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Comment by palata | Hacker News Reader

> You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what.

My opinion is that the very first things people should do are:

1. Get a little bit informed. It doesn't require a PhD, it could be done instead of a fraction of the time they spend scrolling bullshit on their smartphone.

2. Accept the situation. Too many are in denial, with variants of "it's not that bad" or "it's because those in power are stupid, I would certainly fix the world" or "it's because of foreigners".

3. Vote accordingly.

It's too easy to say "we don't have any viable candidates" and "I don't understand why they haven't fixed the problem yet, they must be stupid (somehow implying that "in all likelihood I would have solved it by now")".

In relatively-functional democracies, the reason the people doesn't have viable candidates is because the people does not vote for competent people. Either because they vote for competent politicians (with modern politics being about getting elected, not exactly solving big problems) or because they proudly vote for extremists (which is of course even worse).

In a democracy, the people is the government. When the people says "the government is stupid", it reflects on the people. Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.

View on HN

I went from voting to electoral campaigns to the kind of activism that gets you arrested to working in climate as an engineer. I landed here because the first three were insufficient. I still support and encourage all of it, but the best you can get from voting is creating a better regulatory and funding environment for the necessary engineering and implementation work.

> I went from voting to electoral campaigns to the kind of activism that gets you arrested

You make it sound like you proved I was wrong... somehow? I never said "0% of the world is informed and votes accordingly". I said that the majority isn't and doesn't.

Sure, once you realise you personally aren't able to change that, you can move to the next thing that makes you feel good (in this case working on "green tech", if I understand correctly). Some people go live in a hut in the woods.

Doesn't change the fact that the people is the government, and can generally vote for change. But they don't, for many reasons, including "they actually spend very little time thinking about those things". I would argue that most people spend vastly more time saying that the government is stupid than actually getting informed on problems and what it would take to solve them.

"Doesn't change the fact that the people is the government"

That is not true in large parts of the world. Now even the most absolute monarchy has to listen to the people sometimes, but they absolutely can and do choose to do whatevery the small power circle on top wants, as long as the situation is somewhat under control for them.

So you're saying that the US people did not actually choose Trump twice? Or that the people in other western democracies do not actually get to vote for their governments?

I actually said nothing specifically about Trump, but spoke about "large parts of the world". The USA holds 4.2% of the world population btw.

35% of greenhouse gases are released by China and Russia. These are not democracies. They have killed their people to remain in power.

Another 8-9% is from India which while still classified as a flawed democracy is borderline.

And 11% is in the US which I guess we will find out if it is a flawed democracy or hybrid regime over the next few months. But at best it is paralyzed by polarization on the issue. And also due to lobbying/bribery from oil producing nations and states. The electoral system enforces two party rule which caused this problem in many nations, most of which are no longer classified as democracies.

These are also incidentally the nations best poised to solve the engineering issue of maintaining modern QOL while reducing emissions. The US has certainly contributed and China is working the issue very aggressively, largely out of a need for energy independence. But both of those contributions are fragile. The polarization is affecting it in the US and if China secured sources of energy that were cheaper but emitted, they would not hesitate.

Yet China has successfully pivoted to EVs, is building more nuclear than anywhere else, and is also helping the rest of the planet move to EVs.

China is not stable.

Both can be true statements.

They are also building more coal plants than anyone else.

They are also building more renewables than anyone else. And unlike the new coal plants, they actually use the renewables.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292

What point are you making, that China is doing it right, pay no attention to China? They produce the most emissions, and are not amenable to international plans to reduce emissions, making everybody else's efforts futile. Want to see the ourworldindata graph (again, probably)? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-share-of-co2-emiss...

> They produce the most emissions

Oh yeah well your country produces more emissions than Vatican City. Since absolute emissions are bad, no matter the size of the country, your country sucks too. Every country that isn't in last place for emissions sucks! Get your emissions down to Vatican City levels otherwise you're just as bad as everyone else /s

> are not amenable to international plans to reduce emissions

Please tell me more about this. They're actually flattening or reducing emissions. They signed the Paris agreement.

> Want to see the ourworldindata graph (again, probably)?

That graph tells me North America and Europe combined produce the nearly the same as China. That means if they go 0 carbon tomorrow, it's like taking out one China's worth of emissions. Is that futile?

North America and Europe have also emitted way more cumulatively than China. Historic emissions are the cause of problems today.

Here's another ourworldindata graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions

If you tell me "historic emissions" don't matter then I have to ask, where is the line? Do China's emissions yesterday also not matter? That's historic too, right?

What? The country that is in first place for emissions is causing most of the emissions.

> They're actually flattening or reducing emissions.

Reeeeally. Not reflected in the graph yet. Which of those is it anyway, flattening out, at a third of global emissions?

I've heard "historic emissions" before. You haven't reached for "per capita" yet. "Lump all the other countries together and blame it on them" is a new one. But what are you doing? Trying everything not to blame China, why?

> Do China's emissions yesterday also not matter? That's historic too, right?

That one doesn't even work, I could just agree that it's all about today's emissions.

> The country that is in first place for emissions is causing most of the emissions.

I'm not aware of a dictionary which defines "most" as 31%.

> Not reflected in the graph yet

Actually it is. The graph you yourself shared. And it only goes up to 2024. The following year had actual reductions.

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/

> Trying everything not to blame China, why?

You're trying everything to blame only China. Why?

> I've heard "historic emissions" before

And you think they don't matter? What do you think is warming the planet right now?

> You haven't reached for "per capita" yet.

Hey if per capita isn't important then get your country into last place. Until then it sucks just as hard as every other country not in last place. That's what you're saying, not me.

