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Comment by misiti3780 | Hacker News Reader

The last 1.5 years has shown humans are just too tribal to come to a consensus on something as obvious as COVID. There is zero chance we are going to all agree on climate change. Most companies and politicians think in short term intervals because of the systems we have devised.

It seems to be that the most obvious solutions will be make amazing technology and make it as cheap or cheaper than the dirty competitors -- eventually, even the people that dont believe in climate change will be driving EVs, have solar panels on their roofs, and eating fake meat.

Also, we should all be hoping there are some breakthroughs in nuclear (cheaper + safer reactors that leads to less regulation and allow nuclear to be more ubiquitous )

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Except that it's really only the US and various dysfunctional democracies like Brazil that have this problem. In large parts of Northern Europe this is/has been a reasonable consensus about what should be done and the impact of Covid has been well managed.

The US needs to get it's act together, but it is possible to have functional civil society and make decisions in the common good.

My assumption was that if the US (or anyone else) can build the technology, it will be imported and/or copied by everyone else.

Even Canada was pretty good about unity on the vaccine rollout - the Conservatives raised strong objections about the costs and approach but, outside some really fringe elements, have been pretty consistent in not directly contradicting health advice. Ditto for the NDP & Greens (well, the Greens are a bit weird and sorta anti-vax but they managed to keep their mouths mostly shut at least).

Nope, its everywhere. Even the best managed countries have their share of idiots and rule-breakers. If the leaders are sensible they can mitigate a lot of this but obeying the law and common sense are not a given.

This and getting people out of poverty. People out of poverty have a greater ability to deal with extreme climate events.

Yes.... but the development that lifts people out of poverty may at the same time exacerbate the climate problems. I'm not sure we've yet reached the point of lifting people out of poverty in a climate-friendly way.

Therefore putting people into poverty may alleviate the risks of climate change. Have you ever thought of taking that option? Has anyone?

People out of poverty also consume much more energy, so getting billions out of poverty without having a clean energy answer deployed might make things worse not better.

(I’m not making a claim that we should slow either branch down nor keep people poor so only the rich can keep burning fossils.)

You will note that people in poverty pour their used oil into the street sewer, burn wood and coal for heat and cooking, and simply don't have time for worries beyond their immediate needs. If you want people to care about the environment, they must have their basic needs met.

> … getting people out of poverty.

We have only ever managed to get people out of poverty by increasing their per-capita energy usage.

Any once we do, their families demand to maintain said standard of living that can only be met with enormous amounts of concentrated energy.

We have - and continue - to do this using fossil fuels.

Do you have another, secret, method?

> using fossil fuels

They can skip the fossil fuels and go straight to green energy can they not? This will require advances in technology, and therefore should be our focus.

> go straight to green energy can they not?

No they cannot.

We cannot even get Switzerland - small, rich, smart, friendly, good infrastructure, top class law, surrounded by mountains and water, etc. etc. to renewables in a decade.

Well with an attitude like that we won't...

Hope is not a strategy.

Of course not, but it can feed into a strategy.

> There is zero chance we are going to all agree on climate change

I think if enough climate events happen to enough people around the country, a majority could develop that wants to take action. Unfortunately, I think getting people to make the necessary changes to have a meaningful impact is politically impossible.

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