5 ms·

" Turning things around would require changes of a pace and scale that we have no idea how to motivate and coordinate." Things like electricity, the automobile

" Turning things around would require changes of a pace and scale that we have no idea how to motivate and coordinate." Things like electricity, the automobile, air travel and the internet went from nonexistent to universal in developed countries in phenomenally short time spans. Renewable energy appears to be following a similar trajectory, leaving all the estimates in the dust and emerging faster than most people realize or can keep track of. Fast enough? Well, we'll find out. But at this point you can't say it's slow.

devmunchies 9y ago
> Things like electricity, the automobile, air travel and the internet went from nonexistent to universal in developed countries in phenomenally short time spans Oh, hey, thats about the same "phenomenally short time span" that everything started going to shit.
- ryanx435 9y ago
  K. Let's get rid of electricity and go back to horses and sail boats as our prime travel options, then.
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    I was just stating that its the same timing. i think those things enabled globalization and too many hyper efficiencies but they themselves aren't the cause.
  - crispinb 9y ago
    > Let's get rid of electricity and go back to horses and sail boats as our prime travel options, then. Too late for that. And I don't see anyone offering easy answers. But pretending that what's happening in the real world isn't happening, or frantically waving totems of electronic consumer satisfaction about, won't make those physical realities go away.
    - CalRobert 9y ago
      Solar panels, electric bicycles, and not completely-effing-crazy urban design is actually a pretty easy answer. But everyone wants to live on an island of asphalt with a sterile, depression patch of grass in front, at least three miles away from the nearest place to buy a cup of coffee (a disposable cup, natch). Actually, not everyone does, but those who do, made it illegal to build anything else. At least in the US.
      - dmix 9y ago
        > But everyone wants to live on an island of asphalt with a sterile, depression patch of grass in front, at least three miles away from the nearest place to buy a cup of coffee (a disposable cup, natch). ... I love how the cliche environmentalists worldview is to reduce these problems to entirely the result personal choice. As if consumers chose petroleum as the most efficient and widespread fuel in the earth's crust, and the combustion engine, then decided they wanted highways and suburbs, etc. Instead of thousands of small choices over a century (or more) based on circumstance, central planning, present needs, etc - things largely out of their control. Combined with other biological human flaws like short term thinking and favouring political populism and emotion when voting/buying. Not to mention, the widespread adoption of suburbs was not a product of market capitalism or consumerism... it was the result of government zoning and regulatory policy: https://www.amazon.com/Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-Metropolitan/dp/1933115157/ https://www.amazon.com/Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-M... You may be convinced and have deep knowledge of the subject but it's far from common knowledge. Understanding of climate issues is very low and it's not entirely the result of ignorance or malice or compromise because someone loves having a big lawn. I tried to educate myself on the subject, I love to read, but even I found it difficult to find good books on the subject, specifically books that were balanced and scientific instead of sounding like the ravings of an ideologue. I've asked on HN for book recommendations on climate change multiple times and each time I've been pointed to websites with dry 150 page reports by non-profit organizations. It's far from easy to know better.
frankzinger 9y ago
How does renewable energy prevent the mass extinction of insects?
crispinb 9y ago
Two problems with that. Firstly: climate change is only one of the problems caused by a culture based almost entirely on the ecocidal fantasy of stolen-from-the-future 'economic growth'. We are losing topsoil at a dizzying pace. Fresh water is disappearing. The habitats on which natural systems depend are being ripped apart. Novel substances are being created and released into our air, water and land with unknown consequences. Climate change is a single crisis piled upon multiple others. Case in point: Australia's Queensland inner reefs are almost completely gone, and the outer reefs have only a few decades left. Causes: multiple, from nutrient-rich agricultural runoff (largely from pointless vanity sugar cane production), to wholesale destruction of coastal ecosystems including mangroves, which are crucial nurseries for many reef fish. Increasing ocean temperatures deal the final blow to already critically weakened ecosystems. This is our planet in miniature. Climate change isn't the problem. It's yet another symptom of the same fundamental dynamic, delivered as just the latest and largest of a series of blows many ecosystems will not survive. Secondly: the changes needed are not only (and perhaps not primarily) technological. They require planetary coordination and cooperation to handle on political and social levels, and the defeat of a crazed unthinking ideology of unhindered 'economic growth'. Fundamental changes of attitude and societal organisation need to be agreed upon in the next few decades, and implemented without delay. Yet we can't even agree on obvious tiny measures like removing nuclear weapons, and rogue wealthy nations resist nearly every attempt to do anything meaningful about any of the critical issues. We just don't know how to do what's needed, and there are no solutions on the horizon. And we are still locked into fantasies of national government and sovereignty, despite being (factually & physically) a global civilisation. Look at the political convulsions happening now as a consequence of current worldwide refugee crises. But that's minuscule compared to what's coming. Imagine what happens when ocean level rises cause two billion refugees to seek somewhere to live. Given our level of global immaturity, what do you think will happen? It will be all wars and walls. And our capability, in the midst of such convulsions, to make (and keep) difficult international agreements? Nil. I'd absolutely love to be wrong. But all physical and social indicators are pointing in the same direction.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  So start doing something. What have you got to lose if you're already doomed? Get yourself a copy of Deep Green resistance and join an aboveground affiliate group. It's easy to manufacture excuses not to do something because it looks impossible. So what? Better than saying you sat there and did nothing and watched it all disintegrate.