The reason I blame China is because their 32% is within the control of their authoritarian government, while the rest of the world has to wrangle awkward agreements between many countries, and political will in any individual country is sapped by awareness that only a small fraction of total emissions would be affected anyway, which wouldn't actually stop e.g. wildfires, so participation in a grand global plan is the only persuasive policy, but those grand global plans, such as they are, include agreement that China will carry on as usual.

Yes, I think who did what in the past is irrelevant to solving a problem now. What's that for, punishing sinners? Not the goal. We can decide that it's not morally China's fault (ha), but they'd still be the ones doing it, and it would still be hot (in the future, the only controllable part).

I can't comprehend this "last place" stuff. I think your idea - or ideology - is that the West is responsible (as in having agency) and blames China as a distraction. This flies in the face of the plain facts of where emissions come from and which entities have control over that, specifically the CCP and the CCP.

> The reason I blame China is because their 32% is within the control of their authoritarian government

And you believe this government will be able to order the population to stop burning fossil fuels, go back to living pre-industrial lives? Heck no.

That government was however able to order far-seeing investments in solar panel and battery manufacturing (done for national security, not climate, but who cares).

Even if China went 0 carbon, it wouldn't solve climate change because the other 69% of emissions would continue. Existing emissions will go on causing heating. Everyone has to make a change.

China for its part has done a ton of heavy lifting with its 31% of emissions. It manufactures abundant panels and batteries which make the transition cheap for everyone.

> Yes, I think who did what in the past is irrelevant to solving a problem now

You may think so, probably because you live in a rich country. But the people in developing countries asked to sacrifice in solving the problem do not.

If you move into a shared house with existing housemates, would you accept that you have to clean the already-disgusting bathroom prior to moving in because you have IBS and would use the bathroom more after moving in? You'd say "fuck no the people already living here messed it up".

That's what convincing developing countries to abandon fossil fuels at great personal cost is like. Make it cheap for them and they will do it. But if they see Westerners driving SUVs and flying everywhere, it's the same as your average Westerner's resentment of Elon Musk's private jet.

> they'd still be the ones doing it, and it would still be hot

Only 31% of it. Not even most of it. It would still be hot if they stopped.

> I can't comprehend this "last place" stuff.

It's the same as your "first place" stuff. If "most emissions" is terrible and everyone else is blameless, then "least emissions" is unalloyed good and everyone else is to blame.

> that the West is responsible (as in having agency) and blames China as a distraction

I think everyone is responsible and the West blames China as an excuse to do nothing (probably China does the same internally, I have no idea). Most emissions happen outside of China and are very much within the West's power to affect.

> the people in developing countries

China, you mean, not changing the subject?

> asked to sacrifice in solving the problem do not.

So you mean that China wants the west to make some emission reductions, and then China will cut back on industry. I'm inclined to think they might be happy just with the first part and not bother with the second.

I think their 32% is instrumental to the rest of the world's political will, so I'm pretty much saying the reverse of what you're saying. This might indeed be a "you first" sort of situation, but there's no credible dialog about it anyway, Paris Shmaris.

> China, you mean, not changing the subject?

No I mean all developing countries including China. For example, India's emissions are rapidly rising and people in the West love using that as a secondary pretext for their own inaction.

> So you mean that China wants the west to make some emission reductions, and then China will cut back on industry.

China already has reduced fossil fuel use in electricity generation and industry. I gave you two sources earlier. Here's a third: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transi...

Now if you're intent on blaming solely China regardless of the facts, I really can't help you. You should examine your blindspots and biases before continuing the discussion.

> I'm inclined to think they might be happy just with the first part and not bother with the second.

I'm not. China is more exposed to climate change than most Western countries. And also PV and batteries are legitimately cheaper than burning coal. So they might just race ahead on sheer economics while we bicker.

> I think that 32% is instrumental to the rest of the world's political will,

I really don't think so. They'll just pick on India or some other poor country trying to haul themselves out of poverty. Because "political will" was never about what China or India do. It's about protecting the fossil fuel industry and its cheap energy.

A ton of carbon is a ton of carbon. It doesn't matter who reduces their emissions. Since we both agree on that logic, then the question is "who reduces emissions first?".

To me it's obvious: the richest countries first, because they have the most money to do it. This is where our views diverge.

In the west, people don't like various heatwaves and storms and fires, and they'd get behind a persuasive plan. What plan, though? They also like cheap energy. The reason why they vote for that is because they'll probably get it, while they won't get a cure for extreme weather. That's where international agreements, and the obstructiveness of the specific obstructive country in question, come into it. If your international agreement doesn't really do anything, the cheap energy has more persuasive power.

Why is "trying to haul themselves out of poverty" an excuse for causing climate change, by the way? That's a good trade-off, you imply? Being a poor underdog means you can have a dirty industrial revolution, because it's only fair that you should get a turn at burning a load of coal, is that the idea?

You say "China is more exposed": do they - anybody influential in China - actually express any concern about it? I don't know either.

> Why is "trying to haul themselves out of poverty" an excuse for causing climate change, by the way? That's a good trade-off, you imply?

It's a better reason than "I like hamburgers and steaks, big cars, and jet travel". Do you imply the West's choices are somehow nobler? Or is it ok because those "sins" as you call them are grandfathered in?

What are a poor country's choices? Stay poor, climate change happens anyway, and now they don't have any money to deal with it. Or get rich and have a chance of surviving.

> Being a poor underdog means you can have a dirty industrial revolution, because it's only fair that you should get a turn at burning a load of coal, is that the idea?

They would happily use free or heavily subsidized solar panels and batteries instead. Rich countries could easily fund this and tariff anyone who still burns fossil fuels. Why not do that instead of going "It's useless to do anything because China blah blah"?

> do they - anybody influential in China - actually express any concern about it?

