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> Reminds me of the NY Times saying in 1903 that humans wouldn't fly for at least 1 million years. Glad the Wright brothers and others weren't listening. The d

> Reminds me of the NY Times saying in 1903 that humans wouldn't fly for at least 1 million years. Glad the Wright brothers and others weren't listening. The difference is in 1903 the breakthrough technology of human flight was not being depended on as a matter of skirting existential crises. Both apocalyptic defeatism and procrastinatory techno-optimism are failure modes.

ttiurani 5y ago
Indeed, praying for technological moonshots to save us is the most vicious tactic of delay for climate change action [1]. The root problem is that we people of the Global North are incapable of looking ourselves in the mirror. The obvious solution is to stop all of the frankly idiotic overconsumption that hasn't increased our well-being in decades and – when no overconsumption means no economic growth – rebuild our economy on equity, instead of feverishly insisting that accumulation of almost all of the wealth to a few people is a the only alternative. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/discourses-of-climate-delay/7B11B722E3E3454BB6212378E32985A7 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit... Edit. replaced "westerner" with "Global North" for clarity.
- kortilla 5y ago
  Doesn’t work that way. The way “the West” lives isn’t good for global warming but the way “the East” lives isn’t sustainable either. Just different classes of passenger on the Titanic. > and rebuild our economy on equity, instead of feverishly insisting that accumulation of almost all of the wealth to a few people is a the only alternative. Senseless non sequitur. Social ownership doesn’t solve climate change, that’s just a trope from some leftists as a means to couple one issue (climate change) with something completely unrelated (disrupting capitalism). Just look to Norway for an an example of a huge socialist project terrible for climate change (Statoil).
  - ttiurani 5y ago
    Granted "westerner" was the wrong word: I meant rich nations, which are responsible for almost all of the historical emissions. "Social ownership doesn’t solve climate change," I skipped a few steps there: the reason we can't just stop overconsumption is because that would effectively stop and reverse economic growth. No growth just doesn't work without restructuring the economy.
kortilla 5y ago
> was not being depended on as a matter of skirting existential crises. Life was much bleaker in the early 1900s. Then the Cold War was decades of immediate existential crisis (grade school children practiced getting under their desks for nuclear bombs). > Both apocalyptic defeatism and procrastinatory techno-optimism are failure modes. And this article is squarely defeatism.
echelon 5y ago
> existential crises I agree that climate change is horrible for biodiversity [1]. Solutions to life that took millions of years to evolve will die and be forever gone. Tragic, irreplaceable losses. Undoubtably the worst part of climate change. But I don't think this will be an existential crisis for humans unless we trigger a "clathrate gun" [2] or some other runaway system that kills off the entire food web. Or substantially changes the chemical composition of the atmosphere well beyond periods such as the Mesozoic Era. (There have been vastly different climates and atmospheres throughout Earth's history, but we're adapted to a similar enough environment to survive many of them.) We have to fight climate change, but I think that the doomsday "existential crisis" attitude is a turnoff to many that you'd attempt to sway. There's a pragmatic sweet spot. Besides, there are a number of more likely culprits that would kill us before climate change (nuclear war, bioweapons, reverse chiral autotrophs [3], ecoterrorists seeding the world with prions, ...). Or at least things that would stick us in this gravity well until civilization ends. [1] my thoughts on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27279511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27279511 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28038505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28038505

ttiurani 5y ago

Indeed, praying for technological moonshots to save us is the most vicious tactic of delay for climate change action [1]. The root problem is that we people of the Global North are incapable of looking ourselves in the mirror. The obvious solution is to stop all of the frankly idiotic overconsumption that hasn't increased our well-being in decades and – when no overconsumption means no economic growth – rebuild our economy on equity, instead of feverishly insisting that accumulation of almost all of the wealth to a few people is a the only alternative. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/discourses-of-climate-delay/7B11B722E3E3454BB6212378E32985A7 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit... Edit. replaced "westerner" with "Global North" for clarity.

kortilla 5y ago
Doesn’t work that way. The way “the West” lives isn’t good for global warming but the way “the East” lives isn’t sustainable either. Just different classes of passenger on the Titanic. > and rebuild our economy on equity, instead of feverishly insisting that accumulation of almost all of the wealth to a few people is a the only alternative. Senseless non sequitur. Social ownership doesn’t solve climate change, that’s just a trope from some leftists as a means to couple one issue (climate change) with something completely unrelated (disrupting capitalism). Just look to Norway for an an example of a huge socialist project terrible for climate change (Statoil).
- ttiurani 5y ago
  Granted "westerner" was the wrong word: I meant rich nations, which are responsible for almost all of the historical emissions. "Social ownership doesn’t solve climate change," I skipped a few steps there: the reason we can't just stop overconsumption is because that would effectively stop and reverse economic growth. No growth just doesn't work without restructuring the economy.

kortilla 5y ago

> was not being depended on as a matter of skirting existential crises. Life was much bleaker in the early 1900s. Then the Cold War was decades of immediate existential crisis (grade school children practiced getting under their desks for nuclear bombs). > Both apocalyptic defeatism and procrastinatory techno-optimism are failure modes. And this article is squarely defeatism.

echelon 5y ago

> existential crises I agree that climate change is horrible for biodiversity [1]. Solutions to life that took millions of years to evolve will die and be forever gone. Tragic, irreplaceable losses. Undoubtably the worst part of climate change. But I don't think this will be an existential crisis for humans unless we trigger a "clathrate gun" [2] or some other runaway system that kills off the entire food web. Or substantially changes the chemical composition of the atmosphere well beyond periods such as the Mesozoic Era. (There have been vastly different climates and atmospheres throughout Earth's history, but we're adapted to a similar enough environment to survive many of them.) We have to fight climate change, but I think that the doomsday "existential crisis" attitude is a turnoff to many that you'd attempt to sway. There's a pragmatic sweet spot. Besides, there are a number of more likely culprits that would kill us before climate change (nuclear war, bioweapons, reverse chiral autotrophs [3], ecoterrorists seeding the world with prions, ...). Or at least things that would stick us in this gravity well until civilization ends. [1] my thoughts on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27279511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27279511 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28038505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28038505