devmunchies 9y ago

> Things like electricity, the automobile, air travel and the internet went from nonexistent to universal in developed countries in phenomenally short time spans Oh, hey, thats about the same "phenomenally short time span" that everything started going to shit.

ryanx435 9y ago
K. Let's get rid of electricity and go back to horses and sail boats as our prime travel options, then.
- devmunchies 9y ago
  I was just stating that its the same timing. i think those things enabled globalization and too many hyper efficiencies but they themselves aren't the cause.
- crispinb 9y ago
  > Let's get rid of electricity and go back to horses and sail boats as our prime travel options, then. Too late for that. And I don't see anyone offering easy answers. But pretending that what's happening in the real world isn't happening, or frantically waving totems of electronic consumer satisfaction about, won't make those physical realities go away.
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    Solar panels, electric bicycles, and not completely-effing-crazy urban design is actually a pretty easy answer. But everyone wants to live on an island of asphalt with a sterile, depression patch of grass in front, at least three miles away from the nearest place to buy a cup of coffee (a disposable cup, natch). Actually, not everyone does, but those who do, made it illegal to build anything else. At least in the US.
    - dmix 9y ago
      > But everyone wants to live on an island of asphalt with a sterile, depression patch of grass in front, at least three miles away from the nearest place to buy a cup of coffee (a disposable cup, natch). ... I love how the cliche environmentalists worldview is to reduce these problems to entirely the result personal choice. As if consumers chose petroleum as the most efficient and widespread fuel in the earth's crust, and the combustion engine, then decided they wanted highways and suburbs, etc. Instead of thousands of small choices over a century (or more) based on circumstance, central planning, present needs, etc - things largely out of their control. Combined with other biological human flaws like short term thinking and favouring political populism and emotion when voting/buying. Not to mention, the widespread adoption of suburbs was not a product of market capitalism or consumerism... it was the result of government zoning and regulatory policy: https://www.amazon.com/Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-Metropolitan/dp/1933115157/ https://www.amazon.com/Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-M... You may be convinced and have deep knowledge of the subject but it's far from common knowledge. Understanding of climate issues is very low and it's not entirely the result of ignorance or malice or compromise because someone loves having a big lawn. I tried to educate myself on the subject, I love to read, but even I found it difficult to find good books on the subject, specifically books that were balanced and scientific instead of sounding like the ravings of an ideologue. I've asked on HN for book recommendations on climate change multiple times and each time I've been pointed to websites with dry 150 page reports by non-profit organizations. It's far from easy to know better.

frankzinger 9y ago

How does renewable energy prevent the mass extinction of insects?

crispinb 9y ago

Two problems with that. Firstly: climate change is only one of the problems caused by a culture based almost entirely on the ecocidal fantasy of stolen-from-the-future 'economic growth'. We are losing topsoil at a dizzying pace. Fresh water is disappearing. The habitats on which natural systems depend are being ripped apart. Novel substances are being created and released into our air, water and land with unknown consequences. Climate change is a single crisis piled upon multiple others. Case in point: Australia's Queensland inner reefs are almost completely gone, and the outer reefs have only a few decades left. Causes: multiple, from nutrient-rich agricultural runoff (largely from pointless vanity sugar cane production), to wholesale destruction of coastal ecosystems including mangroves, which are crucial nurseries for many reef fish. Increasing ocean temperatures deal the final blow to already critically weakened ecosystems. This is our planet in miniature. Climate change isn't the problem. It's yet another symptom of the same fundamental dynamic, delivered as just the latest and largest of a series of blows many ecosystems will not survive. Secondly: the changes needed are not only (and perhaps not primarily) technological. They require planetary coordination and cooperation to handle on political and social levels, and the defeat of a crazed unthinking ideology of unhindered 'economic growth'. Fundamental changes of attitude and societal organisation need to be agreed upon in the next few decades, and implemented without delay. Yet we can't even agree on obvious tiny measures like removing nuclear weapons, and rogue wealthy nations resist nearly every attempt to do anything meaningful about any of the critical issues. We just don't know how to do what's needed, and there are no solutions on the horizon. And we are still locked into fantasies of national government and sovereignty, despite being (factually & physically) a global civilisation. Look at the political convulsions happening now as a consequence of current worldwide refugee crises. But that's minuscule compared to what's coming. Imagine what happens when ocean level rises cause two billion refugees to seek somewhere to live. Given our level of global immaturity, what do you think will happen? It will be all wars and walls. And our capability, in the midst of such convulsions, to make (and keep) difficult international agreements? Nil. I'd absolutely love to be wrong. But all physical and social indicators are pointing in the same direction.

anigbrowl 9y ago
So start doing something. What have you got to lose if you're already doomed? Get yourself a copy of Deep Green resistance and join an aboveground affiliate group. It's easy to manufacture excuses not to do something because it looks impossible. So what? Better than saying you sat there and did nothing and watched it all disintegrate.