They have targets to reduce carbon emissions, energy consumption per unit of GDP, particulate pollution, non-fossil fuel energy in total energy consumption, and increase forest cover in their current and previous 2 5-year plans. I didn't go back further than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Five-Year_Plan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Five-Year_Plan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Five-Year_Plan

In many ways, EVs and renewables esp. turbine generators are byproducts of coal. Look into how the vast majority of rare-earths are mined.

The number of plants is irrelevant. What is important is how much coal they use. That is going down because most of these new plants are built to just run at times when the renewables cannot handle the load.

Why coal when the peaks exceed what renewables can offer? The same reason the US builds natural gas plants (and is building more of those than anyone else in the world)--it is their fossil fuel that is the cheapest and has the most secure supply.

As I said, they are aggressively contributing to the engineering side of emissions reductions. Probably the worlds most effective contributor in that regard. They are also the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Both are true. My final point is that those contributions are not altruistic, and their motivations could change if the entire oil production of Russia gets piped to them, they achieve naval dominance enough to secure malacca etc.

You have completely failed to take into account population.

Unless you can make a good case that some people have some kind of natural or divine right to a bigger share of whatever planetary CO2 budget we decide we have, shares have to be allocated per person rather than per country.

Any other systems leads to absurdity once you take into account that groupings of people can change.

Sure, per capita makes sense and that pushes some middle eastern countries to the top, with china and india way behind the us in emissions. But the post that started this was about voting to fix the climate. My whole point was that all the countries that are producing the majority of emissions aren't very democratic (us, india), or aren't at all (china russia), so voting is really quite irrelevant.

> And 11% is in the US

Well, you did qualify it with "in the" US but the US military is a bigger polluter than many nation states; number one source of carbon emissions in the world

Soooo yeah, Murica. As your vanity demands; all the attention is on you.

I and the rest of the world look forward to the US objectively failing to meet the moment.

The US Military: Bigger Polluter Than Most Countries

If the US Defense Department were a country, it would have ranked 59th worldwide in emissions in 2024

https://thebulletin.org/2026/08/mission-impossible-quantifyi...

I recommend any doubters to watch Abby Martin's documentary Earth Greatest Enemy.

That's why it was so important for the US to lead when it was the superpower that had the authority, respect and most influence over institutions of international cooperation. We're in the process of throwing all those accomplishments of the 20th century away. We used to be the good guys.

The less-bad guys maybe? Good guys are pretty hard to find in any honest history books. The moment is gone in any case. Emissions reductowould no longer be sufficient even of we had any confidence they would occur. Engineering solutions need to start focusing on climate engineering in parallel to clean energy. Both will definitely be needed to mitigate the losses to human quality of life.

> Engineering solutions need to start focusing on climate engineering

Or not? Maybe we just focus on mitigating the loss of quality of life?

Climate is extremely complex. I'd rather we did not screw it up even more with climate engineering. But that's not all: even if we somehow managed to safely do climate engineering, it would only have an influence on the climate emergency. We have an energy problem and we have a biodiversity loss problem.

We are currently, measurably living in a mass extinction. It is happening orders of magnitudes faster than the famous one of the dinosaurs. And it is completely unrelated to climate change (but related to human activity of course). Of course, climate change makes it worse! But if we fixed the climate, we would still be living in a mass extinction event.

Climate engineering doesn't solve that. The solution to that is to do less of what humans are doing. And ideally do it better, so that it mitigates the impact on our quality of life.

Human nature being what it is, we won't hit the 2 degree target either. We could! We won't. The likelihood we get into some of the nastier feed forward events seems near 100%. Yes, we could build masks, then suits, then huddle in domes. Or we could build a thermostat into the place. Human nature is fine with spending trillions to fix a problem that billions would have avoided. But it wont do the avoiding. It is just how we are.

> Human nature being what it is, we won't hit the 2 degree target either. We could! We won't.

Agreed, we're pretty much screwed.

Still, I find it more rational to try to bet our survival on what we understand (we have to cut our CO2 emissions) rather than stuff we don't understand ("look 'ma, if I put this in the atmosphere for a few minutes, it has this effect locally. Let's assume nothing will go wrong when we do that for years at a global scale. After all, if it goes wrong, we're just dead... could be worse, right? Right?").

its very interesting, because the US and India will suffer strongly from the effects of climate change.

Russia not so much, the melting of the perma frost might even enable agriculture in some regions previously impossible.

China will also suffer strongly, they know this so they are investing heavily also in resilience measures. anti desertification measures in the green wall, Water management, even geo engineering (which caused some tensions with india about raining off clouds before the water drifts away)

> Russia not so much

Source? Climate change causes a lot more issues than just "it's a few degrees warmer", are you aware?

Like... extreme weather events and biodiversity loss, for a start.

Yes i am very much aware, but different regions are differently affected. The biggest effect on russia might be droughts and peat fires. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_Russia

The overall yield of grain crops in Russia is expected to decrease by 17% by 2050

we are talking about economic effectrs that might convince a trump/putin to take action. So biodiversity loss will likely not convince them. neither will indigenious habitat loss.

> So biodiversity loss will likely not convince them.

Well "biodiversity loss" doesn't sound too bad. The "biodiversity loss" problem we are facing right now is a mass extinction orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs.

The day we cannot produce enough food anymore, won't it have an economic effect?

You dont have to convince me.

Ironically most conservative policy makers are not very avid conservationists...

> 35% of greenhouse gases are released by China and Russia

And we all import tons of stuff from China. Stop importing from China if you want to reduce their carbon footprint. Instead of paying them to build cheap stuff and then complaining because they build stuff for you.

