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...are stupid even to contemplate while we're still increasing carbon emissions. If you actually cared about the impact — and weren't just cynically cashing in
by rexpop 8y ago
...are stupid even to contemplate while we're still increasing carbon emissions. If you actually cared about the impact — and weren't just cynically cashing in on environmentalism's recapitulated caché — you'd be shorting big markets. The biggest threat to the world is unbridled capitalism, which VC's like you are incapable of abandoning. May as well ask a fish to bicycle.
This post is a pitiable joke, whose highest purpose is to stand in a museum, one day, as a testament to how blindly we charged into the apocalypse. I only hope that museum's curated by our children, and not whatever species finds our remains.
For a good, hard look at why I believe this, read Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything," and Peter Frase's "Four Futures."
If you're daring enough, you can follow those with Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash," and Barbara Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets" and "Witches, Midwives, & Nurses" for a deep look at how and how long we've been going wrong.
If that all doesn't make you straight up suicidal (let alone quit maintaining your startup pyramid scheme), I have more reading suggestions for how to turn this ship around.
- peacetreefrog 8y ago"... stupid to contemplate while we're still increasing carbon emissions." Ok, let us know your plan for reducing carbon emissions and when and how we can expect it to happen.
- khrbrt 8y agoEasy. Stop subsidizing fossil fuel exploration, extraction, and movement (ie. pipelines). Make carbon emissions expensive, and you'll see them go down. Levy a revenue neutral carbon tax which anually redistributes to consumers the "average" tax per person. Stop subsidizing suburban sprawl. Build more high density housing near mass transit. Walkable neighborhoods and such. These are all obvious things we should have started decades ago.
- tlb 8y agoTransportation is only 14% [0] of greenhouse gas emission, and passenger cars are about half of that. While driving less can help, even reducing it to zero won't prevent serious climate change. So we need other solutions as well. [0] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-change https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-clima...
- function_seven 8y ago14% is big enough to include in a reduction scheme, no? I don't understand wanting to exclude it. First two points (subsidy removal and carbon tax) would apply to all uses of fossil fuels, not just transportation.
- peacetreefrog 8y agoI happen to agree with all of these, on some level they're even obvious, to the extent that 99%+ of all environmental economists would support it. However, it's naive to think anything close to resembling this could happen politically IMO. That's why we aren't at all close to doing it, even though it's "obvious".
- hodgesrm 8y ago> I have more reading suggestions for how to turn this ship around. Meanwhile your post is putting down people who are doing actual work to fix the problem. I for one am delighted to see people committing resources to solving real problems instead of developing worthless mobile phone apps. That gives me hope our species will get through global warming.
- rexpop 8y agoMore like people who are doing actual work to capitalize on the problem.
- JBReefer 8y agoIf someone can figure out how to make money to reverse climate change, that will be the end of climate change. The whole problem is that it's hugely expensive and only impacts each of us a tiny tiny bit _today_
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoThe only way we're going to turn this ship around is by telling people that there's money to be made somewhere else. If you ask a world full of the rich and those who want to be that they have to turn away from money you're not going to have an audience. Telling us to read 5+ books to appropriately educate ourselves on why the system is doomed and how to fix it isn't going to reach the masses, and certainly not those with power, especially when the basic assumption is that they have to lose all their power in order for the scheme to work.
- rexpop 8y agoI didn't realize you were a masses. If you don't have time to read two books, how did you get a job in the technology industry? I'm sick of you lazy techies. Grow up and read a damn book.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoTelling people to read books to understand your argument is a form of gate-keeping that isn't going to convince anyone of your argument. If you can't express it yourself after having read 5+ books, why would I want to go through the same exercise?
- rexpop 8y agoI just did you a huge favor listing those books because, of the hundreds I've read, these few are particularly telling, relevant, and accessible. You now want me to synthesize a co-review of them all? That's actually a fantastic idea, which I am now more seriously considering, but I won't do it out of charity to those privileged enough to frequent this website.
- JBReefer 8y agoThis doesn't sound relevant to carbon fixation: "Witches, Midwives, & Nurses, first published by the Feminist Press in 1973, is an essential book about the corruption of the medical establishment and its historic roots in witch hunters. In this new edition, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English have written an entirely new chapter that delves into the current fascination with and controversies about witches, exposing our fears and fantasies. They build on their classic exposé on the demonization of women healers and the political and economic monopolization of medicine. This quick history brings us up-to-date, exploring today's changing attitudes toward childbirth, alternative medicine, and modern-day witches."
- rexpop 8y agoForgive my penchant for lateral thinking; English & Ehrenreich's book makes strong points about the development of "professionalism" and industry, two pillars of the pathological substrate making our survival, as another commenter put it, "politically impossible."
- pokemongoaway 8y agoIs that passion I hear? Censor him!