will have cycles to spare, so they can be grid-tied and earn their owners money.

It will all naturally happens over the next several decades as the cleaner tech becomes technologically superior as well as cheaper.

The investment needs to be made as a way to improve infrastructure that provides better service at less cost, not as a “shut it all down” panic - or else the damage of forced switching itself will be measured in the trillions.

Any climate change that’s happening in the next 10 years is happening regardless of net CO2 emissions over those next 10 years. In reality, the solar minimum we’re in will significantly mitigate climate impact in the short term while the technology for cleaning up is rapidly advancing.

> The answer is to replace fossil fuels with [renewables]

I agree.

> So poverty.

Don’t be so dramatic. Would it kill you to turn the thermostat up while we convert our global power infrastructure to renewables?

My list of example actions one could do to to fight climate change was not exhaustive or exclusive.

Passive solar design can improve comfort levels wile dramatically lowering energy use.

No real sacrifice involved -- other than giving up our entrenched mental models that dictate we can either be good or we can have satisfaction, but not both.

I understand, but when you lead with reduce people hear "rich elitists want me to be poor." They hear that because they have in fact been told that by clueless ideologues for decades.

That's true along the white/blue collar divide in the West and even more so between the developed and developing world. Think Africa is going to listen to the people who used to gather slaves from them and colonize them tell them they can't do what everyone else is doing because we need to save the Earth? The response will be "fuck you, we're poor."

Hell France's vast yellow vest protests were in part triggered by a gasoline tax. Egypt's revolution was in part triggered by rising food prices. Reduce = revolt. This is because anything that increases prices of consumables amounts to a strongly regressive tax. It hits the poor much harder than the rich.

So I get what you mean but I think that whole rhetorical line is actually counterproductive. Focus on replacing fossil fuels. That matters far more than little token reductions anyway. Replace coal with solar and gas cars with EVs and the carbon reduction is large and more importantly persistent.

Personally I like to frame it as progress. Solar could in fact scale much larger than fossil fuels. In the future it could actually provide cheaper more abundant energy.

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