Aren’t they essentially Leninist? Like if they weren’t burning coal to make Nikes and iPhones they’d be burning it for something else? So what’s the point of my choices here? I’m not even complaining, but from a problem-solving standpoint, seems kind of irrelevant.

> if they weren’t [...] they’d be burning it for something else?

"If I wasn't selling cocaine to kids, someone else would be doing it (from the statistics I just made up in my head to feel better), so surely it's not bad if I do it"?

You seem to be looking for excuses to buy from them. You have a choice.

> Doesn't change the fact that the people is the government

That completely ignores realities of society, power and influence, even in democratic societies.

"to the kind of activism that gets you arrested "

Glueing to the streets and alike?

I never found that to be helpful. Preventing chopping down forests to open new coal strip mining on the other hand .. I would be with you.

The latter gets you arrested even harder

Depends how you do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_Forest

Glueing to streets can lead to terrorism charges, taking part of a demonstration even if it is not a legal one so far not.

(but among those activists there are certainly more radical elements, also actual eco terrorists, they recently showed solidarity to someone who was hiding close there, who made attacks on power plants and transmission lines)

What do you mean? A lot of people got arrested in the course of the Hambach protests

Not the ones demonstrating, but those who threw stones at police and did sabotage.

Again not sure what you’re referring to.

The ones that made Hambach happen were the people that camped there in the woods literally for years in tree houses and they (some of them) also got arrested for it.

The arrests and prosecution I know of, are not because of living in a tree house there.

There was a lot of intentional ideological violence towards police. Part of the reason why I did not engage with them further, but I know people there.

They still camp there btw

The prosecutions are not because they camped there, but what about those who were arrested and not prosecuted? just taken into jail, strip searched, then let go outside the police station after a night in jail when nobody can find where they are? Without any prosecution because the police cannot stick them anything? The violence against the police is mostly not ideological, it's caused by a deep anger about how people are treated, getting teargased for nothing, or prevented from moving.

Also now with social media, you can find a lot of example of what are called in France "Appariteurs" who often start the mayhem then leave through police lines without getting arrested.

"The violence against the police is mostly not ideological, it's caused by a deep anger about how people are treated,"

Yes yes, I heard that before. Let's just say I have been to many demonstrations and know the scene so sure, unprovoked police violence is a thing. But otherwise the pattern I witnessed quite often(and especially in the context of Hambach) is: some throwing stones or worse at police, police reacts with batons and teargas .. "wah wah, evil police!!"

When you have ACAB as a mantra and the core group consists of left wing extremists, what do you expect?

The openly showed solidarity with someone doing literal sabotage attacks on power plants and transmission lines. They are beyond reason and I claim the Hambach was temporarily saved not because, but despite those radicals. The mass demonstrations were what helped.

> some throwing stones or worse at police, police reacts with batons and teargas

An "appariteur" was caught on video launching rocks at police recently, then when confronted by a parliamentary rejoined someone wearing a bodycam. They aren't hiding anymore. It was then confirmed by the local prosecutor he was from the police.

Well, that is how the police gets informants into a scene. The more radical the action, the more respect and trust they get - if the scene likes radical violence in the first place.

If they don't - they are also immune to agent provocateurs - if that is rather what happened here.

I know that they tried to evict the people in the forest in 2018 and a bunch of people got arrested because they resisted the eviction. Later on they walked it back and let them stay but still some people got arrested not because of violence but because they occupied the forest.

this is the correct kind of activism: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-georgism-work-five-yea... (HN Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49844657 )

I don’t know of any candidates (except a few outliers who have my support) who are pledging to reduce the footprint of the largest polluters. All anyone is willing to do is offer “feel-good” initiatives that make life harder for average people, building popular resistance to addressing climate issues, without actually taking the substantial, difficult steps that are needed. Meanwhile they work together on tightening the social control grid that is being rushed to completion before shit finally hits the fan.

> Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.

Now you’re getting it. But they are stupid for a reason. The people are stupid because they are poorly educated and distracted by entertainment; they are poorly educated and distracted by entertainment because policy makers prefer passive consumers to active citizens; despite the long-term downsides, policy makers choose to create passive consumers because they are easier to control and unable to contest their power.

One of Reagan’s advisors warned that free higher ed was creating a dangerous “educated proletariat”, and he was right! The response to this danger was to end state funding of college tuition, to strip out funding for the humanities, and to gradually turn colleges into job prep centers rather than centers of higher learning. (This process started in earnest with Reagan, but you’ll notice that it was never rolled back.)

People did try to fight this, but we lost. And now here we are.

> I don’t know of any candidates (except a few outliers who have my support) who are pledging to reduce the footprint of the largest polluters

First, you apparently do know candidates like that, so...

Second, the reason we don't have candidates like that is because the candidates who get elected are the ones who do what they are doing now. Extremists get elected by being extreme, and they are because the people vote for them. If the people voted for consensual candidates trying to get the people together to find solutions, then we would have more of those. People in the US voted twice for Trump, no wonder all the other candidates are looking more and more like him. You get what you vote for.

> The people are stupid because they are poorly educated and distracted by entertainment; they are poorly educated and distracted by entertainment because policy makers prefer passive consumers to active citizens;

I don't know why people are stupid, but one thing I know for sure is that there are enough resources out there for them to inform themselves. And most people in Western democracies are educated, so they are capable of getting informed. They just... don't do it. Laziness maybe?

People being stupid doesn't lead to any specific outcome, it adds noise and randomness. To the extent that policies were the outcome of stupidity, those could equally well have been policies to reduce emissions.

If you throw LEGOs on the ground, they will form all sorts of random constructions, but it's very unlikely that they will end up building a model of the Empire State Building.

I would argue that in order to solve systemic problems, it's not enough to "randomly vote correctly once in a while". It needs to be carefully built.

