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Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

I agree that it's important to take lots of action on climate change as soon as possible. That's why it seems counterproductive to tell a company they should stop taking direct action and start promoting the Green New Deal. It's too urgent of a problem to insist that only people with a particular political stance should help.

Maybe the specifics of the Green New Deal are getting lost in translation here? The package isn't just about climate change; like its namesake, the Green New Deal includes provisions about labor rights, education, healthcare, etc. Not everyone who wants to address climate change will necessarily agree with the Green New Deal proponents on those other problems. (And that glosses over a lot of disagreement even on climate change - for example, the Green New Deal doesn't include nuclear power which many people feel is essential.)

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> the Green New Deal includes provisions about labor rights, education, healthcare, etc.

Interesting. So it is the IPv6 of climate policies.

You are completely right. If individuals and companies can contribute in any way possible that's great. Personally I don't care if it's the GND or whatever, but the government needs to take climate change very very seriously.

The only meaningful direct action here with a hope of saving the planet is large scale government intervention and the mass mobilization needed to bring it forth. You may have disagreements with the specifics but it is false to suggest that there is some apolitical path to turning around 200 years of an economic logic that got us here, inside of 10 years. It is also misleading to imply that what SV companies like this are doing is apolitical: they very much want to market a message that private enterprise can solve this, we don’t need too much government, Capitalism is both a cause and a savior, etc. The silence and obstructionism here on govt intervention is dangerous and telling.

For the past couple decades Silicon Valley has sort of gotten away with marketing this idea of the private entrepreneur ushering forth technological change and erased the absolutely foundational role of federal funding. Because if you recognize the role of the taxpayer then maybe people start questioning whether all the profits should be privatized. That’s an existential threat. What you’re seeing here is not apolitical — it is an attempt to offer a private enterprise answer to the GND. Because you’re right, the GND recognizes that you can’t fix climate without also fixing broader social and economic issues that got us here. You can’t just tax gas without uplifting working class people that would be devastated by it. More people will realize the role the govt plays in tech and that it’s not just Elon Musks (who actually specializes in bringing fed funded tech to market like space flight and autonomous vehicles). The GND would actually provide a lot of opportunities for private enterprise but it would undoubtably diminish some of the SV VC community mythology.

I guess I'm not sure what to tell you here. If we can't figure out a way to address climate change without dragging in all these other controversial issues, I don't think we'll be able to address it.

Climate change is a “controversial issue” so that line of reasoning is DOA.

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