Comment by cherrycherry98 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cherrycherry98 | Hacker News Reader

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The insistence that climate solutions involve self sacrifice I believe is a misguided one. I view the transformation to a low carbon future as happening primarily through the existence of natural economic incentives to do so.

People aren't buying electric cars and installing solar panels on their homes out of self sacrifice. Electric vehicles have many desirable features like being very performant, lower maintenance, able to be used as a home battery backup system, refuel/recharge at home, and are cost effective in a high gasoline price world. One of the major selling points of solar panels is the return on investment through lower electricity bills. The fact that both are considered green and makes some feel good that they are helping the planet is merely extra.

In general, sacrifice too often considered the path to virtue. I increasingly believe this to be mistaken. If we want the masses to adopt green technology it must materially improve their lives (superior in features and/or lower in cost). The benefits of being green for climate's sake I fear are too intangible be a significant driving factor in decision making.

I believe there is not one "silver bullet"; there are a wide variety of actions that must be taken to make a dent. Some are personal, and some are systemic, and both require personal sacrifice.

Here is an example (this is just a cooked up example, not an actual policy recommendation) where the large scale systemic change will require personal sacrifice.

Say a politician or a party says: we must act now. We need to spend two trillion dollars over the next 10 years on upgrading our electrical grid, both for overall capacity and to allow dynamic load balancing over long distances to make solar and wind power more effective. We are going to invest heavily in the private sector to accelerate battery research into production, adding significant battery storage to aid in the short fluctuations as part of that smart grid. To pay for this, we are going to increase the tax rate on capital gains to 24% and set a floor on the price of gasoline at $4/gallon for the foreseeable future. We will accelerate the closure of coal generators which will, in the short term, increase the price of electricity.

The opposing politician or party says: hooey, you don't need to do anything different than you are doing today. As we all know, plants consume CO2 and what little effect CO2 has on the world, it will be only good for crops. Vote for me and your taxes won't go up. The other guy is lying to you because he hates your freedom to burn whatever you want.

Here is the personal sacrifice part: you will have to vote for the guy who is going to raise the taxes and spend the money to address the issue. You will have less money in your pocket at the end of the month, and the benefits won't be seen for decades. All the while the naysayers will undermining work on the problem and spreading lies.

> People aren't buying electric cars and installing solar panels on their homes out of self sacrifice.

This idea is simply wrong. Many of them are doing exactly that, they are using their brains and making sacrifices in their daily life in hopes that collective action in reducing impact will at least give us the time to course correct or reduce the impact of our collective failure with respect to climate change. If you don't know anyone doing this, that's because of who you know.

> I view the transformation to a low carbon future as happening primarily through the existence of natural economic incentives to do so.

Yes, we will need economic pressures to get everyone overall to conform to a sustainable lifestyle, mainly because we cannot coordinate global human action any other way. No, those pressures are not "natural" ones unless you mean as a result of destroying Earth's climate to the point change is necessary for even day to day survival. We have to choose our future, however hard it may be.

I wouldn't say self-sacrifice either but people do not like and are generally not good at changing habits. And some things will certainly have to change.

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