I'm not surprised at all that "randomness" results in us not tackling the biggest problems our species has been confronted to.

> I don't know why people are stupid, but one thing I know for sure is that there are enough resources out there for them to inform themselves. And most people in Western democracies are educated, so they are capable of getting informed. They just... don't do it. Laziness maybe?

This, folks, is the power of neoliberalism distilled. Is there a problem? Why, it must be the fault of the many individuals who failed to take the appropriate action. Of course there is no consideration that many individuals together encompass a group who may be part of a larger system in which causality flows both ways.

Your comment here is not so different from accusations against “the blacks” (“why don’t they just stop committing crimes?”) or “the jews” or other groups. It is a simple reformulation of the classic “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. Obviously, if you fail to do so, it is a moral failure. Obviously.

The fact that this outlook infests so many minds is exactly why we have ended up here today.

If the trajectory continues, one day the people will pull themselves up by their collective bootstraps, and a real nightmare will begin, because such things are never clean.

So when people massively vote for extremists, it's fine, but when they massively get informed and decide to try to do something constructive, it's... "never clean"?

> Why, it must be the fault of the many individuals who failed to take the appropriate action

I am actually addressing the opposite: people tend to say "it's because of the few in the governments", as if they themselves would do better.

> Of course there is no consideration that many individuals together encompass a group who may be part of a larger system in which causality flows both ways.

I don't understand the "causality flowing both ways" part, but for the rest, that's EXACTLY my point. People are collectively part of a system, and they are collectively NOT solving the problem at all. And in relatively good approximation, they are blaming the people THEY elected.

Now being part of a system and not having the power to change it individually is one thing. Being part of a system getting worse, complaining all the time about it getting worse (to the point of going in the streets and burning cars/schools), but not being able to actually realise that it is more complicated than "it's not my fault, it's the elites"... Well I don't know how to call it, but it's tragic.

> So when people massively vote for extremists, it's fine, but when they massively get informed and decide to try to do something constructive, it's... "never clean"?

I was implying a revolution, which is almost always bloody and destructive, and almost never ends the way people want it to.

You completely missed the point on everything else. “Society” as a whole is both a bottom-up and a top-down construct. In more functional times, both sides influence and are influenced by each other. My contention is that the top is exerting enormous and extraordinary influence on the bottom to prevent any sort of reform, going so far as to sabotage their education, flood the media with propaganda, and actively implement divide-and-conquer strategies. Under these conditions, you can’t exactly blame the bottom for failing to find their footing.

You especially can’t blame them when most of the candidates who promise to “do something” are either co-opted or compromised from the start. The media says, vote for change! They just fail to mention that change is not on the menu of options. And woe to the few men of means who try to run for Congress to actually get something done; they don’t last long.

These conditions have only gone on for as long as they have because as Adam Smith said, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” But there isn’t much wire left in the walls to strip out and sell. The pain has been unevenly distributed, with just enough people enjoying a decent standard of living to prevent any real mass movement. That won’t be true for much longer; we are running short of runway.

> I was implying a revolution

Not sure how it relates to what I was saying. Were you answering to me?

> My contention is that the top is ...

Are you talking about the USA or western democracies in general?

> They just fail to mention that change is not on the menu of options.

Even in the US there are other candidates than, say, Clinton of Trump. Saying "I didn't have a choice, it was either Clinton or Trump" is a lie: it was possible to vote for others at the time.

You seemed to be saying that a revolution was somehow clean, which it’s not. Also, who do you think leads a revolution? It’s extremists of one type or another. So I guess I’m just even more confused by your comment now.

I was speaking about the US in particular, but much of Western Europe is in the same boat, as they have also embraced the same form of asset stripping neoliberalism. Given the economic dynamics between the US and Europe, Europe is probably worse off.

It’s true that third party candidates exist, and it’s good to support them, but I wouldn’t count on any of them winning. The system is stacked against outside challengers. If you’re going to participate, though, that’s the best place to put your energy.

> The system is stacked against outside challengers.

Why? Are you saying that if 60% of the population voted for an outside challenger, they wouldn't be elected somehow?

> You seemed to be saying that a revolution was somehow clean

I don't think a revolution is the solution. What would a revolution get you? Do you want a new system? Like a monarchy maybe? Or something authoritarian? Or do you want a better democracy? A system that would not be "stacked against outside challengers"?

Let's take an example: Switzerland. If a fraction of the people wants to change the Constitution, they can initiate a vote. They don't have to be elected or professional politicians or anything for that. So the people can actually initiate votes, say related to the climate crisis. It has happened a few times in the last years.

Do you know what happens when the people is asked to vote on a text that says "the government has to take measures to reduce the carbon emissions"? The people votes "NO!".

Saying "we are not solving the problem because the elites are in power, so we need a revolution" is the same as requesting that a software project be restarted from scratch because it's complex: it sounds like an easy solution, but it isn't one. A complex codebase is usually complex because it models some kind of complexity. If you restart it from scratch, the complexity won't magically disappear.

We need the people to actually want to take measures. If the solution was to go in the streets and burn cars, France wouldn't have problems. But burning cars is just a way to say that you have problems. If you want to solve them, you have to vote accordingly. The French will probably vote for those who say they want to restart from scratch (Le Pen and her friends), because they are really good at burning cars and saying that it is the fault of the elites. But apparently not so much at actually getting in constructive discussions and thinking about complex solutions to complex problems. And it's not like France is lacking experts. Jancovici and the Shift project are experts in the domain. But the people is more into burning cars and schools, somehow.

I agree with what you’ve said here, and I’m saying that the people are not “just” going to do what you’ve suggested. Because the people are not well informed, and this is on purpose. They will eventually figure it out, when the undeniable signs of collapse are around them, but it will be too late at that point. This is a pattern that repeats throughout history.

