Comment by silverquiet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by silverquiet | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder how we stop at 2 or 3? Or ever? When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly. I live a very energy-conscious life but I believe it mostly just codes to society as "loser". That I can live with; it's essentially the only way I can live with myself knowing the cost that I create to the planet. But exceedingly few will choose to live the way I do.

"Too late" is also a bit of an academic question as well; there are dragons lurking in the Earth systems - tipping points where carbon sinks become carbon sources and other feedback mechanisms waiting to be tipped. It's very easy to imagine that one tipping point cascades into another to create a runaway effect, though I don't believe there is scientific consensus on exactly where these points are, so we can perhaps hope to avoid them. That the oceans are so much hotter now than models predicted is an ominous sign that our understanding of such a complex system is still quite limited.

The New Climate Institute has a study showing how we can hit 2 degrees without carbon capture or geo-engineering. It's painful, but possible.

3 degrees basically requires countries to meet their commitments. Which for the developing world basically means net zero electricity generation by 2035, 99% of new vehicle sales being EV by 2030 and no new fossil heating in a similar time frame. That's 3/4 of the major emitters. Those are the "easy" ones, since those 3 changes all save money over the medium term. Some sort of technological or social miracle in the 4th (agriculture, especially meat) would give us a lot more slack.

Individuals choosing to live an energy-conscious life is commendable, and if enough people did it it might even ripple some small effects upwards, but ultimately I don't think that would ever be enough to actually solve anything. It has to be a top-down solution where lawmakers force the big corporations to be energy/environment conscious, but of course with the politicians (in the U.S. at least) being in the pocket of those very companies that's a tall order.

> When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly.

Isolating everyone to only ever see the place they were born and never travel the world seems like a big overreaction to me. Transport (and specifically aviation) is hardly the biggest offender as well. Energy, Industry, and Agriculture are 80% of emissions, we should start there.

There are less carbon intensive methods of travel, though they obviously come with inconveniences. Also, the technology to see and learn about other places has never been better or more available to everyone. People seem to like working from home, perhaps they can learn to do more from home generally (and again I'll be told that that is a ridiculous notion).

But if I really wanted to start a flamewar, I'd suggest agricultural changes; that is eating less beef in particular and meat generally. There are reasons so many religions have diet restrictions - it's a fairly fundamental part of human identity.

There are large-effect changes that can be made industry-wide (reducing the carbon intensity of power grids for example) that can be done before we start asking people to change fundamental aspects of their culture like diet.

These efforts targeted at changing individual behavior are distractions from actual things that economies could choose to do centrally to largely fix the problems. There is no reason we need to continue burn coal/gas to generate power, except that we think it is too expensive to make the effort to switch over. For example, Germany choosing to shut down nuclear power plants while there are still fossil power plants on their grid means they don't really believe that climate change is as big a threat to civilization as they say elsewhere.

The large-scale vs personal scale thing is a false dichotomy, ultimately it means individuals sacrifice energy use. But moreover, I cannot control the economy; I can only control my own actions, and I feel a responsibility to do so. Perhaps this is a fault of my character - it certainly brings me more discomfort than I'd like, but ultimately I do feel more at peace with my existence on this planet.

> When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly

It's one thing to do something to make yourself feel comfortable, it's another to say things to make others feel uncomfortable.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I actually acknowledged that my own life is less comfortable than it could be (and I still probably use more than "my share" of carbon compared to global means). I will in fact be traveling this summer and I assure you that flying on a plane would be more comfortable than the arrangements I have made.

But life is often uncomfortable; sometimes you must endure a needle or a surgery in order to receive life-saving medicine. My city in South Texas hit a record heat index of 117 last year - I can assure you that that is very uncomfortable, and yet we are still in the relatively early stages of global warming; I assume that I'll need to move north at some point in my life.

But even I fear some discomforts - I cannot imagine a frank discussion with children today about the future they are staring down, and I have to imagine its one that nearly all parents will face (not that I am among them).

The main issue is the actual effect of your actions. One person living as energy-frugally as possible may make them feel good, but ultimately it's pointless unless another couple of billion people join you, and sadly, many of us are some varying degree of apathetic or ignorant.

I may be wrong, but I think larger actions like replacing power plants, etc. are far easier to do at this point.

It's a funny thing these days; there are two "optimistic" camps. One that says that social change is impossible, but technology can save us, and the other that says that we have no real near-term technological fixes, but we can be saved by large-scale changes to society. In an irony that would be delicious if it weren't so existentially terrifying, I think they are both right and both wrong, but not the way we'd wish.

Building out technology that we already have can save us. We just need to agree to pay for it, which we can't because some of us are too poor to make changes required, some of us are apathetic, some of us are actively antagonistic (think coal rollers and such), and some of us are ignorant (willfully or otherwise). Like all large-scale problems, it's the people who are in the way, not tech.

> Energy, Industry, and Agriculture are 80% of emissions, we should start there.

Both transport and heating each comprise more than 20%.

And telling people they shouldn't eat meat will likely result in even more backlash than telling them they shouldn't fly.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Nature doesn't care how much enjoyment people get from travelling the world. It just experiences the impact on the atmosphere.

Energy, industry and agriculture all improve everyone's lives, while less than 20% of the world population has taken even a single flight.

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