Comment by oliwarner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oliwarner | Hacker News Reader

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I think we all have a fairly good idea of some things that would help, it's the scale we struggle to comprehend. But even if you could find out the magic threshold for what it would take, if there's anything that lockdown and covid restrictions in the UK have taught me in the past 18 months, it's that we all need to follow the rules or it's pointless.

It's so disheartening to see others not pay these taxes, to not restructure and restrict their lifestyles.

It seems that unless things change globally, why are we even considering making changes? 1000 people in Quatar generate over seven times as much CO2 as 1000 people in the UK. Luxembourg, the US, Canada, Australia (and more) all generate three times as much CO2 as the UK per 1000 residents. The US has no carbon taxes. They've long been able to buy fuel and fly domestically for ridiculously low prices. Yeah, I'm having a whinge, but this is my point. If we're not all in this together, what's the point?

> If we're not all in this together, what's the point?

The point is that while we are squabbling over the most fair division of the burden, we are screwing future generations.

Qatar has 0.03% of the worlds population. We can't let climate renegade states preclude us from taking action, and we can't sit around until we have a world government.

Yes, they're a bad absolute example but there are others in that list that are still many times more destructive, yet are physically and culturally close to the UK. If we're ever going to sell the idea of investing in the future by sacrificing what we do, we need our neighbours to, too.

Another reply talks about sanctions and I think I broadly agree that tariffs and levies could be applied but I'm not sure how this amounts to much more than "normal" protectionism. It makes everything more expensive locally, and local sacrifice increases.

To ignore public buy-in will only breed another generation of malcontents. I don't want an "ecological Brexit" where half the populations gets swayed into giving up... Sorry. "Taking back control" [from an unelected environment].

Yes, but what if the biggest empire in the world, the USA, is the renegade state?

Long past time to start enforcing carbon tariffs on non-compliant countries.

I'm not sure how that would work. One country's power to enforce anything like that would —I think— just look like trade tariffs. This can be effective, but they sometimes just make things more expensive (and in doing so, seem like yet another sacrifice).

But maybe there are enough countries to form a pact, with enough alternative producers available to make this effective.

Make things more expensive for both sides and meanwhile incentivize producers to switch to more carbon neutral methods.

Yes, it requires sacrifice, but it would also require sacrifice if the other unilaterally switched to more carbon neutral production methods without a tariff.

The attempt to force people into limiting their lives for CO2 concerns falls into environmental authoritarianism. That’s why. Lots of people see it that way and when you mix hyperbolic environmentalist doomsday predictions that never actually happen people stop taking this seriously.

Additionally, the US is built on the foundation of personal freedom and autonomy. We would be the last country where people would willingly restructure and restrict their lives for someone’s agenda.

The impacts will be extreme, and it is not alarmism to say so.

The issue is that the impacts (lots of death) will be for generations down the line and will not really affect us today at all.

Personal choice effectively means screwing the future generations, because most people don't actually care about them. But those future generations are never given any choice at all.

> Additionally, the US is built on the foundation of personal freedom and autonomy.

What a… onesided view of the world. Do you think other countries are built on the foundation of being under the boot and up for restructuring themselves for someone’s agenda?

Should we stop calling out Saudi Arabia and China because they are built in a certain way? Are we Europeans not allowed to say no to a tax, because we were built on serfdoms?

MURICA!

> environmental authoritarianism

What's the name for the epistemic dark arts practice of attaching an ominous-sounding label to an argument, so it can be dismissed without consideration?

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is to be wary of problems slipped under the rug. The climate change issue is backed by hard evidence, and the eventual result of the current situation if unchanged is dire.

If we wait to act until the eventual result is in our face, then we are no different than animals that try to outrun a flood, if so then what is the purpose being self aware? Freedom eh?

> We would be the last country where people would willingly restructure and restrict their lives for someone’s agenda.

You've have thought stopping the country from burning, sinking under the sea and being ruined by drought might be higher on the US populations agenda but perhaps they all want to go the way of the dinosaurs…

This sort of commenter is what I'm afraid just forcing people into change will create. People so disillusioned with what we can do if we all do it that they're afraid to even try. Too afraid to even attach their name to it.

Climate deniers aren't new, but I suspect once people start experiencing what carbon tariffs actually mean, there will be a surge.

People like this are lost. I'm sure there's a way back, but seeing the recent damage of Brexit, Trump, QAnon, seeing how far people can disassociate from simple logic, it's probably a better use of resource to stop more people following them than try to convert them back.

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