Comment by wait_a_minute | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wait_a_minute | Hacker News Reader

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People with an agenda always refer to nebulous externalized costs that they cannot actually quantify. How are you measuring these costs and what are they? What is difficult about building new companies to solve the engineering problems that stand in the way of the "tragedy of the commons" wrt the climate and infrastructure and other things which can scale? Because I see a lot of people making excuses for why we need a government to do everything, even though the most effective and realistic path I see when I survey the options is to procure funding from the private sector or from the said "giant centralized hand" which in the USA partners with private companies to actually solve problems and bring new products/services to market. That's what happens all the time here, so what's so difficult about doing more of that?

I see the "giant centralized hand" over in the East where they're heavily top-down management of the economy, and yet they're still building the most coal plants and driving those "externalized costs" you mentioned through the roof.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...

> People with an agenda

I guess you could generalize people that believe in the risks of climate changes as "people with an agenda". You could probably also generalize people who believe the opposite that way as well.

Given there is more money to be made (or less to be spent) in maintaining the status quo I'd say it is more motivations for an agenda in climate change denial.

> refer to nebulous externalized costs that they cannot actually quantify. How are you measuring these costs and what are they?

There are a whole range of possibilities here. Some are lower risk, but huge "costs" (world war III, runaway greenhouse effect). Other lower impact scenarios are more likely (more extreme weather conditions resulting in increased storm damage/flooding, uninhabitable areas due to heat/regular flooding, mass migration).

The costs of the worst case scenario are really off the scale. The costs of the less extreme scenario is extreme.

The problem is that for all our science, it's hard to predict the future. And how do you calculate the cost for something decades away that has such uncertainty? It's hard for individuals (or most companies) to build this into their financial models as they tend not to operate on those sorts of timelines, but it is something governments should be looking at.

> Because I see a lot of people making excuses for why we need a government to do everything

That's nice, but you were responding to my comment. I am not making excuses or asking the government to do "everything". I think I was clear in my previous comment, but I will try again: governments need to act to put a cost on negative externalities, which in turn will allow a market to develop, leading to private companies provide solutions for said market.

"governments need to act to put a cost on negative externalities, which in turn will allow a market to develop, leading to private companies provide solutions for said market."

when you say it like this, it def sounds like a more reasonable proposition to debate. i mean we already basically capture that in our military R&D, don't we? like didn't they say that climate change needs to be contained to reasonable parameters and stuff, years ago? i'm sure they're funding lots of work and making contracts available. it's a matter of nation defense after all lol. and didn't Elon announce $100 million for a proven idea that works for sucking carbon out of the air?

https://www.xprize.org/prizes/elonmusk

seems like both public/private are poised to have an interest in solving big problems via technologies and that's great.

that's about the only existential or national defense externality I can think of that needs more funding. and it's already picking up steam. AI research is getting a boost too.

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