You’re suggesting that it’s the fault of the public for failing to overcome intensive propaganda, disinformation, and divide-and-conquer campaigns, a failing educational system, and normal human failings like normalcy bias. I don’t know what to tell you. Fine, blame the people, it’s not going to change anything.

I disagree on the idea that the people is kept into an uninformed state. I have been taught about the problems in public school since 2006 or 2007. We watched "an inconvenient truth" at school. And I'm not even starting to mention the countless hours studying those issues, reading about them in the media or talking about them with friends. Nowadays people can even ask their goddamn AI when they take a 15min break from TikTok. It's not that information is lacking.

What I believe is that it is so bad, that the people are generally in a state of denial. And it's so much easier to say "they should stop wasting tax money" and "it is their fault".

Same goes with basic racism. Is the government teaching the people that foreigners are the cause of all issues? I don't think so. It's just an easy way out.

* "It's not me, it's the foreigners"

* "It's not me, it's the government"

* "It's not me, it's the others"

"It's not my fault if I spend 5h a day swiping TikTok and then go on saying that the politicians are all corrupt and that I would do better, and that I then go and vote for Trump or AfD".

Isn’t this just you saying that you received a decent education so therefore everyone else must have as well? Have you been to school in rural Kansas or Louisiana? Are you oblivious to the countless hours of content from organizations like Turning Point that are explicitly targeted at kids? And the endless influencers who do the same?

Are you not aware that the average IQ in the US is 97-98? And that academic performance has been falling consistently? Did you know that 54% of US adults score below a sixth grade level on reading comprehension?

> Is the government teaching the people that foreigners are the cause of all issues? I don’t think so.

Are you seriously saying that the current government isn’t pushing this idea?

> Are you seriously saying that the current government isn’t pushing this idea?

I meant teaching in schools. Politicians say everything and its contrary of course.

But yeah I get you've got a point. A lot of people actually believe that the Earth is flat, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I think you hit the root causes dead centre there but there's an unfortunate consequence to your argument that you didn't call out.

The only way this changes is if there is real political/government leadership on the issue. That leadership can direct national resources. It can legislate. It can even tax - if necessarily to a very high degree - less useful ways of spending available resources in the private sector to deter waste.

We can't get that kind of leadership in many countries at the moment because too many people will just vote for whichever party they always have or whichever populist nutter has the most convincing sound bites. So before the political problem can be resolved there needs to be much more public education on the realities of the issue.

This is unfortunately a circular argument because the public information campaigns that are needed to fix the education problem are only going to be run by political/government leadership of the required calibre. If anything the populist lightweights will push the other way because dumbing down the voting population helps to sustain their own control and importance.

My hope is that before it's too late there will be enough politicians who are both capable of dealing with the real issues here and capable of taking on the populists convincingly enough to get elected to start moving the needle. Unfortunately I don't really see any other way this gets fixed instead of spiralling downwards.

> This is unfortunately a circular argument because the public information campaigns

I got educated in public schools. I was given all the tools needed to get informed and understand the problems well enough to... well at least not vote for extremists.

Saying "it's not the people's fault, it's the government that actively prevents them" is wrong in my experience. Even when the public education is good enough, extremism rises as soon as life becomes harder.

I don't think extremism and populism are the same thing FWIW - at least not as the terms are used here in the UK. (Obviously there is some overlap.)

A recurring problem with politics is that even a lot of decent and reasonably intelligent people still aren't interested enough to spend a lot of their time looking into political issues in detail. And that's understandable! Most adults have enough to worry about with jobs and families and their own hobbies and interests. The point of representative democracy as commonly used in Western nations is to have representatives who can devote their time to getting involved and understanding the issues on behalf of those they represent. But then how do voters know that the people they vote to represent them will take a good position on the issues that matter to them? A lot of it comes down to rhetoric and trust - and that's how folksy populist politicians manage to win votes and get elected even if better informed voters can see straight through the sales pitch.

The kind of public information campaigns I'm talking about here are the ones that try to raise awareness of the most important points about the most important political issues among the general population who can't or won't do enough research to find out for themselves. It's about getting the core message and basic facts to enough people who would then support doing sensible things as long as they have that essential information. But of course there can be a fine line between public information based on facts and logical reasoning from one party and mere political propaganda from another. The same tools of government and taxpayer funding can support either in exactly the same way - depending on who is already in power at the time.

“ When the people says "the government is stupid", it reflects on the people. Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.”

Yep, George Carlin said this best when he was still alive. Bad Government is simply garbage in, garbage out, if the people are stupid, they will elect stupid people

Indeed and don't underestimate the influence you can have by participating in candidate selection (depending on your electoral system). For example in the UK the replacement candidate for a safe seat [i.e. almost guaranteed to be won by the party of the sitting representative] upon retirement of the incumbent may be decided by just a room full of people. Be in that room.

> the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.

the government isn't stupid -- it's smartly serving the interests of the wealthy, who are primarily concerned with increased profits in the companies they hold shares in, not the wellbeing of Americans (much less those in other countries)

the US gov for the most part, has always been pro-owners (a small minority), not pro-workers (the vast majority of Americans) -- it's a structural feature, not a bug. and that's why it's so difficult to change unless things get so bad and the threat of social revolution is so great, that the gov is forced to make concessions -- this mostly only happened once, during the Great Depression

> In a democracy, the people is the government

sure, in theory. but in the US you'd have to start by overturning Citizens United so that the people -- not corporations -- are the ones driving elections

> the government isn't stupid -- it's smartly serving the interests of the wealthy

The current government was elected by the people. Twice.

