The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt? | Hacker News Reader

The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

15 pointsColinWright19 comments

This is a retelling of a discussion between Peter Watts and a friend about climate change.

Peter Watts is better known for writing Blindsight, which I consider the best sci-fi novel of the past 20 years. I highly recommend it.

> technology is not going to save us, real or imaginary. We have to change our behavior.

We could use technology to change behavior and I think there is still a lot of room for creative technological solutions.

For example, incentivizing climate-friendly behavior and local activism by rewarding people, locals, who reduce CO2/NO2 emissions using satellite measurements and digital currencies.

That’s not a technological solution though: it’s someone throwing money at the problem (to provide “incentives”). It’s a donor-led solution?

More like a negative tax *or UBI based on satellite technology.

Try that with the billions of folk in what we still call the developing world. 'Rewarding them' sounds a bit patronizing.

Its a tax, a pretty standard thing to do. I would say that people from southern countries would benefit even more.

"white colonial powers are yet again telling India / China / Africa / Latin America what do to" is exactly how that has gone over in the past, with things like credits, and how it'll go over with this 'tax'.

Okay, yeah, and now you speak for them?

Call it UBI then. Nothing attached, nobody tells anyone what to do lol.

Edit: grammar. Also, we should get rid of the pollution problem, world wide. To say this is patronizing towards the global south is exactly what the fossil industry would say.

https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to...

I was hoping this would be addressing the coming collapse of the United States due to 37 trillion dollars of national debt but it's just about climate change.

Is there a relationship between the seeming inevitability of societal collapse as a result of climate change, as described in the article, and the seemingly dereliction-of-duty level of undisciplined economic behaviour of the US?

Are they saying "fuck it!" because in a short enough period of time whatever calamity the US economic situation causes is going to be massively overshadowed by the climate change calamity? Are the "haves" using essentially free money / debt to create their own personal enclaves to maximise their chances of, at least, short term survival.

(Only towards the end of writing that did I feel like I was reviewing the Fallout storyline).

Very good questions. I mean looking at historical temperature records we're at the tail end of an ice age.

https://www.climate.gov/media/11332

The INTEREST on the national debt just passed military spending as a percentage of the US budget, mainly borrowed in the form of treasury bonds and government instruments from primarily rich people who are getting paid around 5% to use their money instead of being taxed. Meanwhile the working class just get their money taken via taxes.

It's one of the biggest wealth transfers in human history.

It's not really reported on though.

Of course the people in charge would rather you focus on climate change than this. And the cause of climate change is extremely hard to PROVE however it's easy to scare people with.

You are downvoted but it will be interesting to see which calamity (or maybe not) befalls humanity first. I say humanity because the survival of America as a successful trading nation is of immense importance for every one on Earth.

If accountants (because central money debt is an accounting trick) manage to destroy the US I would be way more impressed than mad.

> central money debt is an accounting trick

It has to be accounted for at some point.

Either via massive inflation on the order of hundreds of percent...or somehow GDP has to rise by hundreds of percent to pay it back.

It's a very real problem.

It really doesn't. The 'borrowed' money is already in circulation and causing the inflation right now.

The main issue is pension funds and low risk investment accounts that will have trouble finding new derisked investment opportunities.

Probably so. Adapting is a superpower that humans have always had.

> encounter with the armed capuchins of the U.S. Border Patrol and eventual banishment from that crumbling empire

Sounds like a reasonable person. Someone we should all follow to a bright green future

It's good sci-fi.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com