> are the ones driving elections

Are you saying that the people did not have a choice not to vote for Trump? Both times?

Yes, current polling basically indicates that the US electorate's overwhelming preference is "cheap gas".

Correct, and the reason I work in climate tech is Amory Lovins’ famous observation that people don’t care where their energy comes from, they care about “hot showers and cold beer”

> In a democracy, the people is the government.

This is just not true. There are many reasons so-called democratic elections fail to capture the will of the people. One of them is that many decisions are bundled into one, so lower priority decisions get sidelined by high priority ones.

The problem here isn't the people, it's a system that is built to have the appearance of being run by the people, while in reality the people will never be given reins to the system.

> The problem here isn't the people, it's a system that is built to have the appearance of being run by the people, while in reality the people will never be given reins to the system.

In Switzerland, the people can actually collect signatures and then vote to add articles to their Constitution. So they are very much in control. Check what they have voted in the last few years. When you ask the people, they actually don't give a shit about the climate problem. Then they say the problem is the government (not sure if they say that in Switzerland though).

What is your reaction to credentialed physical scientists who accept that climate changes and that human greenhouse-gas emissions have an effect, but reject or dispute important parts of the mainstream assessment? They do have a Ph.D. and one of them has a Nobel Prize in Physics so it's difficult to ignore them. This is not to take a position but to point out that they can hardly be idiots; if you think they are, this needs to be made plain.

> They do have a Ph.D. and one of them has a Nobel Prize in Physics so it's difficult to ignore them.

Hard disagree here. Having a PhD only says you got hired for a PhD and spent years doing stuff. Doesn't make your opinion better than a scientific consensus. Having a Nobel Prize means that you won the lottery when you chose your field of research (if you were lucky enough to have a choice there). There is a famous "regression to the mean" with Nobel Prizes who then have a tendency to be confidently wrong for the rest of their life.

Not saying that PhDs and Nobel Prizes are worth nothing of course. What I'm saying is that science is about consensus. It's okay to believe that the consensus is wrong and to try to prove it, but until you manage to do it, you have to admit that the consensus is the best theory we have.

> This is not to take a position but to point out that they can hardly be idiots; if you think they are, this needs to be made plain.

I don't think they are. I think people tend to misunderstand how science works.

If the vast majority of scientists in a field agree on something, and few disagree, that's perfectly normal. Now when you take one scientist from the minority, realise that they are not stupid, and conclude from there that it would be rational to believe that the large consensus is wrong... then you are doing it wrong.

In other words, a scientist could say "you should believe the consensus about global warming, but my research is about trying to prove them wrong. Until them I have failed, given that the consensus is what it is, and therefore you should not base your survival on my ideas". Of course they won't, and in all fairness it shouldn't be their job to say that. We really just need people to understand how science works, and stop thinking that they can select the one study they like and say "it's true, I choose to believe this one".

This may be a contrarian view here, but a government that would force its citizens to reduce carbon footprint would be authoritarian by the views of most. China keeps backing the concept even though they are the greatest polluters and Putin got Schroeder in Germany to shut down nuclear. Authoritarian government without failure lead to wars. A war will come as a direct consequence of politicians selected because they can force people to do something “for their own good”.

You shouldn’t want political solutions to solve this - you want economic ones. I’ve been driving EVs almost exclusively for almost a decade and happy to see less smoke in the air, because and increasing number around are doing the same. Having solar during massive energy price spikes has been awesome. Tech that converts carbon from the air into bricks or some new type of fuel that generates revenue would quickly make factories want to capture it. Crops that grow in dry areas or tech to capture water and energy locally made affordable will increase local economies in countries that currently have so little that war is the only thing on the docket.

Forcing people to change what they eat or to pay reparations to countries that actually cause the pollution (much climate change action funnels money to China) or to lose jobs and factories will get you into war, because that’s precisely what authoritarians like Putin and China use to subjugate Europe.

"Authoritarian government without failure lead to wars."

Huh? Who has China invaded this year? And the USA?

Run your statements though an evidence filter first.

They also blamed China for being the largest polluter. Which, while true on a pure numbers basis, doesn't really account for population/per capita and total renewables.

It also dismisses the fact China's pollution is everyone's pollution when they make most of the crap we buy.

"Putin got Schroeder in Germany to shut down nuclear."

Merkel did after Fukoshima and with broad public support.

The nuclear phase-out came into effect in 2002, under first Red-Green Schroeder government. (the "Act on the structured phase-out of the utilization of nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electricity")

Merkel government wanted to postpone the nuclear phase-out, but after Fukoshima, reverted to the original Red-Green nuclear phase-out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...

Unfortunately a) economics and politics are inextricably tied and b) politicking will be required to allow economics to have a greater effect (ie by offsetting externalities through taxation).

Who is claiming that climate change is caused by foreigners?

>1. Get a little bit informed

These viewpoints are exhausting.

A little informed about what? That we are destroying the planet slowly? Yeah, we know.

What is your actual solution? That we tell people they can't have plastic straws? That we need to install solar and wind farms (which is already happening at mass scale in the West, by the way. That includes the US)?

What are you actually proposing? That we "vote"? Do you want to de-industrialize your corner of the world, like Europe is doing, while the rest of the world plows ahead unabated?

Until you're ready to go to war for this, it's unrealistic. And good luck trying to force any country to do anything you want without a well equipped war-machine. You think Russia, India or China care what Europe thinks about their climate policies?

So, yeah, go ahead and vote in your green parties.

> What is your actual solution?

There is no easy solution. If you think that installing solar and wind farm is "a solution", then... you misunderstand the size of the problem.

> What are you actually proposing?

Get informed, work your way towards accepting how bad it actually is, and then work your way towards accepting that life will get more complicated and that we have to work together to try to keep is a bearable as possible.

As long as people will be adversarial (like you are here, criticising green parties for no reason, I don't even vote for them) we'll be screwed. As long as people will go in the streets because "life is getting harder", we'll be screwed.

The only solution we have is to work together. And even if we do (we probably won't, but let's be optimistic), our life will get more complicated. That's why I say that the first step is to accept that. We won't solve the problem while being in denial.

Extremists, as in lumping trump together left wing folks who want a green new deal and to actually do something about the problem?

No socialist/lefty has been elected in the US despite their ideas being super popular. Don't act like voting for a centrist dem like Biden would do anything but ever so slightly slow the climate change scenario we're in. We absolutely need and FDR new deal scope of attack on this problem.

The revisionist history on Joe Biden is insane. I honestly can’t even explain it, other than the idea that there must be an extremely effective opposition campaign to smear him.

The dude engaged in more climate action than any previous president. The Inflation Reduction Act was a huge clean energy manufacturing bill. This is established fact that isn’t even really disputed from what I can tell.

Remember those EV subsidies that disappeared under Trump’s second term? Yeah, those did more to curb fossil fuel consumption than just about anything else the government could have done with direct action. Transportation accounts for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The US is wildly car-dependent. The government should be practically forcing US auto buyers into EVs through EV incentives and gas taxes.

>there must be an extremely effective opposition campaign to smear him.

In your world, Joe Biden was the modern day Abraham Lincoln, and the Russian propaganda firms are working overtime on HackerNews "smearing him".

In reality, Joe Biden was a career politician because he'd say whatever needed to be said to be elected at the time.

In actual reality "Joe Biden was a career politician because he'd say..." does not in any way contradict "Joe Biden did x and engaged in more y..." Outcomes matter, regardless of motives. Do you see the difference?

The rest is changing the subject - derailing and inflammatory.

I’m definitely not saying he was a modern Abraham Lincoln, please don’t extend my words beyond their reach.

Being a career politician doesn’t mean anything positive or negative without further context. All that means is that you are winning elections.

You can be a career politician because you are popular and effective, or you can be a career politician because your political machine has done a good job of keeping you in power — or both.

Bernie Sanders has been in congress about as long as Susan Collins and they are definitely not the same people in terms of the integrity of their ideology and congressional voting record.

Americans are woefully uninformed about how their own government works. Even watching Schoolhouse Rock would teach you that presidents don't write or vote on bills.

> 1. Get a little bit informed. It doesn't require a PhD, it could be done instead of a fraction of the time they spend scrolling bullshit on their smartphone.

The problem is that as soon as you start digging into it, you're essentially walking in a guilt trip.

The kind of "eating an hamburger pollutes more than driving an SUV for 50 miles" guilt trip.

And you realize most of the focus should be on materialism, consumerism and how/what you eat, not just cleaner transport.

But who really wants to do so? I myself am aware that me eating a beef steak per week has a gigantic impact on environment and resources. That switching to pork > chicken > eggs in that same meal would be better.

But I just don't want to enter the guilt trip. So I do a bit, but not as much as I could.

A carbon tax should help there. Make it so me eating a steak is not incentivized. But then good luck with farmers, the easiest like and empathy grabbing category of workers on the planet.

Oh good lord do I hate this "your carbon footprint" rhetoric.

Eating a hamburger or driving a car is not the problem at an individual level.

These companies are: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed... Going to bet not much has changed since 2019.

You can't vegan hamburger your way to terminating those enterprises. You can tax, regulate and ban them though; and use the revenue to help society adjust.

Yeah. I raise my own cattle and the amount of beef we get from a single cow is more than enough to meet our beef needs for a year (at normal Western averages). They are a "closed loop" - they forage on plant material that would grow and rot anyway and actually condition the soil and make our pasture and forest healthier, and remove any need to buy fertiliser for our gardens or pasture.

Telling people that eating a burger is somehow having a huge environmental impact is nonsense, and it becomes rather obvious it's just promoted by people who want to promote veganism for philosophical reasons who have hijacked the environmental reasons.

It is also a complete no-go in China where veganism is viewed with suspicion because it is associated with religious fanaticism.

> Eating a hamburger or driving a car is not the problem at an individual level.

Strongly disagree. Oil is not getting produced because a handful of companies want to ruin the planet-- that happens because billions want those oil products, for personal mobility, cheap goods, cheap energy.

A lot of people simply don't care enough about the future consequences; they want to continue cheap consumption for as long as possible, and find justifications and excuses easily enough ("China emits so much more anyway", "I can't afford to pay more for gas", "why should I have to make any sacrifices that my parent generation did not have to make", etc.).

If you could disperse every last one of those companies into tiny 20-man operations, you would solve absolutely nothing. What would solve things is if a majority of people (in industrialized nations) would become willing to pay the cost for fast and extensive (green) electrification, to downregulate the size and frequency of personal transport, to pay a premium for green concrete and steel, to accept higher prices and worse availability in order to sanction any trading partner that is not similarly serious about emissions.

We can't get any of the above not because of evil corporations or politicians, but simply because most people just don't want to pay the price and make the sacrifice now for a better future.

> You can't vegan hamburger your way to terminating those enterprises. You can tax, regulate and ban them though; and use the revenue to help society adjust.

You can't tax, regulate, or ban them when people still eat hamburgers. Who would vote in favor of that?

But if enough people eat vegan hamburgers...

We have living proof that laws against meat get passed when voters eat less meat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_slaughter_in_India#Legi...

In this case the motivation is religion, not environment. The outcome is the same though.

You can hate it how much you want, facts are facts.

We consume way too much and fuel the demand for products of the companies you list.

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